A Betty's Pledge: Volume One (22 page)

Like I said, my background was completely different from these upper class women.

Marissa and I paused outside the closed double doors to the sitting room, our actions
so synchronized it was if we’d planned it.

“You ready?” I asked, anticipation laced in my tone. She nodded emphatically, and
we both reached for the door to swing it open.

My eyes scanned the dimly lit room, trying to take so much in at once.

Several of the Consorts were dispersed around the room, chatting happily to the remaining
Betties. The men were dressed to the nines, looking devastatingly delectable in collared
silk shirts and pants, tailored and pressed. The women were just as elegant, refined
and decked out in designer gowns and dripping with jewels.

I heard Marissa talking to someone briefly, her arm leaving mine as she turned to
the side.

The sitting area was open and welcoming, with a large hearth and fire serving as the
focal point. The décor was English antique with a modern flair, and the color palette
was warm and inviting, offering a mild dose of comfort given the subtle tension in
the room.

There were several men I didn’t recognize in matching white collared shirts and black
dress pants holding platters of hors d’oeuvres and tall glasses of champagne. I had
just finished reaching for a flute, bringing the sweet nectar to my lips, when I caught
a sharp sense of uneasiness spread through me. Wondering its source, my eyes quickly
glanced about the room, trying to pinpoint the feeling of impending doom.

That’s when I saw her . . .

Standing in the middle of the room, staring glaciers in my direction, was none other
than the Queen Bitch herself—Sonia.

Our eyes met for a brief moment as I made my way into the room, and in that second,
I could’ve sworn that she was trying to ensnare me in some kind of voodoo, telepathic
deathtrap. Her posture was stiff, unmoving. Her eyes were laced with disdain, narrowed,
but not enough to give an outside observer any clue as to the sheer hate she emanated.

I tried to offer her a smile, hoping to portray a sense of kindness—a sort of olive
branch to see if she’d relinquish her stare—but to no avail. In fact, I thought my
attempt at friendliness may have made it worse, for a semblance of a grin formed on
her cruel lips. Instead of it being kind or warming, however, it radiated pure evil.
Like the sneer from a hell-beast ready to pounce. Her mouth curved, white teeth bared.

“What the hell is her problem?” I heard Marissa ask.

I turned to look at Marissa, my hate-filled standoff with Loco Sonia broken, and saw
my dear friend giving her own version of a stink-eye right back at the evil harpy.

“I don’t know. I guess she has it in for me.” I shrugged and smiled with small amusement
at seeing my girl getting her hackles up on my behalf. I was so glad to have her with
me in that moment, especially since Mina wasn’t here to fulfill her place as my usual
guard dog when Karma came after me.

“Why? She doesn’t even know you.”

“Guess I rub her the wrong way.”

“Well, I think she’s jealous,” Marissa announced firmly, and this time, I knew the
skank heard her. There was no way she couldn’t have. I chanced a glance back to Sonia
to gauge her reaction, but her gaze was still firmly on me, acting as though she hadn’t
heard. I heard a small growl rumble from Marissa’s direction, but I didn’t turn to
address it. At that moment, Sonia’s gaze slid from my face, down my dress, finally
landing on my shoes.

To one who was trained in the ways of bitchiness, I saw Sonia’s actions for what they
were. Judgment, pure and simple, and concluded the catty bitch found me lacking.

Sonia didn’t think I lived up to the Grant standards.

The way her eyebrow curved into a high arch of disdain as she took in my old Vera
Wang dress topped with a pair of last season’s Brian Atwoods, and how the side of
her mouth rose in a slight smirk. But the clincher, and in my opinion, the key evidence
pointing to her conclusion of me, had been the gentle eye roll she displayed before
turning away from me and capturing Tricia’s attention.

