“She has a place at Alea as long as she wants. With her at the helm, I feel like it’s in good hands. Everyone always has kind things to say about Mia,” Tax says. “And I am inclined to believe them.”
Okay, is he talking to me indirectly? Like is he trying to mind meld, or is this all bullshit?
We all take a round of shots together, then another. I am both excited and terrified of finding out what a drunk Tax will be like.
“So, Rex, do you work with Tax?” I ask.
Tax gives me a look out of the corner of his eye.
“Me? Yeah. I do research, tech, I’m kind of a jack of all trades,” he says with his youthful smile. He’s a cute one. Something tells me Tiff has pounced on him already.
“Come dance with me Mia,” Tiff says.
“Uh, okay.” I don’t know why I feel I need Tax’s approval, but I do.
“She’s in good hands Tax. Please don’t try to kill another customer of mine!” She pleads, already three sheets to the wind.
“Go on, I’ll be here with Rex.” Tax leans towards my ear, slides his hands down and cups the crook of my ass, hooking a finger close to my pussy and clenching. “Remember. Mine.”
Tiff lays her forearms on my shoulders, pulling me in close as we dance.
“Jesus Mia, what the fuck? He’s gorgeous!”
“I know...” I lament.
“Girl, that neck tat under that suit!”
“I know...” I mope.
“I know you two just fucked in the alleyway,” she winks. “Julio nearly shit himself when went out there for a smoke.”
“Oh shit,” I say, burying my head in embarrassment.
“No...this is great! This is what you need. This is what we were talking about! You need someone who is strong enough for you. No one has ever kept your interest. You need that guy who is going to give you a run for your money. Someone who keeps you on your toes. You never needed a man to define you, but it’s nice to have someone you can lean on and be vulnerable with. You are a strong, successful woman, but sometimes it’s nice to have someone equally strong to take you on.”
That’s not exactly how I would describe our dynamic. I feel anything but strong around Tax. From the very first moment we met, he has dismantled my independent, strong persona and has reduced me to a weeping, begging, mess.
“Anyway, we have to catch up. You’ve been like a ghost. I was afraid you might not even show up tonight.”
“You know I would never leave you hanging!”
“I know, I know. But that new position at Alea has you really busy, just don’t forget to live.”
Oh, I’ve been doing enough living for a lifetime.
Of course I have been avoiding Tiff, but it’s not because of work, it’s because I am afraid if I see her alone I will burst. I’ve trusted Tiff with everything, but this secret, this is a monster. What I have been enduring is vile. What’s even more vile is how I have allowed myself to enjoy it. What would she think of me? She’s never judged me and I have never judged her. Tiff lives a wild life: long nights, sleeping until 1pm every day, multiple partners (sometimes at the same moment). I’ve sat in the waiting room as she had an abortion. She cried in my lap when Blake, the only guy she ever loved left her and argued with her when she took him back. We have been through so much and loved each other unconditionally and without judgment. But this predicament is different. I am willingly subjecting myself to some phantom debt. I don’t even know why Tax wants to make me pay. I ask every week and I get the same bullshit answer. It’s gotten to the point where my curiosity is starting to dull because it doesn’t even matter anymore. He’s here now, and whatever the reasons may be, he has already made his stamp on my life.
A cocktail server brings us some shots and I gladly swallow the liquid courage. We make our way back to the table where there is another round of shots. The alcohol is starting to hit me hard. Drinking makes me talkative and touchy. Oh, and horny. And there is a tall, muscular guy with a neck tat, and perfect hair, and lips, and he smells amazing, and all I want to do is put my hands all over him.
I start feeling the music and swaying to the rhythm. I turn to face Tax and pull him to face me, wrapping my arms around his neck. As I grind my hips against him, his hands slide down to my ass and he bites his inner lower lip.
“Dance with me,” I plead.
“I don’t dance, babe.” Babe?
I pout and he grins faintly, but he’s not budging. This might be one area where begging doesn’t work with him.
