Lies and Illusions

by Avelyn Paige

  “I can tell,” I smile.

  “So, my brother plans to monitor me from afar or am I to be on display for the entire club’s viewing pleasure?” I sharply question him. Just the idea that my brother wants cameras on me begins to infuriate me. It may all be in the name of protection, but this seems like overkill. The Zezza’s have no idea of my connection to the club, and as far as I know, Ginny never revealed to Gio her real name. This place should be the Fort Knox of safety as it is, but it’s like my brother doesn’t trust his own men. Maybe things aren’t as great as I thought around here.

  “The only two people who will have access to these cameras are your brother and myself, but just as the security expert,” he back peddles.

  “I see,” I offer back coolly.

  Oh yeah. My brother will be hearing about this. I may be a prisoner here, but I refuse to live as a real live version of a show pony in a ring. Safety is one thing, but this is more than that. He wants to keep an eye on me, so I don’t bolt again.

  “It won’t take me long,” he assures me. “If you want to hang out in the main room, I should be done in about thirty minutes or so.”

  I consider his proposal, but dismiss it almost immediately. Being out there would mean facing Ruby again, something that I’m not exactly ready to do again today or ever. After all these years, she is still angry that I left and chased my own dreams, while she gave up on hers for this club. I once would have considered her a friend of sorts, since we grew up together in the club, even though her role was far different than mine. She was property, and I was the princess. We both lived completely different lives. I’d be stupid to think that I could avoid her, while I’m here. We’ll have to see each other on a daily basis, but right now I wanted to avoid it at all costs, even if it meant watching a perfect stranger rig up my room in cameras.

  At least the view is nice.

  Lord have mercy. Stop ogling the bodyguard.

  As he reaches up to the corner of the north and east walls, the muscles below his t-shirt and cut ripple just slightly. V isn’t exactly what I would call a meathead. His muscles, while smaller than his brothers, are still noticeable under the tattoos that wrap around his biceps. He is lean where the other men are bulky. The kind of guy that I usually fall for. I squint trying to decipher the theme of his ink to profile him a little bit, but he jumps down from the chair he dragged over to the corner, and bends down to pick up a fallen piece of equipment, before I get a really good look at it.

  Seriously? Where in the hell is this stuff coming from? Okay, brain. I know you’re tired, but this is getting ridiculous.

  A smile cracks on my face, as his perfect butt strains against the tight dark wash jeans wrapped around his thin hips. Heated arousal begins to coil in my core, as I continue to watch. Each slight movement from him charges my internal arousal batteries one tick higher, which begins to set me on the dangerous edge of confusion and arousal. I wonder what he is packing in the dick department.

  Hey ovaries, get with the program. I know he’s good looking and it has been awhile, but no. You have someone out there already.

  A pained thought enters my mind. There is someone out there who might be wondering where I am or why I have gone quiet. Though I had agreed to cut off contact with the outside world via my government contract, I just couldn’t. It’s human nature to want to seek out human interaction. After so many nights with Ben and Jerry’s and a vibrator, a girl had to do something. I craved affection so badly that I did something really stupid, like set up a dating profile. I tried to make it as generic as possible, and even obscured my face to the best of my ability. It was dormant for months, until a message from another user brought me back to life. That one message turned into multiple messages, which then turned into texts. It was a whirlwind, and I was gladly caught up in it. The man’s name is Beauregard. It’s old fashioned I know, but in those e-mails and then all the text messages from my hidden pre-paid phone, I found a friend. It was almost like he understood me in a way that no one else had ever been able to before. Even miles away, he could see into my soul and provide me with the relief I had needed for so long. There were no expectations, rules, or FBI agents, when I was talking with him. It was easy, and it was the best damn thing that had ever happened to me.

