by SE Chardou
“So hectic that you’ve cancelled our appointments yet you had time to fuck another man? ‘White and black roses for such a beautiful, mysterious woman. You should stop mourning and celebrate life.’ That’s what the card says, Alyssa. Who the hell is ‘D?’ You better have a damn good answer too. ”
I stood in a hurry from the sofa, walked closer to him, and stopped several feet away. “I’m under no obligation to inform you about my personal life, Cam. You’re married with a wife and children. I’m footloose and fancy-free. In fact, I want to end any sexual contact with you from now on out. We both know I won’t be single for long and I can’t stand all the hovering you do. Get out of my house.”
His green eyes darkened before he closed the space between us and grabbed me by the neck. With his hand tightening around my windpipe, I started struggling for breath. It wasn’t long before my defense mechanism kicked in, and I clawed out at him with my fingernails before wickedly scratching his neck.
“You fucking bitch.” Cam let go of my neck but not before he backhanded me across the face.
I held my cheek as I struggled to breathe. I couldn’t believe what he’d done especially since the last time he’d hit me was the night he’d taken my virginity. After that, he didn’t have to; it was easier to be compliant and left with bruises no one could see then those that could be exposed to the world.
“If you touch her again, I’ll kill you.”
I could recognize that guttural yet sexy South African accent anywhere but what the hell was it doing coming from inside my house?
I looked up past Cam and came face to face with Dorian. He stood by Matilda who pretended as if she saw nothing before she walked away in silence.
Cam turned around to face Dorian. He looked from him to me and back again.
“Are you the one who is fucking my sister?”
“Actually, she’s not your sister—not by blood anyway.” Dorian smirked. “What we do with one another is none of your business. However, if you lay a hand on her ever again then I will fucking kill you. This isn’t a joke and don’t get it twisted—I may be a celebrity but I’m certainly not above committing murder. You—I’d gladly kill . . . all Alyssa would have to do is give me the word.”
I stared at the man who’d saved me at the least inopportune time but I couldn’t even bring myself to be angry with him.
He’d saved me when I couldn’t save myself and yet again, I found myself falling further down the rabbit hole past lust, and into a new dimension all together.
This was dangerous—he was dangerous. What the hell was I doing?
“Alyssa, say something.”
I realized Cam was speaking to me yet I had nothing else to say to him. I didn’t want him dead but I certainly wanted him gone.
“Get the fuck out of my house,” I whispered.
Dorian glared at Campbell with hard blue eyes. “If I were you, I’d follow the lady of the house’s orders and get the fuck gone . . . Cam.”
My brother shook his head. “You won’t get rid of me that easy, Alyssa! You owe me for what I did to help you, and I will be back to collect.”
I shook my head. “You didn’t do it for me, Cam, and we both know it. You did it for your own selfish reasons . . . the money, as usual. I’ll give you what I owe but I don’t ever want to find you in my house again or I will call the police and press charges for harassment.”
Cam smiled but there was absolutely zero mirth. “You’re not getting away with this because if I go down then I’m dragging you right along with me.”
“Try it and we’ll see how much time that buys you . . . you’ll be dead before you ever see a fucking dime so get out.” Dorian crossed his arms against his chest. Not only was he taller but in better physical shape than Cam, whose only source of exercise came from his five mile morning jogs around his neighborhood.
“Fuck you both. You may have won this battle, Romeo, but I promise as God is my witness you will not win the goddamn war.” Cam stormed past him in a huff, and we both listened as he double-timed it down the stairs and out of the front door.
Dorian entered my suite and closed the door behind himself. “Sit down. Let’s get you taken care of.”
I did as I was told though my cheek ached more than my bruised neck. I listened as Dorian walked into my bedroom and directly to the bathroom. There, he turned on the water and returned moments later with an ice-cold hand towel to hold against my sore cheek.
“What he did to you is going to leave bruises you know. I hope you have some very good makeup to cover up these marks until they heal.”
