Sexy as Hell Box Set (94 page)

“Zara.” I placed my arm around her shoulder, pulled her near, but her body was stiff and unyielding.

“He just watched as they wanked and chatted and then came on me in revolting splashes of hot cum that slapped over my tits and belly. The stench of it, their disgusting pleasure, it stayed with me, on me, for days. And then, what was worse, after they’d ‘claimed me as theirs’ they pissed on me. Each of them emptied their bladders all over my body, their warm piss splashing and trickling into every crease and crevice.”

I wanted to tell her to stop bloody talking. This was sick. I hated the images she was creating in my mind more than I hated anything else I’d ever known. But despite my discomfort, my burning urge to thump the nearest stonewall, I sat still and silent, my arm still curled around her stiff shoulders.

“The piss stank worse than the cum, but I didn’t care, because they left me then, in the shed, tied up and naked, but I wasn’t tied ‘to’ anything, so when they left I decided to escape, of course I did. Except that was what they wanted me to do, escape, so they could torture me some more for trying.”

Fuck. I didn’t know how much more I could handle.

“That was when the mind games started. Ray was particularly good at them—he told me about all the depraved, sick things he would do to me if I tried to get out of the shed and that if I made it out of the garden I’d be stabbed in my sleep. They said I’d never get away, but if I did I’d never sleep safe, not for the rest of my life.”

“You’re safe with me.” I’d struggled to keep a shake from my voice. The hell my poor Zara had been through. No wonder she didn’t trust God, no wonder she was nocturnal.

“I know they can’t hurt me now. I changed my name, moved to London, set up a new life and I’ve never been back, never will.”

“I want to kill them.” I gritted my teeth and squeezed my eyes
shut. The words had just popped out, they were so true, so heartfelt.

“
Shh, I know you do. I’d like you to as well, but what would be the point?”

“Justice. The pleasure of watching them bleed and suffer.” Anger had knotted my throat, I’d barely been able to speak.

She looked down at her lap. “This was why I wasn’t going to tell you this shit. I knew it would hurt you.”

Like a fucking dagger to my heart.

I took a deep breath. “I’m okay, really. If you said the word you know I’d throw a whole pile of money and effort into tracing them. There’s people out there who can do that for a fee.”

“And then what?”

Murder was the first word that sprang to my mind. I was a peaceful man, always had been, but right now I was incensed. And all the time I sat here with revenge in my blood He just stared down at us. Unmoving, doing nothing. “And then, once I’d found them,” I said, pausing and swallowing. Anger had blurred my vision, made my ears ring. “I’d fucking hire someone to kill them all.”

“Victor!” she said, capturing my cheeks in her palms. “And run the risk of it being traced back to you and you going to prison? Then how would you be able to help me and keep me safe?” She smiled, just a little. “How would you be able to love me if you were behind bars?”

I deflated, like a popped balloon. My vision came back into focus. “You’re right, of course. But I’m a man, and those cunts hurt you, the woman I love, how can I not feel the need for blood?”

“Believe me, I spent many years plotting my revenge, but in the end, the best course of action was to set up a new life, away from them. Which I did.” She shrugged. “Well,
am finally doing, with you.”

I touched my lips to hers. “Yes, you are.”

She looked up at Jesus again. “So you see, I have bad memories of Him. Of Him not being there when I needed Him, and a lot of the time, feeling like He was on their side. How sick is that?”

“I can see how you felt that way.”

She shrugged, dropped her hands to her lap.

“But perhaps they’d planned on killing you,” I said, “and He stopped that. Spared your life.”

“But still I had to endure things that felt worse than death at the time.”

She frowned, and I wondered what the hell was tumbling from her memory now.

“And things that made me wish death would come,” she said.

I could take it no more. I pulled her closer, tried to blend her body with mine and let the pain of her past seep into me. I’d deal with it,
really I would. I just didn’t want her to have to carry it around anymore. Enough was enough.

“Victor,” she gasped, looping her arms around my shoulders. “Victor. I just don’t know if you can…”

“What? If I can what?” I could do anything for her.

“If you truly can cope with someone as messed up as me. I’ll never…” She shook her head.

“Of course you’ll get better, it will get easier. I promise.”

She smiled. “I hope so, but what I was going to say was that I’ll never have children, so if you’re as intent on us being together as you say you are, then that means you’ll never have children either.”

Children.

Jesus Christ.

I looked up at Him. There were times I barely had the strength to give Zara what she needed. Occasionally my legs felt weak and my shoulders struggled beneath the burden of her past.

Children? Had I always believed I’d be a father? Not really. I’d always been keen to use contraception, couldn’t cope with the thought of an
accident
. Never toyed with baby names or had romantic pictures of me holding a child’s hand, painting their room, filling their Christmas stockings.

Contraception. And in all the damn places for me to suddenly think of it, here in the heart of Venetian Catholicism.

“I know you said a while ago, before, at Eden Street that you had contraception covered, but, Zara, I’m sorry, I should have checked again, when we got together this second time. I mean, you might have come off your pill or something.”

“Hey.” She smoothed her fingers over my lapel. “I decided years ago I didn’t want to be a mother, and ever since I’ve had injections to stop me getting pregnant
, much more reliable than a damn pill.” She kissed me gently. “I promise I won’t make you a father, Victor, even though I’m sure you’d be wonderful at it.”

“I don’t want to be. It’s something I can take or leave, and if I’m honest…” I paused and shook my head. A silly
, selfish thought blustered through me. But it was a truth.

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Tell me?” She
’d sounded stern.

