Command Performance (18 page)

“It’s too late now, isn’t it?”

Satya frowned, bracing a hand on her hip. The coffee machine clucked and perked in the silence between them. “You like her, huh? That must complicate things.”

Mason shook his head in frustration. “I should have left her by now. Made her leave me. We’re like a train wreck that keeps wrecking and wrecking and wrecking and wrecking again.”

“Yeah, that’s why the tabloids love you. Trainwreck couple. Now we’re all waiting for the breakup, which isn’t happening...why? Because you like her. You like her that much?” Her amber eyes bored into his, ferreting out his secrets. “You’re falling in love with her, aren’t you?”

He sighed. “I think we’ve already fallen in and out of love. Now we’re like those bitter married couples keeping it together for the kids.”

“Is it really like that?”

“Well, no. We have a lot of great times.”

“Translation: We have a lot of great sex.”

Mason scowled at Satya, but it was pointless. She knew the truth. She waved a hand at him, pouring coffee into cups. “You’re a pig, Mason. I’ve told you this before. The sad thing is, you drag these women down with you.”

“Oh, I drag them down?”

“Yes, you do. You need to grow up. You need to stop doing things because they feel good, for appearance’s sake or for your career, and start doing the
right
thing.”

“It’s not the right thing to break up with her. It will hurt her.”

But even as he said the words, he knew they weren’t true. It would hurt at the beginning, sure, but if she hung in there she’d end up in a better place. It would look good, her separating herself from him. It would restore a little of her respectability anyway, make her look like an independent woman rather than a fame whore.

“She’s not a fame whore,” he blurted out.

Satya eyed him, passing across a cup of coffee. “Uh, I don’t remember saying she was.”

Mason stirred some sugar into his cup. He was losing it. “People think she’s some bimbo riding my coattails, but she’s not. I can’t stand the way she’s being judged. I like her. I want her to be with me. Why does my entire life have to be lived at the public’s behest, just because I’m this celebrity figure?”

He looked at Satya, but she didn’t have the answers. They’d discussed this many times before. The price of celebrity, the blurring of public and private lives. It never got any easier, but the alternative—ducking out of the game—wasn’t attractive either. He gave a frustrated groan and took a swig of coffee.

Satya walked around to sit beside him, squeezing his shoulders as she passed. “I hate to see you this way, hon. I wish I knew what to tell you. If you like her that much, if you want to be with her, then follow your heart. Forget the rest and let the pieces fall where they may.”

He gazed over at her, appreciating her words even if they didn’t solve his issues. His privileged, spoiled-movie-star issues. No wonder she was so snarky to him sometimes. He took her hand and sighed.

“How are things with you? How are things in the human rights trenches?”

“They’re not bad. That money you gave me last year for the schools in Nepal and India is really starting to pay off.” Her eyes took on a familiar zealous glow as she outlined her foundation’s strategy to improve the lives of third world women through schools, early intervention, community education. The goal was to reduce child marriages, sex trafficking, and other practices that exploited women. She showed him pictures of the schools and the kids his money was helping. It was just what he needed. Eventually he turned the conversation back to her.

“You’ve been so busy doing this important work,” he said. “But how are you?”

It was like she’d been waiting for him to ask. Her face lit up. She became almost giddy, which for Satya was really weird.

“I’m still seeing the guy in New York.”

“Oh yeah? That’s great. You look pretty happy about it.”

“I am happy. This guy is...” She looked away, shaking her head. Mason felt a pang of jealousy. “This guy is amazing,” she said. “He’s really one of the most amazing guys I’ve ever met.”

“Tell me about him.”

“He’s a doctor. An orthopedist in New York. He was doing volunteer work for Doctors Without Borders while I was in the Sudan.”

“Oh, Jesus. Another fucking hero. I’ll never live up to these men,” he said with a snort of disgust.

Satya took a sip of coffee and put her cup down. “You know what? Sometimes I think this guy might really be the one.” She looked kind of scared as she said it. This was Satya, independent, confident Satya.

“Do you love him?” he asked with a sense of dread.

“I’m falling in love with him. Yes.”

“What’s his name?”

“Rob.”

