I square my shoulders and let my inner bitch take over my voice. “What are you doing here?”
He raises his eyebrows in vague disbelief. Well, okay. So he’s wearing a tux. Clearly, he’s here for the opera just like me. “I need to play this game for clients. Network. That kind of bullshit. You’ve opted out of this life, so the bigger question is, what are you doing here?”
I bristle, because what the hell does he know about the choices I’ve made? “I’m on a date. Wait. I told you I was coming here.”
I didn’t think it was possible for his liquid gold eyes to burn cold, but I was wrong. Cole hates that I’m on a date, and the thought gives me an illicit thrill. Good. He needs to know that not everyone jumps at his command. Not everyone is within his realm to control.
He steps closer. “Pretty romantic first date, the Kennedy Center.”
“Who said it was a first date?”
“Since your date isn’t at your fucking side, making you feel like the most beautiful woman in the world, I should hope it’s not a repeat.”
He’s not wrong. I don’t say that, though. I don’t say anything.
“Who’s the fuck up?”
“None of your business.”
“Does he kiss you like he could get drunk on your mouth?” He dips his gaze to my lips, which part as if on command. Fuck off, lips, don’t be difficult. I lick them in a nervous attempt to get my body back under my own control, but that just makes his pupils dilate. Like the promise of my mouth is enough to make him drunk.
I don’t tell him I haven’t kissed Trevor, and I won’t be. Unfortunately for me, the bar for kissing has recently been raised to impossible heights.
I might need to become a nun. I shake my head and give him my haughtiest stare, left hand firmly on my hip. “That was a mistake.”
He glares at me, like I’m making him be a jerk and he resents it. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want to do it again.”
His words blast through me and I reach for the railing to steady myself. “Don’t. I’m on a date, for Christ’s sake.”
He swallowed hard, and my gaze slides past him to a woman fast approaching. Holy shit.
“You’re not here alone, either.”
“No.”
She’s beautiful, and I’m filled with irrational jealousy. I’d just finished telling him I was none of his business. But I selfishly still want him to be my guilty something. And the way she’s sauntering over…my stomach turns. I tell myself not to ask the question, but it spills out anyway. “Who is she?”
“My girlfriend.”
I didn’t hear that right. I couldn’t have, but when I meet his gaze, it’s suddenly cold and unwavering.
“But you came over…No.”
He lifts one eyebrow. “No?”
“You kissed me,” I hiss under my breath. It sounds catty and I don’t care.
He drops his voice, too, but it just sounds sexy. “I kiss a lot of women, Hailey.”
That doesn’t sound sexy. Fuck him. It’s my standard refrain. “Like, this week?”
I can’t swallow and my mouth is dry. I can’t believe I let him touch me, and now she’s beside him. Blonde, thin, pale in a pretty way. Ugh. I hate her and hate myself for hating her. I smile and offer a hand. “Hi, I’m Hailey Reid.”
“Penny Kristoff.” Her grip is sure, and I want to ask her if she knows her boyfriend apparently kisses a lot of women, but I’m afraid I might vomit all over her Donna Karan gown if I open my mouth.
So instead I press my lips together and nod and smile through some lie Cole tells her about what we were talking about—a charity connection we discovered over the last few days, because “I’m a cheating scumbag who can’t keep my tongue in my mouth” probably wouldn’t go over well. I make a noncommittal noise when she asks me…something, and then finally my good for nothing date shows up and I escape.
The next hour passes by in an angry blur. It’s like there’s a slideshow of our kiss playing over and over again in my head with an awful National Geographic narration. The alpha male, ever alert for an opportunity to rut with a willing female, pounces at the first sign of vulnerability.
By the time the performance is over, I’m beyond ready to go home, but there’s a talk after the performance that Trevor wants to stay for. We file out to the foyer with everyone else.
“Would you like a glass of wine?” Trevor murmurs, touching my elbow.
I shake my head, then change my mind. Sure, whatever. “White, please.”
I excuse myself to the ladies room where of course I run into Cole’s girlfriend. Because Fate clearly hates me.
