Lithium – Blackwood Elements #2
Every girl loves ice cream, right?
Not Sofia. She's tried all the flavours, but plain old Vanilla was her downfall.
A trip to the Cayman Islands to give her ex what he deserves is made all the more complicated by her fear of water—not easy to handle at the best of times, but he’s taken up residence on a yacht.
She cooks up a special recipe for revenge, and it’s a dish best served cold. But will handsome stranger Leo add some unwanted heat into the kitchen?
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Lithium excerpt:
“So, what are you gonna do?”
“About Vanilla?” Of course about Vanilla, but asking the question stalled for time.
“The job still needs to be done.”
I stared at the ceiling, sunlight twinkling through the glass and reflecting off the leaves of the miniature rainforest. “Did you get rid of the birds?”
“They were shitting everywhere. Stop changing the subject.”
“I know I should deal with him, but the thought of seeing him again makes me want to curl into a ball and hide under my duvet.”
“We all have moments like that.”
“But we don’t all fall in love with the man we’re hired to kill.” There, I said it. My failure as an assassin laid bare.
“True, although if my husband leaves bits of gun everywhere in the bedroom again, I’ll be tempted to kill the man I fell in love with. Sorry. I’ll be serious. Look, you made a mistake, and Vanilla is kinda hot.”
Yeah. That was my downfall. Until the first night with him, sex had meant nothing to me. After my daddy fucked the soul out of me as a child, the act took on all the passion of a business transaction. I’d lie back while a man pounded away on top, thinking about the best way of achieving my objective, which in my case wasn’t an orgasm, it was usually death. Oh sure, I’d moan in the right places, but out of practice rather than enjoyment.
Since high school, I’d known there was something wrong with me when it came to sex. While my classmates were chasing boys and experimenting with them behind the bleachers, I’d already been there, done that, and collected the mental scars to prove it. Instead, I waited until my daddy passed out then snuck his gun out to the woods to practise. I loved the woods, and I loved that old Colt. I took it with me when he died of heart failure—that and my battered copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, the only reminders of my childhood I wanted to keep.
After my deep and meaningful relationship with a semi-automatic I tried dating, but men didn’t do it for me. Eventually, I’d suspected I might be gay, but a little research showed that wasn’t the case. An undercover job had led to a few nights spent with Emmy, who’d try anything once, and we both soon realised the girl-girl thing wasn’t for us. Not permanently, anyway. Luckily, we came out of it with a friendship that lasted longer than any president, and over the years we’d had the occasional bit of…fun? Experimentation? Call it what you like. She was crazily in love with her husband now, and he seemed to view our antics with amusement rather than jealousy.
Although months could pass without us speaking to each other, when Emmy and I did meet, we picked up where we’d left off, and it was her I’d called after Vanilla did his worst.
Ah, Vanilla.
“He’s a walking bunch of pheromones stuffed into a made-to-measure suit,” I said wistfully. Not to mention the only man ever to make me come.
When it happened, when those elusive shivers of pleasure rushed through me, it was like an epiphany. Some women got addicted to alcohol, some got addicted to drugs. Me? I got addicted to a giant prick. And when I say giant, I’m talking about the man and not his equipment. That was average at best.
“There’s not many things that look better on a guy than a good suit.”
“He wasn’t bad out of it, either. Dammit! I have to stop thinking like this. He’s an asshole. A murdering asshole.” With dark, wavy hair, a chiselled jaw, and eyes that sucked you in until you felt breathless. Even now, my brain flip-flopped between wanting to put a bullet in his brain and wanting to put his cock in my mouth. He’d screwed me in every way possible—mind, body, and soul. “Maybe I could get some pills to help.”
Emmy rolled off her own lounger and squashed onto mine. “Honey, no more pills. You’re past that.”
When she’d picked me up in the early hours half a year ago, I’d been a gibbering wreck. I still felt the lure of the lithium, but I hadn’t taken it in four months, and I didn’t intend to start again now. “I meant something to kill my libido. It’s taken on a life of its own.”
“What happened with Raspberry Ripple? Did he have the same effect?”
“Fuck, no. I was going through my grocery list while he screwed me. The most exciting part was the air embolism I gave him at the end.”
