It was so easy then. Tamara followed her to the stairs, then as the woman started to descend, one almighty shove. The pregnant woman didn’t have time to scream as she was propelled down the flight of concrete steps. Tamara watched dispassionately as the woman tumbled, her head connecting with the concrete and blood spurted as her head split open. After the woman landed, in an impossibly mangled heap, Tamara waited, listening for any moans, any signs of life. After a moment, she slowly descended. The pregnant woman’s eyes were open and staring, blood trickled from her mouth. No breath sounds. Tamara could see brain material on the concrete. From between the woman’s legs, blood began to flood out. She was miscarrying, her child disconnecting from its dead mother. Tamara felt nothing but satisfaction.
She carefully side-stepped the dead woman and ran quickly and quietly down the rest of the stairs. Problem solved. It had taken less than five minutes and Tamara was satisfied. It had been just like the first time she had killed someone. Taken their legs out from under them, and like that time, she had gotten away with it.
The only difference this time was that the dead woman wasn’t her own mother.
Chapter Nineteen
Ivo trailed his lips along the length of his wife’s spine before biting gently down on her shoulder. “Wake up, sleepyhead.”
Sofia grinned, her eyes still closed. “I’m sleepy.”
Ivo chuckled, pushing her legs apart gently and thrust his diamond-hard cock into her from behind. Sofia laughed and moaned at the feel of him. “You are insatiable.”
She turned her head so he could kiss her lips. He withdrew and flipped her onto her back. “I want to look at you.”
Sofia wrapped her legs around his waist as he entered her again, kissing his lips, gazing at his gorgeous face. “Feels so good,” she murmured and Ivo thrust harder, laughing at her moan. “God, I love Mr. Zacca.”
“As I love you, Mrs. Zacca.”
They had been on Crete for a week now, a luxurious private villa on the beach and although they spent days out exploring the island, all of their evenings, nights and early mornings were spent making love, talking about their future. Here in their little Greek bubble, Sofia could imagine that they were the only two people I the world and that suited her just fine.
Married. That didn’t seem real to her. After Ivo had proposed, her instinct was to say yes but afterward, when they talked properly, she began to wondered if it was the right thing. “I don’t want you to feel trapped into marriage because of me,” she had told him, kissing him to soften the blow, “So I’m giving you an out. We can figure another way for me to stay in the country.”
Ivo had merely grinned. “Sofia, Bella, taking away ever other consideration, would you still marry me?”
Sofia had smiled. “Oh god, yes. Maybe not so quickly, but yes, yes, yes.”
“Then that’s all that counts. I love you, I want to be your husband – end of conversation.”
They had married quietly with just Ivo’s parents as witnesses. Walter and Adria, to Sofia’s surprise, had been genuinely delighted. Walter had flown into Paris to be with Adria during her treatment, and Sofia was delighted that Adria seemed okay with that. She felt as if they were family now. Adria had given her a ring to be married in. A simple white gold band. “It was my mother’s, darling. I want you to have it.”
The small band had fitted so perfectly on Sofia’s finger she knew it was the right thing to do to accept it and she had hugged her new mother-in-law. “Thank you. For everything.”
Now, as she and Ivo made love in the early light of dawn, Sofia felt as if she had finally found her home. She pressed her lips to his, tangling her fingers in his dark curls. “I love you so much,” she whispered and Ivo kissed her back passionately.
“You are my life,” he said simply. He began to thrust harder, deeper, and Sofia arched her back as she came, feeling him cum inside her, his seed pumping deep into her belly. Her husband. This remarkable gorgeous, generous man was her husband.
After showering together, they dressed and Sofia wandered into the kitchen. “I’m starving. You hungry, babe?”
Ivo grinned at her, and she thought again how handsome he was, just in his white shirts, and his blue t-shirt, he put shame to most other men. “Always.” He pretended to bite her neck.
Sofia giggled. “Lunatic. Sit, husband. Wife will cook.”
