Lies That Sinners Tell (The Klutch Duet 1)

“Arrange dinner?” I repeated. “You know, you’re not meant to act like it’s a forgone conclusion. You’re meant to ask first.”

“I know you want to have dinner with me, Stella.”

Fury crawled up my throat, and I scowled even though he couldn’t see me doing it. The nerve of this guy. And the nerve of my ovaries for responding to his arrogance. “You don’t know anything about me,” I seethed.

“I know that after going through something that would break a lesser woman, you’ve barely missed a step. You’re going to kickboxing classes, the gun range, doing everything to make sure you’re not a victim again. You’re still dressing like pure sex, not covering up the body that some cretin thought he had the right to violate, to own. You still own it. I may not know everything about you, definitely not the things I want to know about you, but I know enough.”

I stared at my bottle of wine. That was a lot to digest. More than a lot. Especially considering I wasn’t in possession of all of my faculties. Sure, considering my typical consumption of cocktails, I had a high tolerance, but even stone-cold sober I wouldn’t have been able to process everything Jay’d just said.

I did know I should have something to say, though—a lot of things to say—especially about him still having me followed.

“What do you want to know about me?” I asked in a small voice.

“I want to know what your nipples look like,” he responded immediately. “How your pussy tastes. What it feels like when you clench around my dick after I make you come for the third time.”

Holy. Fuck.

It was safe to say my sex drive had not been killed three weeks ago. It had just been on vacation. And now it was back. In a big way.

“I know you want that too,” Jay continued while I was too busy trying to figure out what the fuck to say to that.

“I like your backbone, pet,” he pressed on. “Like that you have fire. That you’re going to answer back ... it’s going to make breaking you in so much more satisfying. But we’ll do that over dinner, not over the phone. Luka’s. Thursday. Eight thirty. I’ll pick you up.”

Then he hung up. Not giving me time to argue with him deciding on the time, date and location of this dinner without consulting me. Not giving me time to tell him to go to hell.

But it didn’t really matter because I didn’t want to do any of those things.

I wanted to go to my bedroom with my bottle of wine and get reacquainted with my vibrators.

CHAPTER FIVE

I was on my second glass of wine when my father called.

It was much needed after the day I’d had. First, I’d been at a magazine shoot since dawn. I’d eaten lunch in the form of a cake pop and a venti latte scarfed down on my way to a styling appointment with the little teen millionaire I’d refused two days ago.

She had not taken no for an answer. And she had far too much money, considering she’d upped her offer for my services by about forty percent.

I didn’t say yes entirely for the money, although it was going to fund the trip to Spain Zoe and I were planning for the New Year. I also acquiesced because the little twit might just do something for my career.

She had over two million Instagram followers, something absurd like fifteen million YouTube subscribers, and was somehow getting her own reality show. She was a big name in Hollywood right now, though the city was begrudgingly accepting these new forms of celebrities. There was a healthy dose of judgement directed at these young people for getting rich and famous without the acceptance or approval from the gatekeepers of the entertainment industry. Their fame was completely up to the public. There were no barriers to entry. Anyone could gain power and influence the masses.

Which was precisely the reason why people like me were careful not to snub them or ignore them, because of their huge amount of influence. If they posted or talked about a product, it would be sold out within a day. Or if they put their name on something, there were millions of guaranteed viewers, consumers, customers.

Hence me saying yes. One Tweet, one Instagram post mentioning me, tagging me as her stylist, could catapult me in to a new stratosphere of my career. Which was saying something, since last year I'd dressed Jen for the Oscars.

Which is what I’d reminded myself at least ten times during the very, very long afternoon planning and styling the little idiot’s ‘new vibe’. There were countless teenagers hanging about her Beverly Hills mansion, smoking weed, Instagramming, laying about doing nothing. The place was messy, surfaces covered in clothes, dishes, discarded designer shopping bags.