Bleeding Heart

A. M. HARTNETT

A division of HarperCollinsPublishers

www.harpercollins.co.uk

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are

the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is

entirely coincidental.

Mischief

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London, SE1 9GF

www.mischiefbooks.com

An eBook Original 2015

1

Copyright © A. M. Hartnett 2015

A. M. Hartnett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub Edition © 2015 ISBN: 9780008148812

Version 2015-09-23

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

More from Mischief

About the Publisher

Chapter One

‘I really wish you weren’t alone.’

Seth Axworthy tried his best not to let his irritation show at Evie’s words. He rarely growled at his friend and soon-to-be-former neighbour as it was, and he didn’t plan to start on a day when she looked like she was going to burst into tears at any minute.

Instead, he sighed inwardly and gave her a smile. Then he said the only thing he could think of that would be convincing. ‘Alone, not lonely.’

What a piss-poor response, he realised as soon as the words were out of his mouth. It wasn’t true, not even a bit, and the feeling was made worse by knowing that she was moving away with her boyfriend.

He’d miss her. He’d even miss Ryan. But the worst of it was the idea of sitting by himself in his apartment again, tossing treats at his cat while wondering what in the hell he was going to do with himself for another night.

‘Are you going to come visit us?’ she asked after a minute, brushing an errant corkscrew of her brown hair from in front of her eye. ‘Ryan’s getting a barbecue.’

Again, he held his tongue. He hated the pity he heard under the cheerful invitation. Still, he told her what she wanted to hear. ‘You’re not even out of my face yet and you want to get back in it. Once you two are settled.’

‘God, I hate that word.’

‘Maybe so, but that’s what you’re doing. Another year, and then there’ll be a ring and maybe a –’

‘Don’t even think about saying what you’re about to say, unless you want Ryan to go totally over the top. Are you going to see us off?’

‘I don’t know if my little heart can take it.’

He wasn’t exactly kidding. Their moving was so final. Even though he would miss them, he had no desire to drive to the suburbs to see them. There was no sultry invitation in her tone to indicate that this visit would be anything like the last few times he had been their guest, and the last thing he wanted to do was sit on a lawn chair and watch them be couplish in front of him while he pretended he didn’t mind.

Still, he took her hand and walked with her to the elevator. ‘I am going to miss our teatime.’

‘You’ll have to make teatime with the new tenant.’

Jesus Christ. Here we go. Not even out of the building and she was already well on her way to becoming one of those meddling matchmakers who aren’t happy until they have everyone in their social sphere tied up.

‘What was that?’ Evie asked.

He didn’t realise he’d made a sound until she asked, and so he gave her another easy answer. ‘She’s barely out of her teens and just out of her parents’ house.’

‘So was I, remember? Not coming out of my teens, but still pretty sheltered.’

‘Yeah, well…’

Well, nothing. He hadn’t gone for Evie back then because his heart wasn’t in it, and he wouldn’t go for the new neighbour for the same reason – even if she did look like a pinup girl with those long legs and round hips.

Speak of the devil, there she was as he and Evie stepped outside. ‘Oh, look. Ryan found a stray.’

‘Don’t tell me you’re jealous.’ He teased Evie with a poke.

‘Hell, yeah. Look at them. If they bred, they’d create a real-life Barbie.’

No truer words spoken. They looked like they had been ripped out of an online advertisement selling beach-bum chic.

‘And that would be your apartment’s new owner,’ he said.

April Kaye. Twenty years old and just out of a two-year business course with her first job. He’d almost refused to rent to her on account of her age and lack of any kind of credit, but she had been shrewd in her walkthrough. She brought a checklist, for Christ’s sake, and had grilled him mercilessly about the lack of an electrical outlet in the bathroom – so much so that when he’d agreed to rent to her she’d insisted that he have one installed.

