Fraud

Gabriel

Someone should come over to the table now and take away my silverware.

I’m like a toddler with a bad idea, the thought of gouging out my eyes with a spoon a hell of lot more entertaining than the mindless drivel and banal conversation I’ve been suffering for the past two hours.

How?

How is it possible the woman who has kept me on my toes for the past twenty years has been reduced to this empty shell of a person who is more interested in superficial topics and twirling her damn hair?

I’ve been close to tears three times now as I decide just how to write the eulogy for the Ivy I used to know.

Here lies the most aggravating woman ever...which only made me want to fuck her more. It’s a shame I never got the chance while she was still enjoyable.

Okay. It’s more of an epitaph, a shitty one at that, but still. It’s fitting as hell because the beauty staring at me now has lost every ounce of her devious soul.

I keep searching her eyes for the tiniest glimmer of the wickedness I once saw, but all I’m seeing is the typical socialite, a caricature so mundane and boring that I keep fidgeting in my seat fighting the insane urge I have to get up and leave.

Does that mean I’m not interested in dragging her to bed?

No.

Still interested.

Very fucking interested.

Only because I’ve craved it for so long, and together with the asinine conversation I’m being forced to endure, Ivy is flirting her ass off.

I deserve some tail after dealing with this shit. And I’ll be damn sure to take it.

But not as payment for the debt she owes Ta

“So,” Ivy says, her blue eyes hooded with lurid thoughts, the few glasses of wine she’s had going straight to her head, “I was thinking maybe we can go back to your place and work out an arrangement.”

That can’t happen for several reasons. Let me count them down for you.

Number One: Any arrangement to get between Ivy’s legs will have no strings except for the promise of getting off.

Number Two: It’s not my house, and Ivy won’t be getting anywhere near my actual house because, pale imitation of who she used to be or not, I’m not stupid enough to give her my address. I’m still scarred by the chicken incident. Literally. One of them pecked the shit out of me, and the skin never grew back.

And Number Three: Ta

Going to my place is not happening.

But going to hers...

Leaning across the table, I stretch out my arms and take her hands into mine. She happily accepts and leans forward, giving me a stu

“Considering your guard dog seems to have a hard-on for slitting my throat and bathing in the arterial spray-“

She laughs. “He’s not that bad.”

“He is,” I insist, “but that’s not my point. We should go back to your place instead. At least, there, he’ll be in his own yard and can happily play with his chew toys instead of damaging my property from boredom.”

The analogy makes no fucking sense, but judging by the way Ivy has been acting tonight, she’s too fucking stupid to realize it.

She opens her mouth to respond, but her phone rings in her purse, her expression dropping as she releases my hands to answer it.

“It must be nine,” she comments as she digs around for it. I think it should be mentioned that the chirpy little boy band melody she has for a ringtone is making my ears bleed.

Casting a glance my direction before answering the call and ending my misery, she grumbles, “It’s my dad. I have to answer my phone at several allotted times every day to prove I’m being a good girl.”

Jesus Christ.

Is she serious?

The woman is twenty-seven years old and is being treated like a teenager. Why the fuck does she put up with this?

“Do you have a curfew, too?”

Her lips tug into a thin line at my question, and she holds up a finger for me to give her a minute.

“Hi, Daddy!”

My eyes widen at the saccharine tone to her voice, the high pitch more expected of an eight-year-old trying to look cool than a fully-grown woman.

Every bit of blood that had trickled into my dick earlier at the thought of fucking her is now rushing back into my body so fast my cock is deflating like a popped balloon, complete with the little squeal at the end as it flops to its miserable, limp death.

Ivy twirls a piece of hair while giggling at something her father said, her high voice scratching at my nerves while she promises him that she’s going home soon to be in bed on time.

What in the actual fuck is going on?

She must have been in an accident I don’t know about.

Or a prank went horribly wrong and she suffered brain damage.

There is no other explanation for the bullshit I’m witnessing across the table.

“Okay! Love you, too! Tell Mommy I miss her and will see her tomorrow at the birthday party. Will there be a clown?”

My brow cocks.

“Oh, yay!” she squeals, and I damn near fall out of my chair. “I love when they make balloon animals.”

Yeah, no.

I can’t fuck her.

It would be akin to taking advantage of a mental patient.

No wonder Scott hates me. I almost went balls deep into a woman with the mind of an adolescent. I hate me, too, now. I should save him the trouble and kick my own ass.

Ivy hangs up the phone and slips it back into her purse, her blue eyes slipping my direction.

“Back to what we were discussing. Going to my place works. Just as long as I’m there to set the alarm on time and prove I’m home, they won’t know what we’re really doing.”

The fuck?

“Won’t your babysitter say something?”

I’m not sure I could fuck her if I tried. My cock is so dead at this point that a priest should be arriving shortly to read its last rites.

“Scott won’t care,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “I’m telling you, he’s not as bad as he looks.”

I want to say no. I should say no. But we still need information on her father, which might be conveniently laying around somewhere in her house for me to find.

Fucking her now would feel like less of an exciting conquest and more like taking one for the team.

A sigh leaks out of me. “Let’s pay the bill and get going.”

She grins and does a hair twirl, the sight painful to watch.

After I wave our server over and I pay for the meal, I help her up from her seat, still staring at her ass as she walks ahead of me to leave the restaurant.

What can I say? I’m a guy, and she happens to have an amazing body. If she would just stop talking for a few hours, I might forget she has the sparkling personality of a goldfish.

Scott brings the car around, gives me the usual murderous glare when he opens the door to let us in, and I pause in place next to him while Ivy slides across the seat to give me room.

Turning my head to lock eyes with him, I’m not sure whether to round my shoulders and claim my space, or to slip him a hundred with the whispered plea for him to knock me the fuck out and relieve me of my misery.