Sexy as Hell Box Set (54 page)

Catherine giggled, a little loudly, a bit too sharply. “Oh, dear, really?”

Zara reached out and touched Catherine’s knee. Her eyes sparkled with devilment. “Do you think I’ll get my sex toys past customs?”

Catherine laughed harder, and Zara joined in, making out her words had all been in jest.

I glanced at Ollie. For a moment his gaze connected with mine, but then he looked down at his swollen groin. We both knew Zara wasn’t joking, and it was Ollie who would be adding to his bruises and welts and wearing a set of cuffs.

So why did I feel so damn jealous?

I didn’t!

Catherine was chattering on in my ear about some tour or other she wanted to join once we’d settled in at the villa. Her voice was like white noise, there but faded, and, although it was faded, it still grated on my nerves. Sweat was pooling under my arms. I felt clammy and uncomfortable, in need of a good shower to wash away the perspiration that was sprouting up all over me. I needed space to think, to get my emotions in order, but in such a confined area with three people I really needed to get away from at this moment, I wouldn’t be thinking properly any time soon.

I stared at the air hostess but didn’t really see her. She was a blur of lazy movement as I tried working through my feelings. Everything was a jumbled mess in my head. What should my next move be here? How could I go about on this holiday with my original plan in mind—to teach Catherine what I wanted—when Ollie and Zara were so close? In my face.
There.
And as for Ollie, well, if he so much as looked at me smugly in the next five minutes I could see myself punching him. Make him have another black eye to replace the one Zara had given him.

And what the hell had happened there? Now that I knew it had been Zara who had gifted him with that shiner, I could well imagine he’d disobeyed her. Why, though, had she been so violent? What the fuck had he done to warrant that? It would have to have been something major. I’d only had to suffer a slap to my face. Did the differences in punishment, the severity of pain, mean something in her world, her mind? Had he annoyed her more than I had? And why did I care if that was the case? And, oh God, did that mean she liked Ollie more? I shouldn’t even be thinking about her and him.

But I couldn’t stop myself. He knew how I felt about her, how messed up I’d become while with her. He’d always tried to get what I had or what I wanted, and in this instance he’d succeeded in spectacular fashion. I’d coped with it in the past because it hadn’t involved women—hadn’t involved the one woman who was the lust of my life—and he’d seriously stepped over the invisible line he’d never dared to cross before. What had come over him?

I stopped that thought from progressing. The idea that she had literally
come over
him churned my stomach.

Yes, I’d told him I was done with Zara, and to all intents and purposes I was, and yes, she’d been free to approach, but… Why did he have to choose her? Why not
Fifi or some other Domme from a different dungeon? I eyed him—he was bloody fidgeting something chronic—and had to turn away before I got up and launched myself at him. Punched him, taking us back to the days of fighting in our nan’s front garden, us ending up under a prickly bush, the thorns ripping at our skin and making us bleed.

Zara was now that bush.

That turn of my head had me staring at her. She had her eyes closed, chest rising and falling gently as though she was taking a nap. The dip between her collarbones was on show, and I remembered the time we’d fucked in the summer house at Geoffrey’s, me using my handkerchief to wipe my cum off her skin. I’d spurted very close to that dip, and the thought of that night was setting me up for a hard-on I wouldn’t be able to explain should Catherine see it.

Having her spring to mind made me look away from Zara. It wouldn’t do to have Catherine seeing me staring. Yes, she’d sounded all right with Zara being here, but if she was true to the average woman’s form, she’d be on the lookout for any communication between me and Zara, any secret glances or touches.

I had to make sure I stayed well away from Mistress Z as much as possible during this trip.

And Catherine. Dear, sweet Catherine. I knew, without a doubt, that she didn’t have a hold on my heart or my cock like Zara did. Just seeing Zara again… Shit, what a bloody mess. I mimicked my former Mistress and leant my head back. Closed my eyes. Saw her in my mind’s eye, naked and beckoning me forward, asking in her no-nonsense way to lick her cunt.

Fuck.

“And Tuscany, too, just like you wanted.”

I snapped my eyes open, homing in on Ollie. He’d said that earlier, hadn’t he? I hadn’t imagined it? Then I shifted my sights to Zara. The crafty little bitch… She’d orchestrated this. Manipulated Ollie into inviting her. Had made out in her email to me that she wasn’t sure of the destination. Heat filled my face and a surge of anger spread in my chest, making my heart patter faster.

Then I began to laugh. Really bloody laugh.

“What on earth has tickled you?” Catherine asked.

I shook my head. “Nothing, just remembering some joke someone sent me via email recently.”

“Share it!” Catherine said, bouncing a little in her seat.

Zara opened her eyes a bit and studied me through the cracks. “Yes, do share the joke. I could do with a good laugh.”

“No,” I said, scrabbling to find a joke in the recesses of my brain that might work. “It isn’t something any of you would find funny.”

“How do you know?” Catherine asked, “unless you tell it?”

So I had the pair of them ganging up on me now. This holiday had suddenly turned into the break from hell, and it hadn’t even really started yet.

“Leave him alone,” Ollie said, squirming and wincing. “
Ow.”

“Have you got worms, Ollie?” Zara asked. “Or ants in your pants? You’re awfully fidgety.”

“I’ve…” He paused. Glanced at Catherine, then at me. “Sorry to be so crude, I’ve got something jabbing into my bum. Must be one of those plastic wire things left over from a label.”

Oh, he had to be kidding me.
Zara
had to be kidding me. Did she do the same damn thing with every man? I’d be willing to bet Ollie had a plug up his arse—that would explain his hard-on and constant movement—and Zara would be laughing inside knowing he couldn’t do a thing about removing it until she gave the order.

