Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Frost
I’d had a couple of drinks before shoving through the crowd to go to the toilet.
“Hey.” Someone grabbed my hand.
I figured they were a ruck bunny trying to get my attention and had my excuses ready.
That was until I looked over and saw Ivy, one of the dancers from Flirts. The one I fucked before getting together with Chelsea. Seeing her made me feel like a cheat all over again.
I pushed away the irrational thought, smiled as pleasantly as I could manage and pulled my hand out of her grip.
“Hi, Ivy,” I said politely. “You’re looking, um, nice. Excuse me, I need to go to the?—”
“I need to talk to you.” She stepped closer, pressing herself to my side. Her eyes were wide, her tone a purr.
“I’m really sorry, I’m not interested.” I stepped away from her.
“You were very interested that other night,” she said. “I know you enjoyed fucking me.” She stepped closer again. “I bet you haven’t been able to get me out of your mind.”
“No I haven’t,” I said. Not for the reasons she was implying.
“See? Come with me. Let’s have a second round.” Her eyes were slightly glazed like she’d been drinking or taking something. Either way, even if I was interested in fucking her, she wasn’t sober enough for me to go there.
“I think you should go home.” I stepped back again.
“Good idea.” She put her hand on my bicep. “I don’t live far from here. Let’s go.”
I took her hand and removed it from my arm. “I’m not going anywhere with you, sorry. Are you here with friends? Ask one of them to go home with you and make sure you’re tucked up in bed.”
“I’d rather be tucked up in bed with you,” she purred. “Come on, I know you want to.”
I shook my head. “I really don’t.” I started to walk away, elbowing through the crowds until I got to the bathroom. I pushed through the door and let out a long breath.
I thought she might have left me alone, until she followed me in.
“This works too, Frosty. Can I call you that, or do you prefer Daniel?” She grabbed my cock through the front of my jeans. “I guess I can’t call you anything with this in my mouth.”
She started to lower herself to her knees.
I moved back so quickly I bumped my ass on the sink. “Don’t.” I held both of my hands out in front of me. “I said I’m not interested.” What was it with this woman?
“I don’t believe you.” She straightened back up and pouted. “I know you want to. Guys like you always do. Why are you pretending you don’t?”
“I’m not pretending.” I stepped around to the side to put more space between us. “I’m flattered, but I’m with someone else.”
Her eyes flashed with anger. “Chelsea fucking Miller,” she spat. “What does that bitch have that I don’t?”
“Me,” I said. “And a bunch of other things, including respect. For other people and for herself.”
Ivy raised her hand to slap me, but I grabbed her wrist before she could connect. Something in her expression made me snap. Her anger at me and at Chelsea. Anger that was completely misplaced. Whatever her problem was, she shouldn’t be taking it out on my woman.
I shoved her back against the bathroom wall, crowding her in.
Triumph flashed in her eyes. “I told you?—”
Whatever she was about to say was cut off when my hand wrapped around her throat. I found myself squeezing, holding her there. Her lips dropped open and her eyes started to protrude from her face. She groaned, but was unable to take a breath.
I need to stop , I told myself. I need to stop before this goes too far.
But I couldn’t bring myself to stop. My grip had her completely under my control.
I decided whether she walked away from this or not.
I decided when she took her last breath.
I was the one with the pressure on her throat when her eyes glazed further and she slid down the wall.
My knees bending, I followed her down. My fingers still were around her neck as I knelt in front of her, never letting the pressure go until I knew she was gone.
Only then, I lifted my hands and sagged onto my ass.
Fuck.
Fuck.
“Fuck.”
I sat staring at her lifeless body until the sound of music from the bar slowly filtered into my brain. Reminding me where I was. I was in a public place and I just killed a woman.
Fuck.
I startled as the door opened, the music louder for a few moments before it closed again. Chelsea’s brother came to stand beside me and looked down at Ivy.
“Seems like you need some help,” he remarked.
I let my gaze slowly rise, all the way up to his face. I expected him to look horrified, but he looked calm, even curious.
“I didn’t mean to,” I whispered. “I swear I…” I didn’t know what else to say. If she hadn’t followed me… If she hadn’t been so insistent… If I hadn’t wrapped my hands around her throat…
If I hadn’t enjoyed it.
Ice shrugged. “These things happen. I assume you had your reasons. Either way, we should get her out of here before people start asking too many questions.”
I stared at him, my mouth open slightly. “You’re not calling the police?”
“It’s a bit late for that,” he said. “She’s already dead. Besides, I don’t feel like answering questions tonight. I’m sure you don’t either. And Chelsea would be pissed off with me if I didn’t help you. The last thing I need is a pissed off sister.” He seemed more concerned with that than the dead woman lying on the tiled floor.
“I don’t even know what to do,” I said.
“Don’t panic,” he said. “She followed you in and passed out drunk. We’ll carry her out of here and deal with her.” He pulled out his phone and shot off a couple of texts. “Just letting Kennedy and Chelsea know where we are.” He crouched beside Ivy, scooping her up in his arms like she weighed nothing.
“Why are you acting like this isn’t a big deal?” I asked.
“Because this is Dusk Bay. This is an average Sunday night. You’ll need to open the door.” He nodded towards it.
