Page 54 of Played
“You told me to get on top of someone else,” I remind him.
“I believe I suggested either fucking the guy you really want or fucking someone else.” I can picture his smiling face, those dimples popping. I really do wish he was here. It sucks that he travels so much for work.
I find myself smiling too. “But fucking is your only solution?”
“Isn’t it always, buddy? When in the history of humankind has a good fuck ever not been the answer?”
“Um. Off the top of my head, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral?”
“If all those guys had just fucked each other, they would have resolved that conflict a whole lot faster,” he says, laughing harder.
“You’re an asshole.”
“An asshole who’s always right.”
I chew on the inside of my cheek. He is usually right. And what the hell am I doing pacing my apartment on a Thursdaynight, pining over a guy who doesn’t deserve a second of my time? A guy who has made it abundantly clear that I’m good for nothing but a clandestine fuck? I could be out having fun. Thursday nights at Xylophone are full of hot, single guys looking for casual hookups. Maybe that is exactly what I need.
I hear a voice in the background and remember that Tyler’s waiting for his date to show. “That your date now?” I ask.
He hums in response, and I take that as a yes and also that he’s lost for words, which is either a very good or very bad thing.
“How hot is he?”
“Surface of the sun,” he answers quietly.
Good for him. Tyler deserves the best. “I’d better leave you to it then. Have fun. Be safe.”
“Always, buddy. You too, okay? Call me if you need me.”
I know he means that. I could interrupt his hot date and he’d answer the call because he’s that good of a guy. The opposite of King Blackthorn, who simply wears the disguise of a good guy when it suits him.
Tyler’s right—I need to get over King.
He’s also right about the best way to do it.
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
KING
My chronic lack of a social life is more acute than usual tonight. I have nothing to do but sit in my apartment and think about Mason and what he might be doing. It’s either that or bury myself in work, and the latter holds no appeal to me at this moment.
The fact that my father was somehow involved in Cassidy’s disappearance is obvious to me now, and I need some time to sit with that and figure out my next steps. It will take careful digging to not aggravate him too much now that he knows I’m onto him. He might be a weak man and a coward, but he’s powerful in all the ways that matter. He knows a lot of the right people in the right places and has enough money to make almost anything disappear. Including poor Cassidy Jones and any evidence there might be connecting him to her. If I don’t tread carefully, I may never get the answers Curtis needs.
Without work, my thoughts are back to my only other source of frustration—Mason James. I doubt he’s sitting alone at home, staring at a blank TV screen and eating cereal from the box. No, I bet he’s out somewhere fancy. Maybe on a date with some guy whose abs are like cut diamond, who’s fucking salivating over him. Jealousy burns hot in my veins.
It’s an invasion of his privacy, I know, but I check his phone location anyway. And immediately regret it when I discover where he is. He’s at Xylophone–-the place he goes to pick up guys. What the fuck. I guess he was serious about the whole this-can’t-happen-again thing. Except that’s not exactly what he said, is it? It can happen again, so long as I…
I must have thought about his offer at least a hundred times since he made it. And each time it gets a little more tempting, which worries me. I don’t get fucked. I fuck. Period.
Sucking in a breath, I try to calm the anger that’s threatening to spill out of me—anger I have no right to feel. Mason and I aren’t together. He has every right to go pick up some guy tonight. To kiss him, let his hands wander over those unbelievably sexy abs, his firm ass. His gorgeous fucking dick.
With a groan of frustration, I grab my coat and keys. Looks like I’m headed to Xylophone too.
I keepmy eyes on the floor as I weave through the mass of warm, hard bodies on the dance floor.Nobody knows you here, King. Nobody knows you. I repeat the mantra to myself over and over. I’m sure there’s no danger of running into anyone I know from my past life in here. Nobody except Mason fucking James, anyhow.
I ignore the offers to dance or buy me a drink as I make my way to the bar, the place I saw him standing when I walked in. Talking to some fucking guy. Rage and jealousy burn through my veins, and no matter how many calming mantras I chant to myself, none of them fucking work. Nothing works. Nothing except him.
