Sorority Secrets (Campus Love and Murder Sorority Eyes Romance Book 2)

by Ciara Christie

  He stared at my face. “Shit! What happened to you?”

  “Small accident. It’s nothing, Alice.”

  “Any witnesses?”

  I shook my head.

  He seemed visibly irritated. “You should be more careful.”

  “Says the man with a bullet in his shoulder.”

  He took the shopping bags from the front seat and carried them to the front door of the barn.

  “OK, you get the medal for gallantry,” I said. “Now you can set the bags down before you open the stitches.”

  “Too late,” he groaned and dropped the bags.

  I walked to him and suggested I take the heaviest bags. Michael seemed content with the compromise.

  “Like to see you manage with a bullet in one arm,” he said with a grin.

  “Yeah, right,” I said dismissively. “Weakling.”

  He laughed and followed me out of the barn.

  Inside the kitchen I set the bags on the table. “Better take a look at those stitches,” I said.

  He slipped off his cotton shirt. The first beads of fresh perspiration trickled down his chest. Mixed with the remnants of his sandalwood based cologne, it was quite intoxicating.

  Stirring between my legs I felt the sweet longing sensation of the warning signs of my attraction to him.

  “Yep, you broke the stitches,” I said.

  And you’re not the only one fast coming undone, Mister.

  I made him sit down as I sterilised a needle while I scrubbed my hands. I stood between his open legs and with a pair of surgical scissors cutaway the broken stitches. Gently pulling them out of his skin.

  As I thread the needle I could sense his intense gaze down my neck to my breasts. It didn’t help that the crushed strawberries and pomegranate juice had stuck to the t-shirt and my stiffening nipples were obvious for all to see.

  “You smell amazing,” he said in a rich deep growl as I stuck him with the needle.

  I pulled the first stitch tight as he fumbled through a bag of fruit. He sliced open a pomegranate and staring up at me bit deep into its juicy flesh.

  Butterflies in my stomach somersaulted as the sensations between my legs intensified. As he swallowed hard so did I.

  “You’re distracting me, stop it,” I said.

  He grinned and took another bite into the succulent flesh of the fruit as I pulled the second stitch tight. I glanced down at him. His eyes glistened with the hues of trust and vulnerability and something else.

  I looked away and down to his full pouting lips stained with the crimson juice. He licked them slowly and I felt a quivering sensation inside my jeans.

  “Am I a bad patient?” he asked.

  Despite myself I giggled. “Very. Keep still.”

  I pulled hard to tighten the third stich. He placed his hands on my hips.

  “Hey!” I said.

  “Just steadying myself. Wouldn’t want me to fall on top of you would you?”

  I felt my skin flush hot at the thought of his powerful body grinding against mine on the stone floor.

  “Last one, ready?” I asked.

  He focused on me and once again slowly bit into the pomegranate. Moving his tongue back and forth across his lips.

  God how I want that tongue between my legs.

  Distracted by the outline in his jeans of his stiffening cock, I tugged hard on the thread.

  Michael cried out and I looked down at the vulnerable eyes filled with longing. I felt his hands slide up my back and inside my t-shirt. Moving around to my breasts.

  His fingers teasing my nipples felt like tiny sparks igniting a wild fire of sensation in my breasts.

  I felt a whimper escape my lips. I felt one hand caressing the back of my head. Forcing me to lower my head to his lips. I yielded to his touch.

  Our lips were suddenly and passionately locked. I sank into his lap and felt his stiff cock throb between my legs making me ache with longing for him to be inside me. We kissed ferociously. Exploring each other’s mouth with a lustful hunger.

  I broke away from him. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t use him like this. I couldn’t betray him even if it was to save Emily.

  His eyes clasped around my face and he forced me drown in the lust of his sparkling green eyes.

  His nimble fingers unzipped my jeans and began teasing between my legs. Sliding deep inside me, his fingers moved in lavish circles of intense waves of sensation forcing me to cry out.

