Playing House: A Black Widow Novel (Dark Secrets Duet Book 1)

by Christa Simpson

  I quirk an eyebrow and draw the blade closer to his face. “And then you called me names.” I point the edge of the blade toward his neck, where I slowly draw a line below the band of fabric.

  He blinks erratically, but he lies there very still as I mirror that line on the other side of his neck.

  “Don’t... Move,” I whisper next to his ear. I can’t help but smile when blood starts to leak from the seams. He has no idea what I’m doing to him.

  He swallows and that only makes it worse. I draw my tongue over his neck and lap up the blood.

  “You taste good.”

  He flinches when I reach between his legs.

  “Relax.” I stroke his flaccid penis. I wanted him hard for this. “This is going to be good.” I lift up and his eyes flash to my naked chest, his mouth held partially agape.

  I can tell he’s still thinking about sex when I rub on him but he doesn’t respond when I press my lips against his. “Kiss me,” I order.

  His mouth softens against mine, and I feel him stiffening once again in my hand.

  I pause to smile. “That’s more like it.” Then I deepen our kiss, wishing it didn’t have to come to this.

  Devlin pulls away for a breath when I dig into his lip with my teeth. “You-you-you said you were going to make my dreams come true.” Even after I cut him, he’s still putting desire ahead of his life.

  Big mistake.

  If he wasn’t so spoiled—so used to getting whatever he wanted—maybe he would have thought twice before inviting me out here and leaving his driver in the parking lot. Maybe after I pulled out the knife he should have tried to hurt me. That would have been fun.

  This will be fun, too.

  He struggles beneath me as I push the blade against the base of his manhood. “Sorry to break it to you, Dev. You can’t always get what you want.”

  I stand from the picnic table when I hear a car door close in the nearby parking lot. I walk toward the sound, wearing nothing but a spray of Devlin’s blood. The dark silhouette races toward me and stops a few feet away. I can hear his breathing from here, and I would recognize that tall frame and broad shoulders anywhere.

  His voice shivers when he speaks. “Clarisse?”

  29: It’s Your Dime

  I wake with a gasp, sitting upright in my bed, trying to make sense of the horrifying dream I had. I glance around the room feverishly, sweat pooling on my brow and soaking the clothes I’m still wearing from last night. It takes me a minute to register where I am. I moan when I realize the perma-gross scent has officially filled my nostrils.

  My dingy motel room reeks.

  I sigh, relieved that it was only a dream but frustrated to find something crusty seems to have permanently glued me to my sheets. I cringe at the thought and dive out of the bed, taking the sheets with me. I whip the crusty thing aside and have a mini panic attack on the floor from the grossness. On my hands and knees, I notice there’s dried blood under my nails that I can’t explain.

  No. It was only a dream. It was only a dream.

  I pinch my eyes shut and get to my feet. In the bathroom, I check my breath. Even after vigorously brushing my teeth for a minute straight, my mouth doesn’t taste all that minty. It feels a lot like the mold growing on the sink. When I drag open the shower curtain, the base of the tub doesn’t look a whole lot more appealing. I refuse to go in there barefoot.

  Wearing nothing but my sandals, I climb into the tub and claw the bar of soap. Standing under a moderately warm spray of water, I quickly scrub the night off my body and end up losing the bar of soap to the moldy depths of the tub. My shower is quick, but I don’t feel much cleaner than I did when I got in. I quickly exit the bathroom and pull on a pair of skinny jeans. While the jeans are tight, the shirt is light and airy. You might be able to see my black bra through the draped fabric, but I’ve yet to hear a man complain about it.

  Rather than doing my hair, I flip my head upside down, finger comb it into a high pony and pile my hair atop my head with a few pins. I dig into my purse in search of my favorite cherry lip gloss, and coat my mouth with a shiny red color before I take off for the day.

  I take a step outside and instantly pull on the sweater I bring along. The sun thought it’d trick me into thinking it was going to be warm outside today, but I’m not as naïve as I look. Zayne had told me stories about San Francisco, so I knew I could expect the grey skies and a cool wind. He thought I’d like it here because the sun doesn’t shine that often, but the damn sunshine seems to have followed me here. At least the clouds follow me around and work quickly to cover it up.

