Chloe’s eyebrows pinched together in a suspicious look. “You’re just gonna leave your party?”
I shrugged. “I’d rather be with you.”
A tiny smile lit up her face, but then she was serious again in a second. “Okay,” she said hesitantly. “It’s this way.”
She reached out for me, her little hand fitting perfectly in my palm. Just as I imagined her pussy would, fitting my cock for the first time. I followed her outside and onto the street. It was a cool night, and I noticed her shivering in the breezy air.
“Here,” I said, shrugging off my blazer and placing it across her shoulders. “Don’t want you to be cold.”
“Thank you.” She gave me a sweet smile, and I wondered what the fuck I was doing.
Not only had I ditched my dad an hour earlier, now I was taking a walking felony home. This girl was bad news, and she was totally off limits for me. Her fucking father had allegedly murdered my mother—his secret mistress—a year ago. On top of that, my father’s law associates were the ones who’d put him away.
But the way Chloe’s hips swayed as she walked, her ass jutting out and her perky tits begging to be released from that conservative dress…fuck, I couldn’t resist. I only hesitated for a moment before I kept on walking.
“What’s your name?” Chloe asked.
Fuck.
“Asher,” I said with a smile, nervously anticipating her next question.
“What do you study?”
Disaster averted.
“Law. Why’d you come to my party?” I asked Chloe, trying to steer the conversation in another direction.
She shrugged. “I’m starting school here in the fall. My friends suggested I come with them. I thought I might as well. I just wanted to blend in.”
Good luck with that, I thought bitterly. Your daddy is a killer, and you’re a fucking eleven on a scale of one to ten. You’ll stand out like a sore fucking thumb no matter where you go, princess.
“Where do you live?” I asked.
“My mom and dad…erm, I have an apartment on campus. It’s not completely done yet, but I can sleep in there, at least,” she said. She seemed genuinely sad, and I grew curious about her dad’s case. I wondered if he really killed my mother like they all said he did. If he really was a monster, like the press said.
Like my father said.
I wondered too much, because a second later, we came to a stop in front of a building. “This is me,” Chloe said, turning her big baby blues to me. “Thanks for walking me.”
She stepped up on her tiptoes and pressed a shy peck on my cheek. I grabbed her wrist, not letting her move away. If she thought a fucking peck was enough, she was dead wrong.
“Chloe,” I said with a cocky smile. “Can I come in?”
She hesitated, biting her lower lip, then shook her head. “No,” she said. “But you can call me sometime.”
“Call you?” I laughed out loud. “Darling, I don’t call girls. I call them cabs after I’ve fucked them.”
I looked at her one last time, those great tits, the pretty heart-shaped face. I would make an exception for her… but should I? My dad would kill me if he knew what I was doing.
Too bad.
“I guess you can walk me upstairs to my door,” Chloe said with a wry grin, and my mind was made up for me.
I jokingly slapped her ass, and she giggled softly as she opened the front door to her place two minutes later while I was busy contemplating my next move. But before I got the chance to make up my mind, Chloe’s shocked gasp interrupted me and I looked toward her, my eyes widening at the sight before me.
“Oh, fuck…” I muttered.
Two
Chloe
‘KILLER’S DAUGHTER’
The huge words were daubed in red paint on the ecru walls of my brand new apartment’s living room, lending a macabre contrast to the pale minimalism of the interior design. Several glasses were smashed on the floor along with a lamp and a bottle of custom-scented Beau Monde perfume my best friend had given me for my birthday a few months earlier. My stomach churned, and I drew in a sharp breath as I struggled to stay upright, legs nearly caving beneath me.
“Hey, c’mon, let’s sit down,” Asher said soothingly, guiding me out of the living room and into the kitchen.
I sat down shakily on a bar stool near the marble counter. I couldn’t meet Asher’s eyes. He hunted around my cupboards for a glass and then poured me some water from the fridge, and I silently accepted the drink a moment later, feeling my pulse slow just a little as the cool liquid streamed down my throat.
“You okay?” Asher asked, studying me intently. I felt my cheeks grow warm under his gaze. No matter the circumstances, there was no denying how damned hot this guy was. He was tall, tanned and muscular with angular facial features, and his deep brown eyes made my knees weak.
I gave him a brief nod. “Yeah. Thanks.”
“You don’t look okay.”
I sighed. Truth be told, I didn’t know if I’d be okay ever again.
As of today, my father was officially gone. He was in prison, serving twenty years to life for murder. And not just any murder. He’d been convicted of throwing his pregnant mistress down the stairs and stabbing her seventeen times afterwards, killing her and the baby, and the judge and jury had practically thrown the book at him.
I’d been there all throughout the trial; a whole year of it. I’d even been at the courthouse today, waiting for the jury to make their final deliberations, and when I couldn’t take any more waiting—god knows how long it was going to take—I’d finally taken my best friend Mercedes up on her offer to attend a raucous college party as a means of distracting myself from my awful reality. It was my first ever college party, actually.
Not even ten minutes into the event, I’d received the call from Mom that shattered my world. Dad had been found guilty. If I was being honest, I’d say that a huge part of me already knew he’d be convicted, but there was still that crazy hopeful part of me which hoped he’d be found innocent after all.
