Scorch (Virtues & Lies Book 2)

by Alexandra Silva

  “I told you, wait and see.”

  It’s good to hear him laugh. The last couple of weeks were spent having far too many sombre and sobering conversations. Our world is topsy-turvy. It delivers devastating blows and in the same moment gives you more than you could ever dream of.

  “How can I see if you keep this thing on?” Pulling a big sulky face, I turn to face him, grabbing onto the lapels of his wool coat to steady myself.

  Although I can’t see his face, I can picture his handsome smile. His rich whisky eyes.

  The cold winter breeze blusters around us, urging me closer to him until our toes touch.

  “Do you trust me?” he asks with a teasing peck on my forehead.

  “That’s a really silly questi—” My breath whooshes out of me as he slings me over his shoulder. His arms cross over the backs of my thighs while his hands grab ahold of my arse.

  The jostling unsettles my stomach. I thought I’d get used to it, but…

  I swallow down the water pooling in my mouth, ignoring the way cold sweat flecks my brow.

  “You okay back there?”

  Jesus, if I couldn’t feel his excitement, his behaviour would be a dead giveaway. Christopher is like a child when he’s burning over something.

  My body trails down his slowly, my feet landing on top of his as his arms envelop me.

  “I love you, morena.”

  My cheeks heat and my heart drums loudly in my chest.

  “You always tell me that before you do something really fucking stupid or pretty bloody epic.”

  Silence greets my remark, and my heart starts to race.

  What now?

  His lips pucker on my cheek, trailing to my ear where his breaths tickle that spot that melts me into a puddle of want and need.

  Pulling my lobe into his mouth, he bites down on the spongy flesh. My belly swoops, and all I can think is that I want him to keep biting and sucking.

  I want to feel his hunger tear me apart. But as my hands twine in his hair, pulling him lower, he spins me away from him and my fists clench in disappointment.

  He walks forward, taking me with him. I almost tip over as he reaches forward, far enough that my body tilts on the tips of his toes.

  Warm, sweet air surrounds me as he pulls off my blindfold. It takes me a little while to gather myself and establish my surroundings. The whole thing hits me like a tonne of bricks. I can’t stop crying even though all I want to do is smile and laugh.

  “You said it wouldn’t be ready.”

  The wrought iron fence on either side of the porch has a large box with beautiful evergreens and pretty little red blooms. Their cups are speckled with the smallest wisps of ice from the rain this morning.

  “I said the decorators said it wouldn’t be, but I guess I managed to convince them otherwise,” he says, taking my hand. “Come on.”

  Walking me through the freshly painted, glossy black door, he wiggles his brows.

  I’m completely overwhelmed as I follow his lead and toe off my leopard-print ballet pumps while he toes off his brown leather Chelsea boots. I’m so affected that I don’t think I’ll be able to take it all in properly.

  He helps me take off my coat, hanging it with his on the stand by the sideboard.

  The bright white hallway is furnished in some of the pieces we’d shopped for when we first bought the house. A long, thin sideboard lines the left side of the hallway, the black wood an impeccable contrast with the white walls and the ceramic black-and-white tiles.

  Mix-and-match photo frames in fiery hues dot the surface. Some are photos we took, but mostly, they’re photos I’ve never seen before.

  A couple are from each of our graduations—of course, everyone has those. But the one I can’t stop looking at is of our wedding day. Sadness and worry tinges the moment.

  “Christopher…?” I look up at his face, and knowing what I’m about to ask, he shakes his head. “We still haven’t heard anything.”

  “What if something’s happened to them?” My heart threatens to plummet to the ground at the thought of anything happening to Casper. Fleur…their baby.

  “It hasn’t.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Because Casper was trained to be invisible. He’s a ghost, and until he wants to be found…”

  We won’t know where he is. If he’s alive.

  God, this feels worse than when he was deployed in Syria. At least then we could say that no news was good news.

