Suddenly, he wraps his arms around me and flips me over so he’s on top of me. I’m giggling as I part my legs around him and revel in his weight against me. His bare skin is so warm, and I can feel him pressing into me. My body is switching on again. He brushes his nose along my neck and kisses up and down my throat as I continue to desperately want him.
“I think this is a pretty damn good way to wake up.” I grin and give him a little kiss.
“Waking up next to you is the best way to wake up.” He smiles and kisses me back.
“Then let’s always wake up like this, okay?”
“It’s a deal.”
“I’d better call Peter and tell him I’m not coming in today,” I say, looking over at my iPhone on the nightstand.
“Tell him you won’t be in tomorrow either, or at all from now on,” James says as he kisses my neck while I reach for my phone.
“You seriously want me to quit?” When he said it yesterday, I kind of assumed it was just to comfort me and reassure me that I wouldn’t have to face Eric again.
“Lola, I’ve got a serious stash of money saved up from these movies. I make, like, ten grand for individual scenes sometimes. I could pay your rent for a decade if you’d let me.”
I giggle. If I’d let him. “You might not know this, but I’m a self-sufficient kind of girl. I’m an independent woman; I don’t need you to pay my bills, bills, bills,” I joke, quoting Destiny’s Child.
He snickers and then rests his forehead on my chest and laughs.
“Now, if you’d be so kind as to hand me my phone, I can call my boss and tell him that I’d rather stay home naked in bed with a super hot guy than sit at my desk updating his stupid spreadsheets.”
“Here you go, Beyoncé.” He hands me my phone.
“That’s Sasha Fierce to you.”
He laughs hard and kisses me before he gives me a wink. He doesn’t get off of me. In fact, he starts kissing my neck as I tap Peter’s work number.
“Hi, Peter,” I say, trying to make my voice sound ragged and congested. “I’m really not feeling well today, and I don’t think I can make it in.”
Peter grumbles a response, but it’s hard to concentrate because James has moved from my neck to my chest and his kisses are inching ever closer to my nipples. He looks up at me and gives me a devilish grin. I mouth for him to stop, but he snickers and keeps going, taking my nipple in his mouth. So this is his little game, huh? It feels too good, and I can’t object.
“I’m hoping to get in with my doctor today, but they haven’t called me back to confirm,” I lie, closing my eyes and trying my hardest to concentrate on my words and not on the beautiful man tantalizingly licking and nibbling me.
Peter doesn’t sound happy, but he accepts. I’m glad to conclude the conversation because James has drifted down my body and has just passed my belly button.
“You’re gonna get me fired!” I look down at him with feigned outrage.
“Good.” He shrugs from between my legs. “Then you can stay home and I can do this to you all day.” His tongue begins to work its magic, and I exhale deeply.
“Eventually, we’ll have to stop. We’ll have to leave the apartment at some point, go to work, get some sunlight, take a shower, eat.” Immediately, I blush and regret my choice of words.
“Oh, I plan to eat.” He grins.
I want to come back with some snappy retort, but his mouth is too gifted. He’s completely sidetracked me, and I can’t focus on anything but what he’s doing between my legs. If we do officially start dating, he’s going to win a lot of arguments like this.
Needless to say, it’s a rather busy morning.
I’m getting some jeans on when my phone buzzes on the dresser with a calendar reminder. Shit! I’m supposed to meet Stacey in an hour. I bite my lip as I try to figure out how I’m going to maneuver this one. James doesn’t think that I’ve ever met Stacey, let alone that I’ve been talking to her pretty regularly. In fact, she texts me all the time and we talk on Facebook a lot. I’m guessing he’d be pretty uncomfortable if he knew about my budding friendship with a girl who’s been the co-star in his BDSM scenes—especially such horrible scenes that left him so shaken up. But Stacey’s my direct line to what’s going on in Eva’s world, and I need to crack that vault to try to free both her and James.
“Hey, um, I need to run out for a sec a little later,” I say as I walk out into the living room.
James is sitting on the couch eating a bowl of cereal in the buff. It’s a mighty fine sight.
“For what?” he asks innocently.
“I told my friend that I’d meet her for lunch, and I don’t want to bail on her.” It’s sort of true.
“Do you want me to give you a ride?”
“No, that’s okay.” I lean over the couch to give him a little kiss. I’m surprised at how easy it is to adapt to being romantic with him. Maybe it’s because we were always pretty affectionate, but now we have free license to turn our hugs into full-on kisses.
“What time do you have to go?” he asks, scooping up another spoonful of Multigrain Cheerios.
“I should probably leave in about a half hour, forty-five minutes maybe.” I shrug. All good so far. He’s not pressing for any details.
“So I only have forty-five minutes with you?” He smiles, putting his cereal bowl down on the coffee table.
“It would seem that way.” I giggle, already anticipating his next move.
He reaches over the couch and grabs me, whisking me onto his lap so I’m straddling him as he kisses me.
“You want me to sleep over again tonight?” He grins enticingly in between kisses.
