Ripped (Killer Lips Book 2) (5 page)

I'm dressed and waiting. Of course I haven't changed out of my luscious negligee. Mark hasn't had the chance to enjoy me in it yet. And I want the full on appreciation that comes when he stares hungrily at my body. And everything that comes after.

When he comes I'll tell him everything about the police and the green velvet costume and finally get the answers to the anomalies swirling in my head. The locked door is indisputable - my missing passport.

He's told me enough times that he doesn't want me to go – that I am the one he finally thinks he'll let into his life. There's no need to imprison me in my room any longer. We're united.

I am absolutely on the edge to tell him that it was me that disposed of the green velvet. Will he be surprised and pleased with me for thwarting the officers? And then my other little display. I see us laughing about the loss of the ugly but valuable statue and him hugging me to him, relieved to have a partner he can trust at last.

And the torture chamber?

I'm sure he has an explanation for that. This building survives from medieval times when torturing your enemies was completely acceptable. It's gotta be a holdover from that era. But there are a couple of issues surrounding the torture chamber that need to be resolved as soon as he gets here.

If that cell is his billionaire's red room why hasn't he invited me to enter. Which leads us to the more pressing problem of the girl he did summon in. The one on the camera recording. He needs to explain her before we go one step further.

She isn't a deal breaker but of course we cannot allow that to continue. If he wants us to be joined against the rest of the world, it's got to be an exclusive deal.

The sun has set. I'm waiting on the chaise lounge arranged as he likes me with the transparent lace enticing all the right points and Mark still hasn't come for me. I've looked up and down the passage many times – now I'm checking for him every five minutes.

The door is unlocked which can only mean he never came back upstairs after getting rid of the
polizia
. I could go anywhere I please but I somehow know I should stay here in my room and not be discovered wandering the halls where he might be angry that I'm snooping again.

Where is he?

He's never left me alone all day, not since I arrived. Now I'm starting to worry that he's seriously displeased with me for screaming like that when the officers were at my door. Making them think I was a prisoner.

But shouldn't he be glad, impressed even, at how I covered my mistake so smoothly? You might almost call it elegant. Perhaps I am cut out for a life of crime after all.

It's now pitch black and every boat has departed the dark waterway outside the windows. I sit and stare out at the darkness wondering what's become of my lover. My body pines for his touch, his lips grazing my hard nipple as he slowly tongues it, coaxing into the delicious tug of his hot mouth.

I cannot believe how my body is consistently avid for him. With a mind of its own it pleads and pouts for his caress. Violent or tender, however he wants to take me is perfect. Every time.

My lower stomach clenches against the rising misery that Mark has abandoned me. He's probably with her. At any moment I expect to be informed by one of the servants that I can pack my things and leave. Which will be easy enough as I no longer have 'Things'. He tossed all my personal belongings away, promising to buy me anything I want. That hasn't yet happened but I have more than enough in the closet.

Of course, I wouldn't take those clothes with me-they aren't actually mine nor were they bought for me. It occurs to me that I own absolutely nothing in the world. There would be no trace of me at all if I left the palace.

Where is he?

Fuck, if I haven't seen or heard him since the
polizia
were here perhaps they took him away. What if they found something in the bedroom after all? Or he answered a question that gave the game away.

Oh fuck fuck fuck why didn't I think of that before. I tear the door open and rip down the stairs with my silky gown billowing out behind me.

In the reception room where we always take our pre-dinner cocktails, I pour a goblet of syrupy red wine from the weighty decanter and down it in one for courage. Then chase it off with another. At times like these I wish Mark kept some common old tequila on the drinks bar.

The hallway is pitch dark and I have no clue where the light switch is-it could be miles away at the other end of the passage. Every room is dark. It's more than a little creepy being alone in this enormous house with nothing but ghosts and my vivid imagination.

I find Mark in the dining room. Almost missing him in the dark with only the lights twinking off the canal through the windows. His great bulk of taut muscle drew me to him. He's sitting at the head of the table with his chin in his palms, on the opposite side of the planet. Abject misery and hopelessness envelop his normally virile frame.

I cross behind him to massage his shoulders, solid as sheet metal in my hands. He looks up and a flicker of fury crosses his perfect face.

Then Mark sweeps me up into his hold and kisses my eyelids, trailing down the tip of my nose to claim my lips. They press together, we press together, offering ourselves to each other and then our mouths part and he enters me. We are only prevented from ripping the clothes from our bodies by the arrival of his man with the
carciofi al parmigiano
.

“I absolutely adore artichokes,” I say as Mark pushes my chair in for me. “I only ever had small pieces on pizza before, never the whole thing.”

“The heart.”

Mark seats himself at the head of the table where he can take my hand and keep it in his fist while we eat with our fingers. When the waiter brings the decanter of wine from the buffet, Mark waves it away, says something in Italian and the man removes the offending crystal to the kitchen.

Mark uncorks another bottle and toasts to my ingenuity alongside great beauty. He must be drunk or deranged but I know he'd be rightly mad if I demur. I was cool with the commander today. And I do feel rather decadent sitting down to dinner in a nightgown. He pours me more of the fabulous wine. The rising aroma is both sweet and tangy.

“What do you taste?” he asks.

“A combination of almost bitter full-bodied but fruity. Also very powerful, I feel light-headed already.”

“Not surprising after your little adventure today,” he says and I can't tell whether he's angry or amused. Then his face breaks and he leans in to kiss me.

“You were spectacular.” he says with a wistful air. Were? As in past tense?

