Hooked Up: Book 3 (33 page)

The phantom crawled into bed beside me and trailed kisses along my bare arms. His lips pressed my hand like a knight in shining armor. He
was
a knight; his name Chevalier. Alexandre Chevalier. “Alexandre?”

“Yes, baby. I’m here. I’m back from London.”

“But you were in jail,” I muttered.

“Not jail, chérie, just at the police station giving a statement. They let me go.”

I stirred from my hazy slumber and sat up. “You’re real? This is true?”

He laughed. “Yes, I’m real. This isn’t one of your crazy dreams.” He laid the back of his hand on my cheek. “Everything’s been sorted out.”

“But what about Laura?”

He exhaled as if all that pent up fear of spending time behind bars was expelled in one long breath. “Someone made a confession.”

“James? James killed her?”

“No, not James. He was telling the truth; he’d just got back from rehab, from the Priory.”

“Who then? Who killed Laura?”

“The stairs killed Laura. Aided by lots of very slippery furniture polish.”

I jolted up and leaned back against a pile of soft pillows. I was well awake now.

Alexandre went on, “Mrs. Blake, the housekeeper, came to the station to make her statement. She’d polished the stairs that day. Laura was teetering about in kitten-heeled slippers. She fell down the stairs; slid down on her back, ending by crashing her head on the bottom stone step. It was confirmed by forensics that there was polish all over the soles of her shoes.”

“Who polishes stairs? Wasn’t that a bit stupid?”

“Stupid or clever, depending which way you look at it.”

“Mrs. Blake did it on
purpose
?”

“She told the police that Laura had asked her to polish the staircase, but as you say, who polishes stairs?”

“But hadn’t she been working for James and Laura for years?”

“Exactly. She hated Laura’s guts. Secretly. But stayed because of her loyalty to James. She’d been working for his mother before. Years ago, when I was over there once, I heard Mrs. Blake complaining to the cook. After she made her statement, she asked the police if I could stop by the house. They’d given the case the all clear by that point, and somebody had been sent over to clear up the blood. When I stopped by, she told me she had something that belonged to me. At first I thought she must mean something to do with the Aston Martin. But no, it was the titanium hip parts, and teeth.”

“But Laura said it was in the safe deposit box.”

“She was bluffing.”

“But how did Mrs. Blake know that they were yours? How did she
know
that?”

“She said to me, ‘Mr. Chevalier, I don’t know why this stuff is important to you, or what it all means, but what I
do
know is that Mrs. Heimann was blackmailing you.’ Household staff usually know what’s going on where they work. She would have heard Laura make phone calls, probably eavesdropped here and there. The ironic thing is that it was stored in the garage all along. I even had the key.”

“The last place anyone would suspect? Especially you.”

“Exactly.”

“Mrs. Blake told me that she’d been planning on calling me and letting me know. When she saw that James and I had been arrested, she was horrified and came down to the police station, straight away to set the record straight.”

“So in the end, you didn’t need all those swanky attorneys?”

“The second the police realized I was the owner of HookedUp, they were putty in my hands. One moment, I was a ‘frog,’ and the next their best mate. Two of them had met their girlfriends through HookedUp. Even if I
had
killed Laura, they were so impressed with me, I think they might have let me go.”

“What have you done with the evidence?”

“Oh, don’t worry, I got rid of it.”

My heart’s palpitations had steadied now to a more even rhythm. My poor baby, with all the adrenaline swirling about my body, had sure been on a rollercoaster ride tonight. “Does James know about the IVF malarkey?”

“No, luckily Laura hadn’t spoken to him about that, although she had told him that I was still in love with her and wanted to get back together.”

“So he hates you?”

Alexandre’s lips tilted up on one side into his signature crooked smile. “I showed him all the photos of you on my iPhone and shared with him the fact that you were pregnant. He calmed down.”

“So you threw the teeth and hip parts away?”

“Too bloody right I did.”

