Taken_by_Chance_ARe_June14

by Chloe Cox

  And the result was that somehow when he’d held her in his arms, stroking her back like she was a frightened stray—which, ok, actually really did help—the suggestion to stay at Volare until this whole thing blew over had made sense. It had even started to seem fun. Desirable. Relaxing.

  Now? She was stressing out like nobody’s business. Chance had left her in his suite while he went and got some of her stuff from her apartment. She hadn’t wanted to face the possibility of dealing with Paul Cigna or any of his stalkerazzi buddies, so Chance had offered.

  And she’d agreed. Sure, man-I-just-started-sleeping-with in a bizarre arrangement, go to my apartment and get my things.

  So why was she flipping out about staying at Volare now?

  It felt so…intimate. But really, it was just a room. Maybe it was because it was Chance who felt so close to her, already, and she had good reasons to be worried about that. She knew the guy wasn’t available for a real relationship. That was part of what had made this arrangement seem like such a good idea in the first place. She didn’t have to worry about getting involved only to find out that he was secretly a terrible person, or using her for something, or any of the other ways she’d had relationships end. But that was before they’d had sex. That was before she’d felt…

  Whatever this was. That connection, maybe. A physical connection like nothing else she’d ever experienced.

  Which, when she put it like that, seemed like a good thing for what she wanted out of this: someone she could trust who could help her learn about her kinks. But it carried with it the risk of falling for the man. And not only would that obviously not work for Chance, but it wasn’t like Lena had the best track record in that department, either.

  The idea of being vulnerable to him—to anyone—in that way had sent her right into a panic attack. Hence the cold water.

  Was she supposed to be honest with him about this, too? That just was not going to happen. Some boundaries needed to be kept, for both their sakes. She wasn’t going to mess this opportunity up because she asked too much of him.

  Like going to get her stuff by himself?

  Damn.

  She hadn’t even called Thea to warn her that he was coming!

  “Oh, what is wrong with you,” she muttered to herself while she hastily toweled off. She managed to find her phone in only a few minutes, which, considering the previous night’s activities, was something of a miracle.

  “C’mon, Thea,” she said. It had rung altogether too many times.

  “I was wondering when you were going to call me,” Thea’s voice squawked from the speaker. No greeting for her. Right to the point, as always. Lena smiled.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I was a little distracted.”

  “Yeah, I would be, too, in your shoes. Speaking of which, you know that man is actually packing up your shoes as we speak?”

  He was packing her shoes? Shoes, plural?

  “Yeah, I’m sorry. I should have called you to tell you he was coming, I just…I’ve had a lot on my mind.”

  “Your mind? Then you don’t know what to do with that boy. Besides, he called me first. Good manners on that one.”

  “Trust me, I don’t need to hear any more about his wonderful qualities,” Lena said. She was still in a towel, and realized she wouldn’t have any other clothes until Chance came back. Still, she wanted to be useful. She could at least strip the bed.

  “Lena, honey, gossip and bragging aside, please do tell me something about what’s going on. I worry in my dotage.”

  What had she ever done without Thea?

  “Um, so. God, I don’t know why this is so awkward, but…he’s helping me with something.”

  “Is he your Master?”

  Lena stood bolt upright, letting her towel fall around her ankles, the sheets only half stripped. “My what?” she said as she struggled to recover any towel-based dignity she had left.

  “Yeah, I’m not dumb, honey, and I’ve been sexually adventurous for more years than you’ve been alive. Plus, we have the internet now. Makes it very easy to check up on people.”

  “Jesus, Thea.”

  “I’m not judging. I don’t know if it would be my cup of tea, mind you, but you never know until you try.”

  “No, he’s not my…master. Well, I don’t think so. But he is, um, teaching me, I guess. I just didn’t want to let Richie take that from me, too, and Chance is…Chance has been amazing.”

  “I bet.” There was a pause, very uncharacteristic of Thea. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. “I’m proud of you, honey, for doing this despite that bastard Richie. You get yours, you hear me? I want to see you happy.”

  Lena felt tears gather in her eyes. Why should she cry? It was a good thing to be loved by your family, even if you’d had to move halfway across the country and get kicked out of your last apartment to find them. Thea was the one person in her life who had never let her down. Sometimes Lena didn’t quite believe she was real.

  “Chance thinks I should stay here for a little while, at least until that photographer bozo gives up and leaves me alone,” Lena said. “But I won’t if you don’t want me to. It’s not really a big deal.”

  “Oh, he told me. And don’t be silly. It’s only temporary, and I like living on my own. I did it for years before I met you, remember? You’re the exception, my dear, and I will be glad to have you back, but in the meantime I’m gonna cook naked as much as I want.”

  “That doesn’t sound remotely safe.”

  “I like to live on the edge.”

  “See, this is why I worry about you alone,” Lena laughed.

  “Well, I won’t be alone as long as this ‘photographer bozo’ is here to keep me company.”

  A chill passed through her, taking any levity out of the moment. She had thought about Paul Cigna as an abstract threat, but the way Thea talked about him made him seem very real.

