Chad's Chase (Loving All Wrong Book 2) (5 page)

Eyes moving from my finger and up to my face, he said, “I’m the boss. I don’t mess around with my workers.”

Keeping up the act, I quickly snatched my hand away from his. “Ohmygod, I’m so very,
very
sorry. I had no idea.”

A single nod. “It’s okay. You’re new.”

Reaching for my drink, I took a sip. “So, what are you doing here with me, then?”

Clasping his hands, he answered, “To ask you that same question. What are
you
doing
here
?”

My heart ricocheted in my chest. What did he mean by that? Did he know? Oh shit.

For six years, I trained myself to blot out fear. Rid myself of the emotion. Trained myself to fear nothing or no one. But this feeling right here, this galloping of my heart, this twisting in my stomach, felt very much like fear.

Right then, I accepted it. I had to let myself accept the truth: I, Jhay Byrd, was terribly afraid of Chadrick Niiveux.

That was the reason six months had gone by and he still wasn’t dead. Because I’d been playing it too safe. I was being a milksop.

A waitress came just then and set a drink down before him. “Your screwdriver, sir.”

When she left, Chad took up the drink, sipped it, and then looked over at me with expectancy in his stare.

I sipped my own drink, cool and unperturbed, just as he was. “I’m not sure I understand what you’re asking me.”

Lips pulled up into a lopsided smile this time, he just stared at me for several long, agonizing minutes. I had no idea what that smile meant.

It had been years since I’d been this uncertain, this fucking petrified. Why the hell was I even afraid? Death would be a good thing for me right now. If he found out who I was and why I was here, I should be happy, because it meant I would be dead. Freed from bondage.

Quietly setting his drink down on the table, he said, “I’m told that the customers are complaining that the best girl in the club isn’t working the floor. You don’t do lap dances, you don’t do private shows, and you’re not friendly to customers. But you are with the girls, though. So what are you doing here? Are you a stripper or a customer?”

Inwardly I released a huge, and I mean
huge
, sigh of relief. “A stripper.”

“If you’re a stripper, be a stripper. If you’re a customer, be a customer. You can’t be both in here.”

Fuck you, asshole. I’m not a stripper or a customer. I’m your fucking death angel.

Licking my lips teasingly, I flicked the silver ring around my middle finger one, two, three times. Just enough to partially unscrew the little opening beneath it. And as I did before, I seductively moved my hand across the table and walked my fingers up the back of his hand, inching closer to his drink. “I think whoever made that report about me is full of shit.”

Eyebrows raised, he watched my face, which was exactly where I needed his eyes to be. “Are they?”

I slid one finger up the side of his glass, scooping up the droplets of water. “You be the judge, boss.” My finger was on the rim of his glass now, circling it. “Just now, when you came to this booth, was my attitude anything at all like they reported? Was I not…accommodating? Were you not the one to enlighten me of who you are?”

Wetting my lips again to distract him, I flicked the ring around my finger one last time and inconspicuously angled my hand so the poison stored inside the ring seeped out into his drink.

Completely distracted and unaware, his eyes dropped to my freshly licked lips, lingered for a minute, then drifted back up to my face. But the warmth and amicableness were completely obliterated from them now.

Now they were…something. Something unreadable. Something lethal.

“You’re right,” he said in that irritably smooth fucking voice of his. “They’re full of shit.”

Reading his expression was damn near impossible, so I smiled and slowly, sexily, retreated my hand from his glass, and went back to tracing the back of his hand. “I want you to ‘mess around’ with me. What would it take for you to make me an exception?”

“Why would I do that?” he questioned, watching me closely. “What’s
so
special about you, Blood?”

With my free hand, I reached up and pinched one of my nipples under the silky material of my costume top. “Because I’m so fucking good, I make men
scream
, not growl.”

Head tipped to the side, he asked, “And what do these men scream for, Blood?”

Keeping my eyes locked with his, I sultrily whispered the honest truth: “Their lives.”

At this, he smiled and picked up his drink. “Tempting…I’ll think about it.”

