Chapter 21

Beckett

Music thundered through the space around me, the steady thump of base thrumming up my spine and half-deafening me. Strobe lights flickered, slashing through the darkness, each moment captured as if it were a photo negative of the evening.

A woman dropped her drink. Flash. Men rubbed up against a big-titted blonde. Flash. Two chicks making out, standing in the middle of the floor, totally lost in each other. Flash. A guy with his hand to his mouth, stumbling around the floor.

I leaned back on the sofa in the VIP area and cupped my phone between my palms, instead of the drink my “buddy” Eric had purchased at the bar.

“Drinks on me!” he’d yelled and the rest of the entourage had whooped their pleasure. I’d remained silent. The whiskey here was shit. The atmosphere was shit. The fact that I couldn’t go to Olivia’s apartment was shit.

I’d already tried calling her and texting her. No answer.

I unlocked my screen again and opened the chain of messages then typed out another one.

I’ll be at your apartment at six tomorrow morning. Be there.

And that was it. I sent it off with a wry smile. She’d be there because she knew what was good for her.

But what was good for her wasn’t me.

I grunted and studied the women and men on the dance floor below the raised dais instead of examining that thought.

Blondes and brunettes and redheads. Tall, short, curvy, slender. All sweaty and writhing, presenting a smorgasbord of choices. If I’d snapped my fingers and pointed to one of them, she’d have been summoned up to the VIP area to speak with me.

Within seconds of meeting me, she’d have been mine. One drink and aimless conversation on her part and we’d have gone back to my apartment to fuck for the night. Simple, easy, no complications.

A cab in the morning, and all ties would’ve been severed.

Nothing like Olivia. And because of that, it wasn’t what I wanted.

“You good, bro?” Eric yelled from the seat across the low table in our area, both arms around the shoulders of two women, each equally busty and nameless.

I ignored him and lifted my cellphone again.

No reply.

Christ, when had I become the bitch who waited on a text from a woman?

Since Olivia.

Things had changed since that afternoon in the Granite Room. Every day had changed. It started with me waking up, thinking less about work, the three businesses we wanted to invest in, the potential investors like Dane Holmes, and more about the girls.

Olivia and Penny. When I pictured them, something in my chest unfolded. Something totally unfamiliar. Michael would’ve had something smart to say about it. He’d probably have told me I was an asshole for having come to the club in the first place, but I had to prove to myself that this Olivia shit was just a phase.

Except now I was here, and all I wanted was to die of boredom.

Sweat and sex and probably drugs somewhere in a bathroom. Spilled booze and sticky tabletops. Throbbing music. Laughter. Moans. This was the shit that’d been my evening on any given day.

I shoved my cellphone into my pocket and contemplated leaving.

I’d head home and rub one out if I had to. The alternative was sitting here and picking out a woman I could never stand to have sex with. The thought of any other pussy except Olivia’s repulsed me.

Hers was so pink and precious, and it took my cock like it’d been made for it. Those slick, velvet walls—

Shit, I had to stop thinking about this, or I’d end up sporting a boner in the club, and that’d have every chick in here thirsty for me.

Granny panties. Rotten lasagna. That time Michael threw his jock strap at my head. Ah, that’d done it. I shifted and made to get up.

Eric didn’t even notice. His face was buried between the brunette’s breasts. She giggled, he slurped enthusiastically, the other chick had her phone out, tapping away on the screen, and the bouncers turned a blind eye because Eric was part of the billionaires’ club.

Obnoxious as fuck. A mirror image of who I’d been and how I’d behaved a couple months ago.

I pushed off from the chair and, halfway between sitting and standing, a blonde woman flew at me out of nowhere. She collided with my midriff and bowled me over onto the couch.

I landed on my back with the crazy chick.

“What the hell?” I grunted. This was unprecedented. Nobody touched me without my explicit permission. Not even my business contacts extended a hand for a shake unless I did it first.

The woman let out a tiny squeal of delight. “Beck!” She shimmied up against me, pressing her breasts into my chest. “There you are! I’ve been looking for you all over the place.” She bathed me in a cloud of perfume that was so far from peach and vanilla it made me gag. Something flowery and indecipherable.

“Get off.”

“What’s the matter, Beck? You don’t miss me?” Bebe lifted her head and grinned at me. “Is it because you’ve moved on to another pussy?”

I sat up, and she had no option but to scramble off me. She kneeled on the sofa cushions instead, her glitzy black dress cutting into the tops of her thighs, so short whoever walked behind her would have a view of her ass, and likely her pussy, too, since I’d never known Bebe to wear underwear during our little foray into boring sex.

Boring for me, that was. Not for her, of course.