  He was very handsome, if the picture he sent me was really him. I’m not naïve enough to believe that I met the perfect guy on the first try, and I also know there is a huge possibility that he might be lying to me. It was an everyday occurrence with Google Images allowing anyone to usurp someone else’s identity. Yet, I never got the feeling that what was between us was a lie or a cruel deception by an unhappy person seeking anonymous romantic entanglements, before ghosting away. I have this gut feeling he is telling me the truth, and that the picture really is him.

  He is different. I know he is. I wouldn’t be this happy, if it were all a lie.

  After two months of almost constant contact, I felt safe with him. Even safe enough to send him my full picture, and in doing so, our relationship moved from friendly to romantic. It was reckless on my part for exposing myself that way. I knew that, but I didn’t care. The thought of meeting him after my contract was over in just a few months, gave me the hope and the drive to finish this job. At the end of this journey, there would be someone that I could call my own and not have to worry about him disappearing or being killed.

  My eyes float to the pre-paid phone currently tucked away in the jacket I had worn for days, as we drove across the country. I clung to it like a lifeline the entire trip. Not only for Beauregard, but also for the fact, it was the only form of contact I had with me, other than my purse that I had thankfully left in my unlocked car that day. Without it we would have been dead in that safe house.

  As soon as I felt we were safe, I emptied my bank accounts at a local bank branch drive-up window and tossed my card along with my personal cell phone. I knew if I had done it on the trip that it would pinpoint our location, so I pulled the money from an obscure location just within the city limits of the safe house. The men after us could track us easily, if I used my account or card, but cash wouldn’t provide a breadcrumb trail for them to follow us with.

  The sound of V moving the chair snaps me back into reality. His eyes linger on me for a few seconds, before shifting away again.

  “Do you think that someone can get me a change of clothes?” I ask him, while he grabs another camera off the table.

  “Shouldn’t be a problem,” he mutters, while sliding his pad of paper and pen from the earlier meeting, out of his back pocket. “Write down your sizes and what you need. I’ll get someone to get them for you.”

  He hands over the notebook and pen, before getting back to his work. I flip the pages, and I can’t help myself but to be nosey, when I see his notes on the meeting today scribbled in his own handwriting across the page.

  Would this be how my patients felt if they could see my notes on our sessions?

  It’s almost like reading an action and adventure novel, as I read back the reality that has become my life. How did I fall so far, when I was only trying to do so well for myself in this world? Maybe my life was meant to be one series of giant screw-ups, like the ones I ran from.

  I notice Voodoo grabbing the last camera off the table out of the corner of my eye, before I start scribbling down my own essentials. He makes quick work of its installation and returns to the table for his box, before turning on his heels and collecting the list from my hands without so much as a please. His eyes scan the list quickly.

  “Just the essentials, I swear.” He smiles in return.

  “You’re all set,” he comments, pointing out all the cameras. “The only room that isn’t monitored is the bathroom. For privacy.”

  “Thank you,” I tell him. “At least someone around here isn’t a pervert.”

  He pauses for a minute, and then smiles. “I wouldn’t go that far. You just don’t know me well enough yet.”

  I climb from the couch and sta
lk toward him. His body freezes at my closeness, and I take note of the fact that I can see perspiration dripping from the back of his neck. Not something that I expected of a man who likely kills for a living, just from hanging a few cameras.

  Maybe he has an anxiety disorder to go along with his O.C.D.

  “Since you’re in charge of me, I’ll take it easy on you for your first day. I’m going to take a shower and likely turn in for the night. If my clothes show up, just have someone leave them outside my door, and I’ll grab them in the morning.”

  His Adam’s apple bobs with a hard gulp. The therapist inside of me wonders whether it was the mention of the shower or the implied nakedness that elicited such a response from him. The need to get him on the couch and pick his mind comes on hard, but I dismiss it. I made a rule a long time ago that if the need to pry open a person’s deepest and darkest secrets hit, to back away if I wasn’t being paid to do it. Because those are the kind of people whose mind you didn’t want to dip inside of.

