5. Cassius
five
My glass vibrates where it sits on the table beside me. The bass from the bar upstairs can be felt, even if the music can’t be heard. I spend most of my nights down here, at the micro-casino, if I can. I enjoy watching the people, reading them. It’s my own kind of game, knowing my players. It’s why I’m so good at running the games, well that and the fact that I know how to count cards, which makes spotting it that much easier.
Like the douchebag sitting across from one of my best players right now. He’s fucking counting, and he’s not even good at it. Fucking idiot . I sigh and drain my bourbon. My skin crawls with unspent rage. The audacity of this man to come into my fucking game and pull this shit is ridiculous. The fact that he fucking sucks at it makes it even worse.
I nod to Nate, who catches my eye from the doorway. In two short strides, he has one of his massive paws on the small of the cocktail waitress’ back and ushers her out of the room. No reason to scare her or put her in danger. I am a gentleman, after all. Adrenaline ripples through my body, and I stand. The room around me goes still, ice stops clinking, cards stop shuffling. The bass from the bar only intensifies my energy, as if it’s egging me on.
I don’t say a word. I don’t need to. I can practically hear their heartbeats with every step. Every player I pass by inhales deeply. I never used to consider myself a scary man, but this world turns us all into people we never thought we’d be. People who maim, people who kill, people whose presence instills fear. People like me. People like Ruby. The thought of Ruby and her bullshit only fuels my anger.
I extend one leg out in a swift kick, knocking the tall chair out from underneath the fucking trash bag who sits on it. The hypocrisy of my anger is not lost on me, it never is. But don’t fucking cheat a cheater. The man stumbles to his feet, towering over my six-foot frame by at least four inches. A smile spreads across my face; I fucking needed this. I shift to my toes, ready for a fight.
The man throws a punch and I dodge it. Fucking hell, that’s disappointing . I land a kick to his chest, and once again he falls on his ass. Fuck this asshole and fuck this bullshit. I pause for dramatic effect, giving the rest of the players the chance to really see me in action, using it as a warning. I make a move toward him, deliberately stepping on his hand, feeling the bones crush beneath my foot. Agonizing screams echo through the silent room. In a practiced move, I remove the belt from my pants and maneuver myself behind the jackass. The leather wraps tightly around the man's neck, his pulse fighting against the restraint. The more his body twitches in response, the more mine ignites, until finally he stops breathing.
I remove my belt from his neck and replace it around my waist. Nate immediately retrieves the body from my feet to dispose of it. I didn’t intend to kill him. I had only meant to make a point. Which, on inspection of the room, I did. The players nod at me, respect dripping from their foreheads. I smooth out my shirt, adjusting one cuff and then the other.
“You do not cheat Cassius Cross,” I announce to the room, as if they need an explanation. My heart pounds in my chest, the adrenaline that failed to release during what I expected to be a fight aches to escape. I need to fuck. I need to fuck now. I dial Garrett on my way up the stairs.
He answers on the first ring. “Not dead yet?”
“That belle still up to play?”
“Ask her yourself,” he says, and my phone switches to video call. I tap on the accept button and am immediately rewarded with a live feed of the blonde’s bouncing tits. Her moans of pleasure light me on fire.
“I’ll be there in five.”
The camera angle adjusts as Garrett props it up, offering me a better visual.
Technology. It’s a wonderful thing.
I exit the club through the back door, and enter the parking lot, looking up from my phone. My parking spot is empty. I spin around. What the actual fuck? I’m so confused, I parked it here this morning. I walk closer. In the impala’s place, illuminated by the security light above, is a painted set of lips. Motherfucker.
“Where the fuck is my car?” Waves of fury crash over me. The fucking bitch took my car.
“Garrett,” I yell. “Where the fuck is my car?”
His face fills the screen for what feels like an entire minute before he answers me.
“It’s in the lot.”
“No, the fuck, it isn’t.” I spin around, showing him the employee lot. The Impala is nowhere to be found.
“Yes, it is, walk sixty feet to the left, GPS says it’s right there.”
I follow his instructions, my long strides making it there in only a handful of steps. The car in front of me however is not my fucking Impala. Instead, it’s a fucking hybrid piece of shit with handicap plates. A set of red lips on the rear window. As I approach, the lights flash on the car and the doors unlock. Dark clouds hang over me, the weight of what I’ve done sits on my chest. Ruby knows, but how much does she know exactly?
“Garrett.”
“Yeah, Cass?”
“The girl. Is she safe?” My voice hardens with each word.
