Murphy’s bastard of a law had impeccable timing.
That night, Lilith’s costume of choice was the stereotypical hooker getup. It was too perfect on so many levels. For those who had come expecting the illicit, she was exactly what they were looking for. Shorts short enough that her ass cheeks peeked out, a strappy tank top so tight even her smallish breasts were trying to pop out of the top, torn fishnets, loose, messy hair. She wouldn’t have looked out of place on a street corner in the middle of the night.
It was the wrong outfit to be wearing when she ran into Frank again.
Lilith didn’t see him. He must have been watching her a good portion of the night. He’d been drinking, and whatever was going on in his head was nothing close to reality.
Along the walls of the club, there were several booths. It was harder to engage a potential client there, so most nights they were reserved by groups who wanted to watch everyone while they gathered the courage to get a little closer to the stage. Most of the time, the club was dark, lights flashing in time with the loud music.
There was one booth in particular that didn’t benefit from the glow of the track lighting. He must have been waiting for quite a while, because there wasn’t much reason for Lilith to pass by that booth. Being so far removed from the pulse of activity, it sat empty most nights.
Often, like that night, Lilith ducked behind the booth when she needed a moment to catch her breath after a dance. She didn’t see him until his hand darted out, and he pulled her into the seat beside him, his arm tight around her, pinning her to his side.
“Well, hello there, princess.”
His lips were curled in a sneer as he looked down at her. The scent of alcohol was strong on his breath. Lilith wrinkled her nose, leaning away from him. “Hey. Creeper. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
As she tried to get back up again, his arm tightened around her, and he dragged her further into the booth. “Settle down, slut.” His words were slurred, and his free hand was on her thigh already, inching higher.
“Get your fucking hands off me. I’m too dirty for your delicate skin, remember?”
He scoffed. “I’ll take my chances tonight. Everyone has to slum it every now and then.”
He was so big—tall and broad and just everywhere. Pressed up against his body, she felt tiny. Lilith was not a statuesque woman, but most of the time, she walked as though she were ten feet tall. Most of the time, she could convince herself she was bigger than she was.
Not now.
He was strong enough to keep her from scooting away from him. His hand was meaty on her cheek as he turned her face toward him and kissed her. It was not a gentle kiss. It was aggressive, smothering her yell of protest. With her hands splayed against his chest—good God, he was a wall of muscle—she tried to push off him.
When he released his grip on her face, she dragged in a breath, ready to scream for Ethan. Before she could, his hand was on her, groping her breasts.
It was as though her mind had turned inside out. Suddenly, she was not herself—strong, capable, and in control. She was young, naive, and confused. She didn’t like this. She didn’t like it at all. His hands on her body made her skin crawl and twisted her stomach in knots, but her tongue was tied. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t tell him to stop. She . . .
No.
She was in control. She could stop this.
Dropping her hand to his lap, she found the lump where his dick was already straining against his pants. Getting a good grip, she squeezed. Hard.
The effect was instantaneous. Frank screamed and his grip loosened. Taking her window, Lilith shoved away from him, scrambling to get out of the booth, back into the brighter light of the rest of the club.
She’d only taken a couple of steps away before an iron grip came down on her arm and Frank twisted her back to him. His face was curled in a snarl as he grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her hard enough her teeth rattled. Wrenching her right arm out of his grasp, she drew back, intending to shove her palm up his nose, but he caught her by the wrist.
And squeezed.
Lilith cried out, her legs giving out under the crushing pain. She fell to her knees.
The whole scene couldn’t have taken more than a minute or two from the time Frank grabbed her to when he had her on her knees in front of him. In the next heartbeat, everything was chaos. Lilith was furious and frightened and very confused as to why Mal was there, about to hurl himself right at Frank. She yelled at him. Mal was not very big, and he didn’t have the self-defense training she did. Frank would annihilate him. But it didn’t matter because, by then, Ethan had made his way over. He grabbed Frank by the shoulders, pulling him back, making him release his grip on Lilith’s wrists.
Mal diverted his attention, kneeling at her side. “Lil?”
“I’m fine.” Her eyes were pinned in a glare on Frank who was glowering back at her, oozing malevolence. “He’s had too much to drink,” she told Ethan.
“This bitch—” Terry began, but Ethan was having none of it.
“Come with me, sir.” His tone brokered no room for argument. “Let’s get some food in you. You’ll feel better then.” He had his hand was firm on Frank’s arm, leading him away.
“That’s it?” Mal was incredulous, his voice a growl Lilith had almost never heard. “You’re going to feed him? You should get his ass out of here.”
Lilith got a hold of his sleeve and tugged to get his attention. “Stop,” she said under her breath.
Of course, Mal couldn’t understand. Despite how careful they were, what they were doing here still wasn’t legal. A tantrum from one of their rich, powerful patrons could bring trouble down on all of them, so situations like this had to be handled with finesse. Already, too many people were staring, and if Frank was even a little bit less drunk, this would be going much worse than it already was.
She got to her feet, not looking at Mal as Ethan led Frank away.
