Forbidden To Say No - The Billionaire's Plaything (An Erotic Romance Novel) (14 page)

"You did good."

His words mean almost nothing to me now; I just stare into his eyes with a menacing, compulsive desire. I want him, and I can't let anything stop me. He tears himself away from my gaze long enough to reach into his pocket, and take out a small key. And then, to my delight, he unlocks my shackles one by one, freeing my wracked, shuddering body bit by bit, limb by limb.

"So what now?" I ask, biting my sweat-glazed lip, feeling the heat radiate from my burning scarlet cheeks, and running a hand over the strange, abstract sculptures of wax on my body. I brush them off as I climb to my feet, seeing them hitting the floorboards, and wondering for just one brief moment whether anyone will find them, the telltale evidence of a very debauched morning.

"I have business" he says, a delayed answer to my question. I fall back to the table, dejected, disappointed, and making every effort to exhibit my sore, stinging, and alluring body to him.

"Why don't you hold me? Just for a minute."

I don't know what's gotten into me; I couldn't usually be so bold. But something about being shackled inside a dingy and decrepit cabin, red-hot wax biting at your skin, and your lover's fingers exciting you to a forbidden precipice can inspire a forlorn confidence. He considers - crossing his arms, and looking at me with a raised eyebrow, surely noting my departure from the assigned role of submissive - but after a few moments gives in to my demand, and approaches. I wrap my arms around him, burying my face into the lovingly warm fabric of his white shirt, and again I feel whole.

"Where are you going? Can't I come too?"

He remains suspiciously silent. I tighten my grip on him, feeling the tense muscles around the small of his back and his abs tighten before my affections. In fact, his entire body feels rigid and tense. If I were so daring, I would almost say he feels vulnerable.

"I must be going, Miss Everett. I can call you a driver."

I'm not ready to let go yet; I'm not ready to lose him to another afternoon of stuffing myself in my room, avoiding the painstaking glances of my twin sister. I don't loosen my grip.

"Miss Everett..."

I don't know where I get the nerve. The old me would have bowed to the demand of anyone, let alone someone like Daniel Grant. But here I am, holding on for dear life. He seizes my stingingly sore wrist with his fingers, and peels me away from him, but I still have some embittered fight left in me. I slide a couple of fingers underneath his shirt, between the carefully buttoned exterior, and feel the warmth of his skin beneath.

"Miss Everett!" he bellows, and I feel the same rush of foreboding fear that I felt just fifteen minutes ago, a saucer of burning wax held threateningly above me. He takes a step back, but my grip is too strong. The buttons of his once-immaculate white shirt are spilled onto the floorboards around us, bouncing into the darkened corners of the set, and his body is exposed to me. And I can't believe what I see.

"What have you -"

He looks down to see his abdomen exposed, and the snaking, jagged, writhing mess of scar tissue beneath. I put my hand to my mouth, shocked at the scars that he hides. I see an array of badly healed wounds - an intertwined set of scars that start at his pectorals, and twist up and down his body, to his belt line - and I can't stop myself from looking back up to his eyes as soon as he pulls the two halves of his shirt back over him. I don't see anger, pain, or sorrow. He seems emotionless, a completely blank expression upon his face.

"I'm sorry, I - I just -"

You fucking idiot Chloe, what have you done?!
I leap to my feet, and turn my back to him, too late. My mind is aflame with nervous, gilt-edged questions:
Why would Daniel Grant have such scars? He's one of the richest men in the world! Why would I be so fucking stupid, overconfident and rude to expose him like that? What is he going to do to me now?
 

"Miss Everett," he says, in that ever-professional monotone I know so well. I turn back around, to find him wearing his black suit jacket once again, buttoned up to hide any evidence of my impetuous crime. "You're leaving."

I nod, despondently. Turning around, I look around for my dress and underwear, treading water in an expanse of emotionless, shaken disbelief. I feel palms on my shoulder blades, gently pushing me; I follow his instruction, and allow him to guide me out of the cabin, back into the plastic grasses and shrubs, and back into the darkness outside. It hasn't hit me yet; the realization that I'm still naked. Nor the horrible, biting hatred I'm going to feel myself, having blown the growing chance I had with the man who took my virginity. But it's coming.

