Sexy as Hell Box Set (93 page)

Thank goodness for that.

I opened my eyes and spotted Victor coming down the stairs wearing his big black coat and carrying mine, a flash of fur, folded over his arm.

Shit.

There was the pain.

Victor.

I’d never give him that—the walk down the aisle, the white dress and the vows before God. Never would I be able to commit to him in a conventional sense. Marriage wasn’t on my agenda, and an engagement would never work for me.

But what if he insisted? Would I? Could I?

I’d do anything for him, of course I would. But that?

Confusion swam within me. I’d been expecting pain about Geoffrey and Helen’s engagement but instead it was a swirl of anxiety, muddled thoughts, torn obligations that besieged me, and they all centred around Victor.

His smile dropped. “Are you okay?” he asked, stepping up and holding out my open coat so I could slip my arms straight into it.

“Yes.” I pulled the coat tight, slid the three huge black buttons into their holes. “Of course.”

He turned me, by my shoulders, so I was facing him. “Sure?” He studied me for a few seconds and then kissed the tip of my nose. “You’ve gone pale.”

I closed my eyes, felt his strength and warmth, and also his love and concern.

Sighing, I touched his cheek. “I just had to hide from Geoffrey and Helen. They were checking out.”

“Ah, shit.” He glanced around. “I’m sorry, I didn’t think, I wouldn’t have left you if I’d—”

“How could you have known? It’s okay. They’ve gone now, back to England.”

He nodded. “Good. That means we won’t bump into them again.” He hesitated. “What?”

I shook my head.

“Tell me, there’s more.”

How did he do that? How did he know when I was trying to keep something hidden? It was as though he could open up my layers and see the silent words in my eyes. “They’re engaged.”

“Oh, I see.” He frowned. “Oh. Okay.”

I reached for his hand, wondering if he’d ever asked Helen to marry him. I decided I didn’t want to know. “They’re well suited. I hope they’ll be very happy together.”

He squeezed my fingers; a small crease formed between his eyebrows. “Me too. I don’t want to think about them or see them again, but I do hope they’ll be happy.” He started to move us towards the exit, and the doorman rushed forward to let the cool air in. “Though, of course, they’ll never be as happy as we are.”

“I like your optimism, Virgin.”

He grinned and as we stepped outside, he wrapped his arm around my shoulders and set a solid kiss on my lips.

“So this is St Mark’s Basilica?” I said, craning my neck to look upwards at the huge golden domes. They were a wash of shadows and arches, all amber-hued and stained with serene figures.

“Isn’t it wonderful?” Victor’s voice had been laden with awe. “A perfect example of Byzantine architecture; I adore every square inch of it. Stunning.”

Hand in hand, we carried on ambling down the main stretch of the cross that made up the
floorplan inside the huge cathedral. I hardly knew where to look. The ceiling was beautiful but so was the ground—a detailed mosaic design that had many animals in the pattern including the winged lion.

“I’ve never been here and seen it this empty,” Victor said, moving down the western nave. “We have it almost to ourselves.”

I glanced at a handful of people sitting in pews. All solo, all with bent heads. They appeared to be mainly women in headscarves, though I spotted a man, too, with a shiny bald patch and his collar turned up.

“It’s so quiet,” I whispered.

“Peaceful, inspirational,” Victor said. “I almost feel like He’s with me and I could achieve anything.”

“Who?”

Victor paused then frowned. “God, of course.”

“Ha, he won’t help you.” I pulled my hand from his, touched the wall and traced a dent in the stonework.

“Why do you always say that?”

I pulled my attention from a scene of what looked like Noah and his ark. “What’s down there?”

“That’s the Presbytery. You want to look?”

“Yes.” I
turned and moved forwards. “Then we should probably go.”

He caught me up and took my hand again. “Don’t push me away.”

“I’m not. I want to look down there that’s all, and then go.”

We passed another couple, walking slowly, cameras held high, bronze-toned shadows sliding behind them on the aisle.

