Very Bad Billionaires (29 page)

My heart flutters toward my stomach as the heat builds between my thighs and dampness pools. My arms snake up around his neck, stroking the thick sinew and curls of hair straying from beneath the hood he wears. I feel him stiffen. Have I gone too far? Did I mistake his intentions with the force of my own desires? Ohmigod suddenly I feel like an idiot.

The music is louder, more insistent, the gaudy terrifying masks loom up in front of my face. Only his emerald velvet keeps him visible as our fingers come uncoupled. I dance with wilder abandon and intensity. Oblivious to being separated from my Renaissance mystery suitor and other bodies replacing his.

Dancing with him, feeling his lips press into mine I was sensuous and sybaritic and alive. I've rejoined the living at last. I'm carried along the
fondamenta
with the heaving lascivious group, enveloped in the music. We turn a corner, up some steps over the bridge, down the steps, another corner.

It's okay- if I just dance fast enough, hard enough, my eagerness for intimacy will seem like part of the play and my humiliation will move on. Of course he didn't want me like that. I'm still dancing but now I’m alone. The crowd has fallen away and I feel faintly ridiculous dancing in the cobbled street by myself.

Chapter TWO

I turn one corner, then another seeking my posse and I'm lost. The narrow alley stops short, barricaded by an ancient wall that is the side of a building. I'm in a dead end and I'm all on my own.

Again.

How did I lose that flash of emerald in the crush? I'd been so lost in my reverie of movement, whipping my body around to shake out the trapped emotion. And then that invigorating kiss. Everyone moved on without me. It's cold and dark, the canal lapping at the green slime coated wall beneath my feet is menacing black. The walls all around are too high and closing in.

My heart pounds in my chest and the air dries up behind the mask. I can't breathe, am tugging at my lungs. I jerk the stupid shield away from my face and gasp for fresh oxygen, pulling in jagged gasps of icy damp air until the constriction in my chest eases. I'm still bent forward slightly, clutching my knees, when a voice slices through the shadows clinging at the old brick walls.

“Are you okay, my lady?” Mock chivalrous, soft molten gravel that makes me burst from my skin.

I whirl around this way and that. There's no one there. The fear of ghostly apparitions leaps into my heart. Then he emerges from the shadowed doorway. A massive centuries old slab of ancient wood reinforced with pocked iron bars and studs. My heart races with a totally different beat.

“I, oh, I took a wrong turn,” I say with a stammer of shock.

The lone iron streetlamp in too far back down the alley for me to determine much about him aside from the dark mask. The gold highlights around the dark wells where his eyes lurk. His body is solid and powerful. Adorned with the old fashioned garb of the height of Venice. A puffed up doublet of gorgeous fabric and a pair of hose around some exceedingly ripped legs.

The guy could be a football player or any kind of athlete. Why is a man slithering around the back alleys of Venice in Carnival without his friends? My heart is making my chest ache with its insistent hammering and goosebumps prickle all the way down my spine.

“You have to watch those in Venice. You can come to a watery end.”

He's American. I think, although there's an exotic twang, something seductive and lush. At least I can comprehend him although part of me is responding too intensely to the lilting accent mixed with the timbre of wet sand.

“It would be a shame to lose a woman as beautiful as you,” he says.

He wears the mask with the huge protruding nose. For an instant my heart thrills when he steps into the light. But no, his body is not the one I encountered in the dancing throng. That powerful broad seductive stranger is forever etched in my vision. How can I possibly be disappointed at that loss? But my heart drops low again with sullen defeat.

The tall hunk takes a few steps toward me and I take an involuntary one back, lifting my chest in some sort of defense. I realize I'm walled off still against any man approaching me, no matter how innocently. Will I ever let go and be natural with a man again?

“Hey, it's okay. I'm not an ax murderer, promise.” He holds up his palms with a 'Look Ma, no ax' grin and walks slowly toward me as though I'm a cowering animal. Just being in the narrow alleys makes my skin prickle with cold pins. The way they disappear abruptly and without warning into lethal water. This is not the place to be drunk- or make enemies.

“Why is everyone disguised as a freakish animal?” I ask, pointing at his head. He lifts his eyes as though looking up through his lifted mask, then tears it off to reveal a mop of dark blonde hair.

“Better?” he grins. “See I’m not the dark reaper.”
No you certainly aren't.
No one can be that angelic gorgeous divine and evil. I feel embarrassed suddenly at how muffin-like I must seem to him.

