My belly heated for a different reason as I felt those eyes like a hand at my throat, squeezing just right.
I squeezed my thighs together and noticed the way his eyes darted down to watch me before he could help himself. His clenched jaw and fisted hands gave me the confidence to laugh lightly and tip the glass at him before bringing it to my lips.
Watching him, I traced my tongue over the rim of the rocks glass. His slashing brows drew down over his eyes, shadowing them but not enough to conceal the gleaming hunger there.
Confidence warmed my insides. I parted my lips, opened my throat and let the burning liquid race down my gullet. It was probably one of the most seductive moments of my life, a powerful man caught up in my snare…
And I utterly ruined it by planting a hand in my belly as I bent over to cough furiously as the liquor tore a strip off my throat and seared my gut. Through my hacking, I heard Nova’s bright laughter and Zeus’s lazy, dark chuckle.
When I recovered, my eyes were filled with tears and my skin was redder than spilled blood. I was more mortified than I’d ever been in my life and floundering with how to handle it with any sort of class when Zeus’s soft words penetrated my haze.
“Teary-eyed n’ pink-cheeked with the effort to take it all for me. ‘Preciate the effort, kid.”
I blinked at him because he’d managed to both soothe my ragged pride and gently tell me off at the same time.
“I’ll get you another,” I rasped.
His eyes were heavy on me as he nodded. “You do that.”
I turned on my heel before I could embarrass myself further, both angry and thrilled with the incident. Zeus had flirted with me. Sure, he’d been a prick about it. But the intent was there, the hunger in his eyes had little to do with missing dinner and everything to do with eating me for dessert.
I was distracted as I made the rounds of my section so I didn’t react quickly enough when Quentin Kade pulled me into his lap.
“Saw you flirtin’ with Garro. How come I never see you waitin’ on me with that pretty smile, huh? I promise I’d treat you sweeter than him.”
“Hands off the merchandise, Mr. Kade,” I told him with a winsome smile because I was used to grabby hands and arrogant criminals.
Quentin wasn’t an unattractive man, slim all over in a way that looked like he’d been compressed between two walls as he grew, he was still mildly handsome if you looked at him in profile. He wore expensive, designer clothes and he smelled rich, musky and artificial. It was obvious that he believed his wealth and reputation would get him whatever he wanted, even human flesh.
His narrow face creased up in laughter. “’Course, there’s always a price for sweet merch like you. Tell me and I’ll pay it, see if we can’t put this ass to some use, eh? Just ’cause you can’t get Garro doesn’t mean you have to go without.”
He and his posse of men laughed like he was a stand-up comedian.
My smile grew strained. “No price. It’s like the Mastercard commercial says, some things are priceless.”
“HA! Got a sweet behind, girl, wouldn’t say it’s priceless,” he snorted.
“No,” I agreed because it was a fantastic ass but I wasn’t that arrogant. “But my self-worth is, and while I don’t judge anyone for doing it, I don’t sell myself for sex.”
The good humor fell through the false bottom of his charm and his mouth grew hard. “You think you’re too good for me, or something?”
Fuck. I hated the ones who made it about their own inadequacies. Couldn’t a girl just reject a man based on her lack of desire to be wooed or taken?
“I don’t.” I smiled again. “Like I said, I just don’t go in for that kind of thing. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got rounds to make.”
“Yeah, showing off that ass to see who’s gonna be the highest bidder,” he sneered, shoving his face into my neck so he could lick a slimy trail up to my ear where he whispered, “Trust me, it’s gonna be me who takes you home tonight.”
I planted my hand in his shoulder and shoved, all politeness forgotten in my haste to get away from him but his hands had curled into my hips like heavy anchors so I couldn’t move.
“Kade.”
The one word echoed through the room like thunder.
It was a warning that the lightning wouldn’t be far behind.
Zeus, the God of Thunder, was finally paying attention.
“Back off, Garro. Get yourself another girl for the night,” Quentin laughingly called over his shoulder.
