“Oh, that. Did that bother you, sweetie pie?” Her eyes dance as they look at mine. She’s toying with me and I am in no mood for games after Leader. If she’s not careful, I’m going to bend her over my knee and spank the shit out of her – or I would, if she was going to fire me. Unfortunately, she isn’t. Straightening herself up, Elizabeth pulls her shoulders back and then walks around the side of my desk. I am greeted by the sight of a stunning pair of calves which have been thrust into the air by five-inch spike heels. I love a woman in stilettos. They are so fucking elegant. If I had my way, I’d chain all women inside a pair and never allow them to take the things off.
I raise my eyebrows as she waits for my response. “It bothered me,” I say dangerously quietly, and I stare into those wicked amber eyes and wonder how far I can push this. Hell, if I’ve had my hand up her skirt in front of half the workforce and I’m still here to tell the tale, I reckon I’ve got a little wiggle room. “It bothered me an awful fucking lot and I’ve decided that if you’re not going to fire me, I’m going to quit. I expect to be treated with respect. Normally, if a woman made the mistake of doing what you did out there, she wouldn’t be alive long enough to tell the tale. As I have had to change my ways of late, I’d at least make sure she suffered horribly for the next few days.”
Elizabeth should be looking rather pale right about now, and the odd tremor wouldn’t go amiss. Instead, she looks positively turned on by my sentence. She has no idea what she’s dealing with here.
“And how exactly would you make her suffer?” Elizabeth then perches her pert little butt on the side of the desk and raises a solitary eyebrow back at me. If she thinks she has the upper hand here, she is much mistaken. Pushing myself up sharply from my chair, I stride over to the blind and close it with a deft twist of my wrist, shutting out the world around us.
“Are you really sure you want to know, ma chérie? I’d think long and hard about that one, poppet, because once I start, I don’t stop, and you might not like where we’re going.” Actually, it’ll be more of a fifty-fifty thing. She’ll love some bits and hate others, but that’s her problem, not mine.
Elizabeth licks her lips. “I’ve wanted to fuck you from the second you walked through my doors and that was a very long time ago, Adrien.”
“So? Everyone wants to fuck me. Join the fucking queue.” Her revelation isn’t news to me. I’ve seen her eyes on me several times, looking through the glass as I’m working, or lingering on me a little too long when we’re in a meeting. I’m used to it. It barely even registers these days. Besides, I generally make a point of not fucking the boss. People get cranky about that sort of thing and if I’m going to make my way up the Leader board in this industry, I intend to do it the hard way. Is there any other way?
“No one has to know,” she purrs, and I wonder if the woman can read my mind. Interesting. You still shouldn’t fuck the boss. Put an end to this rubbish now. The trouble is, I want sex, and I haven’t had it in two days. The last girl I picked up ran away screaming. Yes, literally. With this is mind, I guess it’s only fair to warn my boss of what she should expect. I’ll also need a ‘You won’t be fired for this,’ guarantee.
“You can’t handle what I dish out, pussycat. I’m a sadist. I like hurting people. I like inflicting pain. I love making women cry. You wouldn’t last five minutes in my world.” Goddammit. I’ve just ruined my chances of sinking my dick into something soft and wet in the next five minutes. What is wrong with me, today? Leader must have really done a number on me. That woman must hate me so bad.
Elizabeth changes tactics. “Why didn’t Leader kill you out there today?”
“She tried to. She put Sarin on the door handle I had to come out of.”
“Well, she must have had an antidote for it, else you’d be dead. You came to at the warehouse, right?”
“Yes.” I have to confess, I did wonder the same thing myself. Considering Leader is my enemy, it would have made a lot more sense to have let me die. She must have had an antidote on her. Why waste that on an enemy? Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice to be alive, but it’s still weird. Maybe she wants to fuck me, too. If she does, she’s got a funny way of showing it.
“Do you two like each other?” Elizabeth looks me up and down coolly. I have no time for this shit. My lips thin.
