by L.J. Shen
“So, do you work with a lot of millionaires?” Elle purred, her lips shiny with an extra coat of lipstick and olive oil from the delicious food we wolfed down.
“Sweetheart,” he snickered, taking a bite of his filet mignon, “I only work with billionaires.”
“Think you can hook me up with one?”
“Are you sure? They normally don’t look like their bank accounts feel.”
“They have sons, though, right?” Elle asked.
“They do.” Dean grinned. “I like the way you think.”
Just then, his phone buzzed.
“Sorry, I have to take this.” He frowned at his phone and stood up, leaving us to admire his broad back and magic ass in his charcoal, tailor-made suit. Elle clapped her hands twice when he got out of earshot, heading toward the door leading outside. She grabbed me by the shoulders.
“This man, Rosie!” she exclaimed. “Tell me he is terrible in bed so I can keep my loyalty as a friend to you.”
Perfect didn’t even begin to describe what he was between the sheets, but I definitely needed a repeat to remind myself why I was putting my heart on the line like this, knowing someone like him would never settle for someone like me long-term.
“Make sure Darren knows before you move forward,” Mama said to me when I broke the news about us moving in together. “You don’t want him to feel like he’s been tricked by a woman who can’t have children.”
“Dude.” I shook my head, trying to silence Mama’s words. “Don’t even go there. They don’t make them like this anymore.”
“Continue at this rate, and I bet you any money that you will be a victim of a passion crime.” Elle stabbed a fork into her ravioli and brought it to her open mouth. “Someone would kill you. Another jealous bitch, probably. Maybe the PA? I mean, no woman should be the proud owner of a man like Dean.”
“He is not a piece of property.” I rolled my eyes, munching on a breadstick.
“No. He is a hot commodity, though.” Elle pinched her lips before we both doubled over laughing. She asked how Trent was doing—she was disappointed she didn’t get to meet him before the wedding—but then Dean came back to the table. He no longer looked playful, fun, and laid-back. Instead, he looked like he had seen a ghost. Tucking his phone into his back pocket, he said, “Took care of the check. Are you ready to leave?”
I didn’t have to be that close to him to know that he’d been drinking. The mere scent of pure alcohol on his breath gave it away. It bit at my nostrils with freshness reserved for a hardcore spirit. I wanted to bite his head off, but couldn’t do it in front of Elle, and perhaps even at all. He looked troubled in a way that made me physically uncomfortable.
Elle and I exchanged confused looks, our half-eaten dishes still sitting at the table, waiting to be enjoyed. My friend opened her mouth, and I had a feeling that she was going to ask if we could stay for dessert. That was a definite no. He needed to get out of there, and I wanted to save him the explanation.
“Yeah, I’m feeling pretty tired, and it’s getting chilly.” It wasn’t getting chilly, but Elle, and everyone else around me, were always concerned that I would catch a cold. “Let me make a quick bathroom stop beforehand. My bladder doesn’t want to be friends with the house wine.”
Fifteen minutes later, we were in a taxi on our way back home. Dean hailed a cab for Elle first—and paid for it—and again, I was met with her angry eyes, the ones that demanded I chain him to a basement and convince him to marry me.
When we were in the taxi, I turned to Dean to ask him what happened.
One look at his face and I realized it was a bad idea.
“Do you want to hang out?” I inquired instead. “It’s still early.”
“That depends. Will you give me shit for drinking? Because I’m going to. A lot.”
I thought about it for a second. He hadn’t been drinking all week when we were together—including at the wedding and in Vegas, two events that practically called for it. If I’d told him I didn’t want to stay, he’d take it the wrong way. Like I only wanted him under my terms and conditions. Which couldn’t be further from the truth. The truth was, I’d take him any way I could get him, and it was important for me to be there for him to make my point.
“No,” I said. “You can drink.”
“Then yes, stay. I need you tonight.”
And I had needed him the whole week before.
He was there for me.
I was there for him.
One thing was for sure—when one of us fell, the other followed down, no questions asked.
