RIPPED: A Dark Romance (Killer Lips Book 1) (7 page)

Chapter TWELVE

I don't mention the issue of the locked door again. I know he'll deny it and tell me it must have been stuck, rather than admit to the vulnerability of worrying about me. That he has someone to care about now besides his perfect son.

And then he gets a little crazy when another woman's body is discovered floating in the canal.

Now all of Venice is in a pandemonium.

The papers are calling the killer the 'Venice Ripper'. What seems to be freaking Mark is that the
polizia
have released the information that this girl was killed last weekend and her body has been floating in the canal ever since.

I'm so horrified, I take the
giornale
to the library and pull out the English-Italian Dictionary to decipher the events. Normally I'm the last person for ghoulish details but this is a matter of necessity.

Mark barrels in looking like a mad man.

“What are you doing?” he bellows, making me leap up from the huge oak table. Seeing the fear swirling in my pupils, he lowers his tone.

“Don't read that nonsense, sweetheart, you'll never sleep calmly again.”

“I have to know what it says. How she died,” I whisper, cringing back from him because he seems so changed.

Why has this crime got him so worked up? He snatches up the paper and scans across the lurid passages of text.

“It only talks about her body being in the canal for almost a week and how usually the victims of murder are swept out on the tide before ever being discovered.” I shudder and he wraps me into his arms.

“Sweetie you're trembling all over,” he murmurs with the syrupy gravel voice I love.

That poor girl's fate is affecting me badly but his heart is also pounding hard against my breasts. It must be terrible for him too, this horrible event right on our doorstep and I stroke the back of his neck to calm his anxiety. When I feel his body go slack and relax in my arms, I calm down too.

We have each other at least. Just knowing that makes this whole thing less terrifying. Yet again I'm saddened that I'll have to go home eventually and there won't be anyone that I belong to. Or that belongs to me, not even a cat. 

“It's scary to think a young woman, same age as me, could die so horribly and no one even misses her. So lonely.” I'm quivering because that poor girl could easily be me without anyone to care.

“Someone will claim her. She was probably drunk and fell into the canal,” Mark says, stroking my hair so I feel his full presence. It presses up against the walls, filling the room.

“What about this word in the report
torturati
. She was tortured and
abusato
. Some words I don't need to look up in the dictionary.”

Mark scoops the paper back up from where he dropped it, crosses the softly creaking floorboards and tosses it into the fireplace. It blazes alive for a few moments before dying back down.

We stand staring at each other in a mess of confusion and I'm aware of the view through the windows behind him. The red striped police boats are manic, lunging in all directions on the wide canal. I shiver and a bizarre feeling of dread overcomes me.

Before Mark came into the library I'd picked out certain words in the report to try to make some sense. The word
unghie
had drawn my attention, because it was the name of a much loved teddy-bear when I was a child. When I had a family. Before my dad disappeared and left me with a mother from hell. Her sole remaining pleasure in life to belittle her only child into the ground.

Unghie
means fingernails. The next sentence contained the words '
velluto verde'
and I'd just put together the translation when Mark flew through the tall double doors.

Green velvet

“Let's not talk of this anymore.”

He pulls me back into his arms, the place I love to be more than anywhere in the world. It sounds ridiculous after such a short time but it's true. It's like the old me has been obliterated and emerged as fancy new me since Mark.

“There are terrible things that happen in life but we mustn't let them spoil our happy moments when they arrive. I care for you, Riley.”

My heart does a flip-flop in my chest, matched by a trail of tingles all the way down my spine. My breath gets stuck in my chest where I'm holding it tight, unwilling to let this instant slip away.

“Don't be frightened. We hardly know each other but I know what I feel and this feels like – something.”

“I feel it too,” I murmur. And it frightens me half to death.

After dinner Mark takes me to my bedroom and I drown in his embrace. Sometimes the most exhilarating position is lying helpless beneath a powerful man. I feel small and protected under him as he takes me however he wants. Until I pass out in blissful dreams.

No breakfast goodies have been laid out for me on the table by the window, for the first time since I arrived. I dash to the door and it falls back on my tug, surprising me at being unlocked so that I stumble before running out into the hallway.

I have no idea where I'm going and in my haste I'm still wearing the silk and pure lace peignoir Mark insists I sleep in. He loves to toy with my nipples or stroke my swollen clit through the thin damp fabric.

My feet are bare and as I tear along the high paneled hallway, my hair and the long gown stream out behind me. I try the various door handles but all are locked as usual or open onto the same sumptuous guest bedrooms, unslept in for a long time.

And then one opens, the last door on the passageway, gives under my grasp on a bed newly slept in. The room is not yet made up but the occupier has recently left. There are no toiletries in the ensuite but the trash basket contains guy stuff.

I tug the closet open and find a hanging line of black pants all exactly the same and a perfectly folded pile of black cashmere sweaters. All exactly the same, same designer, as though bought in bulk at a Gucci Costco.

Who sleeps in here?

Mark? Josh? Why is it suddenly deserted?

Back in the recess, behind the door, I swish my hand around not expecting to come up with much of anything when my fingers graze something soft and lush. I reach in and tug it forward and sticking out of the top of a cotton laundry bag where its been hastily stuffed, a slash of red satin, poking from a pocket of green velvet.