Bebe slammed her hands onto my thigh and dug her fingernails into my suit pants. “Baby, I miss you so much,” she crooned, reeking of alcohol, her gaze unfocused. “And now, I found out that you’re capable of love, so I know that we can make this work.”

I was so stunned by that declaration I didn’t bother removing her hands from my leg. I speared her with a stare that could curdle milk. One for toes, one for milk. One hot, one terrifying.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“Olivia. I know she loves you, and I know you love her,” she slurred. “And I know you’re doing this whole fake fiancée thing. She doesn’t need you like I need you, baby. She’s so strong, too strong to be your woman. You need someone submissive.” Bebe ran her hands higher up my thigh. “Somebody who will do whatever you want when you want it. You call me, and I’ll be there in a second for you. Naked and wet. Isn’t that what you want, Beck? No, I know it’s what you want.”

The girl across from us lifted her phone higher and her camera flashed.

Fuck.

Bebe’s hands on my leg. The engagement.

The idiot leaned in to kiss me, and I rose, knocking her aside with my leg—accidentally, of course. She sniffed and pressed fingers to her forehead, then followed me and latched onto my arm.

“Come on, baby, don’t be stubborn. You know you want this. If you can love Olivia, of all people, then you can love me.”

I removed my arm from her grip again. I’d been about to blow past her, but those words stalled me in my tracks. The club music thumped through my veins, Eric’s bimbo snapped another picture of me.

“What do you mean, ‘of all people?’”

Bebe rolled her eyes, fake lashes fluttering. One side was loose, hanging skew against her lid. “It’s Olivia. She’s a prude. She’s not like us. I mean, she’s slept with like, what, one guy in her entire life? And she’s not into the party scene. And she’s got that baby, now. She’s not meant to be with you.”

“How would you know that?” I growled.

“Oh, my god, it’s so obvious. Baby, she’s not even in your league.” Bebe gestured to the strobe lights, the sweat and sex out there. “This is where we belong. You and me. Together.”

“Delusional,” I snorted, and this time, I did blow past her and out of the VIP area. I strode across the dancefloor, people giving way before me, the crowd parting as if I was a royal, and made for the exit.

I passed the bar, and the bartender nodded to me. I didn’t return it.

Bebe wasn’t right. I didn’t belong in this place.

I belonged…nowhere.

Except with Olivia. No. Fuck it. No. Not this again.

But my heart sank, regardless. It was probably too late to say no when it came to her. I’d made the cardinal error of sleeping with her. I’d planned on claiming her body then discarding my obsession with her. Instead, she’d claimed another part of me.

One I’d assumed had died years ago.

I charged out, past the long line of assholes waiting to get into the club, and the bouncer with his clipboard and farcical power. I fumbled in my pocket for the unopened pack of Camel Crush and brought it out.

I stripped off the plastic with my teeth and dumped it in a trash can on the sidewalk, then brought out a cigarette and inserted it between my lips. The lighter came next. Finally, I inhaled and squeezed my eyes shut.

Better. And worse.

I plucked the smoke from my lips and examined it, from the filter to the coal. “Fucking waste of time.” I flicked it onto the sidewalk then ground it beneath my heel.

The door to the club slammed open behind me and everyone in that long line, scantily clad or dressed in their best, jerked around. Jackals, all of them. If one person exited the club that opened space for another.

“Beck!” Bebe’s arms closed around my waist from behind. “There you are.”

Christ, she was relentless.

People in the line perked up, pointed. One woman raised her phone.

Bebe let go of me and shuffled around to the front. She threw herself at me again, this time smearing a kiss across my cheek.

I caught her arms before she got near my lips and kept her from wriggling. I controlled my anger, barely. “Let me make something clear,” I said. “You’re not better than Olivia, and you never will be. You’re nothing compared to her. You’re a blip on the radar, understand? You were just another in the long line of woman I used to get over her.”

“W-what?”

“You heard me,” I hissed. “You are nothing to me. And you’re a shitty friend for betraying her the first chance you got. If you ever touch me again, I will destroy you in ways you could never imagine. Do you understand me, Bebe? Last chance.”

Her bottom lip trembled, and tears sprung up in her eyes.

“Do you understand me?” I growled.

“Yes,” she whimpered.

I let her go then walked off, raising my fingers as I did. A cab pulled up to the curb, and I opened the door, got inside, and gave him the address to my apartment, bile clawing its way up my throat.

I’d lost control, and, once again, it revolved around O and the unquenchable thirst to be with her. As more than just lovers.

Fuck, had someone taken a photo of that kiss?

I whipped out my phone and typed in the number, then hit call. It rang twice before she answered.

“Yeah, it’s me. We need to talk. Now.”