A Taste Of Sin Read online

  Table of Contents

  Books by Fiona Zedde

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Books by Fiona Zedde

  BLISS A TASTE OF SIN

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  850 Third Avenue

  New York, NY 10022

  Copyright © 2006 by Fiona Lewis

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  All Kensington titles, imprints and distributed lines are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotion, premiums, fund raising, educational or institutional use.

  Special book excerpts or customized printings can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write or phone the office of the Kensington Special Sales Manager: Kensington Publishing Corp., 850 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10022. Attn. Special Sales Department. Phone: 1-800-221-2647.

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN 0-7582-0920-7

  First Kensington Trade Paperback Printing: July 2006

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Printed in the United States of America

  Chapter 1

  “Excuse me?” Ruben flinched at the sharply hissed words but didn’t stop stuffing clothes into his duffel bag. “I said I’m leaving. Caitlyn is waiting for me in the car.”

  Dez backed up and crossed her arms, a precaution against the sudden urge toward violence that bubbled up inside. He was leaving her. For another woman. If this wasn’t some surreal, fucked-up shit. She focused on her anger. It kept her attention away from the pain that started a few seconds ago when she had walked in on him dragging clothes out of the closet and flinging them into his bag.

  Their argument yesterday hadn’t prepared her for any of this. He was spending too much time with that girl, the stranger they picked up in Santa Fe a week ago on a whim. Yesterday, nothing was said about leaving, about dumping Dez in the middle of the desert like trash. This was coming way the fuck out of nowhere. Wasn’t it just three days ago that they were trading body fluids on the stairs leading up to this very room, their hands tight over each other’s mouths to stop their noises from waking the people down the hall? The whole time when they were fucking was he thinking about the other one—Caitlyn—as his dick moved inside her, as Dez’s fingers moved inside him, making him shudder and quake and almost bite her fingers off when he came?

  She took a deep breath and fought for calm. “Why are you doing this to me, Ru?”

  “Dez, what we had was casual. Neither of us wanted anything permanent so I’m not doing anything to you. I’m just giving you the room you need.”

  “Room? Are you fucking kidding me? For two years you were ten feet up my ass looking like you wanted to stay there for life and now you’re talking about room.”

  “She doesn’t know.” That, too, came out of nowhere. He made his voice soft as if Caitlyn could hear him through the walls.

  “Doesn’t know what? That you’re as much of a queer as I am? That I fuck your ass every night and you love it? Shit.” Her voice rose in a wail, dragging out the last word until she clamped her lips shut over it.

  He didn’t have anything to say. Dez watched him finish up, zip the bag closed, then rush into the bathroom for something that sounded like his toothbrush and the oversize Ziploc bag full of condoms. The bag that Dez had just filled. He came back into the room and looked at her briefly, his eyes skittering over her stone face.

  “Sorry.” Then he was gone.

  She squeezed the bridge of her nose. Fisted her stinging eyes. Breathing deeply, she tightened her eyelids until dark spots danced behind them, but when she opened them the pain was still there. Beyond the window, the taillights of Caitlyn’s powder blue Ford Thunderbird flashed to life. Ruben jumped into the convertible and they coasted down the drive.

  Dez turned away from the window in disgust. There was no point in staring after them like some lovesick little bitch. There were things to be done. But when her gaze raked the room, she couldn’t think of a single fucking thing that she wanted to do. Not one. At the desk near the door lay a scattered heap of letters she’d gotten from the mailbox in Albuquerque earlier that day. With relief she grabbed the one with her mother’s handwriting, the rectangular business-sized envelope with the pink valentine stamp. She ripped open the letter, needing comfort badly. She glanced at the sheets of paper with their flowing green script, then blinked when the print blurred before her eyes. Shit. Dez flung the letter down and grabbed her jacket. She had to get out of here. As she tugged the jacket on and headed for the door, her cell phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Ms. Desiree Nichols?”

  “Yes. Can I help you?”

  The official-sounding voice on the other end asked politely if she knew where her mother was. She battled her impatience long enough to be courteous in return and kept walking. Then the woman mentioned a biopsy and test results and Dez stopped walking. All thoughts of Ruben and his red-headed fucktoy disintegrated and blew away on the breeze like ashes. She paused in the middle of the hallway. Her hand lifted and fell against the pink and green floral wallpaper. The hardwood floor seemed to stretch out for miles beyond her feet and suddenly the white banister leading downstairs seemed very necessary for her to stay upright. Dez cleared her throat. She pressed the phone to her ear, listening carefully for anything that would tell that this was some sort of stupid prank, that she was on Punk’d or something. The voice continued. No one jumped out from behind the wallpaper to tell her that it was all a joke. The woman wanted to change Claudia’s appointment and needed confirmation that she would be there. She wasn’t answering any of her numbers in Miami, and Dez was listed as next of kin on her forms. It was very important that Claudia show up for the appointment. Could Dez guarantee her presence? Through the pounding in her ears, she said yes, finessing more information out of the woman until all she could do was hold the phone against her ear and stare at the closed door at the end of the hallway. Ovarian cancer. As soon as the woman hung up the phone, Dez called home.

