Sexy as Hell Box Set (83 page)

“Yes, I’m fine,” she said, gaze still fixed ahead, eyes going wider.

She shook her head a little, as though she’d suppressed a shudder.

I looked away to stare at what she saw.

A naked man had appeared behind one set of the bars. He was so close to them that his erect cock jutted forward between two poles, as if it were too heavy to stand upright. His arms were bowed by his sides he was that muscled, hands clenched into fists, and with his legs planted apart like that he gave off the idea he was a fighter. Not a strand of hair was on him, and he was oiled up, the meagre light on our side of the room giving off enough brightness that I could see he’d nurtured a tan that bordered on being a bit too deep.

He reminded me of Carlos from Eden Street.

I shifted my gaze upwards to his mask. It had me jolting a bit; I hadn’t expected such a mean-looking, strange choice at all. I frowned, wondering what had gone through his mind as he’d selected it. He hadn’t gone for elegance.

He seemed to have felt my intense stare and looked directly at me.

Everything except that mask and the eyes and lips showing through the cut-out holes disappeared. A
lion’s head floated midair, and painted, moulded lips retracted to reveal a smile that was nothing but downright sinister. The man was infused with power, I sensed that keenly. He moved his eyes, looked at Zara, and poked his tongue out a bit to lick his lips.

What I’d said earlier, about allowing her to be with someone else if it made her happy? I didn’t think I’d manage it after all. The jealousy that had beg
un to burn inside me was swift and strong, threatened to overwhelm me to the point that I wanted to get up, go over to that bloody lion, and tell him in no uncertain terms that if he so much as looked at my woman again, I’d…

I’d what?

Beside me, Victor tensed. I dragged my gaze away from that hideous mask to watch him. He had that thing about him where he looked ready to spring out of his seat. I squeezed his thigh a little, a warning for him to stay where he was.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said stiffly.

Something about the man opposite had bothered him, too, although what it was I had no idea. Victor had been fine beforehand.

I’d been doing okay, too, until I’d seen that mask. Yes, I’d wanted to be here to face the past, but once we’d come inside, the excitement of something new had gripped me, sweeping away our reason for being at the ball. Victor further expressing his love for me, admitting that we could basically have an open relationship if that’s what I wanted, had given me such a sense of belonging, of being wanted, that it had been difficult for me not to launch myself at him and tell him to take me back to the hotel so that it could just be me and him, no one else interrupting our time together. Something had held me back, though—being my wicked self had come naturally, and I’d stifled any natural emotions that had pushed to come through.

It would take a long time to undo the damage, to let myself be the person I seemed to be underneath all the crap, the baggage. And really, all I’d be doing if I allowed Victor to continue helping me would be to ask him to hold my bags for me. Transferring the shit they contained to him. I’d feel free as a bird, and he’d be the one burdened. I couldn’t do that to him, and the quicker he understood that, the better.

I took in a deep breath, forced myself to look at the mask again, to tell myself that’s all it was. Latex, plastic, or whatever it had been made of, fashioned into an animal’s face and worn because masks were a requirement of being here. But it wasn’t as easy as that—nothing ever was with me—and I had a choice. Either I went along with the night and all it had to offer, just like anyone else, or I examined what that mask represented. Wearing one myself, well, you’d think in my line of work I’d have done it more times than I cared to count, but I hadn’t. I could cope with blindfolds, scarves, even a bloody hessian sack if I had to, but an actual mask? Tonight had been the first time I’d really stared at one, touched one since…

Get it over with. Think about it. Let it in.

I nodded as though answering myself. Yes, better it was out of my head and dealt with than in it and festering, screwing me up even more. I had a brief moment of marvelling at how I’d come to accept this new journey of reliving the past and dealing with it in the only way I knew how—by twinning it with sex. Considering I’d always been so stubborn, so resolute in my determination to bury it all, this acceptance, although terribly odd, was also liberating somehow. I frowned a bit at that, knowing that to some people, the thought of going through hell again couldn’t be liberating at all. But it was—it had worked before and could damn well work again. Going through the pain was something I welcomed in a warped kind of way—in order to get to the green fields full of pretty flowers and sunshine that were beckoning me on the other side of a rainy curtain, I had to weather the storm.