  “There’s no one better to protect Fleur and the baby.” There’s only a slight pause when he mentions the latter. At first, I thought he was going to choke on the words, but the more we talk about it, the easier it gets.

  It makes me wonder things.

  “He’ll be back,” Christopher adds.

  I nod even though something inside me tells me of the possibility he might not be.

  “Come on.” He tugs me softly into his side as he closes the front door of our house.

  The wall opposite the sideboard is bare. A couple of nails dot the smooth surface about an arm span and a half apart.

  “I wanted to leave some things for us to do.” Shrugging, he looks around the airy entrance, raising his finger as he disappears into the formal lounge.

  He comes back out holding the painting from the auction.

  “We got it!” Excitement fills me as I take it in. It’s even more gorgeous in the light of day. The chaos of bright colours bringing the dark marking like patterned lines to life, calls to me.

  “Here.” He slides a small footstool my way with his foot. “You can do the honours of helping me put it up.”

  I stand on the small platform, taking one side of the long painting, following his instructions as we hook it on the nails.

  Taking a step back, he muses, “Huh, I could get used to this DYI shit.”

  I join him where he stands, taking his hand and lifting it as I tuck myself back into his side. “Hanging a painting is hardly DIY.”

  “Piss on my strawberries, why don’t you?”

  “Come on, then, Handy Chris. You better lead on with this tour, then.” I nudge him forward with my shoulder.

  That’s all the go-ahead he needs. Guiding me from room to room, he shows me around our home. At first, I have some trepidation about how it will feel knowing that I didn’t have a hand in the process, but then the colours we picked out together greet me in each of the rooms. The furniture I showed him that I loved. Bits we collected over our years together surprise me at every turn.

  He saves the best for last though. The entire back of the house is opened up, the glass doors bringing the outside inside.

  A tall Christmas tree stands proudly beside the large fireplace. It’s not decorated—I’m guessing it’s another of the things he’s left for us to do together.

  He takes a step back and looks at me askance.

  “Really fucking stupid.” He raises one hand. “Pretty bloody epic.” He raises the other too.

  “I don’t know…it’s definitely risky. I could have hated it.”

  “Do you?”

  “Do I…?”

  “Hate it.”

  Turning on the spot, I look around. The smell of fresh paint is really faint beneath the Christmas Spice plug-ins dotted around the house. I’ve always hated the smell of paint. It’s another thing he’s thought of.

  Everything is spot on. It’s not far off what I envisioned. The kitchen looks desperate to be used. The surfaces are a pristine glossy white that keeps the vastness of the room, but then the bright rugs and dark furniture make it all feel cosy and homey.

  It’s a great marriage of our personalities. Christopher likes things clean, straight lines and modern coolness, whereas I love colour. The brighter the better. I love contrast.

  “Really fucking epic,” I say as I face him again. “I mean, there’s room for more colour, but we’ll work on getting it right.”

  “Ah, you want more colour?”

  “That’s ano
ther silly questi—”

  Fucking hell! I almost trip over myself as he takes me into the small office off the family room.

  Sitting me in the large leather chair behind the glass desk, he tucks me in as he places a large, bright red wrapped present.

  “It’s Christmas Eve,” I remind him even as my fingers find the edges of the paper and tear at it.

  “Meh, it’s already Christmas Day somewhere.”

  I rip the paper as greedily as a child. Christmas is my thing. It was the day of the year all our family came together and there was no talk of anything other than us. Even Dad forgot about everything else.

  Going up on my knees, I stretch to get to the edges. The dark frame is thick and bevelled, only just smaller than the large desk it’s sitting on. It’s kind of sadistic that he’s covered the picture itself with a piece of card, but then he’s a bit like that. It’s my fault really for starting the whole work-for-it thing. I wouldn’t change a thing though, so maybe it makes me a glutton for punishment.

  “You’re taking your sweet time,” Christopher says, hands balling as he braces himself over the table, beside me.

  “Are you in a rush or something?” Running my hands over the card, I look up at him with a teasing smile.

