Falling for Rex by Shayne Ford
1
REX
“So... You’ve got yourself a girlfriend?”
Kian’s footsteps resonate behind my back, the echo bouncing around the large room overlooking the ocean.
Swiftly, I slide my gaze to the full-length mirror to catch a glimpse of him.
He wears a dark suit, a white shirt, designer shoes, and a sleek belt. A metallic watch captures the light at his wrist as he sets his drink on the coffee table and slides onto the velvet couch.
“What about you?’ I throw at him, running my palm down my shirt.
“We were talking about you,” he says, spreading his arms on the back of the couch, smiling maliciously.
He meets my eyes in the mirror.
“Heading out?” he asks.
“I’m going to a party,” I mutter, shifting my focus to my attire.
“Since when do you attend regular parties?”
“Since when do you wear a suit on a Saturday evening?”
He stays quiet, a dark smile flickering in his eyes.
I spin around.
“Maybe I have a date,” he mutters, amused.
“Maybe I don’t believe you.”
His stare stays on me as I check the time on my watch.
There’s enough time.
“How come you’re not picking her up?” he tosses at me, reaching for his drink.
I go to the bar and pour one myself.
“Why is it your business?” I murmur, my back turned to him.
He doesn’t bother to answer. I pivot to face him, a glass in my hand.
Biting the inside of his cheek, he runs his eyes on me.
“You’re trying something different, huh?” he mutters.
“So do you. I thought there was a party at the club.”
“Yes, there is...” he says, slowly raising his gaze, “but I’m going to San Francisco.”
“Why?”
A smirk tilts his lips.
“Why would I tell you? You’re not telling me about your girlfriend.”
“There is no girlfriend,” I say, breaking my gaze away from him and sliding into a large armchair not far from him.
He takes a swig and sets his glass on the table.
“You’re not going to be able to hide her from me, brother. I saw her already.”
“Whatever you think you saw, it wasn’t my girlfriend. I’m not looking for a girlfriend, so I don’t have one.”
“I bet she’s going to the party. That’s why you’re going over there... It doesn’t matter. I’ll find out, anyway,” he continues.
“I don’t care.”
His cold grin gives me chills.
“You should care. Plenty of hot women spend the summer here. Rumor has it they can’t wait to come to our parties. She might end up there too as a special guest.”
The irony in his voice makes my skin prickle.
Still, I doubt it will happen.
“You used to like our parties... “ he tosses at me before gesturing dismissively. “But this is not about you. You can opt out if you want to. Stay away and keep her away from the other guests and me... Although I need someone I can trust to handle the money.”
“You can collect the money.”
He gives me a smug grin.
“I sure could, but then I’d keep your cut if I did that.”
“I don’t need it.”
“I think you do,” he says seriously, a different expression setting on his face. “This is not only about money. You know that.”
It’s moments like this when his eyes harden, and his smile dies out, his true nature surfacing. People don’t realize how diabolical he is.
Baron, our stepfather, is one of those people–– he always gives him the benefit of the doubt.
Darker than hell, Kian feeds on people’s weaknesses, taking pleasure in destroying anything and anyone different than him.
That’s what fueled the animosity between us when I started to act differently than him.
He doesn’t like me much these days, yet he is willing to make concessions so we can live together, but our truce is fragile, volatile, and fleeting.
I don’t like his way of doing things, and he doesn’t like my way of viewing things, but we both love power and bask in its glory.
We just pick different ways of exerting it.
“You need to remember this when you run for political office,” he says. “Power is not an island, brother... You only have strength when you control your enemies. When they need you more than you need them.”
I scoff.
“They don’t need us, and you know it.”
He laughs dismissively.
“I’d say look at them...” he mutters, keeping his eyes trained on me. “The next time they come to a party and enter the poker rooms, take a good look at them. Pay close attention to them when they sit around the tables and start gambling before walking into the other rooms and getting sucked by a bunch of college students. Today, they squander their parents’ money or dig into their trust funds. And tomorrow, they’ll be the next generation of ruthless tycoons, corrupt judges, and ambitious politicians. What happens in those rooms today guarantees your political future. They’re indebted to you and me, but between the two of us, you need them more than I ever will. You want to change the world and make things right. Don’t believe for a second that you won’t need people like them. The end justifies the means. You know all that... You’re smart enough not to toss everything to the side for a woman.”