She’s at the mirror, touching up her lipstick, and I decide to do the same. There’s no way my bladder can perform while she’s in the same room, and it was really just an excuse to get away from Trevor anyway.
“Lovely performances tonight,” she says with an authentic smile. Sure, why shouldn’t she smile? Blissfully ignorant of how gross her boyfriend is.
“Yes.” I apply a careful layer of Barely Red, and as I do, she watches me. Not suspiciously. Not innocently. Something else I can’t quite figure out is playing in her eyes. I cap the lipstick and tuck it away.
I’ve got two choices here. I can run and hide, or stick my toe in the water and find out what’s what. It’s very unlike me, but Cole’s lit a spark inside me. It’s dangerous and crazy, and I’m perilously close to not giving a fuck. “You’re Penny, right?”
She steps closer, tipping her head to the side. “I am.”
“Cole didn’t mention you…” I leave that trailing. I don’t want to be a bitch here. I’m done with him, so it doesn’t matter—except it does. Ugh.
“No, he wouldn’t.” Her lips plump and curl at the corners, like she’s got a secret that pleases her.
I don’t want to get sucked in, but that smile has a million questions racing through my head. “What do you mean?”
Another secret smirk, and I want to smack her. No, I want to walk away, but I can’t.
And then she turns and looks at me, and everything shifts slightly as her voice turns overtly friendly. “That's a great shade on you.”
So much for me being brave. I take a mental step back into the protection of my ingrained graciousness. “Thank you. It’s a favorite.”
“I can see why Cole likes you.” She leans this time, not actually moving closer, but the room feels smaller. And hotter. “You're luscious.”
Whoa. “Pardon?”
Surely I’ve misheard her. But then she tugs her lower lip between her teeth and glances down my body, and nope, I’m pretty sure she said I was…. Wow. So maybe Cole and his girlfriend both kiss random women. That didn’t make me feel better.
“You’re very much his type.” She says it almost under her breath, and I wish I could say that I don’t like hearing that. I’d wondered, over the last hour, why he’d kissed me when he was with this woman. Of course now I wonder if he has some kind of fetish for thick thighs and soft breasts.
And since I don’t like that idea at all, I feign my last vestige of ignorance. “Excuse me?”
She pinks up, finally cluing in to the fact that we’re very much not on the same page. “You know…” she says softly. “Don’t you?”
“No, I really don’t.” My voice is high and wavers a bit, but I stand my ground.
“Oh.” She presses her lips together, pink cheeks now ruddy with embarrassment. “Then let's blame this on champagne and a long work week.”
I’m not sure I can. She knows something about Cole that I don't. Hell, what she knows about her boyfriend that I don't would probably fill a stadium. But right now, her words are ringing in my ears.
“Listen, this…” She lifts her hand and hovers her fingers between us for a minute before ever so lightly touching my collarbone and exhaling as she does. “I know he’s difficult. But the way he was looking at you.” She makes a warm humming noise. “I’d like to watch him fuck you.”
Oh. My. God.
&
nbsp; “I have to go,” I squeak, and spin on my heel in the world’s fastest and least elegant bathroom escape ever.
In the foyer, Trevor is waiting a few yards away, holding two glasses of wine. An usher opens the doors to the hall again, welcoming us back for the talk, and all of a sudden I just can’t.
I fumble at my purse, pretending that it just vibrated. I quickly hand back the glass he’d just slid into my fingers, and look at my dark phone. “It’s my sister, do you mind going in without me?”
He better not mind. He spent most of the first half taking work calls on a Saturday night first date. And of course he doesn’t, because whether or not I’m on his arm really doesn’t matter to him.
I watch my date disappear, toss back my wine like it’s water, and look for a place to stash the glass before I disappear into the sad, cold night. I feel a momentary pang of guilt, but I can text him an apology. Family emergency. He’ll believe that.
Cole’s hand is not the place I wanted to dump an empty glass of wine. But there it is, reached out in front of me as he comes around my body. “Long night?”
“Something like that. I need to leave, so if you could give that to a waiter,” I murmur, not looking him in the eye.
