Sexy as Hell Box Set (88 page)

“I love you,” I shouted, the words dredged up from my soul. “
I’ll fucking love you forever.”

I was full of it, that love, and there was so much of it that I could have sworn it was spilling out of me. A cog that hadn’t been turning quite right had righted itself, enabling me to accept that I, Zara bloody Watson, could be loved by Victor Partridge, an angel sent to fix my broken self, putting me back together in a semblance of who I was always meant to be. He’d know where the pieces fitted. He’d know how much glue each bit needed. I’d leave it all to him, because while I knew exactly what he needed sexually, it seemed he knew what I needed emotionally.

And what did I know? Nothing much except that I loved him.

And only him.

After we’d cleaned the stage, the cat, and Victor had dressed, we left the room without speaking until we were in the maze of corridors again. I stopped walking and pushed him against the wall beside one of the doors. Sounds of pleasure filtered out, but I’d come so thoroughly that they failed to do their usual thing and make me want another round.

I laced my fingers at the nape of his neck and pushed my body into his. “Are you all right?”

He nodded. “That was…it was surreal, so bloody weird, but at the end, when you shouted… God, did you mean it?
Is that how you feel now, about us, being together forever?”

“
Yes, I meant it, every word.” I looked into his eyes, seeing sincerity, his love for me. It was so overwhelming I had to lower my head and press my cheek to his chest. “We’ll be all right, won’t we? Everything will work out okay, d’you think?”

“I don’t think, I know.” He stroked my hair, smoothing his fingers over the elastic of my mask. “I can’t guarantee it won’t be rocky at times, or that I can rein in my jealousy when I think about you running Sexy as Hell, doing your shows with men ogling you, but that’s what you were doing when I met you and I don’t have the right to ask you to stop it just because I can’t handle it. I’ll learn to handle it.”

“Like you handled knowing I’d let Ollie touch me?”

“I don’t think about that.” He held me closer, tighter. “I can’t. I want to wipe the slate clean, have the past as the past. It’s just us now, as if we’ve never been with anyone else. That’s how I’ll cope with it. The only way I think I can.”

I thought about Helen, Catherine, and the faceless women he’d been with before them. Did they matter? Really? I lifted my mask. The air was wonderfully cool on my skin.

“Then I’ll do the same,” I said. “Shall we go and find a drink?” I stepped back a bit but remained in his embrace.

“I need one.” He smiled down at me, lifting his mask, too, and letting it sit on top of his head. “This bloody thing makes me so hot.”

“I thought that had been me…”

He laughed, tipping his head back, and I watched his happiness, pleased that I’d put it there.

“Something amusing going on?” a man asked. A man whose voice I recognised only too well.

I whipped my head around to stare down the corridor. A couple were walking towards us, her leading him by a leash. Were they switches too? The collar was thick, spanning the whole depth of his neck, and the chain hanging from it looked heavy.

Geoffrey and Helen.

“Nothing that you would find funny,” I snapped, unlinking my hands from around Victor’s neck and turning my body so I fully faced them. I covered my face with my mask.

Helen’s eyes were narrowed, the holes in her mask large enough that her eyebrows and the tops of her cheeks were visible. I took Victor’s hand, held it tight with both hands, a stupid, insecure move, I knew, but I hadn’t been able to stop myself.

“No need to be rude,” Geoffrey said as they came abreast of us. “Are you enjoying yourselves?”

Victor cleared his throat. “More than you’ll ever know.”

“Oh, good.” Geoffrey’s
Phantom of the Opera
mask gave him a creepy air. He smiled, only half of his lips showing. He nodded at me while looking at Victor.

“You’d better watch her,” he said. “Completely bonkers.”

“Geoffrey! Now
you’re
being rude!” Helen said. She tugged the leash and he stopped smiling, his whole body relaxing as though she’d literally brought him to heel. “I’m sorry. My sub’s bark is worse than his bite.”

