by Cole, Jagger
Gentrification happens, though. Even if I don’t like it, I get it. But that’s not why I painted Cormac choking on a five-foot dong last night. That was because of Grampa Jules.
My grandpa has lived in New York his entire life. He’s moved a lot, as neighborhood after neighborhood got too fancy or pricey. But he’s always made do. Most recently, he’s in the Sisters of Saint Bartholomew home for the elderly, over on West 51st.
But then, Cormac saw dollar signs. He’s bought the entire block. Next month, he’ll be leveling half of it to build a bunch of bullshit—some mid-rise luxury condos, of course, some shopping centers no one needs or wants, a grocery store for people who don’t cook, and a gym for rich people with trainers.
It means bye-bye Sisters of Saint Bartholomew home for the elderly. And with it, my grandpa’s last chance to live in the city he loves.
There’s other elderly homes, of course. But they’re all either booked up for decades or way, way too expensive. So that means Grampa Jules’s run in New York is over. It means New Jersey, or way out on Long Island. It also means me either quitting my art dreams to be near him, or never being able to see him.
That’s why I hate Cormac Heath. And that’s why I painted what I painted last night.
“Two-percent cappuccino, extra shot,” Petra calls. “To go.”
“Two-percent cappuccino, extra shot,” I mumble back. I pull the shots and foam the milk. I pour the drink into the small to-go cup and turn to the waiting counter.
“Two-percent cappuccino, extra shot.”
“Thanks,” a deep voice grunts.
I freeze. The accent is Scottish. I slowly turn and look up. My blood chills. Reaching for his cappuccino is none other than the devil himself, aka, Cormac Heath.
“No problem,” I mumble. I stare at him. Okay, here’s proof of the universe being utterly unfair. A colossal piece of shit like Cormac Heath should be a troll. Someone as disgustingly vile and soulless as him should look like a Disney sorcerer, or a disfigured James Bond bad guy.
Someone this awful shouldn’t look like… well, like him.
Cormac Heath might be rotten on the inside. On the outside though, he’s a golden freaking god. Dark black hair, piercing blue eyes, and the body of a Highland Lord from the cover of a romance novel. It’s absurd. It’s not fair. And it’s very, very distracting right now.
So much so that I don’t realize for a full four seconds that he’s staring back at me. I blink quickly. “Um…”
“You,” he growls quietly. I stiffen. I don’t like that hard look in his eyes. I certainly don’t like the way it looks like he knows me.
“Me what?” I say as casually as possible.
“You painted me.”
The words chill me to the bone. He knows. I don’t know how that’s even possible. But he fucking knows. But he’s not surrounded by the police. He’s not pulling out a broadsword, or whatever the fuck highland lords used to behead people with. So maybe he just suspects, not knows. I swallow back the fear. I smile benignly.
“I’m sorry, sir, what?”
He scowls. Goddamn, he’s even hotter when he looks pissed.
“The painting,” he snarls. “The graffiti.”
“Soy latte, half-caf!” Petra yells.
“I’m sorry, sir. I need to get back to—”
“I’m not done,” he growls. The sound is like metal being crushed. And his voice sounds like whiskey-soaked leather and honey. My core tightens—half in abject fear, half in horrible attraction.
“Did… did you want extra foam?” I say sweetly. He doesn’t know-know, I tell myself. Or else he’d be having me arrested right now.
Cormac smiles thinly. “Is this your cafe?”
“No?”
“So you work for the owner.”
I frown. “That’s… how it works, yes. Sorry, I need to get back to—”
“How about I get you fired?”
I stiffen. He smirks.
“Let me get this straight,” I hiss. “You’re mad that I—allegedly—painted a picture of you sucking a dick, because you’re a giant corporate douchebag?”
“I’m—”
“And your fix for this alleged slight is to get me fired from my almost minimum wage barista job?”
“That was the plan,” he growls plainly. “Yes.”
“Woooow, that would go a super long way towards changing my opinion of you!” I smile thinly.
Cormac Heath sighs. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Here’s the thing…” he glares at my apron, looking for a name-tag. “What’s your name?”
