Heart Thief (Black Market Billionaire Book 1)

by Skylar Sweeney

  I bit my lip, shaking my head. “I feel like I should say that I’m sorry, but…” My voice cracked as the image of Franklin’s smiling, freckled face rose in my mind. “I am sorry that you’ve had a bad life, but I’m not sorry that you’re not happy. Because I’m not happy, either.” A tear ran down my cheek, and Rex reached out, brushing it away.

  “I know, Mason, and I’m so sorry,” he said, his own voice hoarse with pain as well. “I am so, so, so sorry.”

  “You mentioned that in your note,” I said, not sure whether the comment was one of anger or sadness.

  Rex laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I didn’t know what to say, but I felt like I had to say something… It was the stupidest thing ever.”

  “We’re pretty pitiful, aren’t we?” I said, glancing around, and Rex nodded his agreement.

  “I’m still trying to figure out if we’re enemies or on the way to being fuck buddies,” he said, and I laughed out loud.

  “Can you be both?”

  “I have no idea. I don’t have enough experience with women to answer those kind of questions.”

  “Have you really never had a real girlfriend?” I asked, and boom—his cheeks went red. Twice in one night.

  “Actually, I’ve never even gone on more than one or two dates other than when Salem tricked me into thinking she loved me,” he admitted and my mouth dropped open.

  “You’re kidding me. And you’re what now, thirty? What about in high school? Or college?”

  “I spent most of my youth learning the kind of things that I use for my business now from a man who already knew all the stuff I know now,” Rex said, and I assumed he was talking about the criminal side of his business from how carefully he worded the comment. “I didn’t have time for more than messing around with girls now and then. Definitely no dating. Not to mention that watching my father with women made the whole idea disturbing to me. He didn’t treat them well.”

  “So the papers are obviously right when they say you’re not looking for love,” I said, and he shrugged.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” he mumbled, taking another sip from his bottle before standing up abruptly. “I’d better go check on Bambi before Val gets ideas about making her his. Valentine finding someone attractive never ends well.”

  Before I could even respond, he was gone, disappearing into the crowd.

  Apparently love wasn’t a topic he wanted to discuss. Not, of course, that I’d have any reason to want to discuss it with him.

  Right?

  - rex -

  I tossed back another shot of whiskey, my ninth shot from a two thousand dollar bottle, which is obviously not how two thousand dollar bottles are meant to be drunk. But what else could I do? Mason was so fucking hot! It was driving me crazy!

  Bambi moaned, rubbing against me, and I slipped my hand in her shirt, fondling her breast and getting nothing from it. It wasn’t that Bambi didn’t look good in the scrap of silver cloth she claimed was a dress along with her stripper heels. She was hot, in the way cheaper end call girls tend to be. Basically, she looked like she’d slid right off the pole.

  “You look super hot,” I muttered drunkenly, and Bambi smiled, like I’d been talking to her. Mason was glaring at us with a disgusted look on her face, not that I blamed her a bit. I didn’t usually do public sex in front of friends, but three hours into this party, and Bambi and I were getting close. Thank God Greta hadn't come. Sonny would have killed me for doing this in front of his daughter.

  Bambi was straddling my lap, my pants were unzipped—though my cock was still inside, thank God—and she hadn’t been wearing underwear to begin with, so that was no worry.

  “Hey, Rex,” I looked up fuzzily, finding Conner was towering over me, which was funny since he’d been in the booth next to Mason just one single second ago. Crazy.

  “What?” I said as I slipped my hand between Bambi’s legs.

  “I need to talk to you, baby,” he said in a sultry voice, tipping drunkenly himself. Or pretending to tip drunkenly. Conner didn’t get drunk. He didn’t trust people enough to get drunk.

  He also didn’t talk to his Brothers in his ‘client voice’ unless he was really serious and really pissed.

  I pushed Bambi away, maybe a little too hard since she squeaked as she slid off my lap onto the section of booth that Sonny had long since abandoned to go home to his little girl. I wished I was there. We could have had pizza and YouTube.

