The Holiday From Hell (6 page)

"Let's go. I've made dinner reservations and this restaurant comes highly recommended." Luce grabbed his phone and noticed the message light was blinking. Automatically, he checked it.

Your cock is too small to fuck.

Luce tried not to snort. Yep, another wrong message to delete. He wondered what the sender would say if she (he?) knew that most of Luce's random text messages were the opposite – past bed partners telling him how they couldn't forget him, his body, his prowess or a combination of all three and how much they wanted all three again. He hoped Mel didn't see any of them – the encounters had all been a long time ago, but he was pretty unforgettable.

If he got any more from this person who was fixated on diminutive dicks, he was going to respond by unzipping his pants, taking a picture and sending evidence to the phantom message-sender that they had the wrong man. But right now, dinner with Mel was more important. Well, unless she wanted to help him take the photo…

"What are you thinking about?" Mel's arms slid around him. "I know that cheeky grin. It usually means you have something fun planned that you're waiting to surprise me with. Please tell me it's not a live seafood restaurant. Keiko tried to drag me to one of those in Japan, but Koyane managed to talk her out of it. If someone sets a live octopus in front of me again, it'll put me off my dinner."

Luce laughed. "I'd like to make love to you so thoroughly it'd feel like you had a live octopus, with eight arms instead of two. But taking care of you means dinner first, so I'll keep my tentacles in my pants for now." No matter how hard it was to restrain himself. "This restaurant is part wine bar, so I hope you're willing to indulge in a drink or three with your dinner."

"Only if you join me," she responded.

He grinned. "I'll do my best, but it's in town, so I'll be driving. I can't drink too much."

The restaurant turned out to be in the next town, almost half an hour's drive south. Luce parallel-parked his car smoothly right outside the restaurant door and, moments later, found himself seated comfortably beside Mel in a tiny, curved booth for two.

"You look like a honeymoon couple, and that's our booth for honeymooners," the hostess told them. "Where are you staying?"

Mel's blush was visible even in the dimly lit restaurant. "In a loft apartment on top of a winery, just outside of Cowaramup."

The woman burst out laughing. "Yep, I knew it. Honeymooners for sure." She lowered her voice. "Seeing as it's your first night here, I'll arrange a free cocktail for you. What would you like?"

Luce opened his mouth to say they hadn't had time to read the drinks menu yet, but Mel was faster. "I'd like a Dark n' Stormy, please, but not yet. With dessert."

The woman shot a knowing glance at Luce and winked. "Will do. Now, shall I leave you two to it for a few minutes? I'll be back in a moment to take the rest of your order."

With Mel cuddled up to his side, Luce found it hard to focus on the menu. There weren't any oysters, but he thought he'd seen some prawns. Like he'd shared with Mel last night, holding her in his arms and watching each morsel slip between her lips as he wished it was his tongue. Or maybe… Tiger prawns. There they were. And burgers. Layers lying one on top of the other like he'd like to be right now…

"Are you ready to order?" The hostess had returned and she looked expectant.

Luce floundered. A slight nod from Mel told him she was, but he had no idea. "How about you order for me?" he suggested.

The hostess' mouth dropped open.

"If you like, my love," Mel responded. She lifted her gaze to smile squarely at their server. "For entrée, Luce will have the angel hair pasta with crab, while I'll have the prawn croquettes. Mains…mm, I think the seared duck breast for both of us with a serve of seasonal vegetables on the side. I have no idea if I'll even want dessert – especially with that tempting cocktail. Can we order dessert after dinner if that's what we'd like?"

The server nodded quickly, then checked her order. "Ah…any other drinks?"

"Oh! Of course." Mel promptly rattled off the list of wines she wanted served – before dinner and with each course. Even Luce was impressed.

The bemused hostess wandered off with her order pad and Mel whispered, "Is that all right? We can change it, if you want."

Luce laughed. "I'm sure everything will be fine. You know my tastes better than anyone and I'll probably be so busy focussing on you I won't taste a bite of my food, anyway. Tonight, I'll finally have you all to myself again. No neighbours, well-meaning friends or staff. Just us." He leaned in to kiss her and whispered, "I promise I'll be slow and gentle tonight. Anything you want from me – just name it and it's yours." He illustrated his point with a soft, drawn-out kiss.

The clink of glass broke their embrace, as Mel turned to smile at the server for the glasses of sparkling white wine. Luce grabbed a glass and raised it. "To your health," he said.

Mel silently touched her glass to his, seconding his toast, before slowly sipping the contents. Her sweet smile made Luce take a deep draught of his own drink. Light and fizzy and fruity.