Of all the shitty timing, of course he had to take her up on her suggestion to see for himself what the club was like. What a vision she must have been: dressed like the epitome of a whore, forced into a degrading position before a man who would face no real consequences.
She gnashed her teeth. This was not what he was supposed to see.
“Are you—” Mal started to ask, but she cut him off.
“I’m. Fine.” More than fine, she was pissed as hell. Before she knew it, her feet were moving her forward. She needed air. It was far too hot, too stifling in the club.
She knew Mal was following her as she headed for the side exit. Outside, she began to pace, anxious to spend this excess energy. Adrenaline was giving way to a wicked case of the shakes.
By the time Mal caught up with her, she was already mid-rant. Not much of what she rambled made sense, even to her own ears. She was trying to outrun this sense of panic, and there were only so many things she was capable of concentrating on at once. Right then, she wasn’t so concerned with Mal seeing her a little undone—what he’d already seen was bad enough.
So she paced, snarling and whisper yelling about idiotic assholes who thought the world belonged to them. She couldn’t figure out how Frank’s logic made sense in his own head. It was obvious he thought she was a lesser creature. Why was he so fixated? Why couldn’t he just crawl back into whatever hole he’d come from?
“The bitch of it is, I should have been with Trey.” She ran a restless hand through her hair. Trey had called. He’d been calling. He wanted to see her. It had been a week and a half since she’d run out of his apartment. She’d stopped ignoring him after a few days, but she had yet to accept one of his invitations.
Lilith blew out a breath, trying to calm down.
She just couldn’t shake the idea he would look at her again the way he had that day. She didn’t want pity from anyone, but from Trey, it felt all the worse.
“Lily. What the hell are you talking about?”
Stopping short, Lilith looked at Mal. The
skin around his eyes was tight, his expression anxious. “Who the hell is Trey?”
Her heart began to thud hard again, and she felt light-headed.
Mal held his hands out, palms up. “You know what? Never mind. Can I . . . are you allowed to leave?”
That was what she needed to hear to get control again. Panic gave way to complete exasperation. “Ugh. Yes. Yes, I can leave.” She turned so she was standing right in front of him, her hands fisted at her sides. “I’m not a fucking slave here, okay? Smith isn’t going to send some asshole to beat the shit out of me because I wouldn’t fuck that prick.”
The look in his eyes darkened. “He seemed to be doing just fine all on his own.”
Lilith rubbed her sore wrists. “Nothing was going to happen. Not in the club.”
“Right.”
“Mal . . .”
“No. I get it.” He took a deep breath. “Can I take you home? Please?”
Lilith’s shoulders slumped, the fight going out of her. “Yeah.”
He reached for her, but she recoiled. She didn’t want to be touched. Not yet. “I’m fine.” Her response was ingrained and automatic.
Mal didn’t argue. He walked beside her, giving her some space as she texted Smith letting him know both that Frank’s advances hadn’t been welcomed and that she was going home.
“Who’s Trey?” Mal asked again when they were in the car.
Lilith bristled. She swallowed past the thick lump that had risen in her throat.
“He’s no one,” she said as they drove away.
For three simple words, they felt foul in her mouth, just wrong. The instant she said them, she wanted to take them back.
Trey deserved better. He was so many times the man Frank was. He deserved to be more than nothing.
Chapter 10
Lilith wondered if this was what it felt like to be a high school girl.
Trey hadn’t called or texted in two days, and while she should have been relieved, she was beside herself. Could it be he’d grown tired of her aloof attitude? As well he should. Who did she think she was, anyway? As if she could afford to throw away his business.
And . . . She missed him more than she knew how to articulate. How many hours they’d spent lounging in his bed, on his couch, even his floor, not having sex, though they’d done that too, just talking.
Now that she was without them, she missed his incessant questioning. Though it had been unnerving in some ways, it was thrilling in others. When he sought her opinion, taking her thoughts seriously and drawing out more in depth answers, she felt more aware—present in her own head when she was usually so far lost.
A melodramatic, irritating voice in her head thought she might just die if he didn’t want to be her friend anymore.
He’d said they were friends.
He’d made it clear she could call him. As a friend.
But that was too complicated, wasn’t it? There were lines she couldn’t blur, no matter how sweet the bullshit Trey spun sounded. If he knew, if he really knew her, this whole friends nonsense would go right out the window. He was just a peculiar boy; that was all. Noble. Maybe he wanted to believe they could be friends, but they couldn’t.
They shouldn’t.
He had gotten caught up in some altruistic, romantic idea. That was what innocent college boys did. It was a matter of time before he lost interest and life went back to normal again.
The thought made her more miserable than she was comfortable acknowledging.
The giddy, relieved giggle that escaped her when the phone rang late that second day was shameful. Her heart was pounding with anticipation and exhilaration.
What are you, sixteen and about to be asked to prom?
Lilith cleared her throat and forced herself to take a deep breath before she answered. “Hey.” There. That sounded flippant enough.
“Hey, you.”
Her chest felt warm.
“What can I do you for?”
