Servers passed in a blur and two men in black suits began to rope off a reserved section across the room from where he sat. Ivan brought his glass of Jack on the rocks to his lips and sipped as he watched.
“Looks like they’ve got a big party coming in.” A soft female voice spoke the exact words he’d been thinking.
His gaze followed the enchanting sound of her voice and there, three barstools away, sat a gorgeous blonde in a simple black dress.
She shook her head. “Probably nothing more than a pack of frat boys looking to spend daddy’s money.”
“Or a group of high-priced businessmen looking to spend their kids’ college education,” he added, smiling.
“You might get lucky,” she said, returning his smile. “It could be a gaggle of bikini models fresh from a photo shoot.”
“If only!” Ivan said with an honest to goodness laugh, half hoping the stranger was right.
She laughed with him and held up her wine glass as if to toast from across the distance. “I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.”
Ivan raised his glass in her direction and kept his eyes trained on her as he took a drink.
She winked at him and turned back to face the bar. Much to his surprise, the freak was silent, but he was intrigued. There’d been no siren call, no overt flirting, and no licking of lips or beckoning looks. This was just a girl—albeit a stunning girl—who seemed to offer nothing but conversation and maybe a laugh or two. When she glanced back in his direction, he was still looking at her and smiling.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked, listening for the roar of the freak, but it never came.
She patted the leather barstool beside her and tipped her head. “Please do.”
Ivan picked up his drink and walked over. In an effort to short-circuit the freak, should he decide to appear, he introduced himself. “I’m Ivan.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Elle.”
Two drinks in, Ivan realized this was the first interesting conversation he’d had with a woman in months. She was funny, warm, and anything but the Miami Beach type he’d been accustomed to, and it was a nice change. He felt comfortable just being in the moment with her. It had been too long since he’d made an effort to talk to a woman he was interested in mentally, instead of just physically. Rather than being just a body, Elle was a face, she had a name, and he was thrilled to find himself making an effort to connect with her.
She had an accent he couldn’t place. But he listened, enthralled, to her tales about her modeling career and travels across Europe and the United States. And his interest was really piqued when she admitted that modeling wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, that she had ambition for something greater than the gloss. Ivan sat back and marveled. This was nothing like the small talk he’d occasionally endured with the women he’d frequented during the past few months—women who had too much to say about nothing.
“What do you want to do now? You’re too young for retirement,” he asked, fascinated by her eyes.
“Well, I’d have to say photography is my main love.”
Interesting…This easy conversation, combined with the alcohol and the good vibrations, was the right kind of medicine. She was fun and unapologetically silly, and he genuinely enjoyed her company.
As they bantered back and forth, Ivan relished the return of the brilliant colors that only dirty, deviant sex had sparked for him the last few months. Even the pulse of the music felt stronger, more alive as it reverberated across his skin and down his chair, and the sounds of glasses clinking and cackles rising from the big spenders who’d just entered the bar sounded a bit more crisp. But they did little to deter his conversation with Elle. He was allowing himself to reclaim who and what he truly was, and it was invigorating.
Then, just as he raised his glass to his lips, someone bumped against the back of his chair. He lurched forward and spilled his drink over the rim. Elle gasped. The man mumbled a drunken apology, and Ivan blew it off as just some Miami Beach party boy—who smelled as if he’d had one too many. He shrugged and smiled at her, but instead of moving on, the man remained standing behind him, now bantering loudly with his buddy. Ignoring the drunken fools, Ivan tried to stay focused on his new friend, a woman he might actually be into.
“Damn, man, you should see what that ass looks like under that skirt. It’s perfect.”
“Fuck her ass! Look at her tits.”
“Amazing, I know. Trust me.”
The drunken banter grew louder, and it became virtually impossible to talk as the club grew more and more crowded around them. Elle smiled again, but turned her attention across the room to watch the dance floor for a while. Ivan followed her lead and decided on a little people watching of his own. But despite all efforts to ignore the men, he couldn’t help but overhear the conversation unfolding behind him.