With bated breath, I watched as he brought the glass to his mouth. Holy fuck. It couldn’t possibly be this easy.

“No rush. I’m patient,” I responded, trying to look at his eyes and not at the drink in his hand.

The glass moved closer and closer to his mouth, his eyes watching me over the rim…then suddenly he jerked as if something startled him, and as he reached inside his pocket for whatever it was that made him jump, the highball glass tilted inward and spilled all over him.

“Ah shit,” he grumbled.

His hand came out of his pocket with a vibrating cellphone, and he slammed it down on the table along with the now empty glass.

With his hands held out from his body, he glanced down at his soaked frontal, then across the table at me. He was wearing a slight, toothless smile, almost like a smirk, but at the same time, his jaw was set hard, and his eyes were so dark and frightening now, I had to look away.

There went my easy fucking kill.

The same waitress from earlier materialized with a hand towel and began dabbing it on Chad’s wet clothes to help. But he shooed her away, telling her he was alright.

When it was just him, me, silence, and his stare left at the table, I cleared my throat. “You should go change into some dry clothes. I could help you if you’d like…”

Silence. Dark stare.

Okay, I had no idea what happened to him in the last few minutes, because he was a different person now. What’s with the stare? Did he know I poisoned his drink?

No. Impossible. He couldn’t just
know
that. I hadn’t been obvious with it. I’d done the Kill-Ring trick more times than I could count and it worked unerringly. There’s no possible way he could’ve known.

So, what’s with the death stares?

It was beginning to unnerve me how unnerved he made me.

I wasn’t supposed to be afraid of him. I wasn’t supposed to have any kind of reaction to him. I was supposed to be a steel post. Do the job and get out. Why was I letting him and his scare-stare get to me?

I was trained better than this.

Picking up my purse, I eased out of the booth and stood up. I needed some time to get myself in check. To get my priorities in line. To slaughter my fucking fears. “I should go.”

“Yes, you should,” he agreed. “It’s wise.”

Sucking in a breath, I walked away from the booth, from him, repeating the mantra:
I am not afraid of Chadrick Niiveux. I am not afraid of Chadrick Niiveux. I am not afraid of Chadrick Niiveux.

He was seriously fucked.

F.u.c.k. fucked.

For this girl, he should be feeling nothing but hate, knowing her intentions. Instead, he felt something else entirely. Something baffling. Something detrimental. Something insane.

He was feeling her.

He wanted her.

No, not her soul. But
her
. He wanted to steal her, brand her, make her his.

What the fuck was wrong with him? The girl was trying to kill him, for shit’s sake.

Chad watched as Jhay sauntered away from the booth, her strides confident and unshaken. Her black, waist-length ponytail swaying behind her in sync with her hips. The girl was so fucking sexy it was terrifyingly alarming.

He couldn’t believe his little Tweety Byrd had grown up to be so cock-tormentingly hot. No doubt in his mind that body of hers had been the weakness of all her male victims. And judging by his current reaction to her, it would be his weakness, too.

Fucking hell.

Her fear of him was non-existent. Which was both new and challenging for Chad. Because if he’d been just another unsuspecting victim of hers, she would have easily taken him clean out with the Kill-Ring trick just now.

A Kill-Ring was a plain titanium band one would spot on the finger of most assassins. An ever-present, inconspicuous weapon. Some rings had colorless powder poison (best for food), some had clear liquid (best for drinks), and some had a microscopic needle that is sometimes unfelt when pressed into the skin to inject the poison.

But if Jhay wanted to take him out, she had to get a little more creative, and a lot less predictable, because those tactics were old in his book. Ones he’d been doing since he was sixteen. Which had him wondering what ancient asshole trained her. The Kill-Ring was an abused method: old. Still effective yes, but to be used on
him
? Nah.

Chad got the feeling Jhay had no idea he used to be an assassin, too. That he knew everything she knew, and more. Mastered, rated, five-starred.

If she’d known any of this, she would’ve devised a well-thought-out plan to bring him down instead of taking the obvious routes.

And now that he had eyes on her, he would always be three steps ahead of her.