  “Ma, your doctor’s office just called. They need you to come in on the second of next month instead of the eighteenth.” She stumbled over the rest, unable to maintain coherence with the unresponsive voice mail. After she hung up, Dez turned abruptly back to her room to start packing.

  Chapter 2

  Claudia wasn’t home. Dez stood in the middle of her mother’s house feeling another flood of panic. She glanced at her watch: 2:47 A.M. Barely three minutes since the last time she looked at it. Where was Claudia? Was she back in the hospital? Had Derrick even tried to reach her? Her mother’s Audi TT sat in the garage, the engine cold and silent. The kitchen was equally quiet, with only t
he hum of the refrigerator to distract Dez from her panic. Fear turned her fingers cold.

  The kitchen was spotless, with everything neatly ordered and put away. Copper pots winked at her from their place above the kitchen island. Nothing was out of place. Dez focused on that with desperation. If Claudia had gotten sick again, no one would have taken the time to do this, and certainly Claudia wouldn’t have been able to.

  Dez dug out her cell phone and called Derrick. She didn’t realize that she was crying until she heard her own broken voice.

  “Mama. Where is she?”

  There was a pause, a moment of recognition, before her twin spoke. “Mexico. She took off with the McAllisters on their boat about three days ago.”

  She cried silently with the phone pushed hard against her ear. The back of her head slapped an unconscious rhythm against the wall. “When will she be back?”

  “On the fifteenth, in time for her birthday party. Are you all right?”

  “I’ve been better.” Her voice cracked but a quick cough cleared the emotion from her throat. “I’ll call you back later, okay?” Eleven days. Her mother would be back in eleven days.

  “She’s all right, Dez. That whole mess is almost over. She already had the surgery and came through the chemo all right. In a few weeks she’ll have a last checkup and we’re expecting an all-clear.”

  “Okay. Thanks. I’ll talk to you later,” Dez repeated. “Okay.” She never knew. All the time this was going on, she never knew.

  Her mother was gone and no one told her. What the fuck was Claudia doing in Mexico on a boat if she’d just had chemotherapy? She carefully put the phone away before leaving the house the way she had come.

  In the driveway, Dez took a deep lungful of crisp spring air and blinked the grit and wet from her eyes. The crickets played their particular empty music as the last bits of blue bled away from the sky under the silvery blade of the moon. She shoved her helmet on and straddled the bike. The black cherry Ducati 749 roared to life and she sped down the drive and away from her mother’s silent house. Barely a mile away, she cruised up to her own gate. The house used to be a church, one she used to pass on her way to school every weekday for years but never entered. Now the sprawling two-story stone-and-glass building was hers, bought and paid for with her dead aunt’s money. She’d bought the house a year ago just because she could, figuring that it was the closest she’d ever come to actually going into a church. Dez keyed in the security code at the gate and rode up the long drive and straight into the garage. As she turned off the bike, Dez thought briefly about calling her friends, especially Rémi, to let them know that she was back in town. But her mind shied away from it. She was too raw to face them right now. Even over the phone. Later, sheltered in her new queen-sized bed under cool Egyptian cotton sheets fresh out of the package, Dez slept. She didn’t dream.

  Dez woke up disoriented. Sunlight tumbled over her naked body, burning through the stained-glass skylight. Shards of red and blue light fragmented her skin and patterned the white sheets that she’d kicked off during the night. Dez felt heavy, weighed down, like she wouldn’t be able to leave the bed if she tried. Her flesh steamed. After the cool November of Albuquerque, this warmth felt good, like it was beginning to thaw the ice that had surrounded her body since she got the phone call from her mother’s doctor.

  Her mind shied away from that call, but the abyss of memory swallowed her anyway, replaying the conversation over and over again until every word was just noise in her brain, thunder that made her head vibrate and hurt. Gradually, the pain floated away and she was able to open her eyes again. Fuck.

  But even with her eyes open, she couldn’t see. Dez couldn’t imagine her mother here in this house, could not see her laughing face at the kitchen table. She could not see her in the library perched on the wheeled ladder, reaching for a book on the top shelf. She could not see her holding Dez’s hand in the low evening light, telling her that everything was going to be okay, that one more loss wouldn’t break her. Dez couldn’t see her mother anywhere but in Mexico somewhere, dying slowly on a beach with cabana boys in tight white Speedos offering an hour’s worth of living for sale. She scraped her blunt fingertips across her scalp with its short prickling of hair and stood up to get dressed. She left the house so she could see better.

