CHAPTER 7
SAM
Imade a pit stop at Badlands and slipped into one of the card rooms, downing three stiff drinks to take the edge off what I saw at the clinic. Nix was a doctor, all right, but she didn’t work at the hospital or any of the registered clinics around town. Whatever she did, it was secretive, illegal, and had nothing to do with people without insurance.
Stop thinking about Nix. She is just collateral.
Collateral and an inconvenience at best and a complication at worse.
I needed to get my head out of my ass and be ridden by someone who wasn’t my niece. It was time for a diversion. A reminder there were other pussies out there. Just as good and warm and tight as Aisling’s and not half as troublesome.
Pent-up lust.
That was all it was.
I was a busy man ruling the underworld of one of the seediest, dirtiest places in the country. It’d been a long-ass time since I drowned myself in a woman. Aisling was the last, and the woman before her happened so long ago I forgot her name, her hair color, and the setting.
A good fuck would make all of this go away.
I moseyed out of the card room and into the club, ignoring the enthusiastic claps on my back and conversation starters, and scanned the mass of sweaty, dancing figures melding together. I pressed the tumbler of whiskey to my lips.
Humans appalled me.
Despite my reputation, I didn’t just fuck anything with a pulse. I had dry spells of the self-inflicted kind since fucking ultimately required talking to people, and talking to people was a punishment even a good pussy wasn’t worth sometimes.
There were always whores, who didn’t demand meaningful conversation, but I wasn’t a fan of shoving my dick where so many others had been.
I immediately decided which woman I wanted to spend the night with. She had bleached blonde hair, a fake tan, long legs, and a pink mini-dress so tacky removing it from her would be my Christian duty.
Most of all, she looked nothing like Nix.
I snapped my fingers in the bouncers’ direction, pointing at her.
“I’ll have that one,” I clipped then proceeded to turn around and go up the stairs to my office, past the card rooms.
In my office, I busied myself by flipping through the betting books, tugging at my hair and not thinking about Nix.
A knock on the door made me drop the fat book on my desk.
“Open.” I sat back, sprawling out in my executive chair.
The blonde pushed the door open, giggling excitedly as she shut it behind her, and pressed her back against the bullet-chipped wood.
“Hi! I’m Dani,” she squeaked, tossing her hair to one shoulder. “Your bouncer showed me up. It’s my first time at Badlands. Honestly, my friends are, like, kind of freaking out about all this. You calling me here, I mean. We heard about you a lot, obvs. But we didn’t even know you came to this place, like often …”
I tuned her out, focusing on how her lips moved, fast and eager. Everything about her was wrong from her juicy, probably enhanced lips to her definitely penciled-in eyebrows. Her fake eyelashes looked like a shredded semitrailer tire. Her heavy makeup and dry hair full of split ends grated on my nerves in a way that felt personal. Nothing about her felt right.
Or good.
Or delectable.
Complex, dangerous, maddening.
I wanted Aisling. Aisling’s demureness. Her sharp little nose and aristocratic, well-proportioned lips. Her natural hair and skin and teeth. She didn’t succumb to modern beauty standards, and there was something irresistible about it. Aisling had that blue-blooded look of a woman you couldn’t imagine on all fours, getting fucked rough and dirty from behind. Men were simple creatures, so that meant it was precisely what I wanted to do—plow into her Royal Highness, rough and dirty, from behind while she chanted my name.
The girl in front of me continued blabbing. Hell if I knew about what. It occurred to me, now that I looked at her up-close, that she was young. Legal, yes, but much younger than me.
“… kind of down for anything, really. And, like, I know you only do casual, so that’s totally okay—”
“How old are you?” I cut into her stream of words, already in need of two fucking Advils and one bullet to put me out of my misery.
“What?” She looked startled, her brown eyes widening in panic. “What do you mean?”
“Your age,” I jeered, irritated with myself for apparently growing a fucking conscience somewhere between Aisling’s clinic and Badlands. “What is it?”
“Twenty … five?”