  Shit, I really was 30.

  “Sorry, Nala.” I winced. That wasn’t right. “I mean, Belle. Or, um… Ariel?”

  “Bambi,” she cooed, not sounding bothered at all by my sudden spew of Disney characters.

  “Right. Be right back, got to go talk to my Brother.”

  “No problem, big boy. I’ll be ready and waiting, right here.”

  Mason made a vomiting noise, and I frowned, trying to focus on her. Had she really drunk so much that she was throwing up now? Should I get her a cab?

  “C’mere, baby,” Conner crooned, sounding disturbingly like Nala, and I followed him. Or I did my best to, anyway. He was walking pretty fast.

  We ended up near the bathrooms, in a little alcove that was pretty much designed for people to make out in, which is exactly what a couple was doing.

  “Get lost,” Conner snapped, pulling a switchblade out of his very tight pants and flipping it open. The couple squealed and were gone in a flash so fast it made my head hurt.

  “That was mean,” I noted.

  Conner rolled his eyes then grabbed me by the arms and spun us both until he was pressing me into the wall, our bodies together and our lips centimeters apart.

  “You’re really pissing me off tonight, baby,” he said, vivid blue eyes drilling through me. “This isn’t good for your heart, and since you’re still refusing to consider a transplant, I don’t like it when you do things bad for your heart.”

  “I’ll survive,” I muttered, and he shook his head, disgusted.

  “Do you remember back when I lived on the streets, and you were always trying to talk me into escaping that hell? Remember that, Rex?”

  “Yes,” I whispered, and he scowled.

  “What did I always say when you’d tell me how bad the streets were?”

  I licked my lips. “You said, ‘I’ll survive.’”

  “That’s right,” Conner snapped. “And I didn’t. Not intact, anyway. So don’t quote me to my fucking self, asshole.” He released me, stepping back. “You’re not doing yourself any favors with Mason, either, making yourself look like a horny, drunken loser. Which is ironic, since I’ve never seen you act like this before, so I’m thinking that Mason is probably the cause.”

  “She’s so hot,” I whined, and he laughed, rolling his eyes.

  “Maybe if you hadn’t spent the night with your cock almost in a whore’s twat, you would have had a chance at shagging her.”

  “It won’t work with us. She thinks I’m hot, but she doesn’t like me,” I protested, then sighed loudly. “We talked about it earlier. I killed her brother.”

  “Heart failure killed her brother. You’ve been punishing yourself for ten years, and truthfully? You probably hate yourself more than Mason does.” Conner chuckled. “I still think with some intensive effort and some time, you could win Mason over.”

  I made a derisive sound. “Please. She’ll hang around until she gets whatever it is she wants, then it will be bye-bye Mason, hello loneliness.”

  “Wow, you are really depressing when you’re drunk,” Conner said. “It’s obvious she wants you bad, and it’s not just your sexy body she wants. She likes you as a person, too. She just doesn’t want to like you so she’s trying her best to pretend she doesn’t. She’s failing at it, by the way. Her crush is as obvious as Elton John’s sexuality.”

  I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. Even if she liked me, I don’t date, remember?” I shoved him away. “I’ll stick with Cinderella.”

  “Her name is Bambi,” Conner muttered as I h
eaded back toward the table.

  Whatever. Disney princesses were all the same.

  Mason was still glaring when I returned to the table, though the focus had gone from me to Bambi, who was currently attempting to straddle Mason’s lap while balancing a shot glass on her tongue.

  “Rex, could you get your prostitute off my lap, please?” Mason said. “Before I lose my temper and decide to rip off the nipples she keeps rubbing against me and throw them across the room?”

  “Oh, God,” I muttered, shaking my head. “Girl that I’m paying whose name is hard to remember when I’m drunk, please stop. Now.”

  Somehow I managed to stumble my way to the other side of the table, grabbing Bambi around the waist and tossing her over my shoulder. I carried her back to my side, plopping down across from Mason and returning my gaze to her beautiful face.