While she made them breakfast, Ivo flicked through his emails as they chatted. “Hey, Maceo has finally gotten around to planning a showing. Says he’d like some of your work.”
“That’s cool.” Sofia flipped the eggs she was cooking onto a plate for him. “When I think of where I was a year ago to now, it seems otherworldly, Ivo. All down to you.”
He shook his head. “Not true. Down to your talent.”
“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one,” she smiled at him, “Eat your eggs, bub.”
Ivo shoveled a forkful of eggs down his throat. “Nice, thanks. Listen, I was thinking we should think about whether we want to stay in Paris for the long term. I’m happy there but it depends on what you want.”
Sofia nodded. “Honestly, as long as I’m with you, I’ll be happy anywhere. I would rather not go back to the States for an extended period, but if that’s what you want or need, okay then. You know what’s weird?” She sat down with her own plate and started to eat. “I’ve never even asked where you lived before Paris.”
Ivo smiled. “I guess we don’t know each other that well, yet, even though we think we do.”
“I guess not.”
Ivo reached over and stroked her cheek. “To answer your question, I moved around so much I have never had a permanent home anywhere. I moved from Los Angeles over to Europe after college and since then, I’ve rented places for maybe six months tops. Paris, Venice, Rome, Naples, Vienna, Berlin, Barcelona…you name it.”
“A nomad?”
He grinned. “More or less. Now, of course, Paris has been my home for nearly a year.”
Sofia chewed her lip. “I don’t want you to feel like you’re being caged with me. I could live that life with you – travelling here and there.”
“I don’t feel caged. For the first time, I feel…settled. And I don’t mean that in a dull way, I mean, I have roots…no, I’m not explaining it very well. How about this…. imagine we’re two dirigibles.”
Sofia started to laugh as Ivo went on. “Two colorful dirigibles and we have the ability to fly anywhere but at the moment, we’re choosing to remain tethered to the Eiffel Tower for the moment. We still have the choice to go anywhere.”
“That was the best way to describe it?” Sofia was crying with laughter and Ivo chuckled.
“You know what I mean.”
“Lunatic.”
“Lunatic in love with you.”
Sofia put down her fork and came to sit on his knees, kissing him. “You would have to be certified to love me so I can believe that.”
“Who wouldn’t love you?” He whispered, his eyes soft. “Look at you…so beautiful, so kind, and loving sexy as all hell.”
They kissed, not caring that both of them tasted of scrambled egg. Catching her breath, Sofia leaned her forehead against his. “You have made me the happiest woman on the planet,” she said. “No-one could love you more than I do.”
“I feel the same. And we have so much time to really get to know each other. All the good stuff. All the bad.”
“I don’t believe you have a bad trait at all,” she grinned, but Ivo’ smile faded.
“Oh, I do.”
Sofia smiled at him. “Tell me. Unless you’re a serial killer with a mommy fetish, I can’t see it.”
Ivo grinned. “Well, now that you mention it…” He wrestled her to the ground started to tickle her, making her shriek with laughter. “I’m a serial tickle monster.”
“Divorce!” Sofia shouted, trying to fight him off, giggling furiously. He stopped and wrapped his arms around her. Sofia kissed his eyelids. “You are so silly. But
seriously, Ivo, I can handle anything so all I ask is that you never hide anything from me. Promise me, I’ll always be the one you confide in from now on.”
“I promise that, with all my heart.”
She slid her hand down to his groin, feeling his cock harden through the linen shorts. “And this belongs to me now.”
Ivo groaned as she squeezed his cock. “It was yours from the moment we met, Sofia.”
“Remember the first time we saw each other at the pool?”
“How could I forget?”
Sofia stood and pulled her dress over her head, slipping out of her underwear. She held her hand out to him and pulled him up, tugging his t-shirt over his head. “I remember seeing you in the pool, this glorious body swimming up and down, and my body just reacted.”
