CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
“Lead us not into temptation. Just tell us where it is; we’ll find it.”
~Sam Levenson
PRESENT
Dante joined me at the butler’s pantry, pouring himself a fresh scotch.
Tiffany hung back a beat, looking unsure, before she approached us and reclaimed the glass of liquor she hadn’t been drinking.
Dante gave her a less than friendly look. “Can you give us a minute? I need to talk to Scarlett. Alone.”
She did something odd then, something I didn’t understand. Her fake nice facade slipped for a second, and she gave him a very hard look that felt to me like a warning. “You sure you want to do that?” she asked him.
I was looking back and forth between them, for once completely lost on the nuances of what was going on.
“Absolutely,” he pronounced, turning his back on her.
I smiled as she walked away. “You two don’t seem to get along so well anymore,” I noted gleefully.
“We sure as hell don’t.”
“You were engaged to her,” I pointed out. I was provoking him purposefully. He knew it and I wanted him to.
“I was engaged to you too. Didn’t do me much good, did it?”
“Who do you think you’re talking to? If it did you no good, it’s on you.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right,” he noted bitterly. “I forgot I’ve been painted as that guy. Serial fiancé. Because that adds up to you. I’m the guy that makes promises and doesn’t give a damn about them, right?”
“Of course you are. Are you denying it?” I felt my temper boiling up from the bottomless place inside of me, that place that was so full of rage it could feed itself indefinitely. It was only ever looking for an excuse to erupt.
He didn’t deny it, at least, which was perhaps the best way to defuse my ticking time bomb of a temper.
We gave each other a moment of silence. I didn’t realize Dante was stewing in his own temper more than giving space to mine until he said, “How long have you been seeing him?” He was looking down at his glass.
I just stared at him. Somehow, even with all of our history, knowing the ins and outs of him, he still managed to surprise me. “Excuse me?”
“Man-bun from your apartment. How long have you been seeing him?”
“I’m not doing this with you.” I was infuriated at the very notion that he thought he was entitled to know even one thing about my love life.
“Does he mind sharing you? Does it bother him to go to your house to see you while you’re still filled with another man’s cum?”
It was an effort not to show him the reaction he wanted, but I kept my expression neutral, my tone even, “My God, you are out of line.”
He was leaning with casual ease against the counter, his posture nonchalant.
The eyes he turned on me were not nonchalant.
They were livid. Wild. “Did you fuck him after I left?”
“You’re a lunatic,” I spoke quietly and vehemently, “an absolute raging lunatic,” I repeated, “if you think I owe you one single answer about any part of my life.”
“He was in that TV pilot with you years ago. Have you been seeing him since then? For years?” There was so much accusation in his voice, as though he had any right at all to feel betrayed.
The sheer gall of it floored me.
“That is rich,” I enunciated slowly. “Here you are, staying in a house with a virtual stable of your exes, and you have the nerve to act possessive of me?”
His jaw clenched, he stared me down.
“You have me sleeping under the same roof as the home-wrecking whore that ruined us, and you have the balls to think you deserve answers from me?”
He looked genuinely taken aback. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Tiffany is staying here. At Gram’s house. With me here. Don’t act like you didn’t know.”
“I didn’t fucking know! Why the fuck is she staying here?”
That knocked some of the fight out of me, and I found myself studying his face for deceit. “You really didn’t know?”
“No, I really didn’t, and it makes no fucking sense. Why wouldn’t she stay with her parents?”
“Renovations, she said.”
“Bullshit. That place is a mansion. There’s no way they don’t still have spare rooms. And if somehow that isn’t a lie, why doesn’t she stay with my mother? Those two are practically joined at the hip.”
These were all my thoughts exactly, but I hadn’t expected him to be so baffled by it.
In spite of my better judgement, I felt myself warming to him. I took my glass and tapped it to his. “It looks like she’s planning something. Don’t be surprised if a naked girl that’s shaped like a fourteen-year-old boy slips into your bed tonight.”
He smirked and toasted me back. “I’m not too worried. I had no intention of sleeping in my own bed tonight.”
