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Light meets dark. Secrets meet truth.
It's been three years, twenty-five weeks, and five days since Isis Blake fell in love, and if she has it her way, it'll stretch into infinity.
After a run-in with her mom’s ex-boyfriend, she scrabbles to remember what she’s lost to amnesia. Her ex-nemesis Jack falls deeper into a pit of despair, and his girlfriend Sophia does all she can to keep him to herself. But as Isis’ memories return, she finds it harder and harder to resist what she felt for Jack, and Jack finds it impossible to stay away from the only girl who’s ever melted the ice around his heart.
As the dark secrets surrounding Sophia emerge, Isis realizes Jack isn’t who she thought he was. He’s dangerous. But when Isis starts receiving terrifying emails from an anonymous source, that danger might be the only thing protecting her from something far more threatening.
Her past.
***This book contains language and sexual scenes, some of which may be unsuitable for younger readers.
***This is the second book in the Lovely Vicious series.
CHAPTER 1
Part 1
3 Years
25 Weeks
5 Days
“Are you alright, sir?”
I look up at the voice. A bellboy smiles cheerily at me. He
has no idea who I am, or what I’ve been through, yet he has the nerve to smile.
It’s been nineteen days since Isis Blake forgot about me. And yet he has the
nerve to ask if I’m alright.
I light another cigarette.
“Get out of my face.”
His expression falls, and he backs away. “S-Sure. Have a
nice night.”
I scoff and lean against a pillar of the grand marble
roundabout of the Hilton hotel. I watch ridiculously fancy black cars shuffle
in and out, dropping off equally puffed-up old rich people. Bellboys and
concierges scurry around, calling taxis and directing valets. Revolving glass
doors with gold accents constantly whirr and hiss over the mindless chatter.
Women shriek with laughter, men guffaw; all of them oblivious, happy idiots. I
can see the truth in their clothes and posture – five of the men are cheating
on their wives. Two of them with far younger women, one of them exclusively
with prostitutes. He not-so-subtly taps the ass of a passing blonde in a
peacoat. She hides her grimace with an actress’ grace. When she sees me, she
clips over in her heels with a mildly happier smile.
“Jaden! Oh my god! It’s been forever!”
“Three months, Lily.” I correct.
“Three months, forever, same difference.” She laughs.
Perfume wafts off her - the expensive, strong kind. The kind you buy when you
have to cover up the pervasive smell of sex.
“Finished with work?” I ask, and jerk my head at the man
still watching her lecherously, his wife oblivious and clinging to his arm.
Lily sighs.
“Yeah, for the night. I’m about to head back to my place.
What about you?”
“Mayor’s daughter.” I motion to my tuxedo. “Winter ball.”
“Bet you were the hottest guy there.”
“It was a Catholic girls’ school.”
“And the hottest guy she’ll ever have.”
Lily is just a few years older than me, but she’s been in
the Rose Club far longer. Lily isn’t her real name, just like Jaden isn’t mine.
I don’t know her in real life, and she doesn’t know me. But sometimes we work
in the same hotels, and she’s one of the few girls in the Rose Club who isn’t
annoyingly bland. So we talk.
“Seriously.” Lily elbows me. “I’ve seen her. She looks like
an inbred Pomeranian on her best days.”
“Now now,” I blow smoke into the sky. “Let’s not be nasty.
She paid good money. And I respect and appreciate money.”
Lily watches my face carefully as she waits for a taxi to
cycle past. She furrows her thin brows.
“What about your own prom?” She asks.
“What about it?”
“Are you going to that? Do you have a girlfriend? Or a
date?”
I took Sophia to my Junior prom. But it’s not Sophia who
pops into my head. An image of Isis grows strong, dressed up in some silk
dress. Red? Or blue? Purple, probably, to match her hair. She’d dance and drink
and start at least four fights. It would be awful. It would be hilarious. I
smirk at the thought, but it quickly fades.
“No. I’m not going to the Senior one. It’s pointless – I’m
graduating in five months, anyway. High school barely matters anymore.”
She plucks the cigarette from my lips and grinds it under
her heel. “When did you start smoking?”
“When did you start seeing fit to mother me?” I snarl.
“It’s not good for you.”
“Neither is whoring.”
Lily glowers. “We both have our reasons for doing that. You
don’t have a reason to smoke. Unless you want to die early and painfully.”
“And if I did, it would be none of your business.”
Lily looks wounded. She hails a passing cab, and pauses in
its open door to look back at me.
“You’re one of us, Jaden,” She murmurs. “Society looks down
on us. Customers objectify us. All we have is each other. So it is my business.” She pulls out her Rose
Club card – white with pale gold stripes – and hands it to me. “If you ever
need anything, or if you wanna talk, call me.”
She’s gone before I can throw it back at her - gone before
the gaping chasm in my chest has the chance to begin to bleed. I shake it off.
I’m Jack Hunter. No one makes me bleed.
Except one girl, at a party, nearly five months ago.
I light another cigarette to cover the stench of weakness
emanating off me. The women at the hotel’s entrance are eyeing me. If I so much
as flinch in their direction, they’ll accost me, flirting with tired tactics
and worn eagerness. They are just as bad as the men. They covet things that
look nice. And when they can’t have what they covet, they squabble; quickly
turning on each other in sickening displays of predatory possessiveness.
I consider throwing Lily’s card in a nearby puddle. She has
no idea what I’m going through. I
have no idea what I’m going through. She can’t help me. Besides, her help is
offered solely because she has designs on me. Even an idiot can see that much.
‘Not
everything with a vagina likes you, dipshit!’
I whirl around at the
sound of the voice. It’s so clear, so perfectly loud and obnoxious that it has
to be her. But no purple streaks bob out of the crowd to greet me. No warm
brown eyes crinkle with a smirk.
I fall against the pillar again and laugh, putting my head
in my hands as reality slips through my fingers. Get it together, Jack Hunter.
You’re going to Harvard in seven months. Your mother is waiting for you to come
home. Sophia is counting on you. Her surgery is imminent. You can’t go crazy.
Belina needs your help. People are depending on you. You have a life to live,
and no matter how much you wish on stars, no matter how much you bargain with
God, or with the doctors, that life does not include Isis Blake any longer.
You’re a stranger to her.
The hole she burned in the ice must be mended.
There is no warmth, anymore. You barely tasted it, barely
felt it on your skin. It brushed against you for a single second. Something so
small should not retain this much weight. It is illogical. You are illogical
for letting it affect you so much.
There is no warmth, Jack Hunter. Not for the likes of you.
You have blood on your hands. You have duty, and guilt, and
you can’t escape that. No one can help you escape.
Not even her.
“Jaden!” A shrill voice makes me look up. Cynthia, the
Mayor’s daughter, waves me over to the limo. Her dark hair is over-curled and
looks ridiculous. Her pink dress is too tight and low cut. Her circle of
simpering friends have dropped their purses off and re-touched their makeup,
and now they’re on their way to an after-party. We’re on our way. I’m being paid to be one of them, after all.
I stub my cigarette out and put on my best
smile.
Don't miss part 2 & 3 of Chapter 1 from SAVAGE DELIGHT!
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