“I’m not telling you that.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re a stranger.”
He rolls his eyes. “Here’s the thing, nameless.” He smiles. “I never said a thing about the subject or specifics of the painting.”
I stiffen. Fuck.
“I think I need to ask you to leave,” I say quietly.
Cormac smirks triumphantly. “What, no ‘sir’ this time?”
“Please leave.”
“Do you know what I’m going to enjoy the most?”
“Please—”
“It’s not going to be just getting you fired. It’s going to be when I sue you into the fucking ground. Now, I’m sure you’ve barely got more than two spray paint cans to rub together to your name. But that’s what family is for, right?”
I freeze. My lips purse tight.
Cormac chuckles. “Let me guess… you’re at art school or something on your parent’s dime? The trust fund isn’t cool enough, so you work a stupid cafe job and wear secondhand clothes for street cred with your art school friends?”
He’s not just wrong. He’s crossing some major fucking lines. My hand tightens on the handle of the milk pitcher.
“You’re out of line…”
He laughs again. “Now, I wonder how much I can get daddy to cough up for—”
That’s it. That’s the last of my control. Without thinking, I jerk my arm up at him. The milk from the steamer pitcher flies across the counter, dousing his expensive looking suit from neck to belt.
Oh fuck.
If this were a movie, there’d be a record scratch sound here. The music keeps playing though. But everything else in the cafe goes silent. Petra is staring at me in horror. The cafe patrons look like they’re not quite sure what to think.
“Ella!”
Double fuck. I turn to see Tania storming out of the backroom. She looks livid.
“Tania…”
“You’re done!” she snaps. “Leave immediately, and if I ever see you in here—”
“You won’t,” I hiss. I grab my bag and sling it over my shoulder. My face is burning hot as I duck under the counter. I glance around the room with fury in my eyes. But there’s no trace of Cormac. I smirk to myself angrily. There’s one win for the day. Maybe I got fired, but at least that smug asshole ran off crying about his suit.
I’m still fuming though. I’m trying not to think about the loss of my main source of income. I’m trying not to think about saving for a new place for my grandpa. Or, fuck, about Cormac Heath making good on his threat of suing me.
I shove open the cafe door and stumble out into the street.
“I should thank you.”
I whirl at the sound of his voice. My temper flashes blood-red again. Standing there smirking at me, is Cormac.
“For?!” I snap.
He chuckles. “Getting you fired seemed like a dick move, even for me. But you didn’t need me at all. Looks like you just got yourself fired.”
I sneer at him. “I’m not the one with milk on my three-thousand-dollar suit, asshole.”
“It’s seven-thousand, actually. And milk comes out.”
“Yeah?” I snarl. I shove my hand into my canvas bag. I still haven’t unpacked it from last night. My hand wraps around the cold metal of a spray paint can. My thumb pops the cap off. “Well, this won’t.”
I whip out the can. My arm
moves in quick, deliberate strokes. And before he roars and jumps back, my work is done.
Cormac stares down at his suit. Then up at me with fury in his eyes. I grin widely at the big, crude but bulging dick and balls I’ve just sprayed across his suit in neon orange.
“You’ve just made a huge mistake,” he snarls quietly.
“Yeah? Well, go fuck yourself, douchebag.”
I turn on my heel and storm away. I can feel his eyes on me, and I tremble. But the problem isn’t the fear of being sued or arrested. It’s that Cormac Heath’s gorgeous, piercing blue eyes on me make me warm. And that is so, so very unfair.
3
Cormac
I straighten my tie in the mirror of my office. Behind me, the ruined suit lies in my trashcan. What’s funny is that even with my wealth, part of me is still aghast at throwing the suit away. Objectively, there’s no reason to keep it. It’s fucked. There’s no getting out orange spray paint. Yes, it’s a seven-thousand-dollar suit. Yes, that’s obscene to most of the world.
To me, it’s like half a day’s pay. It’s nothing. Hence throwing it away and putting on the equally as expensive one hanging in my office closet. But I still shake my head. I can hear my mother’s horrified gasp at throwing something like that away. I smile and shake my head. Hell, she’d have gone at that fucker with a wire brush and industrial strength paint thinner before she tossed it.