The bizarreness of all of this is not lost on me, but it’s something about being in the real world, and maybe the alcohol is helping too, but I almost forget about the circumstances that brought us here. At the very least, I can ignore them.
“You can dance on me if you want to though,” he says. That is a tiny concession, but for Tax it’s like he’s the UN right now.
“I’ll take what I can get,” I say, pulling him away from the table and pushing him onto to a wall.
I turn around and sway my ass into his groin, snaking, popping, rubbing, getting as close to sex with him as I can while clothed.
I spin back around and look up into his eyes, they are hooded, he’s feeling the alcohol too. Maybe I can get through to him, maybe his defenses will weaken. Hell, being here, right now, like this, clearly they already are.
I snake my hips hard, my spine arching and cresting like a wave, as I run my hands under his suit jacket and up the crisp white fabric of his shirt. The firm ridges of his abs underneath my fingers incite my greed. I stare at him the way he stares at me: with hunger. And he looks down at me with smoky eyes and a pleased smirk as I rub myself against him and his bulging greed pressing against me.
I smile and spin while keeping my eyes on him, circling my back against his abs, and dropping down, piking my ass up, flipping my hair, and driving my ass up the length of his leg as I bite my lower lip. My body feels like it’s on fire and he’s rushing river of cool water.
I spin again to face him, and I hike my dress up just under my ass, while straddling one of his legs. His eyes are affixed on mine, like we are only two people in this crowded club. I ride his thigh, rubbing my bare pussy against him, as I lick my lips and run a hand through my hair.
My chest presses against the firmness of his torso, my nipples stiffening from the contact.
“Please, dance with me,” I beg in a mewl.
His hand threads through my hair, the other grabs my ass and pulls me up and against his thigh, applying more pressure against him.
Brick by brick.
And we move in sync: slow, rhythmic grinding. Eye to eye. Lids barely parted. Sweat beading. Low moans vanish into the air. The deafening music drowns out any conflicted feelings that remain. He tugs my hair and extends my neck, grazing his teeth against my chin, the tip of his tongue awakening the sensitive nerve endings. His hand squeezes my half-exposed ass, and everything lights up. My nipples and clit, a partnership of arousal, tense in ecstasy as they stroke against the man who sets me on fire. He is also the only person who can put me out.
My moans grow louder, but they are drowned out in the safety of the music. And like the flashing lights in the club, I become ablaze with flickering energy, throwing my head back, arching my spine as he supports me, as he lets me use his body, his smell, his taste, his overpowering masculine energy to put out the blaze that he ignites inside of me.
I collapse onto him, grasping his shirt, taking in his smell, the warmth of his broad chest, completely lost in the sensory experience that is Tax Draconi. I smile as I burrow my face into his chest, drunk off the mixture of alcohol and lust.
Tax strokes my hair and slides his hand to the curve of my lower back. I look up at him hesitantly, afraid that at any moment this will all end and he will have erected the wall I managed to crumble just now.
His eyes are dark, but it’s with desire, not hate this time. They almost smile at me.
“What do you say we get the hell out of here?�
�� he says, generously displaying a hint of his incredible smile.
Radiohead – Paranoid Android
Radiohead – Karma Police
“I think you might be tipsy yourself Mr. Tax,” Mia says, stumbling into the darkness of her house.
I am, but I won’t let her know that. She kicks off her shoes and drops a few inches closer to the ground. In true Mia fashion, she immediately heads for her shitty pink and silver boombox. I know how much she makes, she can afford a goddamn modern stereo system.
“You want water?” she asks, haphazardly walking into the kitchen. She’s so happy because I’m here. This piece of shit who has left countless stories of devastation in his wake. She somehow thinks she’s safe with me. She trusts me. No woman lets you into their house when they are drunk unless they trust you.
