by BETH KERY
“Fucked him up good,” Eileen muttered under her breath before she took a long draw on her martini. Her eyes never moved from the sight of Vic staring down at Jennifer Atwood’s beautiful face.
“He’s never told you about her?” Eileen asked bitterly, although she was careful to keep her voice low enough so that only Niall heard her.
Niall’s lips pressed together tightly. If Eileen had asked the question condescendingly, in a way that implied Niall couldn’t possibly mean anything to Vic if he’d never revealed his secrets to her, than Niall probably would have tried to turn the subject. But she hadn’t. Instead, she’d asked like she was totally preoccupied by the situation. Eileen obviously cared deeply about Vic and didn’t want to see him hurt again.
The fact that Jennifer still had the power to wound Vic was becoming uncomfortably obvious to Niall.
“No,” Niall admitted finally. “He hasn’t mentioned her to me.”
Eileen finally ripped her eyes away when Jennifer brushed Vic’s arm with her hand in a lingering caress and turned back into the crowd. “He was supposed to marry her, you know. But she was never happy with him, always scolding him for not living up to his potential, harassing him to move to Los Angeles and compete with the big boys like her slick-ass husband, complaining that his provincialism was bringing her career, as much as his own, to a halt,” Eileen said before she took another long drink, nearly emptying her glass.
Eileen gave a harsh bark of laughter after a few seconds. “I swear she tore him apart from the inside out. Vic wanted to please her, but he never could, you know? It got to the point where he just tuned her out, ignored her. That’s the worst sort of punishment for a woman like Jennifer,” Eileen murmured in that magnificent, deep voice that she used to such stirring effect on the stage.
“So she got back at him by jumping in the sack with ol’ Max over there, staging things just right so that Vic found them going at it full force.”
Niall flinched at the harshness of Eileen’s statement. She hated to think of Vic being subjected to something so painful. She tore him apart from the inside out. From the look that she’d seen on Vic’s face just now Niall had no problem wholeheartedly believing the accuracy of that statement.
All the effervescence and joy Niall had felt earlier that evening seemed to be dissipating as quickly as the bubbles in her untouched champagne.
“But Jennifer ended up being the butt of her nasty tricks,” Eileen continued. “She thought she’d whip Vic into a frenzy of jealousy and rage with her little plot, believed that he’d be even more desperate to keep her at all costs. But instead Vic dropped her faster than a stranger’s germ-ridden snot rag.” Eileen laughed softly, genuinely seeming to enjoy the memory. “She tried to get back in his good graces for months afterward, but the only thing she got from Vic was silence and ice. Finally she gave up and married ol’ Max a year later. I don’t think Vic has given her the opportunity to speak more than two words to him since then.”
“Until tonight,” Niall said softly.
“Yeah. Until tonight,” Eileen agreed with wary speculation.
Both women’s gazes flickered across the crowded room until they found Vic. His head stood above everyone else’s, so he wasn’t too difficult to spot. He was conversing in earnest with a bald man Niall didn’t recognize. His typical impassive expression was once again in place, so Niall couldn’t guess at his emotional state.
She cleared her throat with difficulty. “You seem to know an awful lot about the whole situation with Vic and Jennifer, Eileen.”
“I should. What do you think I was acting out on that stage up there tonight?” she asked with a bitter laugh.
Annoyance flickered across Vic’s awareness as he pretended to listen to a half-drunk Chicago socialite who had legs up to her armpits. He’d been trying to send Niall a “save me” signal for the past ten minutes now, but for some reason her gaze always seemed to bounce in the opposite direction whenever it got near him.
And where had all the luminescence that had been shining in her face earlier gone? Granted, he studied her from across a crowded room, but she suddenly seemed distant . . . drained.
Maybe she hated this type of affair almost as much as he did.
When he saw Niall make her way across the room an interminable few minutes later, he muttered a gruff “excuse me” during the socialite’s mid-ramble, barely noticing her shocked, offended expression as he walked away without a backward glance.
