The Winemaker's Dinner: Dessert (The Winemaker's Feast) (12 page)

“S
HE
W
AS
S
O
D
RUNK
, the bitch ended up passing out. I got her good in the morning though. Told her we fucked.” A snorting laugh followed this revelation.

“You didn’t!”

“Yeah, I did. Handle your fucking liquor, slut. She learned a lesson from it too. She and her boyfriend broke up, and of course I was the bad guy. But screw her—she wasted my night.”

Ivan stared dead ahead at the girl he’d thought he’d known as he listened to the evidence of his romantic homicide being confessed. And the confession was quite different than he’d imagined. Damian Gris’s heartless claims of victory and conquest over someone Ivan held so dear shot rage through his body.

Each word, each claim, each twisted truth deepened the veil of red forming over his eyes, and within moments, Ivan had lost the battle with his inner beast. The freak he’d subdued just days ago was now off the leash. This time anger had wound the freak into a maddening frenzy of fury, rather than lust. An orgasm of rage heightened his senses and made clear his direction.

Every moment of despair Ivan had felt in the past six months filled his mind at once—the look on Jaden’s face the night she’d broken him, days and nights of crushing emotional pain, and the nameless faces of the women who’d served as his sexual painkillers. The wreck his life had been saddened him, and it was all authored by
him
and his manipulation of
her
.

But after a moment, one emotion rose above the swirling anger and angst: pity. He felt sorrow that the beautiful person he’d loved so dearly had been taken advantage of by this evil, empty creature standing behind him. Inebriation was no excuse for unfaithfulness, whether consummated or not, but the malicious intent that had instigated the situation was intolerable.

Damian had ruined what he had with Jaden for no real reason at all—just a drunken haze of frat boy antics and perverse mind games. How fucking
dare
he?

Anger, confusion, and pity ripped through Ivan like an emotional tornado, leaving nothing solid in their path except for a voice. Above the noise came the voice that had counseled him on the beach the morning after his heart was broken, the voice that had urged him to numb his mental anguish with hard work and even harder fucking, and the voice that now demanded he should have retribution for all that had been lost—for himself and for Jaden. The freak had returned. And he was pissed.

Without hesitation Ivan stood, feeling the frenzy of hormones and emotions that energized his body, readying him for confrontation. He turned to look at the man who had wronged his right, who had deliberately, and without care, ruined his life and his one true chance at happiness: Damian Gris. The little faux French fucker deserved at the very least to have his teeth kicked in, the freak advised as Ivan’s muscles swelled. Sounds and sights appeared brighter and louder than they had in months, and finally his desire and the freak’s were the same: retribution.

“So did you ever figure out what flipped her out?” Damian’s friend inquired, still absorbed by the story.

“Damned if I know. One minute we’re standing there kissing, and the next minute she’s in hysterics. All I did was called her something stupid like girly, or baby, or—”

“Baby girl?” Ivan offered, abruptly entering their conversation. He offered a wide, menacing grin as the pathetic excuse for a human turned to identify who had spoken.

“Can I help you with something?” Damian’s friend inquired.

Not even sparing the guy a glance, Ivan raised his hand to silence him. His eyes, which felt as if they were beaming fire, locked on Damian’s icy blues. In an instant he had mirrored Ivan’s aggressive stance.

“Dude, why don’t you just piss off and leave us the fuck alone?” his friend suggested.

Not letting his focus falter for one second, Ivan refused to acknowledge the guy. Toe to toe, he faced the demon.

“This is the cocksucker I was telling you about,” Damian said with a laugh, his eyes widening in recognition. “Jaden’s
ex
boyfriend.”

As if the two men exuded some sort of testosterone-driven beacon, a small group began to form around them, the crowd sensing something was escalating.

“You know, you should thank me,” Damian sneered. “I saved you from getting screwed over later on. Little bitches like that always fuck us over in the end.”

Was that Damian’s problem? Had he fallen in love only to get his heart crushed? Was this what happened when the freak took full control of the man? He became a womanizing, egotistical bastard like Damian Gris?

Ivan just shook his head.
Pathetic
. Damian didn’t deserve a verbal response, nor did he deserve a fist, but he certainly didn’t deserve to walk out of this place without learning a life lesson.

The freak screamed again, and Ivan lunged forward, a jolt of excitement surging through him as he prepared to unleash upon Damian exactly what a creature of his magnitude deserved: the back of his hand.

Every muscle in Ivan’s shoulder flexed as the back of his hand extended toward the side of Damian’s pretty-boy face. As flesh met flesh, Ivan returned a little of the embarrassment, pain, sorrow, and loathing he’d endured courtesy of Damian. The adrenaline rush and sting in his hand were more gratifying than every sexual encounter he’d had in the last six months added up and multiplied by ten. The freak’s demand for retribution matched his thirst for climax, and they collaborated in a fantastic moment of having avenged what was lost. The demon had been vanquished, and Ivan had reclaimed a piece of his pride.

Caught off guard, Damian lost his balance and crashed back into the bar, knocking his friend over in the process. He looked up at the man who’d just backhanded him with hatred smoldering in the depths of his eyes. A collective snicker rippled through the crowd of bystanders.

“Are you done here, Ivan?” the bouncer called from behind the onlookers.

Snapping out of his fury, Ivan smiled at the bouncer before turning his attention back to Damian, who remained on the floor. It seemed he did not care to tango—not tonight, not ever.

Ivan leaned down, his voice low and menacing. “How did that taste, asshole?”

Damian just stared back, gasping like a fish out of water.

“Yeah, I figured as much,” Ivan scoffed. He motioned to the bouncer. “Get these clowns outta here, would you?”

