by Dae, Harlem
She nodded. “I need one.”
I could do with a stiff Scotch myself.
“Fuck it, let’s go,” I said, standing. “Sod the table reservation and the order.”
I held out my hand and she took it, standing herself then pressing close to my side as we navigated between two tables. We had to pass Geoffrey’s—one of the other aisles was blocked by a waitress and a dessert trolley—and I kept my focus on the exit, unwilling to look at him and see any kind of smugness he might be feeling at the fact we hadn’t been able to stand eating in the same room as him. He’d driven us to this, no doubt about it, but I had no time for regrets now. We were leaving, and he could think whatever the hell he liked.
“Going without eating?” Geoffrey asked, his tone condescending.
I stopped, despite my inner voice screaming that I keep walking, and swivelled around to face him, holding back the desire to knock his damn head off for daring to speak to us.
“We have other, more exciting things to do. Eating food is overrated,” Zara said quickly, before I’d even thought of a smart answer.
God, I loved her for that.
“I’m sure it is,” he said with a smirk. “I’d offer for you to dine with us, but it would make my date rather uncomfortable.”
I looked down at the crown of her head, wondering if she was shy. She began to lift it slowly, the curtain of her hair shifting away from her face as she tilted her head back and looked up at me.
My world spun. My vision glazed. My heart…damn, my heart lurched so violently it hurt. I inhaled deeply, my eyesight returning to normal, and stared down at Helen. What the fuck was she doing with him? My mind swirled, racing back to the past, to the housewarming party we’d been invited to once Geoffrey’s house had been completed. He’d flirted with her and she him. It had irritated me something crazy but she’d brushed away my feelings, saying it was my imagination. I hadn’t been able to quite shake it, though, and it left a sour taste in my mouth whenever I thought about the party.
Then shortly after that…shortly after that she’d left me to work in South Africa. Like hell she had. Those evenings out beforehand, business interviews and presentations, she’d said, organising emigration paperwork. Fuck, I’d thought it had all sounded odd, so much time out of the apartment at strange hours. She’d been with him. Dating Geoffrey behind my back!
And the way she’d dyed her hair darker, become quiet, introverted, always reading, or packing or going online and deleting the history. She’d started wearing makeup, something she’d rarely bothered with. I’d presumed it was the stress of her decision to go and take on a high-powered job in the consulate, not preening for another man. The thoughts hadn’t penetrated too far into me, though, I had already distanced myself by then—she’d made her choice and it hadn’t been me.
Yet it was all a lie, a lie so she could run off with Geoffrey, who I wouldn’t have guessed would want anything to do with a timid woman like Helen. That had bugged me that night of the party. Yet it seemed my intuition had been right all along. He had fancied her, and she him. The attraction she’d denied had been exactly that, a mating dance, a plot to turn my world upside down.
Damn it. How could I have believed her so readily? ‘I have to follow my dreams, Victor, the way you have yours.’ She’d said that one night as she’d stroked my hair, her bags and passport packed. Lying bitch.
“Helen,” I managed, squeezing Zara’s hand, a plea for her to step in and help me. To say something witty again that would dissolve this God-awful feeling inside me. Realisation that I’d been duped struck me hard, and feelings of betrayal swept through me from my feet to my face. I stood there, thinking that this man, this fucking hateful man, had been with the only two women in my life I’d ever given a shit about. Was the reverse also true? Had he once cared for Zara? Did he care for Helen now?
“Well,” Zara said, smiling sweetly at Geoffrey. “I have much sympathy for your date.” She turned her smile on Helen. “Just be careful he doesn’t drop you like a sack of shit once you bore him to death.” She winked. “Unless you’re one of his regular lays. You know, someone he’s been seeing on and off for years. And he’s so vague about committing, isn’t he? Sometimes unable to see you without explanation. Those nights are when he’s fucking someone else, but I suspect you know that, don’t you? Or has he spun you the line yet that you’re his special one, and he wants to keep you hidden, keep something in his life private and away from the press?” Zara tilted her head. “You believed him, didn’t you? Good Lord, I’m so sorry to be the bearer of such bad news. I had no idea…”
Helen paled, and I almost, almost felt sorry for her—until I remembered how she’d left me in that whirlwind of lies. Had Geoffrey dumped Zara once he’d met Helen? Zara hadn’t mentioned how long they’d been apart. God, what a bloody mess. And who would have thought that Geoffrey’s and Helen’s other halves would end up together? Fate liked to play some strange games.
