Sexy as Hell Box Set (70 page)

Sexy as Hell

The Vixen
- Book #3

By Harlem
Dae

Book #3
in the Sexy as Hell Trilogy

Venice – Two people, a shed load of baggage and a way forward that takes extreme to new limits.

In an explosion of clarity, the mist cleared and I understood what my lascivious teacher, Zara, really was beneath the surface. I couldn’t see her beautiful core. Like a dank fog warning off poor unfortunates who wandered her way, she wouldn’t let the darkness lift, refused to light the way. But she gave me a key. It was small, stiff, and I was afraid of what I’d find if I turned it. But I did. I couldn’t resist. She did that to me.

In a tumble of truths, I understood her bleak voids and why she filled them with sharp slicing reds and hostile bruising purples. What had happened, what they’d done had bled her of
colour and created a woman who needed so much more and always would—for all of time. But I could give her back that vibrancy, I was sure I could; my colours complimented hers and I had plenty of them. My needs could switch to take her to those grey places she needed to visit again in order to obliterate the memories that caused her pain. In the space they’d occupied, I’d create a pile of shimmering, perfectly cut-diamond memories, a rainbow cloud of sugar mist to replace that dankness. I could do it; I would help her become more beautiful than anything I’d seen before.

And within that new, delicate ‘thing’ was us. Victor and Zara. Unconventional, extreme, romantic, we spanned every shimmering stroke of the rainbow and all the coal-black shadows on the way down to Hell. But together we could fight demons. I would be her knight in shining armour even if it pushed me to the very limits of what I ever believed I could do to a woman. And what thrilled me, was if I bared my soul, found the courage to be a monster as well as an angel, I had a very real chance of making her mine—or did I? Because the only thing predictable about Zara, was that she was completely unpredictable.

Dedicated to Mr
Dae and Mr Harlem, two steadfast pillars of support, ever constant and wonderful inspiration and a very welcome daily dose of eye-candy.

Lick my cunt.

I wondered if Zara would say that to me when we got to Venice, whether she’d try to remain her usual order-me-about self despite my asking her to try the romantic route. The former was highly probable—after all, she’d been dominant for so long now that I didn’t think she’d find it easy to try a new side of herself on for size. Still, she’d promised to give it a go, and that was enough for me.

She sat beside me on the busy train—a far cry from my private jet—
with the debris from the sandwiches and coffee we’d just snacked on in front of her and staring out of the window at a bank of hills and a field of sheep. Or maybe she wasn’t looking at them at all. Maybe she was seeing things in her head, things she’d never share with me. I hoped she would one day, that we didn’t just have this weekend. The time restraint reminded me of our first one, where within a month she’d promised to show me all the weird and wonderful things she got up to. And my God, she’d shown me, but I doubted I’d seen everything yet. Except I wasn’t supposed to have fallen in love with her. No, I was meant to have just accepted what she’d taught me and moved on without a murmur of complaint. A bit difficult to do, that. She’d got under my skin, had become an itch I could no longer scratch away, something that couldn’t be eased with the scrape of fingernails.

She was well and truly inside me—in my head, my heart, my thoughts—and no matter how hard I’d tried, I hadn’t been able to shift her. She was here to stay, whether she realised it or not. I’d come to accept that now, and it remained to be seen if she accepted that too.

“Are you all right?” I asked, resting my hand on her thigh.

She jumped, as though I’d dragged her from a particularly compelling thought, and looked at me, eyes glazed.

“What? Yes, I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?” She gave me a smile, but it was tight, false.

“I was just checking.” I smiled back, hoping my expression went some way to easing whatever was troubling her.

“Thanks, but you don’t need to check on me, to babysit me. I can look after myself as well you know.” She turned back to stare out of the window.

I could have been offended, upset that she’d been so brisk, but I knew her enough by now to realise she needed a bit of time to come around. I’d give her five more minutes then try again, see if she fancied a bit of a chat.

On the other side of the aisle, a woman was trying to cope with a toddler who wasn’t having it that she wanted him to remain in his seat. He appeared to want to run around, to play, and his determination to do so was highly apparent. He fought against her hold, wedging himself between her knees and the seat in front, making a valiant attempt at escape. She held onto the tops of his arms, her cheeks flushed, a wisp of her long brown hair sticking to her cheek, losing the battle. I felt sorry for her, especially because the man sitting beside her—husband or partner, I assumed, because I’d seen them talking as we’d all boarded—was doing nothing to help.

I smiled. Zara would have yelled at me to take over, to get involved and not just sit there
playing on my iPhone with headphones firmly plugged in, you selfish bastard, you. But the woman wasn’t Zara and clearly didn’t have her balls.

Catherine would be a
whole different matter in the same situation. I knew she’d be in control, that her children wouldn’t behave that way in the first place. She’d have firmly yet kindly set the rules down from day one, and her life, should she marry and have children, would be orderly and just so.

I should have tried to explain things a bit better to
Catherine. Shouldn’t have dumped it on her that I was in love with someone else, but sometimes you had to come off as a bastard and just say it how it was. She hadn’t been listening to me when I’d tried to explain how I’d felt—not really, not listening properly—and I remember thinking, as we’d stood in the courtyard discussing the end of our relationship, that if I didn’t say something to really make her understand, I’d never get rid of her.

Get rid of her. That made me sound a bastard too.

I wondered whether she was all right—I wasn’t a complete arsehole—then told myself that she’d bounce back. She was the type to do that. To smile and soldier on, stiff British upper lip and all that. She’d return from Tuscany, perhaps tell her aunt, Mary, all about it, cry in her arms then convince herself to stride on with hope in her heart that she’d meet the right man for her. That she’d thought I was that man was a shame, but I couldn’t have allowed that thought to continue. And Mary…I had her to deal with when I got back to the office. Her frown of disapproval, her folded arms, her pursed lips. Oh, and let’s not forget the telling off I was sure she’d give me.

