Free A Smile as Sweet as Poison by Helena Maeve Page A

regretting her tone almost at once. She had been on the other end enough to abhor rude clients. Now she was one of them. “Since when do you drink iced teas?” she asked Sadie once they were alone again.
    The parasol over their table allowed just enough sunlight to peek through the gaps. The thin sunbeams brought out the once-vibrant pink highlights in Sadie’s hair.
    “Frank likes ‘em.”
    “Yeah, but he doesn’t serve ice tea all day…”
    Sadie rolled her narrow shoulders into a shrug. “I’m trying new things. And you? I saw boyfriend numero dos last night.” She licked her pale pink lips. “Looked pretty pissed.”
    Got every reason to be when he’s putting up with me.
    “We’re still learning how to play nice together.”
    “Is ‘nice’ what they call it these days?” Sadie asked, lips curving into a wide, knowing grin.
    “Shut up,” Hazel mumbled. They? It wasn’t so long ago Hazel had been waiting for Sadie to finish having kinky, dirty sex with a stranger she’d just met so she could drive her home—preferably alive and unharmed. That Sadie was nowhere to be seen. In her place sat a preppy young woman in a conservative wrap dress that made Hazel feel oddly out of place.
    She locked down the thought. Envy, especially of other women, had always come easily to her.
    “I know you have your rules or whatever,” Sadie went on, batting the thought away like a fly, “but you know I’m dying to ask how you’re coping with two of ’em.”
    The rules she referred to were Hazel’s way of blocking out the part of her that knew Sadie had slept with Dylan. It was supposed to make it easier to forget that Sadie had seen his playroom first, that she’d been in his arms and in his bed long before Hazel had stumbled into orbit. She was still working on excising comparisons whenever they sprang to mind.
    “You’re telling me you never had a threesome?” she deflected.
    Sadie scoffed. “Oh, ages ago. Way before I figured out the part about the whips and gags…” Back in Dunby, Sadie had possessed something of a reputation. She’d had a cadre of boys, then men, to surround herself with, and had incurred the wrath of the town’s female population as a result. “Must be intense,” she mused, a wistful tinge in her voice.
    “You and Frank don’t—?”
    “He’s not into that kind of thing,” Sadie replied.
    “Oh.” But you are. You love it.
    The two of them had grown up in the same small town in Missouri, and yet they’d lived completely different lives until college, when they’d discovered a shared interest in all things kinky. For Hazel, Sadie’s friendship had come at a moment when she couldn’t have been more alone. And as far as she knew, Sadie didn’t hang out with other submissives, either. They had been each other’s sounding board for a long time.
    It was strange to discover barricades suddenly erected where before they’d been so free with one another.
    Sadie shrugged again. “It’s not like I need it or anything. Besides, I love Frank.”
    “Well, that’s good.” Hazel grinned, trying to be positive. “Since you’re getting married and all…”
    “You think I’d do it if we weren’t in love?”
    Taken aback by the sudden coolness in Sadie’s tone, Hazel shook her head. “No. No, of course not. I only meant…”
    “Shit, I know. I’m sorry.” Sadie reached over the table to place her hand over Hazel’s. “I’m just so stressed, with work and the wedding…” Her palm was a hot, clammy pressure, trapping Hazel’s digits against the surface of the metal table.
    Hazel forced a smile to her lips. “It’s cool. I get it.”
    “So are you taking him or Dylan?” Sadie wanted to know.
    “Taking them…to the wedding?”
    “Well, that, too. I need to know for the seating chart, obviously. But I meant… To the reunion.” Sadie frowned. “Didn’t Rhonda tag you?” Chair creaking beneath her, she released Hazel’s hand and liberated her smartphone from