by Cassie Rocca
She felt like a monster.
She followed Zack into the kitchen, hoping that having something in her hands would help her, given what she would have to say to him shortly thereafter. The coffee would keep her head clear if Zack decided to try and pull apart her reasoning piece by piece. And she was sure he would.
“So, what did you want to talk to me about?” he asked, as soon as they were seated at the table, two steaming cups of coffee in front of them.
“It’s… about the wedding buffet,” she stammered, avoiding his eyes. “It’s no longer necessary for you to deal with it.”
She heard him take a deep breath and hazarded a look in his direction, but his expression was indecipherable.
“Don’t you need any cakes?” he asked, a strange light in his eyes.
“No. I mean, I need them, but… someone else will take care of it.” Liberty straightened up on the stool, looking him straight in the face. It made no sense to be bent over and hesitant as if she were confessing some kind of crime to him. It was her wedding that they were talking about, and she was free to make the decisions she considered fair.
Zack look confused. Then, the meaning of her words sank in and his face turned to stone.
“What do you mean?”
“I still don’t have a clear idea about my wedding.” Liberty closed her eyes and shook her head. “I mean for the preparations,” she corrected herself. “I’ll buy something for the party that morning, and whatever the theme ends up being, it’ll be fine. It’s not fair to you to keep you hanging on without telling you anything precise about next Saturday – you already have your work cut out for you…”
“That’s crap,” he snapped, unable to hide his feelings.
“Zack,” Liberty sighed, standing up and rubbing her temples with her fingertips. “Don’t make it difficult. I’ve told you there’s no need, why do you have to take it personally?”
“Because it is personal, damn it!” Looking very agitated, Zack ran a hand through his hair. “The problem isn’t the cakes and I would like you to be honest about the fact for once.”
Liberty stiffened at his commanding tone. “Why the hell do you have to make such a big deal out of it?”
“Tell me the real reason why you don’t want to let me do it.” Zack leant forward and looked her in the eye. “Tell me it’s nothing personal.”
“It’s nothing personal,” she lied, clenching her fists and digging her fingernails into the palms of her hands.
“Well, on Saturday morning I’ll call you to find out where to send the cakes and trays for the buffet,” he said, turning around.
“No!” Liberty blurted out.
Zack raised his eyebrows. “I want to know why.”
“I don’t take orders from anyone! In fact, you know what? I’ll tell Justin that I don’t want any damn party before the wedding – problem solved! He doesn’t care, we only decided to do it to please his sister.”
He remained silent for a long time, a vein on his bearded cheek pulsing menacingly, then his shoulders seemed to relax, though his eyes remained threatening.
“So you don’t need any cakes…”
“N-no.”
“Well, then you’ll have to help me with these.” Zack opened a large fridge and pulled out six small, elegantly decorated and differently shaped cakes.
At the sight of them, Liberty felt fear and desire. “What are they?”
“We agreed that you would give me some more precise details so that I could prepare my work with full knowledge of the facts. Well, I waited patiently, and in the meantime I started thinking about some recipes.” Zack’s voice was deadly calm, but his eyes were burning.” Every day I tried a couple, hoping for a phone call or a visit. If you had called I would have submitted my ideas to you so that I could hear what you thought.”
Liberty could barely drag her eyes away from him to look at the cakes he had placed on the countertop. Two were white, very classic, covered with sugar flowers, edible pearls and dark chocolate worked to look like lace. The others, instead, were less classic and more unique, but they were all beautiful and appetizing. “I had to throw some away,” he continued, recapturing her attention. “Since you disappeared for days, most of my experiments have been wasted, but I decided to make some very small trial cakes, and it’s a good job I’ve got plenty of employees to donate the leftovers to, otherwise they would all have ended up in the trash. Everyone was starting to get sick of them.”
Fearing what would be the last line of his outburst, Liberty stood up and took a step back. “Look, I’m sorry…”
“I’m glad you’re sorry. Being sorry might make you less picky during the tasting.”