Food followed drink and then more of both. Luce ate, drank and stared at Mel, content for the first time he could remember. Somewhere in the back of his mind were the worries that Mel would leave him, that he wasn't good enough for her, and all the other simmering insecurities that wouldn't go away, but none of those mattered right now. The warmth in her eyes said she loved him.

"Can I get you the dessert menu?" the hostess asked, startling Luce out of his blissful bubble. She took their empty plates and Luce couldn't recall what had been served on it.

He picked something random from the menu and Mel ordered cheese. When their order came, the server placed a glass of what looked like cola or ginger beer in front of Mel. The cheese platter sat in the middle of the table and a dish was set carefully between Mel and Luce. Between the two spoons rose a small scarp of ice cream, dusted with green powder that resembled grass.

"What's that?" Luce asked, eyeing both Mel's drink and the ice cream.

"This is my cocktail and that is your ice cream with pistachio," Mel replied. "Would you like to taste it?" She held out the glass.

Luce took a deep sniff. The raw scent of rum seared his nostrils and he hurriedly gave the drink back. "No. But I want to share this ice cream with you." He skimmed a spoon through it, holding it up for Mel.

She took it from him, smiling as she swallowed. "Ooh, that's lovely. Salty and sweet, with a slightly gritty texture from the nuts. You're going to make me wish I'd ordered that instead of the cheese. Make sure you have some, too."

"Half is yours," Luce insisted, nudging the second spoon.

For the first time in his life, he shared a dessert – and who better to share it with than the sweetest angel he'd ever known?

Mel's relaxed smile as they made their way back to the car set Luce's heart soaring. Her slight tipsiness gave him the perfect excuse to keep his arm around her and the warmth of her along his side was Heaven in the cold night air.

He helped her into her seat and climbed behind the steering wheel. The key had just touched the ignition when his phone rang.

Luce didn't recognise the number, but he answered it anyway. The caller's response was a string of feminine moans. Luce pulled the phone from his ear and squinted at the number again. The screen was filled with a pop-up message, asking if he wanted to turn his camera on for the video call. Hastily, he refused. The message vanished and revealed a dim, blurry picture that Luce couldn't discern.

The picture seemed to tilt, as if someone had moved the phone, and what looked like a man's wrinkled thumb came into view. The camera jiggled and shifted again and the picture became clearer. No, it wasn't a man's thumb…though the appendage definitely belonged to a man, and in the background was a naked woman, lying face down with her legs spread wide. The camera swooped in close to the woman's genitals as a male voice snapped something in a language Luce didn't understand.

Mel reached for the phone and muted the microphone. "He said that she is what you will never have, because she is his."

A ringed hand slapped the woman's rump, eliciting squeals from the woman.

The phone travelled over the woman's body to her bound forearms, where it was presumably placed in her hands. When her blurry, flushed face came into view, Mel murmured, "That's Mrs Han and the voice sounds like Mr Han."

The man swatted her backside a few times and growled something.

"Tell him what you told me," Mel translated. She paused as Mrs Han squealed a string of syllables. "I am his and you will never…touch my body again." Her hesitation made Luce suspect that Mel was sanitising her translation. "Watch how a real man does it. Please, please make love to me, yes." Mel's calm delivery contrasted strongly with the impassioned cries of Mrs Han as Mr Han plunged enthusiastically into his willing wife.

"Yes, yes, more. Harder."

"Take it. Take it. You like that baby?"

"Yes, yes, oh yes."

A splatter of fluid landed on the camera lens, mercifully blurring the picture but doing nothing to muffle Mrs Han's rapturous screams. A few more growled words from Mr Han resulted in another string of breathless gibberish from Mrs Han.

Mel cleared her throat. "He said to tell you all of it. She said…ah, she loves her big Dong and she is his alone. You are smaller than her…little finger and…generally unskilled." Her blush was visible even in the dark car, but Luce's cheeks were on fire.

"She's asking for your response."

Luce stared desperately at Mel and the phone. "I don't speak Korean. I don't know what to say. What do you say to that?"

"May I?" Mel's finger hovered over the mute button. Luce nodded eagerly. Mel assumed a professional smile and unleashed a stream of fluent Korean in her perfectly modulated voice. She paused several times, as if waiting for a response from the panting couple, but continued when it appeared no response was forthcoming. To Luce's relief, she soon ended the call.

"What did you say?" he asked shakily, not sure he wanted to know.

Mel's eyes danced in the light of an oncoming car. "I congratulated them on reconciling their marital difficulties and told them that we were presently on extended leave, but if they required our diplomatic services, to contact Mephi at the HELL Corporation who would be delighted to assist them." Luce's relief whooshed out with his held breath. "Luce, do you normally get kinky video calls like this?"