He hoped he hadn’t made a mistake. He’d rented to women in their early twenties before, and they always had selective hearing when it came to the rules. Evie had been an exception. Right away she’d struck him as just a sweet girl. That first night the sound of Rufus Wainwright coming down the fire escape was accompanied by humming and the smell of something mouthwatering cooking on the stove. When the weekend brought an invitation to come up for tea, he knew he had a good tenant.

He wouldn’t go so far as to say she came off as vapid, but the new tenant looked typical. Iced coffee in one hand and cellphone in the other.

And she was eye-fucking Ryan so hard, Seth didn’t blame Evie for her testiness, even if the young woman had a snowball’s chance in hell of competing with Evie in Ryan’s lovestruck eyes.

Ryan glanced in their direction, then pointed. With the young woman’s wave came her gaze upon Seth, and a smile.

‘See? Teenager.’

‘She’s not that young. You’re just turning into a cranky old man,’ Evie countered. ‘Now go over there and get her away from Ryan before she offers him a blowjob.’

‘It’s kind of hard not to. Like I said, Ryan is the prettiest man in the building.’

‘Well, with Ryan gone, I guess that makes you the prettiest man in the building.’

They stepped forward, and April thrust her hand out at Evie. ‘Hi, I’m April. I’m moving into your apartment.’

‘Lucky you, especially since Seth has been fixing it up the last few weeks,’ Evie replied with a pointed look at Ryan, who snorted.

‘Yeah, he even put in a dishwasher.’

‘New everything,’ Seth added.

Evie pulled her keys from her pocket. ‘Who gets the honours?’

Seth stepped back and smiled as April lit up as she took the keys to her first apartment. He remembered that feeling, even if the last time he experienced it was a lifetime ago. Even fresher was having the key to the lockbox for every apartment in the building, though it was his late wife who had gleefully snagged that key.

April tucked the key into her pocket and grinned. ‘I guess I’d better start moving in now that you guys are taking off. It was great meeting you.’

‘You too – enjoy the shiny newness,’ Evie offered, and they all watched as she rushed up the walkway.

Cute little thing, Seth thought. With a body like that, she’d be a hell of a lot of fun and a hell of a lot of trouble.

‘Nice ass.’

Seth turned his frown on Ryan, and then on the nodding Evie as she agreed.

‘Very nice. I especially like how you can see her thong through the skirt.’

‘Maybe I should move into the nice house and you can stay here and build your den of sin.’ Embarrassed – which was ridiculous given his sordid history with the couple – he banged on the moving truck. ‘I ought to get up there and give her a walkthrough.’

And that’s when Evie started crying.

He’d seen enough of her tears in the last few weeks and, even though this time it wasn’t Ryan’s fault, Seth still had the urge to thump the other man in the neck.

‘Aw, Jesus, knock it off.’

Still, he welcomed her hug. He expected it would be the last one for a while.

‘Text me some pictures of the new place when you get set up,’ Seth said, offering Ryan a hand.

At the last moment, he grasped hard and pulled Ryan into a hug. Hell, he’d even miss this pain in the ass.

It took a few seconds after their parting for Ryan to wipe the surprise off his face, and then he turned to his girlfriend. ‘Ready?’

Evie didn’t look even close to ready as she looked at Seth, at the building behind them, and back at Ryan.

‘Ready.’

Seth stayed on the curb as they got into the truck. Ryan shot him a grin. ‘Don’t go climbing up any fire escapes.’

Once they were gone, Seth felt shittier than he had expected.

It wasn’t that he was losing lovers in Ryan and Evie, with whom he had been screwing around for the last month before it all blew up. He could get laid any time he wanted to, as his foray into online dating sites – specifically sex sites – had taught him.

He was losing his only friends.

It came upon him with a sickening roll in his stomach before belching up and settling in his chest, hardening at the back of his throat.

When the hell did this happen? he wondered as the moving van turned the corner and disappeared. Where the hell did everyone go? When his wife was alive, they’d been fairly reclusive but they still had their social circle.

