The Black Fox (The Dirty Heroes Collection Book 1) Page 6

  I manage to avoid my stepdaughter for nearly two weeks. Two whole weeks of burying my face in textbooks and learning about earth and fertilizer and drainage. Two weeks of walking up and down the vines, examining leaves and stems and bunches of grapes. I spend every night in the spare room, telling Valeria that I don’t wish to wake her when I come to bed after long hours of study. She accepts this without comment, and doesn’t seem to notice that I can’t stand the sight of my wife. I detest the smell of her. Her voice is someone scraping a bow over an untuned violin. Her vapid conversation makes me want to scream at her that I don’t care what she thinks or says. I never cared. I never wanted her. Only the curse wanted her.

  I spend every night alone, and I barely sleep. Does Lolita miss her Black Fox? Is she wondering where he is, if he’s discarded her after their moment of passion? Is she breaking her heart over him? I rub the heel of my hand over my own aching heart in the darkness, needing as much as wanting my Little Lo. On the fifteenth night after the ball, I work myself up into such a frenzy that I’m pacing up and down the bedroom at one in the morning, breathing hard and growling under my breath. She’s so close. So close. I ache from head to toe for her. My sweet Lolita with her luscious mouth and her pink velvet pussy. I remember the way she clung to me, her fingers digging into my shoulders. She needs her Black Fox, too. The memory of her trusting eyes as I choked her with my belt breaks me.

  I run to the wardrobe and yank out the carefully concealed bag. It’s the work of a moment to change into him, and then I’m swinging out the window into the night.

  The ramparts of the castillo are crumbling, but I feel my way in the darkness around to Lolita’s balcony. There’s a sheer drop below into the vines. I wonder what would happen if I fell and Lolita and Valeria found my body in the morning. Would Lolita scream as the mask came off and she realized who her darling Black Fox was all this time? Or would she sob over my body, broken and battered by this curse?

  Her room is silent and dark when I reach it. The night is warm and her balcony door is open. I steal inside, my booted footfalls soft on the carpet. The breeze lifts the gossamer hangings of her canopied bed, and I see her, a dark-haired princess amid a cloud of pillows and white sheets.

  How lovely she is. How much I want to care for her, my Little Lo. As the Black Fox, my heart is filled with tenderness. I slip up onto the bed and gather her into my arms. Even my lust is tender, and I coax her awake with soft kisses. As her eyelashes flutter, I wonder if I will need to clamp a hand over mouth to prevent a startled scream, but she’s not afraid of the stranger in the shadows. She smiles up at him.

  “Black Fox,” she whispers, arching her back and pressing her breasts up toward me. Her nipples are tight little buds beneath her thin nightgown. “Black Fox, I knew you’d come.”

  “I couldn’t stay away,” I say in a low voice, and press my mouth against hers. Her lips are like cherries, bursting with sweetness. “I’ve done nothing but think of you, mi niñita.”

  “Have you, daddy?” she moans, wrapping her silken thighs around me. “Will you touch me?”

  “Everywhere,” I murmur against her mouth between kisses.

  “Will you love me?”

  “With all my heart.”

  “Will you…” She hesitates for a moment, her eyes filled with uncertainty. Even fear. She needn’t be afraid of me. I would never hurt her.

  “Will you…punish me?” Her hands slide down my chest and stroke the leather belt at my hips. “Will you hurt me, Black Fox? Will you tell me I’m your filthy little girl, and stripe my skin with thick red marks?”

  I watch her pale fingers undo my belt, the buckle clinking gently. I seize her hands and plant them above her head. “Lolita, no. Why do you want that?”

  She bites her lip, and whispers, “Someone told me I deserve it, and I think he’s right.”

  How vulnerable she is, pinned beneath me, her arms above her head. How easy it would be for me to do anything I want to her.

  Anything at all.

  I leap from the bed, horror plunging through me. She wants him. She craves him. If I unleash him now, what if I can’t reel him back in? What if he takes over everything, and I can never find sanctity as the Black Fox ever again?

  What if she learns to loves him more than she loves me? I look down at her soft, prone body, so fresh and unmarked, her eyes filled with need for someone I was so sure that she hated.

