Ripped (Killer Lips Book 2) Read online

  I'm kneeling on the floor surrounded by piles of very shabby looking clothes-at least to my new eyes. And my heart is a sinking dead weight with the realization that I won't wear the amazing outfits again.

  Then Mark walks in and his face convulses.

  Chapter THREE

  I stare up at Mark towering high over my position on the ground. Slightly cowering away from him. My eyes stretched wide on alert as his face twists through a series of varied emotions.

  Confusion and anger are quickly replaced by pain. Such deep pain that I almost want to take him in my arms except I'm frozen like a petrified rabbit in headlights.

  Ravaged by need for him jostling alongside fear and most brutal of all-envy. Killer envy.

  I could kill that girl, that's how bad I want him to myself. I'm not going to share him with another woman no matter how swamped with desire I am. And the flare of fury when I revision him stroking and pinching that girl's lips on the film incinerates me. Detecting the rage in my hardened face, Mark seems to collapse a little in his huge chest.

  “You're leaving,” he states simply, in a voice of resignation.

  “It's time for me to get back to my real life,” I say, managing to quash the tremor but not the livid need to squash something. Pain. I need to feel some to stop my chest from ripping apart.

  “I hoped you'd be able to make this your real life.” He puts an emphasis on the 'real' with a mix of sorrow and bitterness.

  All the need to rip him apart with some vicious words vanishes. If I accost him and demand an explanation, I'll have to hear those pathetic words of excuse for why he needs to be with someone else.

  “I'm sorry,” I whisper.

  For I truly am and I don't know what I can say that won't enrage him.

  His hands are clenched like he wants to fist the wall, the huge biceps pressing against his shirt as they flex.

  “It's okay, I should have known it would come to this. I thought it might be different with you.”

  It was different. It is.

  Until she spoiled everything.

  “Every second of having you here with me has been more than I could ever have dreamed,” he says.

  I know. I've had the same dream but now it's turning scary and I don't know what to do.

  I'm not that majestic woman that can discover her man with another, turn the cops out of the house and discipline the servants. I don't know what came over me in that moment. Other than I just did what I had to to keep my lover safe out of-deep emotion.

  I can't say it. I don't even want to think of it. I cannot have been stupid enough to go falling in love with Mark Capello. I need to get my sarcastic friend Sarah on the phone to remind me that all men are out for what they can get ,cheap 'n' easy. Except my phone's still dead.

  And what about my own safety? I'm taking huge risks for a man that's playing me? Just like Dwayne did. No, I have to take my chance and get away from here. I don't belong ia a palace getting addicted more each day to this impossible fantasy.

  I have to go back to my own petty world. Of getting out of bed in my box home, shifting to the desk in a box, then spending the evening staring at a screen. My life is passing by shifting between boxes.

  Alone. I was alone when Dwayne and I lived together so it won't be that much different. I'll still have food to keep me company. At some point during my marriage I started eating for companionship. I didn't know that then.

  It's only since Mark's been entertaining me with sensual appreciation for what goes in my mouth and having him to share it and me that the fucked up nature of my relationship to food became apparent.

  It's not sybaritic enjoyment, it's my friend. It distracts me from admitting how lonely I am. And now I'm not alone and eating is joyful. Or it was before that image appeared on the screen.

  Mark's looking at me, searching my face for answers to what he did wrong to make me suddenly run scared.

  But I don't know if I know the answer myself. My life has always been so commonplace. I've never had an adventure before. And I certainly never had a romance in a palace with a stunning and brilliant lover. It isn't me. I'm not myself any more.

  It's as though I've been obliterated and another Riley Hart has entered my body. A woman who swishes around palace hallways lined with antiques. Wearing a peignoir that cost more than a month's cubicle income and orders the military police to leave the house.

  That's me now. New woman doesn't even begin to describe it since I came to Venice. Since I met Mark. And Josh. At first I was intimidated by their beauty and power. What must it be like to go through life that confident, I wondered. They must have had a perfect mother and father to have developed strong self-esteem. But in the interim their self-assurance has kinda rubbed off.

  Being with Mark has imbued me with an impudence only cute girls have. But I can only do it with his support. And I no longer know who he is.

  Maybe I've been afraid all my life but some things are scary. Serial killers in particular. The ultimate joke is that just when I find the perfect man he turns out to be a psycho with a torture chamber.

  “You know,” he says.

  I nod my head in agreement although I'm not sure what he thinks I've discovered. He can't know what I discovered in the bedroom, or in the almost underwater portigo. Does he know the police were here? That they took something away with them in an evidence bag? Can he know how close they are to catching us?

  “What should I do?”

  He's asking me. I don't even know what I should do for myself, how to even pull my own life back into a semblance of existence because some asshole I married decided I wasn't enough for his needs.

  “It's always been this way, since he was born almost. I've never had a life of my own. I've lost every woman I've ever wanted to him. Because of the way he is. It's been impossible to be with any woman. Not like you. Not like this.”

  My mind is twirling in manic circles. Is he trying to convince me that his son is the Venice Ripper? He's tricking me into another deception. Using his own son to throw me off the scent.

