by Roz Lee
“It’s a slow process done in a very cold room. They save the genitals and faces for the last minute. They’re done minutes before they’re wheeled out here.”
“Is he really…?”
“Yep. If you look close, you can see the tip of his cock is in her vagina. I don’t know how they hold that pose for so long.”
“Not to take anything away from the guy, the fact that he has a hard-on, and he’s coated in chocolate is impressive, but how does she stay in that position for so long? It would be tiring to stay bent over, with your hands out as if you’re braced against the wall, with no wall to brace against.”
“Agreed. I know I couldn’t do it. It’s like being chocolate-covered fucking mimes.”
Candace laughed. “That’s it exactly!”
They moved on to the other live sculptures, marveling at the stamina of the models before filling their plates. They chose a table near the window, even though it was impossible to see out.
“This is exactly what I needed, a plate of chocolate.”
“I get to do this every week.”
“I’d be as big as the ship.”
“I don’t usually eat a whole plate full, but I do come down and check out the sculptures and see what’s new. Every week the chefs come up with a new dessert. I didn’t know you could do so many things with chocolate.”
Candace popped a chocolate dipped strawberry in her mouth. The sweet juice exploded against her taste buds. She closed her eyes and savored the mix of strawberry and chocolate in her mouth. A drop trickled out of the corner of her mouth and she darted her tongue out to capture it. “So what do you think he’s doing tonight?”
Fallon didn’t try to pretend she didn’t know who Candace was asking about. “I don’t know.” She swept a spoonful of mousse into her mouth. “If I had to guess, I’d say he’s watching you.”
Candace looked up. “What do you mean?”
“I’d bet he’s been watching you all evening, from the security cameras. They’re all over the place. As a matter of fact, there’s one over my left shoulder. He should have a good view of you.”
“He can do that?”
“Not that I’ve been in his cabin, no one but Richard has, but he’s my source so I know this is true. Ryan can access any camera on the ship from his desk, even the ones in the cabins.”
“And does he do this often?”
“Not that I know of, but I wouldn’t doubt he hasn’t let you out of his sight tonight.”
“Well, if that’s the case, I guess I’d better give him something to see.”
“What do you have in mind? Don’t you think sucking that idiot’s cock was enough?”
Candace felt the blood drain from her face. “You think Ryan saw that?”
“I do.”
“Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. So what else do you have planned for him?”
“You’re sure he can access the room cameras?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m going to give him a show.” She looked straight at the camera above Fallon’s shoulder, smiled, and wiggled her fingers. “I’m going to need your help. Can I get some of those strawberries to take back to my room?”
“Dammit Fallon.” Ryan cursed as Candace smiled up at the security camera and waved. Fallon had told her. Well, he wasn’t going to stop watching, not until she was safe in her cabin. Richard was right, he couldn’t stop her from having her fun tonight, but he could ensure her safety.
He lost track of her for a few minutes when she left Zeus’ Temple, but picked her up again at the main elevators. Ryan punched in a series of numbers and the cameras along the hallways leading to her room came on his screen. She bid Fallon goodnight, and took the center elevator to her deck and made her way forward to her cabin. That was all he intended to do, until the little minx looked around, found the security camera, and smiled a Cheshire Cat smile, wiggling her fingers in a ‘come hither’ fashion.
She knew he was watching; was taunting him to follow her into the cabin. Ryan stood and paced away from the monitor. When he looked back, the hallway was empty. Had she gone into her cabin? No, he wouldn’t peek, though she’d all but invited him to do so. His resolve lasted as long as it took him to cross the room and punch in the code allowing him access to her room cam.
He let out the breath he’d been holding when he saw she was, indeed, safe in her room. His finger flew to the button that would cut off the feed, but froze above it when Candace turned to the camera and winked. What kind of game was she playing? Ryan moved his finger away. She had him by the balls, just as Richard said.
Candace fingered the sash at her waist and the white satin parted to reveal a narrow strip of bare skin. Ryan’s cock responded and the sudden rush of blood to his groin made him dizzy. He dropped into the desk chair and shook his head to clear his vision. My God, the woman was going to kill him. Ryan watched, mesmerized as Candace shrugged and the soft fabric slid off her shoulders. The tiny lace bra and panties she wore were not standard passenger issue, and for good reason. The items Lothario issued were merely seductive. These were lethal.
He choked on his own spit when Candace turned her face to the camera again and blew him a kiss. Damn. The little witch flicked the center clasp on her bra. Before the scrap of fabric hit the floor, she hooked her thumbs under the thin elastic band on her thong panties. She cocked her hips side to side and the little triangle of lace slid down, and off.
Ryan rested his elbows on the desk and dropped his head to his upraised hands, fisting his fingers in his hair, never taking his eyes of the screen. He knew it was coming, and tried to brace himself for the inevitable. The thong dropped past her knees and she rose to face the camera. One sweet finger slid between her bare folds. Ryan ceased to breathe as Candace pulled her glistening finger out and touched it to the center of the crystal tattoo. A groan started deep in his gut and tore out of his throat. Ryan closed his eyes and yanked fistfuls of hair until the pain in his scalp brought him back to his senses.