“Anyway,” Zara went on. “I’m just about to find a dark little corner to fuck my date in. Against the wall is such a turn-on, you know, and something he’s so damn good at. The thrill of someone discovering you is quite sublime.” She dazzled them with another brilliant smile. “So nice to have met you, Helen. Toodle-oo.”
Zara tucked her arm in mine and swept ahead, all but dragging me along. I followed gladly, part of me left behind with Helen and the past, the rest of me staring ahead at Zara and my future—one I wanted to spend with her. I clamped my mouth shut, gritting my teeth at the fact that we didn’t have long, that I’d never be with her full time. It hurt like a son of a bitch, but I had to suck it up and accept it.
Instead of going out into the foyer, Zara pulled me to a stop outside an elevator and jabbed one finger on the call button. She turned to me and pressed herself flush to my body, planting a kiss on me that was so deep, so intense I forgot to breathe. Christ, I wanted her in the worst way, and it seemed she felt the same about me. So what if we were about to fuck after just seeing our exes. So damn what. The reason I wanted her was to show her that Helen no longer mattered, that Zara did. If she wanted to fuck me for different reasons, well, I’d take that. I’d take her any way she wanted so long as it meant I could touch her, be close to her.
No use denying it. When we parted, Jesus, it was going to hurt, but for our remaining time together I was going to try my hardest to make her see that a relationship—a full-time relationship—could work, if only she’d give it a try.
The elevator door slid open, and she shoved me inside. My back hit the rear wall, and before the door had even closed she was on me. She held my arms above my head, pressed to the mirrored wall, her fingernails digging into my skin. She gave me a frantic kiss—another breath-stealer—probing her tongue deep, swirling it around mine until my cock got hard and my balls ached like fuck. She pushed her pelvis into my hard-on and rubbed herself up and down, panting as she kissed me, getting off on her movements. I tilted my hips up to give her more pressure, but a disembodied voice came from the speakers saying we were approaching level four.
A bell dinged and she flung herself off me, staring at me with wild eyes, her chest rising and falling rapidly with her fevered breaths. Shit, I wanted her. Wanted her so much my cock hurt. She took my hand and backed out into a corridor, then turned and yanked me along to a doorway.
“In here,” she said, out of breath.
She swung the door open and pushed me inside. I stared around briefly at a cleaning closet, not bothering to ask her how she knew it was here. All I wanted was to possess her, to shove my cock inside her so deeply it made her cry out. She closed the door and pushed me onto it, palms roving my chest. Her mouth met mine in the darkness, and I kissed her as hard as she kissed me. I grappled at her dress, dragging it up until the hem was around her waist. She slid her hands down and unzipped my trousers, pulling at them so the waistband sat on my hips. Freeing my cock, she settled her inner thighs against the outside of my legs, and I hoisted her
up. Her hand fumbled between us, and I guessed she was moving her gusset to the side. She jammed down onto my cock, her sopping heat gripping me. Bracing herself with her hands on my shoulders, she rode me, kissing me all the while, mewls coming out of her mouth and into mine. Something beside us clattered then slid along the wall, smacking into my arm. It should have felt insane to be fucking in a cleaner’s cupboard at The Savoy, a cluster of mop handles leaning drunkenly on me, but it felt nothing but exciting, nothing but fucking excellent.
She took her mouth from mine and settled her face in the crook of my neck, dashing her tongue out to lick my skin.
“Oh, fuck, Victor,” she breathed. “Fuck, I want you so badly. I’m coming. Oh. God, I‘m coming…”
Her words set me off and I was powerless to do anything but let the sensations sweep over me. Cum boiled in my balls, and it travelled up my cock and spurted, her movements more fluid with the wetness. I lowered my head and bit her shoulder, animalistic grunts coming out of me, sounds I hadn’t known I could make. She bit me back, her strangled cries muffled on my neck.