  Poor Josh. So beautiful and golden. No one that perfect could be evil inside. Everyone adores him. I've seen the way every woman pants and flushes because her heart rate has kicked up when Josh appears. Mark's awesomely handsome and charismatic but Josh is just – luminescent.

  Mark sinks to the floor to kneel beside me in the rubble of clothes. I half want to wrap my arms around his beautiful bulk of brokenness and half cringe away. But still I can't decide whether he's playing me. He deceived me once and I can bear anything at all except that. It's all coming back, rising in my chest like a freezing tide.

  When I met father and son I was so impressed by and not a little envious of their allure and self-esteem.

  What must it be like to have parents that endow you with that kind of confidence? To let you know as you grow that you're beautiful and perfect until you believe it without doubt. I loved Mark for giving his child what my mother was incapable of.

  But right now Mark is bereft. Emotionally drained from what he's had to bear because of his son. Has that finally made him warped enough to kill?

  And now the polizia closing in. I should tell him I buried the evidence that incriminates him. But then he'd know I don't believe him. That I know it's the father not the son committing the ripper murders. And if he's tired of me, bored enough to seek out another girl already, then my neck's at risk.

  Chapter FOUR

  He looks like he's about to snap and I'm more than slightly terrified for my own survival. His moods have been insane the last couple of days. And what does he mean it's always been this way, since he was born? Obviously a child hadn't been slitting women's throats. It has to be Mark. I'm not that stupid.

  But he looks so broken and beautiful, the need to take him in my arms is overwhelming. He needs some support or he'll crack. He needs me. I can't bear how much he needs me.

  I reach my arms around to comfort him. I love the broad strong curves of the bac
k of his shoulders through the smooth cotton. He hauls me tight into his arms and I have to scramble on top of him until I'm sitting on his thighs with my legs wrapped around his hips.

  We cling tight to each other, knowing this will probably be the last time and sit there like that for what seems like endless time. The boats sail into the picture windows and out the other side while we hang on, our chests pressed deep together until I can't tell which is my heart beat and which is his.

  His breath is hot and ragged at the soft point where my neck meets my shoulder. My neck.

  The killer lives in this palace.

  I'm sitting in his lap.

  As though reading my thoughts, Mark grips me tighter in his powerful embrace and his lips touch my skin which prickles instantly.

  “I can't let you go,” he moans.

  Every breath he exhales sends ripples down my core and I'm infinitely aware of my sex spread wide on his crotch. The great bulge of him is pressing fervently against me and a current of electric energy makes me clench the muscles in my tunnel all the way back around the curve of my butt.

  Mark must feel my rigid grip through his groin because his swelling into my nether lips shoves harder. He curls his fingers into my hair to pull my head all the way back, exposing my neck.

  I shiver at how vulnerable I am with my throat completely unprotected and how naked that feels. When he kisses me harder there, biting and nipping the stretched sensitive tendons, I shudder in his arms. In moments while he continues licking my neck, his hands have opened the buttons of my shirt and freed my breasts from my old sporty white bra.

  Sitting high on his thick thighs, I'm at the perfect level for him to pull my erect peaks into his hot mouth. He mounds them together in his heavy hands, suckling and laving his marvelous tongue while I leave my head thrown back and moan out loud.

  I want him so much it's pulling me apart. I don't care what he might have done. He's still the same sexy perfect hunk of man who adores me. He'll never hurt me. He takes such care of me I'm starting to finally believe I deserve it.

  My skirt had shoved partway up my legs when I scrambled into Mark's lap. With my nipples in his hot mouth, he reaches one hand to push it all the way up and tug my underwear across my slit. His fingers dagger down into my folds, scooping up all the wetness pooling there and plunging it back into me.

  I gasp louder as his fingers rage all the way up my channel and corkscrew harder and harder while his thumb strums across the hard little point of my clit. I'm already shivering my way to climax, the heat sensation gathering in my legs and rising fast.

  My hands press against his shoulders to hold him off, it's too much, it's too fast, I'm going to come crashing over the edge too violently with nothing to catch my fall.

  But he throws my resistance off and pulls me tighter to him to plunge deeper into my pussy, pressing his thumb in clever circles, coaxing me higher and higher until I throw my head back and let out a groan as my orgasm hurls against the edges of my skin and explodes through.

  “Ohmigod.” I dig my fingers into the burly sinew of his powerful shoulders as my body convulses through the most massive release I've ever experienced. My blasted skin membrane keeps undulating through aftershocks and the waves of release keep coming until I need to keel over like a shipwreck victim reaching desert island sand.

  But Mark is having none of it.

  He holds me upright, close to his chest, with his hand inside my dripping sex feeling the tugs and pulsations peak and retract, peak and retract. Then he brings me back to the edge with some expert little curls of his wide fingers until I crash into another set of pleasure contractions.

  My head feels like a time bomb with all the white light flashes firing through my mind and I lean onto the ledge of his vibrant shoulder, panting for breath.

  He continues planting hot kisses on one nipple then the other while he tugs his belt open and frees his beautiful cock, hard and pulsing. For me. That's all mine. I know it's mine and he is mine because why else would he keep me here in his amazing home?