No such luck.
I turned my head over my shoulder to look at the crimson words on the living room wall again. I had no idea how someone had found my apartment and managed to break in, but I wasn’t exactly surprised that it’d happened. Ever since my father was arrested for the murder a year ago, my life had been in shambles, and every detail of my family had been splashed all over the media. Not just in our affluent Massachusetts home city of Claremont Bay, but all over the country. We were quite well-known—the Carlyle name was found on almost every luxury home on the east coast.
And now we were known for something else.
I was no longer just the heiress to the Carlyle empire; the lucky girl who’d been born with a silver spoon in her mouth. I was a killer’s daughter; the girl whose father had allegedly killed a woman and her unborn baby with a silver kitchen knife.
What a contrast.
“I’ll call someone to help clean this shit up,” Asher said, following my gaze to the words on the wall.
I shook my head weakly. “No. It’s okay. I’ll do it myself. I don’t want any more attention right now.”
“Fair enough. Guess it’s not easy being the daughter of a murderer.”
My eyes narrowed, and my gaze snapped up to meet his. “You don’t know he did it.”
“Judge and jury seemed to know.”
“Sure, and the judicial system has never been wrong, right?” I said, my voice quickly heating up. What the hell was this guy’s problem? He’d been nice up until a second ago, and now he was giving me shit about my dad just like everyone else had been doing for the last twelve months.
“I’m just saying, it seems pretty obvious he killed my…er, that woman. It happened in one of his houses, he had no alibi, and he even admitted he wasn’t thrilled about her pregnancy.”
I gritted my teeth. “I know my father. He would never do something like that. They got it wrong.”
Asher’s eyebrow
s pinched together. “So you knew he had a mistress? You knew he was hiding her in one of his investment properties, and you knew he’d knocked her up? You knew he essentially had a second family?”
I hated him for saying it, but he had a point. I always thought I knew my father, always thought I was Daddy’s little girl. I never thought he’d lie to me, but he had. I’d never had any idea that he was cheating on my mother with that woman, and I’d certainly never had any idea that he was keeping her holed up in one of his mansions across town with a child on the way.
Lifestyles of the rich and the famous, huh?
I abruptly stood up and pushed the stool in, making a loud scraping noise on the tiled floor. “Look, I don’t need this right now, okay? I know everyone thinks he did it. But that woman he killed had a long history of mental instability, and she had a lot of affairs. It could’ve been someone else. So if you’ve just come here to attack me about it and try to convince me I’m wrong, then feel free to get the hell out!”
Asher held his hands up and sighed. “Wait, wait. You’re right. I’m sorry, okay? I just…” He hesitated, and for a moment I thought he was going to reveal something to me, something that might help me make sense of why he seemed so intent on hanging out with a broken spirit like me tonight. But then he shook his head and simply said, “If you think he’s innocent, then you have every right to do so. I get that.”
“Right.” I sat down again, my shoulders slumping. “Sorry, but you should probably still go. Thanks for walking me home and all, but I need to be alone.”
At that moment, his cell phone began to vibrate, and he glanced down at it. I saw the word ‘Dad’ flash across the screen, and he shut it off and slipped it back in his pocket.
“I don’t think so,” he said, his voice shrewd and his expression calculating. “I think you need to talk. Need to get all this shit off your chest. The trial went on for a whole year. Have you ever really spoken to anyone about it?”
“Yeah, I’ve talked to my best friend about it, I guess,” I replied. “But never in any detail. I suppose I was too…”
My voice trailed off, and Asher arched an eyebrow. “Too ashamed?”
I nodded.
He held his hands up again, palms facing me. “Well, I’m basically a complete stranger to you. You can tell me anything you want, and it doesn’t even matter if I’m judging, because why the hell would you care what a stranger thinks?”
He kept his dark eyes on me as he spoke, and I felt my cheeks color even more. “Okay,” I said softly. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should talk about it.”
“Let’s not do it here. Not with all this shit,” he said, gesturing to the graffiti-covered wall and all the broken things on the floor. “If someone managed to get in here to do this, then you have no idea when someone else might try to do the same. You’re obviously not safe here.”
“Where else can we go?” I asked. I didn’t want to go to my childhood home across town, where my mother was still living. I couldn’t face her right now. She hadn’t supported Dad at all through his trial; she’d been too angry about the affair to even fathom the fact that he might not have killed his mistress. I understood why, but at the same time, I resented her for it, and after today’s verdict, I couldn’t stand the thought of spending the night under the same roof as her.
“My place. It’s not far,” Asher said.
“If this is some roundabout way of getting me to sleep with you, then it’s pretty brazen,” I said with a weak smile.
He chuckled, baring his dazzling white smile in a cocky smirk. You could tell a lot about a person from their teeth. When they were as perfect as Asher’s, you could immediately know either one of two things—either they were lucky enough to have been born with incredible genes, or they were lucky enough to have been born with the kind of money necessary to afford the finest orthodontists in the state.
Sometimes both.