Little Jhay…How did she get like this? What happened when he left her that night? He’d spared her life. Seen to it that she’d be taken care of.

But seeing her now, how ruined she was, made him wish he would’ve killed her to protect her from this life. This path she’d chosen. A life he’d never wish for anyone. A path he was forced to travel along. Childhood snatched away.

Now he was nothing but a wandering black hole mindlessly stealing souls.

Jhay didn’t deserve this life. But one look at her, and he knew she was long gone. At this stage she was probably wishing for death, but she wouldn’t die, she wasn’t allowed to die.

He’d been at this stage, too, once. And he knew exactly what it felt like; lonely, empty, black. Like he was living in a shadowy, windless world all by himself. With nightmares, darkness and screams into the void.

Chad had found his way out, though. And watching Jhay leave him right now, weaving through the crowd, he felt it incumbent upon him to save her.

Ronnie, his head of security, slipped into the vacant seat across from him in the booth, watching him watch Jhay. “I made the call in time, boss?”

“Yeah,” Chad replied, still eying Jhay as she accosted a customer, raking her fingernails down the ugly chump’s flannel-shirted chest while whispering in his ear.

She was working—or at least
pretending
to work. Most likely because she suspected he’d be watching her.

For one, she seemed to hate men. Despite her
act
of flirting and provocativeness just now, it was pretty obvious men intrigued her not one iota. And this notion crippled him. Because if she was bisexual, he would stand at least half a chance of stealing her away from this ugly, disgusting life, give her a clean, normal life and make her his woman.

Take her. Claim her. Rename her.

Sure, she’d offered herself earlier, but he was positive that was with the underlying intention of getting him alone in a room so she could slit his throat.

Ah hell. He. Wanted. Jhay Byrd. No sense denying it.

But that in itself was a major problem: one, she wanted to kill him. Two, she was a full-blown lesbian. And three,
she wanted to fucking kill him
.

With a resigned sigh, Chad settled in for the very stupid and very dangerous challenge of winning Jhay Byrd. His days were about to get real fucking interesting.

Ronnie’s voice had him breaking his hawk-watch on Jhay. “Can I ask you one question, boss?”

“What?”

“Why the hell haven’t you killed her yet?”

Good question.

Jhay should have been dead the second he found out her motive. And even if he’d decided to just watch her for a while, that poisoning his drink move should have sealed the deal. Idiots who came after him usually die halfway to their goal. But here he was, thinking about having an impossible relationship with a girl who, less than five minutes ago, tried to take him out.

He must be losing it.

Then again, he wasn’t sure he minded losing it for her. It wouldn’t be the first time he imagined an impossible relationship with her: When they were much younger; eight years apart. Yeah, his sick ass had wanted a little girl who hadn’t even started budding tits yet.

Impossible.

Avoiding Ronnie’s question, he asked, “Does she drive herself to work?”

“Yeah, a fucking 2013 Niiveux.” Ronnie scoffed. “Does she even realize how out of place it looks for a stripper to be driving a Niiveux to work?”

“She’s only twenty-two, Ron. Of course she’s gonna be a little rough around the edges.
We
notice her sloppiness only because we’re more experienced, we know the game. But I wouldn’t underestimate her.”

“No,” Ronnie dragged out, eyeballing him like he was a crazy man, “we shouldn’t ‘underestimate’ her. We should
kill
her.”

“Not yet,” Chad warned, pinning his main hand with a warning glare.

Ronnie was fiercely loyal, and had a habit of taking matters into his own hand to keep Chad protected. Whatever it took. And Chad never questioned his judgment because his no-tolerance, no-hostages, no-chances approach to things always saved Chad a lot of pain and trouble in the end, to be honest. But the last thing Chad wanted was Ronnie killing Jhay on his behalf.

“You won’t lay a finger on her. Got that?” Chad said. “If anyone’s killing her, it’s me.”

Ronnie grunted his response, clearly disapproving. But Chad knew once he issued him a warning, he would heed it.

“Now, I want you to do something for me.”