Ripped (Killer Lips Book 2) (6 page)

The lush silk carpeting gives way to stone as I tear down the stairs to the
portigo
, heading for the boat, praying Mark hasn't gone out to dump another girl in the lagoon or whatever he does every night after leaving me.

Please let the boat be there. The key is always left in the ignition, that much I know. I'm sure I hear him up on the
piano nobile
, doing something in the bedroom.

I'm almost sure.

Yes - There it is lined up along the interior quay. Still so weird to see a deep body of water inside a house. Perfectly convenient for a murderer, of course. He only has to open the door of his torture chamber and he can pretty much hurl his victim straight into her watery grave. I dash along the stone dock and my foot skims along the worn slimy edge so I almost slither straight off.

Only lunging for the
briccole
pole at the last second saves me from diving in. Thank fuck for the red and white stripes. Even faded with age, it stood out in my blurred vision. I squint ahead, not sure I can make it.

The door to the torture chamber red room is between me and the boat. I have to pass it and I need to look inside. With the irresistible urge to know what Mark was doing to some poor girl, maybe I could save her. Maybe I could take her away with me. Or if he has a woman tied up to that cross or one of the other contraptions, I can fetch the Comandante to catch the Ripper in the act.

No I can't hurt him. My heart won't let me do anything that will jeopardize the man I'm in love with. I just need to get away. No keys. Where are the keys? Aren't they always in the boat. I can't make my vision come into focus. The boat in the water in the gloom is a big swirling mess of shades of black. I can't make out where the quay ends and the boat begins.

“Are you okay, my Lady?”

I whirl around and fall into a set of powerful arms.

Mark & Josh

I cannot believe it when the key turns in the lock and the door swings slowly back on its old iron hinges to reveal beautiful soft Riley at last. As though she came to me on purpose.

A
virgin sacrifice wearing a totally diaphanous white silk chiffon robe all lacy so I can see her stunning curvacious form right through. It's as though she's bare naked just for me. Offering herself up to me.

I want to lick and suck those pebbled nipples protruding hotly through the gauzy material. I want to open her legs and thrust my tongue into her sweet wet pussy. She's the most delicious thing I've ever seen and my cock immediately swells with ravenous vigor as soon as she comes close.

“Where's your father?” She's incoherent, her speech all slurry.

She says she has to find him. The
polizia
want to find him.

She says there's a strangler in Venice. Do they think it's my father? She wants to know.

She says she drank some more wine after passing out and now she feels groggy again. Is he drugging her? She turns and runs and I catch her just in time before she falls in the canal, just like we caught her the first time we met her.

She's mumbling about getting away. She has to leave. Her body in my arms makes my fucking dick pound at my jeans. I don't know how long I can resist her.

Maybe I'll wait until she wakes. So she can be sure it's me. Then we'll leave.

I wish we could go now but I can hardly haul a near naked woman from a boat. Not the way the polizia are all over the island. So I lay her out on the bed where I can watch over her, stroking her curves while she sleeps. I'll have her all to myself now. We can stay safe together forever.

When I open my eyes again and emerge from the darkness, I'm laid flat on my back. Disoriented and my head all fuzzy like I've been asleep far too long. My eyes feel sticky and when I go to rub them, my wrists pull back against the shackles restraining them.

Despite the gloop, my eyes stretch wide to take in the surroundings. Oh my god. Suddenly my breath is bursting in my lungs like an Olympic sprinter except it's ragged, way too fast and hurts like hell beneath my breasts. Fear is pressing down on my chest while at the same time, the gauzy lace cannot cover the pressure of my swollen breasts.

A flare of excitement rushes through my pussy as it gains awareness of being virtually naked and spread open. The silk trails into the chasm between my legs, sticking there as the folds become sodden and completely transparent.

Even with no clue what's going on, my nether lips tingle with the thrill of anticipation. The damp chill air of the palazzo's water level makes my pussy superbly aware of its exposure. Shrill pulses of hunger rise into my chest.

My legs are spread wide open and tethered at the ankles, my arms above my head and tied taut so my breasts are lifted sailing high on my chest. My nipples are raging hard, keening with an insatiable need to be lapped and tugged.

