Puppet Master

Chapter Eighteen

“I watched you from the window, I could practically read your mind babe, I’ve known you so long, and you were ready to fuck him, ready to let him take everything that is mine, whether it’s right or wrong to feel like that, I just, I went crazy. I felt like you were fucking betraying me Tor,” his voice had dropped to a sulky mutter; a child throwing toys out of the sandpit and whinging when Action Man is suddenly missing his ammo belt. Tori never noticed though, she stared at his chest and wondered if maybe alien activity and demon possession weren’t such absurd ideas after all.

“So...” she began to whisper, only to be cut off abruptly as he pulled back, cupping her chin in his hands to look into her eyes.

“Don’t interrupt me, babe, I need to get this out there, between us. You see, I’ve always held you in the background, like some idealized little princess. I never thought about you growing up and finding someone, you’re mine, why would I? Except I know that I can’t be the man you need baby, that you’re going to wake up one day and tell me that you’ve found someone who is. Nobody ever will be, Tor, that’s what I discovered. I’ll never look another man in the eye and tell him he’s good enough for you. So my only alternative is to make sure you don’t look. It’s probably not going to work. I don’t really know how to do all this, to be what you need, if I’ll ever work it out, even.”

There were at least five bombshells in his statement, and her mind struggled through each and every one of them until she realised she had no more answers than earlier, or yesterday as it was now.

“So ... where does this leave us ... and this.” She gestured around the room, her teenage fantasies come to life – well, Romeo and Juliet never had Duracell, or blindfolds, but the scene was an exact replica.

“I didn’t know if you were going to bail, or see it through, once you saw the club, but if you leave me now, this is the last memory I’ll keep of us like this,” a frown darkened his features, and his whole face fell into the Puppet Master’s mask, she pretty much knew what was coming before he opened his mouth, “But you won’t be leaving me. I’ll visit you regularly, as I now have a business here, I can be around more. You won’t want or need anyone else, or you will, but I’m not even going to give you a chance to think about it, you won’t have a spare second. It’ll be me, and only me. You’ll clear your schedule for me the entire time we have together, I won’t share you with anybody, and I’ll treat you as you deserve to be treated, as my angel.”

He wanted to carry on with this? After everything he’d said last week, he wanted to carry on? He actually cared who she saw?

Her brain was so muddled with happiness, she’d forgotten to ask the all important questions, she’d forgotten his rules.

She’d simply leaned in to kiss him, to show him all the love that she’d hidden away in her soul for her entire life.

His lips against hers were not passionate, or demanding; they were soft, yielding to her ministrations for a change, and she felt the shift in her gut, suddenly loving her own power in this one kiss.

She never thought to ask what held him back.

Her blinding smile as he pulled away was mirrored with his usual arrogance, as he took her coffee from her hands, draining the remains, and pulled her from the bed to an En suite beyond the lounge area. How big was this place? It felt like bloody Narnia!

It was basically a wet room: tiled from floor to ceiling with a stone tile, flashes of chocolate brown added to the effect in the shower curtain and with a lace veil across the window. It mimicked the richest, most elegant hotel that Tori had ever been to, when she visited the Dominican Republic with her parents and her two brothers just a year before Caleb’s death.

She turned back to Jay, a quizzical look in her eyes.

A blush spread across his cheeks, and he smirked at her sheepishly. “One of Caleb’s holiday snaps. They caught you unawares, and Nate had just thrown a bucket of water over you before you went out into the sun. You were dripping wet, with a massive grin on your face, wearing a little blue bikini. I knew I never wanted anyone else near you, that I wanted you next to me for the rest of my life, but I just, yeah, I knew your brothers, your parents, they wouldn’t like it, and you were just a kid, but uh ...” he trailed off, uncomfortable with the course of this discussion. Tori had been a princess to him his whole life; a beacon of everything he wanted and would never have.

The epitome of perfection, and every fantasy almost came to fruition as he designed this suite by his own hand. The only woman he would ever bring in there.

The honeymoon suite had been built for her, from her own images, to fulfill a lifetime of unsatiated and forbidden desires, but would he ever be good enough to carry it through to forever?