  I unzipped him and felt his hard cock throbbing between my fingers. The symbol of his lust for me. Thick and strong. Such power in my hands felt mesmerizing to the touch.

  He tugged at my jeans and pushed them down over my knees as I rose up, straddling his hard throbbing cock. I felt his strong hands guide me down him. Slowly he entered me as his hungry lips kissed and sucked at my nipples.

  I rode him hard and fast as if I couldn’t get enough of him. As if giving in to pure lust would numb me from the feelings of tenderness and vulnerability that ebbed and flowed between us.

  I wave of ecstasy rose up through me and exploded out in a series of frantic gasps. I was floating on air as Michael lifted me up and lowered my back against the table top. I kicked my jeans off my ankles.

  He thrust deep into me, over and over as my back arced and bucked against the waves rolling through me.

  Even as the wave ebbed away I knew another was approaching. I tugged my t-shirt over my head and pulled his head down to my breasts. He kissed and bit my nipples sending spasms of delightful pain through me.

  I felt another wave crashing through me and pulled his face up to mine. His intense yearning gaze meeting mine as my body convulsed and crushed the fruit into my back. I felt him shoot deep inside me and watched with awe as his face contorted and softened into blissful vulnerability.

  I couldn’t share the vulnerability any longer. I glanced away. Out the large kitchen window to the fields beyond. As I breathed him inside me I realized what the elusive essence of him was. It was wild lavender, hot under the midday sun exploding inside my brain and making me face my shame.

  I guided his lips to my nipples and held him there for some minutes as I fought away my tears for the betrayal that was to come.

  TWENTY SIX

  Alice’s Journal

  As Michael lay sleeping amongst the crushed fruit on the table top, I padded quietly to the office and unplugged the black light UV lamp and grabbed my cell phone.

  I adjusted the camera settings to silent mode and switched off the automatic flash. I took the lamp with me and plugged it in and shone the light over Michael.

  His beautiful, sculptured body was literally a work of art. The D.N.A. sequence tattooed across his body was a fields of dream. Each line was contour on a map to his own private hopes. Like the rows of lavender beyond the windows, they pointed to a destiny for him and mankind. I was about to destroy that vision.

  I moved the lens over his naked body and captured the secrets in his intricate body tattoo. With only one last picture needed, my lens blurred and then automatically refocused. On the screen on my phone Michael’s eyes blinked and stared up at me.

  “Why, Alice? Why?”

  “They have Emily.”

  “Who?”

  “My kid sister. Sui Lee threatened to kill her.”

  He sat up, but conspicuously couldn’t look me in the eyes.

  “What was the plan? Seduce me for the formula?”

  I reached out for him.

  “No, of course not,” I said. “It was real for me.”

  “Bullshit, Alice.”

  He moved away from the table as if I was toxic.

  As he pulled on his jeans he kept his back turned to me. “You could have asked.”

  “And would you have said yes?”

  “Trust, Alice. Trust.”

  “So now what?”

  He turned on me with hateful tears in his eyes and grabbed my cell phone. He threw it hard and watched it shatter across the floor and with it my hopes o
f saving Emily.

  I felt my knees buckle under me. I tore at my hair with crooked fingers and sobbed with self-pity for the bitch I’d become.

  He stared at me for a moment. He seemed horrified at seeing me fall apart. As if I was finally revealing the truth of how pathetic I was to him.

  He took a deep breath and strode to the kitchen door and out towards the lavender fields.

  I stared at the stone floor and the shattered pieces of life. I looked up at the distant figure of Michael walking along the rows of lavender under the thin white clouds shredding like my torn heart across the blue void.

  I pulled on my jeans and t-shirt and shoes.

  I ran after him, calling out his name. But either he couldn’t hear me, or wouldn’t acknowledge the voice of betrayal calling out his name.

  “I’m sorry,” I shouted.

  He ignored me still. I felt a rush of rage that he was denying my right to explain myself. As if his view was the only one that counted.

