Brutally Beautiful

by Christine Zolendz

  I was caught off guard, though, when the woman in front of me froze. The second the guy squeezed his fat fingers over her ass, she went completely rigid, and pretended to spill an entire drink in his lap accidently. I chuckled out loud. I guess she didn’t need the tip. Another waitress was there in an instant, a gorgeous blonde one with her tits almost bursting out of her shirt. She stepped in between the raven-haired waitress and the drunk. I leaned forward in my seat to watch how this would play out. The dark-haired waitress moved her blonde friend out of the way, protectively. The show of courage and safeguard for her friend interested me.

  It took him a few trips and falls, but the drunken guy eventually jumped out of his seat and stood up, puffing his chest and enormous beer gut at the girl. She had to be about half his size and he was leaning his face down into hers threateningly. I scooted forward in my seat a bit to hear the conversation, but couldn’t make out anything that was being said.

  The drunk raised his hand, pointing at her. I pushed out of my seat in a flash, aching to rip the skin off his face if he touched the girl in front of me. With my teeth grinding hard, a heat flushed through my entire body, my fingers itched to grab the beer-gutted moronic imbecile and choke him dead blue. But, then the dark-haired waitress leaned in closer to him, reached into her apron and jabbed the man in the gut, as if she had a concealed weapon, poking it at him. She whispered something, calmly and very controlled, in the man’s ear that made him freeze, lean back and lift his hands in surrender.

  What?

  How?

  What the hell did she say to him?

  The fact that she was almost attacked by some drunken dolt didn’t show in her expression. As a matter of fact, nothing showed in her expression, nothing at all. She was calm and in full control of her composure; it was almost unnatural. Then the woman smiled tightly, walked away backwards from the table, and moved back behind the bar. The blonde followed her and rubbed her back in a friendly way. I had no idea what I had just witnessed, but that little-bit-of-a-wisp waitress seemed to have put that wanker in his place with her presence and words. Unafraid and confident. Fearless. Impressive and deadly sexy.

  Beyond sexy.

  That was the sexiest thing I’d ever witnessed outside of porn.

  When I sat back in my seat, Dylan was leaning over me; chuckling and holding a brandy out for me. “Hey bro, how was your day out with the humans?” He sat down next to me, slid my drink over and sighed.

  “Overrated.” I sipped my brandy and enjoyed the soft smooth burn at the back of my throat.

  “Congrats on the award,” he chuckled.

  “Sod off,” I said, still watching the waitress liquefy herself around the bar.

  He looked at me and then back to the scene in front of us. The drunken guys were back to gawking at the dancer on stage and completely ignoring the one dark-haired waitress that was behind the bar, who was now glaring at a bottle of whiskey as if it personally offended her in someway.

  “Does she dance here?” I asked.

  “No. Neither of them do,” Dylan answered me, but his eyes were still watching her.

  “I wasn’t asking about the blonde,” I stated.

  “I knew exactly who you were asking about, Kade,” he murmured. “She’s not your classical beauty, yet stunning in her own way, yeah?”

  I just nodded. Then…silence.

  Shit…I wanted to know more about her. Just keep your damn mouth shut. How do you think getting to know more about her is going to end? Ugly. Fuckin’ ugly…

  “They don’t look like the kind of women who would work here. What the hell are they doing here?” I snapped.

  “Intriguing situation. They both showed up here about two months ago, beaten to bloody hell. The one you asked about is Lainey and the blonde is Bree. They work here a few nights a week. Both are really sweet. Both are the most intelligent women I’ve ever had the pleasure to meet, and the blonde is sexy as hell, yeah? Both of them have tried to change their appearance as if they’re hiding from something. That’s all I know.”

  Lainey looked up from where she was standing behind the bar. Her eyes collided with mine for a few gut-twisting moments before she darted them to Dylan. I wondered if he was sleeping with her. It angered me just thinking about it.

