by A. Zavarelli
“Obviously not,” I agree.
A pink flush spreads across her chest, and Jesus Christ she’s blushing. I’m smiling and she’s beautiful, even when she’s angry like she is right now.
“I won’t touch them again,” I assure her.
She tries to justify her actions.
“It’s just that if you move one, I won’t be able to find it later.”
I don’t know how she finds them now, but I don’t tell her so. Her control issues run deeper than I ever imagined. This is a whole new side to her, inside this space. A vulnerable side of her.
“Sit down on the couch while I get dressed,” she barks as she points to the other side of the room.
I grab her instead and pull her into me, my hand tangling in the long locks at the back of her hair.
“Scarlett, I like you. But I don’t take orders from anyone. So ye need to get that through your fucking head before you speak to me like that again.”
“Then why don’t you just fuck off,” she suggests.
She’s sullen and I’m hard and my fingers are tight in her hair, pulling her head back so my mouth is above hers.
“I won’t let you ruin this before it even gets started.”
“Fine,” she says. “Then let me go and I’ll get dressed. But I swear to god if you touch any more of my books…”
I smack her on the ass and she glares at me, so I break out the dimples.
“You want to get back at me, sweetheart? Then go slip into something so hot I’ll be suffering all night long even thinking about it.”
She smiles back at me, and its pure evil.
“Just remember you asked for it.”
Twelve
Scarlett
To thine own self be true, and let whoever stands in the way of that, truly know my wrath.
When Rory sees me, he’s stunned into silence.
I do a little spin, really playing it up. The dress is a deep crimson with asymmetrical cuts on the neckline and thigh. The lines cut low into my cleavage and high on my leg.
My mother would choke on her Chardonnay if she saw me in it.
“I’m adorable, right?”
“Adorable isn’t the word I’d use,” he answers gruffly.
“You clean up pretty nice too, sport.”
Now that I’ve taken notice.
He’s wearing dark wash jeans and a white button up with a black vest over the top. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, allowing his ink to peek out.
As far as visual pleasures go, this one isn’t bad. If I was a normal girl, I’d be all over it. The stereotypical bad boy with ink and the flirtatious personality as the cherry on top. But it’s those dimples that he brandishes like a weapon.
Women love them. And there’s no doubt he’ll be turning heads tonight too.
Which is why I have a strategy in place.
“I want to fill you in on the plan for tonight,” I say.
“What plan?” he asks, and it’s a tired question and he’s suspicious and I need to convince him this is fun.
“I think we should act like strangers.”
He stuffs his hands into his pockets and rocks back on his heels, considering my words.
“You want to hustle with me, sweetheart?”
“I’ll be doing the hustling,” I smirk. “But yeah, I want to Bonnie and Clyde that joint up.”
“What’s your game?” he asks.
He isn’t saying yes, but he isn’t saying no. He likes the adrenaline rush as much as I do. He thinks he’s the master, but he hasn’t seen me in action before. Not really.
So, I lay it all out for him. Using the voice and personality of the bimbo I sucker punch my clients with.
“Well you see, doll, I’m just a bored housewife. Married a real estate tycoon down in Texas and he spends all his time at the office.”
I toss in a couple sniffles and pull a handkerchief from my clutch to really ham it up before I continue.
“And I’m pretty sure he’s cheating on me with his secretary too. It’s our anniversary today, and he’s still at a meeting with her. So, I want to get drunk, have some fun, and spend loads of his cash. Only problem is, I don’t know how to play poker. I need one of you gentleman to teach me.”
The smile on Rory’s face disappeared over the course of my speech. The wheels are turning in his mind, but it takes him a minute to reply.
“Jesus, sweetheart,” he mutters. “They don’t ever see ye coming, do they?”
I don’t like the judgment in his tone.
“Oh boo fucking hoo,” I snap. “Do you actually feel sorry for those men? Then you’re the one who needs a reality check.”
“Scarlett.”
His voice is soft when he steps forward and reaches out to grab my arm. He knows I’m already one foot out the door after his last comment.
I don’t take to judgment well.
Anyone who wants to judge me can fuck right off. And I tell him as much.
“I’m not judging you, sweetheart,” he says. “I’m just a little terrified of you right now.”
And he should be.
Because I’m pulling one over on him too. While I play this game and tell him that I’m right. While I tell him not to judge me.
I’m lying to him and fucking him over too.
And while I’m thinking about all of this, he’s only thinking about me.
“I don’t know if I can handle seeing ye flirt with those other blokes,” he says, and it’s honest and...
Fuck.
Why does he always need to be so goddamned honest?
“It doesn’t mean anything,” I assure him.
“That’s exactly the problem.” He rubs a hand over the back of his neck and paces my kitchen. “I never know when ye’re being real, Scarlett.”
I suppose that’s true. I don’t know half the time myself.
I’m a compulsive liar. It’s what I do for a living. It’s what I do to survive.
It’s second nature. As easy as breathing. To lie even when I don’t need to.