Five fingers of brandy, and Dean didn’t even allow the expensive drink to tickle his taste buds before he tossed his head back and finished the snifter in one gulp. He leaned a hip against the wet bar and tugged at his hair, staring out the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking Manhattan. This city was powerful. So was he. Problem was, for the first time since we met—since we were teenagers, actually—I didn’t see him for the big, successful man that he was. I saw a lost boy, and that boy? I wasn’t sure many people could get to him.
“Do you want to talk about it?” My fingers danced on his furniture as I walked toward him, memorizing every curve of dark wood and fabric of the plush seats. This girl, the nagging one who kept on asking what’s wrong—she wasn’t me. But caring for Dean was me. And I had a feeling his sudden change had something to do with this Nina woman. The mysterious phone calls had purpose, that much I was sure of, but they were an open wound. The last thing I wanted to do was to cut it deeper and watch him bleed.
Truths could be uncomfortable. That was why people often chased them. More often than not, they weren’t for all to see. And that was why Dean didn’t know why I couldn’t become a nurse. Why he had no idea I couldn’t have any children.
My boyfriend shook his head. With no trace of emotion in his voice, he ordered, “C’mere.”
I ambled the distance to him and wrapped my arms around his neck, staring him dead in the eye. There was disobedience in my pupils. He needed a diversion from whatever bothered him enough to drive him crazy and make him drink and smoke himself to death.
Dean had a problem. He knew it. I knew it.
He had a problem, and this problem pushed him straight into the arms of his vices. He physically needed the alcohol and the weed to forget whatever it was that bothered him. I wanted to ask—was desperate to dig deeper into the dark rooms of his soul and pull out secret after secret, cleaning it from the cluttered mess—but couldn’t. It killed me, but I had to be there for him, any way he’d have me.
“You’re gorgeous,” he gruffed, trailing a finger over my jawline with the hand that wasn’t holding his brandy.
“You’re drunk,” I deadpanned, laughing nervously.
“True.” His predatory eyes played with my body in a way no other man could with their hands. “And still, you were gorgeous when I was sober, and you’ll still be gorgeous when I nurse a fucking hangover from hell tomorrow morning.” His hands slid down to my waist, and he grabbed me with force, spinning and placing me on his bar. My lower back pressed against an endless number of luxurious bottles, and the surface underneath me slipped chill into my bones, even through my long, torn, black skinny jeans.
His hand slid to the buttons on my jeans, and he was quick to pull them down until they hit the floor. My Sex Pistols yellow T-shirt was thrown onto the gray settee in less than a second, my flip-flops nowhere to be found. Dean then flattened me against the bar with his palm on my chest, and when the bottles dug into my back, he wiped them all off of the surface with his arm, a dozen of them falling to the floor in unison of colors, sound, and light.
“Jesus!” I gasped, the noise of shattered glass ringing in the room like an alarm. Dean grabbed the bottle of brandy that sat next to him and took another swig before pouring some into my navel and sucking on it, his warm lips on my skin making my lower stomach explode with nerves and need.
“I’m not a bad person,” he slurred, seemingl
y out of nowhere and to no one in particular. His level of drunkenness had me genuinely worried, but even though Dean was still a riddle, one thing was stark clear.
He didn’t want to be nursed or contained. He wanted to go unhinged.
His demons came out to play, and tonight, I was going to be their victim. I lay there at his altar, waiting to be punished for something I hadn’t done. His pain was going to be distributed between us.
And I was glad to take some of it away, even if it was just for one night.
“No. You’re the best person,” I mumbled as he dropped to his knees and tore the underwear from my skin. Red, searing marks brushed my thighs like welts. He flung the balled fabric behind his shoulder and dove down, tasting what was between my legs like it was his source of life, grinding his teeth against my sore hot spot, making me go crazy. He was a hungry zombie, feasting on his pound of flesh, and I stood no chance against his darkness.
Dean Cole was nothing like people pegged him. He was the worst kind of devil. One that hid behind a polite smile, preppy clothes, and good manners.
