Chapter 8
Some places never changed.
The lights were still too warm. The bourbon still smelled like varnish. The bartender still polished glasses that never looked clean.
And Hollis…
Hollis still occupied the same damn stool.
For five years he’d come to this bar every Friday.
Five years.
Two hundred sixty Fridays.
Not everyone.
But... enough.
Enough for me to learn his habits. He flirted with busty blondes when his fuck stick wasn’t with him, and when he was, they just sucked face in the corner.
He always ordered the same two boring beers before switching to whiskey, and he always tipped Enrique, the bartender, twenty percent. He scratched the back of his neck when he lied.
Predictable.
I hated predictable, but I hated Hollis more.
There was something about the prick that always made me feel like electricity was zapping the fuck out of me. A sense of déjà vu I couldn’t shake that made me sick when I thought too hard on it.
It’d been years of this dance between us—the constant jeers and taunts.
Then Piggy got promoted. Good for the corporate drone.
So did I.
I wasn’t just the hunter now.
Mistress told me she believed in me, that I would be the one to break the product down. I was good at my job. No one got away from me. The best sales were from my hands. Never again would someone use me in that fucking room full of plants that were there to mask the scent of blood and come.
I was the fucking god that the men who used to rape me now begged to give them something new. Melodie brushed imaginary lint from my black jacket and smiled at me. She was the closest thing I had to a friend in the fucked up world I lived in.
She got on my nerves sometimes, but I imagined that was just what family did. I had a brother before I went missing, but I didn’t remember shit about him. He was my fraternal twin. Grown in the womb together, but now fated to live apart forever.
How is my brother?
Does he ever think about me?
I was nine when I was kidnapped. He might not even remember me.“You’ve been staring.” Melodie giggled, and I rolled my eyes.
“I’m observing.”
“You already know everything there is to know about him.”
“Not yet,” I protested and turned my body away from her nagging.
“What more then? You wanna know him sexually, finally? You two are the definition of sexual tension.”
I watched Hollis laugh, and my dick thumped at the sound.
Fuck her for being right.
People gathered around the asshole naturally, clapping him on the back and congratulating him on some new promotion in the ranks of his swine family.
He was the king of the cops.
I was the god of the criminal sex trade organization.
Natalie liked to think she still ran things, but her “good dog” had grown above the bitch. She knew it deep down, but she reaped the benefits, and continuing to use her as the face kept me safe from idiots like Hollis, if he ever grew a brain cell.
“I like watching people convince themselves they’re important.”
She smirked and followed my gaze. “Well then. You’re in a mood.”
“I’m always in a mood,” I said casually. “A mood to fight. To fuck. To own another soul.”
She kissed my cheek and giggled excitedly.
“No, Cry Baby. Anytime that little Piggy comes around, you are in an entirely different mood.”
Her smile widened when I growled.
“I’m here for business, Melodie.”
Her smile faded, and she looked nervously around herself. Sex with our marks used to be a joint occasion, but my dark demands had gotten to be too intense for her. She couldn’t handle my need to bleed, and about a year before, she had stopped joining me altogether.
“Tonight you’re hunting? Do you need…help?”
I looked at her and shook my head.
“No. I have some new toys to try, and I wouldn’t want your pretty white dress to get too dirty, Princess.”
Melodie’s face paled, and she walked away without another word.
Good.
I don’t need anyone.
Hollis was alone now, too. His gaze drifted toward the bar, where I was seated.
I didn’t acknowledge him.
Weird.
Years before, I would’ve counted every second until he noticed me.
Now?
He wasn’t worth the effort.
I sat back in my seat, turning my body away from him to order my bourbon.
Three cubes of ice.
No lemon.
The glass landed exactly one inch from my right hand. I smiled, as Enrique was always perfectly timed.
Perfect.
I smiled at my friend, but it vanished when I heard him.
“Well, fuck.”
His voice hadn’t changed. This close, it felt strange to hear. Usually only I caught echoes of it across the room, but now he was beside me.
I didn’t bother hiding my hard-on and turned my body so he could see more clearly.
“Didn’t know they started letting weird little psychos drink liquor this early.”
I heard Melodie sigh dramatically as she walked back over to sit with me.
