Iris (The Wild Side #2)(8)

“I’ll come see you as soon as I can. Tonight, if I can. I promise.”

“If you’re promising me things, promise me you won’t sleep with this guy, whoever the f**k he is.”

She stiffened, then drew in a deep, heavy breath. She put her lips to my ear, and said very, very softly. “I love you, and I’ll come see you. Later.”

That stunned me into letting her loose.

She moved away, and slid into the passenger seat of that f**ker’s Jag before I could stop her.

I watched his big hand move to stroke over her hair as the car began to move.

She shot me one brief, worried glance, and then she was gone.

I was in a hell of a mood after that.

I tried to follow them, but that f**ker lost me before I made it to my car and out of the parking lot.

I went for a drive, aimless really, no goal in mind, before going back home, to wait for a call that I was certain wasn’t coming.

I was pretty miserable.

In fact, I was sick with jealousy, obsessed with the familiar way that man’s hand had stroked over her hair.

Mine, I thought. How dare he touch what was mine?

And when had I started to think of that wild creature as mine?

And, strangely, the most unbearable thought of all, had she meant that I love you, or was she just finding new ways to toy with me?

I got in an amazing workout that day and still felt like shit.

She didn’t call.

She didn’t show up.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. She was a liar, after all.

CHAPTER FIVE

Turner Thorn wrote horror, twisted shit with lots of sex and gore, but no one could argue that it wasn’t well-written sex and gore. He was one of the best in his genre, only lived ten minutes away from me, and lately, he was shaping up to be one of my closest friends and confidantes.

Truth be told, I sort of used to think of him as an ass**le.

He was crass, snarky, arrogant, chauvinistic, and completely obsessed with talking about sex, which back when I’d been married and rarely got laid, hadn’t been fun at all.

He had found some wacky balance where he called himself a social recluse, which meant he basically held court and frequent parties at his house, but he pretty much never went anywhere.

He also had a completely twisted sense of humor, that again, I hadn’t appreciated until I’d been unburdened of a spouse that found nothing funny, and frequently got pissy at me for laughing at the wrong things.

It hadn’t helped that Tammy had always hated his guts.

But of course, she’d hated a lot of people. She’d turned being difficult to deal with into a point of personal pride.

Turner was too young and jaded, too big and over-sexed. I’d always thought so, still thought so, even with my newfound liking for him.

He was growing on me, but that didn’t mean he didn’t still have his quirks.

He had a raw-boned, hungry look to him. He was tall and muscular, with tan skin and bright blue eyes. He kept his dark hair very close cut, his jaw perpetually shadowed.

He had the bad boy thing going, and not one qualm about playing it up to the nth degree.

We’d been bonding lately, because I found that his company was suddenly refreshing. I’d started coming to his house for a weekly coffee/vent session.

I could talk to him about things I couldn’t share with my other friends and associates. There was something very nice about having a buddy that didn’t tell you what a creep you were for sleeping with a younger woman.

On the contrary, he wanted to know the details, right down to her measurements.

“So let me get this straight,” he said, as we rehashed my messy love life, yet again. He just didn’t get it. I liked to think of it as an age gap. He saw no reason to want more from a woman than sex. “This hot young thing wants to do the nasty with you every which way, and you do, and then she leaves, and you have a problem with it.”

I rolled my eyes. We’d been over this part plenty. “Yes. I have a problem with it. I want to see her again, and I can’t find her.”

He whistled low, wiggling his brows. You could say a lot about him, but the guy did not take himself too seriously. It was a quality I was really starting to appreciate, as I made a concerted effort to take myself less seriously.

“She must be a piece of work,” he mused. “Is she hotter than Candy?”

I glanced around, not wanting to offend his assistant, the aggressive Candy.

I nodded. There was no question.

“That’s impressive. Candy’s a dime. I only hire dimes.”

This was a fact that was well known. He made it well known.

“Iris is in a league of her own. I’m not exaggerating.”

“No, I believe you. You’re an upfront kind of guy. Not one to stray from the facts, which is ironic, since you write fiction so well. So you meet this unbelievably hot woman, with very f**kable tits, which is just great, I have to add, and she pursues you, f**ks your brains out, you f**k her brains out, she disappears, and you’re stuck in this dilemma, like, what the f**k did she see in me? Why’d she leave? Will she be back? And then she comes back, two months later, gives you a severe case of blue balls, says she loves you, and disappears again, for what, a few weeks now? That about cover it?”

“Yeah, I guess, if you want to oversimplify it. I knew it was all doomed, anyway, but it just feels so unfinished.”