Puppet Master

Chapter One

Instantly, she thought, isn’t that how everyone goes in the end? In an instant?

“Miss Casey, will you be alright here alone? Is there anyone that we can call for you? To stay with you this evening?” the younger officer asked. Neither of them were willing to leave such a delicate young lady clutching the doorframe of a country house, alone, in such a state.

The girl was tiny, not much taller than five foot, her hair a startling platinum blonde that reached her slender waist in a plaited rope, and the most vivid violet colour shone behind the glitter of tears in her eyes.

She shook her head no, she would call her brother, Nathaniel, as he would also need to be informed. He would be the next of kin, she thought inanely, he would need to know, to sign papers and things, he would need to be here. Waves of panic rolling through her slender frame.

They’d called him on her behalf, fetching a hot cup of tea laden with sugar, for the shock, from her mother’s kitchen, plenty of sugar, and a blanket from the back of her mother’s prized red chesterfield sofa. Instantly, Tori was struck with her mother’s scent from the pale pink blanket that Lydia Casey had knitted two days after finding out that she was to expect a daughter after ten years of a home filled with X chromosomes, muddy footprints, and toy trucks.

It was her mother’s signature scent; Clive Casey had brought a small bottle for her on every celebration day.

“It’s the one I wore on our first date,” her mother had said wistfully, when five year old Tori had asked why it was always the same bottle, “I’ve never worn another one since, because your daddy said it was even better than your Grandma Dolly’s Apple pie. You’ll understand one day baby.” And she'd sighed, lost in some far away land at the bottom of memory lane.

She could still hear her mother’s voice, twelve years after that day, in this very room, but it was far away, as though her head were submerged in water, as though she was drowning, and couldn’t reach her.

And then she realised she never would.

And that the scent would wear off this blanket eventually.

And her parents would still be gone.

She heard voices, far away in the space right before her eyes, and then his arms were around her, and it wasn’t her brother, it was Jayden, and she wished that she could tell her mother that she completely understood, that in that very moment he was exactly what she needed, to pull her back to anchor. That as soon as the scent of his aftershave, that musky, wooden, fragrance, had surrounded her, it was okay to cry because she was in the safest harbour she would ever find.

And it made her cry a little bit harder for all that she’d lost in an instant.

How long she cried on his shoulder, she never knew. In those first moments of grief comes timelessness, filled with tears, regret and remorse. Pure misery, pure despair, and it racks every cell in the body.

He simply held her, and became everything to her. Her tether to the world, her heart and soul, her forever.

In an instant.

Sometime later, she lifted her head from his shoulder, suddenly aware that this was Jayden, holding her, maybe for comfort, but her body began to react to being in such close proximity to his. She was completely new to the feeling of tightness low in her stomach, her breasts suddenly heavier, and aching, and something close to electricity ran through her veins.

Nervously, she looked up into his eyes, oblivious to the temptation that she was offering to the tall, dark man that held her. Her brother’s best friend, eight years her senior, who had been fighting the driving desire to kiss the tears from her eyes for almost five hours.

Or three years, depending on which perspective you were looking at the situation from.

“Jayden,” she whispered uncertainly, lightly wetting her bottom lip with her tongue before she pulled it between her teeth, and that was completely his undoing.

With a hoarse groan, he lowered his head, pulling her bottom lip into his own mouth, “No baby, don’t do that,” he whispered after a second, “You’ll leave a bruise.” He cupped her chin in his hand, gently rubbing his thumb across her bottom lip, completely demanding that those nerves work to his will.

His mouth was mere millimetres away from hers, and his ice blue eyes were mesmerizing her, holding her captive, so that she could only nod, in a way that would have been completely imperceptible had it not been so very important, had every single one of her childish dreams been threaded through it like a puppet. She’d never felt such desperation, and almost closed the distance between them herself, but, her nervousness, her innocence, held her back, as she feared anything that could break this moment, shatter it. Surely this was some misery induced fantasy?

“No, Vittoria, if you want me to kiss you, you should ask me.” His voice was different, she noted, although it was soft, he was giving her a command. And he never called her Vittoria, but it sounded so mature, so sexy, coming from his lips, that it sent shivers down her spine. But it didn’t threaten her, or intimidate her; it just made her heart beat even faster behind her breasts, until she was certain that he could hear it.

Clearing her throat before she spoke, she tried to sound seductive, and passionate, but her voice came out soft and wistful instead, “Kiss me. Please?”