Sometimes, it just feels good. To be fooling everyone else.
I’ve been lying to Rory since the day that I met him. He doesn’t know a real thing about me. And now that I think about it, I don’t know a single person that does.
“It doesn’t matter who we’re playing with,” I say. “Because when you start winning big, I’ll just decide that la-de-fucking-da… that’s the guy I want to go home with.”
Rory reaches down to grab my ass and pull me against him. He likes to do that, and he’s hard, already.
His lips move to my ear, his voice low and husky.
“Ye’re so sure I’m going to win big, aye?”
“Course I am, silly.” I pull back just enough to let him see my face. “Because I’m going to be giving you the signals all night long.”
Lies, lies, lies… they spill from my lips like lava.
And he swallows them like sugar instead of the poison they really are.
“There’s just one more thing,” I tell him.
“What?”
I dangle the blonde wig from my fingers and give him a weak smile.
“You’ll be going home with this girl tonight. I know you prefer blondes after all.”
Thirteen
Rory
The first order of business in NYC is to check into the hotel. It’s just down the street from the club that Scarlett picked, and the hotel is also Scarlett’s choice. She’s familiar with Manhattan and I don’t know how.
She’s edgier here. And she doesn’t have a Boston accent and now I’m wondering if this is where her hardness comes from. She could be a New Yorker.
We check in and the bell man follows us up to the room, discarding our luggage and checking out Scarlett’s arse. She notices but doesn’t care and I notice and tell him to piss off.
“You like it?” she asks when he’s gone.
The room is fine. Grand even. But little hell raiser here doesn’t make sm
all talk and I know something is definitely up with her.
“Only the best for you, Satan.”
She smiles and gets straight down to business. “I’ll walk in first and choose the table. You can grab a drink and join us.”
She’s already bolting to the door, but I catch her around the waist and stop her.
“Scarlett.”
“Yes?”
“If anything starts going sideways… and I mean even the vaguest notion that it’s going sideways, you come straight back here to this room and wait for me. Do ye understand?”
“Sir, yes sir.” She salutes me again.
“This isn’t a joke. I want to hustle with ye, sweetheart. But I need to know ye aren’t going to be reckless about it either.”
“I’ll be a good girl,” she promises. “Scout’s honor.”
Now my cock is saluting her and I don’t need her spouting off this sort of shite before we even get to the tables.
Watching other blokes eye-fuck her all night is not going to be an easy thing to stomach. And I really think I might give in to my baser urges tonight and fuck her so thoroughly she will never want to play these games again.
We leave and I follow Scarlett down the street, a few feet behind. My eyes are on her arse and so are every other man’s and I want them to know that she’s mine. But Scarlett is like a bird and the slightest change in the weather will have her flying away.
The man in me wants to show her she can still get her kicks without putting herself at real risk. At least not with me beside her.
She told me she wants to get out of trick rolling. And I’m going to make it happen. From the moment I met her, it’s all I’ve ever wanted.
I can be patient. And she will learn to trust me. She will come to understand that I’m not bullshitting her like every other lad. In the process, I’m liable to get pricked more than a few times by her shield of thorns.
But what’s a little blood for the sake of someone you care about?
Of course, it’s a grand notion to have, until we walk into the club. This place isn’t at all what I expected. It’s swanky and private. Heavy buy in fees and rich pricks strolling around in Armani suits. If I could read minds, I’d be murdering some motherfuckers right about now. How casually they leer at Scarlett as she passes by as if they have that right.
The patience I claimed to have only moments ago is nowhere to be found now.
The trade off, I remind myself.
At the end of the night, Scarlett is going home with me. Not any of these other blokes. This is the only way with a wild one like Scarlett. If I’d suggested dinner and a movie, she’d have laughed in my face and walked right out the door.
So, I grab a drink at the bar and scope out the room, careful to keep her in my sights. She finds the table she’s looking for in moments and it’s faster than I expected and Scarlett is a true pro.
The table isn’t as bad as I thought. A few older businessmen. And one bloke around my age, maybe. Of course, that’s the one she’s got her sights set on when she takes a seat beside him.
I join the table and take my place two seats down from her, focusing on my drink while Scarlett launches into her role.
Within a few short moments, I come to understand that the story she gave me earlier was only the practice version. This time, she’s fully locked and loaded with her smile and her fake accent and her cleavage that even I can’t fucking look away from.
The men are eating it up, all of them offering to help her out, purely from the kindness of their cocks.
I’m rapping my knuckles on my leg and focusing on the table. Trying not to let it get to me. But the arsehole she’s with is eating it up with a fucking spoon, and when he smiles, it’s smarmy and I want to knock those teeth right out of his mouth.
To my complete fucking irritation, he accepts her proposal to help spend her bastard of a husband’s cash.
The game begins soon after, and Scarlett is supposed to be giving me the signals. But she isn’t and all I can see is red when Ethan- her new best friend- wraps his arm around her and leans close to whisper in her ear.
I’m about to fucking snap, and at this rate, I’m about to lose as well.
