FIVE
Damn it.He’s still there.
Lisa punched the car door as she drove past Maddie’s house again. The first time, she’d turned onto the bitch’s street in time to see a black sedan park behind Keith’s truck. Rather than continue, Lisa had pulled over and pretended to talk on her phone. But, unfortunately, she hadn’t gotten a good enough look at the driver’s face as he walked around to the passenger side to know if it was one of the guys Keith often met at Murphy’s Tavern. Whoever the couple was, Keith knew the woman, because he’d hugged her when he opened the front door.
The couple’s identity didn’t matter, anyway. The fact Keith’s truck remained, and it appeared as if all the lights inside Maddie’s house were off, did.
An image of Keith sucking on Maddie’s nipples while he slipped his finger in and out of her like he used to do to her formed, and Lisa screeched as she sped down the street. He shouldn’t be in there with the bitch.
She slammed on the brakes and closed her eyes when she reached the stop sign. Taking a deep breath, she forced out the image of Keith and Maddie and replaced it with a different one. One where Keith handcuffed her to her bed and then used his tongue to make her come. Need ripped through her body. While she could walk into Shooter’s or Murphy’s and leave with someone who’d satisfy her body, she didn’t want some random guy. She wanted Keith. If she couldn’t have him, Lisa would take care of her own needs when she got home. She had more than enough toys to make it happen.
No, she’d do more than that.
Smiling, Lisa turned left. The next message Keith received would include more than words. A short video of her pleasuring herself would accompany it. Lisa didn’t know if Maddie had read the past messages. But fingers crossed, she’d see this, because no girlfriend wanted their guy receiving sex videos from another woman. Even if the bitch didn’t see it, the video would remind Keith of what he was missing by not being with her.
Three hours later, Lisa sat at the kitchen table, her body satisfied, reviewing the videos she’d taken as her cousin came home.
“Faster.” Lisa’s voice, followed by a moan, filled the room, and Nicole stopped next to the table.
“That sounded like you. What are you watching, Lis?”
“A little something for Keith to remind him of what he’s missing.” Finishing her wine, Lisa refilled her glass. “Do you want some?”
“Sure, why not,” Nicole said, grabbing a glass and a box of rosemary crackers off the counter. “What have you been up to all night? Well, besides that.” Nicole gestured toward the iPad as she accepted the wine bottle and filled her glass.
Her cousin knew Lisa wanted Keith back. Nicole also knew about the text messages and that she regularly staked out the places he frequented, hoping to see him. But Nicole didn’t know Lisa had not only learned the identity of Keith’s new girlfriend and where she lived but had also befriended her.
“Not much.”
Thanks to her cheating ex-husband, Nicole now considered one guy just as good as the next. She didn’t understand the connection between Keith and Lisa. Nicole insisted Lisa was mistaking lust for love. According to her cousin, the quickest way for her to get over Keith was to get screwed until she couldn’t walk straight by the hottest guy she could find. So if Lisa told Nicole she’d spent time finding out where Keith was, her cousin would give her another lecture about how she’d wasted another night.
“You should’ve come with me,” Nicole said before taking a sip of wine.
“Was the band any good?”
Every weekend, The Raven, a downtown club, featured live music. While she’d enjoyed most of the bands she’d heard perform, once in a while a group performed that shouldn’t be playing anywhere other than in a soundproofed garage.
“Yeah. We’ve seen that band play there before,” Nicole answered as she opened the cracker box. “And Shawn stopped in with a few of his friends. I don’t know where he meets them, but your stepbrother has the hottest friends.”
Nicole wasn’t wrong.She’d yet to meet a friend of her stepbrother’s that was ugly.
“Any of them would have you saying, ‘Keith who?’ But especially Jeremy, I think. He’s built a little like Keith, and he’s got the most incredible eyes. They’re this crazy ice-blue. I’ve never seen anything like them.”
Over the years, she’d hooked up with more than one of Shawn’s friends. Her cousin had as well. But she hadn’t spent time with any of them, or any guy for that matter, since Keith.
“I’ve met Jeremy.” The guy’s unique eye color alone made him impossible to forget. “He reminds me of the model who does the watch commercial. You know, the one where he dives into a rooftop pool and then kicks to the surface. I don’t remember what brand it is.”
Of course, she didn’t remember Jeremy only because of his eyes. Three years ago, he’d helped Lisa make the obstacle standing between her and the small reoccurring role onPrecinct 3, a cop drama that unfortunately only lasted one season, disappear. And if she needed to make the same thing happen with Maddie, she’d be enlisting his aid again.
“Yeah, you’re right. Jeremy does resemble that model.”
“Did you go home with him after the show?” Before meeting Keith, if Jeremy had invited her over, Lisa wouldn’t have turned him down.
Shaking her head, Nicole took several crackers from the box and then pushed it closer to Lisa. “Shawn and I went back to his place.”
For the past two years, her cousin and Shawn had an on-again-off-again arrangement. So whenever Shawn was single, which frequently happened because the guy got bored fast and wanted sex, he turned to Nicole. Her cousin happily obliged every time—not that Lisa entirely blamed her. An amateur MMA fighter, her stepbrother had a face that belonged on the billboards in Times Square and the body to match. And according to Nicole, he was the best lover she’d ever had, which was why she never said no when he came knocking.
“I’m guessing that means he’ll be over this week?”