The Swan and the Jackal

Chapter Fourteen

Fredrik

I spend the rest of the day ignoring Cassia, and only checking in on her every so often by way of the video feed streaming from her room. I’ve thought of everything and the only idea that comes to mind is forcing her to watch another interrogation. Forcing her to watch me kill a man. For a while, it was what I intended to do. Instead of making her watch from one side of the basement, I was going to tie her to a chair in the interrogation room with me and let her see it up close and personal. Let her witness the horrific torture that she can barely stand to see through a television screen. Smell the fresh blood as it’s drawn, the sweat.

But there’s only one problem: I don’t have anyone to torture. No one left like Dante Furlong who I know deserves to be put through that. The closest ‘backup’ I have is four hours from here and I can’t leave Cassia alone in the basement for that long.

Feeling utterly defeated, and angry, and resentful towards Cassia for keeping the one thing from me that I need, I shoot up from the sofa, accidently knocking my portable tray with my dinner over onto the floor. Reaching up with both hands, I drag them through the top of my dark hair, clenching my teeth and biting back the roar sitting behind my tongue.

My arms fall to my sides and I look up at the ceiling, letting the defeat do what it wants with me.

But then suddenly a thought flickers in my mind and all is right in the world again. I take the iPad from the sofa beside me and switch on the camera in my bedroom. In a split screen, Cassia looks up instantly when she hears the television in her room come on. She stares at the live feed of my empty bedroom for a moment, curious, confused, and nervous.

If I can’t scare or torture the information out of her, I’ll draw it out in an equally cruel way.

I slip my feet down into my dress shoes and then my arms into the sleeves of my suit jacket, afterwards shrugging my long coat on. As I walk briskly through the kitchen I swipe my keys from the counter and leave the house.

It’s not usually my style, picking a woman up from a noisy bar like this one that smells of ash trays and cheap whiskey. The place is loud with drunk voices and some kind of classic rock continuously streams from the speakers of a juke box. I typically hunt in quieter places where wine is served and I can hear myself think. But this isn’t a typical night and I don’t have time to hunt in my usual places.

I’m out of place, dressed in an Armani suit and shiny black shoes and an eight thousand dollar watch. It’s all drawing attention, but that only makes it easier for me.

It doesn’t take long after I’m seated at the bar with my shoes propped on the stool’s spindle to find the woman I want. Dark hair that streams past her shoulders. Her eyes are brown, I can tell even from this far across the room. She’s petite, wearing a loose-fitting black skirt that stops just above her knees, and a pair of black women’s cowboy boots on her feet. A long-sleeved black top that buttons down the front covers her upper-body, but the top few buttons have been left undone revealing her cleavage. A long, silver chain necklace is draped around her dainty, cream-colored throat with a pendant dangling on the end that dips below her breasts.

She’s single. At least for tonight she is. I can tell by the way the two men standing next to her by the pool table are eyeing her and her friend. The way both women smile and blush when the men say how beautiful they are and how much they’d like to take them home tonight. I can’t actually hear what they’re saying, but whatever their exact words, it all translates to the same thing.

The dark-haired woman, the one I want, has already made eye contact with me once.

This will be easy.

I sit hunched over the bar with my arms resting on the bar top, a small glass of whiskey in my right hand. I run the tips of my fingers up and down the artistic indentions in the side of the glass to appear distracted. My long black coat is draped on the back of the stool behind me. I left the suit jacket on, unbuttoned, and my white dress-shirt untucked from my slacks.

Finally, I take a small drink, letting the rim of the glass linger near my lips afterwards. I glance over again to my left and sure enough the woman sees me as if she’s been waiting for me to look.

Far too easy.

She smiles inwardly and then looks at her light-haired friend. Words are passed between them, but I get the feeling they’re not close, probably just met tonight because the other woman seems more interested in the two men than their conversation. Soon, all four of them are looking my way, the two men with disappointment on their faces.

The dark-haired woman takes her small black purse up from the table in the corner and tucks it underneath her arm.

She walks toward me, swishing her shapely hips gently underneath her skirt.

“Hi,” she says shyly as she steps up, but I get the feeling there’s little shy about her. Perhaps she’s pretending to be the shy type, but I already sense that it’s not in her nature to turn a man like me away, one who she knows deep down inside of her somewhere is the kind of man who embodies sexual control.

“Good evening,” I return with a faint smile.

She blushes.

I stand halfway from my stool and gesture at the empty one next to me, indicating for her to sit down. She does, propping her boot on the spindle to push herself onto the seat. She sets her little purse on the bar.

She smells good, like perfumed powder lightly dusting her skin. Her hair has been freshly washed and even though she has been drinking, I can still faintly smell traces of her minty toothpaste.

I gesture for the bartender who comes over and waits.

“Would you like a drink?” I ask the woman.

She smiles and her brown eyes appear to twinkle.

“Sure, thanks,” she says. “Rum & Coke.”

As the bartender goes to make her drink, I take another sip of mine and push the glass out of my way. I turn around on the stool to face her, leaving my right elbow on the bar.

“It’s not often men like you come in here,” she says.

The bartender places her glass down and then leaves us alone again.

“Men like me?” I inquire casually.

She nods with a blush growing in her cheeks.

“Well, yeah,” she says, fingering the indentions in her glass as I had been doing. “A businessman of sorts by the looks of it. With an accent at that.” She glances at my watch peeking from beneath my jacket sleeve. “And men don’t usually come in here wearing Rolex’s.”

Interesting. She actually knows a Rolex when she sees one and doesn’t even need to get a closer look. Gold-digger? Wealthy herself? She could be a lot of different things, but one thing she isn’t is demure, and she has a deep relationship with money. But she’s far from being vulnerable. No, this one is good at a game of her own. She could easily fool a man into thinking she’s vulnerable. But I’m not a man who is easily fooled. I just wonder if she’s good enough to realize that.