  Lolita sits up, bewildered. “Black Fox?”

  Without another word, I run from the room. Not out through the balcony doors, the way I came in.

  Through her bedroom door.

  I don’t realize my mistake until I’m back in the guest bedroom, my back pressed against the door and my chest heaving. I wait, unable to move, waiting for Lolita’s scream to pierce the night. For her to wake the whole castle with shouts that Zacarias is the Black Fox; Zacarias has been taking advantage of her; Zacarias is a foul beast who must be rousted from the castillo; Zacarias must die.

  The silence endures. I tear off my mask and cape and sag against the door, my head in my hands. How did this happen? This curse is overtaking everything in my life, even my beloved, the one thing that I thought would be safe from him. I look at the mask lying discarded on the floor. From me.

  Lolita is a dozen or so meters away, alone in that big bed, restless and aroused. In need. In need of me. Of my belt. Of the discipline she craves that I can mete out on her delicate flesh.

  My teeth are gritted so tight that they might shatter in my head. Without the cape and mask I’m just a man, and powerful lust overtakes me. As I rip open the door and pound down the corridor, I think I hear evil, gloating laughter.

  Lolita has her head under the pillows when I charge back into her room. She starts to sit up, but I push her face back down. It’s me now, Zacarias, and unlike him, I’m not gentle.

  “Black Fox,” she moans, and her back arches.

  I quickly take off my black shirt and use it as a mask to tie over her eyes. Her short, silky nightgown with its thin straps is slipping from over her shoulders, and I pull it down her body and use it to tie her wrists behind her back. She whimpers as I pull the knots tight and regard her naked body, blindfolded and tied, and ready for me to misuse. She wriggles her knees wider, so eager for me to get started.

  I slide my belt beneath her hips and hoist her ass into the air so I can get a good look at her gleaming wet, pink pussy. So this is what she is for her Black Fox. A horny little thing who wants a big man to hit her and a big cock to pummel her into submission.

  I take a hold of her ass and give it a vicious squeeze. “That’s it, mi niñita. Be a bad girl for daddy.”

  8

  Lolita

  His breath is hot and menacing in my ear. I couldn’t move if I tried as he has my wrists tied behind my back so tightly. The leather of his belt caresses my bare ass and thighs. My cheek and shoulders are against the bed while my ass is propped up in the air. I can feel the Black Fox kneeling on the bed beside me. He slips a hand beneath me and palms my breasts, squeezing my flesh hungrily.

  My breath comes short and fast. Now that I’m waiting for the first blow, I almost want to beg him not to do it.

  He leans down and speaks in a murmur. “I’ll give you what you’re craving, Little Lo. But if you scream, I will gag you and strap you even harder.”

  My body ripples at the threat in his voice.

  He takes a fistful of my hair and gives me a shake. “Did you hear me?”

  “Yes, daddy,” I whimper. “Please, please, just do it. I’ll die if you keep drawing it out.” I’m nearly crying the tension is so thick.

  He gives my hair a vicious tug. “Are you telling me what to do?”

  “No, daddy,” I sob.

  “You better not be.”

  He takes his time arranging me, so that the agony of waiting mounts and mounts. No one’s ever hit me before and I don’t know if it will be a glow of heat or a burn of pain.

  When the firs
t strike comes, I’m not ready for it. It’s a white hot blaze of unbearable pain. I’m about to scream but the Black Fox pushes my face into the blankets and holds it there.

  “What did I say?”

  I cry silently, my shoulders shaking, not daring to make a move or a sound. My left ass cheek is throbbing.

  I feel his arm lift, and then he straps me again, this time on the right side. I press my face harder and harder into the blankets, screaming noiselessly. The pain is unlike anything I’ve known before. The sting of the leather is sharp, and the welts burn and burn, and then burn afresh as he strikes me again.

  I move past pain into an entirely other place. The Black Fox strips me bare and breaks me down. It feels good to finally be treated like I deserve to be.

  Little liar Lo.

  Unwanted schoolgirl.

  Nuisance.

  I deserve this. I deserve this.