How long have I been here? My mouth is dry and my stomach feels hollow with emptiness. It's been a while. I writhe my hips a little to release the stiffness

I know this room. Which means—

I stretch my eyes to the side, and then up ahead of me. It hurts to move my eyeballs, like they're stuck in position. There it is-the single tiny eye of the camera lens. I can almost see Mark in the room I discovered looking down on me, straight between my spread legs. My pussy is wide open on camera for his perusal. How long have I been here? There are no windows in the
portigo
level so I have no idea if it's night or day.

On the inside the room is smaller than it seemed on the camera lens, perhaps a wide angle. But now I can see the instruments in the cabinet on the wall beside me up close. And they don't look like anything I can imagine being pleasurable.

Is this a game? Is Mark stepping it up a level to try me with some real bondage? If so why doesn't he come in now that I'm awake?

No that does not compute.

Why was I asleep while he tied me up? One minute we were feeding each other a creamy pungent dessert, next I wake up with a pounding head. Did he-?

No. He'd have no reason to drug me. I've complied with every little kink he's adopted in my bedroom, and with gusto. He knows if he wanted to indulge in any kind of new game I'd be more than willing. Unless.

My eyes scream across to the tools lining the wall in neat rows. There are no whips, nothing vibrator like. Nothing is familiar to me, not that I'm any great expert in sexual apparatus but I do live in Vegas so I'm not a total newb to kinky pleasures.

There are some clampy things but they are more than just ordinary vice grips. These are complete with long cords attached and another gizmo at the other end. My body shivers all the way through seeing the horrible picks and prods like a dentist uses. And then some very surgical looking knives. Knives?

My eyes tear back to the camera.

“Mark are you up there?” I whimper. I have no idea if the room is wired for sound so make my mouth into explicit clear shapes so he can't fail to lip read. Then with only the sinister single eye blinking back at me, I add “You're scaring me now.”

“You're awake at last.”
My heart hurls itself into my mouth. The voice above my head is not who I'd expected. But I know that soft growl well. Josh is seated back there behind me, out of my eyeline. My breasts are wobbling in time to the wild beat of my heart beneath them. I'm pinned so tight to the table, I can barely squirm.

“Why am I bound up in here. With you?”

“You tell me. I want to hear you say it, Rye.”

What is it he wants me to tell him? He rises from his seat to tower over me. He looks weird, his face is contorted with lust and something else. Could it be triumph?

“Please don't hurt me,” I whimper, disgusted by the pathetic begging in my own voice.

“Why would I want to hurt you?”

His hand trails along the side of my neck and over the rise of my breast.

“Certainly not now that you're mine at last.”

His palm scrapes across the hard nipple and I shudder under him.

“I've been waiting for you, my sweet Rye.”

He walks down the length of the table, grazing his fingertips along the outside curve of my body, waist, hip, thigh. His eyes are irresistibly pulled to my naked spread and I clench my butt cheeks with the rise of heat, making my pelvis thrust up. Josh's eyes are hooded with desire.

“I've been waiting for you ever since he took away my last playmate from me.”

He stands with one hand just above my knee and I feel the heat radiating from my pussy toward him. What the fuck is he talking about?

Mark, he has to mean Mark, took away his playmate? When? Last night or when they were kids? He's incoherent, talking as though he can't tell the difference between the present and far past.

“You smell like flowers and honey,” he says as he drags his fingers teasingly along the length my inner thigh.

As he comes closer to the delicate point of convergence, I buck with spasms of fear and desire thrown together in one. My breasts rise and fall dramatically with my ragged breath.

“I'm glad you came to me without any panties on.”

He makes me gasp out loud as he slides his fingers across my wet slit.

“I love how you glisten for me,” he adds. “You look so delicious. I'm dying to taste you.”

“What are you going to do to me?” My voice quivers and he smiles in appreciation.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Where's your father?”

Does he even know about my involvement with Mark? He won't hurt me if he knows I'm his father’s beloved. That we're united now. Or will he?

“Not home. He's been away for over a year,” Josh says, absent minded, too intent on my responses to his divine torture.

“I saw him today. When the police were here.”

“You mean you saw Mark,” Josh replies, as he traces small circles around my hard nub through the sodden fabric.

