Chapter 1
one
. . .
I sit in a hotel bar on the glitzy, gaudy side of town.
It’s the kind of place I don’t usually feel too comfortable in, but tonight I look hot enough that I fit in.
The red dress I’m wearing accentuates my modest cleavage and sits high enough on my thighs that not much is left to the imagination.
The girl at the store called it a ‘fuck me’ dress, and, well, looking at myself in the mirror behind the bar, she’s not wrong.
I have a hard time finding myself sexy or desirable sometimes, but tonight’s not one of those nights. It can’t be.
The space fills with patrons, and I’m on my second drink, calming my nerves. I’ve been here an hour, but it feels like double that.
I’m thinking about just calling it a night, giving up, making other plans. There’s no reason for me to be here if I’m not going to go home with the prize.
But then I see him eyeing me from across the bar. I flirt the way the magazines taught me to: fluttering lashes, fingertips on my lips, messing with my straw. Every movement seems to reel him in a little bit more.
The bartender puts a drink in front of me.
Through the glass, I see something written on the coaster underneath it.
“YOUR BEAUTIFUL,” it says, text crisp and blocky.
I grudgingly ignore the grammatical error, looking over to his side of the bar and flutter my eyelashes and purse my lips more, then tilt my head back to give him permission to come over to me.
Not that men like him ever really ask for permission.
In his mind, I’m already half-comatose on my back in his bed, thanking him for the best fuck of my life, even if there’s no real way he can deliver it.
“Seat taken?” he says, a calm and rehearsed smile on his face. Perfect veneers hide the filed-down, shark-like nubs underneath.
I return a smile just as rehearsed, just as confident, and point to the tan leather barstool next to me. “No, it’s free. To nice guys at least.”
“Oh, I’m nice alright …” He’s tall, six three, and he mounts the stool with assured confidence.
“I bet …”
“Saw you looking at me from over here, wanted to see what was up,” he says. His hairline is a little further forward than you’d expect, the wonders of modern science undoing what nature tries to enforce in natural selection.
“You look lonely,” I say, sipping the drink, Lolita eyes and the fuck-me dress working overtime.
“Got me. A guy like me is busy, so you’re fucking lucky, I don’t get lonely often.” He raises his hand and snaps his fingers, the sudden crack sounding like a gunshot to my sparking nerves. “Hey, service,” He grunts, the fucking brute.
The bartender stops pouring someone else’s drink and comes over as quickly as she can. Her red hair is cinched into a tight braid, and she stands at attention before this man like she’s going to be inspected.
“Bourbon, top shelf, triple, neat,” He commands, poising his finger on the bartop.
The bartender complies in an instant, pulling an elaborate-looking bottle from the back shelf and pouring a portion that looks like more than a triple.
I didn’t even know you could order a triple, but guys like this, again, don’t care what you can or can’t do.
“Two of ‘em. She’s drinking it too, I don’t care if she likes it, she’ll love it.
” The bartender scrambles to find another glass and fills it to the brim.
“Whiskey … how manly.” I grin. “You must take me for a girl who can handle her liquor …”
“It’s not whiskey, it’s fucking bourbon.” He takes a sip, then a gulp. “It’s better than whiskey.”
I giggle, showing just a little more of my teeth. “Oh, I didn’t know there was any difference.”
Of course, I knew there was a difference. I knew he drank E.H. Taylor religiously and had a supply of it back at his 35,000 square foot compound.
“About eight hundred bucks a bottle for the kind of stuff I get.” He downs half of the drink and puts it back on the bar with a thud. “What’s your name?” I also knew that the bottle he was drinking from cost, at most, three hundred dollars, but of course he wanted to exaggerate.
“Carmilla … yours?”
He rolls his eyes and scoffs, rolling the faceted rocks glass around on its base, making a grinding sound. “Seriously?”
I narrow my eyes and knit my eyebrows. “… what?” I giggle.
“You actually don’t know who I am, I can tell,” he says. “Fucking wild.”
I continue looking bewildered, but cute, of course. I have to remain cute and, ideally, look as submissive as possible for him. Make myself easy prey. Low-hanging fruit.
“Well, that’s new at least, been a fucking bit since that’s happened,” he beams, straightening up from his slouched, casual posture. “You’re not playing me, are you?”
“I genuinely don’t know who you are other than a hot guy who came up to me after buying me a drink … am I supposed to know something?” I say.