  The Black Fox finally stops. I know it’s truly over when he takes my ass in his hands and squeezes, admiring his work. “You needed that, didn’t you, Little Lo?”

  I nod, shuddering with exhaustion. He strokes my body with long, slow caresses, telling me how good I am. That I took my punishment like a brave girl and he’s proud of me. I hear the pleasure in his voice. He flips me over. My face is wet with tears behind the blindfold.

  “What do you say?”

  I lick my lips. “Thank you, daddy.”

  The Black Fox grasps both my ankles and pulls me down the bed toward him. He pulls me so I’m sitting up, my feet dangling off the edge of the bed. I feel the brush of his thighs against my own.

  “Suck me.”

  Something hot and blunt presses against my lips. I open my mouth and his cock pushes over my tongue. I suck him eagerly, imagining that it’s my pussy he’s pounding as he rhythmically moves his hips.

  He fists his hand in my hair. “Are you daddy’s pretty little girl?”

  I moan and nod, eager to do anything for him, hoping he’ll take pity on my neediness and fill me with his cock. I’m aching between my legs with the desire to be touched, to be fucked so hard that I’ll feel it for a week.

  He pulls his cock from my lips, leaving me gasping. His fingers caress my face, feeling my tears, and then he pulls my legs apart to feel my sex. I’m so wet that my thighs are coated. “Little girls who cry with a wet pussy are perfect little girls. Will you always be so good for me, Lolita?”

  He pumps his fingers in and out of me. “If you’ll always be my daddy.”

  I wish I could see him, but he hasn’t removed the blindfold and my hands are still tight behind my back. I wriggle forward and rest my cheek against his muscular belly as he finger fucks me. As the sensations build, intensified by the heat and pain in my ass, I rub my cheek against him, like a cat. His other hand caresses my hair, telling me that I’m a good, sweet girl, that I’m going to get my reward.

  I come in a great rush of pleasure, leaning into his fingers and body. The orgasm goes on and on, fueled by the heat already radiating through me. I take a gasping breath, and he flips me over onto my stomach. I feel the thick intrusion of his cock, sliding deep and true right to my core.

  “Yes,” he hisses, drawing back and sheathing himself inside me again. “How perfect you feel after you’ve been punished.”

  “Pound me hard, daddy,” I moan into the bedclothes. “Punish me more.”

  The Black Fox takes a vicious hold my hair and rams his cock into me, over and over, a brutal rhythm that has me flying high. He growls in my ear and then sinks his teeth into my shoulder as he comes.

  For a moment he stays where he is, his weight on his arms and his cock lodged deep inside me. Then he slowly withdraws.

  “If I untie your arms, do you promise not to take the blindfold off?”

  I don’t know why it matters. But then I realize—he’s removed his mask. I long to see what he looks like, and whether he’s as handsome as I know he must be, but I nod. “I promise.”

  The first thing I do when my hands are released is reach up and touch his face. I’m right, he’s not wearing the mask. He tenses beneath my fingers as if he’s afraid of something. As if I might discover some fatal flaw. I explore him carefully and his skin is smooth and warm. His short beard rasps against my fingers. I smile, reveling in the sensation of touching my lover. His brow is stern and his nose is long and straight. When my fingers touch his lips, he kisses them.

  “What made you change your mind?” I whisper. I thought once he charged out of my room he’d never come back.

  He nips at my fingers with his teeth. “My much worse half kept hearing you begging me to punish you, and I had to make mi niñita happy.”

  His much worse half. Just because he likes to strap me with his belt and fuck me hard doesn’t make him a bad man. I love that he can work so hard to protect Spain, and be so sweetly cruel to me as well.

  I reach up and lock my arms around his neck. “Please let’s run away together. I hate it here.”

  He takes a deep breath and I know before he speaks that he’s going to say no. I cover his mouth with my hand. “Don’t tell me no. We can leave here together. Now, tonight. I’ll live a life as a runaway. I can be a vigilante, too.”

  He draws my hand away from his mouth. “You want to live with me, wherever that might be?”

  “Of course.”

  He chuckles softly, and I frown behind my blindfold. “Is that funny?”

