Perv (Filth #1) (3 page)

My friend laughs because he knows exactly what I mean.

The gym isn't bad. The high end equipment is more than serviceable. Three floors to the gym itself and two Olympic-sized pools, but the majority of the people here are hardcore stay-at-home moms and men who like the idea of weightlifting and big muscles.

Tarek rests a hand under the bar. “One of these days you're going to rearrange your face.”

“
Still will be prettier than you.” Sweat leaks into my eyes.

I'm on the second to last set, and my hold isn't as firm as it needs to be. Should have brought my gloves. Shouldn't have let her trick me. Should have asked her who ratted me out. Should have pinched her clit instead of caressed it.

Shoulda, coulda, whatever. Fuck her.

“
Have you heard from Duke?” I ask.

“
Yeah. Why?”

Clearly I'm not going to exorcise the damn woman from my thoughts. This is hour twelve where she's had center stage in my psyche. I don't live in denial. She isn't going anywhere until I can exact some kind of revenge, or at least know more about the evil, sexy...jackass.

But I only tell Tarek, “I need to hire one of his paralegals.”

“
For what?” Suspicion fills Tarek's tone.

The last time I did...well, we don't talk about it. “Long story.”

And I don't have half of it. Hell, a fourth of it. Who sent Stealth to fuck with me? How did they know I'd like her taste?

My memory isn't what it used to be, but it is better than most people’s. I run through the faces of her club friends and try to tease out any memory of seeing them before. And nothing. Stealth doesn't have the kind of face I'd forget, and I never forgot a woman's signature taste. Her name is negligible. Really, dead weight.

With a growl that peels my mouth over my teeth, I finish the last rep. Tarek grabs the bar to notch the metal into place. I sit up, using the edge of my shirt to wipe the sweat out of my eyes since I forgot to bring a towel. For a moment there's just that stupid gym music filling the silence.

“
What the fuck crawled up your ass?” Tarek asks. He steps back from the bench press, his gaze hard on my face.

“
Nothing.”

I don't check to see if he's bought the lie. He's told me more than once to stop fucking with women's heads because one day karma will drop kick me in the nuts. I don't see what I do that way. I'm simply giving my lovers what they want, their deepest desires. Don't women want to lose control with a man who has alpha tendencies? Don't they want the best sex of their life? That's all I provide—the best sex a woman could want.

No shame or excuses. No need to pretend like she wants a relationship to get good sex. The women who do want a relationship, I avoid. Women who start to gaze at me as though I can be that honey-I'm-home guy, I drop—kindly.

If my motto changes, or I meet a woman who makes me reconsider my moral code...Who the fuck am I kidding? Normal women, women who like relationships don't date perverts.

Beside all that, there are other important things to talk about—like tracking Stealth down. “If you manage to get a hold of him again, tell him I need him to call me ASAP.”

“
No. I won't. What is it?”

I build up my best “fuck you” glare and launch it at him. Tarek folds his arms over his chest and waits. We've been friends for close to a decade. The normal shit that works to get people to back up bounces off him.

I sigh. “I've pissed someone off and they are out to get me.” I sound like a goddamn drama queen.

“
They are out to get you?” His voice pitches low. “You are aware how paranoid that sounds, right?”

Yeah. I do. I pinch the bridge of my nose and try to breathe and think like a normal human being. “Like I said, long story. Someone put my dick on a pike, and I just want to know why.”

I shake my head at the second dramatic announcement. I doubt I'll ever see Stealth again. Women are better at revenge. They don't do victory dances or come back to top themselves. They come in, do the mental damage that requires therapists to fix, and leave for good. She wished me a nice life and went back to her friends. And, no, I didn't watch her with them after she walked away.
Fuck her
.

But she left the club maybe twenty minutes later.

And that doesn't matter. I want to know who sent her into my path, and I'll exact my own revenge on both of them. For Stealth, all I need is ten minutes and she'll never be the same. And the person who sent her? I don't know.