“Where?” I asked, fearing they could come back and haunt us like in one of those psychological thrillers or horror movies. My stomach churned again . . . oops my baby was getting another ride on the Big Dipper.

“Hopefully, it’s all sitting at the bottom of the deepest part of the English Channel. I came back by helicopter.”

“Ah, so that’s how you got back so quickly. What about Sophie? Did you let her in on the details?”

“Not yet. I’m playing that one by ear.”

My questions were like a machine gun. “Does she know you’re free?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t she call me then?”

“I told her not to. I wanted to surprise you myself.”

“So you chucked it all out of the helicopter into the sea?” He nodded. “RIP Monsieur Chevalier.”

“My father wasn’t called Chevalier.”

“Really?”

“Sophie and I changed our names when we were in hiding.”

Another little secret.
“Chevalier: Knight. Whose idea was that?”

“Mine, of course. At eight years old, I fancied the idea of being a knight in shining armor galloping on my steed. I was into Sir Lancelot.”

“Well your wish came true. Because you
are
my knight in shining armor.”

He held my head in his hands and kissed me gently. “I’m glad you see me that way.” Then he leaned back on the pillow, stretching out his long legs, but his head landed on my new toy. I burst out laughing. “Oops, what’s this hard purple thing?” he asked, inspecting the oval-shaped vibrator, the two halves meeting together like a cracked dinosaur egg.

I giggled. “A gift from Daisy. She bought it today at the sex shop. It’s a ‘his and her’ design. The man gets his half and the woman hers. It splits in two.”

He broke it open, switched it on and it rumbled in his large hands.

“It’s called the Zini Deux. We both get to use it together apparently, at the same time. You do me and I do you.”

“Well, this will be a first.”

“I know, me too. I always associated vibrators with lonely, sad women whose husbands can’t get it up, but apparently they’re big news these days and very popular with couples.”

Alexandre put his arms around me and drew me close. “Oh, Pearl. You have no idea what’s been going through my mind in the last twenty-four hours. It’s been hell. First, wondering what the fuck I was going to do about Laura, then finding her dead, the police, James, all that time thinking the evidence was going to come to light, and even if I got off scot free, I thought it was over for my mother. Jesus, what a rollercoaster of emotions it’s been.”

“I can imagine. I was going through the same. Thank God Mrs. Blake was so honest. She could have easily kept her mouth shut.”

“They would have realized, sooner or later, that it was an accident.”

“Yes, but you could have spent weeks, even months, worrying and waiting for that phone call from Laura’s attorney . . . waiting for them to arrest your mother. And how do you feel about Laura being dead? That couldn’t have been pleasant, seeing a corpse with her head split open.”

“I’ve seen a lot worse, believe me. But still, I did feel a sort of sadness. Sad that Laura ended up being that way. But I also felt a great sense of liberation, obviously, that she was out of our lives for good. I know that’s a cruel thing to say but it’s how I felt, how I still feel. It also brought home to me how much I treasure you.”

He rested his head on my shoulder, breathed me in as if I were some deliciously scented flower, and we held hands. This was a quiet moment for us both. Peace at last. We both slipped our bodies farther down the bed and, entwined in each other’s arms, fell into a deep sleep.

WAS I ASLEEP? Awake? Alexandre was licking my nipples softly, making me moan. My eyelids fluttered open and I remembered that he really was here beside me. I lazily stretched out my hand and felt, not the Weapon of Mass Destruction, but the Tool of Creation, hard as a rock. Ready. With my eyes half closed, I inched my way down the bed and took him in my mouth, licking, sucking, wrapping my lips around him—I felt a desperate hunger for something and someone who so nearly had been taken away from me.

He groaned, “Oh, yeah baby. Oh yeah, that feels so fucking good. I was thinking about you when I was arrested.”

I dragged my nails lightly over the delicate skin of his balls and he moaned, his hands threading through my hair. I was still half asleep and realized that we hadn’t even kissed hello properly, we were so busy talking in the early hours, and then fell asleep. I walked my way up the bed with my hands until our faces touched. I could feel his hardness against my mound and I lay on top of him. He smelled so good.