  Chapter 3

  The breeze lapped at her cheeks, pressing its comforting salty tang around the edges of her sunglasses as she rode bareheaded at a lazy thirty miles an hour through Coconut Grove. Claudia and death. It didn’t seem real. Not when Dez hadn’t even heard any of it from her mother’s own lips. She shook her head and deliberately turned her thoughts to the smooth stretch of road in front of her bike, the growl of the Ducati between her legs, and the dense border of Spanish moss-laden trees swaying in the light wind. There was beauty before her to enjoy. The other things could wait.

  After riding around Miami the better part of the day, she parked the bike at a downtown bar. Dez settled onto a stool and ordered two fingers of her favorite scotch. The place radiated tasteful-boring with its gleaming wooden bar, deep blue teardrop-shaped light fixtures hanging just so above their heads. The only music was the quiet murmurs of the early-evening drinkers, mostly suits with the occasional frilly dress to lighten up the atmosphere. The later the hour became, the more dresses appeared.

  Over the rim of her glass, she watched the hem of a pretty skirt flounce by. It belonged to an equally pretty girl. She walked by Dez’s stool with three of her girlfriends, each sipping a colored drink with fruit in it. Spelman College type. Long, straightened hair. A cute little ass swishing under the Gucci skirt. Shy smile. More Derrick’s type than hers.

  So far Dez hadn’t seen anyone that she knew, but that wasn’t really a surprise. Aside from Rémi, none of her friends would be caught alive or dead in this particular straight bar. Too many men, too many needy women, not nearly enough dykes.

  The way that some of these straight women were draping themselves over one another, some girl-on-girl action may not be too far off in the future. Dez had taken enough straight girls home back in the day to know how easy it would be to get laid in a place like this. Everyone else in the bar seemed content enough, bouncing happily from one potential one-night stand to another, doing a good job of circulating while she sat at the dark end of the bar nursing her drink.

  “Excuse me.” The pretty girl stood near Dez’s elbow looking sweet enough to make her teeth ache. She lost some of that shyness up close. Inside the peach neckline of her dress, her breasts rose and fell with each breath. The girl licked her lips and continued. “I was wondering if—”

  “Can I tie you up and fuck you in the ass with my fist?” The girl’s eyes widened at Dez’s growl. “Because if I can’t, you’re wasting your time and mine.”

  The scotch burned a trail across her tongue and down her throat. She nodded as the girl backed away and went back to her small huddle of friends. Dez wasn’t in the mood to be nice.

  “I guess you’re not trying to get laid tonight.”

  Dez didn’t even look up this time. “Not really. Even if you’re offering.”

  “Now is that any way to talk to an old friend?”

  Friend? With her eyebrow at a killing arch, she turned to face the source of the voice. And got a little surprise.

  “Phil?” She laughed. “What the fuck are you doing here?” She got several looks for that one even as she stood up to hug the tall, leggy woman. In her strappy high heels, thigh-baring skirt, and the scent of a salon clinging to her permed hair, Phillida Howard easily caught the eye of every straight man in the room.

  “The same thing you are, I imagine. Getting a drink and maybe a little company for the rest of the night.”

  “Straight company.”

  “Like I said, for the rest of the night—not for life.” She sat down on the empty stool beside Dez, bringing her cigarette and ashtray with her.

  “So where have you been? It’s been boring around here without you
.”

  “I’m sure you managed to cope somehow. Rémi knew where I was.”

  “And she didn’t pass on any of that information.” Phil took a deep drag of her cigarette. “But the rumor mill did say that you took off with that little gay boy you had a crush on in college.”

  “Oh, Christ.” Dez rolled her eyes. “I did not have a crush on him.”

  “Whatever.” Phil leaned in closer and lowered her voice. “For a while there we all thought you were turning straight on us or something.”

  “Something else, but never straight,” she said with a shrug. “He and I fooled around a little bit, got off together in some spectacular ways, but it was nothing major. He found a straight girlfriend and now he’s back here in town.”

  Phil ashed her cigarette in the heavy crystal tray on the bar. “Are you going to look him up?”

  Yeah, and after that I’ll search for King Kong and let him fuck me up the ass with no lube. “Maybe.”

  “Hm-hm.” She laughed. “To each her own, baby, that’s what I say. Fuck whoever you want. I’m not one to throw any stones.”

  Ain’t that the truth? Even before Dez left Miami, Phil’s exploits made Dez seem like a virgin. Group orgies, mother-and-daughter tag-team sex. There was even talk about some exotic whorehouse for women in Canada where Phil was a regular customer.

  “By the way, there’s a party going on tomorrow night in Fort Lauderdale. You should come.” Without waiting for Dez’s response, she scribbled down the address and phone number. “The whole gang should be there.”

  Phil stayed at the bar long enough to pick up two of the pretty girl’s friends. The two who didn’t seem quite as innocent. Dez eventually finished her scotch and left. All these straight people in one room were starting to give her hives.