Scorch (Virtues & Lies Book 2)

by Alexandra Silva

  Shit, I feel him getting closer. Like the sun has decided to peek through the clouds once more and warm me.

  “Please, Christo—” My protest is silenced as I’m pulled to a stop and hauled into his body. Without thought, at his rough touch, I fight his hold.

  My fists ball and hit again and again and again, until my breaths don’t just hurt my lungs but cut my throat.

  I screw my eyes tightly shut, depriving myself of his face, even though I’m dying to see him. Starving myself of him has been the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Every part of me needs him and misses him.

  But right now, I need to fix everything I ruined. I bullied him into giving me what I wanted, and we paid the highest price for it.

  My hands press desperately to his chest; it’s so hard that I doubt he feels it, and with all my fight, his warm, peppery scent engulfs me. He’s always had the kind of smell that you want to bottle up and douse yourself in. Today is no different to any other day. I want to wrap myself in it. In him.

  I can’t do that though. I can’t be so selfish again. Not when it comes to his life.

  “Fucking stop!” Cuffing my wrists, his hands hold me still. “Please.”

  I don’t. If I stop now, everything I’ve done will have been for nothing. I’ll be sucked right back in and forced to let go of the only thing that’s keeping me going.

  My head is barely above water. I’m getting tired from all the manic swimming. And right now, his arms are the perfect buoy.

  But I don’t want to float. As tired as I am, I want to keep on swimming. If not for me, then for our baby and him.

  The justice I’m after isn’t something he can give me, because I’ll never ask it of him. There’s too much at risk for that.

  Freeing myself from his hold, I stagger backwards. “Why are you here?”

  “What?” Taking a step towards me, he stops when I move back a couple. “What the fuck do you think?”

  The venom in his voice has me looking straight up at him.

  Oh my God! What happened? I almost shriek at him. His face is puffy, nose swollen, and his eyes appear bruised.

  My feet carry me back to him before I can stop myself. On my tiptoes, I cup his face, not missing the flinch when my thumb strokes over his tender cheeks.

  I don’t know how I’m meant to pull away again, because he’s hurt, and I’ve always been there to help.

  His teeth drag his sculped bottom lip into his mouth with the lowest groan. And God help me, my heart starts beating like it’s just been shocked back to life. Pounding and stuttering and racing as it chases my sharp and short breaths.

  His dark gaze remains stuck on mine as we stand in the middle of the street, alone for the first time in forever. It feels like we’re all the way back to square one. Where we started.

  Me, desperately trying not to fall in love with him. Except this time, I’m not foolish enough to believe that it’s possible. Because with every ticking second, every pounding heartbeat, and every shallow breath, I fall in love with my husband all over again. Harder. Stronger.

  My heart sighs with the relief that we are still us, just as it breaks with the certainty that it isn’t enough.

  “Where have you been?” he asks, hands squeezing my shoulders.

  Fuck, his vice grip burns through me. This pain and fire are something I’d forgotten I could feel. I’ve been vacant for so long, and with a simple touch he’s making me aware of all the things that used to fill me up. That used to make me up.

  “Why did you leave me?”

  Trailing down my back, his touch warms me from the inside out, pulling all the forgotten parts that fell by the wayside closer to their rightful place.

  How am I ever meant to leave you again? I keep asking with the knowledge that I have to walk away from him. Now. Before he sees too much.

  His hands continue wandering down my body until they’re at the curve of my arse, rounding to my hips. I freeze as the heels press to my stomach.

  I can’t breathe as pain slices through me. I don’t recall the attack hurting like this. I barely felt the knife ripping through my flesh. The reminder from his touch hurts so much more.

  That’s answer enough.

  “Arabella…” he murmurs breathless, trying to pull me closer. The way he says my name is like it took everything in him to form every fucking syllable.

  Christopher’s eyes flit between mine desperately as I dig my heels into the ground.