“Shit,” he muttered under his breath a few seconds later when he caught a glimpse of Niall’s golden hair before the ladies’ room door shut with her on the other side of it.
“I think the boys’ bathroom is over there.”
Vic stiffened before he turned to face Jenny.
“I’m waiting for my date.”
“That blonde girl? Niall, wasn’t it?”
Vic didn’t respond, knowing that Jenny knew precisely to whom he referred. Besides, she was baiting him by calling Niall a girl.
He’d been so shocked by her sudden appearance earlier that he hadn’t been clear on what he’d been feeling since then. He suspected that Jenny’s presence must be having a profound effect on him on some unconscious level.
How could it not?
But in all honesty the only thing Vic had been focused on since he’d arrived at Mina’s was being with Niall. It seemed like every goddamned person in the room had adhered to him at some point, making it impossible for him to merely cross a span of fifty feet and claim her. He saw that she was always conversing with someone, including his mother, his sister, and a middle-aged, powerfully built man who looked like he was considering taking a bite out of her as she looked up at him with her huge, sexy eyes. His friend Caesar—who went through women like Vic did number-two pencils when he was on an editing spree—had a glazed-eyed, goofy look on his face as he vied for Niall’s attention. Best forget what Caesar looked like he was about to do when Niall laughed at one of his dumb-ass jokes if Vic wanted to maintain their friendship.
It never occurred to him to question the fact that he didn’t have a clue as to what Jenny had been doing for the last hour in the crowded room.
“May I have a word with you in private?” Jenny asked, her omnipresent hand settling on his lower arm.
“I can’t right now.” Her perfume found its way to his nostrils. Just the hint of it used to drive him wild with lust.
“Just a minute of your time, Vic? Didn’t what we had together warrant at least that?” Jenny asked in a trembling voice that struck Vic at that moment as totally genuine.
He answered her honestly. “I don’t owe you a damn thing, Jenny.” He glanced back at the closed ladies’ room door. “But it’s no sweat off my back if you want to talk to me for a minute.”
Much to his surprise, he realized that what he said was true. Why shouldn’t he listen to what she had to say? She was a human being, after all. He no longer felt the nauseating, blinding rage that he’d suffered in various degrees since he’d found her in his bed bouncing up and down on Max Blake’s cock.
That image—not to mention the cumulative effect of the hundreds of cruel, petty things Jennifer and he used to do to spite each other—had clawed at his insides for years like a vicious animal demanding release. But in that singular moment when he’d caught Jenny in bed with Max, Vic had been enlightened. He’d realized that he’d become an addict whose sole purpose consisted of getting his next fix. His entire world had narrowed down to the positive reinforcement he received from stoking Jenny’s insatiable fires. In the end, he hadn’t cared if he did it by igniting her desire or her fury.
It wasn’t a pretty thing to learn about oneself. He guessed that’s what he’d meant when he asked Niall what she thought about the play earlier.
Jenny tilted her head back toward an empty corridor. “Come here,” she coaxed softly.
Vic hesitated for a second as his gaze fixed on the rear view of Jenny’s phenomenal body.
What the
hell? he finally thought as he followed her. Better to face the truth about how he felt about her than to always be running from it.
Niall felt a little better when she left the ladies’ room. She’d splashed some cool water on her face in an attempt to revive herself and then reapplied her makeup. When she’d inspected herself in the mirror a moment later, she realized how pale she looked. She dug in her purse for some lipstick to add some color to her washed-out palette, becoming unreasonably irritated when she realized she’d left if in her coat pocket.
“Get a grip on it,” she whispered to her reflection a few seconds later. She took a deep breath and exhaled.
Eileen Moore might be wrong about Vic’s feelings for Jennifer Atwood. Art often imitated life, certainly, but it also varied from it greatly. Besides, Alias X reflected a certain time in Vic’s life, like a snapshot in a photo album. That didn’t necessarily mean that Vic was still wildly, passionately in love with Jennifer.