I was conscious of the clicking of my heels and pleased when we reached the East Wing and a small carpet absorbed the sound.

“Why do you want to leave all of a sudden?” he asked.

I stopped. Before us was an intricate screen made of red marble columns and delicate wooden latticework. Perched high on top was a crucifix holding Christ. His ankles were crossed, his legs thin, and his abdomen and chest sunken. His splayed hands showed the marks of the nails, and his head lolled on a weak neck. A crown of thorns pierced his forehead; his mouth was a sad, flat line, and his eyes stared straight at me.

“I thought we were looking at architecture, not all this religious stuff,” I said on a huff but unable to tear my gaze away.

“Surely the two are perfect together, a match made in Heaven.”

I
tutted and focused my attention on my feet.

“Sit,” Victor said, “it’s warm in here and we’ve only just arrived.”

“No.” I glared at him.

“Zara.” He tipped his head; a lock of hair fell near his eye. “Why not? What’s got into you?”

“It’s just…Him.” I flicked my hand at the image of Christ.

“Jesus?”

“Yes, Him, he doesn’t like me.”

“I’m not a wildly religious person, but I think the general consensus is He loves everyone, no matter who they are.”

“So why didn’t he do anything to stop it?”

“Stop what? What do you mean?”

What did I mean? Out of everyone he fucking knew what I meant.

As I studied his eyes I could see that yes, he did indeed know what I was talking about. He just wanted me to say it.

“Sit,” he said again, steering me to a set of three pews beside what looked like confession boxes. “Sit here, with me. Just for a few minutes.”

Fight was slipping from me, so I
sat. The wood was cold on my back and bottom, despite my coat, but he was right, it was warmer in here than outside. And it was so quiet, just the noise of our breathing, the fabric of our clothes rustling and the occasional cough in the distance or tap of footsteps.

“Zara, talk to me. What’s your problem with Jesus and God? I can tell it’s not ambivalent, it bothers you, this rift. There’s more to it than not believing.”

A quiver attacked my belly, and I tensed my muscles, knitted my fingers together and looked up at the crucifix—His eyes had followed me, or so it seemed.

“Because he was there,” I said, “in the shed, and he let it all happen, didn’t stop it. Not once.” I swallowed down a bite of bile.

An image came of Conner kissing the cross he’d worn around his neck. He was saying a quick Hail Mary before he’d slapped my face and breasts, then took a belt to my arse and stripped it to such raw welts I couldn’t sit for a week and had scars for months. The others had watched on:
“God, she’s delicate.” “Jesus, isn’t she quiet, you’ve pushed her too far.” “God help us if we ever get caught, if she ever says anything to the police.”

“Explain, let me in,” Victor whispered, touching my hair and hooking a thick strand behind my ear. “I want to hear this. I need to.”

I turned to him. “Do you? Do you really?”

“You know I do.”

Zara had been pale in the hotel lobby, but now she was sheet-white. Not just her face but her knuckles too—the way she’d knitted her fingers together had pressed all the blood from her hands.

She’d told me bad stuff, sure, hateful, hard-to-hear stuff, but I had the feeling this was more. She still had a way to go before she’d purged all of her memories.

“You’re safe now,” I whispered against her temple. “I’ll never let anyone hurt you ever again, I promise.”

She dragged her gaze from the effigy of Christ and studied me. “I believe you, but…”

“But what?”

“I’m worried this will hurt you. What I tell you.”

I shook my head. “I can take it because by telling me you’re unloading, shaking off those memories.” I paused. “Come on, you can do it, you already have, so much. I’m so proud of you.”