“I'm just a little jumpy from the crowds and the sudden plunge into a dark alley,” I say, willing my shoulders to drop from their clench at my earlobes.

“Too many scary movies. Or vampire novels.”

“I promise not to bite – not your neck anyways.”

He grins wide at the ruby flush drenching my cheeks. I can't avoid picturing the part he would like to bite and he knows it.

“Vampire novels can't be good for a woman alone,” he says. “You
are
alone? Or did you lose some lucky guy in the throng?”

Is he flirting with me? He who could have any woman on the planet. Must just be an automatic reaction for a man-god like him.

“No, yes, I'm alone.” A flare of disappointment biting again at losing my mystery seducer. “Newbie divorcee.” Bugger, why did I find it necessary to explain apologetically for my reduced emotional circumstances? It wasn't even that new, six-seven- months was enough time to move on with my life instead of hauling my baggage around the world.

“He must be a dick to let a woman like you go.”

He
is
flirting. Aside from the flattery, his entire body reads seduction. Unless I'm delusional, which really would be pathetic. But must be the case because this guy is seriously hot. Hot enough to burn me alive like a witch at the stake. His dirty blonde shag of hair styled by a genius to appear perfectly unkempt. His body formed by the gods, six feet tall, broad and bulging, even beneath the swags of velvet. But the face, oh that face of an angel. And young. I mean younger than me.

“He is. Was. A dick that is. But not for that reason.”

Stop right there, do not tell one more stranger that your husband slept with your best friend
and
a cocktail waitress the same night. And following her terrible betrayal, your dear friend just had to come tell you the sordid story and share
her
outraged hurt. Because she absolutely could not believe that he'd done that to her. And you, like the idiot you've always been had to put your arm around her and tell her it was okay. That she'd find a man she deserved.

Ugh. Just ugh.

“Are you on vacation?”
Corny but change the subject and stop shaking. Am I freaked out about the past or present? I cannot be quivering over some kid testing out his lines on me.

“Yes, no, kinda. I mostly live in London but my dad lives in Venice so I come over a lot, like every weekend pretty much.”

“London? That sounds funky. Are you in school?” I'm subtly trying to make him divulge his age.

“No. I'm done with school.”

And now I really can't tell how young he is and figure twenty, twenty-one max. So we're both in our twenties but the gap makes a huge difference. The leap between twenty one and twenty seven is enormous. I've been a grown up and married while he was still in high school. At this point it hardly matters because he is swoon-worthy and I might tip over again, from the heady swirl just looking at him.

He saunters a little closer, not inclined to divulge further information about his daily habits. Whether it's his raw magnetism or my own vivid imagination, I take three more steps back and he leaps for me, grabbing my arm and pulling me to him.

“Be careful, you're almost in the drink, as the pirates say.”

I look back and see my heel is already hanging over the edge of the precipice. My heart is pounding hard enough to beat right through my chest. Which just happens to be precariously close to the firmest most perfect pecs I've ever laid my fingertips on.

We hover, right on the knife edge of the canal. His hand grips me firmly, his arm encircles my waist, scooping me so my back arches. I'm gazing up into blue green eyes as dark as the canal.

“Remember to never, ever, take a step backwards in Venice,” he cautions. And he's still not letting go of me.

“Ohmigod I cannot believe I've managed to almost drown twice in one night,” I gasp, his hot breath is hitting my forehead and making my eyes flutter.

Why does he bring back the man who kissed me after saving me from tumbling into the canal? There's something so similar that for an instant- but no, the body is definitely not the same.

“You know how many grisly cadavers have been dumped in these canals over centuries? Never discovered. It's the perfect place for murder,” he says. His tone fake horror, but his eyes glitter through the gloom.

When I shudder he laughs.

“Sorry I didn't mean to terrify you. Well maybe a little if it means I get to feel you quiver in my arms like this.”

I momentarily forget the unwanted belief that Dwayne played with other women because my thighs weren't slender long. Two men have held me in their arms tonight. Two gorgeous, as far as I can tell, tall and strong strangers have held on to me far longer that is necessary for chivalry's sake. I could remain here for another few centuries. The power of this embrace makes me feel so safe and desired. But he's too young and not a substitute for the other one. The one whose tongue drew me into his possession.