Christ, the last time everyone had been together was for Rita’s wake just over two years ago. They came in clusters after that, bringing food (‘just some leftovers, and I know you like…’) and taking discreet looks around his apartment like they thought its cleanliness was an illusion to mask the decay he’d created in the wake of Rita’s death. The conversation wasn’t the same. It wasn’t just the absence of Rita’s foul-mouthed chatter. He could tell that they didn’t want to be there, that they didn’t know what to say to him.

Then came Evie and her little blue teapot. She knew about Rita and, while she always had apology in her eyes when she asked about his wife, she would still ask. He was going to miss their talks.

He turned from the street and looked down the walkway to the foyer, where the newest tenant of Winsloe Court was setting up a small fort of boxes along the stairwell. She looked so funny, a tiny woman in a yellow sundress and scuffed sneakers running her little folding trolly down the walkway.

He met her halfway. ‘Don’t you have movers?’

April stopped and leaned forward on the handle. Her pale skin was painted with a flush that made a map over her cheeks, shoulders and chest, complete with shining lakes of sweat on her brow and neck.

‘I have a couple of friends. They’re bringing the furniture after they get off work – and then I have to unbox it and put it all together.’

‘Brand-new?’

‘Every bit of it. Like I said, it’s my first place.’

‘My first place was nothing but hand-me-downs.’

She shook her head. ‘I had some money socked away. My place is going to look like an Ikea showroom, but it’ll look fabulous.’

In his head, Seth was picturing white stuffed furniture with colour-coordinated throw pillows and curtains, like something you’d see on a television show about single girls striking out on their own in the city for the first time.

He tried to hide his smile but failed, particularly with her beaming back at him. He grinned and gestured to the beat-up red hatchback overflowing with boxes and cloth shopping bags.

‘Need a hand? I can probably take twice what you’re taking.’

A prickle went along his spine as she gave him a quick but thorough once-over. If he had blinked, he would have missed the hunger in her expression.

‘You don’t want to do that,’ she said, her cheerful voice softer now, and a little thick with the remnants of that look. His body responded in kind, blood quickening and beginning that ache in his groin, but he was quick to banish it as she had seemingly done. ‘I saw you out here helping your old tenants move. You must be about done for the day.’

‘That was nothing. I don’t have anything else to do today except stick a label on your mailbox. Come on. We’ll get the stuff in the foyer out of the way and then come back for the rest.’

‘Oh, thank you.’ She smiled, and along came another ravenous flash, followed by something else that made him uneasy: expectation.

He cracked his knuckles and she led the way to the car. She was almost half his age. He didn’t want to go messing with that sort of trouble, even if that trouble did have a round ass beneath that dress he’d love to fill his hands with.

I just need to get laid again, and soon, he thought as he took three boxes from the trunk of her car.

Still, as April beamed at him he had the feeling that a hard screw wasn’t going to shake off the tingle in his chest.

Chapter Two

April had a plan when she went to bed the previous night.

On her first Saturday in her new apartment, she’d sleep until noon, when the timer on her coffee-maker was set to start gurgling some of that expensive coffee she’d bought herself as a moving-in gift. She’d drink it in bed while reading the latest Sophie Clairmont book. After an hour of sword-wielding bad-assery soaked in sex and gore, she’d shower and grab groceries at that little market around the corner, make a second run to the liquor store so she’d be stocked for tonight, and she’d finish unpacking.

The first hiccup came even before she opened her eyes. Snuggled beneath the duvet, she was roused by a repetitive sound.

Squink!

Squink!

Squinksqui‌nksquinksquink!

She pushed up onto her forearms and cocked her head to listen.

‘Look, right there. Get it.’ Squink! ‘My turn. I said, my turn. Ow–ow! No biting, you little fucker.’

It took her a moment to recognise the deep voice.

Hot landlord.

