Fatal Beauty (10 page)

Every five minutes.

He's determined and stubborn, she'll give him that.

When it rings next, she answers. "Hello?"

"Where are you?” he asks. She's known him long enough and
well enough to know how angry he is, from the slight roughness of his voice,
the speed with which he asked the question.

Jacobs might be trying to appear indifferent but he's furious.

"Do you really think I'm going to tell you that?" She
asks.

"EJ, you’re fucking with more than just me here. Grow up and
tell me where the fuck you are."

"Go home. That's what you told me: go home and forget."

There's a beat of silence.

"Fuck you, Jacobs. You want what I've got? Fucking take it. I
dare you."

"Don't do this, EJ. Don't make me do this."

She laughs.

He curses, "You’re fucking forcing my hand. You know that. If
you don't come back to me, you’re forcing me to take action and it will end
with you dead. I can't stop that."

"I didn't ask you to," she snaps and kills the
connection. She tosses the phone down and stands.
Pax
and Charlie are watching her from the far side of the loft and even that pisses
her off, them standing together, his head bent toward her.

Fucking throwaway toy.

"I'm going out," she says, grabbing her purse and the
thumb drive. And then she's gone, Charlie's voice echoing behind her.

*

She isn't dressed for going out, but that doesn’t stop
 
her, or even really occur to her, until she’s
in a bar a few blocks away, pulling her hair off her neck and securing it in a
messy knot at the base of her neck.

Even so, she drew attention as she walked down the street, and she
draws it now, perched on a stool at the bar, methodically shredding a cocktail
napkin. The bar is busy with the after work crowd, pretty assistants and women
in power suits, cocky men with their ties loosened or discarded, and sleeves
rolled to their elbows.

And all of them notice her. The bartender eyes her as she pulls a
beer, pops the top and serves it to the grinning guy across from her. She makes
her way slowly down the bar, filling drinks and chatting, before she finally
lands in front of EJ.

The napkin is long since shredded, and EJ is twisting the pieces
into tight little curls of nothing that the bartender eyes.

“When I was a kid, I used to do this, and burn them. Always tried
to light the next one with the first—the goal was to keep it going until there
was nothing left to burn.”

“How’d that work for you?”

EJ flashes a quick grin, “I usually ended up burning the fuck out
of my fingers.”

She laughs, a quick startled burst of noise. “You were
kinda
fucked up, weren’t you?” she says, half-admiring.

EJ smiles, that slow sexy smile she wields like a knife. “I still
am, darling.”

The bartender blinks, uncertainty shadowing her big brown eyes, so
similar to Charlie’s, and EJ waves a hand dismissively. “Never mind.”

“What can I get you?” she says, choosing the safer topic. She
places a fresh napkin in front of EJ and sweeps the shredded one away.

“A red-headed slut.”

The bartender flushes a little, and turns to the bottles. Despite
obviously being flustered, she works quickly, efficient as she pours the Jaeger
and schnapps, adding a splash of grenadine and a lime wedge. She presents it
and gives EJ another quick smile, before turning to her waiting customers. EJ
considers her, the slow sway of her hips and luscious curve of her ass. It’s a
distraction—something to pull her focus from the shit storm she’s landed in.

She knows it, knows that seducing the girl isn’t fair or
productive. And it doesn’t matter at all. She smiles again and downs her drink.

Seduction has always been easy. Sometimes, she thinks it’s because
Jacobs is the one who taught her, and he’s the master. Other times, she thinks
that’s giving him too much credit. But just now, she doesn’t give a fuck about
why it’s easy. She just knows it is.

It’s simple thing, really. Laughing and quick glances she’s sure
the girl—Karla—catches, self-deprecating humor, gracefully declining the offer
of drinks from the guys who approach her. She slips Karla her credit card and
leaves a hefty tip and her number after she’s worked her way through three
red-headed sluts and a beer. She wobbles a little as she plays darts with a gay
couple who are watching the slow play with an air of amusement.

“You know she’s like the white whale, right?” one asks. “Guys try
all the time to get Karla to go home with them. And she never does.”

EJ grins and throws a dart, making a face when it lands in the
outer ring. “I’m not any guy.”

The bar is thinning out, that quiet calm before the storm that
happens as the work crowd heads home to their mortgage and dissatisfied spouses
and screaming children before the younger, wilder crowd shows up. It’s what
she’s waiting on.

So when Karla ducks out back to smoke in the alley, EJ is waiting,
a cigarette already lit. The alley is dark and dirty, and it’s perfect. She
sees the girl’s eyes go wide in surprise and the flash of hunger before she
silently offers the smoke. Their fingers brush and the girl gasps, a quiet
noise of surprise that she tries to cover by pulling away, bringing the
cigarette to her lips with shaking fingers.