I don't even feel his hands leave my body. Moments later, I look around, and see nothing but black. The dingy blue glow of the set is behind me now, and I'm too scared to go back. I put a forearm over my breasts, and another between my legs, to hide the faint last bit of modesty I possess, and walk. I don't know where, I don't really care right now. It's cold, and I'm naked and alone.

I stub my toe against something; hard, thick, and wide. I look down, squinting my eyes in the remorseless, guilty darkness, and see a trunk.
Is this - yes, costume!
I pull something out, without even seeing it first - a dress that feels just the faintest bit fusty and itchy - and begin putting myself into it, feeling for the first time the awaited tinge of sad, embarrassing anxiety over what just happened. God,
what just happened?!
 

I've been cast out of the billionaire's affections, naked, darkened, and alone. Even as I find the emergency exit, pushing the horizontal handle down with all of my weight, and feeling the beaming California Sun once again on my pale skin, I still feel blackened. Tainted.
Dirtied
. I look at myself - and the ridiculous, pink and white full-length dress I wear, complete with frilly cuffs and flowery patterns, looking like something out of the 19
th
century - and have to hold back tears.
No, Chloe, don't. Not hear, you're stronger than this!
 

I storm away from the studio lot as quickly as I can, barely making eye contact with the security guard as I leave. Barely-crying woman, dressed as a pirate bride, running from the premises; I'm sure they see it all the time in Hollywood.

Even now, I can't rid my mind of the sight of those scars, snaking up and down his body.
What haven't you told me Daniel
? I don't suppose it's a question I'll ever hear answered. I don't suppose I'll ever see him again. Only when I climb onto the bus, walking dejectedly - my head slung low from my shoulders - do I begin to cry.

Chapter Twelve

"What the fuck are you wearing?" is my sister's only fucking greeting, standing in her old spot in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, blocking my only route of escape. For a moment I consider answering her, before the rushing, flooding surge of tears driven from my tear ducts threatens to overwhelm me once again, and I hold my tongue. Being a prosecutor, though, she's adept at finding evidence of guilt. "Wait, have you - have you been crying?"

I charge - pushing past her with all my despondent might - and storm straight to my bedroom, a route I'm used to trekking by now. The door slams shut, and I resume my usual position, leaning against it with my back, my head in my hands, and my fingers in my ears, blocking out everything in the world but my own painful memories. But it's not enough.

"Chloe? Chloe?" she calls from behind the door, reaching out to that last shred of sisterly love inside me, that hasn't been overwhelmed by this absurd infatuation with the billionaire. "I think we need to talk, Chloe."

I nod to myself, battling back another round of tears.

"I'll be out in an hour or two. Just - just -" I'm back to my old stuttering self, wracked by nerves, trembling with guilt, and radiating embarrassed heat from my blushing cheeks. "Just let me change."

"Change?" she asks, oblivious to the fact I might not just refer to my stolen dress. After a moment, she gets the picture. "Okay. Sure. I'll be waiting."

My head sinks back into my hands, and I set my mind to work.
I need to snap out of this
. Whatever just happened this morning is a blip. A momentary lapse in my character. I'm an actress, and an actress I must remain. I have to go back inside my shell. And stay there.

***

"Okay. I think I'm ready to talk."

"Good," she says, sliding over to the other side of the couch, leaving me a nice, inviting space to sit in. Something's different about this place. I didn't notice at first, but now that I look around, something's changed.

"You tidied up" I finally blurt out, realizing the absence of pizza boxes, popcorn cartons, and empty tubs of hastily-guzzled ice cream. I feel another tinge of guilt that I didn't help out. It'll pass.

"Sit down."

I do as she says, dropping to the couch, still slightly distracted by the unusual cleanliness of our environment together. Maybe this is my chance to come clean; to tell her about the sordid sex games, the enigmatic billionaire, the strange and dangerous delights I've discovered in pain.

"So there was a guy" I begin, planting my palms firmly upon my knees, newly clad in jeans, hiding as much of my burn-marked skin as possible.