"NO!" he half shouted. "I may have seduced hundreds of thousands of people, but every single one was hands-on, not through the use of technology like this." Oh Hell. Hardly the right thing to say at a time like this. Reminding Mel about his past indiscretions…

"Mel, now we're off the phone, what did she really say at the end? The generally unskilled bit?"

Mel frowned. "Are you sure you want me to repeat it? It wasn't very polite and some of it was quite crude." At Luce's nod, she said haltingly, "Your shrimp of a cock is tinier than my clit. No wonder you couldn't find it. If you'd fucked me all night, I wouldn't have even felt it, but you didn't have the stamina of my Dong and his massive cock. Yours must be worn to nothing from wanking every night because no woman will have you."

Luce was lost for words. Admittedly, just the sound of the words coming from Mel's perfect lips was a turn on, if they hadn't made him sound so…bad. He started the car to buy himself time before replying.

Mel spoke again before he could think of what to say. "What concerns me most is that Mr Han appeared to be about the same size as your thumb and his stamina lasted a grand total of two minutes and thirty-six seconds, including, ah, foreplay. His diminutive size and complete lack of stimulation to Mrs Han's erogenous zones in that very short time would suggest that her shrieks of pleasure were less than genuine. Her description of you is the complete opposite of my experience. In your time with Mrs Han, did you even take your pants off?"

"No," Luce admitted. "Didn't you watch the video? She swore she'd send it to Keiko. She was so drunk on wine and the prospect of letting her kinky side out that she didn't notice I used a –"

"NO! I don't need to know. As you say, you've seduced many women and men, but I don't need the details of any of those encounters. The imps may enjoy observing, but I…don't." She handed him back his phone, shuddering, and he pocketed it.

A vivid flashback of the HELL Corporation Christmas party at the Hilton, the exotic dance routine from HR and Mel's acute embarrassment hit Luce like the logging truck barrelling along the highway. At the time, he'd been certain that all the wine she drank combined with the floor show would have aroused her. Instead, she'd downed an entire bottle of wine and stumbled out of the function room as if she was going to be sick. Now he felt sick at the memory.

"I'm sorry, Mel," he said quietly. "That you had to see that. That I had anything to do with that crazy woman. And…for everything. I'm sorry." He clicked on his indicator light and pulled out onto the highway, letting the car growl his anger at himself as they accelerated to match the speed limit on the otherwise deserted road.

Warm fingers covered his, pulling one hand away from the steering wheel so Mel could clasp it between hers. "My love, sometimes the results of our actions are difficult to predict, especially when human free will comes into it. I arrived in Japan with the faint hope of persuading Mr Han to decide on a peaceful solution – one Koyane assured me he would never do. Your…actions with Mrs Han were never something I considered in my plans. Because of what you did, Mr Han chose the opposite course of action to spite her. I had my peaceful solution, but at the cost of Mr and Mrs Han's marriage and possibly their souls. Perhaps I was mistaken and the marriage was doomed anyway. I don't know. Something evidently drove her from his arms to yours." Her fingers trailed up to his shoulder. "Your very attractive arms, Luce, for your physical attributes border on the ideal to most women. And yet…the rift you helped create has brought the two of them back together again, to share what they both evidently enjoy. Sometimes Destiny smooths the way for things to play out as they should, however rough it may seem in the lead up." She squeezed his hand.

"You're not just talking about that crazy Korean couple any more, are you?"

"No, my love. My thoughts are much closer to home. The wonderful man beside me, taking me to our secluded loft apartment. Your magnificent body and your unparalleled skills in the bedroom. We've both been through Hell, but now we have the whole night ahead, with just the two of us and no need to worry about anyone else, let alone some other happy couple, half a world away." Her voice dropped to a whisper as he felt her hot breath. "I love you, Luce." She kissed his cheek and settled back in her seat.

Luce knew he had a dopey grin on his face, but he didn't care. Life didn't get much happier than this. Now, if he could just heal Mel a little more, maybe she'd be up for more when they reached the apartment. He reached for her hand and held it, sending a trickle of healing through their contact as he drove.

Half an hour later, he bumped onto the gravel drive to their accommodation. Dodging two kangaroos and a confused sheep, he pulled into the small parking lot and got out of the car. He trudged up the stairs without waiting for Mel, hoping to get the door unlocked so she wouldn't have to wait in the cold. Yet when he swung the door open, she wasn't beside him. He couldn't see her at all.

He jogged down the steps to the car and peered in. Mel still sat in the passenger seat, fast asleep.

Mel didn't know how much Destiny hated him. She'd never give Luce a smooth run if she could help it. Maybe he should have given in and spent a night with Destiny, back when he was still an angel, instead of ignoring the girl who was so far beneath him. Too late now.

He sighed and opened the door. Hoisting Mel in his arms, he kicked the car door shut and carried his precious, sleeping angel up the stairs to bed.