Mason frowned. “Rob? What kind of name is that? His name is an actual crime. I disapprove.”

He thought it was a pretty good joke, but Satya didn’t laugh. She played with the rim of her coffee cup. “I’ve been thinking about moving out there. You know, to be closer to him.”

Wow. No. This wasn’t a joke. The idea of Satya moving across the country startled him. He’d come to depend on her so much, as a friend, as a confidante. He was going to lose her. One more thing to depress and worry him.

He tried to keep his voice light. “So Dr. Rob is robbing you away from us? You’ll move to New York to be with him?”

“I should have moved to New York ages ago, you know. All my work is there, and this is what I need to get me going. I’ll miss you, but I’m looking forward to being with him there.”

“So you’ve already decided to move.”

Her gaze pleaded with him to understand. To wish her well. “This is what we wanted, Mace. What we wished for on New Year’s Eve, remember?”

He nodded. “Yeah, of course. God, I’m really excited for you. This is definitely a good thing.”

“And I wished happiness for you. I still wish that. There’s still half the year to go. New Year’s wishes...they have to come true, right?”

Mason nodded again, numbly. “Sure. I’ll get through this. I can’t be unhappy forever, can I?”

It was a rhetorical question, but Mason was very afraid the answer was yes.
Yes, you can be unhappy forever.

Even more unhappy than you are right now.

*** *** ***

Miri took a deep breath. Damn sadistic undergarments. Damn movie premiere.

In the beginning she’d enjoyed going out with Mason to these glitzy industry events. Yeah, that was before she became the butt of a joke.

She told herself she didn’t care what the papers and celebrity bloggers said about her. She didn’t care if she was Mason’s secret sex slave or Mason’s clinging coat-tail rider, or Mason’s failed-actress-turned-arm-candy. She told herself she didn’t care, but it was hard to pretend when people were constantly sneering and poking fun at her.

Shane Greenberg wore a scowl as they exited the limo. Mason’s publicist had tried to convince him to walk the red carpet alone, but what Shane had yet to figure out was that the fastest way to get Mason not to do something was to tell him to do it. Now Miri was being dragged along under the scrutiny of cameras and news stations in her sleazy black dress with a big slit up the side. Even his stylist was dressing her to the part. She wanted to cry, but she smiled instead. She did it for him.

Mason cared for her. She knew he did. She knew he was tormented and torn in two directions. The problem was, he wasn’t picking one, and she wasn’t either. She didn’t want to lose him. She couldn’t imagine a life without Mason, without his warmth and his smile, and his silly jokes. His burnt toast in the morning. His perverse kinks and pleasures in bed. He was the perfect man, so why weren’t things working out?

Because you don’t deserve him. He’s more successful than you. You’re an albatross around his neck.
That’s what everyone thought. The public had approved of Jessamine. In their eyes, she’d been a wife of his caliber, and he’d squandered that to go slumming with a loser like her. Miri wished he’d break up with her and date someone more appropriate before his own career was irreparably damaged, but he wouldn’t do it, and she was too selfish and weak to break up with him herself.

He smiled over at her now, patted her hand as reporters shouted to him for photos. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

Ugh, see? Those were the things that killed her. He really was glad she was there. His friend Satya had recently moved to New York, and his friends Kai and Jeremy were busy with their own partners and families and projects. She knew he felt alone and frustrated. In the end, she thought it was better to stay with him until everything shook out. Besides, leaving him would mean a return to her old life, to her room in her father’s house, and she wasn’t quite ready for that.

Once inside the theater, once his film was under way, they snuck out a back door and into a car. No one cared. Most actors did that. They’d already been to a premiere in London, Paris, New York, whirlwind trips that took up a day, and then home again so he could go back to the set. Once this movie was done, there was another lined up, with several development deals in process. He worked so hard, and with her dragging down his rep, he probably felt pressure to work even harder.

In the back of the car, Mason pushed up the hem of her dress, tugged aside the gusset of her panties and fingered her pussy. She sighed and leaned back in the seat. At least they had this. He leaned close, whispered in her ear.

“I’m going to fuck you at home, baby. I’m going to fuck you right out of this dress.”