“No, we don’t like each other. As I mentioned previously, she seems to enjoy causing me bodily harm. I think I’ve become her latest toy. The woman takes great pleasure in yanking my chain. For the record, it would be nice if you sent me on an assignment before she gets there, not after. After tends to be tricky.” There. I’m glad I got that out.
“This is the problem, Adrien. We want to know how she is always one step ahead of us. How is it she always seems to be exactly where we want to be?” Elizabeth looks me up and down carefully. I know exactly what she is thinking. Now I know my reputation proceeds me, but seriously, this is too much.
“No, I am not fucking her,” I grit out. “I read the rule book, Elizabeth. To be honest, I wish I was. I have a lot of really horrible things I’d like to do to her.” I smile and flex my fingers. Hopefully, that’s cleared that one up. I may be a man of few morals, but I do have some. Not many, as I’ve said before, but some.
“Good to know. If I find out you are fucking her, I’ll take your head off at the neck. We clear?” Those amber eyes eat into mine. They are beginning to turn me on again.
“We’re clear. While we’re being upfront, I don’t want a relationship, and I’m never exclusive. I won’t phone you, I won’t remember your birthday, and I certainly won’t pop over for dinner at the weekend. Now get out of my office before I throw you against the wall and show you who’s really boss around these parts.”
Elizabeth’s eyes go dangerously dark in color, and I can see I’ve angered her. Excellent. The first step to getting a woman eating out of your hand is to piss them off. No one likes rejection. While it’s tempting to just give in to my base instincts and fuck her up against the wall, I’m not going to. If she wants it, she’s going to have to work for it.
Standing up, I straighten my shoulders and sigh. I really need that ice pack about now and a shower might be nice. After that, a liter of vodka wouldn’t go amiss, either. For once in my life, I am going to do the sensible thing. Walk away, Adie. Walk away. I stand up and get ready to make my grand exit.
“Later boss lady,” I purr, smacking her ass sharply on the way out. The look on her face is priceless.
Adie
A day later, I am sitting in the cinema with a massive paper cup of soda and the biggest bucket of popcorn I can find. The soda is so I can pretend to need the toilet for half an hour when I get bored with the rom-com we are about to watch. The bucket of popcorn is so I can amuse myself throughout the film by throwing it at my date and unsuspecting viewers.
If this is my penance for failure of my third assignment in a row, it is a good one. I am already suicidal, and I don’t think it would take much more to tip me over the edge. If Hugh Grant pops up anywhere in this film, I swear I am going to mow everyone down in this theatre and beg the cops to take me away.
“So, Sandra, what are we watching today?” Sandra, in case you haven’t guessed, is the colleague who made me the bet that I would fail my latest assignment. She won that bet hands down and she was looking very smug as we queued in line to watch the latest offering of trashy drivel that Hollywood insists on pumping out to women. I really wish they wouldn’t. It makes my job so much harder. Women watch these movies and then expect men to be in touch with their feelings. They encourage them to believe that males are caring and considerate, and desperate for conversation after sex. Apparently, Hollywood men are not all about tits and ass, and they value brains and politically correct opinions. This, of course, sets women everywhere up for disaster. Men are all about tits and ass. We don’t care about minds as long as they’re one track and focused on the same thing that ours are – S.E.X. Conversation is highly overrated, I’m aller
gic to feelings, and she can have whatever opinion she likes as long as she doesn’t feel the need to share it with me. Generally, she’s gagged, though, so it isn’t a big problem. Fifty Shades of Grey wasn’t completely terrible, but Grey was way too normal and a bit insipid for my tastes.
“So, what do you think?” Sandra says, smiling at me adoringly. I have no idea what she’s just said because I’ve just been staring at her chest, but I nod and smile.
“Sounds amazing.” Sandra looks at me sideways, which means I probably haven’t answered the question in the way I was supposed to, so I distract her by thrusting my hand between her legs and cupping her cunt. She squeals and slams her legs closed, which I have to confess is a most unexpected response. I plough on regardless.
“What are the chances of a blow job and do you fuck on first dates?” I usually feel the need to get this question out there ASAP. That way, I can get the slap out of the way at the beginning of the evening.