Still, his hotness did not negate the fact that he had torn a hole in her perfect Saturday morning. She slipped from the bed and grabbed her robe from the footboard, then knelt on the bench beneath the window. She couldn’t see anything, so as quietly as she could she removed the screen and poked her head out.

She could barely see him through all the iron of the fire escape, but through a crack she caught just enough. Sitting in his window with a slinky black cat between his legs, he held what looked like a small tablet computer between his big hands.

Though the screen was fuzzy from so high above, April could see something scuttling across the surface. The cat leaped at it with both paws, then again and again as Seth laughed.

‘You missed. My turn,’ he said, and held his hand over the screen. The cat pounced, and Seth hissed as he shook free. ‘Next time I’m going to bite you back.’

April bit down to keep from laughing.

So, her gorgeous and somewhat terrifying landlord liked to play iPad games with his cat. She supposed that, on a scale of weird, this wasn’t even midway – as long as she didn’t find out he dressed the cat in Renaissance garb on Saturday nights.

The cat leaped as a trill rang out. So did Seth, and, as he cursed and tapped at the screen, April guessed that it wasn’t a tablet at all he held but a phone – one he had no idea how to use.

‘How the fuck – shit – how do I answer this goddamn thing?’

She thought about calling down but didn’t want to give away that she had been spying. Instead she clapped her hand over her mouth to keep her giggles in as she watched him try and fail to answer the phone.

‘Damn it. Christ. How the –’ He held the phone to his ear, then hissed again as he looked back at it. ‘Where the hell did the numbers go? Jesus.’

The fire escape rattled as he got up to go inside. April did the same. She remembered that, when they’d done the walkthrough, Seth had an old-school flip-phone holstered at his waist, and as he’d taken a call she wondered how those thick fingers could possibly navigate the number pad without mashing all the keys at once.

It was a little surprising that he had gotten an upgrade. When she’d spoken to the previous tenant, Ryan, outside on moving day, he’d indicated that Seth was fairly set in his ways and owned the same brick-like laptop that had been his late wife’s.

That’ll be me in ten years, she thought as she went to her counter. She was already known as the curmudgeonly one amongst their friends, nit-picking and price-checking, ordering the same thing off the menu each time and making sure she put her 10 per cent into a savings account on payday. She went shopping with a strict list, whether groceries or the cosmetics counter.

Give me a decade, and I’ll be the nosy neighbour demanding others re-sort their recyclables.

‘Aaaaah,’ she said upon opening the cupboard. Four tiny handmade espresso mugs awaited her selection for her virgin apartment’s first cup of coffee. She wouldn’t be having espresso, but a cup from beans that were ground the night before.

I should call Mom.

She shook the thought right out of her head. She wasn’t going to think of her mother and how depressed she had sounded on the phone the previous afternoon.

She’d stayed home long enough. She could afford it now that she was working.

It had been the end of the world when she announced she was moving out. April had explained to her mother that she was a big girl, that she wasn’t going to get murdered in her bed, and that she wasn’t going to get an STD.

April made her coffee and took it, along with her tablet computer, back to her big bed. She made a wall of comfort with the oodles of throw pillows she had bought, then settled in, wiggling her butt until she had that sweet spot, and clicked her way to the opening pages of her book.

Yet she couldn’t concentrate. Barely four pages in, she set the tablet aside and looked around.

Like the rest of the apartment, the bedroom had come cheap and to her exact desires. She’d taken nothing from her old bedroom. Not that she had wanted the white canopy bed and matching storage her mother had picked out when April was ten. She had gone with a sleek chocolate-brown with red and white accents. There was nothing new about the contents of her closet, but the narrow dresser in the corner was filled with her other splurge of lingerie. Nothing too kinky, just some sheer undies and colourful bras, and a garter belt and stockings she didn’t have to hide from her mother’s disapproving eyes.

And then there was the basket underneath the new bed.

