by T. L Smith
But I don’t want to.
I am sick of it.
Sick of everything right now.
Putting the full bottle to my lips, I drink down more—way more than I should.
The knocking stops, and when it does, I get up and find myself another bottle of wine and start on that one too. That’s when the knocking comes again. Walking over to the door, I pull it open to find Atlas standing there. I blink a few times to make sure as my vision is hazy.
He is a hard man to not see. I mean, with all those hard edges, I bet my tongue could lick them all and keep exploring.
“Edges?” Atlas asks.
Fuck! I shake my head as I lock my eyes on him. Did I just say that out loud?
“Do you have two nose rings, or am I seeing double?” I ask.
He looks down to the wine in my hand and steps forward, taking it from me. “How much of this have you had?” he asks as if he has some sort of right to know.
“It for sure looks like two bottles.” I go to touch his nose rings, ignoring him, and he swats my hand away. “Theadora.”
“One…” I point without touching, “… two.” I nod my head. “Okay, you have two. Why don’t you wear both all the time? They look good,” I tell him with a smile.
Atlas rolls up his sleeves, and I see his tattooed arms.
“Holy shit! Now that’s some ink. Where else is it?” I ask, stepping forward, ready to lift his shirt when he blocks me. Atlas steps into my house and walks straight past me. He heads to my kitchen, and I follow him as he enters like he owns it. My eyes drop to his gorgeous ass, and I am way too busy staring while he’s poured me a drink of water and hands it to me.
“Get dressed. But first, drink this.”
I look down at the old shirt I am wearing—which is just that, a shirt—and smile as I reach for the water. Taking a large sip, I drink it all, handing him back the empty glass.
“Get dressed, Theadora,” he instructs.
I walk past him to my bedroom and quickly find a dress—that isn’t worth a few thousand dollars—and slip it over my shoulders so it falls down my thighs before I reach for my cell and walk back out.
“Dressed,” I say with a smile, then a twirl. My shoes are in my hand, and he reaches for them, taking them and bending down to put them on my feet. His hand touches my ankle, and an intake of breath happens so fast at his electric touch, I’m close to asking him to move those hands, but instead he does one shoe up carefully. When he’s strapped the first, his hand slides just a fraction, quickly releasing, before he goes to the next and repeats. When he looks up at me, I shut my gaping mouth. He just shakes his head and walks out the door. “In the car.”
I roll my eyes at his bossy words but follow, getting in beside him. The car takes off, and I sit back and close my eyes, trying to sober up and remove the thoughts of his touch, which are still scorching my skin.
“You drank way too much.” His voice is between a whisper and a shout but not gentle enough to be normal.
“Yes, Father.”
“If you were my child you would be over my knee.”
My heart rate picks up at his tone of voice. “That can be arranged.” I forgot to mention I’m a whore when drunk. And let’s face it, Atlas is the prettiest man I’ve ever seen.
“Did you just…” He shakes his head and looks out the window. “You sound like your sister right now,” he says with a wave of disappointment. Well, at least I think that’s what it is, from what I can tell.
“Same mother, different fathers, will do that to you,” I tell him truthfully.
“How did you turn out like this, and she like…” He doesn’t finish that sentence, but it still makes me angry.
I shrug. “Lucy feels everything and wants everything. She has a self-entitlement about her.” My head starts to spin as the car comes to a stop at a warehouse. I can feel his eyes on me, but I choose not to look his way as I open the door, needing fresh air urgently. Stepping out, my heel slips on something wet and sticky. So I look down, and when the blur fades, I follow the dark puddle. It belongs to the politician who touched my leg and called me a whore. The wet substance on the floor is his blood.
A scream rips through me as I stumble back, trying to escape.
Chapter Thirteen
Theadora
I feel like I should give a tutorial on how to get sober really quickly.
Finding a dead body would be at the top of the list, that’s for sure.
In my escape to step back, Atlas grabs me before I can move any farther, and breathes in my ear. That minty breath I smelled all those weeks ago, a reminder now of what an evil man Atlas really is.
“What…” I shake my head, not knowing what to say, but he doesn’t let me go. Atlas keeps me standing where I am, in my heels, in a pool of blood, with his hands holding me in place.
If he let go, I would fall to the floor.
“He was looking for you. Wanted you. Started asking around about you,” he whispers, moving a stray piece of hair from my ear and tucking it behind so he can lick my earlobe. “When something is mine, no one can have it, want it, or even think about hurting it.”
The way he says it makes me want to run.
Am I that to him—an it.
“I am not yours,” I tell him.
Atlas bites my earlobe, dragging his teeth over it until it pops out, and he smells me again. “For now, you are. You just haven’t realized it yet.”
“People will ask about him, he will be missed,” I say while shaking my head.
“They will, but no one will link it back to me.” He steps away, setting me free, and I take a long, slow breath. My white heels are now red. Every step I take makes the blood move, and I have droplets of the man’s blood on my toes. “But you…” he says, making me freeze. “He was asking about you. Who is this woman that embarrassed him in a public forum? Who is she?” he says, smirking. And it’s evil that smirk.