His eyes are fixed on his task. I shiver uncontrollably with the grazing of the lace on my hard little slit, teasing my body totally out of control. “That was three days ago.”

“Yes Mark, your father.”

I've been out for three days? Whatever. Ohmigod he's going to make me come all over his fingers if he doesn't stop tantalizing my pussy with his touch. “He won't be pleased if you hurt me.”

“My brother? He won't mind. He's always had to share his possessions with me. He always takes care of me.”

I'm coming undone with what he's doing to my mind and body at once.

“You're so wet, Riley,” he growls softly. “Tell me what you want.”

“I want-” I exhale a loud gasp as he slips beneath the lace and corkscrews two fingers into my soaking pussy while his thumb strums across my clit.

“You want to come. Yes, I can see that, baby girl. And feel it. I want to see you come for me. I want to feel you come around my fingers. I love that.”

I'm so close to going over the edge it's pure agony trying to hold it back. My groggy mind is still a befuddled mix of confusion and lust. Where is Mark? His brother? If that's even true, why did Mark lie to me about being his father? Would he care if I climax while his brother watches me.

Oh my god no. What am I even thinking? My biggest fear is what Josh, whose eyes are glazed over hungry as a predator stalking his prey will do. It's eerie watching his fingers buried inside my twitching pussy. What will he do to me after he forces me to come for him?

There had been long descriptions in the newspaper about the murdered girl that I'd been struggling to translate when Mark discovered me. I'd found the verb in the dictionary before he snatched it away.

Tagliare
– cut, sliced. My eyes jagger back to the knives in the case. Josh surely can't be going to cut and slice me. Not when he claims he's been waiting for me.

It has to be the fear making me so hyper-sensitive. My breasts are tingling and screaming out for Josh to mangle them in his fist. As though reading my thoughts he cups one in his hand and caresses it slowly, bouncing it in his hand as though feeling the weight.

Then his grasp covers the entire mound as he squeezes it like he's wringing a sponge and I moan much as I try not to. He pushes his fingers inside the lace and squeezes my naked mound sending sparks through my cells.

“Did you enjoy the dish I sent you?” he asks.

His eyes never leave my breast as he alternates between rolling the nipple between his fingers until it satisfies him by standing up hard, then crushing the full flesh under his fist.

“Yes. Thank you. It was delicious,” I pant out breathlessly.

I have no idea what he's talking about but I’m mindless with the pleasure of the pain. I need to be trapped in the burning tug of his lips. Feel his wet hot tongue lave across the sensitive skin.

“You enjoyed being fed the other so much it was the least I could do. My father used to feed me that dish himself when I was a child.”

I repress a cry as he twists my breast under the clamp of his hand then tugs the nipple out to full stretch. The delicious pain makes my pussy pull with electric bolts.

“
Cima alla genovese.
A dish best served cold.” Josh laughs at his private joke.

“It was delicious,” I say again, whispering through pursed lips as he flips back the lace and bends to plant a circle of kisses on the tender skin surrounding the nipple.

My groan of desire erupts when he pulls that hungry pellet into his beautiful lips. Shivers of lust rocket down to my toes.

“A breast pocket stuffed with brain and lard and vegetables and breadcrumbs, sewn up and boiled. I added a little something extra to the stuffing just for you.”

“Yes.” I breathe.

I can't hear what he's saying. My delirium complete as he pushes his fingers into my channel, his thumb over my clit.
I'm humiliated by the greedy need in my body for my lover's brother – a killer. I want him to make me come. I want to come and pour juices all over his fingertips while he stares greedily at my spread open sex.

“Tell me what you want Rye. Pretty, innocent, beautiful Rye.”

I'm panting hard with the effort of withstanding the pulses of white heat rippling from my clit through my core.

“You can ask me for anything you want.” I twitch and tug around his fingers trying to pull him in deeper.

“Let me go,” I whisper.

“Not that,” he snaps. “But I tell you what. Usually I lick a woman's pussy until it explodes on my tongue before I slice it off all hard and engorged for my collection.”

“Oh god.” My whimper is barely a tiny whine.

“I don't mean I'm going to do that to you. Probably I won't. Although I might. Your clit is so very hard and so very perfect.”

“Are you going to kill me?” I whimper.