Without breaking eye contact with me, he finds a surface I didn’t notice and disposes of the glass. “We need to talk, beautiful.”
No, I need to knee him in the groin, then go home and take off this stupid gown.
“Why does your girlfriend think she might be able to watch you fuck me?” I hiss under my breath, barely taking a beat to appreciate the way he blanches ever so slightly. Good. Fuck him.
“Penny told me she said too much. She’s sorry.”
“She doesn’t need to be sorry. You do, for kissing me. And calling me beautiful. Totally uncalled for.” My words are coming out in short, sharp, staccato bursts. I wish they’d land half as painfully as they rip from me, but Cole seems unaffected.
“Fine, then I’m sorry. It was inappropriate for me to kiss you.” He moves closer as he says it, and as much as I want to knee him in the junk, there’s a part of me that gets warm. Stupid girl warm, with the goose bumps and convenient memory loss that ensures that assholes like Cole get to keep spreading their DNA through the population.
But this isn’t the first time I’ve mistaken attention as something more. And it wouldn’t be the first time that attention would be purposefully misrepresented as something more.
“There’s nothing hot about being used,” I say quietly. It doesn’t sound quite right as I say it, and the flare in his eyes says I’m wrong. If I am, he needs to fix that impression, because he kissed me when he had a girlfriend, and he sure as hell acted like it was a dirty little secret.
I slap myself back. No. It doesn’t matter if he had twisted good intentions when he kissed me.
His lips tighten and he clenches his jaw for a minute, like he’s at war with himself. I know the feeling.
Finally he drops his chin, staring at me with his magnetic eyes. His voice, low and rough and intimate, does dangerous things to me on the cellular level. “I wasn’t using you, and that kiss was fucking hot. You can’t deny it.”
I can’t. Doesn’t mean I won’t try. “Wow, mixed messages much, Mr. Parker? It can’t happen again, you’ve got a girlfriend, a convenient omission of fact the other day…but you sure seem obsessed with my mouth.”
I think he’s getting taller and wider and angrier as he stands in front of me, but I’m not afraid. I’m fired up, and so is he. “Not at all, Ms. Reid. I didn’t realize that I needed to spell out the details of my personal life before I reacted to you eye-fucking me in your kitchen. It was a kiss. Get the fuck over it.”
“Oh, I’m over it.” Another lie. My nose must be a foot long.
“And if it seems like I’m obsessed with your pretty little mouth, it’s because you keep licking your lips.” His gaze drops to my mouth again, and I laugh.
Then I lick my lips.
“If I wasn’t working for your family right now…” His voice is still low and tense, but we’re starting to attract some attention. Just enough that people might wonder what we’re talking about.
I should shut up. I should walk away. I don’t do either of those things, because I can’t let him have the last word, especially when it’s a lie. “What? Nothing, Cole. You’d be working for some other scum bag. Tell me—how many murders have you covered up this week?”
Eyes dark, nostrils flaring, he looks every part the affronted party. Torn between disappointment and relief—because I’ve pushed him away for a reason, and not just because I’m frustrated and feeling scorned. Cole’s no good for me on any level.
But his words, when they come, aren’t angry. They’re taunting. And he takes his sweet time delivering them. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, beautiful. And that’s okay. You have a right to be pissed at me, because I live in a world of secrets and lies that, God help me, you’ll never understand.” For a second, I think he’s going to stop there. When he starts again, his voice has changed. Shifted, like he’s lost a tug-of-war, and his eyes glint in a new and thrilling way. “But when you say shit like that, it makes me want to put that mouth to work doing something more…satisfying.”
Heat crawls up my neck, then down between my aching breasts and into my belly. Sucking him off is not a turn on. Stop it, body. You’re fired from the What’s Best for Hailey Committee. “Surely you can find someone else who doesn’t object to you being completely amoral to give you a blow job. Like your girlfriend.”
“Haven’t you figured out yet that I don’t want anyone else?” He shakes his head, clearly frustrated, and before I can process what he’s saying, he’s slamming even more at me, his words coming fast and furious now. “I want you. On your knees, your lips wrapped around my cock.”