And I am instantly sober.
“Why would you do that?” I ask, looking back to the politician lying on the cement floor, his eyes wide open in death. I look over my shoulder and see the red door—it’s the same place he had me brought to the night I was kidnapped. “You had planned to kill me,” I say with realization.
“I did,” he replies without hesitation.
“Why didn’t you?”
“I found a use for you after all.”
“Is what Lucy did really that bad?” I ask. “It’s only money which you seem to have a lot of.”
“Yes, yes, I do. And yes, what she did was. So, in comes you to the rescue.” He brushes a stray hair from my face tenderly as his voice is whispered with nothing but sweet venom.
Why does he hate me so much?
What have I ever done to him that would have affected him like this?
Not a damn thing!
“Will I end up the same way as him?” I flick my hand to the man on the floor.
Did he do it with his own two hands?
Or did he have someone else to do it?
What kind of man is Atlas? Really?
And why haven’t I tried to find out more about him? That’s another question shooting through my foggy brain right at this moment.
Two men walk out, both are dressed in hazmat suits. They step over to the body, pick it up, then carry it out while I stand frozen, unable to move as I look down at the blood that still coats the floor.
“Who are you?” I ask with a shaky breath, my eyes fixated on the blood, but my question directed to Atlas. I hear his boots click on the floor as he walks over to me, lifting my chin with one finger as he smiles at me. His other hand touches my cheek, stroking it, making goosebumps break free all over me.
“Now you’re asking the right questions.” His voice is intoxicating and scary all in one hit. I hiccup, and when I do, I spew all over his shirt. He drops my chin and steps back. Touching the edges of his shirt, he pulls it over his head and lets it drop to the floor. I wipe my mouth as I look up at him
and shake my head.
“Put it back on,” I say while wiping my mouth, he hands me a bottle of water and I rinse my mouth. It’s unfair to have to look at someone as gorgeous as him and dislike him so much all at the same time.
His chest looks like a puzzle piece with a flower on his collarbone and women up and down his arms. There’s a gun on his left, with a devil on his right arm.
Who the fuck is this man?
His whole chest and arms are covered, and not one of the tattoos is cheery. They are all dark, and each one represents something I more than likely do not want to know about.
“No,” he says, referring to what I just said.
His chest is hard, I can tell just by looking at it, and his arms are all muscle. If he lifted me and pressed me against him, I bet I would feel all his hard edges.
No, can’t have those thoughts.
I blame the alcohol.
“How do I leave? Get me out of this place. Why did you even bring me here?” I scream the last part at him. My hands lift in fists as I step closer to him, not even caring about the blood beneath my shoes anymore. “Why did you bring me here?”
His lips, soft and hard, come down on me. In one swift and fast movement, he claims me as his without my permission. His arm circles my waist, pulling my body flush with his while the other cradles my head, keeping my lips to his.
I go to push away my hands banging on his chest, but he bites my lip until I open my mouth, then he tastes me. I freeze, liking the way he has me, and the way he feels against my lips, so I close my eyes.
Just for a second.
A second is all it takes for me to think this man isn’t bad and he wants me for normal reasons, not reasons that involve blackmail or using me.
But I’m wrong, so I bite his lip until I taste blood, expecting him to pull away, but he doesn’t. He simply cackles between my lips and presses his harder to mine, all the while pulling my body even closer.
Feeling him against me doesn’t help my resolve in wanting him to go away. No, it does anything but, and soon I’m pushing myself against him as my body starts to crave him and has a mind of its own, moving to get as much friction as possible.
My breathing becomes harder, and my chest rises and falls at the same time my hips do, my head spins, and I’m lost, until someone coughs, and it breaks the haze he has me under. Pulling away, he lets me until I back up and end up slipping, my hands landing in blood and a dress I once loved is now covered in it.
Looking up at him, I more than likely look like that girl in the movie Carrie, but I don’t care, as long as I am not losing my own sense of worth and rubbing myself all over him like a two-bit hooker.
“Clean yourself up,” he says as someone passes him a shirt, which he easily throws on.
I look down at my stained shoes and dress and know every item will have to be burned. So when I stand, I start to remove them. Stepping out of the blood, I begin with my shoes first, one at a time undoing the straps he did up so delicately, and dropping them until they are both off, followed by my dress. Now, I am standing in front of him in nothing but panties and a lame excuse for a bra.
His eyes devour me, lust apparent in their depths. It’s the first real emotion I have seen from him apart from his evil laughter. When he catches me staring at him, he shuts his facial expressions down and walks over to one of his guys and clicks his fingers. The guy removes his shirt and hands it over, which Atlas then hands to me.
“Put this on and leave your shit including your panties, they have blood on them. It will all be burned.”
I have no reason to trust him.
For all I know he could use my clothes as evidence, and say it was me who put a bullet in the politician’s brain. After all, I am covered in the man’s blood. But I’m too tired to argue, and I do as he says and get in his car, leaving my favorite dress and shoes behind at a crime scene.