“I don't want to. But you look so very delicious. I can't decide.”

Josh looks up with a small smile as the door rattles with the ferocious banging on the other side.

“Open up Josh. Right now. Unlock this damn door.”

Mark has come for me.

“We're busy right now. But you can come back later,” Josh shouts.

“We don't need him for this, do we?” he asks me. Seeking my compliance while looking down sweetly at me with the compassion of a doctor about to cut me open on the operating table.

My eyes screech wide but I can't speak. If I beg him to let me go again I have no clue what he might do.

“Open the fucking door Josh or I'm going to bring your father right now.”

Father? Is he playing some mind game? For the first time it occurs to my addled brain that Josh may actually be unsound. Like lunatic level unsound. Or his father is and is intent on making his son appear to be crazy. Why would he say he'll go and bring himself here if Josh doesn't let him in? Unless they're both totally insane and I'm tied up in the basement of a psycho mansion.

“Did you fucking hear me josh? You don't want dad seeing this.”

From the first mention of the parental threat, Josh had ripped his hand away from me like a naughty child caught with his hand in the candy jar. Now he's standing there with his eyes darting back and forth from me lying on the table, still panting with terror lust and the door where his father is playing some new trick on both of us.

When he comes to a decision, I recall that Josh claimed he and Mark were in fact brothers. I lost that piece of information in the disbelief of fear gushing through me. He pads silently across the room to turn the huge old key then leaps back as though expecting an army of special forces to bust in.

The door screeches open, slamming on the wall and Mark's presence fills the room, his eyes dragging from Josh to me and back again. His confusion is livid as though he's unsure of how complicit I am in this. How far Josh and I have gone in cuckolding him. These guys have bigger trust issues that I do. I silently beg him to rescue me from this.

“Are you okay baby,” he asks. “Did he hurt you?”

My head shivers in the tiniest shake of a negative. Not yet.

“She came looking for me,” Josh says triumphantly.

“Josh, let her go,” he says. “This one is not for you.”

“Me. She wants me.”

Mark's eyes scour mine face for the truth. I communicate only wordless terror. He knows I want only him. I'd do anything for him. Anything at all to keep him safe and with me.

“She was looking for me,” he tells Josh.

“You were supposed to black out together.” Josh has been drugging me?

“When did you start drugging me too?” Mark growls. “You don't think I drank from the decanter?”

“You don't think I only use the decanter? Josh repeats in a snarky imitation of his father.

Neither of them know that I drank from the decanter in the reception room before going to the dining room and finding Mark. Like I do every night. Holy fuck, they've been drugging me every night since I got here, that's why I sleep all day.

“Signora B is so very happy to have me help her in the kitchen,” Josh announces. “She says I'm an angel man.”

“You drugged the tiramisu,” Mark says with an ironic laugh.

“How come you didn't feed it to each other in that sickening way you think is so sexy?”

How long has he been stalking us, watching and waiting for his chance?

“Riley, I should never have left you on the sofa while I went to get an antidote. I don't know why I didn't lock you safe in your room.”

“Like you locked me down here,” Josh shrieks over top of me, livid with rage. “You think you can keep me caged in a dungeon like a fucking rat? Now you understand I can come out whenever I want. I can take your princess when you're gone.”

So Mark's been locking me in my room to keep me safe from Josh's needs. Not because he's gone to be with another woman. Not because I don't satisfy him. Because I do. I'm more than enough for Mark.

“He can't look after you, Rye, not like I can.”

“It's for your own safety.” Poor Mark is so terribly weary. I wish I could hold him and make him strong again.

“My safety, my safety? You need to worry about your own safety because when Rye and I leave the polizia will come for you.”

“You're leaving? Where do you think you're going with Riley?”

“To Dad. Dad will take us in and keep us safe.”

“Not this time.
The carabinieri
are too close this time.”

This time?

“The Comandante is asking for the whereabouts of our father. They know. They just cna't prove it. Yet.”

“They'll never catch us. Dad will make very sure of it,” Josh says smugly.

The image rising of their father is more malevolent than anything I've gone through.

“You don't really want dad to get her do you?” Mark stares his brother full in the face with that eye war thing in full swing.

“I found her first,” Josh whines.