Did it?
Were ties of the soul—even twisted ones—so easily severed?
Niall threw her comb back into her purse with a frown. She wasn’t going to come to any earth-shattering revelations about Vic’s love life by staring at herself in the mirror. She was the one he’d asked to his play tonight, not Jennifer Atwood.
Niall turned the corner that led to the coat check, planning to get her lipstick from her pocket before she went and found Vic.
She found him all right.
She came up short and stared at the sight in front of her. Vic leaned back against the wood paneling of the narrow corridor, his head bent downward while Jennifer Atwood craned up, their bodies sealed together as tightly as their mouths.
Niall didn’t think she’d made a noise, but she must have. Because suddenly Vic’s gray eyes were on her, the impact of them striking her like a blast of sleety, frigid wind.
She turned and fled.
“Niall,” Vic called out sharply as he straightened, knocking Jenny slightly off balance in her stiletto heels.
“Vic, hold on, please! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen . . .” Jenny said breathlessly as she put a restraining hand on his shoulder.
“Yeah, you did,” Vic said distractedly as he moved past her. “And maybe I did, too.”
Jennifer stared after him, her jaw hanging open as he strode away from her.
Vic cursed for the second time tonight when he saw the back of Niall’s shiny hair and the flash of a fast-moving, leather-covered calf before she disappeared behind yet another door . . . this time the elevator’s.
Dammit, why did it always seem like Niall was just slipping through his grasping fingertips?
He paused outside the lobby doors a minute later after waiting for another elevator, searching in both directions for Niall. She was nowhere in sight. His mouth pulled into a grim line as he started west at a jog, figuring she’d instinctively head toward home.
Niall didn’t even register that she was shivering like mad until she finally hailed a cab on Rush Street and came to a halt in her frantic escape. Damn. She’d left her coat behind. The temperature hovered right at the freezing mark, and all she wore was a silk blouse and a skirt.
Going back into Mina’s at that moment—returning to that corridor where she’d seen Vic kissing Jennifer—was not even a remote option, however. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about seeing Ellen and Meg to their hotel, Niall thought with a twinge of guilt. Vic’s mother and sister were literally staying across the street from the building where Mina’s was located.
“Niall.”
She looked around, astounded to see Vic jogging down the street toward her. She opened the door of the cab that had just neatly pulled up to the curb, and clambered inside. Vic’s hand caught the door when she tried to slam it shut forcefully. From the sound of his terse curse, her action had hurt him.
Good. It couldn’t come anywhere near the pain that had sliced through Niall when she saw his dark head bent over Jennifer Atwood’s face as he kissed her.
“Scoot over, Niall.”
“No! This is my cab,” she countered, realizing that she sounded like a petulant child.
“Move . . . over,” Vic demanded through a clenched jaw.
Niall just stared up at him for a few seconds. How dare he act like he was mad at her? For some reason all those nasty verbal duals that Sissy and David engaged in during Alias X rose to her mind. Niall abruptly slid across the seat and stared forward, unseeing.
She was no Sissy or Jennifer. She would not sit here and bicker with and bait Vic like a trashy slut. If that was the kind of thing he got off on, he was going to be sorely disappointed, Niall promised herself.
She was the one who was mistaken, however, if she thought Vic was going to try and start a fight with her. He remained as icily silent during the cab ride to Riverview Towers as she did. He didn’t, in fact, speak until the elevator doors closed behind them and he’d pushed the button for the seventeenth floor.
“I’m sorry you had to see that.”
Niall met his gaze for the first time since he’d glared down at her before she’d slammed the door on his hand. She couldn’t read his rigid expression as he stood several feet away from her and pinned her with his stare.
“I’m sorry I saw it, too. But maybe it’s for the best,” she replied as evenly as possible. She exhaled abruptly and stared up at the ceiling, shaking her head. “You don’t have to apologize, Vic. It’s not as if you owe me anything.”