“What, did you fuck her?”
“It’s a funny story.”
“I knew you didn’t.”
“Now, hold on just a minute.” The guy’s voice grew irritated behind him.
“So, we’re at this party, and she’s drinking like it’s going out of style. I catch on and start sending her drinks. She’s sucking them down all night, and then she starts rambling to me about some boyfriend she has back home. One thing leads to another and—”
“Tell me you used the ‘He’ll never know’ line.”
“Damn right I did. Women eat that shit up.”
The conversation behind him now commanded Ivan’s full attention, so when the guy telling the story mentioned that woman with the perfect body was present in the room, and wearing a blue dress, he couldn’t help but be intrigued. What man wouldn’t be? The sound of the guy’s voice grated on his nerves, but if she was half as gorgeous as he’d made her out to be, he had to at least have a look.
“Frankly, she was a little too easy.”
“So did you fuck her?”
Like an overly dramatic telenovela on Spanish TV, Ivan was drawn in by the ridiculous story line and cheesy one-liners he heard. He had to know how it ended for his own amusement.
“I finally convince her to leave the event, and by that point I’d gotten her drunk enough to let me drive her home—to my house, of course. As we’re driving, I start trailing my finger up her leg, dipping it under skirt. Getting her all worked up, you know. I could tell she’d already made up her mind at the party, so I was just playing with her. And the second I pull in the driveway—before we even get out of the goddamn car—she literally jumps across the seat and starts grinding into my lap and sticking her tongue down my throat.”
Elle leaned over and placed a hand on his arm. “I have to run to the ladies’ room,” she told him. “Will you be here when I get back?”
“Absolutely,” he said, nodding. “Maybe by then they’ll be gone and we’ll be able to hear each other again!”
She smiled and disappeared, leaving him free to focus on the train wreck of a conversation behind him.
“You better have fucked her proper.”
“Here’s the fucking thing. We get inside, barely, and I get her down to her bra and panties in sixty seconds flat. Drunk women are so easy. And she’s hot, trust me. Lean legs, toned stomach, and an ass to die for—a really sporty-looking fuck. So we start making out again real hardcore, and I think I said or called her something I shouldn’t have, because out of nowhere she just fucking stopped with this blank look on her face and broke down crying.”
“Ouch.”
“I love my boyfriend…I can’t believe I’m doing this,” the drunk whined in a high-pitched voice. “You know, the typical shit that falls out of a woman’s mouth when she’s had too much.”
“So, she wasn’t kidding about the boyfriend, eh?”
“Yeah, he’s some asshole who lives here in Miami, actually. Seems like a real dickhead.”
Now thoroughly intrigued, Ivan took pity on the guy in the story. Unfortunately, he could totally relate. Poor guy must have shitty taste in women, but I
gotta see this girl. He turned and cased the room for the heartless bitch with a killer body in the blue dress. His eyes moved over dancing party-goers and desperate hopefuls, but nowhere was there a blue dress hiding the promise of physical perfection. Then his eyes fell on a once-vacant table that had now been filled by the private party. The dress wasn’t blue, though. It was teal.
The curve of her hip was one he knew well. He’d gripped it many times before. He knew the feel of the V that formed at the top of her breasts. He’d often laid his face against her soft skin as he fell asleep in her arms. And he knew firsthand the boyfriend in this romantic tragedy who had shitty taste in women. It was him.
Chapter 16
“Freak on a Leash”
“SHE WAS SO DRUNK, the bitch ended up passing out. I got her good in the morning though. Told her we fucked.” A snorting laugh followed this revelation.
“You didn’t!”
“Yeah, I did. Handle your fucking liquor, slut. She learned a lesson from it too. She and her boyfriend broke up, and of course I was the bad guy. But screw her—she wasted my night.”
Ivan stared dead ahead at the girl he’d thought he’d known as he listened to the evidence of his romantic homicide being confessed. And the confession was quite different than he’d imagined. Damian Gris’s heartless claims of victory and conquest over someone Ivan held so dear shot rage through his body.