  “You have a big back,” Walt Disney said in a slurred voice, her ass in the air as she hung over my shoulder. I sighed and yanked her back down on my lap, feeling annoyingly sober all of a sudden. Man, this birthday sucked. At least there was one upside: It couldn’t possibly get any worse.

  “Well, well, well, what do we have here? Still trying to steal my woman, Bennett? Because you know that’s not going to happen. Not with the info I have on you.”

  I groaned out loud as Limpy Luke’s whiny voice cut through the pounding music, very possibly driving me to the edge of homicide—because that’s how much I wanted Mason’s man out of the picture.

  “Luke, what the hell are you doing here?” Mason shrilled, looking more than a little pissed at the sudden arrival of the guy she called her own. I had no idea why she called this guy her own, considering she was a goddess in disguise and Luke was five foot six with a beer belly, thinning hair, and a strangely large nose. But she did, and I did not like it.

  “I think that’s my question to ask,” he snapped, eyes narrowing at me, as if Mason being here was somehow my fault. Hello, I wasn’t the one who invited the most gorgeous woman in the world so I could spend all night with a massive hard on and no relief. I wasn’t a masochist, dammit. “You’re the one out on the town with another man.”

  “I’m her boss,” I snapped, “and this is my birthday party.”

  “Don’t give me shit,” Luke snapped. “We both know you invited Mason because you’re obsessed with her. Don’t think I don’t realize you’re the one who paid her bail after the doormat incident.”

  “What?” Mason said, looking confused. “Luke, I thought you said that was you?”

  Luke ignored her, continuing on his little rant. The guy seriously loved his rants. “And I know that you used to call in and buy GrandMan from her every week—my private investigator told me. So which is it, Bennett? You having problems getting it up, or are you stalking my girl?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Since I was trained never to admit to crimes I could be arrested for, I think I’ll go with the erectile dysfunction claim.” I pushed Bambi off to the side and angled my hips, showing off the very large erection I had thanks to the way Mason tended to chew on her lower lip as she glared at me. “Though, as you can see, it’s not been a problem tonight.”

  Luke made a growling sound. “Who the do you think you are, messing with my girl?”

  I let out a loud laugh. “I’m Rex Bennett. Which, unlike your name, actually means something in important circles. So fuck off.”

  “Yeah, it means a thief and a thug.”

  I shrugged. “Better than meaning ‘limp dick.’”

  “Rex, that’s enough,” Mason snapped, and Luke turned his attention on her, baring his teeth.

  “I don’t need your fucking help, slut,” he snapped, grabbing her hair and yanking. I stood, climbing out of the booth and moving toward the son of a bitch.

  “Seriously, dude? Your girlfriend tries to defend you, and you treat her like that?” I said, grabbing his arm and tugging him back. Luke jerked his arm away, glaring at me.

  “I’ll treat my women how I fucking want,” he snapped. “Because she’s mine.”

  “Wow, you sound like my buddy who puts his ladies in dog collars and ties them to the weirdo furniture in his homemade dungeon-slash-craft room,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “Nothing wrong with having a dungeon and a craft room,” Jones said dryly.

  My lips tightened as Luke dropped down into the booth and wrapped his arm around Mason’s waist. She tensed, but didn’t push him away as he reached his hand up and began massaging her breast like they weren’t sitting in the middle of a damn bar.

  “Luke, stop that,” she hissed, not that it did any good. The bastard just continued to smirk at me, obviously well aware how much he was pissing me off, my fists balling at my sides as I watched him fondle her in a way she obviously did not appreciate. “Seriously, stop it!” She shoved his hand away, and he grabbed her dress, yanking her close to him then slapping her hard across the face.

  When I was recruited by Lotus, he trained me that it wasn’t my duty or business to rescue people from their own problems, so a slap across the face of a woman by her man wasn’t something I would normally even acknowledge, much less react to. But the fact that it was Mason…

  Before I even had a chance to think about what I was doing, the hand that Limpy had dared to lay on Mason was wrapped in mine, the index and middle fingers were turned sharply to the side, and the loud snap was followed by a much louder scream.