When he opened his eyes again, Candace had moved to the bed and lay there like a queen awaiting her sex-slave. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, couldn’t have ended the connection if the ship had been sinking. His cock pressed against the placket of his jeans and he slid the zipper down to ease the discomfort. His cock sprang free, as if it sensed Candace nearby, and sought her out like a divining rod searching for water. Candace shifted, drawing his attention back to the screen. What was she up to? He noticed the items on the nightstand as she reached for something there.
Candace dipped a small brush into a bowl. She turned to the camera and held the brush to her lips. She blew against the brush and a dark cloud settled across her torso. Chocolate. His stomach growled as he imagined licking the fine mist of chocolate off her skin. Candace drew the brush over her skin, spreading the dark brown powder over her breasts, her stomach and over her waxed mound, leaving her skin glowing where she’d embellished it.
Ryan’s tongue darted out and wet his lips. His cock bobbed in response. In the silent room, he heard his blood rushing in his ears. His heart pumped at a rate guaranteed to send him into cardiac arrest at any minute, but still he couldn’t look away. Candace dipped the brush again, this time into a jar of chocolate sauce, and with one hand cupped around her breast, brushed the chocolate over her nipple and areola. Ryan swallowed hard and closed his gaping mouth. It fell open again as Candace switched her attention to her other breast. Once again she dipped the brush and propped herself up on her elbows to brush dark chocolate across her naked mons.
“Shit.”
He’d never seen anything so delectable in his life. His mouth watered at the sight of her chocolate-tipped breasts and candy-coated mound. He wanted to jump through the screen and fuck her brains out. Instead, he wrapped his hand around his cock and massaged it. “Hang on there. We’re going to get her back. Not tonight. She’s having her revenge, but she’ll be ours tomorrow.”
He should have cut the connection
and taken a cold shower, but he couldn’t bring himself to end the torture. Candace had gone to a lot of trouble to stage this little titillating rebellion and he wouldn’t spoil it for her. He sucked in a breath between clenched teeth as Candace poured chocolate sauce into her belly button. A tiny stream spilled over and ran across her stomach in an enticing satin ribbon. She lay back and reached for something. A moment later, she dipped the tip of a luscious red strawberry into her navel and drew it out, dripping chocolate. Tiny drops left a trail across her stomach, between her breasts and to her chin. Her tongue darted out and flicked against the strawberry. She lowered it to her lips and sucked it into her mouth.
Ryan fisted his hand around his cock, remembering how the hot cavern of her mouth felt around his shaft. Her lips worked as she chewed the berry. A drop of red juice ran from the corner of her mouth. Her reddened tongue swooped out to capture it.
“Holy shit!” His cock surged in his hand. Ryan gritted his teeth and willed his impending climax to subside. Candace might have him by the balls, but he wasn’t going to climax all alone while she twisted his cock in knots. Somehow, he found the strength to push the button, severing the connection.
He slumped in the chair and released his death grip on his aching shaft. Candace could finish her little torture show all by herself. He walked on shaking legs to the shower and stepped under the cold spray.
Chapter Fourteen
Candace moved the bowl of chocolate on the nightstand, blocking the clock. She’d slept like the dead after she’d showered off the chocolate. She pulled on her robe. She surveyed the room. What would the steward think of the mess? There was chocolate everywhere, on the floor, the sheets, and on every towel. She opened the door to find her steward holding a shopping bag.
“Mr. Callahan sent these for you.” So now Ryan was Mr. Callahan. She rolled her eyes at the absurdity of it all. Obviously, the whole ship knew how he’d duped her, but now that the jig was up, they’d dropped the pretense.
Candace thanked the steward and took the bag. Inside were jeans, and a Lothario T-shirt and a pair of beach sandals. In the bottom of the bag, she found a note written in Ryan’s hand.
“You missed breakfast. Please have lunch with me in my cabin.” The note wasn’t signed, but it didn’t need to be, she knew he would want to talk today. On the bottom of the note were instructions on how to access the private elevator that would take her to his stateroom.
Half an hour later, wearing the outfit Ryan had provided, Candace punched in the code on the electronic keypad and stepped into the elevator. He stood in front of the elevator looking good enough to eat, in tight, faded denim and a crisp white dress shirt.
“Thanks for coming.”
“How could I resist your invitation? I’m starving.”
“Give me a second and I’ll order our lunch. It should be done, but I have to let the chef know we’re ready for it.” Ryan crossed the room and picked up the phone on his desk. He issued a few orders before he replaced the handset and returned to her. “There. Lunch should be served in a few minutes. I thought we could sit out on the balcony. It’s a beautiful day.”
Candace followed Ryan through the open sliding door where a table set with a white cloth and china with Lothario’s logo waited. “You were certain I would come?”
“I hoped you would. After last night I had reason.”
Hot blood colored her neck and flashed upward like a forest fire to tint her face. He had been watching. The only thing that had kept her going last night had been the possibility Ryan hadn’t been watching after all, and her little display had been hers and hers alone. Now she knew she’d been wrong. “You saw that?”
“As much of it as I could take. You shouldn’t tease a man that way; he could have a heart attack.”
