by A. Zavarelli
All I want to do is bury myself inside of her. Claim her in a way that nobody else can ever have.
But what I want more than that is her trust.
And fucking her like every other lad on the street tries to isn’t the way to accomplish that. So even though she’s kissing me back, and I’m so fecking hard I could drill a hole in the wall with my cock, I pull away. Only to bury my face in her neck and inhale her.
She’s breathing hard, and the tension in her body has dissipated, at least a little. So I let go of her wrists, and she slides them down my chest and into the loops of my jeans.
Then her eyes meet mine, warm like brandy, and so different from only moments ago.
“Fuck me.”
I groan and give her one last squeeze in my arms before I pull away.
“Ye’re going to be the goddamn death of me, woman.”
My rejection triggers her armor to fly back into place, and again, she’s on the verge of fleeing. So I grab her by the hand and drag her down the hall to my bathroom.
“What are you doing?” she asks as I pick her up and plant her arse on the countertop.
I reach for the button of my jeans and flick them open. Sliding down the zipper as she watches with curious eyes.
“Trust is a two-way street, sweetheart,” I tell her. “And I trust that ye’re going to stay put. Because otherwise, I can promise you, ye won’t like it if I have to come to collect your arse again.”
She smiles at me in challenge, so I drop my jeans and kick them off.
Scarlett swallows, and her curious gaze wanders over my body. I give her a full minute to do just that before I walk to the shower and turn it on. And though I want nothing more to have her join me, I settle for letting the ice-cold water calm me the fuck down.
When I get out, she’s still there, her legs dangling off the countertop. I grab a towel and dry off, and then I move my hips between the small gap in her legs. Dragging my fingers up her calf to her bruised and swollen knee.
When I touch it, she flinches.
“A name,” I say again.
“I’m going to let you take me out on a date,” is her reply.
Again, I lean in and taste her mouth. For just a minute. Because I can’t help myself. And because I want to believe I’m making progress with her even though I’m suspicious as fuck.
Then I smooth away her hair and twist it back over her shoulders.
“What does my girl like to do?” I ask. “When she isn’t fucking shit up out on the streets.”
“Your girl,” she scoffs. “For the record, Ace, I’m nobody’s girl. And you really ought to stay away from me.”
I smile and she frowns and she isn’t done.
“I mean that,” she repeats.
“Do your worst, Scarlett.”
She stares at my chest and her fingers move over the tattoos there while she speaks.
“This dating thing,” she says. “It’s my game. My rules.”
“Tell me what sort of things ye fancy. And I’ll see if I can make it happen.”
She ponders this for a moment while she swings her legs back and forth in a childlike fashion before wincing.
I try to focus on her words and not the fact that she’s in pain, because it will only make me homicidal all over again.
“I don’t like people,” she says. “Or texting. Or foods that are orange. Black licorice. Television. Concerts. Restaurants. Clubs. Malls.”
She falls silent as I stare at her curiously.
The sad part is, she isn’t even joking.
“Did I mention people?” she adds.
“Twice,” I tell her. “But I’m the exception to that rule.”
“You can’t declare yourself an exception to a rule. The rule maker has to do that.”
“Scarlett.”
My voice is a warning, which she ignores.
“I’m just laying it out for you, Brodrick,” she says. “You think you’ll get me liquored up and I’ll ease up a little. But that’s not going to happen. What you see is what you get. Always. I’m incredibly dull and very blasé in regards to literally everything. So, you should just move on along now and save yourself the trouble of a failed attempt.”
“I did get loafed in the head tonight,” I tell her. “But I do recall you just asking me to have a go at ye not so long ago after I walked in the door.”
“Only because I had a moment where I wondered what it was like,” she says. “But the moment is gone now.”
“What do ye mean, what it was like?” I press.
“Just, you know.” She waves her hands about in an ambiguous fashion. “What fucking someone that didn’t repulse me was like.”
Scarlett is blunt. That’s one thing I’ve come to know about her since we met. Mack regaled me one night with countless admissions about her. How she is a genius with no filter and no social skills either. That she never fit in so she’s never bothered to try after that. But this admission catches me off guard.
The last thing I want to do is delve into who she was shacking up with before me. But now, I can’t stop myself from asking about it.
“You’ve never been with a man ye weren’t repulsed by?” I question her. “Really? What about your boyfriends?”
“Boyfriends?” she blinks. “I’ve never had a boyfriend. Well, not since high school anyway.”
This time I’m officially stunned into silence. Which only seems to offend her more.
“Who needs a fucking boyfriend?” she huffs. “Relationships are just a headache. I’ve never understood why anyone would want to put themselves through such hell. And willingly too. I might be sadistic, but a masochist I am not.”
“Scarlett?”
“Yes?”
“Stop talking.”
She does. And I take a few moments to file her words away where I can stew on them later. But for now, I just need to get her out of the house before I fuck her into next week.
“Get ready,” I say.
“For?”
“I’m taking ye out tonight.”
Eight
Scarlett
If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then I must be headed straight for heaven.