Suddenly I wanted to be in his seat. To
be
Ollie.

“Oh, that’s so annoying, isn’t it?” Catherine said. “I had one of those plastic things digging into my neck from a sweater once. I kept scratching and scratching, thought I had a rash coming up from an allergy or something—I suffer with those, you know—and no matter what I did the itch just wouldn’t go away. I ended up scratching my skin red raw, and it wasn’t until I got home and undressed that I realised what the problem had been. Now I make sure to remove those labels properly. Perhaps you ought to visit the toilet, Ollie? Pull the plastic bit out?”

Since when had Catherine been so boring?

“Oh,” Zara said. “He’s all right, aren’t you, Ollie? He can stand a bit of irritation. Unlike me.” She smiled sweetly at Catherine. “I have a short fuse, and anything that irritates me gets the benefit of a tongue lashing.”

She grazed her attention over me for a second, and I knew exactly what kind of lashing she’d meant—and it wasn’t the verbal kind. I squirmed much like Ollie, willing away the stirrings of desire that were brewing at the root of my cock.

“Oh, do you have a label problem, too, darling?” Catherine asked me. “Honestly, it’s a good job you have me now. I’ll check all your clothes when we get back home. I wouldn’t like to think of you being irritated.”

Well I was, and it was her doing the irritating. All of them doing the sodding irritating. Abruptly, I got up and made for the toilet. Slipped past the air hostess, who was refilling fresh champagne glasses, then pushed inside the cubicle. Shut the door. Leant my back against it and released a long, unsteady stream of air.

What the fucking hell…?

“Oh, Christ…” I closed my eyes. Breathed deeply. “Oh, Jesus Christ…”

My text message alert went off. I should really have switched my phone off, what with us being in the air and the signals messing with the electrical equipment, but it had slipped my mind. I sighed, hoping there wasn’t a problem at the office. I’d left everything in order. Everyone had their assigned jobs that would carry them through until I returned, and I planned to deal with any client enquiries via email for an hour a day while in Tuscany. Surely nothing was so important that Mary needed to contact me already?

I took my phone from my pocket. Worried about whether anything dangerous would happen if I responded to it. Spotted the sender’s name at the top of the alert box on my screen.

Bloody Zara.

I clicked to read the message.

Don’t you wish you had a plug up your arse?

She was a witch on legs with the ability to make me hard with just a few simple words. A master at getting inside my head, that one. Well, I’d just have to make it my mission to get her out of it. I typed back.

Quite frankly, no. Uncomfortable when nothing can be done about release. You’re cruel to him.

I hoped I’d been terse enough for her to get the idea that she ought to leave me alone but somehow knew it wouldn’t bother her. She thrived on awkwardness, loved making people suffer, enjoyed watching them battle with their emotions.

Yes, but you love it. Crave it. Wish you were him.

How the hell did she know me so well? We’d only been together a short time, yet from day one she’d read me, seemed to know everything I’d needed and then some. She’d cast a spell I’d thought I’d well and truly broken—by not being in her presence, not having contact with her—and then I’d stupidly opened up the link between us again and now look where it had taken us. Me at her mercy and her doing what she did best—again.

Stop texting me, woman. It isn’t wise. And, as you’re so loved-up with Ollie, it’s not appropriate for you to be texting rude things to me.

That should do it. But she wasn’t loved-up, I knew that. She was using him to get to me, but why? She’d wanted to end our relationship as much as I had, yet the pair of us were still tethered, still bound in some weird, warped way. Would I ever get her out of my system? Was I even still in hers, or was this part of her game plan, to piss her ex-students off, letting them know they’d never be free of her?

And since you’re so loved-up with Catherine, it isn’t appropriate for you to keep responding.

I imagined her smirking, fobbing Ollie off that she was texting Fifi or Carlos to make sure everything at her dungeon was all right. And he’d fall for it because she’d cast her wicked magic on him too. Except it seemed he was more embroiled, deeper inside that brilliant web of hers, stuck and unable to get out. I knew how that felt—could feel the same thing happening to me all over again now.

Shit.

It’s impolite not to respond. I’m coming back out now, so stop this silliness.

I slid my phone into my pocket, flushed the toilet so it seemed I’d used it, then splashed my face with cold water at the sink. Stared at myself in the small mirror above. Me seeing my face, my expression that of a shocked, cornered man, brought memories flooding back of the time she’d sent me a butt plug and told me to shove it up my arse. I’d gone into the bathroom off my office, done as she’d asked then stopped, wondering what the bloody hell I’d been thinking.

I felt the same way now. She was playing a dangerous game, one that could end very badly if we weren’t careful. I could lose Catherine, and Ollie…well, he didn’t exactly have Zara, she had him and would discard him the moment she got bored. I suddenly had the feeling we were pawns on her chessboard, and wherever she moved us, we’d go.

My phone bleeped.

Why stop when it’s so much fun?

Dear God, I couldn’t handle this, didn’t know
how
to handle her in a situation with more than two participants, where she was the player in a game that everyone else thought was real life.

I’m warning you, Zara…stop.

Or?

Please, just bloody stop!

I left the toilet, walking back to my seat as calm as you like, hoping to God I’d pulled it off, that I looked laid back with no cares in the world. Zara was using her phone and paused as I sat. She laid it beside her on the seat, and the screen light went off after a second or two. I smiled at Catherine, who seemed insanely pleased to see me.

“Oh, I missed you,” she said, slipping her arm around mine and holding on tight. She leaned close, her mouth beside my ear. “I felt slightly awkward after you’d gone,” she whispered. “Ollie got told off for asking who she was texting. She…she
kicked
him hard on his ankle then whispered something. I felt sorry for him.”