Why am I dead sure Stealth's revenge was a team effort? Women run in packs. They do not go to the bathroom alone. You lie, cheat, or hurt her in any way, and guess who is driving the getaway vehicle when it's time to fuck up your car's paint job? Stealth knew too many details about me to not have a co-conspirator—one I’d fucked.

I'm upfront about the kind of relationship I'll have, sure. Doesn't mean jack shit sometimes, and that means the list of potential co-conspirators could be too damn long for me to slog through.

I scrub my hands over my face and my skin feels tacky from sweat.

Tarek remains silent for another full ten seconds. “Told you so. If I hear from Duke before you, I'll tell him to call you, but you should let this go.”

Let Stealth get the last hooray while her taste makes a home in my mouth? My insides clench at the thought.
What if I can never shake her?

“
You know I can't,” I spit out.

I'm not OCD or anything, but it's hard to walk away from things normal people probably can. I don't suffer from road rage, but I'm that news story where things somehow escalate. You know the kind of story. Backed up traffic, one driver gets cut off, the other driver flips the bird, and it all ends with jail time because one driver couldn't just shake the slight the fuck off.

I'm the someone who can't shake it the fuck off. I can fixate and I like to excel at anything I expend my energy on. That quality made me a fantastic soldier.

Not important. Who the fuck is Stealth?

I press my palms into my eyes with shaking hands. I have jitters like a goddamn junkie. “Please have him call me.”

Yeah. Reduced to begging. At least my eye isn't twitching. There is hope for me yet.

“
What did this woman do?” Tarek's tone of voice says it all.

What can I say that would make sense to an outsider? She refused me? She took away my arsenal? She called me on my shit? Reminded me that no matter how gently I break things off or how clearly I state my intentions, there's collateral damage sometimes. Those are niggling worries in the back of my mind. At the forefront it's her. Just her.

“
She gave me a taste of something I haven't had, and then she walked away. And it was all to fuck with me.”

There isn't a flicker of empathy in Tarek's face. “Isn't that what you do?”

“
Every woman I take to my bed leaves satisfied.”

He shrugs. “If you say so.”

“
What?” I rise from the bench press, my fists balled. “What is this Obi-wan knowledge that you're pretending to have?”

Tarek steps up into my face. “I know I'm not the one sitting here with my balls in a knot. How about you?”

“
Have him call me,” I bite out.

“
You know what will help?”

Here we go again. He believes all I need is less free time. He's right, to a point, but... “I'm not going to work for you.”

“
If you did, you'd be able to teach these men how to spot. No nuts on your forehead.”

The tension that had my every muscle bunched gives way as I laugh. “You're an ass, and, no, I'm still not working for you. I'll find something to do. I'm not a fan of sitting around and spinning on my thumb anyway.”

He spread his hands. “Clearly you need something to distract you.”

I put my hands on my waist and glance up. He's right. I know it. I received my honorable discharge a year ago and went home—to Georgia—for close to two months. I had nightmares, sure, once everything caught up to me. A few steps further, and the shrapnel flung from a homemade IED would have cut my life short. The guy in front of me got that fate.

I'm...lucky. I have a pirate scar on my face and a lifetime prescription to exercise daily to keep my shoulder from going stiff. On top of that, my mother babied me for those two months before I settled back into California.

So what life I have left, I need to do something meaningful with. I'm not looking to strip again. I have zero interest in doing security work. My degree is in computer engineering, and maybe I should use that for something more than wall decoration in my home.

I will. I'm not wasting a moment.

I don't consider it wasteful to hunt down Stealth and make her pay.

*****

It takes two long days before Duke hits me back on my cell. I'm rabid by then. Not sure if I make much sense to his paralegal. I just recall telling her to get her hands on Fade's security videos. Check the parking lot for the woman's car and, if she can, send me any video she gains access to.

She does.

I text Duke and let him know he should give his paralegal a raise. He tells me I should get a life and he'll call me later.

