by S. Ann Cole
Silence.
He sat there, for minutes. Long, torturous minutes. Saying nothing.
This was Davian Hamilton. To the world he was a loaded, famous rock star. Some would look at him and think he was the archetype of all stars: drinking, swearing, screwing every piece of ass that crossed his path then treating them like shit the next morning.
But the real Davian was a hopeless romantic, sensitive towards other’s feelings, who loved with raw passion.
Knowing this, knowing him, I knew no matter what I said or did, I would never get him to break Jessica’s heart.
Letting go of his hands, I wiped away my stupid tears. “I get it. This visit isn’t about love. It’s about closure.” I stood and rubbed my palms down my robe. “None of it, since I came here, has been about you still loving me. It has been about you feeling guilty, trying to find some way to make amends.”
My nose was stuffy, and my eyes still burned, but I wouldn’t clear my nose, and I wouldn’t let the tears fall, because that would just make me appear weaker, even more pathetic in front of him. “It’s okay, Davi. I understand. I hold nothing against you, alright? You don’t have to feel guilty anymore. Go, marry Jess with a clear conscience. You have my sincerest blessings.”
Eyes on mine, Davian slowly stood. He prowled toward me with that look, the same molesting look from earlier.
I backed up from him until the back of my calves hit the coffee table.
Seizing my right hand, he pressed it to his crotch for me to feel the hard, throbbing bulge there. “What does this feel like, Ally?”
I didn’t respond, and he thrust forward into my hand. “Tell me, what does it feel like?”
I kept my mouth shut.
With his other hand, he grabbed a fistful of my hair. “Does this feel like I want closure?”
“No.”
“Then what?” He tugged my hair back, baring my neck to him, and I tried rubbing my thighs together as a gush of arousal soaked my bare folds beneath the robe. “What does it feel like?”
“Like you want to bend me over every surface in this place.”
“That’s right, baby.” His grip in my hair loosened. “I want to bury myself deep inside you and never leave.”
I squeezed.
He moved.
And before I knew what was happening, he had me flat on the coffee table, my robe ripped open.
“Ohgod,” I moaned out loud when his mouth closed around my nipple, his bulge grounding against my mound.
Hot, wet, and starved for his dick, I raised my hips and rubbed myself against him, the sensation in my clit heightening from the friction.
His kisses traveled up until his mouth found mine with a feral growl, drinking all the air out of my lungs.
Reaching down between us, he undid his jeans and took his thick dick out in a tight fist, harshly pumping himself. “You on birth control?”
“No,” I lied, not wanting to take any chances. I’d promptly went on The Pill after that first scare with Xavier. “Put on a—”
“Good,” he hissed out and drove deep into me.
“Ahhh!”
My scream didn’t faze him, as he reared back and slammed into me even harder.
“Davian!” I cried out at the slice of pain.
He took no pity on me, but instead palmed both my breasts and held tight to them like bike handlebars as he began driving into me hard and wild, as though he’d been thinking about this for a while and wanted to ram me as hard as he could, to hear me scream, to be sure it was happening for real.
“I haven’t forgiven you, Ally,” he gritted out. “I’m still mad. Still pissed.”
“I’m sorry,” I whimpered.
His slams became more punishing. “You shouldn’t have done it.” Slam. Slam. “You should have fought for us.” Slam. Slam. Slam. “You shouldn’t have killed our ba…” His voice broke off on a hitch, as though it were too hard for him to finish the sentence.
And that’s when he really took it out on me.
I was gasping for breath, I was crying, I was begging for him to slow down. He didn’t care.
I held on to the sides of the coffee table and withstood his pounding, his punishment, his anger, his resentment.
Until he growled my name out loud, and with rough hands and no grace, flipped me over, drew up my hips, lifting me onto my hands and knees, and pushed into me again.
“You, Ally…” he ground out, his pumps fast, manic. “You’re…the only…one.”