“Fallon thought you were watching, but I wasn’t so sure. If I’d known for sure you were watching, I probably wouldn’t have done it.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed every minute of it, but it would have been better if I’d been there with you. Maybe someday…” A tuxedo-clad waiter brought their food and Ryan waited until he left before continuing. “Well, dig in.”
She did, devouring the grilled salmon and steamed vegetables. “This is wonderful. I’m going to miss the food when I get home.”
“I took the liberty of ordering strawberry shortcake for dessert. I couldn’t face anything chocolate today. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I’ll every look at chocolate for as long as I live without seeing you covered in it.”
“Strawberry shortcake will be fine.” She smiled at him. “I like strawberries, too.”
His eyes lit with recognition, and a big smile broke across his face. “Yes, I think you do.”
“I forgot to thank you for the clothes.”
“I wanted us to meet on equal terms. Fallon picked them out. I hope everything fit alright?”
“Yes, perfectly.”
The conversation lagged while the waiter removed their plates and brought out their dessert. Candace speared a fat strawberry with her fork and brought it to her mouth. She stopped short when she caught site of Ryan watching her. “I do like strawberries.”
“So do I, especially when you eat them. That’s what did me in last night. I’m sorry I missed the rest of the show, but I had to cry Uncle and take a cold shower when you bit into that strawberry.”
Candace popped the berry whole into her mouth, and chewed. A drop of juice trickled out of the corner of her mouth. Her tongue darted out to get it, but Ryan was quicker, wiping it with his thumb. Her eyes followed his thumb to his lips where he sucked the digit in with a groan. Hot liquid pooled between her legs. How had she ever thought she could resist him? No one made her feel the way Ryan Callahan did, so who was she kidding? She couldn’t stay mad at him, but he didn’t need to know that. He owed her an explanation, and she wasn’t giving in until she got one.
“Why did you want to see me?”
“I hoped you would be willing to listen to me today. I have a lot of explaining to do, and when I’m done, I plan on begging you to stay with me.”
Candace pushed the rest of her dessert away and sat back in her chair. “Go ahead.”
“I’m not sure where to start, but I guess the beginning is a good place.” Ryan drained his water glass and set it back on the table. “Richard and I met in college. We were roommates. We had a computer programming class together, and we had an assignment to design a working commercial website. We came up with the idea of an internet dating service for college students. We called it Romance Registry, R&R, Richard and Ryan. It took off like a brush fire, and before we knew it, we had a real business on our hands. Money rolled in, which for a couple of frat boys living on ramen noodles, wasn’t a problem. We managed to live pretty good for the last two years of school.”
“I bet you did.”
“We were the talk of campus and when we graduated, we sold the site to a group of investors for three hundred million dollars.”
“Holy smoley!”
“It was a lot of money, to be sure. We were twenty-two years old at the time, young and stupid, and rich beyond our wildest dreams. Somehow, we managed to make wise investments and the money kept coming in. With it came women. Lots of women. We were living it up, screwing our way around the world, literally. We had more women than we knew what to do with, more than we could possibly fuck. We were living every man’s dream.”
Candace frowned. That wasn’t exactly what she wanted to hear.
“I know it sounds shallow, and it was; only we didn’t know it at the time. One day we were about half-drunk, maybe more, and we were throwing out ideas, ways for us to have all the women we wanted and control the situation. One of us, we don’t remember which one, came up with the idea of a cruise ship. When we sobered up, we decided the idea might have merit and that’s how the Lothario came to be.” Ryan paused, poured another glass of water, and downed it in one long gulp.
“We thought it was the perfect solutio
n. I spent the maiden voyage more naked than anything else. I fucked any and every female who offered herself to me, and there were plenty.”
“So what happened? Fallon said you hardly come out of your cabin since that first cruise.”
“I don’t know exactly. The last evening is a costume optional night and the night of the Bacchanal at Dionysus.”
“I remember you telling me about it.”
“Yeah. Well, I went to it. I don’t remember much about it. I drank a lot. Too much. I remember waking up the next morning to Richard’s voice on the PA system, issuing disembarking instructions. I was naked as the day I was born, as were the three women with me. I lay there in a public lounge, with a hangover to beat all hangovers, and, I had no idea who those women were, and they didn’t know me either. I guess you could say I had an epiphany. I knew then I’d made a huge mistake, but Richard and I were committed to making the cruise line work. Since that day, I’ve run the ship, and our investments, from this cabin. I don’t leave these rooms, except when necessity calls.”
“You gave up women?”
“Not entirely. I’m not a monk, no matter what Richard thinks. I won’t lie to you. I hold out as long as I can, but on average, I go out among the living and find a willing partner about once a month.”
“What about me? Was I just a way to scratch your once a month itch?”
“No. You were never that. I saw you when you came aboard and I knew you were different.”
“What do you mean you saw me?”
“I was watching the security cameras. Richard wears an earpiece and microphone so we can talk while he greets the passengers. I saw him hitting on you, and I think I threatened violence if he did it again.”
“I see.” Or did she? She still wasn’t sure. “So you pretended to be a passenger to, what? What did you think would happen?”