“Shit, Dean,” I panted hard, losing my grip of reality, of my senses, of myself. “You’re going to kill me.”
“No, Rosie. I am going to save you,” he growled, placing his thumbs on my sex and stretching me open to the point of delicious pain. He then plunged his tongue into me, fucking me mercilessly while I held onto the edges of his bar and screamed. For help or from pleasure, I wasn’t sure.
“Jesus. Oh, God.” I wiggled left and right, trying to escape the profound thrill that hit me.
“Tell me that I’m doing the right thing,” he snarled, clasping the sensitive flesh of my folds and slowly pulling it between his teeth until I cried out again. Delicious pain swirled between my legs. I wanted him to do it again, and he did, before saying, “I don’t want to know him, Rosie. I can’t deal with him right now.”
What was he talking about? Who was he? The little working cells of my lust-fogged brain were anxious to know. Who was crazy enough to hurt this gorgeous, kind man? And more importantly, who held the power to do so?
“You are.” My voice quaked just as much as my flailing legs as I tried to scoot up the bar and run away from the wild orgasm that had threatened to riven my body. “You’re doing the right thing, Dean. Whatever it is.”
“I hate her,” he said, his tongue penetrating me, deep. His lips, his fingers, his teeth devouring me completely. He was talking about another woman while being with me. That should have made the alarm bells in my head go off, the red sirens to spin at three hundred miles an hour. But it didn’t.
It didn’t, because it was him.
“Then I hate her, too,” I cried out, feeling my knees shaking and my body going numb as a hot wave of pleasure washed over me, cocooning my body. I howled, a mauled animal, pulling at his hair, my thighs clenching his head until he had to pry them open with his strong fingers. Then I lay there for a second, motionless, and watched as he unbuckled his belt, stepping out of his pants before he grabbed me by the thighs and scooted me up.
“I’m angry.” The green in his eyes danced like flames.
“I know.”
“If you want to walk away—do it now. For what it’s worth, I think you should.”
“I’m staying.”
“You’re not going to like what you see.”
“What am I going to see?”
“The side of me that I’m not too proud of.”
I gulped, my mouth falling open. “I’m in, no matter what part of you you give me.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he sneered. “I’m going to hurt you.”
“Good.” I placed a hand over his chest. “That’s what I like about you. You treat me like a capable human and not like a wilting Rose.”
And just like that, everything changed. Darkness sucked the sunset from the city that watched us, broken glass crunched under his shoes, promising pain, his eyes shut down, and I was left alone with a stranger. With a savage.
The lights were switched off and he pulled me into him, but when I thought he was going to catch me…that was when he let me fall. A throne of colorless glass underneath me. Even my bones moaned in protest as he grabbed me by the arm and hauled me to his bedroom, dragging me along his pristine black and white floor. My skin split from being dragged against the glass. Black velvet rug greeted me when we entered his domain, beneath an extra-large, king-sized bed from the variety you only see in the movies. I’d never been in his bedroom before, and I gulped when I thought about all the women who had. All the Kennedys. All the Natashas.
All the uncomfortable and painful truths.
He let go of my arm and gave me a little kick with his leg toward an ottoman by the floor-to-ceiling window.
“Elbows,” a metal-cold voice that wasn’t his demanded, and I scooted up on my knees and placed my elbows on the settee, staring out to the twinkling, artificial lights of New York. Dean stood behind me, but I couldn’t see what he was doing. My ass was bare, but I still had my bra on. I figured he was hovering somewhere in my vicinity, but couldn’t tell for sure. I didn’t turn my head and look. He wanted me to be scared. I wanted me to be scared. This was happening.
“The funny thing is,” he started, pacing behind me in his room, and I shivered at his beautiful voice. I heard the whoosh of thick liquid as he took another drink of his brandy. “They all called me Ruckus and The Joker in high school. The Jester. The fun guy. The clown.”
And he was none of the above. I realized it now, but back in high school, I bought into that image, too. He could I not? He was damn good at selling it, and at a very high price.
