Fatal Beauty Read Free

sitting on her couch when EJ’s phone rings. The ground is shiny
clean again, but she can see exactly where he had been sprawled. When Tre went
down, it was in an ungraceful crumple that had his arms and legs splayed out in
an undignified mess. When she first stared down at him, before the blood
started to spread and she realized he was dead, there had been an insane desire
to giggle.
    But the slow spread of scarlet, deepening to rusty red, killed
that desire and replaced it with cold panic.
    She can’t quit seeing Tre crumple.
    “Charlie, you with me?” EJ says.
    She blinks, the stress and the long night pulling her toward
sleep. “Charlie,” EJ calls again, her voice the sound of a whip.
    “Shut up,” she says, her voice slurring.
    EJ gives a quiet laugh. She murmurs something too low for Charlie
to hear.
    A soft tap on the front door startles Charlie back into the
moment. She comes almost off the couch, her body tense, and EJ shifts.
    “It’s ok. I called him.” She says.
    Fear slithers down Charlie’s spine, but she’s silent as EJ goes
and opens the door.
    Anthony Jacob is a tall, slender man with dark nut-brown skin,
closely trimmed black hair and cold eyes. He’s handsome, and as he steps into
her living room, surveying it with those dispassionate eyes, Charlie has to
suppress a shiver. Because he is also terrifying.
    A blank slate waiting to dispense judgment. She’s only met Jacobs
once before, about a month after Charlie caught EJ selling blow at the Burningtree . They’d met at a strip club Jacobs owned, and
Charlie had expected something dirty and disgusting. Low, tacky lighting and
desperate women dancing for lonely men.
    She had been stunned by the sleek, clean club, the music pounding
as gorgeous girls writhed and men who reminded her too much of Tre eyed them
and talked about playing with fortunes.
    Jacobs had been one of those captains of industry, and his gaze
had been chillingly amused, but when he saw EJ stalking through his club,
Charlie trailing behind her, it had gone still and predatory.
    She’d been scared then, but having him here—this was infinitely
worse.

 
    *

 
    EJ is acutely aware of Charlie and how very vulnerable she looks
sitting on the couch. Tre is sprawled on the floor and Charlie looks like a
strong wind will blow her over, and Anthony Jacobs stands too still at her
shoulder, observing.
    Calling him may have been a mistake. And when he is involved,
mistakes aren't small things easily forgotten. They change everything, a
fucking earthquake rearranging life.
    But there are few people she can call and say, I need to move a body.
    Both are in this room.
    He doesn't say anything for a long moment, observing the dead body
and the shivering young woman. With an almost inaudible sigh, he steps over the
body and to the bar. EJ watches while he pours three shots and takes two,
thrusting one at Charlie. She catches it with the muscle memory of taking
brusquely offered glasses a thousand times, and sips it with the same kind of
distant awareness.
    "Ella, a word." He says. When Jacobs speaks, it's like
sex, all decedent naughty shit that went straight to her cunt and rubbed it in
the most delicious and demanding way. Before him, she would never have said a
voice could sound like sex and orgasms.
    She ignores the rush of desire and follows Jacobs out of the
living room, into the study that was Tre's home office.
    The door clicks shut behind her and Jacobs explodes into motion,
yanking her into him and spinning, pinning her against Tre's oversized desk.
She can feel his dick digging into her hip, and his fingertips digging into her
throat as he pushes her down.
    For some, sex is all about attraction. A hot body and a good set
of tits can win over anyone. It took Ella about five seconds, a lifetime ago,
to realize that for Jacobs, power was the only turn-on--and right now, she had
handed him the best kind of foreplay. The power over her life--and Charlie's.
The only thing that