He chuffed, then gave a nervous laugh. “I, um . . .”
Lilith sat up straight on her bed, cocking her head as she listened to him stutter.
Though he was a sweet boy, Trey could also be very cocky. He was almost always in perfect control of himself. She’d glimpsed this side of him before, ever so briefly at the club that first night, but it was so rare it was endearing.
“Spit it out.” Her tease was gentle, testing the waters. “I’m listening.”
He paused before he spoke, his voice smooth and clear now. “You always ask me why I ask you so many questions?”
Lilith jolted. It was like jumping into the middle of an intense conversation. She had no idea where this was coming from after a week and a few days of dancing around each other and two days without any sort of contact.
“Yes,” she answered, her tone wary. She didn’t know if she liked being led down a road when she didn’t know the destination.
He took several deep breaths before he could speak. “When I was in high school there was a girl.” His voice was soft, faraway. “Her name was Kassandra, and she was incredible. I was very much in love with her. She didn’t know, but I was.”
Lilith found her throat was tight. “What happened?” She knew something had. She could read that much in his voice.
“She . . . we were ice skating. It was our senior year, and we went together. She was racing around the rink, smiling and laughing at me because I kept falling on my ass. She was so graceful.”
He trailed off, and for a long while, there was only the sound of his breaths coming and going. When he continued, his voice was rough with remembered grief. “She was skating back to me, still smiling. She was halfway across the rink when she grabbed her chest, and she fell down.
“Kass never fell. Never.”
“Trey . . .” Lilith whispered, aching for him. She wished with everything inside her she could be by his side.
“She died in my arms. After the autopsy, the doctors said heart was a ticking time bomb, and that day it went off.”
Another handful of breaths. Lilith had no idea what to say.
“You reminded me of her,” he said. “When you looked up at me at the club that night, you looked like her for just a second.” A beat. “I know you’re not her. That was just what sparked my attention.”
Lilith turned this information over in her head. “Okay. Well, I get why you wanted to fuck me, then, but that still doesn’t explain why you ask so many questions.” Maybe it was an asshole-ish thing to say, but she was confused. She wasn’t at all sure why he’d called her out of the blue to tell her this.
“Kass was a . . . unique girl,” he continued after a moment. “There was so much about her that was a mystery to me. There was a . . .” He mulled for a second, as if searching for the right word. “Darkness about her. Not a badness but something a little heavier than most of the other kids. Maybe it was something, or I might have been imagining it, but I never asked, so she could never tell.”
He exhaled in a long, slow gust. “You remind me of her. A lot. I suppose you’re getting all the questions I could never bring myself to ask her.”
Lilith hummed and then huffed as she processed this information. “Guess it’s the same variation of the usual.”
“How’s that?”
Though he couldn’t see her, Lilith shrugged. “A lot of times, the guys who are with me? They say different names. They like to think they’re with someone else.”
Trey didn’t speak right away. “I know I’m talking to you. I care about your answers.
“Okay.” It was easier not to argue this point. “Why are you telling me this now, anyway?”
“I don’t know. I guess I figured I’d asked so much of you and your past, but never offered up anything about me.”
“I never asked.”
“I know, and I think I would have answered if you had. It doesn’t matter though. I think in any relationship—friendship or otherwise—there has to be a give and take. I can give regardless of wh
ether you ask for it.”
Lilith had to laugh. She’d missed this, missed his logical reasoning, however ironically irrational it was.
“Okay,” she said again.
“Can I see you?” he asked after a beat.
Lilith was very glad then she wasn’t in front of him, because her lips tugged up and her cheeks felt flushed. “Yeah.”
~0~
Trey hadn’t said a single word when he opened the door to admit her. He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her inside at the same time he tilted his head down to capture her lips.
It wasn’t even a matter of following his lead. Lilith had genuinely missed him. Looking back, she couldn’t remember at all which of them was in the driver’s seat. It rather felt as though they were in perfect sync. Maybe it was just that over the time they’d spent together, she’d learned him so well. She knew how to respond to his touch and knew when he wanted her to make the next move.
One way or another, the next thing Lilith knew, her back was against the wall, her legs wrapped around his waist as he pressed his body against hers. Her hands between them, she fumbled with the button of his pants, helping him slide them down even as he hiked up her skirt.
Of course she wasn’t wearing any panties.
He growled against her lips, his tongue seeking hers. In stark contrast to his hungry movements, his fingers were gentle. He traced along the line of her neck so with tender strokes.
When he was inside her, Lilith felt a curious sensation of relief. She got no physical pleasure from sex. What she felt, being with him again, was like salve on a wound, water on a parched throat. The discomfort that had been churning in her gut, niggling at the back of her mind was soothed.
This was personal, she realized when she opened her eyes to find him looking back at her. She had no idea how to define it but that: personal.
Feeling a little shaky, she wrapped her arms around his neck, tangling her fingers in his hair as they settled into a hot, quick rhythm. It didn’t take long. She squeezed around him, her grin smug when he whimpered. She reached down, cupping his ass, letting her fingers wander.
Duplicity Page 7