It might have been my own insecurities peeking through, but I’d bet ten to one that
harpy was talking about how I dressed with her hag of a partner, Tricia. The way they’d
both latched on to Sarah that night in the limo, feeding off her fear and insecurities
like two blood-sucking parasites, didn’t leave me with any false hope that they’d
turned over a new leaf this past week. And as I watched the wicked bitch of the west
throw her head back and laugh at something Tricia said, then turn to me and give me
a snide little sneer, just solidified my pissy mood for the evening.

Marissa sneered beside me. “Fuck them. They are just acting like that because of the
way the boys responded when you walked into the room.”

I turned to my friend, my eyes automatically rolling in my head a little at her outright
fib. “Sure, Ris. Just ignore them. They leech off fear like whores depend on a strong
dose of antibiotics.”

The Avoidance

~ Isaac Wilson ~

Just don’t talk to her, Wilson. Keep your head above water and don’t even try to make
conversation. Just take her, fuck her in the back room, and call it good. Demons destroyed,
curiosity sated . . .

I stood at the roaring fireplace in the sitting room, staring into the orange flame
as if all life’s answers resided within. It held me captive; not by the tantalizing
dance of the fire hypnotizing me.

No.

It was because one of the logs burning near the bottom looked an awful lot like the
golden-haired goddess who haunted my every waking minute. A supple chest displayed,
long legs an enticement, her body alight with a passionate fire that burned like my
desire for her destroying me.

She sang to me there in the flames, the heat coming from the conflagration matching
the fever in my blood. And if I wasn’t so damned desperate, I might have been able
to pull myself from her enthrallment. But no, she had me in her snare.

“You in a better mood?” Carson’s voice pulled my attention back to the land of sanity.
He clamped his overtly large mitt on my shoulder, making my body buckle slightly under
the weight of it.

“Getting there.” I held up my glass, showing the three fingers of whiskey sitting
in the bottom of it. It’d been my third for the night, and I was well on my way to
draining the glass.

A part of me, a small fragment, had enough dignity left to feel ashamed that I’d resorted
to such measures. Yet the night would prove to be the deciding factor. If I could
just get her out of my system, perhaps things would go back to how they were. The
monotonous sex games would take their toll, and I’d be out of here in less than six
weeks.

I took another deep pull on my drink.

“Jesus,” Carson said with a chuckle. “Pace yourself, Isaac. You drink like that this
early in the game, you’re going to end up saying something to someone that you’ll
regret.”

“You say that like it’s happened before,” Trent said, coming up to join us by the
fireplace. Carson laughed.

“Remember that time in Catalina when he drank all that rum?” Carson said, his expression
eager. Trent laughed, clamping his hand down on Carson’s shoulder, enjoying the chance
to remember another one of my royal fuckups.

“Oh yeah, I will never forget that shit. It was priceless!”

“He was standing there on the beach with an empty bottle in his hand, screaming at
the top of his lungs, ‘But why is the rum gone?’ ” Carson cut in, doing a piss-poor
imitation of my brilliant Johnny Depp interpretation.

“Shut it, fucker,” I told him through a chuckle. “It wasn’t all that dramatic.”

“The fuck it wasn’t,” Trent cut in. “You even had the hand gestures in there and everything.”

“Shove off,” I told them, taking another swig of whiskey as the two asstards laughed
beside me.

The door to the sitting room opened and the three of us turned to see two of the Betties
arrive. As they sauntered through the doorway, they both took in the room in a grand
glance, their heads held high in the common appraisal of the wealthy and elite. Once
it seemed they approved of the décor, both their eyes feasted on their awaiting Consorts.

They both looked beautiful in elegant attire, showcasing their curves and a little
bit of leg. Enough to keep me interested, anyway. As they saw us watching them, their
expressions changed in front of my eyes. They transformed into sex kittens, their
body language open and eager.

“Ripe and ready,” I heard Carson say in a low tone, Trent giving him a nod in agreement.
I felt my mouth curve in a small smirk, thinking of the truth in his statement.