  Ignoring the strange weather, I focus on taking a deep breath. It feels good. The air isn’t very fresh but my perspective is. I hastily call a cab, and wave it down as it drives right by me. The car tires screech as it comes to a stop not far up the street. I run toward the stopped car and let myself in.

  “Where to?” the cabby asks me.

  “The nearest convenience store, please.”

  He nods his head and yields into traffic without glancing at me. He veers into the left lane, making the person behind us lay on his horn. The gas pedal is dropped, and I’m forced backward against my seat until he lightens up the pressure to pull into a crumbling parking lot. It’s not the best part of town, and the place isn’t very well kept, but it’s not like I’m a total gem myself at this time of morning.

  He points at the corner of a dilapidated brick building. “It’s right around there.”

  I probably could have walked here faster than waiting for the traffic to open up, but I act grateful for the ride. “Can you wait here, please? I’ll only be a minute.”

  He points at his clock.

  I give him a quick nod, jump out of the backseat and make a beeline for the front of the store, searching over my shoulder to check my surroundings. I shiver from the eerie feeling overcoming me. It feels like someone’s watching me, and this isn’t the first time I’ve felt this way since arriving in this city. Has someone followed me here?

  My eyes rake across the street, but the only other people I can see are a few loiterers in the small parking lot. Intuition has me maintaining a brisk pace. The pavement is stained with oil, and the brick wall is spray-painted with some funky design that looks pretty fresh. This isn’t a place I’ll hang out at for any length of time if I value my life. I pull open the door to the Piggy Mart and slip down a narrow aisle in search of a pack of gum. I settle on the minty fresh one and stop in my tracks when I see a man placing a few items on the counter.

  I instantly recognize him from the night before. He’s wearing the same ball cap and has the same dimples when he smiles. My eyes burn into him fiercely. I know that face intimately. He glances toward me. Before he can make eye contact, I quickly twirl away and walk down the next aisle, on the brink of a panic attack.

  A million butterflies take flight in my chest. This isn’t happening. My hands tremble with a mixture of fear and uncertainty. I move toward the front of the store slowly, hoping he’ll be gone by the time I make it there. When I step around the display of sunglasses, I’m faced with another animal entirely.

  Brooding. Enigmatic. Mr. Sexy. He’s taken off his hat. Now he’s all broad shoulders and dark, trimmed facial hair. I part my lips for a breath, moving toward the door, thinking of a way to get out of here without having to speak to him. He peels a five dollar bill out of his wallet and tosses it onto the counter before stepping backward to block my path to the door.

  My heart stops when I realize he recognizes me. I drop the pack of gum to the floor and dive to the left just as he does the same. I make to go the other way, until we're dancing back and forth, our bodies growing closer with each of my attempts to escape him. We’re face to face when I stop—close enough for me to know that his mouth smells like sizzling cinnamon.

  I wait for him to say something—a, What are you doing here? Or maybe even, What, you following me?—but he doesn’t. A playful smile makes its way onto his face. It’s unexpected
and devastating. No words, only the same smile I woke up to every morning for a good year. I fidget under his dark, assessing eyes.

  I can’t do this right now.

  I push past him, but he grabs onto my wrist. “Let me go,” I say, yanking my arm free.

  He does as I ask, but I feel his sweeping glance all over my body. I hurry through the door to the parking lot where I find the taxi rolling backwards.

  “Wait!” I scream.

  It’s a miracle the driver hears me, or maybe it’s the frantic wave of my hands, but the car stops and I pour myself into the backseat and shout for him to, “Go! Go! Go!” I try to clear my brain to prepare for my audition at the Fox Shoppe, but his cologne hangs in my nostrils. It’s an unmistakeable scent.

  I give my head a shake and continue on as if nothing has happened, even though he is surely the only thing I’ll be thinking about for the rest of the day.