Excitement stirred to life in the midst of her melancholy mood. She tried to relax, to give herself up to the pleasure of his possessive touches. His fingers parted her, stroked her boldly, then strayed up to finger her ass. The old her would have freaked out and pulled away. The new Miri sat very still and let him touch. “Good girl,” he whispered. “You let me do what I want, don’t you?”

“Yes, Sir.”

The driver looked up in the rearview mirror at that moment. She knew he couldn’t hear them through the Plexiglass privacy barrier, or see what Mason was doing to her, but she blushed anyway. Mason went on fingering her, oblivious, his face buried against her neck.

“Oh, Mason,” she breathed. “Please...”

Please...
She meant
please fuck me
, and he would. He fucked her whenever he had time to be with her. She lived for it like a drug. He breathed in against her skin and then blew warm kisses against her neck. “When we get home, I’m going to fuck your ass. It’s time. Past time. Don’t you think?”

Miri sat very still, feeling scared and pressured and hotter than ever for him.

“No answer.” He chuckled. “I understand, but that doesn’t change things. I’m going to push my cock right into your tiny asshole, and it will hurt you, but you’ll beg for more. More cock, more pain. You’ll be begging for your two favorite things.”

She squirmed. “It won’t fit.”

“I’ll make it fit, not that it will go easy for you.” As if to drive the point home, he pressed a fingertip against her. No give. No room at all for him there.

“I’m scared of that,” she said, too wrought up to filter her responses.

“No
that
’s and
there
’s,” he scolded. “Be specific. ‘
I’m scared to have your cock in my ass
.’”

“I’m scared to have your cock in my ass.”

“But?”

“Please fuck me in the ass, Sir, if that’s what you want.”

He shuddered beside her in the darkness. “Jesus Christ. I will, baby. What a good girl you are.”

He sat back in his seat, so glorious, so perverted, so at ease. So necessary in her life.

Miri shifted her hips forward and back again, seeking comfort in the solidity of the spanking bench. This one was designed more like a table, with a flat padded top and attachment points at various locales, depending on which position he wanted her in. Right now she was bent over, ass out, her wrists cinched together and attached to the front of the bench. Ankle cuffs near the floor prevented her from closing her legs or flinching away. She was pretty much at his mercy.

The padded top was comfortable against her pelvis, and it made a nice place to lay her head, but the lube and anal toy Mason placed before her eyes made her significantly less comfortable. The glass plug wasn’t huge, but big enough to scare her. She searched her lover’s face for some sign of sympathy or doubt, but found only the usual reassuring confidence. “You are going to love this,” he said. “I promise.”

She didn’t reply, just fidgeted in her bonds and went up and down on her toes. He stood beside her, his cock rearing up before her eyes. His abs and muscles bunched as he leaned to kiss her. It was a tender, gentle kiss, at odds with the pain she knew he was about to inflict on her. The dichotomy of his mild side and his evil side made her shiver in conflicted lust. “I love you like this,” he said when he pulled away.

“Horny?”

“Obedient. Because Sir wants to fuck your ass, yes? And you’re going to let him.”

She shivered again. She couldn’t help it. “Yes, Sir.”

“And Sir is going to take care of you by preparing you first. What do you have to say to that?”

“Thank you, Sir.”

She was completely used to the
Yes, Sir
s and
No, Sir
s and
Thank you, Sir
s by now. She was used to a lot of the stuff he did to her, but not anal sex. She wanted to experience it, but she was also scared to death. Oh, God, he was lubing up the butt plug. Her whole body went still as he stepped behind her. He patted her bottom, then parted her cheeks and slid the cold glass toy to nestle against the ring of her sphincter.

“Don’t tense,” he said. “Think happy thoughts.”

Happy thoughts?
She pulled at the cuffs holding her as the toy slid in. He was slow and careful, but she found it uncomfortable all the same. When it was fully seated, she squirmed at the intrusive feeling.

“Does it hurt?” he asked.

“No, it doesn’t hurt, Sir. It just feels really full.”

“I might have to get a bigger one. It should hurt a little.” He met her eyes, only barely smiling. “Sorry. It’s going to hurt when I finally go there, no matter what. I just want you to be prepared.”