“Well, I suppose I don’t want to share you. I like this, it just being us, together. And this weekend, especially now Geoffrey and Helen have gone, I feel like everything else is a million miles away.”

“What do you mean?”

“Work, all the hassles of the office. Other family, much as I love them, it’s nice not to have to think of them and it just be you in my life, just us.”

“I like that too.”

I sighed, let the frustration and anger seep from me. Let it go, let it float down to the hard floor and seep into the cracks, head down to Hell where destructive emotions deserved to be. “And I’m so sorry, you know, about what you told me, what they did. If there was something I could do to make that terror go away, to make you trust in Him again, then you know I would.”

She pulled back, bestowed her attention on Jesus Christ. “You finding me, Victor, and understanding my needs gives me renewed faith in Him.” She shrugged. “Perhaps He had a hand in that. In us being together.”

“I’m sure he did.” I, too, looked at the image of Christ, and a strange gratitude grew in my chest. Thank goodness He
had
saved her if murder had been on her captors’ minds.

For that I would be eternally grateful, even if He had moved in mysteriously wicked ways.

“There is something else you can do to chase those memories away,” she said suddenly.

“There is?”

“Yes, but not here, obviously.” She gestured to the towering dome above us and stood. “He’s seen enough of that already.”

“Piss on me,” she’d said.

Yes, she’d really said that, and it had taken me aback, made me blink and try to splutter words out—words that had come thick and fast but had refused to spill. They’d got tangled in my throat, and a well of emotion had whizzed through me.

But
I
had
pissed on her, although how I’d switched my mind off from such a disgusting act I didn’t know. We’d been in the shower when she’d asked, after spending the remainder of the afternoon browsing the shops including a visit to a sex boutique. We’d bought a paddle much like my VP one, and had waited while the owner had fixed it so it had the initials ZW. We’d joked about branding each other, slapping ourselves silly with the paddles once we got back to the hotel. I looked forward to it.

That wasn’t what had happened, though. I
nstead, what I’d done… Damn, I couldn’t imagine doing anything like that for anyone else—ever. It really wasn’t on my list of to-do’s.

“Come on me, then piss on me,” she’d whispered
as we were soaping each other’s bodies with the tangy hotel soap. “I need it. I want it.”

She’d actually sounded excited
, but still, for a moment I’d tried to ignore her words. But she hadn’t let me play deaf. She’d sank to the floor, stared up at me with wide eyes and fondled her breasts. “Just here, Victor, just here, on me. Spunk first and then your piss.”

Masturbating for her had been easy. Her greedy gaze drinking in my rapid movements had got me going quickly
enough. I’d ordered her to finger herself at the same time, instructed her to find an orgasm as I hit mine. We’d been efficient, each in a constant state of arousal so it seemed, our climaxes cresting fast and sharp, my cum basting her chest for a split second before the water washed it away.

And then she’d waited, panting,
pleading with her eyes, and I’d had to find the willpower to empty my bladder on her. Haltingly at first, the trickle began. She’d looked between my cock and my face; it seemed she was trying to register a new memory, obliterate an old one.

She didn’t even flinch, just sighed and spread her hands on her sternum, where the flow had hit. There wasn’t much to be honest, and I was thankful that the shower water instantly diluted the piss and drowned out the sound of it hitting her skin. The vision of it leaving my
cockend, though, and arcing down onto her chest would be with me forever, as would the expression of gratitude on her face.

She was on the bed now, fluffy white towel wrapped around her, hair in another, turban-style. I’d already dried off and got dressed for when we’d go down to dinner, embarrassed a bit that I’d done what I had, although I knew I didn’t need to feel like that with her. God, we’d done so much
out-there
stuff already, what was a bit of piddle between us? Maybe if I looked at it like that, it wouldn’t seem so bad.

I stood staring down at her, a twang of sorrow pinging inside me that she’d balled her hands into fists in her lap, clearly upset about something but
perhaps not knowing how to tell me. Not wanting to tell me. Maybe one day she’d just come out with stuff, tell me as if it were nothing more than us discussing the weather. I imagined the words would come easily once we’d settled into our relationship, got the first few tiptoe-around-one-another moments out of the way after we’d moved in together. It would take a bit of time, wouldn’t it, to learn the other’s routine, the way we liked things being done, but we’d get there.

I didn’t think there was anything we couldn’t overcome. Not now, not when we’d shared so much. How many other couples could say they’d literally revisited Hell and had made it safely to the other side?

“Thank you,” she said, head bent.

Her words had startled me out of my thoughts, and I blinked to clear my gauzy vision.

“What for?” I asked.

“For doing that. And I’m sorry. I don’t want you to think I’m one of
those
women.”

“
Those
women?” I stepped towards her then stopped, not wanting to crowd her, to stop her from speaking.

“You know.” She sniffed. “The kind who asks a man to do things to ‘prove his love’. That isn’t what this is about. I just…it’s just that…well, I need these things done to me again, if you get me. It’s like, even though I know they shouldn’t matter anymore, I can’t let them
not
matter until I’ve been through them again.” She huffed. “Told you I was fucked up. And don’t think I said that because I want you to tell me I’m not. I’m a realist, you know that. State the facts, say it how it is—or at least how I see it anyway. And for now I’m still a fuck up.” She raised one hand to prevent me from interrupting, then lowered it again. “So accept that, and the day I’m not a big mess, when I don’t feel a mess, I’ll let you know.”

I nodded, understanding the way her mind worked. And besides, I’d told myself I’d do anything for her—and it seemed I really would.

“It’s all right,” I said. “I get it. And so long as they didn’t shit on you, then we’re good.” I chuckled, going for lightening the mood. Anything to make her feel better.