Each word, each claim, each twisted truth deepened the veil of red forming over his eyes, and within moments, Ivan had lost the battle with his inner beast. The freak he’d subdued just days ago was now off the leash. This time anger had wound the freak into a maddening frenzy of fury, rather than lust. An orgasm of rage heightened his senses and made clear his direction.
Every moment of despair Ivan had felt in the past six months filled his mind at once—the look on Jaden’s face the night she’d broken him, days and nights of crushing emotional pain, and the nameless faces of the women who’d served as his sexual painkillers. The wreck his life had been saddened him, and it was all authored by him and his manipulation of her.
But after a moment, one emotion rose above the swirling anger and angst: pity. He felt sorrow that the beautiful person he’d loved so dearly had been taken advantage of by this evil, empty creature standing behind him. Inebriation was no excuse for unfaithfulness, whether consummated or not, but the malicious intent that had instigated the situation was intolerable.
Damian had ruined what he had with Jaden for no real reason at all—just a drunken haze of frat boy antics and perverse mind games. How fucking dare he?
Anger, confusion, and pity ripped through Ivan like an emotional tornado, leaving nothing solid in their path except for a voice. Above the noise came the voice that had counseled him on the beach the morning after his heart was broken, the voice that had urged him to numb his mental anguish with hard work and even harder fucking, and the voice that now demanded he should have retribution for all that had been lost—for himself and for Jaden. The freak had returned. And he was pissed.
Without hesitation Ivan stood, feeling the frenzy of hormones and emotions that energized his body, readying him for confrontation. He turned to look at the man who had wronged his right, who had deliberately, and without care, ruined his life and his one true chance at happiness: Damian Gris. The little faux French fucker deserved at the very least to have his teeth kicked in, the freak advised as Ivan’s muscles swelled. Sounds and sights appeared brighter and louder than they had in months, and finally his desire and the freak’s were the same: retribution.
“So did you ever figure out what flipped her out?” Damian’s friend inquired, still absorbed by the story.
“Damned if I know. One minute we’re standing there kissing, and the next minute she’s in hysterics. All I did was called her something stupid like girly, or baby, or—”
“Baby girl?” Ivan offered, abruptly entering their conversation. He offered a wide, menacing grin as the pathetic excuse for a human turned to identify who had spoken.
“Can I help you with something?” Damian’s friend inquired.
Not even sparing the guy a glance, Ivan raised his hand to silence him. His eyes, which felt as if they were beaming fire, locked on Damian’s icy blues. In an instant he had mirrored Ivan’s aggressive stance.
“Dude, why don’t you just piss off and leave us the fuck alone?” his friend suggested.
Not letting his focus falter for one second, Ivan refused to acknowledge the guy. Toe to toe, he faced the demon.
“This is the cocksucker I was telling you about,” Damian said with a laugh, his eyes widening in recognition. “Jaden’s ex boyfriend.”
As if the two men exuded some sort of testosterone-driven beacon, a small group began to form around them, the crowd sensing something was escalating.
“You know, you should thank me,” Damian sneered. “I saved you from getting screwed over later on. Little bitches like that always fuck us over in the end.”
Was that Damian’s problem? Had he fallen in love only to get his heart crushed? Was this what happened when the freak took full control of the man? He became a womanizing, egotistical bastard like Damian Gris?
Ivan just shook his head. Pathetic. Damian didn’t deserve a verbal response, nor did he deserve a fist, but he certainly didn’t deserve to walk out of this place without learning a life lesson.
The freak screamed again, and Ivan lunged forward, a jolt of excitement surging through him as he prepared to unleash upon Damian exactly what a creature of his magnitude deserved: the back of his hand.
