Page 10 of Sinful Desires

Aria certainly wouldn’t be, which was another reason why I’d gladly accepted. There was nothing as satisfying as watching someone walk headfirst into their own demise. It would be like the rabbit welcoming the hunter's snare. And they didn’t have the faintest idea.

Why would they? They had never given a moment’s thought to anyone but themselves. That, if for no other reason, was more than enough cause to set them straight on a great many things. They needed to have their eyes opened.

I wasn’t in the mood for polite company tonight. I’d had more than enough of that.

That is what led me to what I could only describe as a seedy part of town, and that was being generous. I doubted pampered little Aria ever set eyes on anything like this. Apartment buildings where half the windows were boarded up, litter clogging the gutters. Rats scurrying across the street and down the sidewalks. Approaching a corner, I spotted two women attempting to strike up conversations with drivers in cars paused at a stop sign. No doubt one of Magnus’s precious daughters would look at women like that and recoil.

I couldn’t help but think of Mom as I continued on, the two of them whistling in appreciation as I passed. She had never been that desperate. She’d always sworn there were levels to which she would not sink, even for my sake. I was glad of that even now. I didn’t know if I could carry that level of guilt around for the rest of my life.

Up ahead was a bar, and I wondered as I approached how many years its faded sign had served as a beacon for the thirsty, lonely, and dependent. This was where I wanted to be. Around real people, where I could stop pretending for a little while.

It didn’t matter how much money I made, and I had made quite a lot of it. So much so that I hadn’t blinked an eye when I purchased my fully customized Harley-Davidson CVO Road Glide Limited. And I didn’t mind leaving it parked outside a dive bar in the middle of The Bronx either. I could always buy another. That was one thing I had sworn to myself as a kid during those long, hungry nights when I never knew when Mom would be home from one of her many jobs.

When I’m rich, I’m going to buy whatever I want and do whatever I want, and I’ll have so much money it won’t matter.

That goal was now a reality. Fine-tuning my algorithm had been my ticket to millions in profit in the last year alone. Now that I was taking the firm internationally with AI advancements, there was no reason to believe I wouldn’t add another couple of zeros to those figures before long. At least, that was my intention.

Yet as I strolled through a rusty door that squealed hideously on its hinges, I was a regular man. A thirsty man in search of a distraction.

Fuck, I loved it. The stench of stale beer in the air. The slight stickiness of the floors—more than once, it took conscious effort to pull the soles of my boots away from the splattered boards. By all rights, I should have recoiled in horror at the stained tiles overhead, yellowed and somehow still stinking of smoke years after smoking had been banned in public establishments. It was dark, dingy, and at least three of the men sitting at the scarred bar looked like they would enjoy the chance to kick my ass.

I would’ve enjoyed the chance to see how far they felt they could go. It would not have been the first time some piece of trash had taken a look at me and assumed I would make an easy target. I had been fighting for my life early on, and it had never stopped. Only the opponents had.

“Stella Artois with a Jack back,” I told the bartender, ignoring the way his brow creased at the sound of my accent. That was usually the way of it whenever I visited this level of establishment.

The music blasting from the old-fashioned jukebox in the far corner was loud and grating, but it was the raucous laughter of the women drunkenly dancing that drew my attention—four of them, clearly friends, utterly involved in their good time.

One in particular intrigued me—a tall, leggy brunette in a skirt short enough to make the hem flirt with the curve of her ass cheek. Her heavy makeup concealed what might have been a pretty face without it.

One of the women she was with must have noticed the attention I was giving them since before long, the brunette glanced my way after her friend whispered in her ear. We understood each other from the moment our eyes met, and a silent communication passed between us. I wasn’t looking for more than a good time, and neither was she.

Glossy lips curved in an inviting smile before she began crossing the room in a pair of sky-high heels. She wore a tight top with dozens of cutouts exposing vast expanses of olive skin, the fabric thin enough that her nipples were plainly visible. If they got much harder, they would tear through. For all I knew, that could’ve been the point. Everything about her was designed to attract attention, and she had certainly attracted mine.

Of all times for Aria’s curves and sassy mouth to invade my senses, threatening to take over my thoughts, this wasn’t it.

She wouldn’t be caught dead in such an outfit, though I had no doubt she would’ve looked like a wet dream come to life. It had to be the way she closed herself off that made her so painfully attractive and me so painfully hard half the time. I was no better than a young man going through puberty when it cameto her. The challenge she presented made her that much more tantalizing.

At the moment, all she did was make the woman in front of me look like a sad, worn-out hag. I didn’t want that. Tonight was all about working out the tension that had built in me over days spent among so-called civilized people.

“Hey, handsome,” she purred upon reaching me, propping her elbows on the bar top and pushing her tits up and out like an offering. “Never seen you around here before. What are you doing slumming?”

Another thing I appreciated about women like her was their candor. It was refreshing after wasting so much precious time around women who couldn’t be bothered to be upfront. “If I’m slumming, then you’re slumming,” I pointed out, winking. “You shouldn’t sell yourself short.”

Her mouth fell open a bit. I had seen this reaction before. “Oh, that accent is the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard,” she breathed out. “Say something else.”

Why hadn’t Aria reacted that way when we met? Fuck, I was allowing the girl to cockblock me when she was nowhere near this seedy dive. “What do you wanna hear?”

“Anything.” She swayed nearer, bringing the scent of beer and cheap perfume with her. “Just so long as you’re talking.”

“I would like to buy you a drink, but I am not in the habit of buying drinks for people whose names I don’t know.” I cocked my head to the side, smiling at how flustered she’d become. “What do you think? Can we do something about that, love?” I was playing it up. There was no resisting the impulse.

“Fuck, that is hot. I’m Jamie.” Her red nails danced up my arm, then back down again. “How about you, gorgeous? What’s your name?”

“Willam.” Because I would be fucked if I gave this girl more information about myself than was strictly necessary. All itwould take was hearing my name in business news for her to decide we had a relationship. Then again, what was I thinking? Something told me Jamie didn’t spend much free time perusing the latest developments in the business world. The latest reality TV scandal was probably much more her speed.

“It’s nice to meet you, Willam.” The way the name rolled off her tongue sounded like sex or at least the promise of it. I had watched countless women twist themselves into knots, trying to attract the attention of men they believed were weak or stupid enough to fall for their bullshit. The only thing they had going for them was the possibility of trapping a wealthy man and squeezing every last dime out of him before moving on to the next target.

“Likewise,” I told her, smiling to myself when she released a soft groan of hunger and desire. I could have taken her then and there on top of that filthy bartop, and she wouldn’t have protested.

---