“But you know what I am, Rosie?” He stopped moving behind me.
I closed my eyes, sucking the masculine scent of his room into my desperate lungs and feeling my heart disjoining inside my chest.
“You’re a Pierrot,” I whispered. “You’re a sad, lonely clown.”
“Always smart and perceptive.” A hint of his own voice trickled into his tone. He took three or four steps toward me—I heard and counted—and even though I was still mostly naked and couldn’t see him through the reflection of the too-spotless window glass—I felt safe.
“Do you know why the Pierrot is sad?” Dean asked.
“Broken heart.” I swallowed, fighting tears. “He is pining for love that can never be his.”
I wanted to turn around. To hug him. To undo the last few hours that made him the way he was. But I did none of those things. I felt his hand caressing one of my ass cheeks, his breath tickling the valley between my neck and shoulder.
“Run, Rosie,” Dean hissed. “Run before I fuck it up and ruin us.”
“Try me,” I insisted. “Break me. Use me. Fight me. You’ve chased your prey for months. Years. A whole decade, goddammit. Are you just going to let it go?”
The smack to my ass cheek made me tumble forward and shocked the living hell out of me. I’d never been spanked before. Not because I was against it. I guess it was one of those things I never got around to. Like bungee jumping or watching Schindler’s List. Perhaps it was the fact that all the men I’d been with always treated me like a fragile thing that was about to die in their hands. Or maybe it was due to the fact I was never completely stripped of my self-conscious and shame when I was in bed with anyone else.
But Dean wasn’t anyone else.
He was the one.
I groaned, the desire and sting swirling in my body, scooting my ass toward where I’d last felt Dean, begging for more. It felt dirty, but I didn’t mind being dirty with him. He never judged me. Come to think of it, he was possibly the only person in my life who accepted me for who I was. Even Millie tried to convince me to move back to Todos Santos.
The sound of flesh beating flesh assaulted my ears before I felt the second smack, and this time it was somewhere between my butt and pussy. Drool pooled in my mouth and my head sank to the ottoman, my eyes rolling in their sockets. Why did it feel so divine wh
en the man who claimed he wanted to “save” me hurt me? Maybe because a part of saving sick little Rosie was by showing her what she was capable of suffering without breaking.
“Scoot up.”
I scurried up the ottoman until my upper body was draped over it and my ass was in the air. Dean squatted down behind me—I felt his naked body against mine—and shoved four fingers into me all at once. It hurt, but I sucked in a breath and pulled through. He played with my arousal a little before taking it out and serving me my juices.
“Taste your pussy.” His voice was detached. “Taste what I fucking do to you,” he added.
Even though that was another definite first I’d never thought of doing, I brought my lips to his shiny fingers and licked them. Shoving them into my mouth, he demanded after a brief moment, “Suck them clean, Rosie.”
I tasted sweet and warm. Not half as bad as I thought it would be.
He wiped the remainder of my juices on my ass and smacked it again. This time, I leapt forward, but didn’t whimper. I think he liked that I didn’t bitch about it. His groan told me so.
When his tip started teasing my entrance from behind, I lolled my head from side to side, waiting for him to plunge in. But he didn’t. He did this for a whole minute, driving me out of my mind, before I begged, “Dean…”
“Mmm?”
“Don’t torture me, please. Do it.”
“Do what?”
“Get in.”
“Wrong terminology. Try again.”
Holy hell.
“Fuck me, please.” I gulped.
“Condom?” he inquired. His tone was edgy. Like he was expecting something.
“I’m on the pill.” The lie was bitter in my mouth, and I was already breaking the rules we agreed on yesterday. The honesty part. I didn’t need to be on the pill. But he didn’t need to know that. Not until I was ready to tell him, anyway. Apparently, we both didn’t need to know a lot of things. What a fucked-up start to a relationship that was.
“You are? Because in Vegas, you weren’t.”
Jesus, with this guy.
“I am,” I whimpered, waiting for more. Whatever more entailed.