“No?” he drawled.
She shook her head again, still avoiding his gaze.
“Just like you don’t owe me anything—right, Niall? A satisfying fuck if the convenient opportunity should arise. That’s what we owe each other, right?”
Fury rose in her, despite the fact that she’d vowed to herself that she wouldn’t let him push her buttons. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she demanded as the elevator door opened with a ding.
His hand went up to hold it in place automatically, but he didn’t really seem aware of his actions as he leaned forward and answered her. “It means that you’ve got a lot of nerve accusing me of not being interested in having a relationship with you when you’re just as elusive and secretive about your past—even more so—than I am about mine. You just saw my ugly little secrets paraded in front of your eyes on a stage tonight. I didn’t have to invite you to see that, but I did. How much more honest do you think I can be with you?”
“So I’m just supposed to shrug my shoulders at the fact that I just saw you kissing another woman, a woman everybody—including your mother and sister—believes you’re crazy in love with?”
“A woman that I was crazy in love with!” Vic countered, his eyes flashing fiercely.
Both of them jumped when an alarm suddenly started blaring because Vic had held the elevator door open for too long. Vic blinked as if the sound had roused him out of a dream. Niall found herself meeting his eyes again, curious as to what he would say next . . . hungry for it.
“We’d better get off,” he said quietly, disappointing her. Their gazes remained locked for the next few seconds as she moved toward him cautiously, as if afraid on some primitive level that she would glom on to him like he was a powerful magnet and she was a flimsy filament of iron that was helpless to take voluntary action in his vicinity.
She made it down the hallway without submitting to as much as a glance. She paused when she reached their front doors and looked back at him, feeling shaken and unsure.
“I kissed her because I wanted to, Niall. I kissed her because I had to know. Do you understand?”
Niall’s lips fell open. It wasn’t the explanation that she’d expected. But it was the one she needed.
“And?” she asked, her voice wavering with anxiety.
Vic shrugged, his singular eyes never leaving her face. “I’m here with you, aren’t I?”
ELEVEN
For a few tense seconds, Vic didn’t know what Niall was going to do. He was surprised when sh
e suddenly launched herself at him.
Nice . . . having her small, compact little body collide with his, having her hands reach up hungrily to hold his head and pull him down to her. He groaned in pleasure at the impact of her feverish kiss and her taste pervading his senses.
Better than nice.
He’d always liked the fit of a tall woman against his body. But he had to admit that Niall’s taut curves filled his palm just right. So what if he had to bend his knees and lift her against him so that he could feel the soft heat between her thighs pressed against his cock? Her entire weight in his arms only made him exponentially more aroused. He spread both hands across her ass and she automatically encircled him with her legs. God, he needed to get inside of her. Anywhere . . . anyhow.
Just as long as it was soon.
He grunted as he tried to move toward his apartment, but misjudged and backed into his door with a bang. Niall didn’t even seem to notice the jarring sensation, continuing to rub and suck at his tongue, turning kissing into what felt like the main event of making love instead of the first step. He dimly realized that he should set her down and at least get her into his apartment, but her sweet mouth blinded him with lust.
Moans vibrated both of their throats when he tightened his hold on her ass and began to move her in a tight, circular motion against his straining erection. After thirty seconds of that torture, Vic couldn’t take any more. He sealed their kiss, gasping desperately when she continued to tempt him by plucking at his lips, cheeks, and neck with her red, swollen lips.
“Dammit, Niall,” he muttered almost angrily before he set her down, hissing as her pussy dragged against his aching cock.
“I want you so much, Vic,” she whispered, staring up at him with a wide-eyed expression that conveyed both innocent awe and pure carnal lust.
He’d never forget the way Niall looked at that moment.
“Good, because you’re going to get me, baby,” he assured her grimly while he fumbled in his pocket for his keys. His erection made his pants way too constraining for comfortable movement.