At twenty one, Dante made his first million. The small amount of money left to him from his father’s company was all he needed to get started. A year later he’d bought the huge tower block in the city for his headquarters in cash, and expanded his interests, from computer software into clubs and commercial property.
Just before his twenty fourth birthday, Dante turned over a billion. Not many people could say that. Not many people had such an exceptionally quick rise to the top nor the capacity to know how to stay there. Dante had a knack for it. He made more money in a day than ninety nine percent of all Americans. Men fought each other to line up alongside him, hoping somehow his infectious charm would rub off on them, and women, drawn by his natural magnetism and rugged good looks, went crazy just to throw themselves at his feet. He had everything that he had ever wanted, apart from just one thing. The one thing he had always been denied.
Another bar sign catches his eye. ‘There are no regrets in life, just lessons.’
He snarls at it, curses under his breath, raises his glass to his mouth and downs the rest of his drink. When he places the glass back on the counter, a quarter turn out of habit, to set the embossed company logo into a more favorable position, someone has already sat down next to him.
A raise of the glass is enough to get the attention of the bartender.
“You buying?”
Dante shifts sideways in his seat to look at her. She’s prettier than he expects, and much younger than her voice led him to believe. A quick glance reveals an athletic body she’s not shy to show off, healthy, peach-colored skin, and innocent, chocolate brown fuck-me eyes. She’s not a whore either. She doesn’t have the distant, detached look, nor the beaten up air the requirements of that job instills. That doesn’t mean she’s not dangerous, but when has that ever stopped him before? Besides which, she might help him make a decision. At least if she can’t, she’ll help him take his mind of making it for a while.
“Sure.”
Dante is impressed by her confidence, his broad smile spreading across his face to make the girl feel comfortable. It’s a smile that you can’t help but fail to warm to. “What would you like?”
“What are you drinking?”
“Old fashioned. Apparently it’s their specialty”
The bar tender puts a glass down on the counter top and fills it with bourbon and ice. There is a warmth between him and the girl that suggests they already know each other.
“You always drink alone-?”
“Dante”, Dante says, filling in the gap for her.
“You always drink alone, Dante?”
“Do you-?”
“Katy. And yeah, I do if I’m looking for conversation.”
Dante ignores the irony. Drinking alone and looking for conversation aren’t the kind of things that usually go together, but he’s sharp enough to know what she really means.
“This doesn’t look like the kind of bar where you’d usually go to get it.”
“You’d be surprised, the kind of people that come in here.”
Katy eyes go wide as though she’s sharing a secret.
“You always dress like that for conversation?”
Dante looks at the hem of her dress, where the fullness of her thighs emerge.
“I find it flows better.”
Because he’s looking, she uncrosses and recrosses her legs, pulling her dress down carefully to cover herself.
The bar tender finishes mixing the drinks. He slides them over before retreating again back into the shadows, to concentrate on the football game on the TV up in the corner.
“So who’s the girl that’s done this to you?” Katy guesses, her voice rough-edged but luxurious, like it belongs to a soul singer with a thousand different stories to tell.
Dante smiles again. He hangs his head and fiddles with the stirrer in his glass. Again, he regards her. What’s her story? Who is she? University kid from a rich family? A lost soul looking for another?
“What are you doing here, Katy?”
For a moment, Dante wonders whether she’s a high class escort, sent here by Alex or Isabella. He pushes the thought away. No-one knows he’s here apart from his driver, and if he wanted to, he could have arranged that himself. Perhaps she’s not meant for him at all, but someone else. Someone that’s stood her up, and now she’s seen him and zeroed in just to make up the difference. It’d make sense if it was that part of town. She doesn’t look like she belongs here, but then neither does he.
“Making conversation. I thought we’d already covered that.”
Dante watches her turn the glass around. Twisting it clockwise, a quarter turn at a time. Suddenly he feels the urge to impress her. To show her his worth.
“You want to go somewhere, Katy?”
She lets the question hang for a moment while she composes herself.
“You want to take me somewhere?”
“Yeah”, Dante says, that hungry look in his eyes again. “I do.”
When Sash came back to him, after three years of leaving him out in the wilderness, to sit there in his office in floods of tears, and admit that she needed his money and not just him, he knew she was giving him the perfect opportunity to finally get what he wanted, and deserve what ever she got as a result of that too. He exploited her completely, it’s true. He played her, but only because she let her guard down and allowed him to do it.
He wanted to finally take what she had denied him, and put a big, fat, full stop on the feelings he’d carried with him for over three years. The feelings she had made him carry in the first place. After that night, after that amazing, incredible, earth shattering fuck, the plan was to never see her again. The plan was to fuck her and disappear, to wipe her completely from his life, much like she had to him all those years ago. To forget about her completely. The problem was, it just didn’t work that way, and as much as Dante hated himself for it, he didn’t seem able to stop thinking about her. He hated that. He hated the hold she still had over him.
She’d got into him again, she’d brought memories of their time together flooding back to the surface of his mind, and the more he tried to push them away, the stronger they came back at him.