Liberty stared at him, then shook her head. “If you think I’m going to eat them all just by way of an apology, you’re wrong!” she snapped.
“You don’t need to eat them all, I just want you to taste them all.” Zack took a fork from the drawer and waved it in front of her nose. “Which one do you want to start with?”
It wasn’t a question, it was an order.
Liberty stepped back again. “None of them. I didn’t ask you to bake cakes every single day! I’m sorry that you wasted your time and ingredients, but it wasn’t my idea!”
“I don’t give a damn!” Zack grabbed her arm and pulled her nearer to him, putting the fork in her hand. “I wanted to do this for you. You want to cut me off without giving me a good reason? Very well. I’ll at least have the satisfaction of seeing you eat these fucking cakes and hear from your mouth a sincere opinion on each of them!”
Liberty rested her fork firmly on the countertop and gave him a dirty look. “You can’t force me.”
“Do you want to bet?” he snapped angrily.
“Oh, this is absolutely ridiculous!” Liberty made to walk past him, but Zack blocked her way and imprisoned her between the counter and his body. He approached a plate at random and hovered over it with a fork.
Liberty became nervous. “What are you planning on doing? Forcing the fork into my mouth?” she said quietly, her heart beating quickly at being so close to him.
Zack shrugged. “Only if you don’t cooperate.”
“I won’t do it! I mean, are you even listening to yourself? Who do you think you are? You can’t give me orders – I don’t want to taste any of your damn cakes!”
He moved even closer. Their bodies were pressed together now from their ankles to their chests, and Liberty began to feel dizzy.
“Open your mouth, Lib,” ordered Zack in a low voice. She could feel his breath on her temples.
She shook her head stubbornly, focusing on anything except the body that was pressed against hers and the inviting cakes near his hand, and holding firmly onto the counter.
Zack put his hand on her neck, making her start, and when he began to move his thumb along the blue vein that ran down it, her breathing became ragged. She tried to breathe in to fill her lungs, but her nose was filled with Zack’s virile scent – a hint of shower gel mixed with the ingredients he had been using all day and that the quick shower had failed to wash away. The combination threatened to take her breath away.
She opened her mouth…
Immediately, a spoonful of soft sponge cake sprinkled with chocolate cream and chopped pistachios was on her tongue, and after having forcefully placed the mouthful in between her lips, Zack’s hand remained on them to prevent her from rebelling.
Incredulous and furious but with her senses rejoicing in the exquisite taste of the cake, Liberty chewed furiously. Only then did Zack take his hand away, his eyes bright with triumph… and with passion.
“Do you like it?” he murmured, his eyes fixed on hers.
“No,” she snapped. It was another mistake. With his free arm, Zack drew her closer and Liberty felt all the tension of that warm, imposing, excited body. Her legs were about to turn to jelly.
“Do you want to taste it again to get a better idea?” he suggested, soothingly.
“No!” she exclaimed in terro
r. “It’s… good, I like the combination of pistachio and chocolate.”
“Ok, let’s move on to the next one.” Zack abruptly pushed away the plate with the cake she had just tasted and brought a second one closer. With a fork he broke off a piece and then lifted it to Liberty’s lips with his fingers, while she trembled with impatience.
Liberty was vaguely aware of the taste of the cake – butter cream and berries – but her head was heavy because of the desire that kept washing over her in stronger and stronger waves. She swallowed mechanically, and Zack – looking patient – waited.
“Cloying and heavy,” she mumbled through the crumbs.
Zack grimaced. “It came out like that because I was thinking of your boyfriend while I made it.” He dropped the cake into a tall bin with no regrets, then, with a predatory smile, he bent over her to grab a third plate, the one that was farthest away. Liberty could almost have touched his throat with her lips, and the sensual weight of his body seemed to have deprived her of her intellect. She couldn’t even reply to the nasty comment Zack had made about Justin – all her senses were concentrated on the sinful pleasure of having him next to her and on the taste of those sugary delicacies that still lingered in her mouth.