  Mason’s scream was nearly as loud as Luke’s as he fell out of the booth, clutching at his mutilated fingers, which were angled at the joint in a direction they were most definitely not meant to go. Tears poured down his face and his high pitched wails drew interest from the dance floor. Or it did until Conner and Val began directing people away and I stood, stuffing a handful of napkins into the man’s mouth.

  Luke attempted to spit them out, but my large hand clamping over his mouth kept it from happening as I dragged the man to his feet.

  “Jones, take this son of a bitch out of here before someone calls the cops.”

  “You want me to drop him at a clinic?” he said calmly as he stood.

  “Yeah, do that,” I said, eyeing Mason, who was staring at me in shock and horror. Dammit. “I appreciate it.”

  “No problem,” the man said before turning to Luke and slamming his fist into the fucker's face as hard as he could, knocking him unconscious. He caught the man just before he toppled to the ground and tossed him easily over his shoulder. “See you tomorrow. Happy birthday, Bro.”

  I nodded.

  “Are you out of your mind?!” Mason shouted, her bright blue eyes as wide as saucers as she watched her boyfriend carried out of the back of the bar, hanging unconscious over Jones’ shoulder. “What the hell did you do, Rex?”

  “I broke the fucker’s hand for daring to lay it on you,” I replied, crossing my arms over my chest as I glared at her. “Which he completely deserved.”

  Mason shook her head, looking at me in disbelief. “It doesn’t matter if he deserved it, Rex! Breaking someone’s fingers is still not something you do, no matter how much they deserve it!”

  “Why not?” I snapped back, making a damn good point in my opinion. “They’ll heal, and I bet you he never raises a hand to you again. At least not in front of me, anyway.”

  Mason shook her head, looking like her brain was about to explode. “Whatever. I… I have to go. This is… I just have to go.” She stood abruptly and grabbed her purse, tossing it over her shoulder as she climbed out of the booth.

  “Are you seriously pissed at him for protecting you?” Bambi said, probably the first intelligent thing I’d ever heard out of her mouth. She looked at Mason in disbelief. “He broke that bastard’s hand because he hit you when you tried to make him stop touching your boob.”

  Mason just shook her head again, still looking completely bewildered by the whole incident. “Like I said… I have to go.”

  “Mason, please, wait,” I called out, but it didn’t do any good. She was off like a
rocket, moving at a speed I honestly didn’t think was possible on heels that high.

  I collapsed back onto the padded seat with a moan, burying my face in my hands, and Conner patted me on the back.

  “It’s okay, man. Things will be better tomorrow.”

  I raised my face up, giving him a glare. “I hate birthdays.”

  chapter FIVE

  BLOW

  - MASON -

  I adjusted my sunglasses as the elevator rose, really wishing I’d gone for a darker tint. The words ‘never again’ came to mind. Damn you, free alcohol. I groaned as the doors bing’d and opened, stepping tiredly into the King Corp lobby. Mrs. Cho started whining something about a misused pencil sharpener, but I slapped my hands over my ears and made my way to my office, more than ready to settle down inside and get some peace—preferably with the lights off.

  I climbed the stairs to the upper level, frowning when I noticed that Rex’s blinds were shut. Was he even here? Considering how wasted he’d been the night before, it wouldn’t surprise me if he was snoring away in a puddle of vomit somewhere right now. Or possibly in jail, depending on whether or not Luke had gone to the cops about his broken hand.

  I still couldn’t believe Rex had broken my boyfriend’s hand for daring to slap me. I also couldn’t believe how strangely warm that made me feel inside, something I was pretty sure was not an ethical thing to feel.

  I paused outside his door, giving it a soft knock.

  “Rex, are you in there?”

  There was a long silence, so I knocked again, a little louder this time.

  “If you’re in, open up.”

  The door swung open, and I gave a shriek as I found myself face to face with Rex in the same wrinkled clothes from the night before, his shirt hanging open to reveal his very delicious looking chest.