  “Thea,” she said carefully, “do you mean that he’s there now? The guy who was wearing that goofy hat? The skinny, rat-faced one?”

  “Distinctive, isn’t he? I’m afraid so. I’ve seen him every time I’ve been out. It’s just him, though, none of those others have been back.”

  Which was actually much worse, in a way. It meant that Lena had been right in her initial assessment—she just wasn’t that interesting to most tabloids. The kink, Richie’s status as a former child star, and her looks had been the selling points, but L.A. had no shortage of good-looking people doing stupid things on camera, and most of them were actually famous. Photos of her would probably only bring in decent cash in the day or two after the original photos leaked, and that’s if they brought something more to the story—like the insinuation that she was dating Chance.

  It meant that Paul Cigna was out on his own without much hope of taking a lucrative photo. It meant that Paul Cigna had reasons of his own for stalking her.

  For making her feel afraid.

  What an asshole.

  “Lena, honey? You still there?” Thea sounded worried.

  “Yes. I’m just pissed off,” she said.

  Which was so much better than being anxious or afraid.

  Hadn’t Chance already taught her that? That the best way to stop feeling like a victim was to fight back? She had knots in her stomach at the thought of Paul Cigna still staking out her house. Forcing her into hiding. Bothering Thea, no matter how much Thea pretended it didn’t matter. No matter what Chance did to help her feel better, in the end, this tiny, terrible little man called Paul Cigna would always be able to make her feel hunted and powerless, just by showing up.

  If he wasn’t just doing it for the money, he might be dangerous. But what if he was? What if there was some angle she didn’t know about?

  Couldn’t she just end it now? And know, once and for all, what Cigna was really after. Just the idea of knowing calmed her down. At least then she could plan. It would simplify her life—and it might simplify things with Chance. He wouldn’t feel obligated to do all this a
bove and beyond stuff for her sake, and she wouldn’t be afraid of becoming dependent upon him. And Chance would definitely appreciate her wanting to take back control of her life. Maybe learning how to submit and give up control in very controlled situations was just the other side of this same coin.

  Lena had seen how pleased he’d been when she’d braved through difficult questions. And something about pleasing him felt right—as right as fighting back.

  “Thea, can you see the weasel out there?”

  “Yup. He’s in his car, an old, beat-up brown Volvo, just down the block. Watching.”

  “Ok. I’m going to deal with this right now.”

  “Lena? What are you doing?”

  “Give me two minutes.”

  It took her at least that long to find her clothes from the night before, clothes that had apparently been favored with the same miracle that had blessed her phone: barely wrinkled, no grass stains. She toweled off her hair, pulled on her tight white dress, which, in full daylight was maybe a little hooker-y, and slipped into her heels.

  It felt like battle armor.

  chapter 11

  Thea had hovered for a while as Chance packed Lena’s stuff into his old Army duffle, even remarking on how most women wouldn’t let a man they’d only just started sleeping with anywhere near their private things, but eventually she’d seemed satisfied with his conduct. He was being careful, after all. And he wouldn’t know about most women—it occurred to him that he’d never done anything as ordinarily intimate as pack a woman’s clothing for her before. It just hadn’t come up.

  Huh.

  Even so, Thea had eventually wandered off to take a phone call, and Chance had been left in Lena’s apartment. The clothing had been easy; she had a nice closet, easily organized. He’d gotten that out of the way in about two minutes, even though he was sure to have screwed something up, but he figured he could take her shopping.

  Damn, this was moving fast. From zero to sub in one day.

  Anyway it was the other essentials he was having trouble with, reminding him how much he didn’t know about this woman he inexplicably—to use her word—felt close to.

  Her apartment was full of books. Just everywhere they could be stashed, books. Well-loved books.

  And not just books. There were legal pads with dense handwriting all over the place, bulletin boards with index cards on them with little headings like, “Inciting Incident: car wreck” or “Plot Point 1: gets the package.” He had no idea what they meant, but apparently Lena did, and this was obviously all important to her. She wasn’t kidding: she wrote like it was her job.

  He couldn’t take all of it, not yet. But he obviously had to bring some of it. A woman who lived and breathed books and writing like this obviously needed them. He could just check out these binders to find out which one was the script she was working on now, and bring that over with her laptop.

  He hadn’t meant to start reading. But he had to at least skim to figure out what was current.

  Then he’d gotten sucked in.

  Somehow she’d made the story of two lovers on opposite sides of a war funny and breathtaking and heart wrenching. And suspenseful. He wasn’t a guy who read romances or love stories or whatever, but this was crazy. No wonder no one knew what to make of her stuff. It was unlike anything else, and it was just too good.

  The thing that got him, though, was her grasp of people. He’d only ever felt like this when reading Anna Karenina back in high school. That was the only book in that long, torturous year of Ms. Grisham’s English class that had blown his mind. Maybe it was the burgeoning Dom in him, but he’d been fascinated by how Tolstoy had so much empathy and compassion for people he didn’t even like that he was able to get inside their heads completely. Tolstoy knew his countrymen, better than they knew themselves.

  This was like that.