  “The Fox Shoppe. There!” I say to the driver while looking out the window. “Can you take me around back?”

  The glowing neon sign from the other night is now dull and lifeless in the grey of the morning. The car pulls around the corner and rolls up to what looks like your typical dive bar. The brick on the building is clearly original and even though it’s obvious that not a dime was spared on the flashy, neon signage out front, the back wall of the place is practically falling over. Brick crumbles from the wall and apparently someone thought painting the duct tape black would fix the eyesore of jagged metal framing the door. For the record, it doesn’t help at all.

  The back door is pretty fancy, though. It’s solid black and there’s a silver silhouette of a woman dancing on it, followed by the words, The Fox Shoppe. When I twist the handle to let myself in, it doesn’t give. I pound on the door three times and cast a fleeting glance down the long alleyway. I check to make sure I’m alone, which I am as soon as the cab disappears into traffic on the next block over. I knock on the door again, and this time it squeaks open, but no one’s standing there.

  I think twice before stepping inside the dark room but decide to go for it. I enter the back door in search of the mysterious doorman.

  Derek appears from the shadows with a smile on his face. “Did I scare you?” he teases.

  I give him a look that makes him smile harder. “Not even close. Nice try, though.”

  “I’m only playing. The girls are in the other room.” He points me in the right direction. “You’re late.”

  “Fashionably,” I answer, heading toward the only door with light on the other side of it.

  He chuckles at me. “Right. I’m sure Savari will see it that way, too.”

  I flip my hair over my shoulder as I look back at him. “Sarcasm already. I can see we’re going to be great friends.”

  Derek blushes, the balls of his cheeks turning forty shades of red. I turn away to give him some space while smiling about it.

  “Through here?” I point toward another door, with my heels still clicking steadily.

  “Yep,” he answers, shaking the redness quickly. “Right through there.”

  We file into the room and stand at the back of the crowd. There has to be twenty girls in front of me, and every last one of them turns around to scope out the new competition. They all have their game faces on. I smile and casually twiddle my fingers at them to point out just how nosy I find them. One by one, they turn back toward the front of the room while Savari finishes her introduction.

  I still can’t believe there are actual tryouts, let alone cuts. I didn’t know there was such an abundance of classy-looking women with low morals and a sharp wit. With a quick look around the room, I see that maybe this audition thing is no joke.

  “Nice of you to join us.” The baritone in Savari’s voice stuns me and the girls spread apart like she has laser vision that will burn them if they don’t clear out a path. She turns toward the ladies in the front row and they all watch her, like devoted disciples, as she walks toward me.

  “Rule number one: you will arrive no less than fifteen minutes before our first choreographed dance of the night, whether you are scheduled to be on the stage or not. Capiche?” Savari flashes a glance of warning at me.

  It wasn’t necessary. I wouldn’t test her authority in front of her staff, anyways. “Got it. I’m so sorry, Savari. It won’t happen again.”

  “Rule number two: you will call me Miss Fox. There will be no exceptions to this rule. It is a show of respect and reminds everyone who is boss around here.” She flashes me another look, as everyone else nods their head.

  “Yes, Miss Fox. I apologize.”

  When she looks away, I take a breath and think to ask Derek whether that exception bullshit includes me too, but he elbows me in the side before I can say anything. Even with my pouty lips staring up at him, he manages to keep a straight face through it all. Savari lines up the first three girls, and a D.J. spins a track full of base. I have a hard time blocking a small smirk as the first girl takes the stage. I can see that Derek’s finding it difficult, too.

  Savari calls it a freestyle dance. We’ll all get our turn. This girl mistakes freestyle for free for all. I’m not the only one snickering. This poor girl is really bad. She looks tacky, her moves trashy, borderline disgusting, and I’m just getting started. I mean, it’s one thing to have your thong up your butt, but this girl’s ass is eating her baggy white underwear for breakfast.