“That's not true, remember?”

“It is so true. Just because you grabbed her lost innocence out of the filthy crowd of carnival and kissed her under your Batman cape. So romantic. Spew. BFD. That doesn't mean you found her or that she's yours.”

“That was you?” I whisper. Looking up at Mark from my splayed position on the bondage table. “You were the man who wrapped me into his huge cloak and kissed me like I'd never been kissed.”

Mark nods.

“Hmm, death by
tabarro,”
Josh sneers, almost petulant.
“How sweet. Because he's too scared to go get a woman by himself.”

“I've got too many secrets to keep from a woman,” Mark says, beaming apology, deep apology, direct to me.

“Nah, you're an old pussy who kisses women behind a cloak and mask like a comic book creep.”

I try to let him know that I don't mind his secrets. They're all out now and I still love him despite this nightmare.

“I caught her. Who talked to her and found her hotel? It was because of me we went out and snared her before she bolted.”

“You guys kidnapped me?” I whisper. “Why?”

Now I'm really confused. They're battling over top of my stretched out trembling nakedness like two siblings at the billionaires deathbed for their inheritance. Mark had kissed me. Then Josh had almost jumped me in the dark
calli
. But why had they come to seize me?

“Because you're beautiful.”

“Soft and innocent and kind.”

“Sweet and welcoming to a man.”

“You have no idea which makes it all the more enticing.”

I've always found it fascinating how they often talk as one person. As though they aren't quite sure when the one ends and the other begins. Now they're going to have to open up a little so that another can merge with them.

“Josh and I separated during carnival and we both happened to come across the same women at different times and fall for her without knowing the other had done the same.”

Mark curls his huge fingers around my two smallest ones under the table where they’re locked and gives a squeeze of encouragement. I have never felt more livid with desire for him, to be safe in his arms and take him all the way deep inside me. “When Josh goes out hunting, I try to go along because on occasion I can influence a different outcome.”

“How many such occasions have there been?” I ask, my voice shaky.

“We had a deal. You have to take care of me. And now she knows about us.”

“She won't tell.”

“No I'll never tell, I promise.”

All along, Mark was the mystery seducer who brought me back to life.
“They always promise, Marco, you know how they lie.”

“But I was right about this one, she can be trusted. She's one with us.”

“Yes, yes I am.” My breath is less jagged now.

The urgent need to come dissipated when Mark came in the chamber and I was suffused with a strange warmth. A desire spreading right through to the edges of my skin from Josh's fingers languidly swirling in my pussy still and my eyes fixed at the same time on Mark's rugged gorgeous face.

He was the man who claimed my mouth with his tongue. I should have known. Why hadn't I recognized him?

“But she knows everything,” Josh says. “I told her you're not my father.”

“She already figured that out when the police came back here with the DNA report.”

“What DNA report?” Josh's eyes stretch wide with excitement. Rather that fear of arrest, he looks enthralled with the thrill of the chase.

“They took a glass and ran tests for a match to the fabric shreds under the fingernails of the girl you took at carnival,” Mark says wearily.

Josh laughs, extreme pleasure at how they've outwitted the
carabinieri
.

“Didn't Josh leave after I met you at carnival and go back to London?”

“Josh rarely goes back to London. He goes to our Father on an island in the lagoon.”

“Is that why the comandante asked where your father was,” I say still fighting to make this all fit together. The two men lock eyes and something passes between them. Something they silently agree to keep from me.

“You have to be more careful now,” I add. And they both stare at me for an impossibly long time.

They're so surprised by my collusion, they've completely forgotten I'm tied up and stark naked, spread wide under their control.

I'm a little surprised myself but I don't want anything ugly to happen to Josh any more than Mark does. He's too fragile, too beautiful and damaged to cope with police cells and prison-can you imagine how they'd rip his ass to shreds, someone that perfect.

“No, this has to stop Josh. They're getting too close,” Mark says.

“I don't understand why you pretend to be father and son,” I say.

It's amazing how comfortable I am being spreadeagled naked and bound for these two brothers. One, if not both of whom are murderers. My body craves their touch and their admiration and I'm not remotely afraid of them. It seems so natural to trust them. I know they not only want me, they need me and I've finally found where I belong.