“The girl? Safe?” Garrett questions me, his voice lifting an octave.
“The fucking girl,” I bellow, my hands forming a fist at my side. “Is she fucking safe, Garrett?”
“Oh, that girl, yeah man. Nobody will find her.”
I release the breath I was holding. A small penance for my doubt.
“Change of plans,” I tell him. “I’m not in the mood to share tonight. I’ll find my own pussy. And Garrett?”
“Yeah, man?”
“Find my fucking car.”
I hang up the phone and stare at the ugly ass hybrid sedan. It seems I have two options, either I can drive away in this ridiculous thing and likely crash because the whore cut the brake lines, or I can call the car company I utilize in the winter when the Impala goes into hibernation. Neither feels right though. Ruby has proven to be smart and calculating. It’s her job. So, she would have anticipated those options and would have prepared for me to make either choice. The right choice appears to be not to make a choice at all.
But I know people too, and thanks to Garrett, I know Ruby has a signature. She wouldn’t blow up the car or cut the brake lines. No, she wants to slit my throat. If I call the car service, it won’t be here for at least fifteen minutes. If I drive the hybrid, I can have my cock between a set of pouty lips in under that.
The driver’s seat feels foreign to me, the pedals at my feet are all wrong, and there’s no place to insert a key. Instead, there’s a button that says engine on/off . Using my middle finger, I push it, and immediately the dash and control panels illuminate. The engine is barely audible. If it weren’t for the lights, I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell the fucking thing had even started.
The display screen for the radio goes black for a second, and when it turns back on, Ruby is looking at me. Her deep brown hair falls in loose curls around her face, and I can’t help but picture those curls splayed across my sheets. My gaze shifts to her lips. Pouty. Red. Lips.
Fuck me. Get it fucking together Cross.
“Good evening, Cassius,” she purrs. Her tongue caresses her bottom lip before taking it in her teeth.
This bitch. My teeth clench and my knuckles turn white on the steering wheel. My interactions with her so far have been brief, but Ruby’s presence is electrifying. There’s something about her that claws at me, threatening to undo everything I’ve worked so hard for. Awakening emotions I suppressed long ago and breathing life back into me. Gone is the numbness I’ve felt for so long, and in its place is this electric current running in my veins.
“Let’s play a game, shall we?” Ruby asks with an impish grin because we both know it’s not actually a question. We’re going to play a game whether I want to or not.
“Does it involve your lips on my cock again?” I flash a smile at her, hoping for a reaction, but her face is still and unamused. Just the thought of her on her knees again has my dick pressed against my zipper, begging to be released.
In response, the gear shift on the car shifts into reverse on its own. I try to push it back into park, but the effort is futile, and the car begins to back out of the parking spot.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I roar at the screen. I pull on the door handle, but nothing happens. I try to unlock the doors, but again nothing happens. In a last-ditch attempt, I try the windows, but it’s with wasted effort.
“I have control of your new motor vehicle, Cassius, is that not obvious?”
“This is how you’re going to kill me? Seriously?” I can’t help but roll my eyes at her. “I think I deserve better, don’t you?”
The car pulls out of the club’s lot and onto the busy downtown street.
Ruby’s brown eyes narrow, her lips pull tight, “Where. Is. The. Girl?” She says each word with punctuation, applying pressure to her question.
“I’ve been with a lot of girls; you're going to have to be more specific,” I retort, a smirk playing across my face.
The car jumps the curb onto the sidewalk, and my body tenses involuntarily. The time on the dashboard says it’s late, almost last call. I need to get us out of downtown before the clubs close and the sidewalks are full of pedestrians. I may maim and kill without mercy, but I don’t do it without a reason. Innocent people don’t need to die because this bitch has a vendetta against me. I put my arm behind my head and lean back into the seat. If we’re going to be at this for a while, I might as well make myself comfortable.
“The girl Cassius. Where is the girl?” Her eyebrows furrow, her bottom jaw tenses. Her frustration with me is growing and it’s hot as fuck.
“Do you have a name? A picture? A picture could jog my memory, maybe. I might need a picture of her ass though, in case I fucked her from behind, in which case I probably wouldn’t recognize her face.”
“The girl you stuffed in the trunk of your car, where is she?” If Ruby could shoot lasers out of her eyes, I’m pretty sure they would be aimed at my face right now.
The fact that she knows about this is proof that Garrett was right, she has a tech guy, or girl, digging and they’re good. Because I’m guilty of exactly what she said. I shoved a terrified young girl into the trunk of my car. And I don’t regret it for a single second.
