Blood Lust

Chapter One

"You have tuna today?"

The New Yorker's drawl was not unfamiliar; in fact, she heard it every Wednesday at precisely 12:15 in the afternoon. Without fail, through rain and hail, he'd be at this very booth, tucked in the only corner of the diner that didn't smell of stale bread and sewer.

His routine is important to him. She knew that. He made sure she knew that. The man owned half of New York. Respected by the elite, the piggy bank of the city, he's used to getting what he wants. He entered Joe's diner, right in the middle of bustling Brooklyn Heights, the better part of the district, and spotted her from the entrance, demanding to the namesake of the restaurant that he'd only be waited upon by Cassandra, the waitress with no last name.

I have one, of course. My birth certificate could tell anyone easily enough that I do. But, if I'm asked the choice whether to say it or not, there's no part of me that will allow them to claim me, or vise versa. To whoever gives a shit, I'm Cassandra. This man, the one who is openly appraising the way my apron conforms to my chest, I'm Cassie, and only by his insistence. I let him choose the nickname...I decide everything else.

"Sure, the usual then?"

His crooked smile, a smile of an old man with absolutely no boundaries, tells me that he has time in his schedule. It tells me that he's in no rush to get to any of his places of work. The usual just happens to be very opposite of it.

His tastes are unique. The husband of a woman who refuses any position but missionary, a woman who spends her days sipping tea, spending thousands online, he's long since strayed from her bed. I don't blame her for allowing it, for encouraging separate bedrooms even. While his daily life is one where people can only talk up to him, in the bedroom, he prefers the opposite.

And that is where I come in.

At first he insisted on five-star hotels, but this wasn't a romance, or even a transaction. I have no desire for his money, nor his company. He serves one purpose to me and one alone.

Someone to control.

I am not a normal woman. I am not even in the realm of normal.

In a life I had no choice in starting, abandoned by the only people who are supposed to be programmed to care for my existence, I've been enlightened to the darkness in people, in the world. New York City, especially. The foster homes I leaped through my entire adolescence showed me enough of that.

I take hotshot Jimmy Rockwell to bed every Wednesday, not to get off, not because I'm attracted to him. He's ancient and unreasonably loud. He slobbers like a mutt when he's close. I take him to bed because so little in my life have I been granted the right to choose.

It's not even 12:45 by the time we're stumbling through a creaky hotel door, dropping onto an odor-ridden mattress. By this time, as is what happens every time, I'm too angry, too caught up in the enflamed part of my soul that yearns to belittle this man to even care about the filth around me. With only a fifteen minute break to perform the duties that I know he won't even last half that time to do, I use the time above him to show him my hatred of men.

He must think it's a taboo fetish. He must think that I'm doing this because I want something from him. He keeps coming back because he's convinced he's in love with me. In fact, he's no more in love with me than any other man who has taken my body. He doesn't want my mind, my soul, my heart...that is a thing of fiction. He wants my cunt. He loves me because I'm not afraid of my body, what power it possesses, the power that turns men into monsters. The only reason I allow him on mine is because he wants my body, but can do without the power.

For these five insignificant minutes, I'm not the victim. No one's whispering profanities, horror stories in my ear. No one's pinning me down. In these five minutes, I find more light than a thousand suns could provide me. My hands are around his throat, and I see that brief but disbelieving flinch in his eyes that wonders how far I'll take it.