Hearts of Glass (The Glass Trilogy Book 3) (4 page)

“I heard you,” he replied ominously. He kept on driving, a faint smirk edging his sculpted lips. All I could think of was what an idiot I’d been. A fucking moron to get into a stranger’s car! Had my mother not warned me about that ever since I was two years old? I hadn’t checked the man’s credentials. I had assumed.
Never fucking assume, Janie,
I berated myself.
You idiot
! Ethan had obviously got wind of things. Maybe he’d even had me followed to the Bellagio. After all, duh, I’d hailed the cab right outside Daniel’s hotel door! I hadn’t even been followed probably, but the cab driver himself may have been summoned by Ethan/Kristin in the first place. I’d just walked right into their trap!
Assuming
this man was Paul. Then my mind double-tracked back and forth. What if Pearl Chevalier had left her phone at the hospital when she came to visit Daniel, along with her pearl necklace? What if “Elodie” was not Elodie at all, but Kristin, putting on a fake French accent? I felt dizzy. Intrigue and paranoia engulfing me, smothering me like a heavy wet blanket. Then I realized I was being ridiculous; if Pearl had left her phone at the hospital, I would have found it. Of course it was Elodie I’d been speaking to . . . but still. Whatever the scenario, I was up shit’s creek.

“Where are we going?” I demanded, rattling the door handles that were holding me prisoner. I tried to buzz down the windows, but of course they were blocked too. “Stop this car! Right now! I want to get out!”

But he just ignored me and carried on driving.

And the dead battery on my phone wasn’t going to help me. There was no way Elodie could track me now, because my cell wouldn’t be sending a signal anywhere. I let out a furious gasp. I’d been a fool and all I could do now was try not to panic and keep my wits about me.

5

Daniel.

I
AM STRUGGLING to keep my mind active, even though my body is shut down. I think of the only thing that keeps me going: Janie. The second that girl came into my life I knew she was special. A wisp of a thing, with big brown eyes, a fiery disposition, and an intractable will. She wanted to please me. I tried to go easy on her, attempted to treat her like the rest of the cast, but she got under my skin. I knew right away that she was falling in love with me. I was getting married to Natasha—blinded by her glamour, her stardom, the promises she made me of a blissful future together, yet this little actress was determined to knock down my barriers, unravel the truth. So many questions about her role in
Where The Wind Blows.
She challenged me, made me think.

“Who am I?” she’d say. “What’s my motivation?”

“That’s for you to find out, Janie. “That’s what rehearsals are for.”

“I know who my character is and where she’s coming from, but you, as a director, don’t seem to be supporting that. I see her as—”

My mind is struggling with this memory that now won’t play out. Did she say these things to me? Or is it my imagination? Another recollection slips in where the other fades . . . The first time I realized I wanted to fuck her. Yet I was married. Having racing thoughts about my cock in her mouth when I had a wife to go home to. An unfaithful, cheating wife, who didn’t give a damn about me.

Scott, the actor playing Janie’s lover in the play, was leaning over her, whispering in her ear. I had told him to play it that way, yet a twinge of jealousy gripped my heart. In a physical way. Like an actual stab. I could feel a vein throbbing in my temple. A vein I had never known lived there. For the first time ever in my career I compromised my vision. “It doesn’t work after all, Scott. Lose the tender words. At this point in the story . . . well, trust me, it isn’t working. See me after rehearsal, Janie, I want to have a word.” My cock ached for this willowy girl. I wanted to take her, fuck her up against the wall backstage, splay her little pussy open with the one part of me I couldn’t control. I imagined how tight she’d be, how ravenous for me. I felt so turned on I knew I had to have her. That it was a matter of time. It was obvious how much I needed her. I already knew how much I liked her as a person, respected her as an actress, but it was then I knew how much I desired her. Wanted to make her mine.

I picture her now, in my arms . . . no, beneath me. I have my mouth on her lips and I’m telling her that I am irrevocably in love with her. “You are my world,” I tell her. She has her legs wide apart, and she’s moaning, the tip of my cock poised at her sweet, taut opening. She’s squirming beneath me, whimpering, “Please Daniel, I need you, I need you inside me.” I tell her that I know she needs me, and that’s why I’ll never leave her, and I push myself in, into her soaking, welcoming little pussy—tight and hot—just a little, just enough to feel the crown of my cock expand and pulse, and for her to urgently buck her hips at me. I make tiny little movements, telling her I’m crazy about her, how I love being so close, how fucking her is my greatest pleasure in the world because we are one: one whole, one heart. My words are her aphrodisiac. The more sweet talk I make, the wetter and wilder she gets. I pull out and start prodding and massaging her clit with my erection. I’m kissing her mouth, her eyes, her neck. I’m rolling one of her nipples between my thumb and forefinger, tugging gently. She’s practically crying, her arms squeezed around my back, as they move down . . . frantically, lustfully to my ass. It’s adorable how she thinks she has the strength to force my buttocks down, closer to her groin. She’s pummeling me, pinching her little fingers into my taut flesh. It’s my cruel torture . . . to make her so wet, so desperate to be fucked . . . but to make her wait. I like to control her pace, because that way, when she climaxes, thunder rolls inside her body and breaks her into a million imploding stars.

“I’m going to come,” she groans, “I’m going to come if you keep teasing me like this.” I tell her that we’ll come together, and I drive myself further inside her, rocking my hips just the way she likes it, so my pelvic bone hits her clit on every thrust and my cock massages the base of her opening. The rhythm is now like a metronome, and I know at what point she’ll come. Her lids are fluttering in a stupefied daze . . . her eyes are rolling back. I’m in really deep now . . . in every respect. I want to be with this girl forever. I’m in deep and there’s no return.