No! Don't get drawn in. Your ripped up heart won't tolerate any more right now.

“I'd better get back to the hotel,” I say, reversing back along the dead end alley toward the streetlight.

“So early?”

“Got to pack. I'm leaving tomorrow.”

Does he look disappointed or is that my willful imagination?

“I was going to invite you for a Bellini.” The almost lop-sided grin is so inviting that I feel the force-field throw itself up in front of me, shielding me from his irresistible allure. It still makes no sense for this beautiful man to be standing in a dark dead end alone.

“I really can't.” I'm already backing away up the alley. 

“Let me accompany you to safety at least. To keep you from falling into the big blue.”

He walks along with me, striding to keep up with my pace. I'm almost jogging. Desperate to get away from the seductive pull of his wide, almost lop-sided grin. The body built to pull a woman into its cocoon and never let her go.

When I point out the small
pensione
I'm staying at, there's a brief moment when I think he wants to come inside.

Would I? Should I let him? He's so gorgeous it makes my eyes ache. And that seals the deal because no way can I live up to his perfection especially in my present state of inferiority complex. I don't want to be a disappointment to a lover ever again.

“Goodbye,” I mutter, already half through the wooden framed glass door etched with Venetian masks. Using it to shield my body from any irresistible onslaught.

“Josh.” He tells me his name then with a kiss on each cheek, he's gone. As he walks away, I feel that sense of recognition again. As though we've met before somewhere. My skin still searing from where he brushed his lips across it. The legs resist hauling me up the narrow red-carpeted staircase to my room overlooking a narrow backstreet canal far below.

I throw myself on the bed inflamed, my entire crevasse between my thighs throbbing.
What the fuck is wrong with me?

Chapter THREE

Mark & Josh

Fuck, but she's hot. And the beauty of her is that she has no fucking idea what those full on dangerous curves do to a man. Especially when combined with a sweet fragile innocence that makes her so- real. What did it was the eyes behind the mask. Those dark slits were filled with a kindness that could rip you apart.

We've had too many model girl skinny bitches clogging up our life with cold eyes only interested in gazing at a mirror. It comes with the territory when you've got more money than you know what to do with. There are always women hanging around wanting a piece of that. Like it's gonna rub off on them like magic dust they picked up at Sephora. Although they'd much prefer to dig their claws all the way into it and are willing to endure quite a lot of torture for the hook.

They're like fucking vultures. Thinking they're entitled to suction off someone else- a man. Like it's their life purpose to get someone else to fund their existence. Dunno, maybe they're just brought up that way. Like back in the Renaissance when Venetian families trained their girls from birth to hook the wealthiest, most powerful man. It must be coded into every woman's DNA now.

Except now they aren't patrician well-gened girls, they just think it's their birthright. If they can post a selfie of a pair of fake tits and butt cheeks in designer jeans, they must somehow deserve a fat paycheck for life.

But this one's not that way. A body to bury yourself into forever and a beautiful self-effacing smile you want to suck on. Mixed with those kind and lovely, compassionate eyes. What an astounding woman. A woman looking for a new life, and adventure. That's obvious, coming to Carnival on her own? But she's leaving.They're always leaving. Or trying to. The problem with Venice is people just passing through and those that live here know too much.

So close. We almost had her but she spooked and ran. Maybe with one more push we'd have caught her. For some reason we played it too gentle this time. Somehow she defied us with those doey frightened eyes. But now that's got to change. 

Riley

The afternoon has turned cloudy, the sky a stormy gray when I check out of the hotel. I didn't get my Venice romance but I feel I've finally turned the corner and left Dwayne back there in a dark rut. The receptionist at the B&B tells me where to catch the boat to the airport and I pull my wheelie down the quay toward the Grand Canal. The water has swollen high in the levees and I wonder whether the famous floods will shortly spill over the edge.

There's a menace in the way the tide tosses back and forth like a mad thing in restraints. It's a weird thing about water, so serene and calming one moment but can turn murderous in an instant. A swell of fear rises in my chest as I recall that a boat is the only way out of here. I'm going to be stuck on the rising tide, chopping about across the open sea to reach the airport on the mainland.

Night drops around us like a Phantom at the Opera's cloak, even though it's just past three. And then white globules flutter through the shadow.

Snow.