I mewled at his words, coiling tight, then shook and shattered, unable to recognize the sounds leaving my own mouth, unable to stop from collapsing to the table even as Davian tried to keep me up.
My knees were weak, could no longer hold me up, so he came down with me, never once pausing his relentless pounding.
“Alina?” he whispered, dropping his mouth to my shoulder and sinking his teeth into my flesh. “Baby?”
“Davi?”
“What I feel for you…” Slam. “…is unending…” Slam. “…undying…” Slam. “Infini—ahhhgh shit!”
His orgasm took him by surprise, and he stiffened behind me, cock pulsating, a cluster of incomprehensible words leaving him.
“I love you,” he wheezed out as he went lax on top of me, breathing hard.
I didn’t return the sentiment. There was no point. It would change nothing. He already knew my heart was his. Why waste words on a moment that meant nothing? Why bother when, the moment he left here, he would go straight into his fiancée’s bed and whisper the same goddamn words to her?
We laid there in silence for long, long time, until he got up, taking me with him, and began stripping off his clothes.
“What are you doing?”
“I need to make love to you…before I go.”
I frowned. “We just—”
“Fought,” he finished, kicking off his boxers. He bent and picked me up in his arms. “Got rid of the pent-up resentment. Now let’s make love for real. Slow and long, like we used to. Where’s the bedroom?”
Sighing, I dropped my head to his shoulder and gave him directions.
He took me to the bedroom, gently laid me down on the bed, located the surround system, selected my “Baby-Making Music” playlist, and then made slow, sweet, passionate love to me.
And much like that first night he took my virginity, I cried throughout the whole thing I was so in love with the guy.
We cuddled for hours under the sheets afterward, reminiscing on old times and whispering sweet nothings until my eyelids grew heavy.
“Can you stay the night?” I asked him.
He discharged an apologetic groan. “I can stay until you fall asleep.”
“Well, in that case,” I mumbled through a wide yawn, “can you go fetch me a Redbull?”
I woke up cuddling my pillow, sunlight blasting through the floor-to-ceiling windows.
The sheets smelled of Davian Hamilton and hot sex. I inhaled deep, savoring the scent.
Noticing a note on the nightstand, I reluctantly slid from beneath the sheets and picked it up.
I wish, every day, that things were different.
Love you forever.
∞
My smile was sad. I had hoped he would have stayed, hoped that when I woke up he would be out in the kitchen preparing breakfast.
But wishes were for kids, right?
Using the penthouse receiver, I called Mel and told her to pick up a new cellphone for me at the nearest dealer. After a long shower, I blended up a green smoothie for breakfast, went out on the balcony, stretched out on a lounge chair, and listened to my Ice Steam playlist until Mel returned with the phone.
I switched the new SIM card with my old one. And as soon as it was on, the notifications flooded in, over a hundred missed calls from various Ninety Miles Villa residents.
There was also a text message from cousin Chad.
Cousin: You know how I feel a
bout defiance, don’t you?
The apartment was really bugged? And here I was thinking Davian was just being paranoid. Arrrgh!
Drawing my knees up to my chest, I took a few calming breaths in and out.
Me: He did nothing wrong. I *deserved* 2 know d truth.
Cousin: I tested his strength. His endurance. His so-called love for you. If he had chosen you over his father, I would have done nothing. I would have let them both go free. Choosing you would have proved I can trust him with you. But he didn’t. You are worth 12billion. Anything dire can happen down the road, should people get wind of this fact. I won’t be around forever to protect you. You deserve someone who will protect you, who will always choose you. No matter what.
Me: What r u gonna do 2 him?
Chad: You love him, so maybe nothing. As for Senior Hamilton…
And that was it, no apologies. Not even an ounce of compassion or humanity. Just cold and to the point, as it always was with him. Commands and expectations of compliance.
I sometimes wished I wasn’t so afraid of him so I could tell him to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine. But that would be like trying to chew iron.