In my head I saw myself on the bad weather side, drenched to my skin, shivering, my clothes sticking to me. Dark clouds rolled, their bellies full of yet more rain,
more things that I had to deal with, and a wicked wind swirled, chilling me further.
They
were behind me, I could feel them, ready to pounce and do more evil. I stared through the rain curtain at what was on offer, and my goodness, I wanted to be there so badly it hurt. To have a warm, gentle breeze touching my skin as I tilted my face skywards, to feel the heat of the sun, to hear birds tweeting instead of the ominous rumble of thunder. To run to Victor, who stood there with his arms outstretched…

There was no contest, was there—no sodding contest at all.

“That mask,” I said, swallowing before I went on. “Reminds me of
them
.”

Victor stiffened further. “I see. Tell me about it. About them.”

I glanced around at the other people this side of the wall. Their attention appeared riveted to the man—to his body, his cock, most likely—and to a woman who had appeared as I’d been thinking. She, too, stood behind a barred doorway, reminding me of Julie back home at Eden Street, with her long blonde hair and her vicious whip. Others had ventured to the glory holes and knelt in front of them, one arm inside, seeking out whatever was beyond. Others still sat watching, rapt, eyes wide behind masks that possibly hid their blushes.

I was safe to talk; no one sat anywhere near us, and to be honest, they were far too engrossed in what they were doing to give a shit about us.

“One of them wore a pig mask,” I said. “Did something to me that I haven’t had done to me since.” I laughed bitterly, thinking how much I liked my pussy filled with cocks, dildos, fingers and tongues. “Oh, I’ve had plenty of action but not like…that.”

I paused, feeling the words building up inside me, waiting patiently in line to come out. If I let them, they’d tumble—I’d babble, make no sense at all—so I steeled myself to get them out in some semblance of order, sentences that were clipped, precise and left Victor in no doubt about what had happened. Those words, they’d hurt him, I knew that, but he wanted to hear them and, oddly, I wanted him to. I didn’t have the need to hurt him, nothing like that, but to have him heal me, as I knew he would once he learnt what had gone on, was calling to me stronger than that damn sunny field.

Why the hell was I swinging from one set of rules to another? I’d set out to make him see he couldn’t fix me, yet here I was, asking him to try. I didn’t understand myself at all.

“I wonder at times, “ I said, “as you must have, whether those men made me want what I want, made me like what I like.” I shrugged. “And if they did, so be it. I like it now, crave it, and I can see I’ve made it, in the best way I know how, so that the horror of it has been switched to enjoyment. I don’t need a psychologist to tell me that.” I laughed again, the sound so weird that I’d swear I hadn’t made it.

“Are you all right to go on?” Victor asked. “You sound…on the edge.”

“Oh, I’m fine.”

I stared at the man in the mask. Another man, wearing a half mask, had his cock wedged firmly in Lion Man’s mouth, was sucking greedily having turned from a member of the audience into part of the show. Lion Man gripped two bars, had his pelvis pressed into them so hard they made indents in his body. I shifted my gaze higher, to the mask, and let the fear of it do what it would. Memories came, fast and unrelenting, shoving me well into the middle of that storm so that the rain pelted me, stung my skin, seemed to penetrate so deep, like his cock was doing to the other man’s throat. Choking. Suffocating.

“Have you ever had a whole fist up your arse, Victor?” I asked, knowing full well he hadn’t.

“Pardon?” he said.

I saw him in my peripheral. He’d whipped his head around to stare at me, his eyes, as my mother would have said, like piss holes in the snow—the only thing I could see amidst the gold of his mask.

“You heard me,” I said.