But his bluff wasn’t good enough. I could see the fear spark behind his eyes and the thin crown of sweat that bloomed high on his forehead.
“Let the kid go, Kade,” Zeus said again, his voice a low rumbling force that had Quentin’s hands flexing anxiously on my skin.
I took advantage of his fright to scramble off his lap and put a huge partition of space between us. It took me a minute to realize that I’d subconsciously come to a stand still beside Zeus.
“A woman tells you to let her go, do it,” Zeus growled, taking a step ahead and to the front of me, shielding me from Quentin’s sight.
I didn’t know or care if he was conscious of the protective gesture, it sent hope fluttering to life in my heart.
“This is a fuckin’ titty bar, Garro. Can you blame a man for trying? Or is that particular girl you got an issue with me taking?”
“Yeah, I fuckin’ well can because this titty bar is property of The Fallen and if you don’t know this by now, Kade, listen close, yeah? You fuck with the The Fallen, you court death. Simple as that.”
Even though I was slightly behind him, I could see the cruel cut of his smile across his face, as if the idea of Quentin defying him, of courting that death, turned him on.
A dark shiver rasped like a calloused finger down my spine.
“Now, if a girl wants your attention, go for it. I hear you try to corner another one of my girls, you’re banned for life. And, Kade, I don’t just mean from this bar.”
I chewed on my lip because I got it. Quentin Kade was one of the biggest drug dealers in the province. The Fallen was one of the biggest producers and distributors of weed in the country. If Kade got cut off, he’d be crippled.
“Yeah, got you,” he said, face twisted with wounded pride and bitter anger. “Just like I got that you don’t give a fuck about getting my business anymore.”
“Just spent way too much of my fuckin’ time tryin’ to get that through your head so gotta say, glad you’ve finally got the message.”
Something feral and nasty slithered across Quentin’s narrow face, something that looked a lot like evil.
Zeus crossed his enormous arms over his chest and tipped his chin up. “I’d say it’s time for you and your boys to move on for the night.”
“Yeah, I’m fuckin’ beat,” Quentin agreed with a grin that was more of a grimace.
As soon as they left, I took a step toward Zeus, eager to thank him, wanting to touch him.
He took a huge step away from me before I could gain any ground and spun to face me. “I’m lettin’ you stay on because at least here I can keep an eye on your crazy ass, you get me? This is what you get when you flirt with dangerous men, little girl. You’re too fuckin’ young to know what you’re dealin’ with here and honest to Christ, I wish you’d go back to your pretty, ordered little world and stay the fuck outta mine.”
“Zeus,” I breathed with what little air was left in my compressed lungs.
“Got two kids already, Louise, you think I got time for a third?” he asked with a cruel raise of one scarred eyebrow.
I opened my mouth to say something but there was no air left in me, only hot blood that coursed through my veins like flames. It was impossible to believe that my saviour could so suddenly have turned into a demon.
“Believe it,” he whispered darkly, and I wasn’t sure if I’d spoken aloud or if he’d read the disillusion fragmenting the dreams at the backs of my eyes.
I watched in mute hor
ror as he turned and walked away from me.
By the end of sixth period the next day, my hurt had calcified into something else, harder and offensive. I was spitting mad and righteous with it. If Zeus Garro thought he could just flick me away like a fucking bug, he was sorely mistaken. I wasn’t a little girl anymore and I’d made it my mandate since my diagnosis that absolutely no one could tell me what to do.
Not even my guardian monster.
Especially when he was being a fucking prick.
“You got fire in your eyes,” Reece noticed, leaning away from his position at my side so that he could push my hair behind my ear and peer at me. “What’s up?”
I chewed at my lower lip as shame swirled in my belly.