The chill in the air turns as ice cold as a knife point and I cannot stop my body shivering. Every boat that arrives is a local, rammed full with people rushing to get home before the storm arrives. Nothing for getting to the airport. The time passes and I'm going to miss check-in but there are no options.

The smaller speedboats that serve as private taxis have vanished. None will cross the open ocean in the ravaging seas, growing more irate with every passing minute. I don't blame them and I'm not even sure I'd take one and be at the mercy of the ravenous water for the sake of making a flight.

Finally an orange light appears through the dark fog and the small group of people resolutely determined to get home clamber on board. The boat doesn't leave immediately, despite the impatience of the passengers. We fidget and try to calm the grip around our chests. The captain is shouting at someone, the agitation in his voice lets us know he's reluctant to make the crossing.

At last we set off with the old seadog Italian, day old white stubble and a blue mariner's cap, cursing all the way. Perhaps he's invoking Neptune to keep us safe. The cabin is down beneath the deck so we are almost level with the black thrashing water. Or it seems that way with the dark waves clawing at the windows. For every foot we move forward, we're pressed two feet back.

About a quarter across the lagoon, it's impossible to tell for sure as the windows are streaming black, I realize I've missed the flight. I'll have to book another and find a place to stay at the airport. That blows my entire budget for next month and I'll be living on mac 'n' cheese when I finally do make it home.

Home. What does that mean now in an empty apartment?

Crap, what an inauspicious end to what was supposed to be a new beginning. Nothing for it but to surrender to the weather fates. Then the boat splutters and chugs to a near halt. Have we broken down?

Ohmigod, my stomach rolls in time with the boat dashing about on the open seas. We're going to drown in this thrashing black water rising all around us. The engine jerks into life, dies then pops again to force a path through the swell. As the captain steers a juddering large arc, a flurry of garbled foreign languages surges around me. None of which is English. Questions, panic, conjecture.

It's obvious we're turning back. Ohmigod, for sure. I'm frozen through my core, my body will not warm up even though I'm in shelter after hours of waiting on the dock. It's late, the city is deserted and I don't think I have enough credit remaining on my card for a Venice hotel. The boat doesn't make it back into the Canal. The captain heads for the nearest port, a high dock on the back side of the city. He pulls up and everyone climbs off, leaping to solid ground from the surging boat.

I have no idea where we are or where I might find a place to stay. People mill around, looking to each other for clues. No leader emerges in our group and some of us- those in the secure comfort of a couple- wander off to search for shelter. Soft fat pellets of snow tumble into my face as I try to take a sideways glance at the few stragglers left on the quay with me. A woman, older, and a bunch of single men. No one seems eager to join forces. We're all kind of lost, stunned in this odd personal disaster.

A booming roar of engine echoes around the total silence of the floating city. It shocks me out of my slump and I notice the other woman has slunk away. My chest is tight with the fear pressing down. It's so dark my eyes are sore trying to see through the fog. Then the roar plunges towards me from the blackness and pulls up in front of the moored boat. I take a step backwards and slip on the green slime on the sodden stone quay.

“It seems Venice doesn't want to let you go.”

I right myself and whip around to the caramel voice behind me and it's him. That stunning vision of male perfection, smiling with eyes sparking. “We meet again on a dark night.”

“Yes. Hallo again.” I don't dare say more, my voice croaks at his beauty. I move out of the shadows, drawn like a magnet toward  the sleek black cigarette speedboat he's standing in, another man at the wheel beside him.

I look at the older man and my heart wrenches across my chest. He is Josh in a few years time, all grown up, matured, experienced and worldly. But otherwise just as virile handsome, just as powerfully ripped across the chest- an absolute facsimile.

“My father, Mark.”

I swallow hard. I can't even raise my hand to take his outstretched one because my limbs have turned to wood-pulp. He cannot, just impossibly cannot be Josh's father, he's so young they look like brothers. Except his hair is lush dark brown where Josh is mucky blonde. Mark has a rugged veneer across his skin that only makes it shimmer more decadently handsome than his kid. I am shaking all over and I can't make it stop.

“Riley,” I murmur, forcing my fingers to reach for him. His hand is warm and firm and inviting. So inviting I'm being pulled in, suckled and swirling. I feel like I'm losing what's left of my mind.

“Beautiful name.”

“This is the woman I told you about, lost in Carnival,” Josh tells him.

“Yes I know, the young lady who likes to dance alone in dark alleys. You must be very brave.”