“Gwen,” she introduces herself. “What brings you to a place like this? Needed to drown your sorrows? Trouble with the wife?” She glances at my bare ring finger.

“Fredrik,” I introduce with a dark, faint smile. “Fortunately I have no sorrows to drown. And certainly no wife.”

She grins and takes another sip. Then she slides the glass out of the way with the tips of her long, slender fingers, afterwards propping her elbow on the bar top. She crosses her legs and stealthily pulls the ends of her dress over the top of her knee by tugging the fabric in her lap with her free hand. She has sexy knees attached to long, flexible legs.

Gwen is a very confident woman hiding behind the guise of a shy Jane. She’s a hunter, like me. And she’s used to getting her way. She’s used to men who drool at the sight of her, who can’t get past staring at her breasts long enough to see that they’re being played.

Tonight will be interesting for her, if not an eye-opener.

If this were any other night and finding my ex-wife wasn’t a priority, I might want to hunt this woman a little longer. Take my time. Feel her out to figure out her game. I’d play it just because I can, and because she’s not so unlike me and would probably enjoy it, too.

“What is that?” she asks. “The accent.”

Her eyes seem to light up with the possibilities, as though the thought of sleeping with a man with an accent excites her.

I incline toward her, closing the space between us and inhale her scent. My gaze scans the curvature of her neck and the plumpness of her mauve-colored lips. “Swedish,” I answer and let my eyes fall on hers. I lean in closer so that she can feel the heat of my breath on the side of her neck. “I should tell you, Gwen”—her body leans into mine eagerly—“I never waste time with the mating ritual, getting to know one another before we fuck by offering little spoonfuls of personal information to break the ice.” I sense her body tense up and her breathing begins to deepen, but she makes no effort to pull away from me. “If you want to leave with me, then let’s go. I can promise you one thing.”

I pull away and look at her, waiting for her answer. Her eyes are wide and that plump mouth of hers sits partially agape. She’s no longer the confident, game-playing woman she was when she walked over here. She’s stunned for probably the first time in her life.

She hesitates for a long, contemplative moment and finally asks, “What can you promise me, exactly?” Then she laughs nervously and adds, “That you won’t kill me and throw my body in a dumpster?” She seems only slightly concerned about that prospect.

I smile and curl my fingers around my glass before bringing it to my lips and taking a drink. “No, I won’t do that,” I say and set the glass back down. “But I will have my way with you—that is if you can handle it. I won’t lie to you, I’m not gentle.”

She bites down tenderly on the corner of her bottom lip.

Gwen pauses and then turns slowly on the stool, facing forward. She takes another small drink and sets the glass down letting her fingertips linger on the wet rim. I’ve seen that look of excitement and conflict in a woman before. It’s unmistakable, the look of a woman who wants to taste the darkness no matter the risks. Her cream-colored skin is flush with heat. Her long, slender fingers continue to dance around the rim of the glass in a slow, repetitive movement. The inner ridge of her bottom lip stays moist as the tip of her wet tongue carefully traces it.

Quietly reading her thoughts, which are as loud as the music playing in the background, I oblige and drop my right arm from the bar, slipping my hand between her thighs and carefully breaking them apart. Without looking at me—and without objection—her body relents and her legs come uncrossed on the stool.

Like the rest of the bar, the area is dark, only the orange and red glow from various bar lights humming against the walls. The shadow plays against Gwen’s profile, accentuating the way her throat moves every few seconds when she swallows. And when my fingers slip behind the elastic of her thin panties in the bend of her leg, the shadow reveals her mouth parting even more with anticipation.

Grazing her little bead of sex, Gwen gasps lightly and both of her hands collapse around her glass on the bar, her fingers loose, but restless. Her legs part farther, giving me—begging me—more access.

I slide my middle finger inside of her and feel her tighten around me, wanting to hold me there. Her eyes close softly. Her back has straightened like a proper English girl. Her shoulders are slightly stiff, her breasts heaving between them with every pleasure-filled breath she takes, but tries to contain for the sake of being in public. And only when she feels the sensation of my finger sliding carefully out of her does she turn her head to look at me again. Placing my hand over the top of my glass, I let my middle finger fall between the others and dip into the whiskey before taking a drink. I set the glass down, afterwards placing the tip of my wet finger into my mouth and tasting her.

She just stares at me. Lustful. Conflicted. Confused.

Then I stand from the stool and remove my long coat from the back of it, sliding my arms down into the sleeves. Gwen watches me quietly, intensely, still fighting with the angel on her shoulder which lost to the devil on the other side the moment I touched her.

I drop a fifty-dollar bill on the bar beside my glass.

And then I walk away.

I don’t look back as I make my way to the front exit, passing occupied tables and busy waitresses and pushing myself through thick wisps of cigarette smoke.

As casually as I had gone in, I walk back outside into the frigid air, pulling my coat together in the front as the wind brushes bitingly against my face. Before I step off the sidewalk and into the parking lot, I hear the music and the voices from inside the bar funnel from the front door as Gwen steps from it behind me.

“I’ll take my chances with the dumpster,” I hear her say and I grin with my back turned.

I turn to face her, my hands buried in my pockets. She’s wearing a long coat, too, with a faux fur-lined hood draped around her dark hair where loose strands push against her face by the wind.

She is quite beautiful.

“I’m glad to hear that,” I say matter-of-factly.

She smiles, breaking a little of the sexual tension for the sake of conversation. “You’re really…blunt.”

I shrug and gently purse my lips.

“I guess I am.” I smile faint and close-lipped, offering my hand to her.

She smiles back and places her fingers into mine.