  On one side of her face, her long hair was pinned back with a soft lilac ribbon that made her look indecently innocent. Shiny waves were cascading down from the little clip and fell around her face framing soft porcelain features. She wore a familiar emotion on her face that I knew all too well, haunted. The plain raw intelligence of her face was utterly breathtaking and for the first time in my life, I couldn’t find the correct adjectives to describe something. No mere words would have done her natural beauty justice or could have described the way she moved.

  It was like…liquid.

  That’s the only word I had for her.

  Flowing, fluid, melting into everything with a precision that seemed naturally calculated. I felt like Adam looking at Eve for the first time, having never seen another woman before her.

  What the hell did I just let myself think? I just need to drown myself at the bottom of my damn brandy.

  Fucking…hell… I caught myself leaning forward, almost falling off my daft chair trying to watch her move around. Brilliant.

  “Jesus, Kade. I never saw you look at anybody like that. You want me to tell her to come over here?” he asked.

  “Fuck off,” I laughed, angrily. “You know I don’t play well with others.” I forced my fingers to relax their tight grip on my drink before it shattered under all the pressure. I didn’t clearly understand why I was unable to keep my eyes off the woman, or why my body reacted the way it did to her, or why my gut feeling told me she was more than she appeared. I took another pull on my brandy.

  My brother’s mouth opened to say something but thought better of it. He raked his hand through his hair and hung his head in his hands. “How have you been, really?” He mumbled into his hands.

  I dropped my head from my line of vision of her. That’s it for the next six months, no, year…I was already fed up with people. And talking. Talking with people. Stupid people.

  And who the hell cared about a freaking waitress?

  Yeah, she was pretty in such a different way, and intriguing, so damn what.

  Dealing with thoughts about her would end up like all my thoughts did, in sickening violence. I would need to find more words to match her beauty and somehow mar her fictional existence in my head with the exquisite release of her last breath, or possess her with demons, slaughter her by the hands of a delusional lover, disfigure her in a gruesome accident or something equally horrifying.

  That’s how I deal with my issues. That’s how I deal with my anger and my rage. I live in a world of lies, fictitious characters I dream up and breathe life into, just to break, for the enjoyment of horror readers throughout the world. I wondered what lies this woman had told; what her story was, not that it mattered if she had one, I’d gladly make one up for her. Everyone was just a character to me. Each person was just another empty name I would put to paper and control with my whims, develop into people I wanted them to be. Complete and unconditional control.

  I glanced my eyes over the waitress again.

  For a small second, she looked fragile, a tilt forward of the head, the small slump of her shoulders and I wanted to protect her. But the thought was nonsense in my head. I wiped it away as fast as I thought it. Who would protect her from me?

  Guzzling down the rest of my brandy like it was a cheap shot, I left the bar without even saying goodbye to my brother. He was used to my idiosyncrasies. I drove home wondering what color her eyes were, which is the single most asinine thought ever to cross my mind, so I cancelled any more thoughts of the woman. It wasn’t like I would ever see her again.

  I stormed into my empty house, slamming the heavy wooden door behind me, locking myself away from the rest of the world and bring new meaning to the word recluse. I
won’t lie to myself as others do and pretend I have any control over things. It’s easier to find and gain control if you stay in a very small space and let no one else in.

  Yanking off my tie and jacket, I threw them over one of the leather chairs in my den and sat myself in front of my computer. I poured myself another brandy and sat it beside my keyboard, sipping at it slowly every so often to cherish the thick warm burn.

  I brought up the screen to my work in progress and the last scene I was working on.

  Words had always come easily to me. Violence and hate were in my veins. I was rage personified, and horror and malice were my only friends. We had lived together peacefully since I came to terms with being me. Yet, as I sat before my desk, with a bright white empty screen in front of me, cursor blinking and mocking me, I didn’t see the red of an award winning horror writer. All I saw was silky black liquid hair and pale pink lips.