In one rough motion, and with little regard for their wellbeing, the security guard parted the crowd and grabbed each of the men by their shirts. He dragged them to their feet and toward the door.

A wave of giggles and murmuring followed them out, but after a few moments, with no more to see, the crowd dispersed. Ivan took a deep breath and felt a momentary lightness. The weight of this burden had finally been lifted from his shoulders, but he wasn’t done. The freak was free, and it was time to right so many, many wrongs.

Despite the release he’d relished after confronting Damian, he could already feel the tension returning. So now the freak turned his head toward her. He looked over the heads of the crowd, many of them still conversing about the bitch slap that had sent a TV star flying, and found the girl in the teal dress. Suddenly every other woman in the club faded away. The freak had made his choice. Even he wanted Jaden.

She and Tasha sat side by side, giggling and sipping martinis, and the veil fell over Ivan’s eyes once more. Making the same beeline he’d made in Bianca what seemed like a million lifetimes ago, he darted through the crowd and across the dance floor. As he approached, a second burly security guard nodded and stepped aside.

“Hey, Doc,” the man greeted him as he granted access to the roped-off area.

“Hey, Sam,” Ivan replied as he pushed past the crowd lingering to get a better look at the beautiful people behind the ropes.

More than a few heads turned as he crossed the room, but the girl who sat with her back to him—the one and only person Ivan wanted to notice him—remained oblivious. As he came to stand next to her, he held his breath. Finally sensing his presence, Jaden turned in her seat to face him. Her eyes, as green as emeralds in the mid-day sun, locked with his for the first time in what seemed like an eternity. How long had it been since her words had broken him? He could tell by her face that those same words now echoed in both their ears.

A two-second visual conversation was all he needed. Emotions rushed through him—hate, love, anger, lust, disdain, sorrow, pity, envy—until he had no idea what he felt. But pinpointing his feelings didn’t matter. He was drawn to her presence, and he knew from experience that the freak was not about to turn back now. He didn’t care about the anger, he didn’t care about the confusion, and he didn’t care about the pity. All he cared about was reclaiming what had been stolen. What tomorrow brought was insignificant. Tonight she would be his, and that’s all that mattered.

Silently, he extended his hand to her. Wordlessly, she accepted.

The feel of her skin against his sent a flash of energy though his body. He prepared himself for a night of passion that wasn’t spoken but screamed.

Chapter 17

“Crazy Bitch”

I
VAN
T
OOK
J
ADEN’S
H
AND
and led her back through the dance floor and around the bar, blindly pushing past anything between them and the back exit of the club. They crashed through the doors and out into a secluded, dimly lit alley, hidden by the small hours of a muggy Miami Beach night.

“Ivan, I am so—” Jaden began to speak the second they stepped outside, but he pressed her into the wall, pinning her to the brick with his forearms and cutting off an unfinished apology that wouldn’t do either of them justice.

He crushed his lips to hers and pushed his arousal against her thigh as he raised her leg and placed it around his waist. She tasted just as sweet as she always had. The essence of dry martinis and salt air lingered in her mouth, and he forced his tongue farther to drink it in.

A cacophony of passionate gasps and moans mingled with the sounds of passing traffic as they explored once familiar, yet now foreign grounds. Dropping his mouth to the skin behind her ear, Ivan sucked and nipped a trail of kisses down her neck and across her shoulder until he found the curve he knew all too well, the V between her breasts. The familiar fragrance of lavender and coconut triggered an indescribable reaction, one he hadn’t felt in so long. This was what he craved: her touch and her smell.

His hands trailed over her body and ravished her breasts. He raised her other leg, hooking it around his body and pinning her harder against the wall. His cock, now at full attention, pressed more urgently into her thigh.

He ground into her, and Jaden matched his movements, swaying her hips from side to side and eliciting a guttural moan from deep within his chest. This was the ultimate fix. This was his cure. She was it. She was his.

Jaden grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked his head back, forcing him to look at her as she seemed to search for something he wasn’t communicating. Her breath heavy and unsteady, she ran gentle fingers across his face and jaw. Ivan brought his hand around to the back of her neck and tilted her head, his teeth ripping at her bottom lip. Her body responded as it always had, and she clutched his hair with both hands.

Releasing her bottom lip from his teeth, he held her face between his hands, studying her face, her reaction as he held her against the bricks with his body. She was every bit as beautiful as he remembered, but he could not look at her now without feeling the pain of having been ripped in two. But this was not the time for feelings. He looked her up and down and marveled at her beauty as the freak within trembled in excitement.
Satisfaction
.

Jaden tried to pull back and speak between kisses, but he kept cutting her off. He kissed her hard as he yanked the teal dress up around her waist, exposing her lacy, black panties, moist with intent. He watched her reaction as his fingers pushed aside the fabric and came to rest between her legs. He could feel the wetness mounting, her body readying itself for him.

“Ivan,” she mumbled between gasping breaths, but he silenced her again with his touch.

He plunged two fingers into her, and she squirmed beneath him. The feel of her warmth illuminated the dim alley in a medley of sounds and colors. Faster and faster he worked his fingers in and out of her and reveled in the sensation of power. He held her against the wall and had his way with her, smiling as she writhed and bit her lip in ecstasy.

He felt her legs begin to tremble as they always did when she was ready to come, and he picked up the pace, curling his fingers inside her to rake against the sweet spot. Her mouth dropped open as she clamped around his fingers and convulsed with orgasm, but he didn’t stop. Instead, he continued to thrust his fingers into her, the palm of his hand rubbing against her clit with every stroke, and driving her straight into another orgasm.