“I’m fine,” I say, scanning her living room. I don’t know why I do that, I never do it anywhere else, but I think it’s because I am looking for clues. For some explanation as to how the fuck she can be the person I know she is. A person who is cruel and who toys with emotions, but there’s nothing. All I see is someone who wants approval, who wants me to care about her, who tries to find the good in me. She meets my rage with a weapon more powerful: acceptance.
If she can find it in herself to be kind to me now, how could she be the same person who years ago met love with cruelty?
I don’t know what happened in the club. I honestly have no explanation for it. I don’t want another man touching her, that’s for sure. But I could have stopped at that, and I didn’t. I’m telling myself this is part of getting her to fall in love with you, but I’m starting to think that kind of stuff happens both ways. Tonight, we weren’t locked in a room beholden to some set of rules, we were out in the world, just Tax and Mia. Holy shit, it was a lot of fucking fun. She’s a lot of fucking fun. And it’s hard enough staying the course sober, but with the alcohol in our veins, things have taken some unexpected turns.
Kissing her is the dumbest thing I have done so far. Yes, I have let her kiss me in throes of heated fucking, but I have never initiated. It was always clear I was doing her a favor, that I never really wanted or needed it. Staying away for over a week backfired. I just wanted her in every way, I couldn’t hold back, I wanted to take every part of her I could, including her delicious lips.
“It’s not 1999, Mia,” I say, referring to the Backstreet Boys playing on her cd player.
“No, but I remember how thrilled you were to see it in my stack of cds, so I thought I would play it for you.”
She slinks over to me. “Take off your jacket, get comfortable!” Mia Tibbett: world’s giddiest drunk.
I slide my jacket off and place it on the couch. I remain standing, this night has taken so many turns, I can’t get too comfortable in her house.
She starts dancing. Yes, apparently she dances to this crap in the presence of others in her house, not just when she is alone. She doesn’t even realize that the last time she danced alone in this house, she was potentially minutes away from her gruesome death at my hands.
“Whoops!” she says, as she spills water on me. “I’m so sorry!”
“Don’t worry, I’ll send you the dry cleaning bill. Water wasn’t the only thing you got on my pants today,” I say, recalling our bodies, hot and sweaty, grinding in the club. And her fragile body in my arms as it quaked on my thigh. Fucking-a that was hot.
She looks down coyly. “Sorry,” she pouts.
“I was kidding, Mia.”
“I know,” she says, putting her glass of water on the kitchen counter. “Dance with me,” she pleads, doing the running man.
“I already told you I don’t dance,” I reply, standing firmly in front of her swaying body with my hands in my pockets.
“What about what we just did at the club?” she asks.
“That wasn’t dancing, babe.”
Her cheeks burn bright.
Fuck. Shit. I keep calling her that. It just rolls off the tongue. I feel possessive towards her, and it’s bordering protective. That is not the mindset I should have with someone I need to kill.
“Oh, come on, what’s that saying? Dance like no one is watching? I’m no one to you, right?”
Her words unexpectedly punch me in the gut. Because I can tell she’s not fishing for me to assuage her. She truly believes it. I have succeeded in making her believe she is worthless to me. And that was the point of all this, but feels wrong.
“You’re not no one.” Mia isn’t nothing, she is all I think about. And for the longest I meant that in the worst possible way. I dreamed for years of ending her life brutally. The others had mostly peaceful or quick deaths, but with her I wanted her to know, to understand, as she died in terror.
But now, she’s becoming something else to me. And I keep fighting it, I keep trying to convince myself that all I feel towards her is bitterness and vengeance, but I am lying to myself. So I either need to end her soon, or start figuring out a Plan C. Because I am really starting to like the idea of keeping Mia alive, and it’s scaring the shit out of me.
She doesn’t say anything. I brush past her, picking up the old Radiohead cd, in its original cracked case, and slide it into the player. This time, I play Paranoid Android.
Mia’s right, I am tipsy, and I do kind of feel like dancing. Only with her though.
I walk up to her wrap my arms around her slight waist. Her eyes smile at such a small gesture from me. I give her so fucking little, that just agreeing to this makes her feel like she’s having some sort of victory.
