Though I’d often felt like I’d been stripped of my humanity, there was still a hidden part of me—all but imperceptible to anyone else—that had been holding on to a very human sort of guilt for three years. It was impossible to completely erase.
“Okay, but back to the other thing… If you’re not going to call the police, how are you going to get rid of this psycho?” Luke asked, lifting his coffee cup to his mouth.
“No idea,” I answered, drumming my fingers on the table.
“Do you know if it’s a man or woman?” he asked.
“No. The few times I’ve spoken to them on the phone, they used a voice modifier, so I couldn’t tell,” I answered, and Luke’s eyebrows arched up in surprise. I knew what he was thinking about—that time I’d asked him to trace one of Player’s calls.
“The Brooklyn Bagel…” he said softly, and I gave him a speaking look, letting him know with a glance that yes, this had been going on for a while, and yes, he had actually been the first person to whom I had gone for help.
“What the hell are you talking about?” grumped Xavier, who didn’t know any of that.
“A while ago, Neil came to me asking me to trace an anonymous call. He didn’t tell me much, so I just did what he asked. All we could find out wasthat the call had been made from a public restaurant, so it was impossible to pin down who made the call,” Luke explained.
Xavier stared at us, openmouthed.
“Fuck, this kind of thing gets me hyped. This is some James Bond shit!” he enthused while both Luke and I remained stone-faced as we looked at him. This wasn’t a joke. It was an enormous problem that I needed to solve as soon as possible.
“Player usually sends riddles. Hard candy doesn’t mean anything to me.” I returned my gaze to the sheet of paper that lay beside my now-cold cup of coffee. Again, it had been typed and printed to make sure there was no handwriting to recognize.
But this message was even more challenging than the ones that had come before.
“Yeah. A puzzle, however difficult, at least has a solution. But with just two words…how the hell do you figure out what he’s trying to tell you?” Luke mused.
“What if it’s some girl you fucked in the past? I mean, there have been a lot of them, and it ended badly with pretty much all of them,” Xavier speculated.
I lifted my gaze from the note to his dark eyes and gave them an impenetrable stare. I should have ignored his inane question, but instead, I gave in.
“All of them were well aware of how I was and how it worked,” I argued. None of my partners had been shocked when, after a single fuck, I’d dropped them and made it clear that I had no desire for an ongoing relationship.
“Sure, but a good eighty percent of them still fell for you anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them wanted you dead to this day,” Luke chuckled, and I heaved a sigh. It wasn’t my fault that women were drawn to me despite my awful temperament. I always approached them honestly and bluntly. I never changed how I acted with anyone; I was always myself. But even when I made it clear that I wasn’t looking for anything serious, their heads got turned by the dominant role I took on in our coupling. I acted with bold self-assurance to get what I wanted from them, and theyoften deluded themselves into thinking that meant something more. Thattheymeant something more. They tried to fit themselves into the role of savior and began to believe that they had the power to conquer my heart as well as my body.
It never came as a shock.
“You know how I am. I always had everything under control, and I take responsibility for everything I say. Why would some ex of mine hate me that much?” I asked, looking between the two of them. “Because I fucked her consensually and she liked it?” I smiled at the direction our conversation had taken.
I could see how someone might get hung up on something like that, but the idea of someone harboring that much hatred toward me just because we’d fucked once or twice was beyond the pale.
“Well, the whole experience with Scarlett should have taught you that women can do things you never would have imagined when their hopes are dashed,” Luke noted, as he finished his coffee. I shook my head and took a sip of my own as well. As I did, I noticed a couple sitting across from us.
The man was wearing a sleek blue suit, and his chiseled face was wrinkled in a frown as he stared persistently at me, not even sparing a glance at the woman with him who was trying to talk to him about something inaudible. I shifted my focus to look more closely at her. Pearl earrings, blond hair, and a tightly stretched blouse rang an immediate bell: I had seen those firm breasts somewhere before. Felt them up and sucked them, too.
It was her…Amanda Cooper, the art history professor.
I sat motionless, coffee mug in midair, just staring at her until Luke gave me a gentle nudge to bring me back to earth.
“Are you still doing Ms. Cooper?” he teased. I put the mug down on the table with my usual unflappable expression.
“No, it was a one-time thing,” I answered blandly. I didn’t give a flying fuck about the woman, and I didn’t understand why the man with her was watching me like that.
“Once is probably enough. She looks like she’d drain a man dry,” Xavier chuckled, giving her a lascivious glance.
“Who’s the guy with her?” I asked, shifting my focus to the man who occasionally nodded at Amanda but regularly looked back at our table.
“Oh…is Neil Miller jealous?” Luke asked mockingly.
“No, dumbass. I want to know who he is before I beat his face in. He won’t stop staring at us,” I answered and then began returning the dude’s stare with the same intensity. I was used to men feeling competitive with me or the specific possessiveness that my presence triggered in them when they had a beautiful woman on their arm. Other men saw me as a threat, as a hunter who might be looking to draw the attention of their women to himself. I figured that was what was happening in the moment. What this guy didn’t know, however, was that I had already sampled the seductive Miss Cooper’s sexual talents. I vividly remembered the delightful butterflies she had tattooed around the base of her spine. How could I forget them? I caressed them with my thumbs the whole time I had her bent over in front of me.