  “I’ll take it away.”

  “You can’t give and then—”

  He silences me with a bite of my lips and a thoroughly stolen kiss. I’m squirming on my knees, holding on to the edge of the table for dear life, when he pulls away with a lopsided grin. His prickly stubble shadows the contours of his face in the most wicked way that makes every cell of my existence need to jump his.

  “Precious girl, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away…” A hand lifts to trace my profile with the tip of his finger, running down my nose and tugging on my gaping lips before resting on my chin.

  I hold his swallowing stare. The urge to touch him is so great that my muscles ache, the rampageous pounding of my blood through my veins sharp. I need him so terribly bad. I need him to silence the scenarios going around my head from that night.

  You would’ve thought killing Tomasz, draining the monster of his life, would expunge his poison. It didn’t. Especially not after seeing what he did to Vanya. There are so many ways I wish I’d hurt him before taking his life.

  How could someone have so much evil inside them?

  I wonder if he was sorry for all his dark deeds as he felt his life spurt out of him. I hope regret found him in his dying gasp and that it dragged him to hell. I hope it haunts his eternity. I hope the pain he caused in his life afflicts him in his death.

  “Hey, you…” Christopher strokes my face with his thumb as he takes a step away. Quietly, he bunches the wrapping paper together before throwing it in the small bin.

  Focusing on the frame in front of me, I lift the card away. A bright spectrum of ruby reds, raspberry pinks, and sunshine yellows greets me in the most beautiful swirls.

  Two large dark pink handprints frame smaller red ones with two tiny yellow footprints in each palm.

  Of course, tears spring to my eyes. Stupid fucking tears. But how can I help it when he overwhelms me with so much love?

  “You said you never got to hold her,” he says, looking up at me from where he’s crouched at the side of the desk with his chin resting on the edge. “I can’t change that, but…I…” He shrugs, nodding at the incredible line drawing in front of us.

  Christopher was right when he said we weren’t the same people. He’s softened. His heart has become impossibly bigger. And he was even more right to not want to go back to being the same people.

  I don’t want to be the same person as before. Everything that’s happened has led me to this. The attack, Carina dying…all the shit with Charles and Tomasz.

  There’s strength in being broken.

  There really is, far more than I thought.

  There’s beauty in being scarred.

  And even in loss there’s a mountain of love.

  And Christopher is taller than Everest. He’s a bit like Mauna Kea—the surface is just the peak, and then you go beneath and it is bigger, deeper, taller than you could have ever imagined.

  I follow the line with my eyes. I like that it’s all one element, changing colours and curving and twisting to form our family. It accurately flows with our story, and as I follow the line to the edge of the frame, I’m not ready for it to end.

  Chapter 46

  Christopher

  My heart beats wildly as I watch Arabella take in the artwork with tears in her eyes. Her hands flatten over the glass. I can tell she’s overwhelmed with the way she chews at her plump lips. Her chest rises and falls shakily.

  Pushing off from the desk, she stands. Her ivy-green cashmere dress stands out in the midst of the dark furnishings and light grey walls. It brings out the jewelled hues of the old leather-bound books on the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves behind her.

  The pounding in my chest picks up as she stands in front of me and then slowly brings herself down to my level. I lower from a crouch onto my knees, and with a shuffle forward, she touches hers to mine.

  Warm fingers trace up my black jean-clad thighs. Up, up, up to my stomach, where her hands fist in my black sweater.

  “I love you,” she murmurs, studying the tangle of fingers and black wool. Peering up at me with shining eyes, lashes clumping a little from the moisture of her emotions, she says, “I more than love you, Christopher Sinclair.”

  Heat erupts in my chest, like scorching hot lava. “I more than love you too, Mrs. Sinclair.” She smiles, pulling on my top with one hand as she rises to her knees and cups my jaw with the other.

  “Always more,” she breathes across my lips, leaning into me.