It’s when I cup my hands under her buttocks, hold my hips still for a second and then push to the back of her womb that she starts screaming my name. Her legs go stiff, sweat beads trickle down the small of her back. I bring her even closer to me . . . closer and never close enough. My lips are on her ear. “I love you, Janie, I love you so much.” She’s coming hard, her pussy clenching my cock like a limpet on a rock, as if her life depended on never letting me go, and my orgasm powers through my erection in a wild, desirous rush.

We are in this together. Until death do us part. That’s right . . . I forgot . . . Death . . . that’s the word
du jour
, the word on everyone’s lips. They are talking about me . . .

I’m being shaken out of my beautiful home movie by doctors discussing their trade. Unpleasant images and words sift in and out of my consciousness, ruining my dream:

“Nonhuman primates are used as experimental models to study a wide range of human neurodegenerative diseases.”

I hear Kristin’s voice chiming in. “We used human microarrays to profile genes from brains of human, macaque, and marmosets, and combined this with available data from chimpanzees and orangutans to create a data set that provide salient similarities and differences in expression of genes underlying Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s, and Parkinson’s diseases.”

My mind is fading fast. I hear more rumbling voices all around me. More doctors discussing my fragile state. But I can’t decipher their words . . . their mumbling recedes to a gentle hum. My brain is blanking to a pale white . . . a light is shining in the confused orb of my brain. Yet I feel strangely at peace.

It won’t be long now.

6

Janie.

I
HEARD MUTED screams and cries. Not human. Relentless. Piercing. Begging cries. But coming from another place, somewhere distant. I couldn’t work out where I was. I remembered being at the Bellagio. I could hear my stomach rumble. My head was light. Dizzy. All I could think of was food and how hungry I was. I pictured a French baguette with Brie and lettuce, mayo, and tomatoes washed down with a soda. I licked my dry lips. I was thirsty too. I peeled my eyes open but could barely see. It was dark. I was lying on a sofa, fully clothed. Where was I?

Then I remembered. The car. The man whom I thought was the bodyguard, sent by Elodie. Kristin. Daniel in his medically induced coma. My cell phone out of juice. I could hear my own muffled sobs. Sobs of defeat. I was too exhausted to even stir. I mentally scribbled a note, a proverbial message in a bottle:

I’m alone in the dark, locked up, with nobody to hear my cries. They’ve taken him from me. Nobody believes me. She is a liar, a thief, and a fraudster, and probably a murderess. She’ll kill him for sure.

Not only does she want me out of the picture . . .

She wants me dead.

But then I heard a shuffle. I wasn’t alone after all.

“Who’s there?” I groaned. My head hurt. I lifted my hand to my forehead and traced a small lump just above my left eyebrow. Bruised, but not cut.

A light went on, illuminating the dank room. I guessed it was a basement.

“I wondered when you’d wake up. Hungry? Thirsty?”

I lifted my eyes and saw the outline of the man who’d abducted me. He was no longer wearing his mirrored shades. His eyes were black—a Johnny Depp kind of soulful black, and his five O’clock shadow spoke of time passing. How many hours had gone by? I hadn’t noticed stubble on him before. I must have been here for ages. What was he doing here? My watchdog? What the fuck was
I
doing here? Had he hurt me? I needed to get to Daniel!

“What am I doing here?” I fired at him.

“You’re being kept out of trouble, is all. You didn’t answer my question. You hungry? You must be, you’ve been out for a good forty-eight hours.”

I didn’t have the energy to ask more questions. “Yeah, I’m starving,” I conceded. “Thirsty too. What have you got?”

“There’s a kitchen. I could fix you a sandwich. Or grill you a steak.”

My food fantasy daydreams popped straight out of my mouth: “I want a baguette with Brie, please. Pickles if you have them. Lettuce, tomato. And a Coke. Classic.”

He laughed. His laugh told me he wasn’t much older than me. “Not demandin’ one bit, are we little princess?”

“What is this place?” I asked nervously, my mind a blank as to how and why I was here. “Where am I?” The last thing I remembered was being in a car with this guy.

“I’ll fix you a cheese sandwich. Nothing fancy. And we do have Coke. Not classic, this isn’t the Ritz.” He chuckled again. “You’re cute, but you know that, right?”

“So they tell me,” I said, feeling my bruised lump again. “I suppose I’ve been abducted and you’re taking me hostage?” I asked, trying to sound cool although my pulse was racing with dread and apprehension of what was to come.

“Abducted, yes. Hostage, no. I’ll fix you that sandwich. By the way, you bumped your head in the struggle. I didn’t hit you, in case you were wonderin.”

“A real gentleman,” I said wryly, not remembering a thing.

I must have momentarily dozed off, because what must have been a while later, I awoke to the smell of processed cheese under my nose.

“Here, eat this.” The guy put a plate out, and the soda on a table beside the sofa. I sat up, or tried to. He helped me, positioning his hands around my waist and hoisting me vertically. His shoulder brushed against my cheek. He smelled of cedar wood, or some expensive cologne, which surprised me. The intimacy of his proximity was unnerving.

I delved into the sandwich, moaning with relish as I chewed. The feeling of real food hitting my stomach calmed me, instantly giving me strength. I gulped down some Coke.

“Better?” he said. I nodded, filling my mouth with another large bite.

“We got TV,” he told me. “But otherwise nothin’ else to do. Except fuck, if you want to.”