EJ watches, a smile turning her lips. “I make you nervous,” she
says softly. Karla’s eyes meet hers, so briefly, before they dart away. She
licks her lips nervously and shrugs. EJ slides closer. “Why?”

“You don’t,” Karla says, a hint of steel in her tone and EJ
laughs. She reaches out and claims the cigarette, pulling on it and letting the
smoke linger in her lungs as she studies the girl. She drops it, and reaches
for her as she exhales, and surrounded by the fog of smoke, she hooks a hand
around the other girl’s neck.

“Have you ever fucked a girl, Karla?”

A shudder and a blush claim her, and EJ laughs, low and delighted.
“A virgin, then,” she murmurs. Karla licks her lips again, and EJ smiles. “Tell
me to stop.”

The girl shakes her head, a tiny motion, and EJ is kissing her,
pressing against her soft curves.

It’s been too long, EJ thinks, since she’s been with a woman.
She’s missed the sweet curves, the tentative press of lips and tongue, the way
she can lead, the tangle of hair to pull. She jerks softly and Karla whimpers,
her eyes wide and soft and dazed as EJ nips at her earlobe. “Be quiet,
sweetheart.”

Then she reaches down, undoing the button and zipper of her tight
black pants. She’s naked under them, and EJ grins against her lips. “Naughty
girl.”

Karla purrs a response, a noise that turns choked and broken when
EJ slips her finger into her pants, and brushes against her wet pussy.

“Quiet,” EJ says, with a wicked smile. She kisses Karla then, a
hard kiss as she slides her fingers through the girl’s wet heat. Karla moans,
her lips desperate and greedy as EJ nips at her. Her hips tilt, when EJ goes
still, and she whimpers out a broken plea.

This is why she fucks women. Because of the lush curves that are
begging to be stroked, and the drugged look on her face as she waits, her whole
body tense, the silky sweet heat, her little nails digging into EJ’s
shoulders—it’s desperate and hungry and demanding, and it’s fucking addictive.
She slips one finger deep into Karla’s pussy and the girl makes a choked noise
as EJ yanks down her V-neck black top, exposing a plain white bra trimmed with
lace. She pulls it down and catches her nipple with her teeth, tugging lightly
on the pale pink bud as she strokes Karla’s pussy with one finger.

The girl almost comes off the wall when EJ adds a second, and when
she bites down just above Karla’s nipple, and rubs her clit, hooking her
fingers and stroking hard inside, the girl screams, a weak breathless thing
that fills her head as EJ revels in the shudder and spasms of this sweet,
little bartender.

When Karla is breathing properly, again, she slips her fingers
free of the other girl’s body, zips her pants and adjusts her top. Leans in to
kiss her one last time.

“Does your boyfriend finger fuck you that good?” EJ says, and
Karla’s eyes go wide.

“How do you know I have a boyfriend?” she whispers.

EJ shrugs once. “You do. And when he’s fucking you tonight, you’ll
be thinking of me.” She winks at the girl and straightens. And even though
she’s horny as fuck, and can feel the girl watching her, she never looks back
as she leaves the alley behind.

Chapter 19

Charlotte is anxious, and doing her best not to be. But it’s been
hours since EJ stormed out, hours since that call from Jacobs, and even though
she trusts that her friend will be smart out in the city, there is a lingering
fear.

And she wants her back. Simple and complex and something she
refuses to look at too closely. Some things shouldn’t be examined closely,
because scrutiny doesn’t always lead to something she wants to see.

She leans against the wide, floor length window and watches the
street. They’re up six stories, and it’s dark—she has no illusions about seeing
EJ in the masses, but it’s soothing to watch and hope.

“Charlie?” he murmurs and she tenses, just a little. She can see
his reflection in the window, his expression obscured by the shadows.

Paxton
Blaincot
. The stupidest thing she
could have done was calling him. He’s always had an obsession with protecting
her, and showing up with EJ and a bagful of secrets was—it was stupid. But also
inevitable.

He wasn’t just the only option when they left NOLA in a stolen car
and no plans—he was the best option.

“What is it?”

“I’m done.”

She straightens, and turns to him, her eyebrows raised. “I thought
you’d need another day.”

That’s what he told her when they were in the car, when EJ was
lost in silence and she’d been too tense to do anything but stare out the
window and wonder how badly they’d fucked up.

“I was able to pull some strings. Do you want to see?”

She nods and he leads the way to the kitchen bar, which partitions
the small, shiny kitchen off from the rest of the loft. His laptop is set up at
the bar, and he turns it to her before he busies himself opening a bottle of
wine and pouring them both a glass. She scans it with interest, but—

“
Pax
, this doesn’t make sense.”