“Try this one,” he said, cutting her a piece of cake. Liberty could just see it. It was crown-shaped, in the colors of the American flag. “This is the best one… I made it thinking of you and it’ll become a house specialty: the Miss Liberty.”
Enchanted by the way he said it, she opened her mouth, and Zack slipped a mouthful of red and white striped sponge cake, covered with blue icing and sprinkled with little stars of meringue in. In accepting the cake she touched his fingers with the tip of her tongue, and Zack gasped slightly and held her even tighter.
Liberty almost shouted out in frustration.
She didn’t care about those damn cakes – it was Zack that she wanted to taste!
“Do you like it?”
She ate quickly without taking her eyes off his face.
“Yes. I like it,” she whispered, licking the crumbs from her lower lip.
Zack’s gaze was on her mouth and, seemingly of their own volition, her lips parted.
She had been waiting for that moment all her life. She realized it the moment that Zack’s soft lips touched hers.
She forgot everything – her insecurities, her doubts, her dissatisfaction and her fears. All of her life seemed to be focused around that one kiss, so languid and deep.
Ignoring the fact that his fingers were still covered with cream, Zack stroked her face and hair, tilting her head so that he could kiss her more deeply, and Liberty let out a groan, a guttural sound that came from the depths of her being and that contained all the joy and suffering she felt at that moment.
Zack seemed to sense only the subtle despair of the sound and pulled his lips slightly away from hers. He noticed the streaks of cream and crumbs that he had inadvertently covered the skin of her neck with and breathed in. “I’m sorry.”
Confused and totally overcome by pleasure, Liberty opened her eyes. “You’re… sorry?” she asked.
Zack stared at her for a long time, then shook his head. “Not sorry enough to stay away from you,” he murmured, before bending over to lick away the cake left on her pale skin.
The touch of his tongue on such a sensitive part of her body set a thousand sparks flying inside her. She pressed herself against him, anxious to be as close to him as possible, and when Zack lifted her effortlessly up onto the counter, she was suddenly out of breath. The situation was getting completely out of hand – she could feel it in Zack’s movements, which were becoming more and more daring, as well as in her own.
Without stopping kissing her, Zack managed to open her blouse while she pushed her hands underneath his shirt, anxious to caress the warm strength of his muscles. She felt Zack’s fingers creeping past the belt of her jeans and gasped, her fingernails reflexively sinking into his back.
Breathless, Zack stopped and rested his forehead against hers. “At the risk of hating myself for the rest of my life, Lib, I have to ask,” he murmured, his eyes closed tightly.
“What?” she asked, her mind in turmoil and her mouth a hair’s breadth away from his.
“Do you want me to stop?”
Liberty remained motionless. A part of her knew what Zack was asking her, and the very fact that he was asking her, even though it was so evidently painful for him, tugged at her heart. No other man would have thought about that for an instant – they would just have taken advantage of the situation without caring about what she might have felt later.
But not him, not Zack. She felt as though she loved him even more than before. Yet this was madness… She was getting married! It was too late to be getting carried away by sentimentality and letting this spark turn into a fire that could only end up burning her.
Zack was a dangerous temptation which could seriously hurt her.
But letting go of him was unthinkable.
One more bite… Just one and then I’ll stop, I swear!
She took his face in her hands and looked for his gaze. Zack’s dark eyes, half closed as though trying to hold back his emotions, reflected her own hunger.
Do you want me to stop? he had asked.
“God, no…” she whispered, before putting her lips back upon his.
There would be plenty of time for guilt and for diets later.
At that moment she just wanted to have her fill of him.
Until she was fit to burst.
11
“Do you think it’s burglars?” whispered Clover warily as she stood staring at the half open door of the shop.
Zoe grasped her phone tightly in her hands as she peered over her friend’s red head. “It’s too quiet – surely burglars would be making more noise?”
