The Initiation of Ms Holly (Xcite Erotic Romance Novels) (20 page)

T
HE CHICK’S PARENTS WOULD
shit themselves if they knew their little angel was taking it up both holes and begging the two biker blokes to fuck her harder. Gavin couldn’t remember her family’s title, but they probably owned half of some small county somewhere. And anyway he thought these were the same two bikers who were giving the chick’s father a ride last month. She was just another one of those rich twenty-somethings with no prospects, no ambition, but lots of mum and dad’s money to blow. Like he gave a shit. Rich people could afford to get creative with their sex fantasies. He might be just a glorified bouncer, but what he saw on the job beat the best porn he had ever watched, and he got paid well for his efforts.

Like an unhappy stray cat, the chick suddenly shoved the bikers aside. ‘Get away from me,’ she huffed. ‘You’re rubbish, both of you.’ As she crawled from between them and heaved herself off the big bike, the two blokes shrugged and went to work on each other. The chick’s eyes were locked on Gavin. Both hands cupped her half-lemon tits pinching enormous nipples as she moved toward him. ‘I want a real man.’

Before he could give her the usual, employees don’t fraternise spiel, her tongue was halfway down his throat and she was undoing his fly.

She offered a breathy giggle, at the discovery of his hard-on. ‘I thought you might be enjoying the show.’ She guided his fingers over her smoothly shaved puss. ‘I like to be watched’

He pulled his hand away and struggled to disengage her. ‘You are being watched.’ He nodded to the cameras strategically positioned around the room. ‘So am I, and I’m not a part of your little fantasy.’ He’d already been reprimanded once for taking improper liberties with members, but Vivienne could hardly punish him when every time he turned around she wanted him to fuck her while she pretended to be Rita Holly. And she had literally ordered him to make that bird come, so how could she say anything?

‘Come on,’ the chick pouted. ‘I know you want me.’ She nodded to the two bikers. One was now buried to the hilt in the arse of the other, who was stroking his cock with a vengeance. ‘They won’t miss me.’ She pulled his hand back to her pussy, opening her legs just enough for him to get a good feel of her slippery pout. His cock jerked against his half-open fly. She sighed. ‘There, you see? I bet your balls are so full.’ She guided his hand deeper and gyrated her naked hips like a belly dancer, riding his fingers as they thrust and stroked almost of their own volition.

She undid his fly and shoved trousers and boxers down, groping his arse as she did so. He pulled away long enough to shrug out of his jacket. ‘Mmmm,’ she sighed as she released his erection into her hand. ‘I want it in me.’ Her slit quivered and gripped at his fingers, and the smell of hot pussy bloomed from under the clean sanitised smell of wealth.

‘You’re not in Surrey any more, bitch. If you want that,’ he nodded to his stiff cock, ‘you do what I tell you.’

‘Oooh,’ she breathed. ‘Tell me what to do.’

‘That’s better,’ he whispered, glancing up at the cameras, hoping that Vivienne were watching. Pretty stupid to think such a thing, he knew, but he couldn’t help himself.’ He could feel the rich chick – what was her name, Eliza? Jemima? – straining against his hand, her whole body tightening as she tugged at her tits with one hand and yanked on his cock with the other. Oh, she was close. So close.

He pulled away, and she howled her frustration. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her to him. ‘You come when I say, bitch, so hold your cunt.’ He shoved her to her knees and guided his cock into her mouth, imagining what it would look like to Vivienne, hoping it would make her jealous and hot for him.

The chick moaned and gagged as he thrust into her gob, but she kept sucking like she couldn’t get enough. He slapped her hand away when she tried to finger fuck herself, and she whimpered.

Butt-fucking Biker Bloke grunted, ‘I’m coming, holy fuck, I’m coming!’ Just as the bloke being fucked shot a fountain of semen onto the shiny chrome of the big bike. Gavin was afraid Rich Chick would pinch her swollen nipples right off as she tongued the underside of his cock to the rhythm of her thrusting hips.