  “Always, always so much more,” I barely finish before she’s licking into my mouth.

  The hand in my top comes up to my shoulder, squeezing as she explores my mouth. Hums morph into throaty moans as my hands find her hips and my tongue duels with hers.

  I let her taste and kiss until she’s gradually straddled my thighs. Her hands find the hems of my jumper and the T-shirt I’m wearing underneath. Pulling them off, she tucks her face into the crook of my neck, breathing me in so hard, I think she might overdose on air.

  Her tongue licks over my pulsing jugular. Hands trace up and down my sides, and I am so struggling to hold on to my composure. The feel of her bare skin in my hands as I cup her arse is intoxicating. It makes my mouth water to taste every warm inch.

  “You keep doing these things,” she heaves. “And I am about to burst with your love.”

  “About to?”

  “I’m trying really hard not to.” Her hands press to my chest, thumbs tracing the lines of muscle and swirling over the light hair. “I want to keep it all inside me. Every drop.”

  Pressing her to me with a hand at the small of her back, I lean forward, taking her with me as I brace myself over her writhing body.

  With a gasp as our groins touch, her hands slip from my chest. Steadily she holds my gaze as she pulls the hem of her dress over her curves.

  Soft thighs are banded with lacy black stockings, matching her knickers. She doesn’t stop there; she keeps going, baring beautiful golden skin inch by inch. Pulling it off completely, she drops it beside us before grasping my wrist.

  Our eyes lock as she moves the hand on her hip to her belly. I think I might burst.

  “Do you feel it?” Arabella asks. Hooking her hand around my neck, she pulls me down on her. “Do you feel it too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It hurts to hold it all in, doesn’t it?”

  It really does… “In the best way.”

  “It’s why we always want more. Why we need it so bad.” Kissing my jaw, her hands find the top of my jeans. Pulling the button and fly open in a few tugs, she wriggles them over my arse with my boxers. “It’s never enough.”

  Pulling up a fraction, I look down at her to find her longingly blinking up at me. Her hand flattens over
my hard cock, slowly working its way up between us. “I want more. I want you to give me more, and I want to give you everything in return.”

  “Everything?”

  “Every. Single. Thing.” Breathing hard, she drags her underwear to the side, opening herself up in offering.

  I can’t contain myself anymore. Pressing my dick to her pussy, I ease into her pulsing heat. My tongue takes her mouth, devouring her deep moans.

  When it comes to Arabella, I’m greedy. I’ll take everything. I’ll take it all.

  I swallow every plea for more. I love her with everything until we’re lost in nothing but us. Until all that exists in this world is me and my wife.

  A man with his existence. A heart. A soul.

  One hell of a life.

  Epilogue

  Casper

  Two weeks earlier…

  I’m being torn in two. Arabella’s gone and every part of me wants to find her. I’m vibrating with the need to be out there and do something. The Glock holstered to my side screams to be handled. The urge to pull the trigger is setting me on edge. The need for the recoil vibrating through my limbs verges on manic.

  “Why isn’t it ever her?” I swallow down the anger bellowing inside. “Why isn’t she here?”

  Punching my hands into my pockets, I check out of the conversation. Arabella is my sister—I love her, and I will always hate myself for not doing more tonight.

  But Fleur?

  Fleur is alone. She’s alone with my child growing inside her, and I know all the spiel about duty and honour coming first. Dad hammered it into me enough. But what about my duty to my baby?

  I’m not like him. I can’t ignore the fact there’s another life depending on me. Two lives actually. One dependant on the other.

  And I know what’s going to happen the minute they get to Fleur. They’ll descend on their scapegoat. It’s what politicians do. There will be no care or thought that she might be innocent.

  Fuck, you’re not even sure!

  The slamming of the opening door pulls me back to the mostly vacated room. Dad’s looking at me with a scowl, and I’m pretty certain he was reading my thoughts until Cassie looks up at me all apologetic. “I’m sorry, it just came out…I…”