“It’s … refreshing, that’s all …” He says, a smug calm spreading across his face.
“I guess you’re not the kind of girl that looks at tech websites.
” He flicks his eyes up and down my body, assessing things yet again.
“Probably just tell them to get you the newest phone when you waltz your pretty little ass into the store, don’t even care who made it. ”
“Oh, I’m awful with tech … I’m so illiterate with any of that stuff.
I have to write my passwords down in a notebook, I’m so ditzy,” I say, giggling again, biting my cocktail straw as I try to look as innocent and dumb as I can.
Guys like this love a girl to be as dumb as possible, and I want to be supremely dumb tonight.
So I won’t tell him that the cell phone jammer in my purse was hell to get set up and took twelve hours of me fucking with it in the command line to get it to work on 5G devices.
Or that I had to hand-solder a fucking Panelmate connector to USB-C because who the fuck is going to manufacture that? But I digress.
“That’s fucking dumb, that’s a dumb thing to do,” he says, grumbling.
“How am I supposed to remember all of them, though?” I say, weathering the scorn and utter misogyny from him. I can’t lose my cool, I can’t blow this.
“Go ahead, get your identity stolen, see if I give a fuck.” He smirks, satisfied with himself and his own assessment of his wit. “Bet you’ve used something I invented, though …” He says, straightening up again and pulling at his suit jacket to accentuate his frame.
“Yeah?”
He laughs again. “Yeah. Have you ordered food on Yes, Chef before? Sent money to someone with SpotMe?”
“I mean, of course …” I say. “Do you work for those places?”
“Heh …” A bit of aggression catching in his throat as he grimaces. Maybe he thinks he could blow this chance too. He doesn’t know this is all I have left. “I am those fucking companies. I can’t believe you haven’t heard of Eric Moore before.”
“Who’s that?”
“Me!” He seems to hold back a scream in asserting himself. “This is … god, this is something … is this a fucking prank?”
“It’s … not, I’m just … not the kind of girl who really looks at the news, I’m more into things on a …
personal level,” I say, leaning forward, making sure my cleavage is quite clear to Mr. Eric Moore.
I also make a note to dial down the ditzy innocent act a bit, I don’t want him to think I’m too stupid, I have to be just stupid enough, and he’s getting a little suspicious.
“Well, I’m the CEO of both of them … basically a billionaire, on paper.” He grins, the self-importance welling up.
“That’s … wow, how on earth did I end up so lucky to be sitting with a billionaire CEO?”
“Right place, right time, I guess … and you looking so damn hot I couldn’t resist.” He reaches out and puts his finger at the bottom of my chin, tilting my head up. “Damn, you’re beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re not … looking to fuck for money, are you?” He says, the charmer.
“You mean like …” I laugh. “Oh, I can see what it looks like, but, no … I’m all dressed up with nowhere to go since my date stood me up.”
“Unlucky for him, pretty goddamn lucky for you, right?” Eric says. He moves in close, a little aggressive, a little closer than polite. But that’s the way of men like him, of basically billionaires. “You get to be around me for the night now.”
With him being this close, I can see a tiny spot of blood on the collar of his shirt. The product of a careless swipe while shaving, a cut that barely bled. I can see the
cut, barely visible amidst his rugged tan and rough stubble, a clot of dried blood at his jugular.
“You’re getting pretty close to me,” I say.
“Maybe it’s because I want something …” He says.
“Like what?”
“Something we can’t do here …” His hand clasps my thigh roughly, demanding.
“Or at least something we shouldn’t do here if we want to really enjoy it.
” He slides the fabric of my dress up, fingertips under the hem.
I slide back a little. “Something we could do at my place, a place with better views than this goddamn hotel bar.”
“Really?” I say, mouth open, eyes wide, my expression telling him he’s the most important man in the world to me right now. And right now, actually, he is.
“Yeah … the kind of place where you can scream all night and not a damn person will be able to hear it other than you and me.” Eric tries to slide his hand further up my leg, but I position my hand to block him. Can’t let him get to the goods just yet.
“That sounds perfect …” I say, half-closing my eyes, looking like I’m intoxicated with his overbearing seduction. “You want to fuck me or something, Mr. CEO?” I say. He leans in, kissing my neck, then moves to my ear. “Oh, I’ll do much more than fuck you, Carmilla.”