“This old music reminds me of my hometown,” she says, resting her hands on my shoulders.
“Where’s that?”
“I think you know Tax. You know everything about me,” she says, cocking an eyebrow.
“Refresh my memory,” I say, gently drifting side to side with her.
“It’s a small town in Iowa called Clint. Well, was. The main factory closed down there like two years ago and it pretty much turned into a ghost town. I inherited my dad’s house when he died, but it’s worthless now. I’m not kidding. The town is full of either people squatting, or a proud few who refuse to leave. The place is a mess. Boarded-up shops. Houses falling apart with overgrown lawns.” Don’t I know it.
“Do you miss it?”
“Honestly? No. I never felt like I belonged. People there were so judgmental and nosey. I left and never turned back. If I went back and told them I worked at a sex toy manufacturer...” she laughs. She has a way of making everything lighter, even when she talks about the things she hates.
“How did you feel like you didn’t belong?” It’s like I am talking to another person. She was popular, loved, envied. Her dad was the sheriff of the tiny town. If the Pettit’s were royalty, then Sheriff Tibbett was a knight.
“Well, I guess I did on the exterior, I had all the right friends and such. But everyone was so obsessed with the dumbest things. Like football. You know that show Friday Night Lights? Yeah, that times a thousand. Those kids could have gotten away with murder. They didn’t have to do homework, teachers had to pass them anyway. I had even heard of some girls who had been assaulted and their own parents told them not to press charges. How ridiculous is that?”
Heat snakes up my collar.
“I felt like I had to be a certain way to fit in, but as soon as I had a chance to leave, I did. And I never missed it. The only person that connected me to the town was my dad. But he’d come here to visit because I think even he wanted a break from that place. I miss him a lot,” she says, her eyes drifting away with her thoughts. “We were all we had for so long, and now...I guess I’m alone.””
“You’re not alone...” she looks up at me expectantly. “You have Tiff.” She looks down again. Give a little, take much more.
“This song reminds me of you,” she says, referring to Karma Police, which now plays.
“How so?” I ask. Is she onto me?
“It’s a song about comeuppance...and you’re taking
out your revenge on me...right?”
The way she said it, the way she has accepted this fate she doesn’t even understand: that is the saddest thing anyone has ever said to me.
I look up, dismissing her question.
“Tax, when are you ever going to tell me what you think I have done to deserve this?”
What you did, Mia. It’s what you did.
“I’m not sure anymore.” I don’t want to want to tell her, because if I do, I’ll have to kill her.
She looks up at me with sad brown eyes.
“Sometimes I look in your eyes and I see something familiar, something kind. And it makes me wonder if I did do something to you, if I hurt you in a way I didn't even realize. And if I did, I am so so sorry that I hurt you so much that you felt I deserved this. But whatever it is I did, I really hope you think about it and ask yourself if it’s worth it. Because whatever I did, I never meant to hurt you. I don't like to hurt people, Tax. Even now, I should hate you, but I can't. I don't have that in me.”
How can she say that to me? How can she experience the putrid hate I exhale with every breath, and yet apologize to me? I live off the misery of my violators. My life force is vengeance. My fuel is their blood. Whatever she thinks she sees, there is no good inside of me. That was taken from me when I was 15.
This woman in my arms, those words, I almost don’t even care for a moment about what she did. Because I want to have her. She is the only person who makes me feel something that isn’t anger or a retribution. Maybe the way she makes me feel is her penance. But that’s not enough, because I wasn’t the only one ruined that night. Jude won’t accept anything less than death, and Jude is the one person who has ever given a shit about me my entire life.
But I am selfish, and I want to feel Mia’s warmth. I want to reward her for her kind words the only way I know how: with sex.
I kiss her on her velvety soft lips; her fresh taste instantly makes me hard. Her scent, the flavor of her pussy, everything about her makes my blood churn, so that I have to have her.
“Are you in a rush?” she asks.
Debt Page 14