‘Stand up,’ he ordered. She had little choice with his hand still twisted in her hair. He half dragged her to the seat of the bike and shoved her up onto it while the two biker blokes looked on stroking their cocks. There, he forced her legs wide apart. Her cunt was all dark and swollen and pulsating. And slippery. God, it was so slippery. She whined and whimpered like a sprog begging for sweeties, lifting her tight little arse off the seat, flashing her clenching bum hole at him. And bloody hell, he had to have her. He felt so full. His need to come was spurred on by the thought of Vivienne watching all wet and horny.

He shoved into the bird’s tight cunt, and she wrapped her legs around him like she would break his ribs. He grabbed her arse and pulled her to him, bending to bite her fat, begging nipples as he did.

‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ came her humid gasp against his ear. And she gripped him like a tight fist. He held back as long as he could. He didn’t want Vivienne thinking he couldn’t hold his wad. But the chick’s slit was so tight and so wet, and she just kept thrusting against him until it was inevitable. One last hard shove, and he spurted massively, grunting and jerking until it almost hurt, but oh God, such a relief. Such a relief.

T
HE THOUGHT OF TURNING
and running back down the stairs barely had time to register before her mother scooped her into her arms, oblivious to the rain soaking through the front of her very expensive silk blouse. ‘I’m so sorry, my darling, so sorry,’ she whispered against Rita’s shoulder.

Rita could only respond by sobbing. At times like this, maybe a girl just needed her mother. Maybe the unpleasant scene she had been dreading between the two of them could wait, at least for a little while. She had already had enough unpleasantness for one day.

With the front of her blouse wet from the rain and her shoulder wet from Rita snuffling, Coraline Martelli helped her daughter out of her wet clothes and made her a warm cup of cocoa. When the catharsis was over and Rita was swathed in her favourite terry robe and tucked up in her bed, her mother pulled the chair to her bedside and held her hand as she had done when Rita was as a small child. Back then, Rita had thought her mother was a dark-haired angel with pretty red lips that always smiled and strong arms that kept her safe from the monsters under the bed. With a sudden tightness in her throat, Rita realised not that much had changed, except the monsters were now real, and they wanted to destroy her.

Her mother studied her for a long moment in the amber light of the bedside lamp, then she reached out and pushed a damp lock of hair away from her face. ‘You look thin, Ree. I knew that without Rosa to cook for you, you wouldn’t eat well.’

‘Mama, please. I’m eating fine. I’ve just been …’ Her voice drifted off, and in spite of herself, she felt tears welling again.

‘My poor baby. I’m so sorry. I never intended it to be this way. I searched and searched for you. I thought maybe you’d try to find your father. I never imagined you’d leave the States. Then I sent Paulo to London on business, and he discovered these amazing articles by some free-lance journalist named Rita Holly.’

Rita stared down into her cocoa. ‘Using my middle name was a give-away. I should have known better.’

‘It wouldn’t have mattered if you had called yourself Queen Elizabeth, I would have still known it was you. Remember, you used to read all your stories to me when you were a little girl? How could I not recognise the voice of my own daughter all grown up and taking London by storm.’

‘Hardly by storm, Mama. In fact I imagine you’re the only one who noticed.’

Her mother waved away the self deprecation. ‘Anyway, finding you was easy once I realised you had left Seattle and transformed yourself into a London journalist. When I realised what was going on, I knew I had to act. Your friend, Kate let me into your flat once she knew how worried I was.’

And just like that the mother-daughter bliss popped like a soap bubble, and the old issues surfaced again. Rita pulled her hand away from her mother’s grip. ‘So you had me tailed like a petty criminal and bribed my best friend to break you into my flat?’

‘It wasn’t a bribe. She was worried too.’

‘Mama, this is exactly why I left in the first place.’ The venting of her frustration, once begun, was like a runaway train. Defying Coraline Martelli took courage. Best get it all over with before the courage failed her. ‘I needed space. I needed a life of my own, and Martelli isn’t it. I’m not like you. I’m not a born businesswoman. I have no nose for it, no feel for it, and I saw what it did to us, to you, and I just couldn’t – ‘

‘Paulo’s taking over Martelli.’