  I have to go. My defences are crumbling, and if I don’t leave now, we’ll both be doomed and plagued by guilt and sorrow.

  I won’t let him carry the weight of my mistakes.

  “It’s too late, Christopher.” Chin wobbling and tears blurring my vision, I push his hands away, taking advantage of the hurt that staggers him to put enough distance between us. “I can’t…this…us…”

  Hands on his hips, he looks down at the ground. His entire body is wracking with his heaving breaths, and for one short minute I think that he’s about to break down and dissolve into the mess I feel.

  He doesn’t.

  Straightening, he levels me with his dark, piercing gaze. It’s a hit to the gut. There’s so much rage and hate in his eyes that I stumble backwards. Stalking me with his angry strides, he herds me against one of the lampposts.

  My hands hold on tightly to the post at my back as he presses his body against mine. His arms bracing above my head, I’m completely surrounded. There’s no escape as his face lowers to mine, lips skimming my cheek all the way to my ear.

  “You can’t what, Arabella?”

  His voice is so hard that he sounds like a completely different man.

  “Go on.” Sneering, he pulls back, nostrils flared and a grimace twisting his handsome face. “Tell me. What is it you can’t?”

  I’m clinging and clawing at the wrought iron beneath my hands. But really, all I want to hold on to is him.

  “You want someone else? Is that it?”

  He bends lower until the tip of his nose is touching mine. I can smell his sweet, vodka-kissed breath.

  I could never want any other man, not the way I want him.

  “You want another man to touch you?” Growling, he winds a hand into my hair as the other cups my face, eyes boring into mine with hurt and disgust. “Does it feel better than mine?”

  My entire body trembles as his words sink to the pit of my stomach. My chest constricts all the organs within it; it’s strangling my heart in such a way that it might just pulverise it.

  His eyes are dark as he marks me with his hooded glare. They’re glossed with loathing. His words settle, pushing through the loud ruckus of my heartbeats. And I realise why he’s looking at me like that.

  He saw me.

  Tears fill my eyes, and I have to force myself to keep them wide open through the sting, because I will not cry. I won’t. Not in front of him. Not like this.

  Chuckling at my shaky exhale, his lips ghost mine. “Do you want him to kiss you better?”

  If he believes that another man’s kiss can fix me, I don’t know what to think, or what it means for us.

  Maybe we are beyond repair. Perhaps our bridge isn’t one that can be mended.

  I’ve made too many mistakes. Cost us too much. And now our love and all our promises aren’t enough.

  He swipes the flat of his tongue across my lips with a raspy growl. “You still taste mine.”

  Because I’ll always be yours.

  Pinching my mouth open with the V of his hand, he licks inside, tugging my hair to tilt my face to his roughly. The moan that erupts from my gut is deep and needy. It’s a plea for him to take all that’s left of me for himself.

  Tugging and pulling, his fist twists in my hair so tight that he might actually rip it all out. His tongue fucks my mouth just like he used to fuck my body—senseless. And he feels so good that my body is bending backwards to get as close as it can to his.

  Slipping to my sides, my hands clench around the fabric of my coa
t. I want to touch him so badly. It takes every ounce of me not hold on tight and squeeze him until I’ve wrung every single one of his feelings from him. Until I’m drowning in them. His hurt and anger. But mostly the hate and disgust he’s devouring me with, because if anything it means he still loves me enough to care.

  Christopher is relentless. He licks and tastes and groans so deep and so coarsely that it feels like he might actually eat me up.

  I want him to do it. I don’t want to be me anymore. I don’t want to be this person. The mother who was too weak to protect her child. The wife who was too selfish to serve her husband.

  Just as I sag into him and my tongue twirls over his, he pulls away. I can barely hold myself up as the evening chill freezes me to the core.

