My head’s still separated from my body when I stand and toss the used condom onto the floor. The camera flashes a red light to let us know it’s still fucking recording. Still watching. Still waiting for us to put on a good show.
I nearly knock it over when I jab my thumb against the button to shut it off. It trembles on its tripod, that ever-watchful eye swaying back and forth, threatening to turn Vincent’s princess’s little exploits into nothing more than smashed metal and film.
Oh, but no princess I knew of could fuck like that. She’s a little predator wrapped up in the skin of a lamb. It takes one to know one, though my disguise had been shredded long ago in favor of my true form. I wear it when I face her again. She’s slumped on the center of the mattress, her eyes swollen, chest heaving, nipples stabbing at the air, legs still parted.
The rules of her little game were simple. We play nice for the camera. We put on a good show for her big bad fiancé. I let her ride me like a cheap circus attraction.
But the show’s over now. It’s time for the dancing animals to be shoved back into their cages behind the stage. There’s a mess that needs to be cleaned up. Fresh tickets to sell.
The little bitch doesn’t react when I grab her by the ankle and drag her to the edge of the bed. She watches me, a grim smile playing over her mouth like she knows the thoughts circling through my head when I sink down onto my knees and pull her legs apart, throwing one over either shoulder. She doesn’t even flinch until I seal my mouth over her cunt and shove my tongue inside her.
She makes a sound that she didn’t learn from those porno videos, however. Her hands claw at my shoulders. Then my hair. She whines when I find her clit and graze the bundle of flesh between my teeth. Her taste floods me, more potent than any of the shit Arno has stocked in his bar.
One hand on her waist keeps her pinned down while I taste the little bitch inside and out. She’s sweet, if it’s even fucking possible. Sweet like liquor. Sweet like heroin. She’s an addict’s kind of bitter taste—my own personal hit of dope.
I take every dose until she’s writhing. Until the sounds she makes cease being sounds at all, and she’s merely grunting beneath the brutal, twisted fuck. I taste every single, goddamn inch of her. Then I use my fingers to finish her off, trapping her clit beneath my thumb and rubbing until her back bows and her nails break my skin. It’s only when she’s limp and panting that I come up for air.
I don’t take the time to observe her flushed body when I spot my jeans lying in the corner, and I shove them on. With single-minded determination, I rip the camera from the tripod. When I toe the threshold, I finally look back and find her watching me, her eyes unsettling...
And I slam the door behind me so hard it shakes on its fucking hinges.
Arno’s seated at the bar, waiting for me. He doesn’t react when I drop the camera onto his fucking lap. He doesn’t make eye contact. There’s a full shot glass resting on the counter in front of him, and he merely shoves it toward me.
I take it and knock it back, grimacing at the bitter taste. It’s a dangerous fuel to add to the fire already consuming my fingertips. The blaze grows hotter, lapping up my wrists and surging through my blood with every unstable beat of my pulse. She did this. Her taste mingles with the alcohol. I swipe at my mouth with the back of my hand, but she clings to my lower lip, stubborn and vile. I rub at the spot, nearly stripping the skin raw. Then I take the second shot Arno offers me and down it.
He says nothing when I leave, slamming the door on my way out. It’s dusk. A spreading night sky battles with a resistant, orange sunset that scars the horizon like a burning fire. I scowl at it. Then I head down the street, going wherever my fucking legs take me. I’m unfamiliar with this part of the city. After five years, street names have changed. New buildings have crept up on the ashes of the old ones. The people are even different. Tougher. Stranger. Louder.
They don’t offer me one fucking moment of silence to clear my head. One moment to find the familiar beast I know dwells in my skin like a parasite. The noises and barrage of sound don’t even succeed in drowning her out. I still hear her moaning. Panting. Begging. Pleading. The sounds form a noose around my cock, which is so fucking greedy after being denied for so long.
Trolling the streets like a dog off its leash is a bitter way to brace myself for the wrath that will come once Stacatto sees what his fiancée’s gladly done. But the fucker can come for me. I’m ready.
Oh, the fuck am I ready.
I almost believe that fate’s playing some kind of cruel, twisted joke when a man staggers into me the moment I turn a corner. For the first time in his fucking life, Dante Vialle finally gets his goddamn wish...
“You got a problem?” the man demands, his head cocked. He’s got a five-o’clock shadow stretching over his jaw and wears the dirty jeans and oversized sweatshirt of a punk with too much time on his hands and too much dope in his brain to know when to back down.
“Yeah,” I tell him. “I’ve got a big fucking problem.” The bastard doesn’t hear the warning note in my voice: it’s the jarring crunch of a bulldog breaking off its leash; it’s the second when the wolf realizes that there’s blood in the air and releases a howl; it’s a danger that even I sense, and my fingers clench fighting to ignore the way they burn. Throb. Ache, still slick with her.
The stupid fucking bastard doesn’t know how close I am to losing control. How much I goddamn want to lose it. I need any excuse. Any fucking one.
