Wrath

Didn’t Beth expect a little payback for that? More to the point, didn’t she deserve it?

“All right,” Harper conceded. “I’m in. All in.”

“Good decision,” Kaia said, clinking her mug against Harper’s. “To revenge.”

“To winning,” Kane added, clinking their glasses with his own.

Harper paused just before taking a sip, and added one more toast. “To justice.”

Kaia checked her watch on the way out of the coffee shop. She had just enough time to head home and change, before meeting Reed. Or she could stop by Guido’s Pizza early and see if he was ready for her. If not, she could at least sit there as he worked. She loved watching his sure movements behind the counter, tossing the dough, smearing the sauce across a fresh crust, sprinkling the cheese. She’d never thought fast-food preparation could be so hot.

She slid in behind the wheel of the BMW, but before she could decide which way to turn out of the lot, her cell phone rang.

“Good news. My dinner engagement has been cancelled. I’m free for the night. Be here in half an hour.”

Kaia chewed on the corner of her lip and tapped her index finger against the phone. Powell liked to order her around. It gave him the illusion he was in control.

“Can’t-plans,” she said quickly.

“Forget them,” he suggested. “I have a special treat for you.”

For a moment, Kaia was tempted-but as she thought of Reed’s lopsided grin, and the way his rumpled, curly hair always made it look like he’d just climbed out of bed, the temptation passed.

“Sorry,” she told him, her flat tone making it clear that, as usual, she wasn’t.

“What could be more important than a night with me?” Powell asked.

“What’s the difference?” Kaia snapped, suddenly unwilling to make up a lie. This wasn’t a relationship, after all-they were under no obligation to each other. That was the beauty of it, at least until he’d turned into the amazing human jellyfish, wrapping his tentacles around her at any opportunity for fear she’d slip away. “I’m not coming.”

“Tu me manques,” Powell said. I miss you. “Mon amour.” My love. He knew very well that she couldn’t resist when he spoke to her in French.

“I’ll come now,” she said with a sigh, regretting it almost as soon as the words were out of her mouth. “You’ve got twenty minutes.”

“You say that now, but you know you won’t want to leave.” She could hear the smug grin behind his words and, as always, it repulsed her-and turned her on. “You know you can’t say no to me.”

“Twenty minutes. That’s it.”

Kaia clicked the phone shut, cutting off his laughter. So, new plan: two guys in one night. She’d double-dipped in the dating pool before, but this time felt different.

Kaia pulled out onto the road, turning toward Powell’s dingy side of town. She refused to let herself slip into some kind of juvenile relationship, imagining that she and Reed were “going steady”-it was a slippery slope and, before you knew it, she’d likely be sucked into a downward spiral of gooey love poems, Valentine’s Day candy, pathetic pop songs, and dithering about whether “he loves me” or “he loves me not.”

That was unacceptable, and even if she didn’t particularly want to see Powell tonight or suffer through his groping fingers and pompous Brit wit, she would, anyway, just as a reminder that she was free. Kaia had never let herself be obligated to anyone-as far as she was concerned, it was a step away from ownership, and no one owned her. No one ever would.

“Now that is a fine piece of ass!” The second-string point guard leaped out of his chair and pushed his way to the edge of the stage, waving a wad of dollar bills in the air.

Adam looked around the table searching for a bemused expression to match his own, but saw only naked desire in his teammates’ eyes. So what was wrong with Adam? Three half-naked women dancing onstage a few feet away, their perfect bodies gyrating to a hard, driving beat-and all he could do was stare into his glass and wallow in his own pain?

“You’re pathetic, man!” one of the guys complained, clapping him hard on the back. “Stop sulking and look where we are.This is heaven.”

Heaven, or Mugs ‘n’ Jugs, a triple X strip club on Route 47 that promised Live! Nude! Girls! and failed to card even its most obvious underage patrons. Adam had made the traditional pilgrimage out here for his sixteenth birthday, but hadn’t been back since.

Now he remembered why. Sure, a few of the girls were hot, parading across the stage in their barely-there costumes, this one a tiger-lady, that one a vampiress, all of them flashing the same fuck me look at their loser clientele. But once you tore your eyes away from all that bare skin, you couldn’t help but notice all the depressing details: the worn-out speaker system, piping the same five songs on a maddening continuous loop; the overpriced drinks and underpaid waitresses; the middle-aged businessmen who’d snuck away from their dreary lives to spend a few hours pretending that the strippers were performing just for them, that their bored come hither expressions were more than just business.

“Why’d you drag me here?” he complained, shouting to be heard over the loud techno beat. “I thought we were just going to shoot some pool.”

“What are you complaining about?” the center asked. “Look around you and tell me this isn’t better than pool.” He looked up at the waitress, who’d stopped at their table to clear their drinks, and was leaning so low across Adam that her bare midriff brushed his shoulder. “Hey, baby,” the center leered, and pointed toward the stage. “Why aren’t you up there with the rest of the hotties?”

Adam cringed, but thankfully, the waitress ignored the idiot. She turned to Adam instead. He cringed again.

“Hey, sweetie, why so glum?” she asked, stroking her finger across his jawline. “Don’t see anything you like?”

Adam took a deep breath, almost choking on the heady mix of smoke and cheap perfume.

“It’s not that,” he stuttered. “I’m… uh…”

“Distracted,” the waitress guessed. She slapped a small glass down on the table and poured him a shot. “It’s a girl, isn’t it?”

“No, it’s-” How to answer that? He couldn’t get his mind off a girl, yes, but which girl? The one he wanted to kiss, or the one he wanted to throttle?

“It’s always a girl,” the waitress said knowingly. She poured a second shot, then lifted the glass herself. “She’s not worth it, kid. You’re too young for that face.” She squeezed his cheeks together and gave his face a gentle shake, like a grandmother doting on her angelic little boy. Then, in a decidedly un-grandmotherly move, she wrapped his fingers around his glass, clinking hers against it.

“To forgetting,” she toasted, and downed the shot. She looked at him expectantly, and so he tipped his head back and dumped the drink into his mouth, trying not to choke as the cheap tequila lit a fire down his throat.

“You’re still frowning, kid.”

“I-”

“Let’s try this.” And the waitress put down her tray, grabbed his face with both hands, pulled it toward hers, and kissed him. Hard. Fast. Wet. Sloppy. And incredible.

She pulled away, and Adam just gaped at her, dazed, as the warm tequila buzz spread through his body and the cheers and hoots of his buddies beat dimly against his ears.

“There, that should do it,” she said, using her thumb to wipe away a lingering smudge of lipstick on his lips, just as his mother had done when he was a child. “Now enjoy the show.”

“That was fucking unbelievable,” the center said in a low voice.

“You are officially the luckiest guy in the world,” the point guard added, back from his failed trip to the edge of the stage.

Adam tried to smile as his buddies clapped him on the back and roared with approval. A couple years ago, this whole scene would have been a dream come true. But he wasn’t that guy anymore. Not even a hot kiss from a hot, half-naked woman could change that. The kiss just made things worse; he was ashamed to be there, because he knew Beth would be ashamed, if she ever found out-if she even cared.

“Woo-hoo, baby!” the center cried, waving a fistful of cash at the blond bombshell who was sliding up and