There isn’t a single part of me that has ever felt bad for fucking over a man. Some say you’ve got to be cruel to be kind.
I say you’ve got to be cruel to survive.
I don’t owe anyone anything. Especially Rory.
But when I dart glances over at him, driving me through the streets of Boston like he actually gives a fuck, I want to go for a long run. Over a bed of Legos.
If I punish myself, then I feel better.
But I can’t punish myself, because I’m trapped in this car now and all I can smell is him. He’s clean, like the ocean. He’s cool and mint flavored and olive-skinned and his body is all Alpha, and I keep checking him out when I don’t mean to.
His body is hard, but he isn’t hard like me. He’s open. Lazily draping his hand over the wheel and leaning back in his seat, his tee shirt stretching across his chest. He’s a tee shirt and jeans guy. A dimples guy. A jokes guy. A punch-you-in-the-face on Thursday nights guy.
He’s too many things. Tall and casual and funny and green-eyed.
And I am only one thing and it’s not his girlfriend.
But it doesn’t matter.
I made up my mind, and I’m no quitter. I tried to warn him away, but if he isn’t smart enough to listen, I can’t take responsibility for that.
I’m a wrecking ball, and you don’t fuck with a wrecking ball.
He fucked with me and now he’s going to help me, and I’m going to use him, and in the end it will ruin him.
It wasn’t supposed to be this easy. And it’s only for Rory’s own good that I’m going to teach him this lesson. Because after everything I’ve already said and done to him, he shouldn’t trust me.
But he took me back into his life just like that.
And do you know what happens to people
who give out second chances like Halloween candy? They get fucked over.
I’m not a toaster, and I can’t be rewired. You can’t plug me into the wall and get a connection where there was none before. Because this is how I was programmed. From birth, I was wrong. Those symptoms my mother used to bitch and moan about? They weren’t symptoms. They were lifelong afflictions.
I don’t have feelings for people or objects or places or sentimental longing for old memories. While most people have an emotional capacity that rises and falls in relation to the object or person, I was not plagued with such a hindrance.
My mother knew I was wrong and she couldn’t have wrong in our family. She put me through the works. Blood tests and speech tests and ink blots and diagrams of reptilian brains. At first, it was a learning disorder. Then a social disorder. Communication disorder, perhaps. The word spectrum was tossed around, which my mother quickly put the kibosh on…. because those types of disorders didn’t live on the upper East Side. Brooklyn, maybe. But not in her home.
I told her once that I didn’t feel anything. That I was just a flat line. And I stayed flat forever. She told me never to speak of such nonsense again and then sent me to boarding school for a year.
So, I never spoke of it again.
There was satisfaction in being right. In being flat.
But now there is something else. I’m second guessing the boundaries of my linear emotions. There is a blip in the line when I look at him.
Fear, I reason. Because I’ve never felt as dangerous as I do when I think of what I could do to him.
Rory isn’t flat like me.
He’s all jagged edges and soft corners. A contradiction of dark masculinity and soft humor. But inside, he feels.
And I’m the girl that’s going to soak him in kerosene before I light a match.
There’s a faint whisper of the conscience I didn’t know existed telling me to stay away. But the destructive part of me wants to punish him.
I want to stay linear. Because it’s easy. And it’s familiar. But it’s like one of those heart monitors when they bring someone back to life. I can see the small peaks and valleys forming already. My flat line is altered.
Pliant, when before it was unbendable.
I stare at him too long and he feels it. His eyes move over me too, suspicious.
He knows something is up. Because I never would have come to him otherwise. So, I need to give him a reason. Something to think that I need him. I’m going to make him a good soldier. The Clyde to my Bonnie. And we’re going to fuck up everyone who’s ever crossed me before I turn on him too.
Because in this world, you can only ever rely on yourself.
And I am going to end this. One way or another.
Rory pulls up into the parking lot of Slainte and turns off the ignition. This is the Irish mafia’s stomping grounds. Headquarters, if you will. A strip club and gambling establishment and who knows what the fuck else. Mack was a dancer here for all of two seconds before Crow went and married her, so I know a little about the place.
The question now is what we’re doing here.
Rory is back to his normal boyish personality when he turns in the seat and winks at me. He reaches for my hand and his is warm and big and calloused from fighting.
“Name?” he asks.
This is my opportunity. And here comes the breadcrumb. Rory can’t resist helping a woman in distress. So, I’m going to throw him a bone. I will give him a legitimate reason why I need to stick around for a while.
“The thing is…” I say quietly. “The name doesn’t matter.”
Rory doesn’t interrupt me. That’s the thing about him. He’s not like most guys. He actually listens to what I have to say. And whenever I talk, his eyes are on my face, not my body.
It’s unfamiliar, and it makes me uncomfortable. Exposed and raw. Full of curves and peaks that I want to stomp back down into the flat line where they belong.
“The game has lost appeal,” I continue. And this part is actually true. “It hasn’t been there for a while.”
Rory’s eyes are warm. Relieved. And the small sense of calm I had evaporates into annoyance. Of course, he’s happy. Trying to dictate the way I live my life. Just like the rest of them.