I gasp. “What the hell happened to it was a mistake and this is nothing?”
“Oh, it’s still a mistake. But I was kidding myself about one taste being enough.”
He has a girlfriend. And I’m not into threesomes. Plus he’d said cock, like that was something one just said in the foyer of the Kennedy Center. My cheeks are hot and I know that as soon as I open my mouth again, I’m going to be stammering.
But before I can react, before I can grab on to the shitastic pile of truth he just dumped between us, he makes an amused face, as if to say, see? We’re playing in different leagues, little girl, and turns on his heel, quickly striding toward the Hall of Nations.
He’s pulled back behind his curtain of lies. More to the point, he’s had the last word.
“Get back here,” I whisper, my voice stolen by white-hot rage. I literally feel tipped sideways, but this isn’t over. I get to end it, I stubbornly insist in my head, even though it feels completely laughable at the moment.
I stare at his retreating back, righteous indignation coursing through my body. I want to run after him, leap on his back and pummel him about the head, but my heels preclude the running and the fact that we're very much not alone precludes the rest.
But we are so not done with this conversation, so I follow. Slowly, but he knows I'm behind him. I can tell from the extra-square shoulders and the way he isn’t looking around.
And it's not until he takes the sharp turn about ten feet in front of me that I realize this is a trap.
I slow. Eight feet. Six. If I turn that corner, he’s waiting for me.
Two feet.
I take a deep breath, ready for whatever Cole has in mind, and step into an almost empty hallway. Definitely empty of Cole and his raging energy.
Spinning, I ignore the hurt slicing through my chest. He’s playing a game with me, and it’s not one I’m up for.
Trevor has our coat check tickets.
Maybe I don’t need my coat. I step into a nook and pull out my phone. I’ll just text him and beg off. Whatever. I don’t care what he thinks, it’s not like we’re going to do this again.
I bump into the wall as I s
tep back, but then the wall gives way in a smooth, swinging motion, because it’s a door. Cole’s on the other side, and he tugs me into the dimness of another concert hall.
Before I can protest or yell at him again, he has me pinned against the wall, his mouth on mine. Teeth clashing, tongues sparring, I pour as much anger into this kiss as he does. Maybe more, because I hate how good he tastes and how perfect his hands feel, one gripping my wrists and holding me against the wall. The other is tracing my collarbone, making my nipples tight from five inches away.
“I’m going to do a lot more than kiss you. Tell me to back away and I will.” He devours my mouth again, making every cell in my body pulse. I lazily consider the fact that he’s not actually giving me a chance to tell him anything, but his tongue is like a magic wand that makes me wet and wanting. “But you don’t need to. No one will ever know. It’ll be our dirty little secret that I know how sweet you come on my hand.”
I swallow a moan as Cole jerks the bodice of my dress down, freeing one of my breasts. He cups it from below, his thumb teasing at my nipple in a way that makes me want to beg for his mouth right there.
Another reason we can’t do this—he could have me on my knees, desperate for scraps of his attention, with no effort at all. That’s the stuff of fantasies and dirty books, not real life.
Can’t do it again, I mean. Because Cole slapped a pause button on real life when he dragged me in here. We’re definitely doing this. He’s promised me an orgasm, and I want him to deliver.
And then I’ll get on my knees for him, just this once.
—six—
Cole
I’ve jerked off to the fantasy of Hailey’s tits more times than I can count over the last six months. She was wearing a V-neck t-shirt that first night I saw her, and a necklace that dropped straight to the top of her cleavage. Soft and sexy, they have captivated me ever since, and now I know what it feels like to have her flesh filling my hand. Fucking amazing.
I brace myself tight against her body, relishing the tension in her arms as she strains against me, her creamy skin dancing under the dim pot light above us. I wish we had time for me to explore every inch of her body with my tongue, from her delicate wrists to the soft dimples I imagine are at the base of her spine.
Hate F*@k:Part One (The Horus Group #1) Page 4