She sat up so fast the room spun in dizzying circles and the water threatened to perform a reappearing act.
‘Slow down, Nita. There’s no rush.’ Damon reached out a hand to steady her.
She pushed it away. He had it all wrong. There was definitely a rush.
‘I have to tell you something.’
She was cold to the core, like her soul had been turned to ice.
‘Wilson - Damon, I remember why he was there. Dad sent him.’
Chapter Forty-Two:
They had ridden for hours, BJ always a few paces behind Charlotte. He enjoyed watching her ride, enjoyed watching her tight backside move up and down against the hard leather saddle.
The horse riding was his father’s idea.
What came next… that was BJ’s brainchild.
‘Why don’t we stop here for a while?’ He slipped out of the saddle. ‘It will be sunset soon.’
‘Shouldn’t we get back then?’ Charlotte seemed reluctant to get down from the horse or maybe she was just reluctant to be alone with him. ‘How far back to the stables?’
‘Not far. We’ve almost come full circle. And believe me; you’ll never see such a gorgeous sunset again.’
‘Fine, but just the sunset.’ She swung her leg out of the stirrups and dropped to the ground by his side.
BJ took a cooler bag from the back of his saddle. Charlotte eyed the bag, worried about his intentions.
So she should be. They weren’t good.
‘Champagne?’ He popped the cork on a bottle of Perrier-Jouet. At $6500 a bottle, it was a little over the top for an impromptu desert picnic but BJ was trying to impress. He also hoped the quality of the champagne might camouflage any residual taste of the MDMA that coated the inside of both glasses.
She took the glass, her body language as prickly and defensive as the desert cactus forest they had ridden through. Even her full red lips were stretched thin, an outward manifestation of her inward stress. She stared out at the dunes, gulping down the expensive drink so fast, it might as well have been two buck chuck.
He refilled her glass, leaning back against the soft, warm sand to sip his own. The bubbles popped in his mouth, tingling on his tongue like a thousand tiny masseurs.
It didn’t take long for the drug to loosen his tongue. ‘What do you see in my brother?’
She sighed. ‘Do you really want to have this conversation?’
‘Yes. He’s all wrong for you.’
Charlotte’s brown eyes crackled with dangerous energy as she leapt to the only conclusion that made sense to her. ‘I suppose you think I’m not good enough for him.’
‘No. That’s not what I think at all.’ He reached for her hand, the touch of her skin sending a million fireworks exploding up his fingers and into his body. ‘Damon’s not good enough for you.’
He could tell by her started expression that it was the last answer she expected. ‘I don’t think we should talk about this anymore.’
‘Are you afraid I’m right?’
‘No,’ she said, her voice petulant and moody.
She was afraid. BJ could see it written all over her face.
‘Anyway, what do you have against your brother?’
‘Nothing. Just a bit of sibling rivalry.’
He didn’t intend to say more. BJ had never admitted weakness to a woman in his life but the words were out before he could stop them, rolling like tumble weed across the desert sand. ‘I think I’m jealous.’
‘Of what?’
Her question was full of innocence and BJ was bemused that she had no idea the effect she had on men.
‘That he found you first.’
He touched the ends of her fingers to his lips, not so much kissing them as using them to trace the outline.
She snatched her hand away, staring at him for a long time, searching his face for any sign of deceit.
But there was no deceit. For once he was telling the truth.
‘I understand the physical attraction,’ BJ said, trying to make light of his confession. ‘He gets his good looks from me, you know.’
‘Oh, you’re so modest.’
At least she was laughing. He liked to hear her laugh.
‘That’s where our likeness ends though,’ he said. ‘Damon is boring, Charlotte. You’d never be happy with that.’
‘He’s not boring. His kind and gentle and caring and…’
‘Boring.’
She rolled her eyes and threw a small handful of sand at him. ‘I think we should change the subject.’
‘You’re right. I don’t want to talk about Damon. I want to talk about you. And maybe a little about you and me.’
‘There is no you and me.’
‘There could be.’ He topped up their glasses. ‘To a brand new friendship. May it lead us places we never imagined.’ He clinked his glass against hers.
‘I think you’ve had too much to drink.’
‘You’re scared of me, aren’t you Charlotte?’
‘No, should I be?’ There was bravado in her voice but it didn’t carry to her brown eyes, which were now the colour of the sand – warm caramel.
Gradually, Charlotte’s body language relaxed, the drug’s effects lowering her inhibitions. She leant back against the sand; her hands delving in and out as she let the powdery soft talcum sift through her long fingers. BJ could only imagine the euphoric tingle each grain elicited in her body.
He wanted to let go, to relax in the moment, to let the ecstasy take them where it would but his mind kept wandering to the end game.
BJ knew what would happen – what his father wanted to happen. He knew how things would end. Charlotte Burke would die. She had to.
But the more time he spent in her presence, the more he wanted to fight against his father’s wishes. He wanted Charlotte for himself. Not just physically – though sex with her was all he could think about most days. No, he wanted her in a way he had never wanted another woman.