Mom used to be afraid of him. Dad used to be afraid of him. Hell, even his own father used to be afraid of him. My parents loved him to bits, but with a certain wariness and vigilance, as though they were expecting him to suddenly morph into some kind of wild, vicious creature and eat them alive.
The only two people I’ve ever seen him tolerate were Saskia and JK. Whenever they dissed him, he would just have this barely-there smile on his face. JK was his best friend, so that was understandable, and Saskia was JK’s wife, so she had dissing privileges as much as JK.
But I was too much of a wuss to cross the line with him. He scared me.
Knifing up from the lounge chair, I ran to the bathroom, turned on the shower and dialed JK.
As soon as he picked up, I rushed out, “Take Jacob over to Dave’s and let him stay there until next week.”
“What? No. You know on Sundays I take Jacob with me to—”
“JK, shut up! Just shut the hell up! You should be glad I’m even talking to you right now!”
“What’re you—”
“Davi told me what you didn’t, asshole! You watched me deteriorate for months and you said nothing!”
“What makes you thi—”
“I don’t wanna hear it right now, alright? I don’t know when, but Chad is gonna pay Dave a visit, and only God knows what he’s gonna do to the poor old man. If Jacob is there with him it might make a difference, might make him rethink. Dave is my son’s grandfather. Family. So just…just do as I ask. Please.”
“Shit,” JK swore. “Not home, so I’ll let Sassy take him over. Will also try talkin’ some sense into Chad. By the way, I don’t know as much ‘bout what happened as you think I do.” He hung up.
I turned off the shower. Knowing now that the penthouse was bugged, I didn’t want to risk the chance of Chad catching on to my lame attempt to save Dave.
I made a mental note to purchase a bug detector to locate and destroy everything that intrusive bastard had planted.
As I trekked back out onto the balcony, my phone started up again, and I groaned at Xena’s name on the screen, tempted to hit Reject.
“Yes, Miss Xander?”
“Girl, I cannot believe you’ve been rejecting my calls!” she yelled into the phone. “I thought we were good. What the hell?”
“New phone. Old SIM,” I informed her. “I smashed my phone. Because of your brother, not you.”
Xena made a mock sobbing sound. “Alina, this is what I’ve been calling you about. The slut corroborated his story. And it has to be true, because, think about it: why would he be screwing some whore when he knew you were out shopping for a dress and would be there at any minute to get ready for the date? Annnnnd, why would he cheat now, when you two have been phone-dating for almost six months and he hadn’t so much as looked at another girl—which was ehhhpic, by the way, considering this is Xavier Xander we’re talking about, the alcoholic slut of the band.”
“Wait, what story are you talking about?”
“What he told you,” he said with impatience. “That he doesn’t know the bitch or how she got into his room? That he was in the shower and came out to find her on his bed?”
This had me scratching my head, because I couldn’t remember Xavier telling me any such thing. I’d been so blown back into a vortex at the scene, that I’d gone dumb, numb, deaf.
I remembered his mouth moving, his hands shaking me, but I’d been so out of it, nothing registered.
“Of course,” Xena rambled on, “it sounds like a lame excuse, and I probably wouldn’t believe him either, but when you left, he was so mad he nearly choked the poor slut to death. Mark had to pull him off her, or she’d be dead and he’d be in jail right now.”
“He did what?”
“Oh, sweetie,” she said in a soft voice, “you’ve yet to see my brother when he’s overtaken with rage. He’s lethal.”
“So, what did the girl say?” I asked. “How did she get in there?”
“She’s a Call Girl. Said she was paid for, picked up by a cabby who had specific orders to keep her blindfolded—she swears men call in with twisted orders like this all the time, so for her it was the norm.
“When the cab dropped her off, she said some guy who told her his name was A, escorted her inside the house with the blindfold still on, brought her into a room—where she heard a shower running—stripped her, laid her down on the bed, and told her to touch herself until he came back.