Needing her made Dante feel weak, and there was absolutely no way he’d let his guard down and show Sash he felt that way. It was why he’d let a week slip past already without contacting her. It was too long a time based on the way he felt, but not long enough to make a decision either way. It was why he’d buried himself in work, why he was getting drunk more and more often, and why now, as he headed to one of his clubs, he wasn’t doing it alone.
She’d be mad at him for leaving in the first place. Enraged he hadn’t returned her calls. He’d have to figure something out. She’d forgive him, whatever he did, as long as he went back to her. He knew that. He knew where she was after all, there was only one place she had left to turn, and it was exactly the place where Dante had wanted her to go. It had started there, so if it was going to continue at all, it seemed fitting that at least once, it should be there. Dante was impressed by how he was able to control her, but what he wasn’t impressed with, was how little he was able to control his own feelings.
Chapter 11
Sash watches Abbey snoop around Dante’s room, as though looking for clues to a murder mystery.
“Dante’s bedroom. I thought I’d never make it in here.”
“Knock yourself out.”
Sash is sat up on the bed, her knees pulled protectively up to her chest. She looks worn out, like she’s spent the whole week crying.
“You know everyone was in love with your brother.”
“He’s an asshole. And he’s my stepbrother anyway.”
“Yeah but he’s hot.”
Abbey opens a drawer and finds the picture of Dante that Sash has purposely hidden. “And he’s loaded.”
“So what?”
“So, duh, he’s totally Mr eligible bachelor 2015. Look.”
She holds up the photo for Sas
h to see, as though she hasn’t spent hours and hours pouring over it already. “You’ve got to admit he’s cute.”
“You have a boyfriend already.”
Sash stands up to grab the photo from Abbey’s clutches and hide it away again in the back of the drawer. “And I didn’t bring you over here to perv over my stepbrother.”
She gets behind Abbey and pushes her to the bed.
“Seriously, Sash, you don’t know how long I spent idolizing your brother.”
“Stepbrother. And I do, remember, you told me about it every day for about two years.”
Abbey flops onto the bed and Sash sits alongside her.
“He never looked at me. He was always too interested in other girls. I was never popular enough.”
“You’re not missing out on much.”
“No, of course not. Only private jets, penthouse suites, fantastic abs, perfect ass, that smile, those arms-.”
She counts them out on her fingers.
“It isn’t everything.”
“Duh, Sash, what else is there?”
“Love.”
“Please.”
Abbey laughs. “It’s overrated.”
“Why are you with Shaun then?”
“Because Shaun’s got a big dick, baby, and he knows how to use it.”
Sash laughs. It’s the first time for a week she’s felt able to do that. Abbey twists on the bed so the two girls are facing each other.
At one point growing up, Sash and Abbey were inseparable. Born only a few months apart, they played together as little girls, moving through elementary and high school together as best friends, eventually separating out into different social circles when they were old enough to realize their interests were taking them on vastly different paths. While Sash moved into the city, desperate to grow up and find a life of her own, Abbey decided to stay put.
Although they spent less time together through college, they still maintained contact, treating each other like sisters, each with their own separate lives. If there was anyone she felt she was close enough to, to confess how she felt about Dante, Abbey would be the girl. The fact that they’d known each other so long and she still hadn’t done it, went some way to explaining just how important a secret it was to keep.
“So who is he?”
“Just some douche-bag.”
“They’re all just some douche-bag. This one really hurt you though, huh?”
Sash can feel herself welling up again. “It’s not just that. It’s this, all of this, having to be back here again.”
“Oh, fuck that. At least you get your washing done for you and your meals cooked.”
“Tracy has the unique ability to suck flavor out of anything she prepares, and she won’t let me into the kitchen to help her.”
“What I mean is it could be worse.”
“I have no money, Abbey. Zero, zilch, zip, nada de nada.”
“That’s why I’m here”, Abbey says proudly, with a smile that beams across her face. “I’m going to take you out.”
“No, Abbey.”
Sash shakes her head. “That’s not a good idea.”
Abbey wriggles herself closer to Sash. “I know you didn’t call me up to sit here and
be miserable all night.”
“That’s exactly what I called you here for. To look after me in my time of need. To stop me from going crazy.”
“When was the last time you went out?”
“I went running today.”
“That’s not what I meant. Out out. Drunk, dancing, flirting with boys out.”
“I don’t feel like it.”
“Yes you do.”
Abbey takes her by the hand. “It’s exactly what you need, and tonight is on me.”
She guides her to the full length mirror, standing behind so Sash can see herself.
“Don’t let yourself get down, Sash. See how beautiful you are?”
Sash looks at herself briefly, before looking away again.
“I don’t feel it.”
“That’s part of the problem. You need to get your confidence back, and do you know what the best way is to do that?”
“Going out?”
“Duh, attentions”, Abbey says, pluralizing the word. Sash doesn’t know whether it’s for effect or because she just doesn’t know that it can’t be.