  Temptation.

  Damn, this wasn’t going to be good for me.

  Chapter 3

  An unexpected warm rush of heat spread across my chest as soon as I looked up from concentrating on the bottle of whiskey. I was trying to calm the nausea down from that drunken degenerate’s attempt at manhandling me, counting to twenty in my head and taking deep breaths.

  Mother-effin’ twenty.

  Son-of-a-bitch nineteen.

  Eighteen, seventeen… Calmly closing my eyes, my brain was still screeching at the pot-bellied piss infected Neanderthal. My insides wanted to claw his eyes out and dickkick him for touching me.

  Three.

  Two, just breathe…one.

  My eyes fluttered open and all thoughts about drunken men touching me vanished. Actually, all my thoughts completely faded into oblivion when I noticed a strange man watching me. I heard myself gasp when I saw him. The air just sort of sucked itself right out of my lungs. Not only was he devastatingly handsome, he was staring at me.

  Me.

  Not Natalie, aka Lace, who was up on the stage wearing only her sparkly little thong and humping a pole.

  Not Bree, the blonde bombshell who every man drools over.

  Me.

  I’m just going to put it out there, right now. I’ve never seen a man watch me like that before. It was personal. Intimate. I mean…I was one of those women who got acknowledged for their brains more often than their looks. And I took pride in myself for that. I liked being intelligent and confident, but that look…

  My cheeks heated at the severity of the stare; his gaze was unnerving. It was animalistic and primal. Hot-as-hell; it made me tingle with a damp warmth between my thighs and against the cotton material of my panties.

  I was completely embarrassed. Fully flushed and blushing, I was literally reacting like some silly virgin from a cheesy romance novel. Then…then to make matters worse, I started to fan myself a bit with one of the laminated menus.

  But, damn, it felt good to be looked at like that, you know? It was a look that made you want to swing your hips a bit more, smile a little wider for, because you knew this man was enjoying the view, appreciating the way you looked. I felt wanted. Desired. Hungered for. Lusted. Preyed on. Was this what Lace was feeling right now on stage with all the men watching her?

  I fanned myself faster.

  He was leaning back against the red velvet of the booth chair, dressed in an expensive looking tuxedo. His hair was as black as mine, deep inky black, and wildly arranged on his head. His face…all hard angles. His skin was light, pale against the silky darkness of his hair. A jaw carved out of stone, strong cheekbones and full perfect lips. But those weren’t the attractive features of him. Well, they were, but it was more than that. He seemed to wear a deep intelligence and life experience in his expression. Strength and pain. Knowledge, endurance, and raw danger were blatant on the planes and hollows of his skin. Dangerous and unfriendly, an angry outsider looking into the world from some far distant places in his mind. The sort of man that didn’t fit in. The one you would always pick out of the crowd as different, uncomfortable and on edge. Kind of like me.

  I stared at him a little too long, holding his gaze, which made my senses, all of them, kick into overdrive. The exchange was maddening and arousing, and like nothing I’d ever felt before, primal and visceral in texture. It was purely mouthwatering.

  My eyes diverted to Dylan, who had just sat down next to him and without a doubt, I knew they were brothers. Where Dylan’s features were soft and blond, this man was a chiseled, harder, darker version of him. Serious trouble.

  The man’s dark eyebrows were pulled together and light pale-gray, almost colorless eyes, stared fiercely into mine. Raw and primal, as if I was being hunted.

  Hunted? For a moment, terror surged through my body. Could this man have been sent to hurt me? Did they find me? As quickly as the thought came, I debunked it. No one was going to be coming after me. There was no way of knowing where I was or that I survived.

  No, this man who was staring at me like that wanted me.