I had a feeling that when it came to Asher, he was definitely a combination of both. Good genes and a privileged background not unlike my own. He just gave off that sort of vibe of cool superiority.
“C’mon,” he said, holding out a hand. “Let’s go.”
He was right about his college apartment not being far from mine. It was only a five minute walk down a few streets in our leafy neighborhood. When we arrived, he let me walk in first, and I was all too aware of his hand pressing into the small of my back under the guise of helping me inside. I didn’t mind, though. Being around a guy like Asher was the best kind of distraction for me right now.
I glanced around his place as I stepped through the foyer and into the living room. It was the exact opposite of my own apartment. Rather than the cool-toned minimalistic style I was used to, the rooms here were expensively decorated in that old-money East Coast manner with deep reds and chocolate browns, and the walls were lined with artwork which I could immediately tell had been selected by a professional collector. It was a far cry from a typical college guy’s apartment. Usually you’d expect to see beer bongs, empty cans and posters of half-naked girls, but this place smacked of refined elegance.
“Not what you expected, huh?” Asher said, watching my face as I took it all in.
“Actually, it’s exactly what I expected,” I replied. I’d been right about him—he obviously came from a wealthy family.
He gestured to a black leather sofa. “Take a seat. I’ll get you a drink. You like whiskey?”
“Water is fine.”
He raised a playful brow. “You didn’t even have one drink at that party. I would’ve thought you’d want to drink on a night like this.”
“Were you watching me?” I asked.
“Yeah, I was.”
A small smile played on my lips. “Maybe just a tiny glass of whiskey.”
He nodded and headed out of the room, and he returned a moment later with two crystal tumblers. I accepted mine and took a slow sip of the amber liquid, feeling the burn as it went down, and Asher watched me from the other sofa which sat perpendicular to the one I was on.
“So you wanna tell me what it’s been like?” he asked.
I nodded slowly and set my drink down on a coaster. Then, in a halting voice, I began to describe the last twelve months to Asher.
The initial shock when I found out my father had arrested.
The sickening lurch of my stomach when I found out what they thought he did.
The pounding of my heart when I realized how much he’d lied to us.
How much he’d hidden.
Asher listened to every word intently, nodding and interjecting the occasional ‘uh-huh’ at the appropriate times. I’d only known him for an hour or so, but I already found him to be very easy to talk to. He was a good listener, and he seemed quite intent on hearing my side of things and helping me out. It was cathartic to have this, just for a few moments; someone to listen to me and share my pain.
It didn’t hurt that he was gorgeous, either.
“My mother filed for divorce almost immediately,” I said, when the meat of the story was out in the open. “I guess I can’t exactly blame her. But still…I can’t help but wonder how things might’ve gone if she’d stuck by him. Maybe the jury would’ve been more sympathetic.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Can’t keep torturing yourself with all the ‘what ifs’, Chloe,” Asher said. I couldn’t help but notice that he’d moved closer to me now, and my heart skipped a beat as one of his hands reached over, fingertips gently touching my right knee.
“I know,” I replied, trying to ignore the flaming desire in my core. This wasn’t the time for that, nor the place.
His gaze hardened. “But you can’t stop thinking about it, can you?”
I nodded. “Yeah, exactly. I can’t stop replaying everything in my head, over and over. This whole case….it’s followed me around like a black dog for a year now. I want to forget, but it’s so hard.”
“Is that why you were at my party tonight?” he asked. “Because you don’t see
m like the kind of girl who usually goes out partying.”
I nodded. “Yes. I wanted to forget. And I tried to, just for a moment. But then I got that call. Now I have even more shit to try and forget.”
Tears began to cloud my vision, and Asher nodded grimly. “Believe me, I know the feeling,” he said. Something dark was simmering in those eyes of his; something that told me there was a lot more to this man than met the eye. “I know all about trying to forget shit. And I know a lot of ways to do it.”
My pulse quickened at his last few words. There was some obvious subtext there, and I could no longer ignore the burning deep within my core.
Maybe now was the time and the place.
I looked down at my lap, gathering the last ragged remnants of my strength and confidence. This wasn’t me. I wasn’t usually like this; I wasn’t the sort of girl who went home with handsome strangers and slept with them. But tonight….tonight it could be me.
No, tonight it was me.
Tonight I was like this.
Tonight I would forget.
I tilted my head up and looked Asher dead in the eyes, summoning my most confident tone of voice. “Asher…will you take me to bed?”
Three
Asher
"I know all about trying to forget shit. And I know a lot of ways to do it,” I said before mentally kicking myself for saying such shit. I felt like a total jackass, unsure of what to do in the given situation. Chloe was obviously miserable and shaken up as hell, and for once in my life, I felt like a real dick for bringing her to my place—not a feeling I was familiar with.
"Oh," she replied in a quiet, shaky voice that made my stomach twist up in knots.
Tell her. Tell her right now, my inner voice prompted me, but when I opened my mouth to speak, no words came out. I wanted to tell her who I was, explain I'd been hiding the truth, but I couldn't. I was frozen to the spot with my mouth uttering nonsensical you'll-be-fines and don't-worrys, and she was shaking like a leaf.
Scandal (A Dirty Money Novel) Page 2