A familiar burn started up just under the surface of my skin. I couldn’t mistake what he meant any more than I could stop my body’s reaction to him.
And I wasn’t sure if I wanted to. Because again, fucking him meant fucking with him. Having Tiffany sleeping in the house had only upped the stakes in our little battle of head games.
But I just smiled blandly at him. “Luckily my room has a very good lock.”
His grin widened. “Good. No one will bother us, then.”
I straightened, setting yet another empty glass down. “On that note, I’m going to mingle.”
“Wait,” he said, snagging my arm and pulling me back. His finger went to trace over a spot on my collarbone where I’d missed one of the fuzzies from earlier. Carefully he brushed it away.
I shivered.
He glanced down at my nipples as I did that, watched them harden, protruding clearly through the thin material of my dress. He didn’t take his hand away, instead tracing down to circle one of the sensitive buds, rubbing it under his thumb.
His eyes were heavy-lidded on my breasts, his breath coming hard. I was very aware of the effect my body had on him, and he was in a state right then.
He was easily led in matters of the flesh, and I thought I could have gotten him to do anything when he had that look in his eyes.
I decided to use it against him.
“I can’t believe you let me inside of you bare and I only got to have one taste,” he uttered, voice low, guttural. “I wasn’t at my best. I want a do-over.”
I leaned into his touch. “Yes, bare inside of me. You didn’t even pull out. How was it that you described it? Oh yes, the eloquent—filled me with your cum. You obviously weren’t too drunk to remember a few things.”
“Jesus,” he breathed, coming unhinged, backing me into the high wooden counter, leaning into me, rubbing his big body against mine, his erection a clear impression against my hip. “I’d have to be dead to forget that. And I’m going to fill you up again. And again. Stuff you full of cock and cum until you beg me to let you rest.” He started kissing my neck, outright fondling me now.
Dammit, he played a good game. He almost had me sucked in before I caught myself.
I gripped him through his slacks, stroking him hard, not an idle touch but one meant to make him lose it. “I don’t think I can wait,” I told him, pumping at him in earnest. “You should go up to my room, strip down, and wait for me.”
He pulled my hand away, peeled himself off my body, and looked at me, really looked at me.
I smiled at him.
“Christ, you’re messing with me, aren’t you?”
With an evil laugh I walked away. “And while you’re at it, hold your breath,” I called over my shoulder.
*****
Mingling was not nearly as fun as tormenting Dante, but I applied myself to the task nonetheless.
That lasted about five minutes. I hated talking to strangers, and that was really the best case scenario. It was the non-strangers, the familiar faces from my childhood, that I really couldn’t stand.
I ran into one of the police officers, Mandy’s father, the sheriff, in fact, almost right off the bat.
I detested him. He’d helped to plant my distrust in cops, which I felt had been to my detriment. Who could you turn to if not the police?
I smiled at him, not letting an iota of my animosity show. I really couldn’t afford to have him notice me overmuch.
As I’ve said, I have a very healthy fear of cops.
“Hello, Harold,” I said.
His beady eyes narrowed on me, the fleshy folds of his face nearly swallowing them up. He’d been overweight since I could remember, but he’d really let himself go since the last time I’d seen him.
He studied me for a few moments, trying to place me. He scratched his bushy mustache as he said, “Do I know you?”
Typical. His daughter had tormented me for years, he had covered for her, and he didn’t even remember.
“Scarlett Theroux. I went to school with your daughter Mandy.”
Ah, that got him.
He fingered his jowly beard, eyes running over me. “Well, you look like you landed on your feet. How ‘bout that?”
I didn’t know about that, but I was hardly going to argue with him. “How ‘bout it,” I drawled wryly.
“Have you, erm, caught up with my daughter? I remember you guys were friends.”
I almost laughed. “Yes, we caught up in the kitchen. She hasn’t changed a bit. It’s like she’s caught in a time machine.”
His uncomfortable smile faltered. He cleared his throat. “So, um, how’s your dad doing? He hasn’t given us any trouble for a while. That has to be a good sign.”
My own smile faltered. “There’s absolutely no proof that Jethro Davis is my father.”