I would like to say I watch the security feeds with a blank face, cold heart, and an even colder gaze. Like I said, I don't do denial. I'm on the footage like flies on shit.

Dragging my chair closer to my bed, I adjust the brightness on my laptop. The playback is grainy, but I easily find myself in the crowd. I watch the exchange straight through without mental comment. To my surprise, the whole back and forth lasts about thirty minutes from beginning to end.

I switch views, this one closer—the camera has to be behind the bar. I come into view, drumming my fingers on the counter after a minute of waiting, and looking preppy as fuck in my polo shirt and halo of dirty blonde hair.

At the other end, Stealth pays me no mind. The redhead leans and says something to Stealth. Covertly, Stealth scans the club. Her brows go up, and I know that expression. She approves of what she sees.

My blood turns to ice. I fist my hands against the keyboard. She hadn't known who I was—not on sight. I'd been a man she wanted to fuck. Proof of that is how she abandons her group of friends, her drink, and sidles right next to me. The entire bar was up for grabs and she drifted to me.

What the fuck did I say to her to change all that?

In the vid, my back straightens. I'm trying to pinpoint the scent. My head tilts to the left—it's her. A short, curvaceous woman in a black dress, red heels and fragrance I want to taste.

I send off the first flirtatious reply without waiting to think things through. I can't read lips, but I see we jump right into a conversation—no names exchanged.

I watch, damn near holding my breath, for the moment shit snowballs. I pick up the flashes of desire and anger playing over her face, and that's all I can see. I fast-forward through The Moment—the one where she gives me a taste.

Exchange over.

Relaxing my hands, I suffer through the rest.

After she hits me with the
coup de grace
, she slinks back to her friends. I want to say she goes to recoup, but she doesn't. She cheers the redhead, laughs, looking relaxed and unfettered.

Every second I force myself to watch her give zero fucks about my very existence, and I just want to fuck up her world. No. I just want to fuck her in a way that her world is never the same.

Finally she leaves. Her squad stays for another hour and finally follows suit.

I don't want to watch myself for the next three hours as I troll the club. I may not do denial but stark truth isn't appealing either.

But the important thing to note is that she left the club in a simple sedan. Her friends piled into an SUV. The redhead is the designated driver. The club, bless them, has a habit of noting every license plate.

Though Stealth's car leads nowhere, the SUV is registered to the redhead. And the redhead's name leaves a trail to a job and daily activities. That name allows me to discover every Monday Stealth meets the redhead at the Starbucks downtown.

That's all I need to know.

I plant my ass at a table in a corner that has a direct view of the door and the counter. Stealth struts through the doors at exactly 9:03 a.m. My breath doesn't hitch or any bullshit like that, but my muscles are carved from stone as she does her smile—the eye-crinkle one—at the girl behind the counter.

Her voice isn't as I remembered. In the club, Stealth had had a huskiness to her tone that could caress with a single word. Now there's a fluidity to her timbre as she orders some kind of chai-frap-latte. There's no flirty skirt either, but a professional pants suit that still manages to curve to her tits and ass. The navy blue shade somehow makes her skin glow. No earrings, no necklaces, no cleavage. Her bun is too tight for even stray curls to escape and glisten in the sunlight. Nothing about her appearance says she'll let a man stick his hand up her dress to get a little revenge.

Fucking Stealth.

But it's her, with that long, sexy stride. In hindsight, her walk should have tipped me off. She moves as though she knows her pussy can topple empires.

What had blinded me? Even as I settle into the hard wooden chair, stretching my legs under the small table, I can't say what tugged at me about her. No. That's a lie. She was vivacious, witty, and cocky, but I can't pinpoint her taste, her scent—that's what usually drives me.

But none of that matters. She's doing her shy, seductive smile, and she has no idea I'm lurking. I stand, shove my hands into my jeans and do my own stealthing.

She's waiting for her order, blissfully unaware she's bleeding, and I'm a goddamn shark with a taste for her. I saddle up much too close behind her and smile with all my teeth.