“Later when the shower went off, the blindfold was ripped from her eyes, and Xavi was standing over her, demanding to know who she was and how she got into his room. She said she thought one of his friends brought her there as a surprise for him, so she played along and continued touching herself…I guess that’s when you walked in...”
If she hadn’t mentioned ‘A’, I would’ve called bullshit on that eye-rolling story. Sounded crazy, but hearing ‘A’ was all I needed to know that Xavier and I were set up. And all I needed to confirm that Tex was A—and he knew everything. About my son. About my cheating on Xavier.
His inexplicable aversion to me was all starting to make sense now. But what I couldn’t figure out was how he knew. How could he have been at more than one locations at the same time? How did he come into possession of my personal photos?
I questioned, “Did anyone own up to this?”
“Nope,” she exhaled. “Markie and Tex swore it wasn’t them. Leo was suspiciously missing, so we’re guessing it’s him. We just don’t understand why he would do that.”
It wasn’t Leo, of course. But if I affirmed that, she would want to know how I was so sure it wasn’t him, and then I would have to tell her what I discovered in Danni’s bathroom yesterday, so I opted to keep quiet on that assumption.
“Where’s Xavier now?” I asked in a whisper. “Can I talk to him?”
“I don’t know.” I detected worry and anxiety. “He told the band sabotaging his relationship with their silly A games was crossing the line. Then he packed a bag and left. We haven’t heard from him since. Have been calling him but we’re only getting voicemail.”
“Holy shit,” I murmured. “Does this mean—”
“Yes,” Xena confirmed, her voice despondent. “It’s the only way he knows to deal with his shit. He’s not strong enough. You were his distraction, Alina.”
“Xena, I’m so sorry...” Xavier relapsing wasn’t something I, the band, or anyone needed right now. Slutty, alcoholic Xavier was more popular in the tabloids than guitar-genius Xavier. “Do you have any idea where he might be?”
Xena sighed for about the hundredth time. “I have a few places in mind. Could you swing by Beach Rock, make some breakfast for the boys, and come searching with me?”
I waited a beat before replying, “Um, I will go searching with
you, but, why do I need to make breakfast for the band?”
“Because even when you’re not there, they still wake up expecting to find the kitchen island covered with food, and when they don’t, they get grumpy and give me weird looks, like they’re somehow expecting me to fill in, and I’m starting to feel pressured because I don’t do domestic shit.”
If I wasn’t in a bad mood right now, I would’ve laughed. “Did you forget that one of those same ‘boys’ is behind the split between me and your brother? Why on earth would I want to feed those jerkoffs?”
In the stretch of silence that followed, I knew she was thinking up her best ‘Xena-gets-what-Xena-wants’ convincing comeback. “Because…if Xavi’s anywhere near…and he gets a whiff that you’re there…he’ll know there’s still hope left for you two and he’ll come back. You’ll get your boyfriend back, I’ll get my brother back, and the band will get their mate back.”
Got to hand it to this girl, she was good at convincing people do what she wanted.
Begrudgingly, I agreed.
During the drive to the villa, I questioned Mel on her reasons for giving Davian information about me, and she explained she had been there two years ago: she was the ghost who drugged Davian’s drink, then abducted him from the bus.
After she heard the story behind the abduction, she didn’t believe Chad’s actions were justified, and that’s the reason she gave Davian a lot of green lights with me, even though she had specific orders to alert Chad whenever Davian came within a hundred feet of me.
I wasn’t mad at her. In fact, I was grateful for her kindness towards Davian. My only concern was if Chad would fire her…or worst.
As promised, I swung in at Beach Rock, made breakfast for the band without exchanging a single syllable with any of them, then Xena and I filled our water-bottles and went man-hunting.
We never found Xavier.
Three weeks later, and no one has seen or heard from him since.
I avoided the villa. Not just because of a missing Xavier, but also because of the triangle with Jessica, and Tex’s silent war against me.