“Well, the man himself claims he is. No one else is claiming it, so I’d say that’s some proof.”
“Do you usually take the claims of known criminals as proof? Is that how police work is done around here?”
Dammit, I’d riled him. In all fairness, he’d riled me first.
He pulled at his ill-fitted suit collar, eyes darting away from me, face flushed and angry. “Excuse me,” he said gruffly, “I see someone I know,” and ambled off.
Mingling: 1
Scarlett: 0
And it only went downhill from there.
My next victim was someone I thought was a stranger at first.
He was a short, portly guy, around my age. He shuffled up to me looking nervous as hell, and my first impression was that he seemed kind of sweet.
“Um, hi,” he said, looking down at his feet. “I saw you in that lotion commercial. It was—you were—you did a really good job.”
I smiled at him. “Thank you. That’s a nice thing to say.”
He finally looked up at me, flushed, and looked back down at his feet. “Do you, um, remember me?”
I studied him. Nothing about him was familiar to me, but I’d lived here from birth to adulthood, so there were plenty of vague faces I’d forgotten. “I don’t, I’m sorry. Do we know each other?”
He gave a little half shrug and just kept staring down at his feet. He looked so utterly pathetic that I found myself feeling sorry for him. “What was your name again? Maybe that will jar my memory.”
With much effort he choked out, “Tommy Mann.”
I stiffened, the smile freezing on my face. I knew that name. I studied him again, trying to find traces of the boy he’d been.
I vaguely saw it. He didn’t look good. He didn’t take care of himself. He was pale in a way that gave the impression he didn’t leave his house much. But it was in there somewhere, that boy who’d been just one in a long line of the vicious kids that had singled me out for abuse as a child.
My lip curled in disdain. “Did you ever outgrow your habit of punching girls half your size?” I asked him. “In the face,” I added for good measure.
He actually answered the question, talking to his toes. “Y-y-yes,” he stuttered.
And dammit that almost made me feel sorry for him. I had a soft spot for stutters.
“I always wanted to say I’m sorry for that, but they switched you to the other class after that, and Dante told me if I ever got within five feet of you for any reason that he’d pound me into next year.”
That I believed.
“But I’ll say it now. I have no excuse for myself. I’m very, very sorry. I know how it was for you. I know it wasn’t easy. I didn’t have any friends myself, and I was a weakling and a coward. I don’t even know why, but I was trying to fit in and picking on you seemed to be the thing to do.”
That I also believed.
“Like I said, I have no excuse. To this day I’m ashamed of myself for it.”
I didn’t know what to think of his apology. I wasn’t used to them. I just felt strange. Conflicted. Did he expect to be forgiven for a few short sentences of remorse many years after the fact, sincere or not? Would I be crazy for holding on to a grudge for all these years, or a complete doormat for accepting his decades late apology?
I decided (begrudgingly) that a late apology was better than none at all. He was far from the worst of the goons I’d had to deal with back then. At least he’d left me alone after one offense.
And I had kicked him in the balls really, really hard.
“Apology accepted,” I told him quietly, if begrudgingly. I wasn’t used to forgiving people. It was a muscle I’d never had to use before.
I couldn’t say it felt particularly pleasant to work it out for the first time.
Still, I was rather proud of myself. I’d made it through one confrontation that had gone kind of well, all things considered.
But then Dante.
He appeared just as I was about to move on with a feeling of accomplishment.
He stepped up beside me, wrapped a proprietary arm around my waist, and leaned down, down, down to short, terrified Tommy.
“What did I tell you, Tommy?” his voice was quiet and menacing. “That looks closer than five fucking feet to me.”
Tommy stammered out an apology and took off.
I was sitting somewhere between exasperated and annoyed as I shrugged out of Dante’s hold and turned to look at him. “I had that under control,” I told him. “He’d just apologized and then you scared the crap out of him.”
He was completely unrepentant as he shrugged his broad shoulders. “You are talking to the wrong guy if you think you’re ever going to get me to feel sorry for any of the punk kids that terrorized you.”
Well, now. How could I get mad at him for that?