2

AIDEN

“You’re a dirty bastard motherfucker. That’s what you are, Aiden Carmichael.”

Fuck, she’s angry. Angry shifts to evil as the nasty bitch smashes my phone screen against the corner of the granite breakfast bar, four times, and I don’t blink despite the ear-splitting repetitive sound. She tosses it in the direction of where I’m sprawled on the couch.  It lands on the area rug.

Her face is twisted into an ugly expression. She looks rough, ten years older in broad daylight than she did last night. Her black eye makeup is in clumps and still all over her face, left over from the night before when I’d face-fucked her so hard mascara and tears left tracks down to her jawline. I’ve got a great snapshot of her gagging on my dick. Another of her bent over the coffee table taking my cock up her ass.

She was too polluted to notice me taking that front-facing snapshot when I pretended to check the time. What bitch doesn’t take notice when you stop to check the time while she’s giving you head? I suppose it’s what the girls I fuck have come to expect from me. They know better than to expect anything but cool indifference.

One side of my face twitches and I give her a cockeyed smirk.

“Thanks for the news flash, sweetheart. Not the first time it’s been said.” I shrug.

She whips a beer bottle from among the other dead soldiers on the counter at me. It bounces off the back of the couch and lands on me, not breaking, but dribbling backwash dregs all over my arm. I wipe my arm with the blanket that I’ve got over me. If I wasn’t looking forward to closing my eyes again and seeing the back of this bitch, I’d be tempted to retaliate.

I can’t let it go without at least a warning.

“Watch it, Bella.” I point at her with the bottle, then toss it to the table. It rolls off and lands on my rug.

“I deleted the sex video and the pictures, you asshole. I can’t believe you tried to pull that crap!” Bella hisses.

Oh yeah. I took video while I was doin’ her from behind out on the balcony, too. Why? Because this chick is a calculating bitch and doesn’t know that I know her game. Knowing her game, this is my insurance, so to speak.

Just the fact that she was in my phone at all lets me know I was right to take out my “insurance policy”.

She wasn’t only snooping in my phone, the bitch. But, I don’t tip my hand that I know what else she was doing.

I hear a key going into the door from the hallway.

I shrug again. “Not sure why you thought you had a right to snoop in my phone, bitch. Not that it matters. I already sent them to the cloud. So, just remember, I have those, should you decide to try to fuck me over in any way, shape or form.”

Bella glares at me while yanking her skanky form-fitting dress over her head and she’s fumbling into her hooker heels, ass hanging out, when the door handle turns. Bella stabs her index finger in my direction, ready to say something, when the door creaks open and there’s a chick standing there, behind Bella, looking uncertain, having obviously heard some of the shouting from the hallway.  She’s watching Bella pull her dress down over her purple thong. Bella glares over her shoulder at the newcomer.

The chick at the door is petite, curly light brown hair, olive skinned, big light brown eyes. Big tits. She looks to be in her early twenties, dressed in yoga pants and running shoes with a half-zipped black hoodie that blesses my eyes with cleavage spilling out of a tight orange top.

Shit. Is this the roommate my father texted me about late last night? Fuck me, but she’s got a great rack. Great face. Great body. Fuckin’ love yoga pants on a chick who clearly does actual yoga. I can’t remember what the text said. Can’t re-check it, either, given the state of my phone.

“Are you Ally?” She looks at Bella. “Want me to call the cops?” She jerks her head in my direction as if to offer to save Bella from me. She’s got a pink iPhone in her hand.

Bella flips her long dark hair with a flourish to untrap it from the neck line of her dress and glares at the girl. “Who the fuck are you? His next victim? Or his last one?”

The girl rears back, startled, brows jutting up.

“I am outta here.” Bella points at me. “You fuck with me, I’ll fuck you right back.” She looks to the chick at the door. “Sister, heed this warning. Don’t tango with that fucker. He might have that rich, hot, bad boy thing down pat, but he is a ruthless dirtbag dawg, and despite his skills and equipment, he won’t be worth the trouble.”

She grabs her designer bag and struts out.

I roll my eyes and throw the blanket off.

The girl watches Bella leave and then has her eyes on me as she drags a massive rolling black and white polka dot suitcase, a big purse, and a carryon bag in from the hall and shuts the door.

She looks at me with a mixture of horror and curiosity.

I lean forward and scrub my eyes with my palms.

“I, uh, I’m Carly Adler. I’m supposed to be sharing this apartment with Ally Kingston. Is she here?”

I head toward the breakfast bar. She jerks back a little bit, but I can’t focus on that reaction she’s having to my body, because the room spins a little. How much did I drink last night? I put fingertips to my temple and sway a little.

Too much. That much is obvious.

“I’m not sure if there was a mix-up with apartments, or…”

She takes one breath and then continues talking. Fast.

“Are you just here today or till tomorrow, because Ally is supposed to be here tomorrow, so I’m not sure if this is just an overlap, or ---”

“One sec,” I mutter, trying to stop myself from swaying.

Her fast-talking is making me dizzier.

I reach for the half full bottle of Booker’s and twist the cap off.

She waits while I take a healthy glug.

“Do you work for Carmichael, too?” she asks.

I set the bottle on the counter and look around for my smokes, catching her look at me. She’s trying to not assess my equipment, me being in nothing but my underwear, but she’s failing.

She keeps talking. “Um, I’d call the office to see if there’s a mix-up, but it’s Saturday, so I don’t know if…”

I take another swig and she stops talking, but then starts again.

“It’s eleven o’clock in the morning San Diego time,” she points out, staring at the booze bottle in my grip.

“Got a smoke?” I ask, not looking at her, spinning the cap on top of the bottle.

“Um, no. I don’t smoke. But, there’s a pack on the floor.”  She gestures. “You’re not gonna smoke in here are you?”

I look down and see them by my blazer from the night before. I squat and grab them. “Goin’ to bed. Your room’s that way.” I gesture down the hall. “First door.”

“But…” she starts.

I don’t wait to see what comes after ‘but’. Instead, I head down the hall, carrying the bottle by the neck, my smokes in the other hand.