Smiling, I drink my wine and place my glass on the table.
“Since when does it matter if I have a political career or not?”
“It doesn’t matter to me, but it will matter to you. That’s how life works. You think you have a choice when it comes to it, but you don’t. When you rise to the top, people need to fear you. When they no longer fear you, you’re gonna go down.”
He pins a blank stare on me.
“You pick whatever the hell you want for yourself,” he says. “All I know is that I will never be down.”
“You’ve never been down,” I argue, emotionless.
His gaze sharpens on my face, a smirk tugging at his lips.
“You don’t have to be down, brother. Just look around. There are two kinds of people in the world... The ones who live and the ones who ask for permission to live. You take your pick. I have.”
He snatches his glass and empties it in one gulp.
“Back to your girlfriend...” he says in a different tone, a knowing grin curving his lips. “You’ve already put a target on her back. I think you know that” he mutters, his eyes glinting with darkness.
My blood turns to ice.
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I retort.
Holding my gaze, he searches my eyes, studying me with intense curiosity.
This is not a joke–– mentioning her is a real problem.
I know him. I know how ruthless he is. Nothing can stop him from taking something from me if he likes it and thinks it’s his.
We’ve shared women over the years. Not share share–– we’ve mostly taken our turns.
And we haven’t initiated it. The women couldn’t make up their minds and couldn’t say no to either of us.
We clashed a few times and even fought over them, not because we had feelings for them––we didn’t love them–– but because we wanted them at the same time.
No matter what we did, the story repeated itself. We never dated anyone. And never promised anything.
We played the field and played it hard.
He played it harder than me, but you couldn’t tell because whoever got to know him wanted to have an experience with me as well, so getting to know those women was a given.
They even gave us a nickname. They called us... The Curse. We took what was ours and never stuck around.
And they were right. Most women weren’t newbies, and some were older than us, yet they ended up shedding tears because of us.
These days, women are rarely a conversation topic, but for some reason, Luna Rae is.
No surprise there. I knew this would happen.
I don’t know what he knows or what he saw. All I know is that I’m not in the mood to share with him.
Why?
I don’t know yet.
Because she’s not the typical woman who rolls off my bed to climb into his? The professional escort who earnestly sucks off either of us? The online sex worker who spreads her legs for us? Or the mature woman who makes us come with a smile?
I can’t tell for sure.
We want wild women these days, but they are hard to find in a world where everybody copies everybody.
Kian spends most of his time at the bikers’ club downtown–– not surprisingly so–– where quite often, one of those women with legs up to her neck and melon-like breasts does it for him.
He takes her wherever he feels like... On the back of his ride, in the club restroom, or the alley behind the venue.
Despite rolling in expensive sheets, having a chef, and showering in glass booths that fetch the price of a piece of real estate, Kian has a beast in him–– a man who feeds on anything raw, bloody, painful, and wild. Anything stripped off finesse and morals feeds his dark instincts.
He has the sensibility of a rock and the force of a volcano, burning everything in his path.
The women don’t mind him–– they like his force, darkness, unstoppable drive, the unapologetic way with which he claims them.
They get smitten with him, seek his attention, want to be in his graces, and never refuse his advances.
The men just stay out of his way.
With him, there are no emotions, foreplays, or afterthoughts in the aftermath.
He doesn’t need a woman.
He doesn’t need women for more than their warm bodies and soft depths–– their feelings and regrets don’t matter.
He enjoys when they connect to him and get addicted to him, fucking them proving even more pleasurable, more intense, and more fulfilling, but that’s about it.
He gives them the best time of their lives before they quickly learn no dick is worth the pain.
Although his dick seemingly is.
He likes their fondness for him but doesn’t believe in romantic words to soothe them and replace what he can’t give them otherwise.
Taking over their lives, he overpowers them, the same way he rises above everybody else–– the need to control and destroy is ingrained in him.
People wondered if something happened in the past and made him that way.
Sadly, no.
He was born that way–– I truly believe that.
He and I share common traits, but I have nothing dark to feed inside me—no demons, murkiness, and abysses to sacrifice other people for.
He has no limits, boundaries–– forget his broken moral compass–– but I do, and that’s what makes him hate me.