He has no right to judge me.
The fucking Mafioso trying to tell the hooker that her life is all wrong. It gets under my skin and lives there, but I don’t let him know it.
This little charade is going to be quick and rough, the way he likes it. He’s a perpetual bachelor. I’ve seen him at the fights. The women hanging off his arms. The life he lives is fast and hard. High octane.
Anything less wouldn’t give him the same satisfaction.
Men get bored easily. Monogamy isn’t natural to them. Fact.
Rory would get bored with me too, no matter what he tells himself. It’s only the chase that thrills him. And if I wasn’t fucking him over right now, he’d be fucking me over in only a few short months. No question about it.
Which gives me the fortitude I need to move forward with my lie.
“I want out,” I tell him. “I want to move on. But I just....”
I lay it on thick, turning to look out the window as I rub my hands over my dress.
“There’s just a few loose ends I need to take care of first. And I need your help with that.”
“Sweetheart, you know I’ll always look after ye. All ye ever had to do was say so.”
I swallow the lump in my throat, but the false tears I conjured up don’t feel so false anymore. I don’t recognize what’s happening inside of me right now.
Regardless, it’s what Rory needs to see. His fingers move over my face, gentle and full of worship.
“We’ll sort out the details later,” he promises. “But for now, it looks like ye could use a good dose of some fun.”
Fun? I don’t even know what that is. But I nod anyway. Placating him like I’m a normal girl who can go on normal dates. Or whatever.
Rory tells me to stay put and gets out to walk around the car like some sort of gentleman. He opens my door and helps me out of the car, wrapping an arm around my shoulder as we walk towards the back door.
But before we go into the club, he pauses to lean down and whisper in my ear.
“You will give me a name, sweetheart.”
Rory bypasses the bar and the dance area and takes me directly to the basement.
The space is loud and filled with Irish men and a hodgepodge of other sorts too. Various gambling pursuits abound throughout the room, and there’s a waitress running her ass off to serve drinks while the men drink and smoke.
The noise and the claustrophobic atmosphere stab at my temples and I’m smiling and I really don’t mean it. My senses are in overload. The thing about my brain is that it doesn’t deal well with so much stimuli. But I’ve had a lifetime of practice, so I shut it out and focus on the things that need doing. Like walking and breathing and observing and nodding when Rory introduces me to someone.
He leads me to a poker table with one spare chair and sits down, pulling me into his lap like I’m his trophy for the night. The other men at the table toss me fleeting glances, but don’t dare say anything.
This is a man’s game. And apparently, I’m here for decorative purposes. But after Rory meets each of their gazes, they stop looking at me and find other points of focus. It’s a change of pace if I ever had one and I relax a little as he orders a drink.
He asks what I want, and I tell the waitress myself.
There’s chatter around the table before the game starts, but Rory doesn’t participate. His face is in my neck and he’s breathing me in again and PDA isn’t a problem for him but it’s a problem for me. I tell him so, and his arm wraps around my waist and pulls me back against his chest.
“You play poker?” he asks.
“Don’t know how.”
He shifts beneath me, and he’s hard for me. Uncomfortable, no doubt. With my ass pressing against him and no
relief.
There’s a part of me that likes that. That I’m torturing him. I’m feeling like myself again.
“I think you’ll like it,” he says. “The adrenaline rush without fucking up any unsuspecting lad.”
I glare at him and he flashes me his dimples. His signature move.
The dealer sits down and gathers our attention.
The table falls quiet as the cards are dealt and everyone morphs into a human statue. They don’t want to give anything away, Rory whispers in my ear, and I think that maybe I’d be good at this game.
I may not know how to play poker, but I know how to read faces. And some of these guys, quite frankly, suck.
For the first couple of rounds, I just observe. Rory whispers in my ear to explain the moves he makes with the cards and I learn a little as we go. But it’s the people I’m watching. And after about twenty minutes or so, I know that the bald man opposite of us is nervous as all get out.
It’s a gut instinct.
I whisper my theory into Rory’s ear as well. He glances at me, and then without question, trusts my judgment completely.
When he’s forced to show his hand, I’m happy to see that I was correct.
The rest of the evening proceeds in similar fashion. We stay until two in the morning. Between Rory’s skill at the game and my tip offs, we rake in a shit load of cash. I’m exhausted and my eyes hurt when Rory drags me away from the table.
“We’re leaving already?” I ask.
Rory laughs and musses up my hair like I’m a child.
“Better to quit while we’re ahead, sweetheart. But don’t worry, we’ll come back. We make a good team.”
“I want to have a spot at the table,” I tell him. “My own spot.”
He smiles at me again and shakes his head. “No women allowed. Club rules.”
“Well that’s bullshit.”
“You can take it up with Lachlan,” he says.
“Or you could just take me somewhere that isn’t 1950.”
He pauses at the door to consider it.
“That’s not a bad idea.”
A wicked smile spreads across my face, and it has nothing to do with poker. I thought it would be a challenge, but here he is, laying the groundwork for me.