“Oh, yes,” she said. “Fucking yes!”
Her cunt spasmed, milking my cock hard, and I clutched her arse, pressing my fingertips into her flesh.
“Zara, I…” Another rope of cum left me, and I was unable to tell her what I’d been tempted to tell her before. That I needed her. I wanted more.
“Oh, you are such a good fuck,” she said, giving me a short, bruising kiss.
She slowed, licking every part of my mouth, poking her tongue out to swipe it across my lips then back down to my neck.
And that’s all I was, it seemed. A good fuck. But I could do better. By the end of our time together, she’d be calling me a fantastic fuck—and hopefully, it was a fuck she wouldn’t be able to do without.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“We have to do it,” Zara said, stalking to the window and staring out at Tower Bridge. “And since we can, the decision is made.”
“Are you mad?” I stared at her slim silhouette, at the way her hips flared in her tight red dress and how her ankles looked so delicate, almost snappable, in her heels. “We’ll never get away with it.”
She wafted her left hand as though brushing away my annoying, trivial concerns. “Live dangerously for once, Victor. You never know, you might just enjoy it.”
“I think life has been dangerous enough lately, certainly my arse would say so.”
She turned and smiled, a wickedly smug grin that lit her face. “Your arse has never been so happy. Admit it.”
I shifted on the barstool and reached for my glass of Merlot. Noted the lingering, pleasant sting from Zara’s paddle on my bum—pleasant in that it reminded me of how turned on I‘d been at The Harlequin show. So aroused that all sense and reason had left me and for the first time ever I’d become a wild animal who would only be appeased by a good fuck. I was still thanking my lucky stars it was Zara who’d been in that room and not someone of a fragile disposition. Mind you, in that cleaner’s closet less than an hour ago, the beast in me had resurfaced, seemed now that he knew the way out he was going to appear whenever Zara tempted him.
“We should go now,” she said, strutting over to me and plucking the wine from my hand. She took a big sip then set it aside. “They’ll just be finishing their meal—presuming they stayed to eat—and I know full well Geoffrey likes a session after splashing out in a fancy restaurant.”
“Session?”
Zara rolled her eyes. “Yes, a submission session, with his Domme.”
Zara may as well have been speaking a foreign language. She was making no sense to me. “I…I don’t understand?”
She cupped my chin, tilted my head. “Don’t you see?”
“No.”
“Helen is his new Domme. He threw me away and then found her.” She shrugged. “Or maybe he found her and then threw me away. I’m not exactly sure which, but what the hell does it matter now?”
“Exactly, so your crazy shit idea about heading off into the night to spy on them is ridiculous.”
“No, not ridiculous.” She pressed her lips to mine. “It’s your next lesson, Victor.” Her mouth was hot, her words wine-laced. “I want you to see how a real man submits.”
“Real man?” I scowled. I was a real man, certainly as real as bloody Geoffrey Dell. In fact, I was more so. I didn’t steal other men’s women. “Well, I’m not going.”
A sudden, stinging slap burnt across my left cheek. I turned my head, the force ramming my cheek into my teeth and rattling my jaw.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, poking my tongue into the painful side of my mouth. “What the hell was that for?”
“He won’t help you.” She paused. “Do you really want me to hit you again?”
“No. I damn well don’t.”
“So stop arguing with your Mistress and start showing some fucking respect.” She grabbed my hair, tugged my head to the side, yanking my neck. Her eyes flashed, her pupils large, a frown slashing between her eyebrows. “If I say we’re going to watch Geoffrey and Helen then that’s what we’re doing. You do not argue, you do not blaspheme, you just fucking do as you’re told, got it?”
I wasn’t sure, but I thought I could taste blood. “Yes, Mistress.”
“Good. Now help me out of this dress.” Releasing me, she turned and scooped her hair to the top of her head. “Undo the zip.”
“Yes, Mistress.” Damn, it was becoming a habit, this Mistress thing. That one had slipped out without me even having to think about it.
