The King - S.R. Jones Page 0,87
I’m pissed or full of admiration. “You fucked her friend, to get information?”
“Yeah.” He smirks. “Not a hardship. She’s not my type, but not a hardship.”
“Really? I’d have thought her friends were just your type.”
Suzy is, and everyone says this Vanessa girl is a bombshell. “Was it Vanessa?”
“Nah, they are newer friends, this girl is an old friend. A girl called Penny. They’ve been best friends through school. I looked on Cassie’s Facebook page and saw she and this girl having a lot of conversations, so I figured they were friends. I did some digging, asked Suzy, and she said they were best friends for a lot of years, then Penny moved away and only came back into the area six months ago. They just haven’t been in touch as much since. No issues or anything, simply grown apart a bit. But I figured, who knows us better than the friends we grew up with, right?”
His words painfully bring a picture of Yulia to mind, and for some reason it makes me think of Maxim, my other childhood friend. A quiet, sensitive kid who loved to draw.
I remember his art. Fuck me, he’d work so well with Zoey. So damn well. I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing, though. We’ve not spoken in years. I could find him. Damn, I wonder if he’d be interested in taking a job? He’s probably married by now, and living still in the God-awful place we grew up. I can try to find him.
“You’re pissed.” Vasily’s words drag me back into the room and the current conversation.
“No, I’m not. I’m impressed by your ingenuity and dedication.”
He smirks.
“Yeah, well, I fucked her brains out, ate her pussy until she was practically crying, plied her with wine, and she talked and talked. I got lucky because she had a picture of her and Cassie on the sideboard in her bedroom, and it was easy enough to mention it, and then I didn’t have to do anything else. The girl was bone deep relaxed, and drunk, and she talked to me for fucking ages all about what a laugh they used to have, how much she loved Cassie, how she misses her. Then she told me all the shit Cassie went through. These were her words, K. She said; my girl has a hole the size of a crater in her, and she needs it filled with love.”
Those words sink into me, and they terrify me. Not much does, but someone needing that, and thinking they can get it from me?
Fuck. I can barely tell my son I love him; never mind filling some needy black hole in a woman I barely know. I like her, I fucking crave her, but love?
“She doesn’t love me,” I say.
“Maybe not, but she’s halfway there at the very least.” He stubs the cigarette out and walks by me. “Shall I get this new housekeeper to make us both an egg white omelet?”
“Yeah, please.”
As he pushes by, I stop him.
“So if you made this girl come like crazy, and you listened to her half the night, how come she’s not blowing up your phone?”
“Gave her a fake number. Told you, she’s not my type.”
“What’s she look like?”
“Pretty enough, but bland. No edge. Too nice. Nice doesn’t fit men like us, K. We fuck nice up. Remember that.”
Then he’s gone, but his words linger like the smoke of the cigarette he’s just put out. They wrap themselves around me, toxic but true.
I do fuck nice up. I fuck everything up.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Cassie
I want to sleep with Konstantin. In the league table of bad life decisions, it’s probably the worst I could make, what with how out of depth I am around him, but I’m beyond caring. I want him so bad it’s like torture. It’s as if every single moment I’m super aware of my body. My skin is sensitized, and I’m constantly wet. I have erotic dreams the moment I fall asleep.
A nurse came yesterday to look at my breast, and she told me to hold an ice pack against my sore flesh, wrapped in a tea towel, and to take anti-inflammatory medication. She said it will hurt, but should get better on its own. She did tell me certain things to watch out for. Today I’ve been holed up in my room, reading, resting, and healing.
Konstantin has mostly avoided me. Despite my fevered hopes, last night he didn’t come to me, and I didn’t search him out again.