  “Okay,” he mumbles. “Goodnight then.”

  Before I can even respond, he’s out of the door. I listen for returning footsteps for a few minutes, before grabbing my jacket and bolting for the bathroom door, seeking privacy.

  I shut the door behind me and dig into my pockets for my phone. The screen flicks on, and the low battery notification flashes. I had just re-loaded the minutes the morning before our great escape, but that wasn’t the issue. Minutes I had, but the battery dying was going to be a problem without a charger. If I asked for one, my brother or my guardian would be wise on the fact that I had a phone. My brain was too tired to come up with another plan for securing a charger, and I added it to my mental to do list, after I slept.

  The battery alarm beeps again, and I quickly unlock the screen, finding Beauregard’s name. My fingers fly across the digital keyboard, as I click send. The three days of silence between us was almost too much.

  Is it the same for him?

  I miss you.

  The text goes through, and the phone dies in my hands, just after it sends. My heart sinks, as I realize that may be my last message to him.

  I’m truly alone in a prison of my own creation with no escape in sight.

  The door to her room closes behind me, and I feel like I take in my first real breath, since before I entered.

  You were smooth in there, dip shit. Could you have been more of a nervous Nelly? Grow a pair.

  She looked so fucking beautiful sprawled out on that couch, and my dick was screaming at me to go say hi. But it was the moment, that her soft hand grazed mine in my sad as shit attempt to be professional, that I knew this was something different. A fucking hand shake and I was gone. I was crazy. Absolutely off my rocker crazy, but it was happening. Maybe those fucking romance shows the club girls watch weren’t that far off on the love at first sight shit. Well, in this case, there wasn’t a big rock and a cash prize waiting at the end. There was something much more than that. The only problem is that she doesn’t realize the way she reacted to me is because she knows me. The other me, who was really the real me, without the club bullshit, but that’s beside the point.

  Fuck, I’m confusing myself.

  I caught the shared reaction between us from that touch, as hard as she tried to hide it. She was a shit liar, if I could ever call someone that.

  Every second that I was in that room, I was in absolute terror of spilling my secret to her. She was so close, yet so far away from me.

  Fuck. My. Life. Guarding her wasn’t going to be as enjoyable as I thought. Not if I was going to be like this. I’m a raving lunatic, when she’s around.

  As soon as she sauntered over to me with those rounded hips, I knew I had to get out of there. The mention of a shower and the thought of her sleeping naked in that room was my breaking point. It was even worse, when the dark thought crossed my mind of having access to watch her through the cameras I had just rigged up. I heard red alert warnings going off in my head from below the belt. I was running the risk of my other brain taking over, and it wouldn’t do me any good right now.

  Not happening, buddy boy. That’s a prison sentence. You have to wait, until the time is right.

  My dick rebutted at my moral high road, but that wasn’t a line I was about to cross just yet. Prison colors didn’t look good on me, and neither did a dead man’s suit. That was the only two possible outcomes of such a stupid fucking idea had I gone through with it in that moment. I just had to play my cards right.

  I bolt from the hallway, where Presley likely stands naked, dripping wet from her shower, and charge for my office. Thankfully, I have a nice new selection of porn that I can use to satisfy this itch and pacify it. Just a man and his dick. Masturbating in misery together. Fucking pathetic.

  My head is so tightly wrapped around Presley’s proposed nudity that I didn’t even see him standing there just outside our office area. I hit him head on, and bounce back from the contact.

  “Where’s the fire, V? Damn, that hurt a bit.” Raze questions with a curious look.

  “Shit, Prez. You’ve been practicing those ninja skills. Didn’t see you there.”

  Raze’s look remains the same, as he assesses the situation.

  “V, I live in a house with five kids. Stealth is my middle name,” he chuckles. “Did you get her room wired up?”

  “Sure did. About to go get started on Ginny’s room next.”

  “Don’t bother,” he states. “Ratchet took her home with him. Against my wishes, I might add.”