  Squeezing my thighs together against my moist panties, I shivered uncomfortably. I wanted to gag at the pathetic nature of my discomfort. Whenever I had listened to other women say silly things like, “Oh, it was love at first sight,” or “I felt sparks right away,” I always laughed. I guess I just never felt that. There were other things, more important things than men in my life. There wasn’t such a thing as love at first sight. I didn’t even believe in lust at first sight. I was a true believer of hotness at first sight, but that’s about it. I’ve felt love and lust before. But this, what I felt while this dangerous man fucked me vigorously with his eyes, it was insane. Intense. It might have been the first time in my life that being a woman had made me feel good. Okay, it made me feel like a porn star, and no man had ever made me feel like that. There, I said it. We’re all adults here, right? I mean, I shouldn’t be ashamed. I’ve already told you my panties were wet, so my dignity was out the window.

  He was still staring at me. Even though I quickly looked away, I could feel his eyes on me, as if they were burning an impression against my memory. Touching every one of my nerve endings with the rough dangerous caress of his eyes.

  Then he just dropped his head down low, spoke to Dylan for another few minutes, ran both his hands through his hair, drained his drink, and stalked out of the bar. My insides ached to run after him and just pretend to bump into him, just to see him up close, and to see those eyes stare at me like that again.

  Just watching him walk to the door had my pulse beating harder. His gait and long, strong strides had me biting down on my lip. I smiled to myself thinking that, maybe for the first time in my life, I might have been acting like a normal healthy sexual woman. I shook the thoughts from my head. It was nice to feel good, to feel confident, and to believe in myself again, but I wasn’t ready to deal with men any time soon, especially one that looked like he should have a triple X rating tattooed on his forehead. This was one of those men a woman would probably shrink in heartbreak from, weeping loud and bitterly into their extra-large-super-sized apple martini glasses. What am I talking about? It was silly and immature of me to think I could judge a man by his likeness and not by his character, foolish and naive. I was not by any means a foolish girl, who fluttered away on whims and heady needs. Heady needs? Maybe I needed a vibrator; it had been way too long.

  “Hey, Lainey,” Dylan said, as he slid behind the bar and grabbed a bottle of tequila. “What put that smile on your face?”

  “Oh, nothing,” I said as I wiped down the bottle of whiskey I was stupidly smiling at. “That gentleman you were sitting next to, just now, that was a relative, right?” Oh Lord, why was I asking questions about him?

  Dylan rubbed the back of his neck and sighed. “Yeah, he’s my brother, Kade.”

  “It’s sort of eerie how you look the same, yet completely opposite. He’s like the darker version of you,” I laughed, playfully. Is he married? What does he do? Is he intelligent? Is he playful? Does he like long walks on the beach and can
you give him my number? Shut up and don’t ask! Being in the woods this long is making me crazy, and I’m definitely buying a vibrator. That should have been the first thing I packed when I left!

  Dylan didn’t laugh with me.

  His eyebrows furrowed and his lips tightened into a small scowl. “He’s definitely a dark version of something. Listen, stay away from him if he ever comes in here again. He probably won’t anyway, but if he does, just ignore him. He’s tainted with a ton of issues. He’s a loner anyway, doesn’t date, and doesn’t enjoy being around people, sorry love. He’s pretty savage.”

  Okay, he’s not making any sense. I was just asking if they were brothers, not to set me up with him. I didn’t ask any of those questions out loud.

  “I wasn’t saying I was interested in him or anything, I had just noticed the resemblance, that’s all. What’s wrong with him?”

  Dylan chuckled, full out laughed, and then all the seriousness drained away from his features as his eyes fixed on mine. “Nothing, love. He’s like a living-breathing-yet-emotionally-dead J. D. Salinger, but with more secrets. I think he just finds his own mind so much more interesting than anyone else’s, that he locks himself away because he doesn’t like distractions. And he’s got major trust issues. Savage.”

  “J. D. Salinger? So, he’s a writer?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but he’s more of an arsehole, so just steer clear of him. He could be intentionally hostile to people most of the time just to keep everyone at a distance. Vicious and savage.”