Page 44 of Wicked Beautiful (Wicked Games 1)
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The meal is exquisite.
Parker feeds it to me, forkful after forkful, an odd and completely sensual experience. I’ve never been hand-fed before, am not quite sure what to make of it, but after the first few awkward bites I surrender to the sheer bliss of the food that’s hitting my tongue and begin to enjoy it. For every two bites I take, he takes one. For every few swallows of wine I take, he takes one. I doubt he’s trying to get me drunk, but by the time the meal is over and we leave the restaurant, I’m feeling a little tipsy, and tell him so.
“I know just what you need.” He smiles and helps me into the Porsche. He closes the door behind me with a firm thunk, as if sealing my fate.
We go dancing.
It’s a jazz club right out of a noir movie set in Paris in the forties, smoky and somehow illicit, the entrance unmarked, the music mingling with the smell of sweat and cigars in the air. I adore it. Parker commandeers a private table in a shadowed, elevated corner in the back of the room, where we can see everything without being seen, where we can smile our secret smiles and play our secret games and act like none of it matters.
We order champagne. We hold hands. We dance, not speaking, our bodies swaying to the beat, our eyes closed. As the night wears on, he looks at me often in silence, a strange light in his eyes, an intimate yearning I escape by averting my own eyes, taking a drink, forcing a laugh.
When the club closes at three, we’re the last to leave. Standing outside in the chill, Parker settles his jacket around my shoulders and I’m wrapped in his warmth, his scent. Neither one of us wants to go home, so we act like silly tourists and hire a horse-drawn carriage to take us on a meandering circuit of Central Park. Bundled beneath blankets, we talk in hushed voices about everything and nothing as the horse chuffs and shuffles, his breath steaming the air. Then there is birdsong, a lightening in the sky, and I realize with deep surprise we’ve stayed up all night.
With an even more profound sense of surprise, I realize I don’t want the night to end.
When Parker pulls the Porsche into the valet drive at my building, I’m tense and unhappy, filled with regret. I didn’t expect this night to be so…so…
Perfect.
“She was perfect. We were perfect.”
Parker and his perfect, dead love. The memory of his sorrow-filled words about her is what finally snaps me out of my ennui and gets me refocused on the goal:
His obliteration.
“Thank you,” I say as the elevator doors open in the vestibule in the lobby. “I had a wonderful evening.”
“You’re not inviting me up.”
He sounds resigned, thought not particularly disappointed. He’s the type of man who likes to chase things, after all. An easy victory would be a hollow one.
“Some other time, perhaps. I’m tired. It’s been a pleasure, though.”
He touches my face. He enjoys doing that. Enjoys watching his fingers drift over my cheekbone toward my mouth, the same way he enjoyed it when we were young and he called me by another name.
I wonder how many other women he’s enjoyed it with, too.
“So I’ve passed muster? There will be another time?”
I smile. Our gazes hold. “We’ll see.”
He steps closer. “That’s not a no. I’ll take it as
progress. And Victoria…” he brushes his lips against my mouth. He whispers, “The pleasure is all mine.”
After an abrupt, hard hug, he’s gone, striding away through the lobby, his shoes echoing off the marble, his stride long and sure.
I enter the elevator and hit the button for the penthouse. As the doors close, I stare at myself in the mirrored panels. My reflection mocks me.
Like the woman in the picture in the newspaper, I’m unrecognizable. My face is soft and unguarded. My eyes are missing their usual hawk-like shine. Once again, because of Parker, I am weakened. Lessened.
Vulnerable.
I turn my back on that vulnerable woman in the mirror.
But not before flipping her the bird.
