1
Cal
“So, what do you say?” Victoria simpers, batting her spidery-looking lashes like she thinks that will get her what she wants. To be fair to her, it probably does exactly that when she's trying it out on the right people. The daughter of a media tycoon, she grew up wealthy, fawned over in the press as some sort of pseudo-socialite. One look at her, and you can tell what she's after— someone to continue drip-feeding her enough cash to support her addiction to pretty things. I’m not that someone.
I do, in fact, like pretty things as much as the next guy.
But I don't just like tocollectpretty things; I like to ruin them.
I've spent countless hours trying to analyze myself, to figure out if I was born a monster or if something in my life made me this way. I quit seeing real shrinks because they would ask too many questions, dancing right along the truth that I've been sworn to protect. They always wanted to talk about my family, whether my mother loved me right when she still could, or if my father was too harsh. They inevitably always steered the conversation toward my perfect sister, posturing that I harbored jealousy for her because of the way that my parents seemed to dote on her. From the day she was born, Charlotte commanded all of my parents’ energy.
Even now, my father speculates that my dislike of my sister has to do with her being the golden child with her big blue eyes and innocent face. The truth is, I wasn'tallowedto like her. We never got a chance to play together because she was always being whisked away by the adults. Conrad and I were much closer, brothers in every sense of the word. He was my partner in crime… or maybe I was his.
Though he was the younger of the two of us, he was the more troublesome. Conrad made everything fun. And though I was ten months older than him, I looked up to him. The day that he died, I think everything started to fall apart. He took a piece of my mother with him, and she never got it back. She followed him to the grave a year after he passed, leaving Charlotte and me alone.
I'm sure I have some mommy issues, repressed or otherwise. I still hate her. For not being stronger. For leaving us to suffer without her. We were going through the same thing she was, but she left us anyway.
In a way, Victoria looks like my sister, who was the spitting image of my mother. I tell myself that that's the reason why I won't be taking her home with me, that it would be weird or wrong. The reality of it is that I won't take her home with me because a girl like her will gather too much attention on my arm.
The disgraced son of hotelier Anderson Kensington has mostly faded into obscurity since my father exiled me across the country. If I were to walk out of this room with Victoria Vincent on my arm, it would cause a stir. No, I’m better off flying under the radar. And Victoria does not fly under the radar—she’s wearing a fucking disco ball, for fuck’s sake.
“We’ll see what we can do,” I tell her coolly, “have your assistant email mine on Monday, and we’ll go from there.”
Disappointment is evident in the pout of her lips, and she opens her mouth to argue. I stop her with a hand on her arm, taking her off guard as I tell her how it was lovely to see her, and then I push around her with a quickexcuse me.
“Dex!” I call, desperate to immerse myself in conversation with someone before Victoria can come try to shoot her shot again.
Dex nods at the woman who goes off without him, a brunette in a short red dress. When his gaze meets mine, he smirks.
“You escaped?”
“Barely.” I grumble. “I think she was going for a marriage proposal.”
“A girl like that?” He chuckles. “She’d poison you with hemlock by the end of your honeymoon.”
“You mean if I didn’t choke her to death with my dick buried inside her cuntfirst, right?”
I laugh, appreciating the startled look on his face.
I imagine saying that in front of the wrong person may go really bad, but Dex has slowly grown used to my deprecating sense of humor. He hasn’t exactly had a choice.
It’s been a year since I kicked Bridget to the curb, one month shy of our wedding. We drank too much one night, and she kept telling me to choke her harder. And I’m a man of the people, so I did exactly that. But when she went limp, I didn’t stop.
It was like I was possessed, high on the need and the adrenaline, the euphoria running through my bloodstream as her body stilled beneath mine, becoming my little toy. I held her tighter, unable to let go as I fucked her hard, bewitched by the sounds her body made under my spell. When I finally came, whatever demon had been possessing me seemed to have been sated, and I slipped back into myself, aware of what I’d done. Luckily, she was still breathing. She slept through me throwing up in the bathroom all night, disgusted with myself.
When she woke the next day, I told her it was over.
I’ve had a year to ruminate.
Dex has had a year to come to terms with the fact that there’s something wrong with me.
Each day that passes, I can feel that beast inside of me clawing its way to the surface, desperate for more of that ungodly high. Some days I feel like we’re fighting for control, he and I. It’s why I haven’t gotten close to another woman, why I only sleep with people looking for a quick fix… same as me. The calls have been getting closer and closer lately; it's why I’ve taken to paying for sex. It’s not due to a lack of people willing to sleep with me without a cash incentive. But the ones whom I pay for are far more discreet.
“Don’t talk like that.” Dex warns me, glancing surreptitiously around us to be sure that no one has overheard our conversation. Of course, no one has. These events are so packed full of people vying for attention that I’d have to get a microphone to be heard over the din of people talking about themselves. “Not here.”
I roll my eyes at him but tamp it down all the same, because he’s right. While I’m not worried about being overheard, this isn’t the place to discuss my wicked proclivities. I can deal with whatever comes of my sickness, whether I’m caught or left to my own devices to try and sate my dark desires. But I can’t deal with Dex taking any of the heat for my transgressions. He’s done enough. The best thing I can do for him now is leave him out of all this. Which is how I know my days of calling the agency for a girl to be delivered are done.
It’s time to try something new.