Ivo kissed her as she pulled at the drawstring of his shorts and he shed them, stepping out of them. Sofia stroked his cock against her belly, feeling it stiffen. She looked up at him from under her lashes, knowing that drove him crazy with desire. “I swam with you; do you remember that?”
“I do.”
“And all the time, I was imagining what it might be like to just reach out and touch you. When we paused for air at one end, and I saw your face for the first time, there was water clinging to your eyelashes.” She stroked a finger over his long, thick lashes now and kissed his eyelids. “I thought you were the most magical thing I’d ever seen. The way the pool lights made your eyes so green…”
Ivo pressed his lips to hers. “I remember the way you disobeyed the swim cap rule and this mane,” he fisted her dark hair in his hand, “It was like halo around your head. When I saw you, with it streaming around you under the water, I thought, ‘My god, she’s an angel.”
Sofia grinned. “Cheesy.”
Ivo laughed. “I know but that was my honest reaction. I thought I’d blown it afterward, broke the spell, when I asked you if you would be there the next night.”
Sofia kissed him, pressing her body to his, feeling his cock grow even more harder, his arms tighten around her. “It was all I could do from not running into your arms. But I was a street girl, a homeless girl and you were…”
“Just a boy.”
“No, I knew you were special even then. My merman. I knew it could never be but the fact you would be back there the next night…I floated through the rest of the night. I keep thinking what if I never got sick? Would we be here now?”
Ivo held her gaze steadily. “I truly believe we would. We were meant to find each other, Sofia, il mia amore. Now…I’m going to take you into the pool outside and I’m going to make love to you the way I wanted to when we met.”
“We’ll recreate it, pretend we never met until now.”
“We will…”
Outside in the pool, under the blazing Crete sun, they swam together then came together to make love, reliving every moment of their meeting and realizing the other’s fantasies of that night. Sofia wrapped her legs around his waist as he pushed into her. They made love in the water, then on the hot tile of the patio, Sofia straddling Ivo and riding him hard. When the sun got too hot to bear, they retreated back into the cool of their bedroom and played their games again.
Afterward, wrapped in each other, exhausted they talked some more. Sofia told him about the first few years of her life, born in American to a white American father whom she never met, and an Indian mother who had been a Professor of Molecular Physics. Ivo was surprised. “Wow. So, you and she had wildly different passions?”
Sofia grinned. “We did, but to her credit, she always encouraged me to follow my heart, my instincts. I’m sure she would have loved me to go into the Sciences but that was never going to happen.”
“What about your stepfather?”
Sofia hesitated. “For years, right up to the minute my mom died, he was the best father figure you could imagine. That’s why it hurt – it still hurts – so much when he flipped. I guess if I was generous, I could say the grief drove him mad but…”
“It’s no excuse for what he did. What about this step-sister?”
Sofia’s eyes darkened. “She’s psychotic.” She looked at Ivo. “If I tell you something, will you promise not to tell anyone else?”
“You have my word.”
When she spoke, her voice trembled. “I’m almost one hundred percent certain…no, I know for a fact that Tamara caused the death of her mother.”
She saw Ivo’s shock. “You’re sure?”
“Tamara more or less told me. She hated my mother even more than she hated me. One day, I could only have been thirteen or fourteen, she said to me ‘You know, Mothers can be very clumsy.’ I had no idea what she was talking about, it seemed so random. But then she went on. ‘Sometimes they just…fall down.’ And she smiled at me and even at that age, I knew what she meant. I asked Jonas about his mother’s death, and he told me she had fallen down some stairs, hard concrete ones that led down to their wine cellar. Judy was still alive, had only just fallen when Tamara found her. The thing is…no-one had known Tamara was home from school that day. The doctors said had an ambulance been called earlier, Judy might have been saved but it took Tamara a half hour to call. She said it was due to shock.”
“Jesus.” Ivo looked sick.