She closed her eyes, rolled her lips in on themselves. I thought she wasn’t going to speak but then she looked up again, at the cross, and said, “I called for Him first, you know, when Conner grabbed me. I’d been helping out a friend who had a kid, minding him so she could go out with her new boyfriend. I didn’t care, quite liked kids back then.” She gave a small huff. “Anyway, it was summer, so there was still some light when I wandered home late evening. I was happy—despite my mother’s crap parenting I’d stayed on at school and had been accepted on an airhostess course. I wanted to travel, see the world. I was
eighteen and all set to escape the shitty council estate and crap town I’d never set foot out of, except for that one interview. My future was bright, and I was primed for escape.

“But then out of nowhere he appeared, wearing a hood
ed top and woollen gloves. He just dragged me up against him, put a hand over my mouth and the other around my body, and pulled me into the shadows. I managed to shout from behind his palm, sort of. You know,
get off, help, Jesus Christ
, the usual panic, but soon it was clear that not only was he strong but that he wasn’t alone. Like shadows, Ray and Sam appeared. I think it was Ray who grabbed my feet, and I was carried then, behind a derelict house—there were lots of those—and into the ivy-covered shed at the back of the garden.

“I remember the smell of dirt and oil, as if it had been a well-used tool shed. And that mannequin, that was just creepy. To start with, in my terror, I’d thought it was another man, waiting for his turn to
o, but…”

“
Shh, it’s okay.” I had a great ball of fury in my guts. I wanted to tear those boys from limb to limb. Subject them to slow and painful deaths, torture them until they begged for mercy and then torture them some more.

But I couldn’t. That ball of fury had to stay contained—more than that, hidden. Because if Zara thought she was generating such a cancerous rage in me she
’d close up, keep it all inside for the rest of her life, and that would be more devastating to me than any kind of unquenched wrath. “Go on,” I said, the words scratching at my throat but thankfully coming out softly.

“They put a strip of tape over my mouth—sticky and sore, it was. I couldn’t even move my lips without it peeling at the skin. I was scared I was going to choke, die on my own vomit. They stripped me naked then, in a flurry of ripping material and yanking. I was convinced they were going to rape me, the thought made worse because…”

I shut my eyes; my vision had blurred. Fury threatened to erupt in a loud scream Heavenward to let God know how fucking angry with Him I was for letting this happen. But I didn’t. Instead, I contained it and told myself that if the anger in me from just a few details was so consuming, goodness only knew how fucking evil it was inside my beautiful woman, and had been, gnawing away, for so many years.

“Because I was a virgin,” she said. “I’d seen friends chasing after boys, getting pregnant, their lives fucked up before they’d ever had a chance to get out of the shithole we lived in, and I didn’t want that. So I kept my legs crossed and was determined to make it out.” She sighed, unwrapped her fingers and reached for my hand as though needing contact.

Her skin was cool, and I pressed her hands flat together, as if she was praying, and captured them between mine.

“I was scared, so scared. I struggled, of course I did. Wondered if they’d let me go if I elbowed them, kicked, glared. They didn’t, and I was no match for three strong men—that’s what they were, young men. Soon I was naked, curled in the corner and convinced I was on my last few minutes of being alive. Conner did what he always did then, before he hurt me, and it was him that did the most hurting. He pulled the silver cross he wore around his neck to his lips and muttered a prayer. I soon learnt that when he did that something bad was going to happen.

“That first time was sick, horrid, and they treated it like a ritual they’d talked about, had planned. There was excitement in their voices, in their actions. The shed was dark, but like I said there was some light in the sky and they’d lit a couple of candles in the corner. It wasn’t a nice warm glow, like in here, or last night sitting at the table with you, it was a hard, metallic glow, one that seemed alive with pain and humiliation and lacking in heat.

“Each man st
ood over me, then they took their cocks out and began to wank. They had a good bit of banter, about the shape of my tits, my pussy and untrimmed pubic hair. I shut my eyes, prayed for God to help me, save me from this awful fate and the three evil scumbags who had me. But He didn’t help me. He just watched.” She paused, tipped her chin in the way she did when being brave. “And I knew He was watching because Conner had just spoken to Him, summoned Him to the shed, yet still He did nothing… Bastard.”