I finish fussing with my tie and step back. I’m done for the day; I’m just on my way home. There’s no reason to be wearing seven grand worth of clothes for the chauffeured ride home to my luxury loft. Except, there is. I wear it for my parents, and for very different reasons.
I’m wearing this instead of shorts and a t-shirt because of my mother. She’s the one that always told me to go out and show the world what I was made of. “Show them you’re better than they think you are when they look at you,” she’d tell me. That was when we were dirt poor back in Edinburgh. I was in thirdhand shitty clothes trying to get my first job at a shoe store.
“Dress your best, show them you mean business,” she said. So, I did. And I have ever since.
I also dress like this for my father. But for him, I wear it like a middle finger. My da was shit—a mean drunk, a meaner husband, and a fuck-off father. It was the rest of the world’s fault that he was poor and couldn’t keep a job. And it would come out with drunken tirades and sometimes fists. He’d lay into my ma, so I’d provoke him. I’d get him to switch to me, so she wouldn’t get it.
“You’re trash, boy,” he’d say. “And you’ll always be trash.”
I grimace and glance around the four-thousand square foot lower-Manhattan office that overlooks Ground Zero. I’m wearing a seven-thousand-dollar suit and a three-hundred-thousand-dollar Patek Phillipe watch. I’m about to take a chauffeured Bentley home to my twenty-six-million-dollar loft apartment overlooking Central Park.
Yeah, fuck off, dad.
They’re both gone now anyways. But I wear what I wear as an homage to them both, a badge of pride to my mother. A middle finger to my father, may God piss on his grave.
I glance once more at the suit in the trashcan. Then I’m out the door. I’m still lost in thought though as the doorman opens the door for me and bids me goodnight. I’m thinking about that fucking suit still. Well, not the suit. The girl who fucked it up, actually.
I frown and slide into the back of the town car. The problem isn’t that I’m thinking of her. Of course I would be, she just spray painted a fucking dick and bollocks on my goddamn suit. The problem is, my thoughts on her aren’t those of revenge or ruin. It’s desire.
I roll my eyes as the car pulls away. Yeah, I’m not thinking about suing her. I’m thinking about tearing her clothes off. I’m dwelling on the way her plump lower lip quivered when she was yelling back at me. That fire in her sultry green eyes. The auburn hair I want wrapped around my fist while I bury my cock…
Christ, I need to stop this. I glance out the window at the lights of New York. There’s what, three fucking million single women in this city? And every single goddamn one of them would be a better dating prospect than the smart-mouthed little vandal with a penchant for drawing dicks.
So why the hell won’t my brain get on board with that?
I frown. Maybe it has been too long. Christ, even Alan’s made not-so-subtle hints at my… celibacy. My self-isolation. But it is what it is. It’s been necessary. For one, so I could concentrate on building my business from a success to an empire. And I’ve done that. Heath Holdings is the largest real estate equity firm in the city.
The other reason is, I suck at dating. And at women. I should rephrase that. I mean I’m six-five, I work out heavily six days a week, and I’ve got a full head of hair. I’ve also got a lot of zeros in my bank account, and enough thick inches between my legs to make most jaws drop.
So, I don’t suck at attracting women. But I suck at attracting ones I want anything to do with. When I was young, I was greedy and stupid. I was newly successful, and I played the town. I was photographed with all the models and the actresses and all of that bullshit.
I hated it. I hated the emptiness of those women. One-night stands left me feeling hollow. I tried settling down and dating. That was an even bigger dumpster fire. I scowl when I think of Kristen. Christ, talk about regrets. It was the bad relationship that I just couldn’t get away from. It started bad, got worse, and ended in nuclear war. That one almost cost me my business, too.
So after that shit, I was done. It’s been two years, and I haven’t so much as had a drink with a woman. I’ve barely thought of one beyond the day-to-day norm. Until this one. Until Ella. Christ, I don’t even know her last name. I just caught Ella when her manager was reaming her out.
