A Smile as Sweet as Poison Read Free

whooshing like a churning sea. She felt it in her face, too, the warm, numbing blush of humiliation. She should have been familiar with the sensation by now.
    Idly, she clicked through to the last tab in the browser. No surprise there.
     
    Shoulda thought of privacy before you took off your clothes, slut.
     
    She sounds like a squealing pig. LOL.
     
    Bitch you got some nerve putting this on your man. You took your clothes off on camera. Fucking deal with it.
     
    Social media could be cruel, Hazel knew, and finding the forums where webmasters of submission-based Internet pornography roamed hadn’t been a pleasant task. All the same, weathering the vitriolic backlash wasn’t easy.
    With shaking hands, Hazel tipped the laptop lid down and closed it. The fan whirred for a few stubborn seconds longer before grudgingly shutting off. Silence returned to the room, thick and suffocating. Hazel pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes and gulped down a couple of deep breaths. It didn’t matter. The slurs, the judgment—none of it counted for anything. As long as she found a way to get that video down, the rest was just fog. Prickly to the eyes, sure, but in no way harmful.
    This shouldn’t be happening. They’re right. If she hadn’t allowed herself to be put in that position, there would be no sex tape. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known he was filming them.
    Hazel choked down the ball of guilty rage that threatened to spill out in a sob and fired up the laptop again.
    Before she could lash out against the trolls, her phone shrilled to life with a new text message. She fished it out of her purse. Trepidation lingered, although only a handful of people knew this number. Her old one had popped up online and had to be changed.
    Sadie’s heads up had saved Hazel a lot of heartache in that regard.
    Surprise slackened the cold grip of panic that seized her heart when she recognized Ward’s caller ID. He wanted to come to the mahjong game after all.
     
    I should meet your friends sooner or later .
     
    Were this any other night, the emojis tacked to the end of the text would have earned him a smile.
    Hazel flexed her fingers. The last thing she wanted was to spend her evening making nice with strangers, or skirting Sadie’s questions. But Ward had only met her best friend briefly, at the diner. As far as Hazel remembered, their introduction had been frosty at best. For all that she was a notorious party girl—and had been so since long before they left Dunby—Sadie didn’t think much of Hazel’s decision to hook up with two men at the same time. She seemed certain that Hazel would get hurt.
    She’s not wrong.
    Hazel peered at the laptop. She must have switched tabs without looking, because the lurid sight of naked women flashed into view. At the heart of all the banners and ‘click here’ imperatives, the video player revealed her own stark naked body, hands fettered above her head with black leather cuffs in a grotesque parody of what she’d been up to less than an hour earlier, at Dylan’s loft.
    Her hair was shorter, bangs drooping low and sweaty over her brow, but there could be no confusion. It was well and truly Hazel dangling there like a piece of meat. It was Hazel, her nipples clamped with silver butterfly clips, a red ball gag stuffed in her mouth to muffle her moans.
    The image was frozen on a shot of the paddle striking her hip. Cellulite rippled under the spotlights overhead, adding one more level of degradation to what was already a mortifying memory.
    Hazel tapped her cell phone screen to wake the display.
     
    Sure. I’ll pick you up.
     
    With a deep breath, she sent the text message. She might as well enjoy being in a relationship while it lasted. Six years ago, in another life, she hadn’t known the end was coming until it had ripped out her heart.

Chapter Two
     
     
     
    “No Dylan?”
    “We’re not attached at the hip,” Ward scoffed, sliding into the front seat. “Vintage.