Every muscle in Ivan’s shoulder flexed as the back of his hand extended toward the side of Damian’s pretty-boy face. As flesh met flesh, Ivan returned a little of the embarrassment, pain, sorrow, and loathing he’d endured courtesy of Damian. The adrenaline rush and sting in his hand were more gratifying than every sexual encounter he’d had in the last six months added up and multiplied by ten. The freak’s demand for retribution matched his thirst for climax, and they collaborated in a fantastic moment of having avenged what was lost. The demon had been vanquished, and Ivan had reclaimed a piece of his pride.
Caught off guard, Damian lost his balance and crashed back into the bar, knocking his friend over in the process. He looked up at the man who’d just backhanded him with hatred smoldering in the depths of his eyes. A collective snicker rippled through the crowd of bystanders.
“Are you done here, Ivan?” the bouncer called from behind the onlookers.
Snapping out of his fury, Ivan smiled at the bouncer before turning his attention back to Damian, who remained on the floor. It seemed he did not care to tango—not tonight, not ever.
Ivan leaned down, his voice low and menacing. “How did that taste, asshole?”
Damian just stared back, gasping like a fish out of water.
“Yeah, I figured as much,” Ivan scoffed. He motioned to the bouncer. “Get these clowns outta here, would you?”
In one rough motion, and with little regard for their wellbeing, the security guard parted the crowd and grabbed each of the men by their shirts. He dragged them to their feet and toward the door.
A wave of giggles and murmuring followed them out, but after a few moments, with no more to see, the crowd dispersed. Ivan took a deep breath and felt a momentary lightness. The weight of this burden had finally been lifted from his shoulders, but he wasn’t done. The freak was free, and it was time to right so many, many wrongs.
Despite the release he’d relished after confronting Damian, he could already feel the tension returning. So now the freak turned his head toward her. He looked over the heads of the crowd, many of them still conversing about the bitch slap that had sent a TV star flying, and found the girl in the teal dress. Suddenly every other woman in the club faded away. The freak had made his choice. Even he wanted Jaden.
She and Tasha sat side by side, giggling and sipping martinis, and the veil fell over Ivan’s eyes once more. Making the same beeline he’d made
in Bianca what seemed like a million lifetimes ago, he darted through the crowd and across the dance floor. As he approached, a second burly security guard nodded and stepped aside.
“Hey, Doc,” the man greeted him as he granted access to the roped-off area.
“Hey, Sam,” Ivan replied as he pushed past the crowd lingering to get a better look at the beautiful people behind the ropes.
More than a few heads turned as he crossed the room, but the girl who sat with her back to him—the one and only person Ivan wanted to notice him—remained oblivious. As he came to stand next to her, he held his breath. Finally sensing his presence, Jaden turned in her seat to face him. Her eyes, as green as emeralds in the mid-day sun, locked with his for the first time in what seemed like an eternity. How long had it been since her words had broken him? He could tell by her face that those same words now echoed in both their ears.
A two-second visual conversation was all he needed. Emotions rushed through him—hate, love, anger, lust, disdain, sorrow, pity, envy—until he had no idea what he felt. But pinpointing his feelings didn’t matter. He was drawn to her presence, and he knew from experience that the freak was not about to turn back now. He didn’t care about the anger, he didn’t care about the confusion, and he didn’t care about the pity. All he cared about was reclaiming what had been stolen. What tomorrow brought was insignificant. Tonight she would be his, and that’s all that mattered.
Silently, he extended his hand to her. Wordlessly, she accepted.
The feel of her skin against his sent a flash of energy though his body. He prepared himself for a night of passion that wasn’t spoken but screamed.
Chapter 17
“Crazy Bitch”
IVAN TOOK JADEN’S HAND and led her back through the dance floor and around the bar, blindly pushing past anything between them and the back exit of the club. They crashed through the doors and out into a secluded, dimly lit alley, hidden by the small hours of a muggy Miami Beach night.
“Ivan, I am so—” Jaden began to speak the second they stepped outside, but he pressed her into the wall, pinning her to the brick with his forearms and cutting off an unfinished apology that wouldn’t do either of them justice.
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