He was thirty years old and had never been in a long term relationship. There were just too many beautiful women out there to limit himself to just one.
But lately, BJ had allowed himself the fantasy of imagining a life with Charlotte. Coming home to her every night wouldn’t be so bad.
‘Look how gorgeous those colours are,’ Charlotte said, gazing at the sky like it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
Mystic colour swirled in the air; every colour imaginable. Lilac, aquamarine, cyan, gold, magenta, burnt sienna and blood red; stretching across the sky, turning the night time vista into a gigantic canvas.
But BJ wasn’t watching the fiery sky. He was watching Charlotte, imagining what it would be like to touch her smooth, silky skin.
Charlotte glanced over at him, an innocent giggle in her voice as she noticed him staring.
He reached out a hand, stroking her cheek, her skin sending vibrations through his fingertips that resonated out through his body until he thought he would explode.
Yet there was nothing innocent about her reaction to his touch.
She pushed him back against the sand, her fingers in his hair, her lips crushing his with all the power of a Category Five hurricane.
Damon had always known his father was capable of immoral behaviour. He had never imagined for one minute that immoral behaviour could be turned on his own children.
Should he give his father the benefit of the doubt?
If what Anita said is true -
Their father was a monster – a filicidal madman capable of untold horrors. It wasn’t just nausea building inside him. It was revulsion and abhorrence.
Everything Damon had ever believed was a lie.
The foundations of his life had been decimated but there was more, so much more.
The more Anita said, the more the pieces of the puzzle snapped together like automated Lego.
Anita, Miranda, Charlotte. Every person that Zac Wilson had hurt could be traced back to one place – The William S Club – and
to one person in particular. His father.
If Anita is right, if what Miranda Evans found out is true…
There was nothing Damon could do to reconcile himself with the knowledge that his father was responsible for his mother’s death. There was no way Damon could ever forgive him for that.
Hatred arced through Damon’s veins like liquid fire, igniting a need for revenge.
Hatred not just for his father but for every member of The William S Club. They were all party to these actions. It all made sense now.
His grandfather’s mysterious calls to Anita, BJ’s miraculous arrival in Venice. The only thing that still didn’t make sense was their obsessive interest in Charlotte.
Oh God. Charlotte. I have to warn her.
BJ’s hands danced across Charlotte’s skin as he lifted her top over her head. Jagged bolts of electricity arced from his fingers through her nerve endings and into her brain, like a rolling wave of orgasmic energy. He unhooked her bra, setting her breasts free, tossing it to the side like the bothersome thing it was.
Who needed clothes? It was far better to be naked.
She reached for his top, tugging it over his head, pressing her body against his. The touch of skin against skin made her ache with desire. She needed to get closer, to feel his body pressed against hers.
His lips found her nipple and a tingling explosion of energy shot through her. She moaned, thrashing her head from side to side as a wave of pleasure spread down her stomach, breaking in a rush of warmth between her legs.
He bit the hardened skin, rolling it between his tongue and teeth and Charlotte rode another wave of pleasure, arching her body up to meet his, feeling the bulge in his groin.
She wanted that. She needed it. It was the only thing that would make her feel whole.
Her fingers fumbled the button on his pants, tearing at the zipper, her actions manic, jittery. She was an addict and beneath those layers of denim laid her drug.
And then it was free. It was hers.
She took it in her hand, feeling the hotness swell beneath her fingers.
She kissed the smooth, round head and it bucked in her hand. She squeezed her lips shut over the end, sliding it into her mouth. His body shuddered and her name rolled off his tongue, filling her with so much joy she almost burst.
It wasn’t enough. She needed more. She needed to be closer. To feel him inside her again.
‘Make love to me,’ she said, pressing her groin against his. ‘Make love to me, Damon.’
Somewhere in BJ’s drug addled brain he knew Charlotte had called him Damon but he was beyond caring about names. Only one thing mattered. She wanted him to make love to her. He’d be Charles Windsor if she wanted him to be.
It was far stranger that the words had not sickened him.
‘Make love to me.’
If anyone else had uttered the phrase, it would have been an instant turn off.
On Charlotte’s lips, it became an aphrodisiac, not a deterrent. It was his route to heaven, to the delightful centre of her soul. And the way forward lay beneath her jeans.
He just had to get them off her.
Easier said than done.
They were welded to her skin.
He pushed and pulled and when that still didn’t work, he started to tug at the heavy denim.
Slowly, inch by inch, they slid down her sensuous hips, revealing the curve of her firm buttocks, the soft silky patch of hair beneath her lace panties.
The slowness of her unveiling was torture and ecstasy all rolled into one.
BJ was a virgin again, about to have sex for the first time. He was dangerously close to blowing. He could feel the pressure build at the base of his cock, making its slow way up the shaft. Any second now it would spurt out and cover her.
What is that noise? Where’s it coming from?
Something shrill pierced the darkness, shattering the chemical spell that connected their bodies.
Charlotte must have felt it too because she pulled away, curling into a tight ball, the vertebrae in her spine like speed bumps slowing him down. Her hands were on her ears and she cried out, the piercing screams like knives to her brain.