“I don’t care
what
your sub is,” I said. “I’m too interested in my own.”

I pushed past her, making sure that I nudged her with my shoulder, and tugged Victor behind me. Jealousy, it pinched inside me with nasty little fingers, and all I could think of was getting my virgin as far away from his ex-girlfriend as possible.

The feeling was alien, taking me by surprise, because tacked onto the end of it was insecurity, the feeling that even though I’d told myself I
was
good enough for him, the little voice inside me had other ideas.

You’re not,
it whispered.
And you never will be.

“Fuck off,” I muttered as we neared the end of the corridor.

“Pardon me?” Victor asked.

“Not you. Forget it, I’m just talking to myself.” I shuddered at the thought of those two staring at us. “Being bonkers, just like he said I am.”

The cool night air was a welcome relief as we stepped out of the club. Immediately I tugged my mask off, pushed my hair back from my forehead and then flicked it over my shoulders.

“Do you want a shawl? They have them here,” Victor asked, also removing his mask. “You can just take one, return it or not, depending on what you want to do with it.”

“No, I like the cold.” And I did, it reminded me that I was alive, awake, in the land of humanity, even if slightly off track. The chilly nip on my skin, the pinch it gave my nose and cheeks, was a welcome torment.

“Back to the hotel?” Victor asked, gesturing to a water taxi, the same one, so it seemed, that had brought us to the club a few hours ago. Had Victor made him wait?

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Or we could go and find a bar, or get something to eat.”

“The hotel is fine.”

The driver held out his hand. I
didn’t take it; instead, I let Victor support my elbow and together we stepped onto the slightly unstable deck and sat on the soft leather seat that spanned the stern. Victor slipped off his jacket and laid it around my shoulders. I didn’t bother to protest, letting his body heat infuse into me and his faded aftershave fill my nose. He pulled me close and gave a quick instruction in Italian to the driver.

The boat hummed to life, a front light flicked on, and we pulled away from the mooring into the still water on a purring glide.
Venice was eerie this time of the night. The grandeur and gaiety of the day had been switched to a ghostly, almost surreal scene, one you couldn’t run from because of the canals and warren of alleys, all of which led to more cold, murky water.

A bluish mist hovered all around, and we seemed to sit within it, as though we had become part of the vapour. Our headlight sliced a path ahead but it was a smoky illumination, unhelpful, and if anything
it added to the spooky thoughts I was having about lurking spirits below the surface with reaching, stretching hands searching for something to grip.

I shuddered. Victor noticed and held me tighter, his fingertips squeezing into my upper arm and his thigh pressing into mine.

Stately buildings loomed over us, tall and dark, their eyes shut for the night. What was going on behind those shuttered windows? Pain and pleasure-play? Were memories being purged all over Venice? Was it a city of rebirth?

As we passed a church, angels, standing like weeping widows, bent their heads over praying hands and stared into the blackness beneath them. I could make out their stone toes, peeping from their heavy, sculpted gowns. I wriggled my own toes, cold now, and wondered if those angels had ever had anyone pass them by who was as fucked up as me.

Sure, they’d been there hundreds of years, but still, I really was a seriously messed-up case.

“You’re quiet,” Victor said, a huff of air billowing from his mouth and adding to the damp mist surrounding us.

“Just taking it in.”

“Do you like Venice at night?” he asked.

“It’s creepy.”

“I agree
. Without human noise, just the slosh of the water on the foundations of the houses, it really does feel deathly still.” He kissed my temple, my cheek and then my ear. “I’ll be glad when we’re warm and cosy in bed.”

“Me too.”

Fortunately, The Baglioni appeared sooner than I’d anticipated, and Victor and I stepped into the warmth of the lobby, the golden lighting seeming to add to the sudden lick of heat over my skin.

“A soft drink?” Victor asked, steering me to the bar, my heels clacking on the marble-like floor.

“I’ll go for another gin and tonic,” I said, sweeping my gaze over the few patrons who were sitting quietly sipping drinks. They took no notice of us.