This is exactly what I need . . .

Suddenly, I found myself not so consumed with only one of the Betties. I thought that
perhaps seeing another woman or two waiting and wanting me might just be the thing
I needed to get her off my mind . . . and out of my shower.

The girls approached us, displaying themselves for our perusal with their mannerisms.
Like ripe grapes on the vine, ready for the picking.

The one named Tricia I’d met the night of the party and thought she seemed quite sweet.
Her body was perfect, tall and trim, with just the right amount of curves. But the
thing I’d remembered most about her that night was the fact that her gargantuan fake
titties were about to pop out of her top. I’d never been one to like the feel of silicone,
but I could appreciate the way they looked in a bikini top or under me as I fucked
their owner senseless.

As far as the other one was concerned, she seemed like a different breed of woman.
I couldn’t for the life of me remember her name—only that she was incredibly forward.
We never had what some might call a proper introduction. I do remember watching her
trial, though, and was mesmerized by her vivid blue eyes.

She’d cornered me at the party at one point, grabbing me through my pants to see if
I ‘measured up’. I’d never taken to women who were crass like that, but now considering
the jumbled mess my brain was in thanks to a certain Betty, I figured that perhaps
someone as wild as she seemed to be might be exactly what I needed.

“Good evening.” I brought her hand to my lips and kissed it gently.

“Evening,” she replied, her voice a silken caress of pleasure. “You look good enough
to eat.”

“Funny, I was thinking the same damn thing.” I saw something flash in her eyes at
that moment. They seemed to darken, and the temperature in the room spiked.

As I continued to flirt shamelessly with my blue-eyed vixen whose name I learned was
Sonia, I could hear the sap inside my mind attempt to sit up and dust off his broken
body. He wanted his say, wanted to remind me of my golden-haired lover, and how she
made my toes curl with just an imagined whisper in my ear. Just as he opened his mouth
to speak, however, the hound dog made a blitz attack, taking his ass down to the ground
and resolutely sitting on his head, arms crossed, motioning me to go ahead and continue
to woo said blue-eyed girl into the back room for a little rule breaking.

“I’ve been hoping to get you alone for a while now,” Sonia said to me, her fingernails
running along the seam of my shirt, threatening to cut the threads of the buttons
in a catlike move. “You see, I don’t think our original meeting gave you a proper
assessment of me.”

“I beg to differ,” I told her, my hand snaking around her waist to rest right above
the curve of her bottom. Her dress was low cut in the back, and I smiled wryly as
my fingers came in contact with bare skin. “I think I found out exactly what I needed
to know.”

“And what was that?”

“That you’re my kind of woman,” I told her, pulling her body closer to mine so she
could feel the chubby I was sporting right above her pelvic bone. She didn’t need
to know that said chub was a residual leftover from my fire-log temptress. It served
its purpose. In the back of my mind, I heard the muffled sounds of the sap’s protests,
but I ignored it just as the hound dog threw a sharp elbow to his ’nads, putting him
back into a comatose state.

She smiled at me, telling me with her eyes that she would be willing to let me do
very naughty things to her body, and my mind started to create a plethora of visions
where she was bent over backward, writhing and chanting my name in ecstasy.

At that moment, the doors to the sitting room opened once again, and in walked the
woman of my fantasies.

Mady . . .

Fuck
.

I wanted her. Just that quickly, my mind did a complete one eighty, making her the
starring role in my visions, bent over my bed with her glorious ass on display. I
felt myself harden impossibly, and just like a super hero with insane strength, the
sap inside me threw off the dog, his muscles flexing and body taut with need. And
he became a man on a mission.

Tonight, I’d make her mine.

And it didn’t help that the woman looked like the proverbial wet dream. The front
of her was all proper and conservative, giving off the impression of a politician’s
wife or a loyal girlfriend. But when she turned at the door to take a look around,
I saw that the back of her dress left her entire spine visible.