  “You want to go? Then go. But know this: I’m always going to be right behind you. Even when you can’t see me, I’ll be there. And it will be me you will crave. It will be my touch you yearn for. My kiss you need.” Bringing his thumb to his lips, he swipes it over them before sucking the bottom one into his mouth, glaring at me with heaving breaths and barely restrained greed.

  That’s how it’s always been between us. Lust and greed and all those basic human wants and needs that are so natural, it’s impossible for our fates to have ever been apart.

  “We will never be over, Arabella. In the end it’ll always be me that wins. I’ll kill every fucker that goes near you. You’d do well to remember that next time you let another man touch what’s mine.”

  Neither of us moves. The threat settles into the autumn air around us. My heartbeat is pounding so hard in my veins that I’m having trouble hearing my own thoughts.

  “Goodbye, Christopher.”

  All I can do not to fall apart in front of him is walk away.

  Chapter 6

  Christopher

  I let her go, but I’m not giving up. She can think it’s too late or not enough or whatever other fucking lie she’s telling herself. But I won’t stop until she begs me to take her back.

  That was the second time she walked away from me. And as much as I love Arabella, I’ll make her regret every step she took.

  “Are you fucking listening?” Freddie chucks his burger wrapper across the dining table of my hotel suite, getting me right on the head.

  “Yeah.”

  Scrolling through the report on his MacBook, I try to find a reason as to why Arabella would be remotely interested in the Russian from the club. But there’s nothing.

  There’s fuck all beyond the fact that they looked pretty fucking cosy.

  I think it was easier when I had no idea where she was. How she was. Or what the fuck she was doing. All I can think right now is that she’s fucking some rich cunt who only wants to get his dick wet.

  “There has to be more.” Standing, I grab another bottle of water from the sideboard, as I hash and rehash all the information Freddie managed to get and our conversation outside the club.

  None of it helps. Now that I’ve run through our talk over and over, I wish I’d made her answer all my questions. I’m a fucking barrister—my job is to interrogate people in court, to get answers, manipulate them into telling me things they don’t even realise they’ve spoken until they’re out in the open. And I couldn’t get my wife to give me one straight answer.

  What a fucking joke.

  “More what?” Putting his feet up on the table, Freddie looks at me like I’m being a moron.

  “More information. More answers. I don’t know!”

  “That’s all I could find, but you know what’s interesting? For a rich guy that is so well acquainted with the British Foreign Secretary, there’s fuck all political links. Not even in his own country. No one is that clean, not unless they have someone cleaning up after them.”

  “We need to find out more.”

  “Yeah, Leo sent me the list. I’m on it, but there are almost five hundred names on there. It’s going to take time, and I have a bank app to kit out.” Taking a deep breath, he leans back on his chair. His weight creaking the antique wood. “You need to put someone on Arabella. Every move she makes. Every place she goes.”

  “I have.”

  “You have?” He looks baffled at me. “You know where she’s staying?”

  “I got Murphy to wait outside the club until she showed up again.”

  It didn’t take her as long as I thought it would. It was a couple of days before she was back and the Russian with her.

  “Are you fucking serious? He almost got her killed. And the ba—”

  “Freddie! It wasn’t his fault. If I hadn’t told him to keep his distance…” I try to swallow down the tightness in my chest.

  “His job was to guard you; he failed. He cost you…Christopher!”

  “No. I failed. I should’ve never asked him to walk so far behind us. Fuck, I should’ve known better than to take her out in the open like that.” Walking through to the sitting area, I try to clear my head.

  Every fucking memory from that night is so clear and vivid that it feels like the here and now.

  “How can you trust him again?”

  “Because he’s got enough guilt to remind him of what happens when he takes his eyes off the ball. He knows better than to lose sight of her again.”

  “So where is she?” Freddie sprawls himself over one of the two sofas by the fireplace.

  “At her sister’s.”

  “How come Casper didn’t know?”

  “We think she stays at our house when he goes over.”

  “You think?” Picking up one of the small china bowls on the coffee table, he spins it on his finger. “You’ve got a tail on her and you think?”