  “Michael, can’t you see that saving all the people in the world makes no difference if you can’t save one person who means the world to me?”

  He stopped in his tracks and turned to me.

  “I know that more than anyone,” he said. “But I also know sometimes you have to let go. What you don’t realize, Alice, is the fate of the entire world’s population is contained in that formula.”

  “You can’t save everybody, Michael,” I shouted as I fought back tears. “Only if we’re lucky, the ones we care about.”

  “You don’t understand what you almost did.”

  “Then explain it to me.”

  “The formula can save or destroy.”

  “What do you mean destroy?”

  “By design it identifies the genetic building blocks of what makes us all the same as well as our differences. It can be used to target any one person or any group of people and annihilate them, leaving the rest immune from destruction. Designer plagues that pass from one individual to the next. Leaving many unharmed and many more; the targeted individuals dead. Now do understand you almost made the worst mistake in the history of mankind? That is too much power.”

  I shook my head. “If you ever knew love, Michael, you’d know that I had to try to save Emily. The one always triumphs over the many. It’s human nature. You have to trust people to do the right thing.”

  “People are lambs fattened for the slaughter,” he said. “They cannot protect themselves against the perils of progress. I understand that now.”

  “Michael, you were awarded for progressing society. Not holding back on it. Paranoia is not progress. You need to learn to trust.”

  A bitter sneer crossed his face. He shrugged and turned away.

  I stopped. I reminded myself I had a mission. It was the sole and entire reason for my existence here. Like it or not, the stakes had increased dramatically. Emily’s life was in my hands. I knew in my heart that I had to betray Michael’s trust in order to keep Emily’s.

  There was no choice. I made peace with it and returned to the kitchen. I gathered up the remains of the cell phone and picked out the tiny memory card. It was still intact.

  Michael’s words echoed through me. But I knew I had to try and save Emily. I fought down the rising bile in my throat.

  With luck the photographs were all salvageable. I found the keys to the SUV and ran to the barn.

  Within a minute I gunned the SUV down the track under the long archway of trees and towards some twisted hope for redemption.

  TWENTY SEVEN

  Robyn’s Journal

  Harry’s crazy idea to have a picnic on the old wooden jetty in the autumn chill meant only one thing in my mind. He was going to propose.

  Before I met Harry, the idea that I was ever in my life going to find my soul mate, someone who understood me completely and never judged me, was a crazy concept. But together we had overcome life’s vicious obstacles and at last we had each other. He was too good to be true and a part of me worried that he would come to regret his decision to love me.

  I refused to allow myself to believe he was actually going to propose marriage.

  I could barely contemplate the food he prepared as he loaded the Mustang with a wicker hamper basket.

  We were about to set off when Mai came running out of the Sorority Eyes office as if she’d just seen a ghost.

  “What is it, Mai?” I asked.

  “Alice!” she shouted. “She’s in trouble.”

  Harry climbed out of the Mustang. “Your new recruit?” He asked.

  “You’ve tried the tracker?” I asked Mai.

  “It’s dead.”

  “Wait a minute,” Harry said. “You mean to say you sent out a newbie recruit without backup?”

  Mai and I shared a look. Neither of us wanted to say anything. It was all I could do not to vomit with fear.

  Harry glared at me. “Robyn, that’s not the actions of the woman I fell in love with.”

  “What the Hell, Harry?”

  “Robyn,” he said, “either you find Alice, safe and well or we’re over.”

  TWENTY EIGHT

  The last journal of Michael Maddox

  I walked through the rows of lavender until the burning midday sun exhausted my anger. The exhaustion eroded my defenses. The feelings of betrayal, though immense, began to decay amongst the scent of lavender.

  What would I have done, were I Alice faced with losing Emily in some cruel game of collateral damage? I conceded much the same.

  Alice’s scent still lingered on my skin. I stooped. Picked a branch of lavender and scrubbed my skin until all traces of Alice were gone.