‘I just couldn’t spend my life doing something I have no love for. I mean it’s hard enough …’ She stopped suddenly and caught her breath as her mother’s words finally soaked in. ‘What?’

‘I said Paulo’s taking over Martelli.’

‘Paulo?’ Rita barely trusted her own voice. ‘Taking over? Really?’

Coraline Martelli held her daughter’s gaze. ‘He has the nose. There’s never been a more loyal employee. Why not? Why shouldn’t he do what he loves? Why shouldn’t you both do what you love?’

Rita held her breath, unable to believe what she was hearing. Paulo had always been like a big brother to her ever since her mother hired him to work in the stockroom in the evenings after school. ‘And you’re OK with that, Mama?’

Her mother nodded. ‘If you’d only told me you wanted to be a journalist instead of running off to England, I would have –’

‘You would have bought me my own magazine, yes I know, Mama, that’s why I didn’t tell you.’ She smoothed the duvet over her lap. ‘I wanted... I needed to do it myself.’

Her mother chuckled softly ‘Only a small magazine, darling. You would have to prove yourself before I bought you a big one.’ She waved away her remark. ‘I would never have pressured you to take over Martelli Fragrance. I remember too well what it was like when your grandfather did that to me.’ She gave a heroic shrug. ‘Fortunately for Martelli, I did have the nose, and the business sense. That’s why I had to find you. That’s what I wanted to tell you.’

She reached out and took Rita’s hand again. ‘I sacrificed a lot for the business, but the one thing I won’t sacrifice is you. So if you’re angry at me for hiring a private detective and deceiving your best friend, well, I can only add those to the long list of things I need to ask your forgiveness for.’

Into the emotionally charged moment the phone rang. It was her mother’s mobile, ringing from inside her bag.

Coraline Martelli groaned and rolled her eyes. ‘I told Paulo not to call me here.’ The ensuing conversation was in animated Italian.

Rita closed her eyes, and the sound of her mother’s voice washed over her as it had done when she was a child. She heard her mother open her brief case and heard her spreading files and bits of paper all over the foot of the bed. It was a good thing her mother had the brains and the nose because she couldn’t organise her way out of a paper bag.

The conversation got louder and Rita opened her eyes as her mother rifled through papers and hand-written notes on Martelli stationery. If it was raining water outside, it was raining bits of paper inside. Rita caught a piece of expensive company stationery before it could float off the edge of the bed, and her heart did a flip-flop.

Suddenly it was as if the room were full of beating wings. She shoved aside the duvet and shuffled to the lounge, plopping down in the chair in front of the desk to boot the computer. Her mother followed, still half-shouting in Italian, hands flying through the air like she was conducting an orchestra. Rita could see her reflection in the monitor as she pulled up the vintage erotica sites one by one, until she came to the one she was looking for.

And there it was, the elegant copperplate script surrounded by the same erotic drawing. How could she not have remembered? She looked down at the words in Latin written beneath a tiny, simplified version of Venus and Mars embracing on the Martelli stationary. In Latin it said,
The depths of our animal nature and the highest mount of our divinity.
She had seen it all her life and never paid any attention to it. It was just words in Latin. Neither it nor the drawing had meant anything until now.

Her mother had stopped talking, and the phone hung loosely in her hand. Paulo’s confused voice carried on at the other end until she cut him off, and mother and daughter were engulfed in charged silence.

‘You’re a member of The Mount.’ It wasn’t a question.

‘Yes. Roman Coven. I’m the head of the High Council there.’ Her mother gave a self-deprecating smile. ‘We aren’t as barbaric as Vivienne and her lot. We alternate every three years. But I know coven law better than anyone else, so the job falls to me a little more often than I’d like.’ She nodded to the monitor. ‘Those drawings are from my collection. Edward’s great, great grandfather did them.’

Rita felt as though all the air had gone out of her lungs. ‘You know about Vivienne and Edward?’

Coraline Martelli took her daughter’s hands and pulled her away from the computer. ‘I know about everything, dear. In fact, I know more than Vivienne knows. Much more.’

Her mother led her back to the bed and tucked her in, then sat down next to her. For a long moment neither woman spoke, then Rita found her voice. ‘You know everything? How?’