Reece and I had never talked about whether or not we were “dating”. It wasn’t so simple as that these days when there was a spectrum of togetherness that ranged from one-night stands, hook-ups, friends with benefits and “seeing each other” to the more serious stuff. I figured Reece and I were the latter of those options but seeing as how we had never rubber stamped it, I tried not to feel too guilty that I’d spent the past few weeks consumed with thoughts of another man.
“Just thinking about how excited I am for the Winter Hoops tournament next week,” I told him with a huge fake smile.
He frowned slightly because he had a good bullshit meter but talk of basketball always distracted him enough for me to get away with it. “Yeah, scouts are coming from U of T, Western and UBC.”
“That’s so great,” I said genuinely.
Reece was an amazing player and honest-to-God, the kind of boy I knew I should want. He was handsome and smart, moneyed and going somewhere bright but with that bit of an edge that made him interesting. He liked to party on Saturday nights and golf hung-over but functioning on Sundays with his father.
He was the kind of cool a normal teenage girl could hanker after safely.
Too bad I was the kind of teenage girl who dreamed of men who could murder with their bare hands, who swore like it was essential to the English language and believed in brotherhood more than the law.
Eh, everyone had their crosses to bear and I figured that was mine.
“Louise,” he called again, squeezing my bare thigh under the hem of my kilt.
“Distracted, sorry,” I murmured.
Instantly, his handsome face softened with empathy. “How’re you feeling?”
I bit my lip so hard it drew blood because his question shouldn’t have annoyed me but it did. I didn’t need or want the constant reminders, which was why I kept Loulou cancer-free. People didn’t want me to be honest about my response. Did they want to hear that it was hard to get out of bed in the morning because my body felt wrong, broken then mended in a way that meant I looked fine but couldn’t breathe right or pirouette in dance class anymore because my world didn’t stop spinning when I did?
The symptoms weren’t that bad at the moment. The one round of chemo I’d had during the summer had slowed the progress of the cancer but not stopped it, not reversed it. I was due for another, more intense, round in December and I knew it would be worse then. The shortness of breath, the itchy skin and constant weariness would be magnified by endless nausea and bone-deep aches.
So, for now, I was okay physically. I was fighting, feeling optimistic about it because that was the only way you could feel if you had a hope in hell of surviving.
But I was living on an island. It was the second kick in the gut of cancer, the way it isolated you from your loved ones, made you feel like no one could understand you and that no one wanted to, really, because you’d turned into some kind of hope-devouring monster, infected with nightmares and frighteningly contagious.
There was no one who could understand that.
No one, I’d thought, except for my own guardian monster.
The bell signaling the end of sixth period rang out, shattering my depressing reverie. Reece immediately threw his arm around my shoulders and ducked close to me, his eyes on mine as he whispered, “I’m here, Louise. You may not see that and damn, you might not even want it, sometimes I can’t tell. But you do want me, I’m here.”
I nodded mutely, guilty and stricken by how on target he was. He searched my eyes for a long moment more before he nodded then moved away to join the crowd of students funneling out the door.
“Louise,” Mr. Warren called out to me as I swung my messenger bag over my shoulder and made to follow after Reece. “Stay a minute.”
I nodded then waited for the last few students to leave so I could close the door behind them. Mr. Warren didn’t like to speak with the door open.
“What can I help you with, Mr. Warren?” I asked in my practiced, saccharine voice.
My biology teacher wasn’t my favourite teacher; that spot had been taken by Miss Irons, my former IB English and History teacher who had since quit amid a flurry of gossip about her banging a student. I didn’t believe the rumors and anyone who knew Miss Irons wouldn’t have either. She was the soul of discretion, a mild-mannered woman with a smile that made you feel like an angel was grinning down on you. She was the only person I’d told last year when I’d first been diagnosed and I missed our infrequent tea dates in her bookish classroom.
So, no, Mr. Warren wasn’t my favourite teacher.
But I was his favourite student.
He was beaming his beautiful smile at me as he came around his desk to lean against the front and hook his thumbs in the pockets of his bright blue dress pants. He was a pretty guy, the kind of immaculately groomed man that offended my sensibility because wasn’t a man supposed to be, well, manly?
