A good fuck would make all of this go away.

I moseyed out of the card room and into the club, ignoring the enthusiastic claps on my back and conversation starters, and scanned the mass of sweaty, dancing figures melding together. I pressed the tumbler of whiskey to my lips.

Humans appalled me.

Despite my reputation, I didn’t just fuck anything with a pulse. I had dry spells of the self-inflicted kind since fucking ultimately required talking to people, and talking to people was a punishment even a good pussy wasn’t worth sometimes.

There were always whores, who didn’t demand meaningful conversation, but I wasn’t a fan of shoving my dick where so many others had been.

I immediately decided which woman I wanted to spend the night with. She had bleached blonde hair, a fake tan, long legs, and a pink mini-dress so tacky removing it from her would be my Christian duty.

Most of all, she looked nothing like Nix.

I snapped my fingers in the bouncers’ direction, pointing at her.

“I’ll have that one,” I clipped then proceeded to turn around and go up the stairs to my office, past the card rooms.

In my office, I busied myself by flipping through the betting books, tugging at my hair and not thinking about Nix.

A knock on the door made me drop the fat book on my desk.

“Open.” I sat back, sprawling out in my executive chair.

The blonde pushed the door open, giggling excitedly as she shut it behind her, and pressed her back against the bullet-chipped wood.

“Hi! I’m Dani,” she squeaked, tossing her hair to one shoulder. “Your bouncer showed me up. It’s my first time at Badlands. Honestly, my friends are, like, kind of freaking out about all this. You calling me here, I mean. We heard about you a lot, obvs. But we didn’t even know you came to this place, like often …”

I tuned her out, focusing on how her lips moved, fast and eager. Everything about her was wrong from her juicy, probably enhanced lips to her definitely penciled-in eyebrows. Her fake eyelashes looked like a shredded semitrailer tire. Her heavy makeup and dry hair full of split ends grated on my nerves in a way that felt personal. Nothing about her felt right.

Or good.

Or delectable.

Complex, dangerous, maddening.

I wanted Aisling. Aisling’s demureness. Her sharp little nose and aristocratic, well-proportioned lips. Her natural hair and skin and teeth. She didn’t succumb to modern beauty standards, and there was something irresistible about it. Aisling had that blue-blooded look of a woman you couldn’t imagine on all fours, getting fucked rough and dirty from behind. Men were simple creatures, so that meant it was precisely what I wanted to do—plow into her Royal Highness, rough and dirty, from behind while she chanted my name.

The girl in front of me continued blabbing. Hell if I knew about what. It occurred to me, now that I looked at her up-close, that she was young. Legal, yes, but much younger than me.

“… kind of down for anything, really. And, like, I know you only do casual, so that’s totally okay—”

“How old are you?” I cut into her stream of words, already in need of two fucking Advils and one bullet to put me out of my misery.

“What?” She looked startled, her brown eyes widening in panic. “What do you mean?”

“Your age,” I jeered, irritated with myself for apparently growing a fucking conscience somewhere between Aisling’s clinic and Badlands. “What is it?”

“Twenty … five?”

“Is that a fucking question?”

“No …?”

“Then why do you keep putting question marks after your answers?”

Her generation was going to run this country one day. No fucking wonder I had a fake Swedish passport, just in case. Say hello to Ludvig fucking Nilsson.

She blinked slowly, like this was a test. I was half sure she was illiterate.

“Show me your ID.” I opened my palm, stretching my arm in her direction.

“This is ridiculous.” She laughed, her neck and ears turning pink. “I’m legal! Everyone gets carded here.”

Not everyone. Aisling didn’t on Halloween, and now my dick wanted a subscription card to her pussy.

Never mind that I fired the bastard who let Aisling in the following day.

“You have five seconds before I blacklist you,” I said dryly.

“From the club?” She sucked in a breath.

“From the city,” I corrected. “Your ID, Dani.”

She rummaged through her knockoff Chanel purse with a huff, producing her driver’s license and slapping it over my palm. I lit a cigarette and sat back, rubbing my forehead as I studied it.

Twenty-two.

Danielle Rondiski was twenty-two.

A practical baby in comparison to me.

Still, legal enough to drink, to fuck, and to be here.

She was also a natural brunette with pasty white skin when that photo was taken but had since graduated from the Bimbo Academy and morphed into what was standing in front of me right now, an inflatable version of Charlotte McKinney.