She was looking forward to breaking that queen bed’s cherry with someone, using the contents of that basket. She’d had enough unpleasant experiences of screwing on unwashed sheets with the sound of rowdy roommates playing videos games just outside the bedroom door, and that was only when she’d had boyfriends who weren’t in the same boat as she was.

She could have gotten by with her old double mattress, but she’d wanted a bed made as much for sex as it was for sleeping.

And there was the new vibrator.

It cost almost as much as her security deposit and she could have better spent her money elsewhere, perhaps getting a coffee-maker that had more bells and whistles, but after taking her masturbatory sessions in thirty-minute windows when her family home was actually empty, she felt she had earned her stylish vibrator.

As soon as the caffeine had kicked in, she rolled onto her side and slid the basket out.

Hello, Miss Scarlett.

It was a top-of-the-line rabbit, with words like ‘ergonomic’ and ‘dually stimulating’ and ‘supple’ in the description, and she’d almost talked herself out of it, given the number of less expensive toys she should have bought, but the reviews had enticed her.

Two orgasms in five minutes.

Never came before I used this.

Almost passed out.

April flopped on her back and closed her eyes, then turned the vibrator on.

She gave herself just a bit of pressure through her panties. The little rounded ears of the rabbit hummed, and for a second April listened for movement. Realising she was alone, that no one was sleeping across the hall, nor would they come knocking at her door for some silly reason, she relaxed and increased the power by one setting.

Good, but not not great. She was definitely feeling the effects of the toy, but there was something missing.

The mindfuck.

Her fantasies weren’t usually about real people. She made them up in her head, like she was the J. R. R. Tolkien of masturbatory fantasies.

She’d never admit it, but her fantasies would have been perfectly at home in a paperback romance: meeting the bad boy at midnight on a lonely stretch of beach or burning off sexual tension in an office hate-fuck.

She scrolled through the chapters of her sexual anthology, but it was the blank pages at the end that caught her attention.

Big arms. A crooked grin. Intense blue eyes.

Viking? Too cheesy. Biker? Maybe. Construction worker? Getting warmer.

A late-night panic. A smoke alarm that won’t go off. A knock at the door. Getting wet watching him stretch to reset the alarm. Realising her nightgown was too low cut and too high up on her thighs. A lingering ‘good night’ at the door. A longer ‘good night’ up against the door with her back pressed to the surface and her leg wrapped around his waist.

‘Oh…oh, there we go,’ she puffed out as she really started to feel the effects of the vibrator around her clit. Her next flash was of her landlord looming over her, naked and glorious, that naughty smile as good as the vibe he teased her with.

April wriggled out of her panties and spread herself open as her imaginary lover did the same. Fingers parted her folds and the effect of the vibrator went from good to fucking phenomenal.

Living at home, she’d mastered the art of a brain-melting orgasm in perfect silence. Now, with no need for a buffer, she couldn’t hold it in. She was soaked and throbbing as in her mind he leaned over her and jiggled the vibe around her clit.

April sucked in a deep breath, and then fantasy and reality exploded in powerful waves and she cried out.

She didn’t drop the vibe between her legs when the pleasure became too much. She let the fantasy linger and, like the man of her imagination, she didn’t relent. She took it as long as she could, until her body took over and bucked to be free.

‘Oh. Wow.’

Her legs were so wobbly she didn’t think she could stand if she tried, and she was slippery everywhere. Leaving the vibe on the bed beside her, April closed her eyes and shuddered with the aftershocks.

The vibrator had given her the biggest bang for her bucks, but it was the thought of being exposed like that for Seth Axworthy that made it that much more delicious. Even as she sprawled there like her bones had been liquified and the thrum of her climax could still be felt along her inner walls, she couldn’t wait to have a second round with both her vibe and the fantasy that went with it.

With a great sigh, April pushed up onto her elbows. That’s when she saw her voyeur.

The black cat, Marco, sat prim and proper on the window sill staring at her.

‘You little pervert,’ she called to him as she swung her legs off the bed.