“Is that a fucking question?”
“No …?”
“Then why do you keep putting question marks after your answers?”
Her generation was going to run this country one day. No fucking wonder I had a fake Swedish passport, just in case. Say hello to Ludvig fucking Nilsson.
She blinked slowly, like this was a test. I was half sure she was illiterate.
“Show me your ID.” I opened my palm, stretching my arm in her direction.
“This is ridiculous.” She laughed, her neck and ears turning pink. “I’m legal! Everyone gets carded here.”
Not everyone. Aisling didn’t on Halloween, and now my dick wanted a subscription card to her pussy.
Never mind that I fired the bastard who let Aisling in the following day.
“You have five seconds before I blacklist you,” I said dryly.
“From the club?” She sucked in a breath.
“From the city,” I corrected. “Your ID, Dani.”
She rummaged through her knockoff Chanel purse with a huff, producing her driver’s license and slapping it over my palm. I lit a cigarette and sat back, rubbing my forehead as I studied it.
Twenty-two.
Danielle Rondiski was twenty-two.
A practical baby in comparison to me.
Still, legal enough to drink, to fuck, and to be here.
She was also a natural brunette with pasty white skin when that photo was taken but had since graduated from the Bimbo Academy and morphed into what was standing in front of me right now, an inflatable version of Charlotte McKinney.
I whipped the card back at her. “Get out.”
“Mr. Brennan …”
“Out.”
“Age is just a number.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” I tried—and failed—to find the conversation frustrating. Truth was, I was bored. So far from the realms of any other emotion, I couldn’t muster it if I tried.
I wasn’t annoyed. I was horny for something I couldn’t get my hands on, and the boring words coming out of her mouth were killing my erection.
“If age is just a number, then temperature is just a number, too. And money. And cancerous cells. And war casualties. Numbers are everything. Numbers are what separates life from death. Numbers run this world. There’s no just about them. Now get the fuck out.”
After sending Dani on her way with my Rain Man speech, and coming to terms with the fact my dick and I were both going to bed lonely tonight, I got into my car and drove to my apartment. My instincts told me the clusterfuck of today was in full swing and to expect the worst.
My instincts were never wrong.
Because Aisling fucking Fitzpatrick was waiting at my door.
A reward—or a punishment—from Karma?
Her back was pressed against the wood, sitting cross-legged, head bent down, the cool glow of her phone illuminating the planes of her face. She looked up as soon as I stepped out of the elevator, scrambling to her feet, smoothing her black, conservative dress over her curves. Her coat was folded and rested on her forearm neatly.
“I ought to kill you.” I pushed past her callously, punching the code to my door and opening it without making a move inside.
“That wouldn’t be out of character for you,” she murmured from behind me. “What didn’t I do this time?”
“You cockblocked me.”
“I wasn’t even anywhere near you all day!” she protested, the delight in her voice giving her a cheery lilt.
“You didn’t have to be. The PTSD of fucking you put me off the whole concept for life. Congratulations.”
“That’s why you had to finger me again, right? Just to make sure it really was that horrible the first time,” she sassed back.
“I fingered you to deny you an orgasm, not because I wanted you,” I replied drily.
“You really know how to woo a girl. No wonder I was obsessed with you.”
“Was?” I turned around to shoot her a dark smile, my hand on the door handle. “Last I checked, you are still running after me like a puppy and even took it to the next level and are now showing up at my place, creeper-style.”
“You show up at my place all the time, too. I don’t call you a creeper.”
“That’s different. I work with your father. I cannot escape the sight of you, no matter how much I want to.”
I was really on a roll tonight. All I needed was red-tipped horns and to sacrifice a baby or two to complete my transformation into Lucifer.
“Where have you been?” She changed the subject, refusing to be offended and or leave my fucking building.
Now I did feel something.
I felt ready to strangle her.
“Allow me to answer you with your favorite goddamn expression: none of your business. How did you find my address? Do not say none of your business,” I warned.
“Google.”