“Not if they’ve already gone away… But Liberty should already be here, right? It’s nine o’clock.”
“Yeah, it’s usually already open when we get here.” Zoe stared at the ‘Closed’ sign hanging from the glass door, then peered inside. The shop looked exactly the way they had left it on Saturday night – neat and dark. Nothing seemed to have been touched.
“Come on, let’s go inside. If someone had broken in, it wouldn’t be this tidy,” she said, straightening up. “And anyway, the alarm would have gone off too. The whole place would be in a mess and Liberty would be out here going crazy.”
Clover nodded and pushed the door open, holding out her keys like a weapon for self-defense.
She and Zoe had met on the street as usual, gone for breakfast at Starbucks and then made their way calmly towards Giftland. They usually found the store already open, since Liberty normally arrived early, but that morning the door had been ajar, the ‘Open’ sign had not been put up and the lights were all off.
“Maybe Lib has only just got here,” she said, going inside.
“I just hope we don’t find her body lying around here somewhere,” muttered Zoe, turning on the lights.
“Shut up!”
“Damn Eric – he would have to go to a client’s house this morning, wouldn’t he?”
“Yeah,” said Clover with a laugh. “I mean, I’d feel a lot safer knowing Eric was around to protect us from a crazy killer!”
“Hey, you can make fun of him all you want, but behind that teacher’s pet face, Eric is plenty strong and plenty brave,” snorted Zoe with her chin in the air. “He would die trying to protect me, don’t you worry.”
She tripped ahead on her high heels towards the counter, where she noticed that the safe was perfectly intact. “No sign of a break-in and no bloody corpse here.”
“Lib, are you here?” shouted Clover, sticking her head round the door of the room she shared with Eric. It was empty. “She must be upstairs.”
They headed off together in the direction of their boss’s office on the floor above and Zoe pushed the door open with two fingers. The interior was dark and there was a stuffy smell of fried food and
sugar. A smell which was completely foreign to that place.
“Lib?”
“Leave me alone.”
At the sound of their friend’s voice, they both gave a sigh of relief.
“Okay,” said Zoe, walking in, “she’s alive and she’s in a bad mood – situation normal.”
Clover reached for the light switch, but when the lights came on she gasped in surprise. “What the hell…?”
The office, which was usually so immaculate and smelled so nice, was a total mess and was covered in rubbish. There were scrunched up pieces of paper everywhere, an empty pizza box on the desk, bits of fries lying next to it and crumpled up tissues and empty packets of sweets on the floor. Liberty’s clothes were thrown on her chair, and her shoes were nearby, while the sports bag she used when she went to the gym was in a corner, open and half empty.
But the most incredible detail was Liberty herself, sitting on the floor in the corner farthest away from them, wearing a tracksuit, her hair gathered haphazardly at the nape of her neck. Her face, usually so neat and perfectly made up, was pale and her eyes were red and tearful. On her neck there were vague red marks and on her cheek a dark streak that looked like chocolate.
“What happened?” asked Zoe, her grey eyes staring in surprise.
“Are you okay?” Clover said, coming closer.
Liberty clutched a handkerchief in her hands. “No, I’m not okay – I’m not okay at all!”
“But what… what happened?” Clover pushed through the rubbish and squatted down next to her friend. “I’ve never seen you in this state before.”
Zoe grabbed the swivel chair, dragged it over to the other two and sat down. “Did you have a fight with Justin, by any chance?”
Liberty looked up at her. A giggle escaped her lips, then it turned into a laugh which sounded almost hysterical. Clover and Zoe exchanged worried looks with one another.
“Do you think she’s got to the end of her tether?” whispered Clover.
“I knew she was stressed, but the way she’s acting now it’s almost as if she’s out of her mind!”
“You’re right,” coughed Liberty, trying to stifle her laughter. “I am out of my mind! It must be all the sugar I’ve eaten… I’m not used to it. I used to be, but not anymore.”