I couldn’t decide if he was out of his mind or if I was. Maybe this was some kind of bizarre dream.
I opened the door and let him step out first, carrying a dead woman in his arms. He headed for the door at the back of the bar and pushed out into the alley.
“What are you going to do with her?” I asked.
“I’m going to pin this on someone who’s been causing trouble for my boss,” Ice said easily. “We’ll make sure her family knows. And her employer.”
“She worked at—” I started.
“Flirts, I know,” he said. “I saw her there once. She was a talented dancer. Her family and her boss are going to miss her.”
I slumped against the brick wall beside the door. “I swear, I didn’t mean to do this.”
“Did it feel good?” he asked. He didn’t seem to be passing judgement. Again, he seemed curious.
“It felt incredible,” I whispered.
He smiled. “I knew we’d get along. Next time, don’t be a cliché and kill a sex worker. If you want to feel that rush again, there are much more deserving people than this.”
I didn’t know how to respond to that. I wanted to feel that rush again, but I couldn’t go around killing people.
“What do you mean by deserving?” I followed him to his car and helped him to place her in the back of it. The way we had with Chelsea, but not bound, or with her head covered.
“If you weren’t seeing my sister, I’d say people like you.” He closed the back of the car with a thud. “People who kill innocent women. I mean people who do it on purpose though. People who hunt them down. You didn’t take her in there to kill her, did you?”
“No!” I said immediately. “She followed me. I was trying to get away from her. I don’t know why it was me she thought she wanted.” Whatever she drank or took must have impeded her judgement. There would have been a ton of guys happy to go home with her if she’d asked them to. With them, she wouldn’t have had to get pushy.
He put a hand on my shoulder. “You’re adorable. It’s a cross some of us have to bear.” He sighed as though it was such a burden. “She came onto you and wouldn’t take no for an answer?”
“Yeah, exactly,” I said. “I told her I was with Chelsea and she got angry. Called her a bitch.”
“Huh.” He glanced at the back of the car. “Lucky she’s dead then, I might have killed her for calling my sister that. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
I half-expected to be followed out of the bar, or to meet a contingent of police vehicles, but there was no one. We’d walked out of a busy club with the dead woman and no one blinked. They probably thought we were gentlemen for helping her.
Right now, I felt as far from gentlemanly as a guy could get.
“Are you going to tell Chelsea?” I asked.
“You should tell her.” He got into the driver’s seat. “She won’t be surprised.”
I shut the door behind me and stared at him, the seatbelt in my hand. “What do you mean by that?”
Had I misheard him? It sounded as though he said she wouldn’t be surprised that I took a life. She was a doctor, shouldn’t she be horrified?
He started the engine. “Like I said, this is Dusk Bay. Chelsea knows all about it. Like most of us who grew up here. I’m surprised you didn’t know already.”
“I’m not sure I know what you’re saying,” I said slowly.
“Dusk Bay is ruled by organised crime,” he said as though that was no big deal.
“Isn’t every city?” I asked.
You couldn’t turn on the news without hearing about some criminal being involved in something from bribery to extortion or whatever other shit they got up to. Someone was always trying to do something to someone else. Humans had been doing it since the dawn of time. It wasn’t going to end anytime soon.
He glanced over and grinned. “Yeah, but not like this. I can’t remember who said it, but this place is shady shit central. Most of the businesses here are owned by, you could call them the Australian mafia. That includes Hazards and the Dusk Bay Demons, to name a couple.”
“The Smashers?” Did I want the answer to that?
“Probably,” he agreed. “If not directly, then indirectly.”
“And Chelsea knows all of this?” I couldn’t get my head around it.
“All her life,” Ice said. “She even went to Brutham Academy, where they train us in careers that serve our families. She deviated a bit, of course.”
“Of course,” I echoed. “What do you do?” Did I want to know that either?
“For tax purposes, I’m a pathologist. I spent a lot of my time encouraging my boss’ enemies to give me information. By any means necessary. That means I torture them,” he added lightly. “It’s a lot of fun.”
“You pay tax?” I asked.
He laughed. “Yes, that’s the takeaway here. I pay tax like you do. Probably not as much as you, though. I gather rugby is pretty lucrative, until you get too old to play. I know that won’t be for a while for you, but if you enjoyed strangling Ivy, you might have a future working with me when you retire.”
That should not have made my balls throb, but it did. The idea of being in control like that again… It was addictive. How long would it be before I needed another hit?
Shit, I was as bad as Dallas, just in a more dangerous way.
“I think I might like that,” I said softly.
“I thought you might,” he said. “Just don’t practice on my sister. You wouldn’t like what I’d have to do to you if I did.”
I believed him when he said that. Someone who didn’t blink upon walking into the aftermath of a murder was probably down for just about anything.
“I’d never harm her,” I insisted. “I love her.” After a moment I added, “What’s wrong with me that I enjoyed doing that?”
He glanced over at me again before pulling the car into a shadowed driveway. “People like us are in touch with our darker side. Some people suppress that part of themselves. Some go into politics. Some of us kill people. I’ll help you channel it in the right direction. I have a feeling you’re going to learn a lot about yourself.”
I had a feeling he was right and I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it.