And yet she’s been on my mind ever since. Constantly. Like a record I can’t turn off. Stranger still, it’s not like it’s been a dull day. It’s been the opposite actually. When a six-foot-tall mural of you with a dick down your throat goes viral, your day gets a lot more interesting. Believe me.
Flashing lights pull me away from my thoughts. I frown out the window.
“What the fuck?” I growl.
There’s a crowd outside my building. When I look harder, I realize with a groan what it is: the press. Newspapers, evening news, even bloggers.
“Hey, Mike?” I grunt into the intercom to my driver.
“Pull around back, sir?”
“Yep, thanks.”
I glare through the tinted windows at the crowd. Fucking hyenas lounging around waiting for blood. Fuckers. Mike pulls the car around the block. But then I groan again. Christ, they’re at the back door too.
“Stop here, Mike. I’m making a run for it.”
“You want me to call security?”
Yeah, right. Nothing will de-escalate this like having building security start breaking cameras and knocking skulls on someone’s Facebook live stream. No thanks.
“Nah, I got it.”
Mike pulls over and I slip out. I dart up around the building next to mine. There’s a security gate in the alleyway. But I’m me. I scale it easily and vault the top. I zig through the maintenance alleys behind the multi-million-dollar Central Park properties. Finally, I slip out into the little walled off side park attached to my building.
It’s really more of a patio with a couple thin hedges. But there’s a side entrance here. And no goddamn press. I straighten my tie and glance around. Not a soul in sight. Perfect.
I head across the patio. But suddenly something catches my eye. I turn, and instantly I come to a stop with a snarl on my lips.
“Are you fucking kidding me?!”
Ella almost jumps out of her skin. She shrieks and whirls on me, brandishing the spray paint can like mace. I snarl at her. Then my eyes slide up to the big expanse of wall behind her. My jaw clenches. My temper roars.
“You are un-fucking-believable,” I hiss with fury. I slowly shake my head, trying to even comprehend what I’m looking at.
It’s me, again. And it’s obviously me—the face is almost perfect. On the one side, she’s refrained from sticking a dick in my mouth this time. But instead, this time I’m on my hands and knees looking like I’m experiencing peak ecstasy. Behind me, a muscled humanoid looking red creature with wings, horns, a forked tail and a three-foot dick is, well…
Having his way with me. Balls deep.
“You,” I snarl at her. She pales and backs away from me.
“Wait, um…”
I storm towards her, fury in my eyes. I’m trying to decide if I’m going to tie her to the fence and call the cops or throw her over my shoulder and march down the precinct myself. But before I can make up my mind, the man in the hoodie with the gun steps out of the shadows.
“Mr. Heath?”
I turn as he raises the gun. There’s murder in his eyes.
“Whoa, hang on…”
“You tore down my fucking building, you fucking prick!” he sneers. “My folks lived in that place for forty-five fuckin’ years, Heath!”
“Calm down,” I hiss.
“Forty-five years!” He steps out of the shadows. He’s brandishing the gun wildly. It’s clear he’s not a professional shooter. But at four feet, I’m not so sure it’s going to make a difference.
“Listen, we can talk…”
“No, no,” he snaps. “I’m done talking! No more lawyers, or your fucking bullshit payoffs. Fuck you!”
He brings the gun up. Ella makes a squeaking sound with her hands over her mouth and her eyes wide. The guy blinks. He yanks his head around to her and he swears.
“Look, let’s talk, man,” I say quietly. “You don’t want to shoot me. With a witness here?”
His jaw clenches. “You’re right.”
I breathe. “Good. Okay, so let’s put the gun down and talk business—”
“No witnesses.”
His gun swings from me to her. I lunge at him without even blinking. My shoulder smashes into him hard. I mean I’m two-hundred-fifty pounds of muscle, and I’m angry. I feel his nose crunch against me. But the gun drops and clatters across the patio.
He hits the wall behind him with a grunt. I snarl at him and raise my fists. But the guy looks at the gun on the ground, then at me between him and it. He turns, and he bolts down the alley. I’m about to chase him down, when I hear a whimper. I turn and my heart sinks.