“I don't feel brave right now, just like I've overstepped my own boundaries,” my voice almost a whimper I'm so weak all of a sudden.

“That too requires courage, moving outside the zone.”

His eyes graze across my body in a way that makes me imagine I might be unbelievably desirable. My heart continues its war dance in my chest and a ripple of sparking shocks travels down my core.

The first man in years to make me feel – alive. Apart from last night when a masked stranger took my mouth, making me covet another later. One dangerously gorgeous but much too young for me.

My body is in a turmoil of sensations making my knees waver underneath me, ready to give way. No you cannot sink to the ground. You'll freeze.

“Where are my manners?” Mark says. “Where can we take you?”

“Thank you so much, but it's too late. I was heading to the airport but I've missed my flight now.”

“We just came from the airport,” Josh says. “No flights leaving. Nothing but a battle with the horde of angry travelers.”

I stare at him stupidly. My bare head too frozen to form a plan. Too overwhelmed by a posse of virility materializing in a massive speedboat from the vile night to offer me a ride.

Me.

My body is pounding out a beat inside so I have to shift from foot to foot to dissipate the tug between my legs as well as the chill. Mark, both of them, talk so easily and seem so fascinated with what I'm doing, it frees me of shyness.

“You made it across the lagoon though?” I whisper.

“Josh is a model in London, he needed to get back for a shoot.”

“I should have known. I mean, you know, you're obviously an, idol.” I flounder for a word to describe a man too young that I'd have carnal dreams about even if I was fifty.

“He was training to be an architect but he dropped out. For now.”

“No flights tonight and unlikely tomorrow. They're trying to get everyone a room but it's a scramble.” Josh says. He seems completely unfazed about losing his photoshoot.

“I think we can take this chit-chat home,” Mark announces. “Get Riley out of this
tempesta
.”

“Oh I couldn’t' possibly impose on your generosity. I'm sure I'll find a room.” What am I doing? I don't even know where my
pensione
is from here. Whether they've filled my room.

“Nonsense. You must come home with us. Hop in.”

I waver on the slithery stone quay. Can I jump into a strange speedboat with two strangers on a dark and stormy night? That's like everything my mother would have warned me against. If she'd been bothered with my upbringing enough to caution me about men.

The two divine Gods have their eyes fixed on me, waiting. No one that gorgeous could be evil. Josh already promised he wasn't an ax murderer. Last night comes back, my ridiculous mistrust when you'd think I'd be grateful for the rescuing. Here I'm again acting all suspicious. Even my eyes are slitted.

“You'll be better off with the devil you know, at least a little bit,” Josh says, with the underwear model's secret enigmatic smile.

Josh & Mark

It's almost impossible to keep the look of triumph off our face.

After an afternoon of panic, waiting at the end of the canal outside her little hotel. With the storm whipping up into a nightmare, it looked as though we'd lost her. She disappeared so quickly down the
fondamenta
that by the time we doubled back in the boat to a canal wide enough to take us, she was gone.

Now we'd selected her there was no turning back. She was our girl and despite the foul weather and the danger of driving the cigarette across the open lagoon, giving her up was
not an option
.

We stood at the airport in the midst of the filthy throng of humanity, all pushing and shoving to get home faster and going nowhere. Humanity is a repulsive species. Then, after finally being forced to concede - something I cannot tolerate- and heading back to town, there she was right in front of us, boarding the boat to cross the lagoon. Two minutes too late to pick her up, we had to drive endless circles around the bay as the storm whipped up. Then waited for the idiot captain to get halfway across before realizing he was a lame pussy and turning back.

Is she worth all that? She stands on the quay looking at us with wet snow glistening on the tips of her eyelashes. It's sweet how she's scouring each of our faces in turn for legible clues of sociopathy. Can she trust us, should she?

Yeah, she's definitely worth it.

It's beyond fucking glorious watching the emotions play across her face. She's so obviously been tortured recently. With some emotional abuse from childhood, or that jackass ex-husband. Seeing it plainly displayed on her lovely face makes you want to curl up inside.

And now she's the one with inclinations virtually announcing themselves in neon across her face. Not to mention that gorgeous fuckable body. The curving swell of her magnificent breasts and hips. She is pinging with battling emotions. The pretty pink heat that gushes into her cheeks. The way she looks down all unsettled because of the feelings swishing around inside. It's delicious.