I reached for the zip and drew it down, revealing creamy skin. The zip went low, so low it showed the top of her arse cleft and revealed that she was wearing a miniscule thong.
My dick twitched. I adored her buttocks. They were soft and round and the perfect size for my palms. An image of me buggering her backhole sprung to mind, and as the dress slid lower still, then crumpled on the floor at her feet, I had a sudden urge to bend her over the sofa and revisit her darkest place.
She turned, naked, and kicked the dress aside. “I know what you’re thinking, you dirty boy.” She waggled her right index finger.
I swallowed and shifted on the stool. “What?”
“That you want to fuck me again.”
“I always want to fuck you.”
She smiled. “Good.”
I slipped from the stool, reached for her waist and pulled her soft, slight body close. “So come here.” What was it with me lately? I was insatiable. Zara tugged my emotions every which way, tossed them in the air, and every time they realigned or landed, lust was at the top of the pile. “I want to fuck your arse again…Mistress.”
She tipped her head back and laughed. A great big guffaw that shook her breasts against my chest. “Oh, Victor, you’re so funny.”
“No, I’m not.” I slid my hands down her back, cupped her buttocks and pulled her tighter into my dick. A hard, jarring movement. Why the hell was she laughing? “I’m not funny, I’m a real man, a man who is going to make you scream in ecstasy.”
Her face fell serious, and she slipped her hands up my neck, rested her fingertips on my jawline. “I know,” she said, licking her lips, her eyelids becoming a little heavy, “that you can make me scream with ecstasy. That you can give me off-the-scale orgasms and that you have a beast inside you that is rampant and greedy and needs to be let out to play as much as it needs to be tamed.”
I kissed her, quickly, a sharp press of mouths. “Yes, I can and I have.”
“But first,” she said, stroking through my hair. “I do want you to see how it’s done. What you can expect when I decide to cage your monster.”
“You do mean figuratively?” I said with a grin.
Again she laughed. “For now, yes, figuratively.” She stepped back, forcing me to drop my arms. Pulled open a drawer at her hip—an odds-and-sods drawer— plucked out an elastic band and fastened her hair up into a high tail that sat on the crown of her head. “Now please tell me you have s
ome of Helen’s old clothes hanging around. I can hardly go sneaking through undergrowth in a dress, can I?”
Helen’s old clothes?
“I…um…yes, probably.” I still had a box of her stuff in a cupboard in the spare room. She’d gathered most things up from my apartment, but there had been several items that had appeared over the weeks after her departure. I would have dropped them off had I thought she was still local, but, since I’d presumed her to be in South Africa…
I shook my head to rid the kernel of pain that was trying to weed its way into my guts. No time for that now, not when Zara took up all my energies, both emotional and physical.
“Sure, come this way.” I headed into the spare room.
It smelt of nothing—no fabric conditioner or lingering perfume—just cool nothing. The double bed was made up, the bottle-green sheets perfectly smooth, the pillows plump, no head dents.
I reached a cardboard box down from the cupboard and plonked it on the bed.
Zara rubbed her hands together and plucked off the lid. “Oh, great, let’s hope Helen is a dull dresser.”
My gaze fell on a black-covered book first, The Story of O. I reached for it, remembering Helen reading it the last few weeks we were together. She’d had her nose in it every time I’d come home.
The spine was battered, the pages rumpled and well-fingered.
“Here we go,” Zara said, pulling out a pair of black jeans and a navy sweater. “A bit big, but these will do.”
I turned the book over, read the words on the back cover. It was about sexual fantasies and dark desires. Since when had Helen read this kind of thing? I’d thought she was a Maeve Binchy kind of a girl.
“Oh, what’s that?” Zara said, yanking up the jeans and tilting her head. “The Story of O, great book.”
“You’ve read it?”
“Duh, yes, when I was twelve.”
“Twelve?” Bloody hell.
She giggled. “No, actually I read it…” She paused, swallowed, and that furrow came back between her eyebrows. “I read it four years ago. Just after I met Geoffrey.”