I rip the bag open where the tie gathers the top and pull out an old-fashioned man's costume. A full tunic of luxury fabric, short as they wore them back then, with the skirt cut open to reveal- their manhood- the codpiece thing. Four black balaclavas definitely not of the time period complete my trove.

And suddenly the soft furry fabric reminds me of crashing into a man's arms as he hauled me back from plunging into the cold water. Of the plush feathery material covering his taut muscle. The well-packed hunk man who kissed with a mouth that devoured me, as my palms rested against a green velvet costume slashed with red silk.

Ohmigod that was the night I met Josh in that creepy dead end alley.

What was he wearing?

I have no clue. No image forms other than the outrageous beauty of his face and the blonde hair illuminated in the night. I'd been so agog at coming face to face with such stunning manliness, every other detail faded to nothing.

I fish furiously in my brain, frustrated with the inability to dredge up an image of what his costume had been that night. It comes back to me as nothing but a massive, dark and shapeless form, like a shadowy old film negative.

It seems logical that he'd been wearing this costume, seeing as it's stuffed in his closet.

Green velvet.

Josh & Mark

We're getting closer every day to Riley. Beautiful Riley with the incredible body built for loving.

There's no way she's ever going to leave us now. Not now. We have claimed her and she's ours.

I know he locks her in her room at night. Trying to cage her all for himself. But it's far too late for that. He can't keep her away from me. I keep coming back and I'll keep coming back until Riley is totally mine.

Continue to PART TWO

RIPPED is a two-part darkish romantic suspense. The second part will be published July 15
th
.

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Scroll on down for the next chapter – start of Book 2

A bit about Molls

I'm a wanderer. Rootless. A slow world traveler. A visit is never enough for me to fully experience different cultures. I have to stay and make like a local. I've lived in different countries all over the world for research, great food and no end of adventures. Naturally, all my stories feature mysterious alpha males in exotic locations. What better kind of lover is there?

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Now read the Start of RIPPED Book 2

I dash out of the room and down to the library. Of course yesterdays newspaper has already been cleaned from the grate. It would have been embers. What about today's paper. Not in the library and the door to Mark's study is locked.

Finding nothing anywhere in the palatial reception rooms, the massive ballroom that opens onto the Canal at the perfect height above the water. I can't resist twirling round and round with my arms stretched wide, under the Murano glass chandelier as big as my entire bedroom back home.

The spinning alleviates some of the ramped up stress in my body and the memory returns of dancing at Carnival with a strange masked man who might be a killer of young women. The Venice Ripper.

A blast of queasiness overwhelms me which is not from the turning.

When I stop rotating the full length windows are filled with movement, a roaring black tiger bursts from the bowels of the building. The sleek speedboat explodes from beneath me and rips across the water, disappearing before I can be sure whether there are actually two figures on board.

He's playing me. Of course because a man like Mark would never be alone. My mind darts to the obvious solution to all the skullduggery. He keeps another woman in the palazzo besides me. It's the only possible explanation for why he never sleeps the night in my room, why I've never even gained admittance to his and for the identity of the person he just spirited away in his magnificent speedboat.

Again? Again I'm the idiot woman being used for her body while another woman has my man's real attention. What the fuck is wrong with me? Aren't I enough to satisfy any man? When am I going to stop attracting all the psychos and get a man who wants only me? 

I tear out along the main hall of the
piano nobile
, up the stairs and run headlong into three men emerging from one of the main bedrooms. When I recover from the collision and focus on the surprised group standing in the hall staring at a deranged looking woman in a slinky full length nightgown and robe, I realize they're some sort of officialdom.

They're all dressed in highly pressed dark uniforms with sinister white stripes along the sides and I realize I must look like the madwoman from the attic, all tousled hair and a nightgown in the middle of the day.  I draw myself up tall and pull the robe around me to cover my barely covered breasts, naked under the thin lace.

“May I help you gentlemen?” I inquire with as much regal stature as I can muster.

The three gendarmes, or whatever they call them in Italy, are staring at me in frank shock, interest and if I'm not mistaken a little appetite. They look back at the housekeeper questioningly. She was in the process of pulling the double doors closed when I careened into them and a smattering of vigorous Italian is exchanged.

“
Scusami
,” I interrupt ('excuse me' being about the only Italian I've picked up. “I don't suppose anyone speaks English, my Italian is coming along rather slowly.” In that moment I resolve to begin studying immediately.

“I can speak a little,
signorina
,” the older guy who looks to be in charge says. “I am Comandante Alanzo Guerra, Comandante of the Carabinieri for the Veneto and you are?” He loves rolling 'Comandante' off his tongue with vigor.

“Riley Hart, I'm a guest of the owner here. Why are you, er, gentlemen-
carabinieri
here?” (Fuck what a mouthful to exercise the tongue with).

“How long have you been here?” The Commander ignores my query.

“I arrived on the day of the storm, the last day of Carnival,” I lay stress on that detail for some reason.

There's another burst of Italian between the police chief and the housekeeper, I assume he's confirming my alibi.
Alibi
? Why do I suddenly feel guilty and that I need to prove myself?