"You should have said," she says, with a consoling hand upon my knee. She's close to touching one of my many wax-burns. Luckily for me she doesn't. "I just thought you were concentrating on acting. I didn't know you were, you know, on the prowl."

She grins, and for a moment it's like looking into a picture of confidence; a mirror-image of all the carefree jokes and ease I wish I had. Black hair combed nearly around her shoulders, just like I wear my own, and eyeliner thinly applied, but still very noticeable. How is it that we're so different, yet look so very identical?

"I wasn't. I don't know how I got into this. But now it's over."

"Chloe, you know, it’s an old saying, that's put around a lot, and that never stops being so annoying and insulting, but it's true." I raise an eyebrow, questioning just where she's going with this. "But, there are plenty more fish in the sea."

Not like this one there isn't. I sigh, and for a moment I'm transported back to the audition, to the restaurant, to the bland, characterless room in his penthouse, and the armoire. And to the final set: the cabin, as superficial and characterless as anywhere else. And then it hits me, the perfect way to describe my entire relationship with Daniel Grant.

"It was superficial," I say proudly, looking through her, firmly in a world of my own, and trying to put the
L word
out of my mind. "All of it. No character, no personality. No feelings, and no history."

I'm lying again. Of course there are feelings. But I know I'll never be anything but
Miss Everett
to him. The professional; the bland and characterless foil to his various sadistic impulses. I can't deny it: I like the sex. I like the tension, and the restraint, and the chance to give myself completely and totally to another human being. I like having my choices taken from me. And I like not having to rely on my own nervous, overly-anxious mind. I even like the pain. But I know what it is now.

"What do you mean?" she asks, her grip on my knee intensifying, using that prosecutorial nerve to extract everything she can from me.

"It's like a film set. It's designed, painted, and sculpted. Used, and then thrown away, never to be seen again but in memory."

My entire relationship with Daniel Grant; a procession of meetings, pre-planned by himself to the minutest detail. Designed to stretch my boundaries and sculpt me into the person he wants. Painted with sexual tensions and sculpted with the promise of something more. But never becoming anything other than the ever-professional, utterly domineering sex. It's telling that the closest I possibly got to Daniel wasn't his cock inside me, but the coffee after 'work'. A pure look into his real personality.

"You've thought about this a lot, haven't you?"

I nod, resolute in my intentions.

"Well, are you happy?"

Of course I'm not
. I miss him already. But then again, do I truly miss him, or the person he made me? I for once felt confident. Confident enough to rip off his shirt and expose a side of him that he didn't want to show.

"I don't know."

A knock at the door startles us both, sending me jolting upwards, and my sister looking around desperately, thinking to herself whether or not she'd invited anyone over today.

"Fuck, whoever that is, they're leaving."

She springs to her feet, and true to the venom in her voice, storms out of the room. I hear another eager knock at the door, and resign myself back to my imagination, delving back into the morning's events, and ashamedly feeling a spark of excitement between my legs at the very memory of those dripping beads of wax. And then I hear it: the very thing in the world I expected to hear least.

"Chloe, please, can I come in?"

It's him; that voice, so deep, and so controlled, yet betrayed by a certain tone of sadness. I spring upright, every muscle in my body tensed. He's here?
In my flat? For me?!
What does he want? To apologize? To explain himself? My hands are shaking. My heart is thumping angrily. My mouth is dry.
He called her Chloe
?

"Uhm, I'm not Chloe" my sister replies, sounding more than a tiny bit awestruck at the assertive body that stands at our door. "I'm Chloe's sister. Her twin. Are you -"

"Please can I see her?"

I never thought I'd hear Daniel Grant plead for anything,
ever
. All of a sudden I'm standing up - I don't even remember getting to my feet - and walking to the kitchen, possessed by some deep, dark impulse.

"Carissa," I say, standing at the doorway, looking upon him again so soon. "It's okay. Let him in."

She turns away from the door, and smiles at me giddily, realizing that
yes
, it's who she thinks it is. She'd always dig her head into the celebrity magazines more than I would. She might even know more about him than me. Then again, maybe not.