  “Need me to check the cameras on his house or get Slider over there?”

  “I’m already ahead of you. Slider’s parked outside right now.”

  Lockdowns aren’t exactly the time to defy our club president’s orders, but this is a bit of a different situation. Ratchet loves his sister, that was plain enough to see, and it only makes sense that he wants her in his house the first night back. Was it a smart move? No, but the first night would be their safest here, as long as they weren’t followed. The lack of our doors being broken down around us was proof enough for the time being that they weren’t.

  “She’ll be back tomorrow, so you’ll have time to do your thing, before she’s back.”

  “Sounds good, Prez. You need anything else, before I get back to work? I want to get the outer cameras ready to go, before I install them after dark. If they are watching, I’d rather that they didn’t see where I put the cameras.”

  Raze smiles at my forward thinking, and slaps his large hand roughly against my shoulder.

  “If we make it through this alive, I owe you a raise,” he remarks.

  “Aw, shucks. I’m just doing my job,” I mock back. “You know how I love to play with wires and cameras. I’m like a kid at digital Legoland.”

  Raze just laughs, as he walks away and leaves me to my previous plan. I slide into my office, closing the door behind me and flipping the lock. I think about throwing a sock on the door, but the club girls might get the wrong impression. And so would Presley.

  As much as I love pussy, I had to play my cards right with Presley here. No more club girls, and no more one night stands, until I know where we stand. It was just me and my favorite girl from here on out. Rosy palm and her five sisters.

  Tossing the empty box on the table, I stalk over to my personal computer console on my desk that houses my spank bank collection. Business and pleasure don’t mix, and that goes for my computers as well. It would be embarrassing as fuck, if I accidently exposed my pump peep show to an actual website or worse to my brothers. This is one of those things that stays private.

  I flick through my collection, and finally decide to try out the parody of the last Star Wars movie, Star Sluts. It’s low quality, but this wasn’t going to take long with Presley so fresh on my mind.

  I undo the top button of my jeans, as the movie begins to load. My dick is raging against the zipper, and it hurts just from the sensation of the button popping open. I almost want to apologize for putting hi
m through so much temptation. Her beautiful face flashes into my head. Maybe I don’t need the porn after all. My fingers start for my zipper just as my Star Wars text tone goes off for the first time in days. I now know the season for the silent treatment between us. She was running for her life, and unknowingly, right to me.

  My hand flies to my desk drawer, pulling out the old burner phone I had stowed, since her silence began.

  The three little words scrolling across my screen makes my stomach seize. She misses him. Jealousy punches me in the gut. I’m jealous of myself, and it fucking sucks. This problem was of my own creation. The downside of it is only just now starting to reap what I sowed, except I was its beginning and end. The only person who would be hurt by it would be myself. I guess the old adage of being your own worst enemy was finally making sense.

  Presley is texting Beauregard again, and from the confines of the clubhouse. This poses two distinctly different issues. One, she has a phone here and there’s no telling if The Zezza’s are tracking her with it. The second is that she was thinking about another man, when I was with her.

  My sudden need to get my rocks off blinks into oblivion, only to be replaced with the need to tear apart her room and get that phone. The only problem is, if I do that she’ll know my secret, before I even get a chance to explain it to her.

  The only thing I can do is play along, even though it is killing me on the inside.

  I think for a few minutes before I respond, but the message instantly bounces back. Dammit. It must be dead or she’s turned it off. At least that solves one of my problems for the time being. I look down at my dick thinking about starting where we left off, but he’s a no go, even with the sounds of a fake Princess Leia sucking off a pretty shitty Chewbacca coming from the computer.

  Those three little words and the subsequent emotional avalanche took everything sexy off the menu. I lean down, switching off the video, and re-button my jeans. I guess I’ll get started on my intel search, since just about everything I had planned to do tonight has gone to absolute fucking shit.