Page 24 of Taming Scarlet

As the day wore on, I got more and more excited at the prospect of his shock and anger when we pulled up to the nondescript club with its simple, understated sign, through its thick wooden front door, where I’d needed to have a few words with the manager about my unexpected guest, then into a lobby where we had to lock up our phones, and, finally, into the club itself.

And right there, ten feet in front of us, was a woman becoming ‘airtight’—one dick in each hole.

Right behind my shoulder, the bodyguard was close enough to me for me to hear him suck in his breath.

“Absolutely fuckingnot,” he growled in my ear, his warm breath tickling the shell of my lobe, making a strange shiver course through me.

“Then leave,” I offered, linking my arm through Drea’s and Di’s arms, and moving into the club.

I had no idea at the time that I’d just royally fucked up.

And that Julian was scheming up ways to make me pay for it.

CHAPTER FIVE

Julian

SVNT.

I had no idea what the fuck that could possibly be. And judging from the blank look on Eric the driver’s face, he had no clue either as he pulled the car up, then rushed out to open the door for the girls.

I wasn’t exactly thrilled that Drea, the girl who’d been so sick the night before, was out again. But found myself glad that Leona, the pixie-chick, was gone.

While waiting for Scarlet to wake up, I’d spent some time scrolling through not only her, but all her friends’ social media profiles.

Save for the chick she’d ended up having dinner with—Lilac—Scarlet was definitely the most followed, loved, and hated of her group.

Drea seemed to be a part-time model. Which made her too-thin body make more sense. However, according to the comments on her posts, no one thought she would be a model if not for her actress mother and her pull in certain circles.

Di was the daughter of a financier and dedicated her socials to her fashion line she was building.

That pixie-cut chick, Leona, had a page full of ‘boss bitch’ type shit. Seeming to push the narrative that all you had to do was #hustle to get everything you wanted in life.

People were quick to point out that it wasn’t #hustle that bought her the Brownstone she was living in, but her grandfather’s real estate empire.

All of the women, though, regardless of how many followers they had, all had the same carefully curated posts and captions.

The only place any of them seemed to get messy was in their stories. That was where peeks of something real came through. But even then, sparingly, carefully.

It was all… fake.

Sure, a picture may have captured a moment of time with the girls, but, hell, I’d seen the smiles myself. The way they fell immediately after snapping the picture. They weren’t actually capturing true joy. They were manufacturing it.

But, I guess, when you had thousands of people in your comments telling you how beautiful, amazing, fun, spontaneous you were, you felt the need to constantly live up to that. You got addicted to their attention and approval.

It seemed like a hollow fucking existence to me.

I brought up the groceries I had delivered and set to making food for her, knowing she’d been sick all night, and likely needed something in her stomach to make it feel even again.

That, and water.

The woman never seemed to drink anything but coffee or alcohol.

I hadn’t exactly… meant to boss her around over breakfast. But she was so fucking stubborn. I swear everything she said to me had a bite to it.

It was hard not to see the spoiled brat underneath and want to train it out of her.

Following her around as she ran her errands and she completely ignored my existence had been a lesson in humility for me.

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