  He laughed—he’d just compared Lena to Tolstoy. That…that was insane, right? Chance was no literary critic, but he knew what he liked. Screw it. Tolstoy it was.

  That was when Thea had shouted for him.

  He shoved a few of the binders and her laptop case in the duffel, slung it over his shoulder, and headed toward the commotion.

  “Thea, what’s up?” he called down the stairs.

  “I think our girl might be doing something a little crazy,” she said. “I only tell you this because I don’t know if that photographer is the violent type, and because you run faster than I do.”

  Chance had seen Paul Cigna sitting in his car down the block. Apparently, so had Lena.

  He broke into a run, tearing out the front door.

  Lena was definitely doing something…maybe not completely crazy. But not obviously sane, either.

  She was standing at Cigna’s window, blocking the photographer’s view of Chance’s approach, dressed in her outfit from last night and yelling something.

  Shit.

  Something in Chance redlined. That man was intent on hurting Lena, either psychologically, with his fucking camera, or physically, because he was a creep. Chance welcomed the feeling he’d learned to hate—that lurch in his gut, the fire coursing up his spine—because it was what was going to stand between Lena and Paul Cigna. He broke into a run.

  “Let’s just get this over with so I can get on with my life,” Lena was saying. “I’m not interesting, I’m not famous, nobody cares who I’m dating or what I’m doing, so why don’t you take whatever creepy ass picture you want right now and then leave me alone?”

  Chance was close enough now to hear Cigna’s creepy, calm response.

  “But that’s not the shot I want, sweet thing.”

  The beast in Chance roared.

  Keep a handle on it.

  Chance put a gentle hand on Lena’s elbow and firmly pulled her out of Paul Cigna’s line of sight. He’d be damned if he let that asshole enjoy the view of Lena in that dress for one more second. When she saw it was him, she unconsciously stepped into the protection of his arm, and in the back of his mind he was pleased.

  But first things first.

  “Hey, asshole,” Chance said, leaning down to the window, feeling like he could get his fingers to leave dents in the metal if he wanted. “What did I tell you last time?”

  Cigna’s expression turned on a dime. The fear on the man’s face as he put his car in gear was satisfying, though not as satisfying as it would have been if he’d begged Lena for forgiveness and promised to leave her alone—on his knees. Instead, the coward peeled out without a word, turning recklessly onto Abbot Kinney.

  Chance held Lena close to his body and took deep breaths while he waited for the pressure inside to dissipate and be replaced by normal thoughts. He was still on high alert.

  He was still pissed about the leer he’d seen on Paul Cigna’s face, and not just because the man himself sickened him—he had been leering at a woman who was his. His responsibility.

  “You ok?” he asked Lena, looking down. She was still pissed, but she there was something more—she looked puzzled.

  “I’m frustrated,” she said. “And confused.”

  Frustrated? Confused?

  Did she have any idea what kind of danger she’d just put herself in?

  “Lena,” Chance said, keeping his voice controlled. “That could have been dangerous. I get why you’d want to confront him, but don’t do that again. I’m not kidding.”

  She raised a mischievous eyebrow. “You’re not the boss of—”

  His look stopped her. She said, “Oh.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I am.”

  “Yeah, but not literally.”

  Jesus, this woman. Chance stopped her, put the duffel down, and turned her to face him. They were in the middle of the street, and he did not give a damn.

  “Yes. Literally, figuratively, however you want to put it. Your safety is my responsibility—physically, psychologically, whatever. All of it. I am not going to let anyone hurt you, not Paul Cigna, not you. That clear?”

  Lena’s head ha
d been back at the confrontation with Cigna, but now she was most definitely in the moment. She looked up at Chance with some weird mixture of nervousness, happiness, and that anxious tension he’d seen in her before.

  “Yes, that’s clear,” she said. “I didn’t…I didn’t think of it like that, though. I just wanted to take control of it. I thought you’d be pleased. And I was pleased—it felt good. Until he got, you know, all creepy.”

  Were her eyes actually brimming with tears? Sensitive, brave, wild submissive. It was every flavor he loved, and now she was crying because she’d disappointed him, or because she thought he was being unfair, or both, when she was already in the middle of an emotional time.

  But she needed to understand this. He sighed.

  “You notice things, don’t you?” he said. “You noticed I was proud of you when you pushed yourself. And I encouraged you to take control of that situation yesterday. And it felt good when you did.”

  Lena nodded, clearly embarrassed that she was nearly crying. He tilted her chin up so she couldn’t avoid his gaze.

  “Look at me,” he said. “I am proud of you for wanting to fight, and don’t beat yourself up for crying—you’ve got a lot on your plate. But your safety is always going to come first. You put yourself in danger on my watch again, and I’ll have you over my knee in the damn street, you understand?”

  The shock of his promise hit her physically. He watched her closely. First a look of gratitude, so much gratitude just because he cared even a little bit—again, she expected so little of him, maybe of everyone. Then outrage.

  And then it all gave way to arousal. Arousal crowded only by the lingering expression of shame.

  If he didn’t think it would be too much for her at this particular moment, he would have pulled up that dress and spanked her in the street. The thought drove him crazy.