  “Fine, she stays at the house when Casper goes to Georgina’s. Better?”

  “I don’t know, Christopher!” he snaps, sitting up straight. “Your daughter’s dead. Your wife almost died. And fuck, we’re still operating on thinks and supposes and who the fucks and what the fucks! We’re pussyfooting about bribing nobodies and making fucking deals with pricks!”

  “What do you want, Freddie?” My bellow echoes around the suite because he keeps talking like he’s the one who had to watch his child die. Like it’s his wife who’s out there with another man.

  “We’re not those people. Or at least I’m not. We’re going about in circles when we should be doing something. I’m fed up of doing fuck all every time something happens.” Pacing around the sofa in circles, he pauses by the fireplace. Opening the glass dome to the Cogsworth-looking clock, he spins the arms randomly before he closes it up.

  “We are doing something.”

  “It’s what everyone always says, and yet, we’re still here. People dying, missing…”

  “We’re doing something.” I repeat, heading towards the bedroom I’m using. It’s the smaller of the two, but the other has too many memories of its own. “Fix the clock.”

  “Killing that cunt isn’t doing much. It’s a mercy to the world.”

  “Well, we can call it a mercy killing, then.” I shut the bedroom door as I head for the en suite.

  I can sense him going off the rails again. His anger is rife. He’s thirsty for blood, and so am I.

  “You good?” Leo asks from beside me as I pause at the entrance to the hospital.

  The place is a fucking shithole. Half of it is crumbling while the other is being rebuilt. The glass sliding doors are shattered with a plastic film holding them together, and the pungent smell of piss and vomit punch the air.

  The hallway is long, and the yellow lighting gives it an eerie feel that has my ribs constricting around my organs.

  “You okay?”

  No, I’m not okay.

  It’s the first time I’m stepping inside a hospital since…

  “Look, if it’s too much, you don’t have to be here. Freddie and I’ve got this.”

  No fucking way.

  The grating noise of the badly maintained doors runs through me as I carry on putting one foot in front of the other. “Let�
�s go.”

  “He deserves this.” Walking beside me, Leo walks straight through the emergency room littered with people.

  Looking down at my phone, I flick it open, my daughter’s photo glowing up at me, bright in the shitty hospital lighting.

  This is all that’s left of her. The only memories I’ll ever have of my baby girl are of her fighting for her life.

  She was born wrestling for her next breath, for her next heartbeat. Holding on until she couldn’t anymore.

  “A life for a life,” I tell him as I follow him through doorways covered with plastic construction sheeting.

  How’s this place even open?

  Leo’s phone buzzes, and when he checks it, he looks up at every corner. “Freddie’s disabled the cameras. Let’s get this shit done.”

  Veering off in the opposite direction, I continue following him. He knows where he’s going. Walking past an abandoned nurses’ station, he pulls one of the crash trolleys with him into one of the darkened rooms.

  The place smells like death simmered to a slow rot.

  I fucking hate hospitals.

  Closing the door behind me, I pull the privacy curtain across the front of it before I turn and take in my surroundings.

  There are six beds in this room. They’re all on top of the other, barely any room to move around them. There aren’t any visitor chairs. There’s no sign of any life except for the four other people—the three standing, looking at me, and Jack.

  He already looks battered and bruised. Nothing that can’t be fixed though. Good—I’m going to enjoy being the one that changes that.

  Parking the trolley beside the bed, Leo sits on the edge. He’s watching him with a disgusted twist to his lips as he snaps on some gloves and then throws me a pair.

  It’s no secret they’ve never been close. They’ve always been pitched against each other. Their grandfather always encouraged their rivalry, making it seem like he favoured Leo, but in the end, it was all a distraction.

  Taking another step toward Jack as I pull the latex gloves on, I contemplate all the ways I could go about this. Smothering him in his sleep. Overdosing him on the morphine…choking the breath out of him with my bare hands…