I nodded. “Yes, of course I do . . . but a better question I should be asking is how did you get into my home?”
He could have easily lied about how he’d gained access to her property but he’d already decided to let the breadcrumb trail begin.
Dorian had been serious about murdering Campbell but he had a lot of reasons, most of them extremely fucking intimate. He wouldn’t divulge them to Alyssa anyway—not now at least. He had a plan to stick to and he was most of all patient, precise, and tried to make as few mistakes as possible.
The fact remained he didn’t believe in coincidences, and just because he happened to like this chick more than any other bitch he’d ever fucked still didn’t make her all that special in his eyes.
“Spare key.” Dorian held it up for her to see. “Your deceased was a producer with a state of the art studio built on the same property as his home. I wanted to ask your permission to use it. The singer is only in town for a couple of days and we have to her tracks lined up so she can record them here. You see, she asked me to collaborate on some songs for her upcoming album, The Real Me.”
“How original,” Alyssa murmured sarcastically. “Has she been fake all this time?”
He couldn’t help but to laugh out loud because her humor was spot-on and usually tongue-in-cheek. That’s what had him so fascinated about her. She made him feel almost guilty for being in the situation to take advantage of her at a very vulnerable time in her life. However, the fact remained he wouldn’t allow anyone else to take part in his grand plan, and he’d already decided only one other person would benefit when all was said and done.
After all, she’d done all the hard work.
“Don’t tell me you’re jealous of Ella Jade.” Dorian sat next to her on the loveseat. “I co-wrote a couple of songs with her and she wants me to co-produce them too.”
“She’s also your ex-girlfriend or should I stop reading TMZ?” Alyssa’s hazel eyes lit up with fire but it simply amused him she could be so feisty after the violent altercation she’d recently been through with her adopted brother.
“Don’t insult my intelligence—someone like you doesn’t have the time or inclination to read TMZ. Grace told you we were an item, didn’t she? After all, the woman is my manager.”
She stood and tossed the hand towel on the table next to the huge vase filled with white and black roses. “What are all the flowers about? I thought what ever we . . . had—if you could even call it that—was over. You didn’t call me and I didn’t call you. It’s been three weeks. Shouldn’t we be ready to move on?”
Dorian stood and walked up behind her. Her head bowed, she looked so vulnerable but he knew what a hellcat she truly was beneath the surface. Alyssa was far from being a doormat.
“Don’t you mean aren’t you ready to move on?” He touched her shoulders softly. “I know I am. I can work with Ella and it means nothing to me. Been there, done that. However, I do want to pursue something with you. The last three weeks have been pure torture. All I can think about is what I wanted to do with you in bed and what I did do with you in bed.”
Alyssa turned around and faced him. “What are you talking about?”
“We fucked. That’s it. I treated you the same way I would treat any other random girl who fell into my bed but that’s the problem. You aren’t just any girl—you’re a woman—and I want to experience sexual feelings with you I ha
ven’t done with anyone in a long time.”
Dorian knew she was doing her best to read him as a person. Was he sincere or had he just showed up for a little more action between the sheets? He usually wasn’t the type to wear his heart on his sleeve but something about this woman told him she was worth it. Despite what he would do to her just to get revenge on a feud decades old that she had absolutely fuck all to do with but that was just how the cookie crumbled. He refused not to take what was his by birthright because she thought she’d gotten lucky and landed the jackpot.
“Listen, it’s a great offer, really but . . . I still can’t be seen with anyone yet. The press would crucify me and call me a whore. My God—Richard’s Estate attorney warned me I would have to wait at least a year to start dating. I have to appear as if he was the most important part of my life, and the only man I truly loved. If I don’t, I risk everything and for what—a few more romps in bed with you only for you to dump me once someone hotter and more exciting comes along? I don’t have the time or the patience for childish games, Dorian.”