The previous tenant must have let him in, she thought, as she went on wobbly legs to the bathroom. She cleaned the vibrator and left it to dry on the edge of the sink, then drew a bath.

‘Well, that was something else,’ she said out loud as the tub filled. She washed her face and clipped her hair up, then pulled out a lone strand.

‘I wonder what I’d look like as a redhead,’ she said out loud, and, as soon as the tub was ready, she cut off the water and quickly called the salon for an appointment while she waited for a second cup of coffee.

Back in the bedroom, the cat still peered inside. He stood on his hind legs and pressed his paws to the glass, and April was won over.

‘Just for a minute,’ she said as she pushed the window open.

The cat wasn’t shy. He butted his head against her palm a few times, then stepped up onto her knees. One quick sniff at her coffee cup and he made another sound, then leaped past her into her apartment.

‘Make yourself at home,’ she called after the cat as he strutted through the small labyrinth of cardboard boxes and plastic bins left to unpack. She continued to sip her tepid coffee while keeping an eye on the cat, and contemplated the possibility of getting one her own, some unwanted gentleman from a shelter or a kitten with the energy and ambition to shred her brand-new sofa.

The cat paused at the foot of her platform bed, then stood on his hind legs for a better look. The thought of a stray rolling around on her clean sheets would have sent her scrambling as soon as the cat leaped up, but her earlier spying told her that this cat was Seth’s little prince, used to the luxury of a soft bed like the one he had found.

After a quick exploration of the mattress and an approving twitch of his ears, the animal turned and strutted back to the window.

She stroked him from head to tail. ‘I hope you’re not the first of many men to go running from my bed once you’ve had a roll around in it.’

The cat curled onto her lap, and April settled back. She was down to her last mouthful when the sleeping beauty in her arms lifted his head and pricked his ears.

A moment later, April heard a whistle.

‘Marco! Going out! Window’s closing!’ came a husky male voice.

April jostled the cat, but he simply looked up at her and blinked.

‘Go on. I’m not fighting for custody.’ When the cat still didn’t move, she emptied the cup and set it aside, then scooped the cat up into her arms and set him down. ‘Go home.’

Another whistle, this one more insistent than before. ‘Marco! Get your hairy balls in the apartment or else I’ll wax them when I get a hold of you!’

April giggled. ‘Scoot!’

Another blink, another mournful meow, and Marco sat on her foot.

‘For fuck’s sake!’ came the exclamation from downstairs. Accompanied by irritated muttering, the fire escape shuddered with the extra weight. ‘Marco! Come!’

‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ April exclaimed as the cat made his way back to her window. She scooped him up and cradled him in her arms, then carefully stepped down to meet his owner.

As the bulky figure loomed up like a movie monster from the level below, April stopped in her tracks.

He wore nothing but low-hung pyjama pants. His chest and shoulders went on and on, and all that bare skin was splashed with patterns of dark ink that made him look unearthly.

He looked from the cat in her arms to her hot face. ‘Hey.’

‘Hey,’ she managed to get out breathlessly. ‘Um, I think this belongs to you. He crashed my party-of-one.’

‘Yeah, he’ll do that,’ he replied, and took the last step to bring him to her level – or, to be more accurate, a good foot and a half over her level. As he closed the gap between them, April found herself wanting to retreat, cat and all, into her apartment and away from this intimidating brick wall of a man.

He quickly plucked the cat from her arms and turned his stare upon her.

‘Sorry about that. If you don’t want him hanging around your window, wipe some Pine-Sol on the sill. He can’t stand the smell.’

‘I don’t mind, really. I…’ she began, but her barbarian landlord was already on his way back down the fire escape. The backside was just as intimidating as the front and went on and on.

The fire escape stopped juddering and then she heard the scrape of a window being closed. She blew out a deep breath and leaned against the brickwork.

‘Welcome to Winsloe Court,’ she muttered, then turned to head back inside, a second session with her new vibrator a definite possibility.

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