  But she was under my skin. I scrubbed harder. It was no use.

  A honey bee took offense that I had liberated it of its harvest. It buzzed angrily and dived at me. I motioned to swipe it away and stopped short of hitting it. I let it settle on my arm and collect the pollen.

  Like a bee sting the memory of my longing to give myself completely to Alice and thereby win her trust, bit into me. I laughed. Even though, with her callous betrayal of my trust, I still wanted her. Or was it simply the complete acceptance and understanding of the real Michael Maddox that I pathologically craved?

  Either way, my only chance to have the object of my obsession was to accept her betrayal. To show Alice my acceptance. To help her win back Emily.

  I could hate her all I needed to, but still I couldn’t kill the bliss in the acceptance she showed me in her arms.

  If saving Emily for Alice was the only way to show my love for her, then let it be.

  I turned and began to run back to the farmhouse. I cried out, “Alice, Alice.”

  In the distance I heard the SUV race along the archway in a cloud of dust.

  I fell to my knees with the weight of realization I was too late. I knew she was driving to her death and there was nothing I could do to save her.

  History was cruelly repeating itself.

  TWENTY NINE

  Alice’s journal

  I dialed the number on the business card.

  “You’ve got it?” Sui Lee said.

  “Yes. I’m on my way with it now.”

  “The church in the old market place. Twenty minutes.”

  She hung up.

  In the rear view mirror I could see Michael. I knew I should stop the car and run to him. He vanished in a haze of my tears. I wiped my eyes and stamped on the accelerator.

  When I reached the market square it was empty. At this hour most people were too sensible to venture out into the heat of this late summer. Preferring an afternoon siesta, no doubt.

  I parked up by an old sun-bleached stone church that must be at least a thousand years old.

  I pushed back the black painted wooded double doors and stood in the opening, letting my eyes adjust to the semi-darkness. A figure moved inside near the altar.

  I took a deep breath and entered the church.

  The cool air preserved by the thick stone was welcome.


  The figure moved with an efficient clip towards me in a manner I recognized, but couldn’t place. A blond stepped out of the shadows.

  “The formula, if you please, Ms. Angelo.”

  “Sinclair? You’re working with Sui Lee?”

  She held out her hand impatiently. “Now.”

  I handed her the micro memory card. She took it and placed it in her cell phone.

  “Does Barret know you’ve betrayed him, Sinclair?”

  She smiled and swiped through the pages of photographs and shook her head.

  “It’s incomplete.”

  “It can’t be. I was careful to...”

  Sinclair smiled with dead eyes as if the glee at my downfall was too much to bear. She glanced around her as if asking the statues of angels for inspiration or my salvation.

  I heard footsteps behind and felt the cold hard steel of a gun barrel on my neck.

  A cell phone pressed hard against my ear.

  “Say goodbye to Emily,” Sui Lee whispered.

  “No, please,” I cried out.

  I could hear Emily crying on the line.

  “Please,” I shouted, “I’ll get what you want. You gave me twenty four hours. There’s still time. I’m begging you.”

  “Should I kill her now?” Sui Lee asked.

  Sinclair hesitated and sighed. She glanced at the shadows between the statues of two angels.

  A shadow of a figure moved and stepped into the light offered by a single god ray.

  He was an athletic man in a light linen suit.

  “No,” Jonathan Barret said as he picked lint off the shoulder of his cream suit. “We’ll give her one last chance.”

  “Jonathan?” I gasped. “If you’re working with Sui Lee, what was the point in hiring me?”

  He shrugged. “I wanted it to be personal.”

  “Personal? How?”

  “Michael murdered someone dear to me. He deserves worse than death. An eternal suffering of knowing that what he destroyed has come back to haunt him.”

  My stomach back flipped. “What are you talking about?”

  Barret took the cell phone from Sui Lee and put it up to her ear.

  “I’m not a monster you know,” he said. “The real monster is Michael.”