‘Make it stop. It’s hurting my head.’
He was naked but BJ crawled towards her, searching with his hands for the source of the noise.
There. In her pocket.
He reached inside, pulling out a rectangular object that shuddered in his hand like an angry alarm. The glass screen was alight with a string of numbers that meant nothing to him.
When did it get so dark?
The last thing BJ remembered before losing himself in Charlotte was the colours of the sunset but the desert was now plunged in inky gloom.
‘Someone is calling you,’ he said, his brain trying to grab a stranglehold on reality.
‘Who?’ Her face had the open curiosity of a child, as if she didn’t remember what a phone did let alone who would be using one to call her.
BJ held the screen up to her, watching as her face changed from blank indifference, to recognition to ghostly white.
The effect was jarring, like a bucket of icy water thrown over mating dogs. She grabbed the phone out of his hand, ending the call without answering, her tortured eyes staring at him as if seeing him for the first time, the white in her face turning to green as she took in his nakedness.
‘What did you do?’ Her voice was filled with accusation.
She pulled her jeans back over her hips, securing the button and zip, her eyes full of condemnation and guilt as she felt around for her singlet. She found her discarded top, not even stopping to put her bra back on, shoving it into her back pocket instead.
BJ watched her get dressed as if watching drama unfold on television. It was happening to someone else, not to him.
‘I need to go.’ Hysteria made her voice crack and break. Hot tears broke through the dam of her resistance, spilling down her cheeks like quicksilver.
BJ was in shock, the sting of rejection a slow acting poison in his chest. No woman had ever walked away from him before.
He wanted to call out, to make her stop but he was afraid if he opened his mouth he would beg – and BJ had never begged a woman for anything, let alone sex.
He was used to commanding, to taking what he wanted, to using force if he had to.
She stumbled towards the horses, tripping and falling a dozen times before she reached them. She put her foot in the stirrup, pulling herself up into the saddle.
Go. Get out of here. Fuck off and leave me alone.
He wanted to shout all these things and more but it was his father’s words that had the biggest impact.
‘Don’t let her out of your sight, even for a minute.’
It was dark and, while they were close to the villa, he couldn’t risk her wandering around in the desert alone. She would get lost.
‘Wait,’ he said, getting dressed as fast as he could.
She shook her head, her haunted eyes searching the sand dunes as if she could figure out her own way home. Anything but stay in his presence.
‘Don’t be stupid, Charlotte. It’s dark out there and you’ve got no idea where we are. I’ll take you back.’
Her phone rang again and her back went rigid.
In that instant BJ knew who was calling. The knowledge, combined with the drug low, hit him like steel capped boots to the balls.
So she still hasn’t got Damon out of her head?
Chapter Forty-Three:
The phone rang, over and over again, like the peals of a church bell. When it wasn’t ringing, it was beeping - the sound tapping out like urgent Morse code.
Charlotte didn’t need to read the messages to know what they would say. She knew Damon wanted her to call but how could she?
How could she ever speak to him again after what she had done?
BJ had it back to front. Damon wasn’t bad for her. She was bad for him.
How could she ever look Damon in the eye again after begging
his brother to make love to her?
Love? Huh. What do you know of love? You’re sick. All those years in the homes, you blamed the men but it’s your fault. You’re the common denominator. You’ve got nobody to blame but yourself. Mitzi was right. You’re defective. You’re nothing but a dirty little whore. You’re scum. Lower than scum. You’re the bacterium that feeds off scum.
Everything you touch turns to shit. You broke Wilson. You turned him into a murderer. You got Miranda killed. You got Joanne killed. You probably even caused Nancy to kill herself.
Charlotte curled into the foetal position, tucking her knees into her chest as she rocked back and forward.
Fat tears rolled down her cheeks but now it wasn’t just shame. She was crying for all the people she had lost. Her mother, Joanne, Miranda, Nancy and yes, God forgive her, she even mourned her father.
The mouth of the abyss yawned before her and Charlotte sank towards its black embrace.
Damon paced the floor of his Spartan hotel room, an avalanche of dread freezing his veins.
‘Where is she, damn it? Where the hell is she?’
Terror closed around his heart like a spanner, squeezing it tight, crushing any vestige of hope.
What if something has happened to her? What if my dad is there? What if she’s dead?
His stomach lurched against his ribs, sending a surge of nausea rushing ever upwards.
He raced to the bathroom, vomiting in the small, grimy basin, washing the stench of fear down the drain with shaking hands.
Damon stared at himself in the mirror, wondering when he had got so old. It was as if each unanswered call had aged him, as if each unreturned message had lined his face with another deep furrow.
It had been more than thirty hours since they last spoke – and that was just a hastily written text. He had not heard her voice in more than two days.
Anyone could have sent that text. BJ could have sent it.
Call him. If he has her, maybe he will negotiate her return.
Damon knew he had nothing to barter with except his sister’s life but he knew he had to try.
He picked up the phone, hoping he wasn’t too late.