He laughs, a quick, rough noise that has her mind wandering to
areas she can’t indulge in just now.

“Look. This—the majority of the money is spread out in four off
shore accounts—the Swiss accounts, one in the Caymans, and a fourth in Belize.
All of them are clean—just like you asked for. Your account info is here.” He
slides a thumb drive to her and she takes it absently.

“The portion you wanted invested,” he says, sitting next to her
and turning the computer, “I put in a diverse portfolio. Low-risk tech and
established companies with good returns. It’s the same portfolio I use for my
clients who want to increase their wealth but who don’t
need
the profits to survive. You fall there, between what you’ve
given me and what you have in your accounts already.” He pauses, watching her.
Waiting for an explanation.

He’ll be waiting a while.

“That’s good. Excellent. And what kind of safeguards do you have
in place?” She glances at him and he sighs.

“The investments are through my personal firm,
Blaincot
Returns, and I scrubbed the files of your name. If it comes up, you’re listed
as my third cousin on Mother’s side—she went to Korea to teach English, so I
don’t think anyone will ask questions but we can cross that bridge when we come
to it. The bank accounts are accessed by account number. Even if you were to
walk into the bank, you wouldn’t need to provide ID. I kept it as anonymous as
possible.”

“Thank you,” she says again, and it’s not a paltry thing she’s saying
to appease his ego or manipulate him into doing what she wants. For once, she
actually means it.

“Are you going to tell me why?” he asks, turning her barstool with
one knee so that she has little choice but to face him or retreat. “Charlie,
tell me why this is important? Why you’re running and who the hell has EJ so
scared and
why
the actual fuck are
you with her?”

“Because she’s my best friend,” Charlie says, her voice sharp.
“She was there when the rest of my damn world fell apart and everyone wanted to
talk about poor Charlie and how horrible it must all be for her, what with that
rat bastard disappearing. Fuck that,” she snarls, and he flinches, backs away a
little.

“Don’t push me on EJ,” she says. “You don’t have to like her and
you don’t have to understand—but she’s here. She’s not going anywhere. Accept
that.”

“You thought the same thing about Tre,” he says quietly in answer
and she stares at him. Long enough that
Pax
flushes
and looks down.

“That was an asshole thing to say, Paxton,” she says, her voice
shaking just a little.

“You left me, Charlie. I’m allowed to be a little bit of an
asshole.”

“That was eight
years
ago,” she scoffs and he leans back on his stool.

“You say that like it was a lifetime, but once, you wanted to
marry me. You were going to leave everything in Charleston behind and start
over. You were in my life, my bed, and you were fucking happy there.”

“And then you decided that I was a little fucking flower to
protect and you suffocated me. You drove me back to Tre,
Pax
.
You want to walk down memory lane, remember all of it,” she spits and stands,
stalking away.

“I would never have done this to you. I would never have vanished
like this and left you with
her.”

Charlie looks at him, and she feels nothing. Just a wide, yawning
emptiness and the absurd sadness that it has come to this.

Once upon a lifetime ago, she thought he was someone she could
love. Not even love—she had never put much in that. Maybe the way she was
raised, by parents who barely tolerated each other and used affairs like a
stiff drink at the end of a bad day.

But she thought he could make her happy. For a heartbeat, staring
at him, she wonders—if she had stayed at
Vandy
,
stayed with
Pax
—would they still be here. In this
moment, with a dead fiancé and a furious drug lord and—EJ, whatever that whole
thing was. Would she have been so bored she had jumped at the chance to deal
drugs, just for the momentary high?

Or would she be happy, bored, raising two point five kids in a
spacious antebellum house and making dinners she saw on the Food Network when
she gave the staff a night off.

Would she have been happy, in that fictional life that she can see
so damn clearly?

“I’m just worried. Because I care about you,” he says and she lets
out the breath she’s been holding. Because there is her answer.

She would die, suffocate and wither away, under
Pax’s
constant possessive worry.

“Don’t,” she says. “I know what I’m doing.”

She turns and freezes.

EJ is standing in the doorway, sweaty and gorgeous in her jean shorts
and white
v-neck
t-shirt, her lipstick smeared and
her eyes big with eyeliner that’s begun to smudge.

She’s watching
Pax
, and her expression
is furious and fierce, and almost—
amused
.

“Where did you go?” Charlie asks, her lips numb and dry. The
question cracks in half and EJ’s gaze darts to her, a smile ticking up her
lips. She swallows. The words are on the tip of her tongue.
I was worried.
The same thing that
irritates her so much from
Pax
. And from the amused
gleam in EJ’s eyes, she knows it.

Charlie swallows hard and
smoothes
out
her expression by force of will, ignoring the chuckle from EJ.