He grabbed her waist and pressed his right cheek against her left, his mouth close enough to her ear as he whispered, “Who ever said anything about childish games? I want to wine and dine you, silly. I didn’t come here to jump into bed with you. I actually want us to try to work this out. I’m attempting to grow up and actually have a mature and healthy relationship. I know you had a late lunch but what about dinner at my place? Say around seven o’clock?”
Alyssa rubbed her cheek against his before she replied, “I thought your only interest in coming here today was to ask me a favor about using the recording studio. You’re welcome to it. No one uses it much except friends of Richard. When are you planning on starting your work with Ella Jade? I can call and make arrangements—”
“No need. I know all the artists and producers who use Richard’s studio and I’ve already cleared the time with them.” He pulled away as the palms of his hands replaced his face against her soft skin. “So, we’re on tonight for dinner, right?”
“Well, since you put it that way, you make it pretty hard for a woman to refuse.” She smiled though there was still an unknown sparkle in her eyes. It was almost like she sensed everything happening was too good to be true.
“I can’t wait to see you.” He kissed her lips quickly before he turned and left her suite, closing the door behind himself.
Dorian would have gladly worn a smirk had he not walked past Matilda who glared at him like he was the devil himself. What the fuck was up with him and old broads anyway? It almost felt like they could sense his true intentions.
Then again, it might have been his situation. It wasn’t ideal, and Richard was loyal to many people in his life though they weren’t always the most important. Unfortunately, the man had been obsessed with making money and breaking free from a tortured childhood. He could understand why the deceased producer acted the way he did but that certainly wasn’t condoning the behavior itself.
Although Dorian had promised himself he wouldn’t try to pressure Alyssa to have sex with him, all thoughts of what he shouldn’t do left his mind as he began to prepare dinner. He didn’t keep much food in his home and shopped several times a week at Whole Foods or Gelson’s to ensure the foods he liked were fresh at all times.
He had a choice of making a soup for dinner, which was a great idea because it wouldn’t weigh them down and he could still manage to get her drunk enough that she would end up back in his bed. Technically, they were taking it slow. He waited three weeks to call her and serenade her with enough flowers that had cost more money than most middle class families made in a week but it was worth it.
In the end, he chose his favorite soup to make because it reminded him of his homeland of South Africa. True, he’d been born in the States but he still had a very beautiful piece of property in the land where he had matured from a boy to a man. He loved visiting but with his schedule, it was almost impossible to make it out to see his place more than once a year. The field hands and maids got more out of the place than he did.
His front door opened and closed as he chopped up lobster tail and decided to add prawns to the recipe along with shallots, finely sliced onions, yams that had been peeled and chopped up along with heavy cream to the water and butter base of the soup. After adding a tablespoon of garlic to the soup base that slowly cooked on the stove in the pot, he added chopped up yams, onions and shallots to the soup pot as Ella walked into the kitchen.
“Mmm, whatcha makin’?” she inquired in that little girl voice of hers that drove him crazy.
Her fans might have thought it was cute she acted and sounded like a perpetual twelve-year-old desperately trying to emulate Taylor Swift. Or that her bodyguards carried her petite, one hundred and five pound frame to the limo after performances because her feet hurt from walking around in five- and six-inch heels but Dorian wasn’t amused at all.
It was one of the major reasons why they’d broken up.
At the age of seventeen, he was already a mercenary in South Africa, and had seen the worst of what human beings could and did do to one another over petty tribal differences, conflict diamonds or any of the other precious minerals that were raped from the continent he still considered his true home.
Someone like Ella didn’t get him at all and never would. She didn’t have the intellectual capacity to understand what it was like to not get her way all the time. She’d never had to go days without a shower or climb through swamps or the bush with your fellow soldiers, trying to hide out from the enemy. She had no idea what it was like having a gun constantly shoved in your face or dealing with despot leaders who cared nothing about their people, and rather what they could rape from their country to set them up in mansions somewhere nice like Switzerland, France, or Monaco.