  The next girl isn’t much better. At first, I wonder if she even brushed her hair today. I quickly learn that she likely had. With all that hair flipping it’s no wonder it’s in knots. What can I say? Tryouts are a joke. I must be the only one here with any real talent, let alone flexibility and dance training. These other girls look like they’ve stepped straight out of high school, some timid, others skanky, many of them acting like they’re having sex with the stage. It starts to look like I’ve dropped in on an audition for a poorly funded porno flick.

  Two of the girls in front of me can’t even keep a beat, and it’s questionable whether they can even speak English. If you ask me, Savari has got her work cut out for her if she’s going to make dancers of any of them. I’m ready to throw in the towel, when the redhead from the other night takes to the stage, but then a stormy bass booms over the speakers.

  Shit. I spoke to soon. She doesn’t even move until the words start, and I’m already mesmerized in anticipation.

  The girl stands very still, her wine-stained lips matching the song about chains and love. I can’t take my eyes off of her. She’s gorgeous, for one, with long corkscrew curls of a vibrant red color that any woman would die for. At first, she looks down, and I’m just waiting for her to look at me. Then she flips her hair up and lifts her chest, arching her back. Our gazes collide as she moves her body, and she seduces me from across the room like I’ve been selected as her target. Her eyes speak to me as loudly as her body. When I glance at Derek, I find he’s just as fascinated by her.

  Candy rolls her head down, slowly, and curls fall in front of her face one at a time. Ask me why this is the most appealing thing I’ve ever seen and I couldn’t tell you, but everything she does is laced with sex appeal. She hasn’t even pulled off her shirt, and I’m ready to throw my last dollar bill at her to keep it going.

  This girl is good!

  Okay, so Candy is officially pegged as my only competition. Rather than waiting for my turn, I decide to show everyone that I can be just as alluring, even if my confidence is suddenly waning. I kick off my shoes, pull the pony holder from my hair, and leap onto the tall stage, shocking Candy motionless. With a body gifted to me by Mother Nature herself, I’m used to the boys gawking at my full mouth and child bearing hips, and what man doesn’t like lean legs with a little junk in the trunk?

  Red is shocked that I would be so bold to interrupt her and struggles to rebound now that I’ve captured everyone’s attention. She fights for the spotlight, but all it took was that one second for her to lose her audience. Now, they’re all mine.

  My s
mirk flirts with the crowd as I rock my hips like they have a mind of their own. My body listens to the music but is guided by the waves of an erotic ocean. I stretch my leg up over my head and swing around the silver pole that the others must have thought was out of order. I work the crowd like only the best bitch can and jerk my head aside, right on cue with the music. I hook a leg around the pole and reach back into a bridge, showing everyone that dancing is only one of my many talents. Then I flip out of it, knowing how appealing it looks when my long hair flips around.

  Facing the back of the stage, my hair runs like dark silk down my back, my body hitting the beats in sharp motions that demand everyone’s attention. Within moments, I’ve made the decision to ease off my shirt and let it slip from my fingers, knowing it’s all in the tease. Derek tries to look away, but he’s mesmerized by me.

  I spread my legs, slamming to the floor into the splits. It’s not the easiest thing to do in jeans, but I’ll lose a pair to the cause if it means showing up Candy. Derek’s eyes look like they’re about to pop from his head, as I take my bottom lip between my teeth and crawl toward him like I want it, wearing my skin-tight jeans and a black satin bra with crimson lace trimmings.

  Savari claps her hands, and Derek seems to snap out of it as soon as the music cuts. “Yes, ladies! That is what I am talking about! Did you see what just happened here?” Savari asks the captive wannabes.

  A young lady, who’s questionably old enough to be dancing at a place like this, raises her hand. “Miss Fox,” she says with a mousy voice.

  “This isn’t high school,” Savari says pointedly. “Speak.”

  The girl points right at me with a short, baby pink fingernail. “That girl just stole the spotlight from the red-haired one.”

  Savari nods but waits for someone else to elaborate. “Yes and no. Anyone else?”

  No one raises their hand. I know exactly what she’s about to say, but I figure it’s best that it come out of Savari’s mouth.

  “That redhead’s name is Candy,” she informs us. “And she was really rocking it. Everyone give her a hand.”