Perhaps
it was time for Mary to retire. Perhaps she wouldn’t be able to stand working for the man who had crushed her niece’s heart.

The toddler
broke free from his mother and barrelled towards me, planting his sticky-looking fingers on my trousers. I smiled, and he looked up at me with big blue eyes that held a hint of mischief. Who was I kidding? They were filled with it.

“
Ciao,” I said.

“
Scopare
,” he said. “
Scopare, scopare, scopare
!”

Oh. Well. I didn’t quite know what to say to that. Who knew small people had
fuck
in their vocabulary at that age? What was he, three?

“
Do you like the train?” I asked.

“
Bisogno di un poo
.” He bit his bottom lip, grabbed his buttock and wriggled his little hips.

“Um, ah…” I stared at his mother, appealing for her to step in.
I didn’t fancy witnessing him filling his pants with poo.

She got up and came over, once again taking hold of his arm. “
Mi dispiace
,” she said with an apologetic smile then moved away with the struggling child in tow.

I glanced down at my trousers. He’d left fingerprints. Would there ever be a time in my future where dirty marks on my clothes from a child would be the norm? I’d never really thought
much about children—not seriously.

I turned to look at Zara. She was watching the mother and child.

“Apparently,” she said quietly, “I had a dad like that man there.”

I knew who she’d referred to, but I didn’t want to shift my gaze from her, to break this moment. She was talking about something she’d never broached before, and I was buggered if I’d do anything to stop her carrying on.

“Except I don’t remember, because he left when I was about that little boy’s age.” She clenched her jaw. “But that mother seems to care, so that’s all right.” She nodded, her attention on the other side of the aisle.

I waited for her to say something else, but she didn’t.

“Yes,” I said. “She seems a good sort.”

“I’m…you do know children aren’t for me, don’t you?” she asked, eyeing what I imagined was the little boy.

“I’d thought as much, yes, but they could be. One day. Maybe you’re just not ready yet. You have your new business, so much to do. Kids… They tend to take a lot of your time up, don’t they, something you don’t have at the moment.”

“It isn’t that.” She inhaled deeply then released it in one long gush. “People manage to work full time and juggle work and children. But for me it’s…it’s a bit more than that.”

“What’s a bit more?”

“I wouldn’t want to have them only to find once they were in the world that I couldn’t love them.”

I frowned. “Of course you’d love them. I can’t imagine you doing anything otherwise.”

“No, I mean…I might not be capable. Like my mother wasn’t.”

Oh, shit. She’d chosen a train ride to Venice to open up, where anyone could be listening. I was torn between asking her to wait until we’d arrived and were alone and letting her continue. If I stopped her, she might never reveal anything more—or anything else ever again. Floodgates sprang to mind, and I thought about them opening, of her being unable to close them. Our location was irrelevant—if she needed to talk, I wasn’t about to stop her.

“Oh, right,” I said. “But you’re not your mother.”

“No, and thank fuck for that.”

She whipped her head back to face the window, and I knew that was all I’d be getting out of her for now. She’d shut down, closed off her memories, a defence mechanism I realised she employed every minute of every day. How difficult must it be to constantly monitor your thoughts, to hide them? And what the hell had she been through in the past to make her like this? Who had hurt her? Going by what she’d said, I had to suppose the first person who had done so was her mother. Not good, to have such a start in life.

“I have to say,” she said, still staring out, “that I felt a bit sorry for Catherine, despite her being such a bloody drip.”

I stopped the laugh that wanted to burst out of me. Not because of me hurting Catherine, but Zara’s impression of her. “Yes, I did, too, but sometimes—”

“I heard everything you said.”

“I know.”

“And I think you meant every word.”

“I did.”

“What are we going to do about it?” She lifted one hand to run a fingertip across her lips, an absent gesture she may not have been aware she was doing.

“What do you want to do about it?”

Of course, I hoped she’d say she’d give it a try—give us a try—but I wasn’t going to hold my breath. Zara was a complex woman who needed careful handling. She could go off like a rocket at a moment’s notice, and despite that, despite her being off-the-wall, difficult to understand, and a massive ball of tension, I loved her, goddamn it. I wanted to spend the rest of my life getting to know her.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I really don’t know. I’m not used to anything like…this.” She waved her hand as if to encompass what she’d meant, that ‘this’ was a tangible thing floating around us, that everything we were and could be was something she could reach out and hold.

Would she be willing to do that, though, that was the question.

“I know that,” I said, “but perhaps you could give it a try? Like I said back at the villa?”

“For one weekend, yes, but I doubt it’ll do any good.”

I frowned again. “Do any good? What do you mean?”

She shrugged. Went back to running her finger over her lips. Should I push her for answers, or would that make her clam up? I didn’t know this Zara. The woman I knew wouldn’t even be talking to me like this. She’d have scoffed at what I’d said, taken the piss out of me about it, brushing it off as a joke, that I was off my rocker if I thought she and I could make a go of things. And maybe I was, but I was damned if I was going to let this opportunity slip by without at least trying to make her see that romance and caring weren’t really so bad.

“All this love crap,” she said. “It’s not real, is it?”

I was a bit affronted at that but didn’t say so. “It’s real to me. What I feel for you is real. This ‘love crap’ wrapped itself around me from the moment I first saw you in the coffee shop, if I’m honest. I didn’t know that until recently, that I’d fallen for you at that moment, but I did, and I’m still in love with you.”