‘Rome is the oldest coven of The Mount. The original. Not much escapes our notice, and even less escapes the head of the High Council.’

‘Especially when the head of the High Council is my mother.’ The thought suddenly made Rita’s head spin. Had her mother gone through what she had gone through?

‘Was my father a member of The Mount then?’ Rita asked.

Her mother shook her head. ‘He was a rock musician, like I said. An American. He wasn’t anybody famous. It was a one-night-stand,’ she reassured her daughter. ‘He didn’t know who I was, and I never even knew his last name, but it wouldn’t have mattered. You would have still been a Martelli. I wanted a daughter, and he didn’t think it a hardship to give me what I wanted.’ She chuckled. ‘Of course he didn’t actually know what I wanted.’

After her mother had given her time to absorb her little bombshell, she continued. ‘I love the business, and I’m good at it, but if you scratch the surface, it’s The Mount that’s shaped me more than anything else, and it’s always been my hope that the time would come when I could share it with you.’

She stood and moved to the window at the foot of Rita’s bed and looked out onto the rainy night. ‘No daughter wants to think about her mother doing what she’s done, especially when it involves initiation into The Mount. That’s why you were invited to join the London Coven. It’s always that way with children of members. Not all children undergo initiation when they’re grown.’ She turned away from the window and offered Rita a smile. ‘But those who choose to, do so in a coven other than that of their parents.’

Suddenly the room felt tight and airless. ‘You knew about this? You knew about Edward?’

Her mother nodded, holding her gaze. ‘I told you, I know everything. That’s why I didn’t come to you sooner.’

‘Since you know everything, then I’m assuming you know that I’ve been banished for writing an exposé for
Talkabout Magazine
.’ No matter how casual she tried to be about what had happened only a few hours earlier, her face still burned with shame of it.

‘Rubbish! Anyone with half a brain would know you didn’t write that article, and since no one in the London Coven knows who you are – well almost no one – then I can’t believe you’d be privy to any special secrets.’

‘Like what?’

Her mother raised a well arched eyebrow. ‘Have you not read the article?’

Rita shook her head. ‘I’ve only heard the choice bits that Vivienne took great pleasure in regaling the High Council with.’ As an after thought, she asked, ‘Who there knows who I am?’

Her mother ignored the question.

‘Mama? I know that look. What are you up to?’

Suddenly the woman was rummaging through her briefcase again until she extricated from the detritus the offending copy of
Talkabout
, which she shook triumphantly at her daughter. ‘Rita, darling, you just leave this to me. When I get through with Vivienne, I promise you, she’ll regret the day she messed with my daughter.’

‘No, mama! There you go again interfering. It’s always been this way. I get a B in Latin, my mother sorts the teacher out and I end up with an A. I don’t get the job I apply for, my mother comes and buys the position for me.’

‘You earned that A, and you know it. Your Latin was better than the teacher’s. And it was hardly necessary to buy you the position when I owned the company.’ She gave a shrug that made her look like she was wearing heavy shoulder pads. ‘Technically that means that you owned the company, right?’

‘That’s not the point. I left because I wanted to fight my own battles, and sometimes that means losing.’

Her mother studied her for a long moment then took a deep breath. ‘Do you want to lose this battle?’

‘No! Of course I don’t. I loved my experience of The Mount. I guess I only realised how much after I’d lost it, but I love Leo and Morgan and Alex and Aurora, and I –’

‘And you especially love Edward, yes I know my darling.’ Once again she gave her daughter the long hard stare. Then she looked down at the magazine in her hand and cocked her head. ‘If you don’t want to lose this battle, then you’ll have to let me tutor you a little bit in coven law. That wouldn’t be considered interfering, would it?’

Suddenly Rita’s heart was in her throat. ‘You’d do that?’

‘It’s the only way you’ll be able to take on Vivienne head to head. But before that, there are three things you need to do. First, don’t under any circumstances, read the
Talkabout
article. Your not knowing is the key to getting you back in. Secondly, call Kate. She’s worried sick.’ She looked down at her watch. ‘And finally, get some rest. Nothing’s going to happen tonight.’