Victor hesitated. “Are you worried about Geoffrey and Helen being here?”

I snorted—not very ladylike, but I couldn’t help it. “Why would I be worried about them?”

Victor shrugged. “He’s your ex.”

“And she’s yours,” I snapped.

He frowned. Tipped his head and studied me. “I don’t have feelings for her anymore, you know?”

“Yeah, I know, but…”

“But what?”

I tugged off his jacket, handed it to him. “She might still have feelings for you.”

Victor sighed, though he’d clearly tried to hold it in. He took his jacket in one hand, holding it with the masks, and then wrapped the other around my waist. “I really need that drink for this.”

A stutter of panic went through me.
For this?
Shit. He knew something. He knew she still cared for him. Had she been trying to contact him? Had they met up on occasion for a heart-to-heart or a fuck, or worse, had he made love to her recently in that special way of his? My temples itched. Sweat popped on my cleavage and a nausea-inducing fist gripped my stomach.

Victor ordered two gin and tonics
, and once they’d been served, with ice and a slice, we took a corner seat that looked over the fog-swamped canal we’d just floated down.

The plush seat was super-soft and high-backed—good for sore bottoms. Victor sat opposite, a little gingerly. His cushioned chair was a lush
royal blue with brass ornaments on the ends of the arms, shaped like lions with wings. A candle flickered on the small, round table between us, and I let myself study the way the warm hue cast shadows on Victor’s face, glad the masks were off and I could see him properly again.

I waited for him to speak.

“Helen doesn’t have feelings for me,” he said eventually.

“How do you know?” I asked immediately.

“Because she left me, for Geoffrey. If she had feelings for me she wouldn’t have gone. She would have stayed instead of making up some convoluted lie about going to work in Africa when all along she wanted to go and play submission games with him.”

The way he’d said
him
had almost been a sneer.

“I left you, even though it’s clear now that I still had feelings for you, very strong feelings.” I slugged on my drink, grateful for the refreshing tonic and also for the bite of alcohol. Insecurity over a man’s regard for me wasn’t on my agenda, never had been
, and I hadn’t thought it ever would be.

Until Victor.

But then again, why was I surprised? Hadn’t everything been
until Victor?

“You and I…” he said, “we had a mutual break
-up.” He too drank heavily, the ice in his glass clanking noisily.

“We did, but how is that different? What if Helen strutted back into your life right now, demanded that you take her back and showed you that she, too, can switch, the way you like to. Perhaps you would be compatible now, in the bedroom.”

He frowned. “Suddenly we’re right for each other because we’ve spent time with you and Geoffrey?”

“Yes. I’ve taught you what you need, sexually, and he’s certainly opened her eyes.”

Victor shook his head.

“Don’t you see,” I went on, “she’s the perfect middle ground between me and Catherine. Catherine looked great on your arm, had all the right credentials but in private she could never take you to the places you need to go. She can pretend to enjoy submission but that girl couldn’t flog if her life depended on it and you know it. And Helen, well, she too looks the part on your arm, she could go to all your posh architect dinners, say the right things, smile sweetly, and then afterwards, she could beat you to orgasm, bend you over, peg you, let you lead her around on a leash and submit to your VP paddle.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Peg me?” He shook his head. “No, we’ll come back to that. Do you really believe Helen is right for me?” There was incredulousness in his tone.

I couldn’t hold his gaze so instead stared out of the window. A shadow shaped like a clawed hand stretched and shivered over the water towards me. No, I didn’t think Helen was right for Victor. I was the one for him, only me, but that was just what my bonkers head and crazy-in-love heart said. It sure as hell wasn’t what the rest of the world would say. I was never going to wear a white dress and walk down an aisle; I could never be that repaired. Nor was I ever going to nurse a babe at my breast, dash off on a school run or make a costume for a nativity play
. That was just too extreme for my lifestyle.