And he presents it by stupidly stepping closer. His hot breath fans my cheek, mingling with the sweat from her skin. Her taste is still on my tongue, even as the bastard says, “I suggest you apologize. Friend.”
It’s like lighting a match above a pool of gasoline. Fire erupts, spreading wild and ravenous, and there’s no fucking way to contain it. My skull breaks open and something evil spills out. It stains my vision the color of blood, and my fist goes flying.
Flesh and bone reverberate beneath my knuckles. Again. Again. Again. There’s shouting. I’m in the middle of the street in near broad, fucking daylight, but none of it fucking matters. I can hear each sickening blow I land. Maybe the bastard managed to get some in himself because I’m not sure whose blood I taste when hands paw at my shoulders and finally pull me back.
Under...arrest... The words come in slow motion. Pieces of my vision return like puzzle pieces. The conflicted sky. A confused sea of faces. A body lying motionless in front of me.
My mouth’s open, I realize. I’m laughing as icy metal encircles my wrist and some asshole reads me my Miranda rights while sirens wail in the distance.
I can’t fucking stop.
It’s been nearly a week, right on the dot. Van Hallen was right.
General lock-up isn’t like being in prison. You’re herded like cattle into a cage with other vicious mutts. They size you up, warily, wondering which dog has the biggest dick—who you just don’t want to fuck with. Maybe it’s the blood on my knuckles. Or the look in my eye. Hell, maybe it’s the subtle scent of I-don’t-give-a-fuck wafting from my skin. Whatever the reason, I’m left alone. It makes for an interesting way to pass the night. Arno might want to try it sometime when he’s not drinking himself to death on liquor.
Nothing says “fun” like waiting for the inevitable.
“Vialle.”
I stiffen at the sound of my name, mangled by a Brooklyn accent. An officer stands before the holding cell, reading from a clipboard—but his uniform isn’t the royal blue of a patrol officer. He’s wearing a tan trench coat over faded gray slacks. He sure takes his job seriously, down to every last fucking cliché.
“Vialle,” Van Hallen reads again while his eyes seek mine out through the bars. “You’re free to go.”
Free? I don’t question it. I hold my tongue when an actual officer enters the cell and undoes my cuffs. He and Van Hallen lead me to the front of the station where I sign a piece of paper. Just like that. I’m “free.”
“You’ve been bailed out,” Van Hallen explains when I start to head for the door. “Seems you’ve got some powerful friends out there, Vialle. The man whose jaw you broke won’t even press charges. Says it was all just a ‘misunderstanding’—or he wrote it, at least. There are even corroborating witnesses who’ve stepped forward to say that he started it first. It was self-defense.”
I should keep walking, but I don’t know what makes me slow near the glass doors to the station and glance over my shoulder. The only other person around is a clerk behind the front desk who does her best to busy herself with paperwork and pretend to be invisible.
“There a point to this, detective?” I ask.
Van Hallen, the prick, merely smiles. “If you were out on parole you wouldn’t even have the option of bail. You’d be sent right back where you belong.”
I shrug. “But my record’s sparkling clean, officer. The DA saw to that.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Vialle,” the detective says gruffly. “We both know it’s only a matter of time before you’re hooked up on something that intimidation and nice connections can’t wriggle you out of. Tell me something. A man loses his temper and nearly beats someone to death right in front of a passing patrol car containing officers just about to start their break. Talk about coincidence.”
I raise an eyebrow, dissecting his words. “You’ve got a detail on me...” I spot a name tag stuck to his chest and play off the fitting name embossed there in gold. Richard V. H. “Dick?”
He shrugs, but there’s something smug about his expression. The buzzing at my skull perks up, but it’s only a dull whisper, sated by enough violence for now.
“Let’s be serious now, Vialle,” Van Hallen says, “a man would notice if he were being followed, wouldn’t he?”
I grit my teeth, irritated by this interesting new bit of information. “That he would, detective.”
“A man would also try to keep things in perspective,” Van Hallen adds, and I suspect that this is the real reason why he cornered me here. Not to gloat about the fact that he had men watching me, but to spew whatever it is that’s about to come out of his mouth next. “I’ve been going through your old case file. Interesting stuff.”
I turn on my heel and head for a door, not giving a damn as to how it looks.
“You beat a man to death with a hammer...” The bastard keeps up with me. “But do you care to explain why there were no fingerprints? No hard physical evidence? Nothing we could pin on you, not even with the fuck-up at the DA’s office. A man who’s reckless enough to kick someone’s ass in broad daylight can’t even leave one bloody smear on the end of a ball peen—”
I barrel through the glass doors and allow them to slam shut behind me. Van Hallen’s not stupid. He doesn’t follow me out of the precinct, but I feel him watching me. Then I have enough fucking sense to scan the block for any patrol car or cop who seems to be on my trail. It’s late. Pedestrians crowd the sidewalks, heading home or looking for trouble while traffic churns through the streets.
It’ll be a long walk back to Mulligans, and I can only assume that’s why apparently Arno didn’t send one of his thugs to collect me. He wants me to sweat it out. Clear my head. The bastard’s known me for way too long.