“You want to feel good about yourself, you need to let people tell you. Agreed?”
“No”, Sash says. She’s turning now, looking at herself again, her eyes going to her chest and down towards her belly. In a week she’s done nothing about it. If she is pregnant, the baby will already be growing.
“Wrong answer.”
“I don’t want to drink.”
Abbey smiles. She can already tell she’s changing her mind. “Then I’ll do the drinking and you do the dancing.”
Sash doesn’t answer, she’s too busy admiring herself, her hands back over her belly, smoothing the skin above the line of her trousers.
“You’re not fat. Don’t even begin to think you are.”
Sash pulls herself back to reality. “Ok.”
“Ok, what?”
“Ok to going out.”
“It wasn’t up for discussion anyway”, Abbey points out, already on the way to the wardrobe, keen to find something sexy for Sash to wear.
“Whoever he is”, Abbey says, rifling through Sash’s clothes. “He’s made a very big mistake.”
Chapter 12
On the drive into town, Abbey drops the hood and pumps the music up as loud as it will go. Sash watches her squirming along to the high tempo beats, dancing away in her seat without shame, and she can’t help but be pulled along by it. Fuck it. Forget about Dante. Forget about that useless, lying, good for nothing, asshole.
She made a mistake going back to him, but it’s over now. She’s got to move on. She’s got to think about her own life. She’s back to square one, but everything else is up from here on in, and it’s people like Abbey who are going to help her get there. Abbey smiles as she watches Sash loosen up and get her groove on. Together they sing along to the chorus, the words both catchy, and laughably ironic.
My love has got no money, he’s got his strong beliefs.
My love has got no power, he’s got his strong beliefs.
Up ahead, the lights are about to turn red. As though they’ve thought exactly the same thing at exactly the same moment, the two girls look at each other briefly to confirm it. With a mischievous glint of solidarity in her eye, Abbey slams her high heel down on the accelerator purposefully. The engine revs and the car picks up speed.
“We’re not going to make it.”
“We’re going to make it.”
Up ahead, cars are already slowing.
“Slow down, Abbey, we’re not going to make it.”
Abbey presses as hard as she can on the accelerator.
“Come on”, she says, willing it to go faster.
“Abbey.”
Several meters before they get to the junction, the lights turn red. It’s too late to stop. Flashing past a line of parked cars, they rocket through the intersection just in front of the approaching traffic. Sash grips the door tightly, a burst of adrenaline running through her, as Abbey twists the wheel and spins the car violently to the left. The tires screech wildly below them, clinging desperately to the road, while stunned drivers angrily beep horns in their wake. As Sash catches her breath, Abbey can’t stop laughing.
“Fuck, that was close.”
“What the fuck, Abbey?” Sash complains, before she too finds she can’t stop laughing.
“I told you we’d have fun, and this is just the start. You wait until we get to the bars and clubs.”
Sash turns in her seat to look behind her. In the distance, too far to see more clearly than in silhouette, her stepbrother’s office tower dominates the skyline.
In a mirrored private booth at the other end of the city, a semi-naked dancer swings around a table top pole, gyrating s
ensually to the downbeat music only a meter away from where they are sat. She’s got long hair that falls around her shoulders as she moves, dark, glittered skin and firm, surgically enhanced tits. The way she moves is making Katy horny.
“Is this where you bring all the girls you pick up?”
Her eyes rove carefully over the dancer’s contoured body, feeling her own not quite adequate enough in comparison. At times, when the girl leans out or stretches an arm or a leg, she’s that close, that if she wanted to, she could reach out and touch her. Dante could too, but Dante always can if he wants to.
In the bar, she wasn’t sure what to expect. She knew he had money, that was why she went over in the first place - the expensive suit, the chunky gold watch, he hardly attempted to hide it - but she didn’t know who he was, or that they’d end up here.
For Katy, a girl who considers gold-digging to be a career choice, and the conquering of a billionaire the pinnacle of that ambition, this feels like an interview for the top paying position in the city, she wouldn’t forgive herself for fucking up.
Dante takes a sip of his drink, the ice cold champagne tingling pleasurably as it creeps down to his belly. Unfortunately for Katy, he can already feel himself getting bored of her.
“I don’t remember picking you up. I thought it was the other way round”
“Hey. I told you all I wanted was conversation. The rest was up to you. You invited me here, after all. We could have had the conversation in the bar across town.”
Dante regards her carefully. His look is intense, almost debilitating. Katy can’t help but feel herself weakening, as though the longer she looks the harder it is to resist him.
“It helps me think.”
He doesn’t need to specify, for Katy to know what he is referring to.
“What does it help you think about?”
“Getting what I want”, Dante says firmly, as though that should have been obvious.
“That doesn’t look like something you have trouble with.”
“You’d be surprised.”
The dancer lowers herself to gyrate the stage, her legs open now, inviting. Dante’s cock stirs as he watches.
Charged: A Stepbrother Romance Novel (With FREE Bonus Novel Heated!) Page 25