Sandra snorts. “You’re here because you’re shit at your job. What makes you think I want to sleep with you?” That comment takes me back.
“You don’t want to sleep with me?” I ask. This is a first.
Sandra shakes her head and looks at me aghast. “Whatever gave you that idea?” she asks.
I frown. This is disturbing news. In the history of never has a woman ever said that they don’t want to sleep with me – unless they’re married, which means they want to sleep with me, but they don’t want to get shot.
“Why don’t you want to sleep with me?” This has put a bit of a downer on my evening if I’m honest, but I’m sure I can figure something out.
“I don’t do men,” she replies. I figure it’s not a completely unfriendly response, so I decide it might be worth another shot. Maybe I can meet her in the middle somewhere.
“What if I brought another woman along? Then you can have your fun, and I can have mine. It’s a win/win, right? You can even pick the girl if you like.” I give her my sexy come-to-bed and be ravished from dawn until dusk eyes, and cross my fingers I’m not about to get the slap I somehow managed to dodge the first time.
The black fringe shakes as her eyes hide behind it. “Don’t do men,” she repeats for the second time. Yeah, I got that part. Fucking hell, what is wrong with me today? I usually have a queue of women lining up to fuck me, but for some reason the Dumortier charm has up and left me. It’s either that, or Sandra is ninety-nine percent blind, or she really is a lesbian – and they’re as rare as gold dust, trust me.
“Tell you what,” I say amiably, “how about you do your girl thing and I’ll just sit back and watch?” Never let it be said that I, Adrien Dumortier, cannot compromise. “Hell, I’ll even pay you.” As long as you don’t tell anyone. I’d never live it down.
“You do realise I kill people for a living, just like you, right?” Sandra gives me a look.
“Yeah, but you don’t do it as well as I do.” She ruins my swagger by bursting into laughter. Yeah, that’s right, rub it in. Just because I am having problems with Leader, it does not make me a shit operative. There are a few snags I need to work out, but everything will fall into place soon enough. Melinda is only human, after all.
“Just shut up and watch the film,” she says, shaking her head. The lights then begin to dim, so I’m not sure if she just rolled her eyes at me, but I think there’s a good chance that she did. Then Hugh bloody Grant comes on screen and I want to scream and slit my wrists. I wouldn’t fuck her now even if she begged me to, and I’m pretty sure that I’m going to need the pisser for almost the entire duration of this film. It must have been something I ate.
“God that was awful,” I say shuddering, when we finally walk out of the theatre.
Sandra gives me a look. “How can you say that when you didn’t even watch half of it?”
“Didn’t need to. I’m an instinctively good judge of film beginnings. That one tanked.”
“Good.” Sandra is almost power walking down the street in her hurry to get away from me. Ouch.
“Good?” I ask, a little confused.
“It was supposed to be a punishment, right?” She glances back at me quickly and winks.
Damn, I desperately need sex. “I don’t suppose you want to invite me round for coffee?” I ask. She shakes her head immediately and almost breaks into a run. “I could give you a lift home,” I offer. I have to shout that last sentence because she is already half a mile away from me, but it makes no difference. Sandra can’t hear me. She’s crossed the road and has her back to me. It’s official. The Dumortier charm is dead - either that or my aftershave needs an update.
When I get back to my apartment, I am in an unbelievably bad mood. It’s a combination of things. I failed my latest assignment miserably, I’ve eaten nothing but popcorn all day, I’m nowhere near drunk enough, I can’t stop thinking about Lois, and I really wish that I’d fucked my boss after all. My balls are still throbbing from Leader’s earlier attack and pain makes me horny. I usually prefer to dish it out, but receiving it turns me on as well. My family is dysfunctional like that. We’re all assholes.
Yeah, I am not a nice guy. I’m not ashamed to admit it, either. I’m not even remotely normal, whatever that means. Most of my childhood was spent being beaten and shaped into something so monstrous, no one could ever love me. Even though I know that to be the truth, it still stings when I’m rejected. I have the face of an angel and the soul of something so black that tar looks white in comparison.