The car ride is uncomfortable, there’s no other word to describe it. Stopping out the front of my house, I go to get out when his hand touches my thigh, halting me. Turning back to look at him, his eyes are cast down on my thigh before they slowly creep back up to mine.
“Shower all that off of you.” He gestures to the blood, and I can only manage to stare at him as I get out. “Someone will be back for the shirt. Make sure you wrap it in a plastic bag, don’t leave it anywhere it will mark.”
Turning to close the door, I look down at him. “Why did you kiss me?” I ask, wanting to know if he will answer me.
At first, I think he’s going to shut the door and leave me with no explanation, like he does best, but instead he looks at me. “Because you are kissable.” He smirks, then shuts the door.
Kissable? What the ever-loving fuck does that mean.
Walking up the steps, I go to open the door, but before I do, it’s pulled open, and Tina is standing there. She stares down at my legs and back up, her eyes go wide as she looks behind me to Atlas who’s sitting in the car watching us.
“Don’t scream. Don’t say a word,” I tell her.
She listens and steps back, so I follow her. I turn around to angry eyes as the heavens above rain down a torrential storm, then I shut the front door.
“I need to shower,” I say, locking it behind me.
That damn man probably has a key for all I know. He seems to know and have access to things he shouldn’t.
“I’m coming.” I don’t protest, I’m too tired to do so.
Tina follows me in as I turn on the water, stripping off the shirt and placing it in a bag as requested, then get in.
“Just say it,” I call out while washing my hair.
I can feel her staring at me.
“Who is he? And what the fuck are you covered in?” She looks me up and down, and I look at her. “Paint…” She pauses, and I can see her thinking. “Is that… blood?” She shoots her eyebrows up.
“No. He’s involved with Lucy. We went to an art studio, and this is the outcome.” I tell her an utter lie. It hurts to do so because I don’t lie to Tina. Finishing up, I get out, and she hands me a towel. “You would tell me, right. If it was something else?”
“Yes, you know I would.” She nods, but I get the feeling she doesn’t believe me.
“So, he’s with Lucy. I had such high hopes with the way he looks at you.”
“How does he look at me?” I question. To me, he stares as if I’m a nuisance. Which baffles me, because I never asked him to be in my life.
“Like he’s hungry,” she says, turning and walking into my bedroom.
My hand touches my lips from when he kissed me, and I have to try to remember how he looked at me. Anger. Anger is all I seem to remember. How can Tina see that, and all I see is hatred?
“I know you’re thinking about it. But it is hunger. That man wants you as much as he doesn’t,” she calls out to me.
I take a look in the mirror at my bruised lips and shake my head at thoughts of him entering my mind.
He isn’t welcome.
And I hope all thoughts of him go away forever.
Chapter Fourteen
Atlas
Killing her friend is playing on my mind right now. Will Theadora tell her? She had to have noticed she was covered in blood.
Did Theadora tell her?
That bastard deserved to die. And anyone who looks for things that are mine will meet the same fate. This isn’t an option, and he knew this, and still he went looking for her. I can’t fix stupid, and that’s exactly what he was. Stupid.
His body will be found as a suicide, and no trace will come back to me. Luckily for me, the people who he hired to find Theadora work for me. So the first thing they did was tell me.
News articles will read, ‘Beloved Politician Commits Suicide.’ Let’s hope for Theodora’s sake the same thing won’t be said for her friend.
Theadora runs on Sundays like clockwork, but she hasn’t been doing that for quite some time.
I’m waiting out the front of her house where sh
e would normally come out dressed in her sweats because the temperature is dropping, but after thirty minutes tick by and there’s no sign of her, I walk up to her door and knock. At first, she doesn’t answer, but then I hear her footsteps as I give it another firm knock. She pauses, there are no words or movement beyond the door in front of me.
“I should warn you, I have very low patience,” I say, knowing she’s on the other side.
“I could be sleeping.”
“You aren’t, so open the door.”
She goes silent, but I don’t hear her walking away. “Theadora,” I say, my patience growing thinner with each passing second.
Finally, she pulls open the door with a scowl sitting on her pretty pink lips. “What is it you do exactly that gives you so much free time to annoy me?” Her eyes pin me with a glare. “Seriously, what do you do?”
“I dabble in a lot of things, but my first love is my casino. I grew it from backyard gambling, and now I am the richest person in this town thanks to it.”
“So, you’re a dirty casino owner?” she says with venom.
“It didn’t start off that way, but yes. How I make a lot of my money is dirty, and Theadora…” I step up closer to her, “… I will do anything to keep my business safe and operating.”
“So, why are you here? Why are you annoying me?”
“What did you tell her?” I ask, and her eyes go wide. She shakes her head slowly from side to side.
“Don’t you dare threaten Tina. Don’t you dare.” Her bottom lip quivers.
“What. Did. You. Tell. Her?”
“That we went painting. She thinks it’s paint.”
“Good.” I believe her. She’s proving to be nothing like her sister, Lucy.
It’s then she looks me up and down and squints. “Why are you dressed like that?” She’s staring at my gray track pants and black shirt. She’s dressed in a shirt that comes down to her knees, and she has fuzzy socks covering her feet.