“How’s my favourite student doing?” he asked.
I perched my butt on the end of a desk in the first row across from him and shrugged. “Good, excited for Winter Hoops.”
I wasn’t excited.
Being a cheerleader was something the women in the Lafayette family had been since Entrance Bay Academy was founded so I didn’t really have a choice in the matter.
School colours and pom-poms were so not my gig.
“Of course, the highlight of the fall semester.” He nodded. “Well, I won’t keep you long. I just wanted to ask if you’d be interested in being my teacher’s assistant this year. I know it’s a few weeks into term, but I like to take my time with these decisions and make sure I find the right pupil for the job.”
I blinked into his car salesman smile but the well-trained part of my brain was already saying, “Of course. Thank you for considering me.”
I didn’t have time to be his teacher’s assistant. I was training in the dance studio four times a week while my body could still stand to do such rigorous activity, I spent at least a few hours each week with my Autism mentee, Sammy, and I was in the full International Baccalaureate program at school, which was the equivalent of taking university-level courses.
And that was just as Louise.
As Loulou, I had an equally packed schedule and now the Zeus problem to figure out and spend additional hours each week stewing over.
But Mr. Warren was my dad’s best friend.
And what Benjamin Lafayette wanted, he got.
So I didn’t bother to refuse him because it was obvious that the two of them had already talked about it, decided on it and this was just a formality.
“Great.” He grinned and stepped forward to grasp me in a quick hug. “I’m so glad to have such a capable young woman on my team. I’ll need you every Wednesday after school for two hours. You can work in here with me.”
“Cool.”
His smile softened slightly and made me realize that he stood a little too close after giving me that awkward hug. I flinched slightly when his hand came up to tuck a piece of hair behind my ear.
“Glad to see you aren’t losing your hair,” he murmured.
“Me too,” I said, somewhat harshly because I didn’t like having him in my space.
“Looking forward to spending time with you, Louise. It was nice to see y
ou so much this past summer,” he said, referencing the countless times I’d been forced to attend church functions, charity picnics and political events with my parents. “You’ve grown into a very beautiful and intelligent young woman.”
A timid knock on the door had him stepping away from me before I could react—negatively—to his over familiarity.
“Sorry, I can come back,” Lily Foster, a girl from the grade below me with pretty yellow hair, said from the door.
“No, Lily, you know I always have time for you.” Mr. Warren smiled that same smile at her, warm and fake as artificial light. “Louise was just leaving.”
Hot and cold flashes erupted across my skin as I shouldered my bag once more and brushed past an eager looking Lily on my way out the door and I couldn’t tell if it was a common side effect of the lymphoma or because Mr. Warren had seriously creeped me out.
I wasn’t paying attention.
Later, I wouldn’t blame myself because I was still reeling from the complete loss of my childhood idol, the broken heart I nursed at realizing my first love was nothing but a dream.
Still, I was taking the trash out to a poorly lit back alley behind a titty bar. It was straight up dumb-blonde of me not to take note of my surroundings.
I paid for it when something heavy slammed me into the brick wall. The trash bag fell to the ground beside me as I tried to bring my hands up to push away but someone strong captured them in one hand and brought them around to the small of my back.
“Stupid bitch,” Quentin Kade hissed into my ear. “Think you’re too fuckin’ good for me to fuck, huh?”
I tried to buck him off but there was no torque.
“Fuck yeah,” I bit out, enraged by my helplessness, so angry with myself for being oblivious in a dark fucking alley.
He chuckled in my ear. “Don’t worry, bitch, I’m not going to stick my dick into a bitter cunt. I have a better idea. We’re going to play a little game, okay? Zeus fuckin’ Garro thinks he can intimidate me? He’s not the only game in town anymore and it’s about time he knew it.”
Welcome to the Dark Side (The Fallen Men Book 2) Page 10