Up until now, my life has been all about sex. I’ve helped my father traffic women for years, and although the work turned my stomach, I’m afraid to say I had quite the flair for it. I can make women do anything I want them to. James was the same. James. I want to kill him. Scratch that. I’m going to kill him if I get my hands on him. We were supposed to have been friends. Friends get each other out of tight spots, but James left me to rot. I bet he was dancing on the rooftops when he thought I’d died. He got rid of me and managed to get the girl, too. I can’t stop thinking about Lois. I can still smell her, taste her, feel myself sliding inside her. She was mine, or she was only a heartbeat away from being mine. If I’d have had just a little more time with her, James wouldn’t have stood a chance.
In my head this all seems like yesterday, and yet it was months ago now. I can’t let go of this. It’s screwing with every waking thought, which means my work and personal life are flailing around miserably. This cannot continue. This is not how the Dumortier family operate. We don’t roll over and take it. We get even – generally in spectacular style. The trouble is that James and I have been like brothers for as long as I can remember. Brothers don’t leave each other to die, though. I nearly went crazy when Alain locked me in that little room while the heavy bomb belt strapped to my waist bleeped its countdown at five-minute intervals. My twin brother took great delight in taunting me at regular intervals, describing how he couldn’t wait to press the trigger should James and Lois not arrive back in time to rescue me. There was no love lost between me and my older brother. I hated him from a very early age, and with good reason. He was a monster. Some people think that I’m a monster, but I have nothing on him, trust me. You don’t want to know the kind of things he put me through as a kid. If I didn’t do as I was told, he’d string me up, strip me, beat me, torment me, and torture me – sometimes for days on end. The trouble with me is I’m stubborn, and I can take pain - way more than is good for me. I’ve come close to death several times after one of my brother’s beatings, and it’s amazing that I’m still here today, if I’m honest. In the end, the beatings didn’t work. I’d just retreat inside myself. I’d disappear to this little place inside my head, and no matter what he did to me, I wouldn’t give him what he wanted. There was no point giving in. I’d be strung up again days later for another ridiculous violation of the rules, so I usually gritted my teeth and went the distance. When Alain realised that his tactics weren’t working anymore, he got smart, though. He then moved on to my sister,
Alaina, and he controlled me through her. That worked perfectly until he killed her. That’s another story entirely, and I can’t think about that now. I’m depressed enough as it is.
The only good thing to come out of this situation is the knowledge that my brother is dead. He can no longer hurt me. The weight that has been lifted from my shoulders is astronomical. Think of someone dropping a six axle, forty-ton lorry on your chest, and you’ll be somewhere close to what I was dealing with for most of my life. Yeah, I know my rejoicing in my twin brother’s death makes me sound like a bastard, but the guy was pure evil. I’ve done things, awful, horrible things because I knew that the consequences of not doing them were too severe to contemplate. I’ve trafficked women, innocent, unsuspecting women, and trained them up so they can be sold on as sex slaves. I’ve run arms. I’ve tortured, maimed, and killed people. I’m an expert with both drugs and poison, and a crack shot. I have a fiery temper, and I like to drive fast cars even faster than their maker intended. To atone for my incredibly shitty behavior, I decided to join the other side, which is why I’m now with Elizabeth. I helped them take down my brother, and at the moment she is doing her best to take down his empire piece by piece. It won’t be easy. Alain was always very careful to hide his tracks. Even when he whipped the skin off my back so badly I nearly died, I never saw the inside of a hospital. He’d have rather killed me than given the enemy a chance to even up the score. That’s the kind of lovely man Alain was. Stop thinking. You need to stop thinking.
Rage is bubbling up through my chest as I head towards the kitchen cabinet that contains my alcohol supply. I have devoted two whole cupboards to Vodka, all sorts of Vodka as it happens, and I’ve yet to decide which is my favorite brand. Tonight, I intend to devote a whole lot of time and attention to the matter. By tomorrow, I won’t remember which one I liked the best, but I’m not going to let it deter me.
Deadly Retaliation: A Dark Bully Harem Romance (A Twisted, Dark and Deadly Romance Book 1) Page 3