  My heart flutters alive as my breasts fill with desire yet again. I will never get enough of him. I wrap both hands around the thick blade and feel how burning up he is.

  For me.

  He cups my ass cheeks in his large palms, squeezing the flesh there with relish and lifts me until I push down on my heels to raise myself and with his guidance he pushes at my entrance and slides along the length of my pussy.

  An entirely new set of nerves whips into being as his pole strokes every shimmering pore at the same time. I sit up higher, impaled on his perfect huge cock with my breasts now buried in his mouth. He ravages them as though he's starving, licking across the entire sensitive globe of flesh.

  I enfold his head into my arms, curling my fingers around the back of his head, feeling the tender curve of his skull beneath the lush tendrils of hair. I could never ever leave him. I just cannot go, not like this, to leave him when he's at a low point and needs me. When he makes me feel like thiisssss.

  His thumb drives me to another climax but it's the sensation of fullness in my deepest chasm, him stretching me open to receive his seed as he groans through his release that makes me quiver in his arms yet again.

  We sit surrounded by my mess of old clothes, gasping for breath while I hold his head clasped between my full breasts. He rests his cheek there for an age while we both return to normal existence from the very heights we'd traversed.

  “Fuck, Riley you are so incredible. So sexy, so sweet, you do things to me I didn't know were possible.”

  Uh-huh right back at ya baby.

  We sit there still and I'm amazed his legs don't collapse with the strain of kneeling with the weight of both of us squashing them into a tighter fold. He's so strong it seems nothing can break him – except the problem of his son. And me leaving.

  He's holding onto me, inhaling as though smelling the aroma of my skin so as to remember it forever. I thought it was me that would be ripped apart by leaving, but Mark is beyond bereft.

  “So where are we going for lunch?” I say.

  And he lifts his head from my cleavage to look into my face. He looks so happy, my heart lifts in response.

  “We better show the world we aren't afraid of the Venice Ripper.”

  Chapter FIVE

  Mark hugs me, kisses each of my swollen sore nipples then picks up a pile of my clothes from the floor and goes to the window to hurl them out into the canal.

  “Noooo.” I scream, crawling across the straggle on the floor to grab at his ankle.

  “Don't tell me you want to keep this old stuff. I'll buy you all the clothes you want.”

  “Don't ruin the Renaissance master view with Forever 21,” I say. “A black garbage bag is all those crappy outfits are good for.”

  We go to a seafood restaurant, famous among the locals, behind the Rialto market and Mark orders a bottle of prosecco to go with the dozen oysters. The waiters stare at their only customers in surprise and confusion.

  “Should we be out celebrating at a time like this?” I whisper with a invigorated small laugh. Everyone else is locked up behind closed doors, fearful for their necks.

  “We're never going to stop celebrating,” he growls.

  Mark locks my hand on the table buried beneath his huge fist. It's almost as though he thinks I might run away he's holding me so firm. But he knows I won't. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, isn't that how the cliché goes? In every one of those sayings there's a core kernel of truth. I would say the thing that drives you apart also brings you close together. Unbreakably joined, the way Mark and I are now.

  “I've always thought you're a great dad,” I say and wish I'd kept quiet, as Mark's eyes turn black.

  “I mean that you accept him. That's important to a child t o feel loved unconditionally right?”

  Maybe I should just shut up and have another drink but I burble on.

  “I know I never was. I think my mother hated me from the da
y I was born. She took such pleasure when I was unhappy. I never felt okay, never mind good enough. It was always my fault. You know, like, if someone bullied me at school, I must have done something to deserve it. If one of her bazillion boyfriends disappeared it must have been because I threw my ugly ass at him.”

  The waiter brings a gorgeous dish of vitello tonnato and I laugh out loud so that Mark looks up from the white tablecloth to scan my face.

  “And I have this totally weird relationship with food because of her. I hate eating and I also can't stop. She used to force me to eat until my stomach was ballooning. If I ate she was pleased if I refused she'd throw a fit. I guess she wanted me fat while she was thin. Must be a mother daughter thing.”

  Now it's Mark's turn to laugh. But in an ironic head shaking way.

  “What's funny?” I say, opening my mouth for him to enter with a forkful of exquisite thick creamy fish sauce.

  “It isn't only mothers that use food as control.” He pops another yummy mouthful into me. “Force-feeding is a method of torture though. And either parent will use it as a means to get the upper hand over the vulnerable trusting child.”

  Is he telling me something about his own father? His gaze is years back in the past, half enraged, half destroyed. Almost exactly the way I feel.

  “But you've got good self-esteem which I have to force myself to embody because it doesn’t come naturally. Your father must have made you feel good enough.”

  “I was always in competition with others to get his love.”

  “Noooooo,” I squeal as the waiter returns with a bowl of dark creamy zabaglione. “That looks like whizzed up cream and sugar.”

  “No cream only egg yolk.”

  Mark ignores the two spoons laid either side of the dish and instead dips his finger into the velvety rich mix. The instant he touches it to my lower lip, I open up to let him inside my mouth. Licking the underside of his fat finger like he like his cock tongued.