“I needed a little time to think,” EJ says, brushing past Charlie.
She can smell the alcohol on the other woman, the scent of smoke and perfume
and she wants to ask, about that and the past hours and how angry Jacobs is and
what they’ll do next.

Instead she clings to her silence, and drinks her wine as EJ
disappears into the backroom.

*

They need the time, to regroup. To breathe. That’s what EJ tells herself
in the morning when she crawls out of bed. That they need the break—from the
tension, from the constant motion, from fear. She’s being reckless and
stupid—even now, with the stale taste of Jaeger in her mouth and the feel of
Karla too real against her fingers, she knows it.

Last night was a stupid mistake. She rubs her eyes and pushes her
hair out of her face, and wanders out of the partitioned bedroom in search of
coffee or Charlie.

She finds the former in the kitchen, which is silent and empty. A
nibble of curiosity makes her wonder where Paxton is, before it’s gone.

“Charlie?”

Her voice echoes around her as she searches the loft.

She finds her in the bathroom, in a bath drawn to the edge of the
wide stainless steel tub, the water frothed with bubbles. A candle is burning
next to her, with low music, and her eyes are closed. EJ hesitates in the
doorway, not sure if she should intrude. The conversation she overheard last
night comes back to her, and she is—for the first time in she can’t remember
how long—uncertain about her place. Her role. It’s a disconcerting feeling, one
she doesn’t much care for, and tightens her lips.

“Don’t lurk,” Charlie says, “it’s creepy.”

She makes a soft laugh, a weak thing. “I’m not lurking. I’m just
not sure you want me around.”

Charlie moves, sitting up enough that she can look at EJ, her
shoulders and the slope of her breasts exposed above the water. “When have you
ever been unsure about anything?” she asks, an eyebrow raised.

“More often than you would think,” EJ admits and comes deeper into
the bathroom. She perches on the windowsill by the tub and stares at her
friend. “Are you mad at me?” she asks, finally, when the silence stretches out
too long.

Charlie shakes her head. “I don’t know, EJ. I just—I don’t know
what we’re doing. I don’t know why. It all seemed like a dream, back home, and
it was easier to let Jacobs fix it than to face the consequences. But now—now
the bruises are faded and the body is gone and what the hell are we doing? How
did we end up here?”

That is the question. Except that she’s been headed to this point
her entire life. Since that first afternoon in the park.

“You can go home.” EJ says, and she is proud of herself, that her
voice comes out steady, without any inflection or the bone crunching fear that
grips her when she thinks about Charlie disappearing from her life.

When the hell had this blonde ice queen with her southern drawl
and bitchy attitude slipped so firmly into her life?

“Do you want me to go?” Charlie asks, eyeing her.

EJ flushes and shrugs. “It’s your choice.”

Charlie makes a low disbelieving noise. “That’s not the question.
Of course it’s my choice. It’s always been my choice. But I’m asking what
you
want. Would you be happy if I left
and went back to my father’s home?”

No. Without her, without Jacobs—what’s left? A pile of money and a
game, and—she shivers. “No. I don’t want you to go home.”

“Why?”

“Fuck, Charlie,” EJ says, pushing off the window. She prowls the
room, nerves dancing along her skin. “What the hell do you want?”

“I want you to be honest and upfront about shit. You called
Jacobs, and you didn’t bother to mention the history there until after it was
over—until we were at
Pax’s
house with that damn car
in the parking garage and there was no turning back. I’m not going anywhere.
I’m not running home. I’m in this—but I need you to be honest with me. If you
can’t be honest about anything else, then be honest about this. What the fuck
do you want?”

Charlie has never spoken to her like this. Not with that much anger
and disgust, and it shocks her. Makes her stop in the middle of the bathroom
and stare at the girl still sitting in the tub.

How can a girl surrounded by bubbles and dripping wet manage to
look and sound like a fucking goddess?

“I want to bring Jacobs to his knees. And I want you with me.” She
says, without letting herself think. “I don’t want you to leave.”

Charlie smiles, a slow smile that makes EJ irrationally nervous.
She swallows hard and Charlie pushes up out of the water. It cascades down her
body, bubbles dotting her pale skin. It should be ridiculous.

It’s not.

EJ clears her throat and steps back as Charlie steps out of the
tub and casually wraps a fluffy white towel around herself before smirking at
EJ.

“It’s about time you admitted it.”

EJ stares for a long moment, wonder what the hell just happened,
when Charlie yells from the other room. “Get dressed! I want to go out.”

*

They end up shopping. Charlie adores shopping—it’s one of the few
things she is unabashedly spoiled about, and one EJ takes great pleasure in
teasing her over.

EJ has never found much enjoyment in retail therapy, but she’s
more than willing to follow her friend around, and forget the tension in the
bathroom earlier that morning.