Sofia nodded. “At her mom’s funeral, Jonas said Tamara didn’t cry, just stood there with a blank expression, holding her father’s hand.”
Ivo gathered her to him. “Thank Christ you got away from that family.”
Sofia sighed. “Apart from Jonas. I miss Jonas.”
Ivo stroked her face. “Then he’s always welcome.”
“You would like him. He’s very down to earth. He teaches – he loved my mom and she encouraged him to teach. He doesn’t give a damn about his father’s money.”
“When we get back, we’ll contact him, yes?”
Sofia smiled at him. “I would like that. We still have to tell my father his blackmail won’t work now.”
“I’m looking forward to that.”
Part Three
Chapter Twenty
In the end, it was Desiree who told Fergus Rutland. After failing to find out where Sofia had gone, Fergus went to the apartment his private detective had told him Sofia was staying at.
Desiree opened the door, wrapped in a silk robe and glared at him. “What do you want, Rutland?”
Fergus bit back a retort. This woman, gorgeous and statuesque was still intimidating to him, but he could not be rude to her. She had helped save Sofia’s life, after all.
“Please, I’ve just come here to see my daughter.”
Desi didn’t smile. “She’s not here.”
“Would you tell me if she was?”
“I don’t lie, Mr. Rutland.”
“Forgive me. Will she be back today?”
Desiree have him a half-smile. “I doubt it. She’s on her honeymoon.”
Fergus rocked back for second, and then sighed. He had never intended to follow through on his threat to have her deported, fancying he could persuade her to come home with him. But still…married? “I see.”
Desiree was obviously enjoying his discomfort. “What’s the matter, Rutland? Surprised she made a decision without you? That girl lived on the streets for six months – you think she didn’t grow the hell up during that period? You don’t get to call the shots in Sofia’s life anymore.”
Fergus felt nothing but defeat. He dropped his head into his hands. “Christ. I fucked up, I know that.”
There was a silence then Desiree, sighing, opened her door. “Come in. You look like you could use a drink.”
Down the hallway, through a crack in his door, Grant listened, his rage a burning thing inside him. Sofia was married? To the Zacca asshole? Fucking whore. He waited until Desiree had closed her door then stepped out of his apartment, taking the stairs up to the roof. Once there, he let out a howl of anger, bellowing it out over the rooftops. It was lost in the breeze, the spitting rain. She was married. The moment you said I do,
you signed your own death warrant, Sofia. Grant smiled grimly. No, wait, you were always going to die, it’s just now…it’ll be sooner than I’d planned. You won’t get to celebrate your first anniversary, beautiful.
Chapter Twenty-One
Tamara had expected Penn not to call for a few days – after all, he must be grieving for his girlfriend and child, she grinned to herself. The report of the accident wasn’t headline news, but buried inside the local pages. Pregnant Mother Falls to Her Death in Freak Accident. And now Tamara knew his girlfriend’s name. Willa. Willa Kline and her unborn child were dead. Penn Black would be in a state of grief, but Tamara knew she had to be patient. Any move to preempt his contacting her might make him suspicious. As far as he knew, Tamara didn’t even know where he lived, let alone that he had a wife. No, she would wait for him to call.
In the meantime, she concentrated on her business venture. The club, now renamed Le Petite Mort, the French euphemism for an orgasm, was already garnering attention from the BDSM community. Tamara didn’t care that her more adventurous acquaintances knew she was the owner; she reveled in the notoriety of it. She also didn’t care that she had spent all of her father’s investment on the hidden murder rooms in the basement. They were so well hidden that she and Grant could enjoy their torturous games without fear of discovery.
She decided to call him now, as she observed the designer putting the final touches to the club’s main room. Alcoves with purple velvet curtains for privacy, day beds which could fit two or three or more in each, flattering lighting, an endless array of toys and lube. The kinkier stuff could be found in the private rooms in the maze of corridors leading through the club. Exposed brickwork, old fashioned light fittings – it really was a palace of kink.
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