Dorian had soon grown tired of her but now that she was staying for a few days in L.A., he would have to set her straight that there would be nothing going on between the two of them besides their professional endeavors they’d already planned.
“What are you doing in my home?” His voice was cold and beyond icy but Ella laughed it off, her big brown eyes merry and bright in a pixie cute face.
“I still have your keys, silly.” She jumped on his marble counter and swung her legs back and forth. “You must be entertaining that older bitch tonight.”
“Which one would that be, Ella?” He finally added the seafood to the pot, and turned the stove on low so that the soup wouldn’t burn or overcook any of the ingredients.
“Alyssa Conlon. The great Richard Conlon’s trophy wife. She’s, like, thirty years old, you know. She must have good genes ‘cause I admit she doesn’t look it but doesn’t it bother you you’re totally going cougar? What’s wrong with chicks your own age?”
Dorian checked his temper before he turned around to face his ex-girlfriend. “She’s only two years older than me, Lucia—that hardly qualifies her as a ‘cougar.’”
“Whatever.” Ella jumped off the counter and paced in his living room, her high-heels clicking loudly against the hard wood floors. “So after you’re done wooing the widow and you get everything you want, do you think there is a chance we can get back together? I mean, I’ll totally clean up my attitude and I’ll be a really cool girlfriend, you know? I can’t survive professionally without your vast expertise, Dorian, but you already know that. Please don’t make me beg.”
Even though he was a star in his own right, everyone knew the golden rule: never ever piss off a pop star so he said the only words he could. “Sure, I’ll give serious thought about us getting back together again.”
Ella screamed out loud before she ran toward him and jumped into his arms aggressively. “You’re the best, babe. And you better announce that shit on Twitter too. How did I get so lucky to find you?”
You didn’t, Dorian thought wryly, I found you when I needed money. Without your parents’ generous contribution, you’d be singing at bat mitzvahs and first communions in Long
Island.
“You’re a lucky girl, Ella.”
One of her small hands managed to fit between his waistband and she grabbed his cock. “I think we’ve got time before your company arrives. Can I get a to-go fuck before I head back to the Chateau Marmont?”
Dorian glanced at the clock and realized it was only five minutes after six. He had the time, even if he was committing an act that he didn’t find the least bit entertaining, he could fake his own orgasm although with Ella, he wouldn’t have to.
She was great in bed—he’d give her that—but she wasn’t even in Alyssa’s league.
I arrived at Dorian’s house with five minutes to spare. As I checked my makeup and straightened the aubergine cocktail dress I wore, which fit me like a glove without making me look slutty but one hundred percent sexy and classy, I spotted a figure running to a pink BMW convertible.
I’d bet both my natural breasts it was Ella Jade—who else would be tacky enough to drive a Mary Kay pink BMW with the vanity plate, “ELLAJ4U?”
I rolled my eyes and applied more lip-gloss to my lips before stepping out of my Range Rover after she’d driven off in a rush of blaring hip-hop music and screeching tires.
I suppose Dorian lived up to his bad boy status about as much as I lived up to my grieving widow status, and neither of us were capable of change, not at this moment in our lives.
Everything eventually came down to timing and ours seemed to be completely off balance. It was “another time, another place” scenario that kept screaming at me loud and clear that if I was smart, I’d turn around, climb back into my SUV, make a stop by Gordon Ramsay at The London WH, and order some of the best takeout in West Hollywood. I could binge-watch the old episodes of American Horror Story or Justified while being perfectly comfortable in my own home.
Of course my overactive hormones overruled every decent bone I had in my body and every working brain cell in my head. I waltzed right up to Dorian’s home looking like a million bucks, and smelling like expensive perfume—I might as well have had money oozing from my pores. Who the hell was I kidding? I could try to live in obscurity for the rest of my life but men would be after me like dogs in heat. If I didn’t catch one now while I had my looks then I’d be left with the gold-digging twenty-somethings who specifically went out with moneyed cougars. That would be me in another ten years whether I wanted to admit it to myself or not.