“I give him thirty seconds before he says something stupid.”
“Twenty.”
“You always underestimate him.”
A chair scraped beside mine, and I met his glare.
He leaned against the bar with that same lazy grin I’d spent years imagining breaking. “I heard you still came here, but I never saw your little body till now.”
I looked at my bourbon instead of him. He was lying. He saw me every Friday night, and every week he looked me in the eyes across from the room.
But he wants to play this game? Fine.
“I heard you never learned how to make your “boyfriend come. Guess those kisses are for show, huh?”
Silence.
Interesting.
That had definitely affected him.
That wasn’t the retort he’d expected.
“You gonna ignore me, pig?”
I finally met his eyes, and my expression was calm, a contrast to his rage.
“He’s not my boyfriend. I just fuck with him sometimes. I’m not gay.”
I sipped my bourbon and chuckled. “I expected adulthood would’ve improved your personality, but alas, it’s made it as bad as your ability to lie.”
Melodie hid her smile behind her glass, and Hollis forced a laugh.
“Aw, how cute.”
“What?”
“You actually think you’re intimidating now? You fuck a bunch of these bar hops, and now you’re big and bad?”
“No.”
Another sip.
“I don’t think about intimidating you at all. Your discomfort with me is purely your unrequited attraction.”
That landed, and his grin faltered.
Just slightly, but enough that I couldn’t help but smile.
“Says the white-haired freak with a boner.”
“I know.” I shrugged, sticking my hand inside my pants and giving my length a harder stroke. My moan made Hollis stumble a bit. Melodie laughed out loud at him, choking on his drink.
“Fuck you. You still counting everything like the lack of moans you can elicit from your easy lays?”
“Sometimes. Want a demonstration?”
“Fuck, man, you’re still obsessed with me.”
I looked at Hollis almost sympathetically. “You think I’ve spent five years thinking about you?”
“I know you hate me. You can’t hide your lies either, Jailbait.”
“Hate?” I tilted my head. “Hollis…” I said and genuinely smiled. “I don’t think about you enough to hate you anymore.”
There it was.
That tiny flash.
The wounded ego.
Not pain, exactly, but not far from it.
He remembered someone who couldn’t look him in the eye.
Someone who shook when mocked.
Someone desperate to be accepted.
That person is gone.
Completely.
His jaw tightened, and I smiled.
“Whatever helps you sleep.”
“I sleep wonderfully, thank you for thinking of me.”
He scoffed before wandering back toward his table, and Melodie leaned closer. “I think you bruised his ego.”
“I answered his questions.”
“You enjoyed it.”
“I enjoyed finishing my drink.”
She watched Hollis rejoin a dark-haired man in a charcoal button-up.
Late thirties.
Confident.
Easy smile.
The man clapped Hollis on the shoulder, saying something that made them both laugh, and Melodie noticed my attention shift.
“Oh nooo. What are you thinking, Cry Baby?”
I nodded once toward the man. “He knows Hollis.”
“So?”
“So, he’ll do.”
She studied me closely. “You’re choosing him because he’s attractive and a good mark, right?”
“No.”
“Then tell me it’s because he’s available?”
“No.”
“Cry Baby, don’t you fucking say it.”
I watched Hollis laugh again and clap the guy on the shoulder.
It was because of him.
He’d assumed the conversation was over. He thought he’d won. He still believed he understood me, even when he knew nothing anymore.
The dark-haired man glanced toward our end of the bar, and I caught his gaze and smiled. He was friendly, curious, and completely unaware of what was to come.
I smiled in return. “He belongs to Hollis’s world.”
Melodie understood instantly and groaned. “What are you doing? He’s probably a damn cop, Cry Baby…”
“Tonight. He will see our world.”
She grinned despite her earlier whining and chuckled
Nervously.
“You really have become terrifying.”
“No.”
I stood, straightening my cuffs and keeping my gaze fixed on my prey. “I’ve become patient.”
Across the room, Hollis looked up just in time to see me walk directly past him, but not toward the exit…toward his darling friend.
He frowned and watched me continue my journey.
Good.
Let him watch.
For once, I wanted him to be the one wondering what came next.