I need to cop onto myself.
So, I order another drink and get my head into the game, deciding the only way to salvage this clusterfuck is to ignore Scarlett completely. She didn’t come here to play poker and if I’m going to win, I can’t be distracted by the game she’s playing too.
So, I do what I do best.
I start hustling.
And I recover from my initial blunders once I’ve got my focus right. Now things are changing. Now Scarlett’s eyes are on me, but I don’t look up at her.
Her laughter is musical and the tales she spins for Ethan, syrupy sweet. She’s a good fucking liar and Crow was right and she really is Satan and what the fuck am I doing and why do I still want her?
She’s playing me too.
The viper disguised as a kitten. And she’s dead wrong if she thinks I’m just another ignorant bloke being led by his cock and she’s going to watch me crash and burn while she laughs in my face.
Just when I think I’ve got it all sorted out in my head and that I need to let go of her, Niall’s words from earlier come back to me, warring with that thought. Am I only sabotaging this, exactly as he said I would?
The game breaks, and Ethan excuses himself to the bathroom, with promises he’ll be right back. Scarlett and I already agreed that we wouldn’t speak until the end of the game. That was the plan. But she knows that none of this is right and she can sense the want in me to leave this behind. To leave her behind and forget her.
And the devil in her wants to reel me back in.
“What does it feel like?” she whispers as she moves around beside me. “Is this jealousy?”
It’s an innocent question. And the honesty in her voice softens my resolve. Scarlett doesn’t have relationships. She told me herself she doesn’t feel anything for men.
It shouldn’t surprise me. Or piss me off more.
But it does.
“Why don’t you tell me?” I nod to Ethan as he comes strolling back from the bathroom.
She gives me a funny look but resumes her games with Ethan.
With the few minutes we have left, I turn around and scan the crowd. There’s a cute blonde across the bar, glancing at the tables hesitantly. Like she wants to play, but isn’t sure how.
I catch her attention and gesture for her to come closer.
She does.
“Care to join me, sweetheart?” I ask, laying on the accent real thick. “You look like ye could use a good dose of fun.”
She gives me a tentative smile, and a deliberate moment of hesitation even though we both know she was sold the second she saw me across the room.
“Okay.” She agrees and takes a seat beside me.
Across the table, Scarlett’s eyes move over my new companion. But they are flat, as always, emotionless, and I can’t read her.
I genuinely don’t know if the woman really is capable of feeling anything.
But I’m about to find out.
Childish, maybe. But I’m a bloke. We never fully grow up.
Blondie introduces herself as Charlotte, and she becomes my new best friend as the game begins again. She’s laying it on real thick too, with her sweet charm and pretty smile. She keeps leaning close to me, brushing her arm against mine before I wrap mine around her shoulders and start whispering in her ear.
I’m raking in the chips now and cleaning out the table.
And I’m proud of myself for not once checking in Scarlett’s direction. Her laughter has died down, and the conversation between her and Ethan seems to be diminishing as well, much to my satisfaction.
When the game is finished and I’ve raked in my winnings, Charlotte tells me she has a hotel room upstairs, wondering if I’d like to join her.
Before I can give her an answer, Scarlett is beside me.
I glance down at her, still jacked up over her antics. But her face is soft now, her eyes open. She doesn’t spare Charlotte a glance as she grabs my shirt collar and pulls my face to hers.
“I’ve decided that I don’t like this game anymore,” she says. “And I’d like to play another.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. And I’ve decided I need a new good luck charm. So what do you say, old sport?”
I give Charlotte an apologetic smile, and it was a dick move of me to bring her into this so my apology is sincere too. I tell Charlotte I’m going to keep trying my luck at the tables.
“No big deal,” she says, eyeing Scarlett as she slips me a card from her purse. “It was fun. Let me know if you want to do it again sometime.”
Scarlett drags me from the table and then stops in the middle of the floor. I can’t tell what she’s thinking. She’s locked down tighter than a battleship right now, giving nothing away.
“I have to go to the powder room,” she announces.
“Alright. I’ll be here waiting for ye.”
She leaves, and I grab another drink from the bar.
But by the time I’ve finished it, she still hasn’t returned. I take a walk around the club and ask a couple of ladies who leave the bathroom if they’ve seen her, but they say no.
So on the predictable chance that she’s run off on me again, I find the back exit and poke my head into the alley to look for her.
What I find isn’t Scarlett.
Even at her worst, I’ve never seen her like this. So frayed. So much rage pulling at her seams.
She’s got the bloke- Ethan- pinned by his throat with her stiletto, and she’s aiming a gun I didn’t even fucking know she had, right at his head. Her wig is off, and her eyes are wild. Terrified and filled with thirst.
Thirst for blood.
“Scarlett.”
I move towards her, approaching slowly, but she won’t even look at me.
“Stay the fuck away, asshole,” she tells me. “Why don’t you go find Charlotte. You liked her so much with her blonde hair and dry personality. I bet she’s completely sane too.”