“With the police you mean?”

“It was you that moved the costume?” he says. “I assumed it was la Signora B but my housekeeper has never been that loyal.”

“Are you angry with me?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you keep leaving me locked in my room – your room.”

“Our room. And watch that cute pouting of yours. In a second I'm going to have to bend you over this table and rip that lace to shreds.”

He kisses me and his firm fingers curl around the underside of my breast sending spasms of eager desire through the chasm between my thighs. I wish he'd take me here on the huge table but Roberto comes in with the
carpaccio
– raw beef.

The food is sublime as usual and we finish with a tiramisu, loaded with marsala and dark espresso coffee. I could fist my entire hand into the creamy mixture and lick it lasciviously from my fingers. Instead I let Mark feed me from the end of his finger as he likes.

With no man other than Mark would I be so ravenous over dessert. Before I'd always act like I never ate sweet things, for shame that he'd think my curvy thighs came from over-indulging.

“You're always so sexy when you eat,” he says. “I love watching you take this between your luscious lips.”

“I wish it was you.” I say, running the tip of my tongue along the edge of my lower lip, drawing his voracious eyes to me. I know he remembers how I trail it the same way along the ridge circling the head of his cock. “I missed our afternoon nap today.”

“I had stuff to take care of.”

“But you locked me in my room. Why do you keep denying it?”

I look right at him daring him to nix me again. Swirls of tension constrict my lower stomach. Fear of him strangling me right here on the table or bending me over it and plunging into me from behind. How can I want him so much when he's so monstrous?

“It's for your own safety,” he says, daring me right back. “There's a killer around, have you forgotten?”

“Is he around? Or is he here?” I say, amazed at my brazen query.

I have to know. I have to know whether the Strangler is my lover, or his so
n, or his father
and why he's gone to all this trouble to deceive me about his family. But I know somewhere deep inside me that Mark would never hurt me.

Yeah, like you knew that Dwayne would never cheat. I twist my head all about, convinced that someone other than Mark spoke. There's no one but us in the room.

Fuck, now I'm hearing voices. It's not like that. Because somewhere buried in that same place, I knew my ex was cheating and would always betray me. And I refused to see the truth because of my own fear.

Now here I sit, trapped alone in the wide desert of terror and I see the truth so clearly it's like graffiti across our sumptuous hand-painted wallpaper. An irrefutable knowing in my heart.

“Mark I don't mind at all. I want to be with you even if - “

“Are you okay, Riley?” Mark says. His hand reaching to steady me looms up huge in my eyesight. I'm suddenly so woozy. Not again. I thought I'd slept the fever off.

“It must be all the booze in the dessert. That is some wicked pudding la Signora makes,” I slur. My mouth doesn't want to form the words, like it's frozen after a dentist's injection.

“Yes, she's quite the magician in the kitchen. Riley, baby, look at me. Don't go to sleep, stay with me.”

“I'm fine, only my head is-”

“Bastard fucking asshole.” Are the last words I hear as Mark's shaking me, before the world turns black again.

It takes forever to work out where I am. I wake up laid out on a massive sofa in an opulent room that you see in museums. Then I recall. I live here. I live in this palazzo with my lover. And Mark is nowhere to be seen.
I remember drinking from the decanter on the buffet before he joined me for dinner and feeling more and more disoriented as we ate.

Something is wrong with me, a brain tumor, a stroke.

Where's Mark?

He should be here with me.

He's obviously gone to get me a doctor. Although he ought to have dressed me in something more modest to receive him.

The wine.

That heady exotic nectar is far too pungent to be normal red wine.

Space slows as my head stops ping-ponging between ideas and it starts to coagulate into one complete scheme.

My lover drugged me, has been drugging me. Yeah, fuck, it all makes perfect sense now. Why I pass out each night and sleep so late every morning.

Mark acting all bereft and fragile because his son's a killer when all the time it's him. Josh isn't the murderer, Mark is. And he hasn't gone for a doctor, he's gone to make his preparations for killing me.

Fuck, why did I admit to knowing? I should never have let on or told him I didn't care. He's never going to let me survive knowing I found him out. I got too close and now I've got to go.

Shit. Shit. Shit. My body is shaking so hard I have to sit back down in the heavy wooden chair. My mind dashing this way and that in a whirl, crashing into my skull like a lunatic on the run. In spite of that some things make perfect sense inside the churning.

I'm his Vestal Virgin. Hasn't he said that before? And he bought me the stunning exquisite lace bridal night gown I'm still wearing for my sacrifice.

Ohmigod. Oh my God. The pounding through my body is agony as adrenalin pours into my system. Run. Get on your fucking legs and run.

My quivering knees collapse beneath me again and slump me into the chair. The second attempt I manage to stagger to the door in a daze of numbness and pounding blood vessels.

I'm already hurtling down the hallway to the stairs. No, halfway up I turn and dash back down. He's up there. Arranging something, fixing things. I do not want to run into him now.

I have to get out of here. Never mind clothes, I've got no passport. Of course he took that so I couldn't escape. Just get out.

The front door, as big as the size of a normal person's whole house is bolted and immovable. Anyway I can hardly run through the alleys dressed in a see-through negligee.

One option. I dash downstairs with my heart ripping a hole through my chest. What a total complete idiot I am to imagine I was wanted, that Mark was actually falling in love with me.

Why do I believe them? I'm a victim. Maybe I've always been a victim even in my regular life, a sucker for people to use. So eager to be loved, I'll put up with anything. Well no more.

That's all over now. If I get out of this.