I bite my lip, deep in thought. Okay not really, but I need to gain distance, away from innocent people. When the car navigates back down the curb and takes the next turn down a side street, I speak again.
“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, a girl in the trunk of my car?” Tapping my finger to my chin, I repeat, “A girl, what girl?”
The car immediately jumps the curb again and crashes through a wire fence, beelining toward a rundown house. The pounding in my heart increases in speed, matching the throbbing need in my dick, but I don’t flinch. She won’t kill me. Especially if she’s looking for the girl. Ten feet from the house, the car reroutes, sending dirt and grass flying into the air.
The release I’m so desperate for, the one I neglected to get earlier, is bubbling to the point of overflow. And I don’t know what’s pulsing harder now, my heart or my dick.
“I’m sorry, baby, I don’t know who you’re looking for.” I’m a glutton for punishment and I know it. I want her riled up. I want her frustrated and confused so she can’t stay away. I want to bury myself inside of her while she negotiates with the grim reaper to take me down.
The speedometer on the car nudges past fifty, and the increase in speed only feeds my inner adrenaline junkie. The wheel cuts to the left, lifting the passenger side tires off the ground. Brick scrapes the mirrors on both sides as the car cuts through an alley, causing sparks to fly in the dark night.
The noise drowns out the sound of my zipper.
“You know Cassius,” she begins. “I really do need some new garland for my Christmas tree. Your intestines would do quite nicely.” Her eyes light up like the very Christmas tree she speaks of, one corner of her mouth lifting in a sly grin.
I fist my cock. If she notices, her poker face is as good as my own.
“Face it, sweetheart, you don’t have a Christmas tree. You would need a soul for that.”
Uncomfortable silence fills the air. I struck a chord; apparently soulless Ruby has a weakness. My laughter breaks through the emptiness and the car pummels through a park, coming within mere feet of a tree and then veering away. She’s playing a game of chicken with nature…and my life.
My cock is like stone in my hand, almost so hard it hurts. My grip tightens and I slide my callused hand up to my tip, pre-cum coating my fingers. On the screen, her red lips are pursed in a displeasing frown, and I want nothing more than to smear that lipstick, make a mess of this woman. See her come undone.
“The girl, Cassius. Where is she?” Ruby holds a picture up on the screen and my heart plummets a little. The picture has been photoshopped to show a healthy teenage girl. But she wasn’t. Not when I took her.
“You’ll never find her,” I bark through gritted teeth. “You don’t even know her fucking name.”
“Isabella Diaz, and I assure you I will find her,” Ruby retorts. The car pulls out of the park and onto the road, narrowly missing an oncoming car.
“I repeat, where is she?” she demands, and my climax grows closer.
“You have no idea what the fuck you are talking about, you crazy fucking bitch.” I imagine the fight that would ensue upon my words if we were in person and not speaking through a screen. The adrenaline pushes through me as I slide my hand up and down my shaft. Rock fucking hard and raw from friction, but I can’t stop. I need this release more than anything I’ve ever needed before.
The car increases speed. Sixty, sixty-five, seventy. I pump faster. Seventy-five now. We weave in and out of cars. I sit somewhere on the brink of death, and yet I feel more alive than I have in years. Fucking monster, that’s me.
“Cassius.” My name rolls out of her perfect mouth, each syllable breathier than the last.
A guttural moan escapes me, and my eyes seek hers, desperate for her to say it again. Silently pleading with her. I need to hear it dance along her tongue and spill from her lips, deadly like a poison without an antidote. Because it could kill me, and I’d die a happy man.
I don’t actually know if she can see me, but if there’s a God, I pray to Him that she can. I shift in the driver’s seat, angling myself closer to the screen, like she could reach through it to touch me.
“Cassius.” Her breath hitches and her lips purse when she swallows.
“Ruby.” I growl her name as my cock opens fire at the display, coating a digital Ruby in my cum. I run my palm over my length, coating it with my own seed to soothe the burn and I shudder, I don’t know the last time I came so hard. Every nerve in my body is charged. Closing my eyes, I try to terminate the live wires and savor the moment.
When I open my eyes again, the display is dark. She’s beginning to live up to the rumors. Maybe she is a ghost.
Horns blaze around me, cars swerve out of the way. The car hits the rumble strip, and I take the wheel. I’m now in control. Of the car. Of Ruby. Of whatever game we are fucking playing.
I hope.