He let out a ragged sigh. “You know I haven’t.

“It isn’t pleasant having a whole fist inside you.”

“Christ. They did that?”

“Not my arse, though they did threaten it several times.” I smiled, still watching the two men going for it. “You know me, I like my pussy filled, but a whole hand? That’s a bit much even for my tastes.”

He waited a few beats before answering. “I wouldn’t know how to go about doing that to you, Zara. I don’t want to hurt you. I can’t imagine how…how it would bloody well fit.”
He glanced down at his hands, resting on his thighs.

“Oh, it’ll fit. It’s amazing what that hole can accommodate.” I breezed on, as though it wasn’t killing me to tell him these things. “You’d be surprised what some people shove up there. Wine bottles—and I’m not talking the neck end—their lover’s feet, two big dicks do it for some people. All wide, all things you’d never imagine, so a fist…that’s nothing, really.” I was trying to convince myself of just that—a fist was nothing but a clenched hand, a part of the body used to give sexual pleasure. Except it hadn’t given me pleasure back then. It had almost ripped me apart.

“Bloody hell.” Victor sighed again. “I don’t know…”

“You wouldn’t have to do the whole thing,” I said. “It isn’t the actual fist that causes me issues—how can it be when I don’t mind being invaded by fingers and cocks and whatever else is at hand? It’s what they said, how they treated me—
that’s
what you have to fix. Like you did in the shed. You’d become them, just for a little while. Can you do that again?”

He was still looking at me, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn to him, to read what was in his eyes. I might see into his soul again, and that wouldn’t be a good thing. I’d break, my resolve to see this through would flounder, and then where would we be? No, this was the ideal time and place to get this crap over and done with, erase it from my mind. Putting it off would only make matters worse now that I’d allowed the memories to prance around my head any time they chose. I knew from experience that it took a lot of work to lock them up once they’d been given the green light to come out. I didn’t want to do that this time.

“I think so,” he said. “I won’t like it, I can’t deny that, but I’ll do it. You know I’ll do it.”

“I do, and that’s one of the reasons you’re so dear to me.” There, I’d said some soppy stuff again. “I know how difficult this kind of thing is for you, so the fact that you’ll do it, that you’ve already done it, well, you know…”

“I know.” He cleared his throat, glanced at the two men again. “Jesus, they’re having a good time.”

I smiled. “Aren’t they just. And hopefully we will, too, once we get the nasty bit over and done with.”

“The nasty bit. I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Funny enough, neither do I, but at the same time I want it to happen. It
has
to happen. Like you said, I have to face it all again. But what I want to make clear to you is that I don’t think you can ever fix me. There’s too much to get through. Oh, you might win the first few battles, you know, get me through it and change the scenes in my head into something less harsh, something I can deal with and put to bed, but what if, later down the line, we stumble and can’t mend something? What then?”

“We’d keep trying until we did fix it,” he said. “Earlier, you said something that bothered me. Similar to just now. It’s like you’re putting up obstacles on purpose, wanting it to fail before we’ve even had the chan
ce to have a good go at it. What you don’t seem to understand is that I’m prepared to take the risk of us going tits up—that I’ll do whatever it takes to have you in my life. Yet you…well, you seem to want to stop before we’ve even begun. I get that you’re afraid to love—I do get that—but I’ll never hurt you, never let you fall, and I’ll always, no matter what, be there to make everything better. Once you believe that, you’ll be all right. We probably won’t have to go through these scenarios ever again once you just get that.”

I believed him—damn, my eyes stung—but what
he
didn’t understand was that although I wanted to do this, to allow him to love me, to allow
myself
to love
him
, I was afraid.

Afraid.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“I’m…” No, I couldn’t tell him. Just couldn’t say it. Couldn’t let him know. And fucking hell, I wanted to, but it was like a barrier prevented it, some evil force inside me that still wanted to keep me in its clutches, to keep me being the hateful woman I’d let myself become since the shed.