  “No, mi niñita. It’s not funny. Only a little ironic that you’re asking me this now. There’s nothing I want more than to live freely with you, out in the open, but it’s too dangerous.”

  “You’ll overcome your enemies.”

  “Too dangerous for you.”

  I sit in darkness, not understanding. I reach up to tear the blindfold off, but his hands catch mine.

  “Niñita, you promised.”

  “But why would it be dangerous for me?”

  He sighs regretfully and pulls me into his arms, cuddling me on his lap as he sits on the edge of the bed. The warm night air caresses our naked bodies. “Because I’m cursed.”

  I stare at the place I think his eyes must be. “What curse? Don’t be ridiculous! There’s no such thing as curses.”

  “I used to think the same thing, but I know it to be true now. Ever since I…laid eyes on something precious. The most precious thing in the world to me.”

  He sounds so sad. So bleak. “Black Fox, I don’t understand.”

  He strokes my hair back from my face, and I know he’s gazing down at me. “When I was a very young man, a fortune teller called out to me in the street saying that I must hear what she had to tell me. My friends thought it was funny, and made me sit down while she gazed into her crystal ball. If I hoped to hear that my future would be filled with riches and happiness, I was sorely disappointed. She told me that I’m cursed, and that if I ever fell in love, I would die for love.”

  I listen carefully to his voice, because it’s all I have to gauge his emotions. He speaks with utmost gravity. “And you believed her?”

  “I think I must have. I became the Black Fox, and left everyone behind. I never felt one stirring of love, and I was glad. Until now.”

  I bite my lip, wondering if he means that he’s felt the stirrings of love at last. “But, Black Fox. There’s no such thing as—”

  He kisses me softly, halting my protests. For a moment I become lost in his kiss and the feel of his arms around me. My heart beats hard despite his strange words. Is this his way of telling me he’s falling in love with me, despite everything that divides us? He lives in the night, in the shadows, and I live in the day, in this cruel, unfeeling castillo.

  “I want what is good and right, Black Fox,” I whisper, when my lips break from his. “I want you.”

  His fingertip runs down my nose. “I know you do, mi niñita. Your heart is pure and good, and it beats so sweetly against mine, which is rotten with corruption.”

  I open my mouth to protest, but he castigates m
e. “Listen to me, Lolita. I am telling the truth. I am cursed. It was a wicked queen with strange powers who did it. She was jilted a long ago by her hero, and ever since then she has been cursing men down the ages, and they must pay the ultimate price for love. I don’t need you to believe me, but you must understand that I believe this.” He takes a horrified, shuddering breath. “I can feel her close to me when I am happiest. Right now, she’s whispering hateful things into my ear because you’re in my arms. I dream about the queen. An evil, green-eyed witch, and she’s laughing at me. She’s wildly jealous of you. If I take you with me, we will both perish. Even this is dangerous, but for the moment I’m able to…for the moment you are safe.”

  I think rapidly, trying to understand. “She cursed you because you’re a hero, like the man she thought she was going to marry? But you didn’t do anything! How unfair that is.”

  When I touch his face, I feel that there’s a sweet, sad smile touching his lips. “I’ve never told anyone this before. I’ve been alone for so long that I’ve forgotten what it’s like when someone truly sees you.”

  He says that even though I’m blindfolded. But it’s true. I do see him. “Black Fox, I will break your curse.”

  He goes on smiling that sad smile. “Lolita, will you sleep in my arms? I want to hold you tonight.”

  We lay down together on the bed and he wraps his arms tightly around me. My mind races with everything he’s told me. If he allows himself to fall deeply in love with me, he’ll die. My eyes fill with tears behind the blindfold again. What a cruel paradox. The more I hold him and kiss him, the closer death will creep. If I look upon his face and tell him I love him, I’ll seal his death warrant.

  There must be a way to break the curse, but if there is, it eludes me. Exhaustion and despair overtake me, and I fall asleep.

  When I awake I feel around the bed, but I’m alone. I rip the mask off, half hoping, half afraid that I’ll see his face. I blink away the blurriness, and see only sunshine, cream carpet, and my empty room.

  I’m all alone. I always will be, because the man I love can’t love me back.