“It was like an eternity,” I told him in a whisper.

“I know.”

The tip of my tongue flickered on his lips. He gave me that half-cocked smile, the dimple in his cheek making me remember why I was so smitten the second I saw him in the coffee shop. Light was pouring through the open parts of the drapes, probably almost midday. A beam of sun lit up his head, and I noticed shimmers of auburn highlighting his dark hair, which usually looked almost black. He draped his arms about me, squeezing me against his muscular chest. He gave me an “Eskimo kiss,” rubbing noses gently, but what was going on down south was far less innocent.

“I’m trying to control myself, Pearl,” he breathed into my mouth. He parted my lips with his tongue and moaned. His cock flexed against me. His kiss was passionate but brimming over with need and love. I returned it with equal fervor, my tongue sliding along his, stroking, flipping under and over and out until our tongues tangled almost into a sexual feast.

“Where’s that egg thing?” I whispered.

He cupped my ass, his erection tight against me. “Really, you want to have a go?”

“Why not? We’ll have to try it at least once, or Daisy’ll be disappointed. Speaking of Daisy, she and Amy must be up and about.”

“I heard them leave a while ago,” he told me in a low voice. “We’re quite alone, and I put a Do Not Disturb sign on the door.”

He leaned over and took the big purple oval from the bedside table and held it up. He smirked.

“Pull it apart. Let’s see how it works.” I took one half from him and switched on the lowest setting. Even on ‘low’ it was still very buzzy. “This fits you right here,” I said, cupping his balls with it. But it was too ticklish for him; he jiggled about.

“Let’s see what happens when we light you up,” he said. He switched on the ‘hers’ half and pushed it underneath me so it cupped around my form perfectly. The sensation was different from anything I’d ever tried, not so unlike the showerhead; intense, unrelenting. I slid farther down his chest, back to my last position, with my face resting on his erection and swept the base of his cock with my tongue as vibrations massaged my clit. I pressed another setting for myself and it pulsated in waves. I looked up at Alexandre and saw him observing me, biting his lip as I ran my tongue along his length. He simultaneously, from his half, must have felt the vibrations on his balls.

“I need to see more of you, baby,” he said, sitting up, taking his half from me and switching it off. “We can do me another time. Right now, I want to concentrate on you. On your back.”

“What?”

“Do as I say. Roll on your back.”

He got off the bed, pulled me by the legs so my butt was on the edge of the mattress. Grabbed my ankles and hoisted me up so they were resting on his shoulders. “Hook your pretty feet around my neck.”

I did as he said. He stood before me, a veritable vision of beauty; the Greek god again. That delightful V so prominent with the marble statues, but unlike their little fig leaf offerings, I observed Alexandre’s massive centerpiece, smooth and proud. His pecs flexed as he maneuvered me into position. He wanted to see all of me. I curled my toes about his neck and lifted my arms above my head. The last time I had done this he’d impregnated me, but now he brought the vibrator and pressed it into its rightful position. It felt amazing—almost too intense. I bucked back a touch and he got the hint; he switched it down a notch and I writhed about—it felt great.

“Open your eyes, baby,” he commanded, and I did. I observed him. With one hand he held the gadget against me, and with the other he gripped his cock. “In a minute, I’m going to come all over you.” His index finger massaged between my butt crack as he held the Zini in place with his large hand. It zapped my clit and vibrated at my entrance relentlessly. Meanwhile, I focused on his erection, tight in his fisted hand as he pleasured himself. I was thrashing about, thrusting my hips at him, controlling the waves of pleasure by either pulling back a touch or grinding my hips forward.

“Lick your fingers and play with your nipples, Pearl.” I did, and his hand worked faster, jacking his cock with racing speed. I tugged at my nipples and felt a rush of electricity shoot between my legs. Mixed with the intense vibrations, it felt amazing.