“Mmm-hmm,” I mumble as I grab him and kiss him deeper.
“Tomorrow night, too?” he asks with a little glimmer in his eye.
“Mmm-hmm.” I tangle my fingers into his hair and sit up on his lap so I can let myself get into the kiss.
“What about the night after that?”
“Let’s just go ahead and make it indefinite.” I pull him in and passionately kiss him. I can hear him snickering as he kisses me back.
“Just evenings and weekends or during peak hours too?” he says against my lips.
“Shut up and kiss me!” I giggle and press my mouth to his. He obeys and kisses me like it’s as necessary as the air in his lungs. I want to be kissed like this every day for the rest of my life. We really should have started doing this years ago.
I’m standing around pretending to check out books in the biographies section of Barnes & Noble, but really, I’m waiting for Stacey. We decided to meet here instead of Starbucks because she was worried that someone might see her and tell Eva. She seems genuinely afraid of Eva, not in a Dom/sub kind of way, but in an abusive-ex-husband-who-might-accidentally-murder-you-in-a-fit-of-jealous-rage kind of way. I don’t even know Eva, but I’m pretty sure I hate her.
Stacey arrives wearing black yoga pants that inadvertently draw attention to her emaciated body. Her hipbones are jutting out like knives. She’s got on a charcoal gray hoodie zipped up all the way to the base of her neck. Her brown hair is down and hanging in front of her face like she’s trying to hide behind it. Her big, black sunglasses make her gaunt face look angular, like a praying mantis. It’s too bad that she’s in such a state, because Stacey could be really pretty. She just needs to gain a little weight, get some sunlight, and drop that horrible, controlling bitch draining her of her youth like some sort of soul-sucking tumor.
She pretends to browse for books alongside me before she’s sure the coast is clear. She turns to me and pulls off her sunglasses. I nearly recoil. Her eye is swollen, and she’s covered up the darker purple areas with foundation as best she could. Seeing this obvious injury makes me impulsively examine her more, and I pull back her hair to see lacerations on her neck that look like linear scrapes. I’m assuming they came from some kind of rope because of the braided pattern of the abrasions. I take her hands and roll up the sleeves of her hoodie: more deep
, discolored welts and bruises. My heart aches for poor Stacey.
She looks down like she’s ashamed and I can’t help it, I grab her and hug her. Why can’t she see that this is not okay? Nobody should be abused like this. I know she doesn’t like it—she’s told me that before—but she keeps doing it because Eva orders her to. How can I convince her that she doesn’t need to follow Eva’s sadistic demands? There’s a difference between a dominant personality and a psychopathic personality. Her body tenses up as I hug her, and I wonder if maybe I’m pressing on an unseen bruise.
“Sorry,” I apologize. “I know you don’t like to be touched, and you’re all bruised up. I shouldn’t have hugged you like that.”
“No, it’s okay,” she says with that fledgling smile, the one that gives away just how unaccustomed to happiness she really is. “You touch me because you want me to feel better. You don’t touch me to hurt me.”
“I don’t want anyone to hurt you. I don’t want you or James or anyone else to ever have to do any of this shit again.”
She pauses for a moment and then looks at me with such sadness in her eyes that it nearly brings me to tears. “I don’t know how to be any other way,” she murmurs.
“I’m sorry. I just want you to get away from Eva. I want everyone to get away from her.”
“I’ve always been with Mistress,” she continues grimly. “She made it where I didn’t have to go to school anymore. She took me away from my mom and her mean boyfriend who used to touch me. She’s all I know.”
“Oh, Stacey! It doesn’t matter! She’s hurting you. Run away from her! Please!”
“But I’ve been with Mistress for eight years; I can’t leave.” She looks confused and concerned.
Wait a minute. Eight years? “How long have you been with her, Stacey?” I ask, hoping she won’t see how much this has piqued my interest.
“Eight years.”
“And you’re twenty-three, right?” I can’t stop my eyes from growing wide.
She suddenly sees my line of thought and starts to get skittish. “Um, no, uh, I mean, um, I was, uh—”
“Stacey,” I say, my voice serious and strong, “were you with Eva when you were underage?”
She looks down and gives me a shy nod.
“Did you do movies with her before you were eighteen?” I press. We might have something here. “You can tell me, Stacey. This might be our ticket out of all this.”
She nods again. “My first one was when I was fifteen,” she confesses, like just saying it out loud can absolve her soul. “I didn’t like it because the man was a lot older than me and his mouth tasted like whiskey. Mistress found him at a biker bar near the strip club she used to make me dance at. He had a beer belly and big skull tattoo on his back.”
I’m doing my best not to cringe. I don’t know if I want to hear any more of this. I’m sure it’s utterly awful.
“It hurt real bad, and I cried a lot.” Her facial expression says she’s conflicted on what emotion she should feel about these memories. “Mistress didn’t like that I cried. She told me if I cry, I’ll get punished. The next video was three men at the same time, and I really didn’t like it.” She pauses and looks around with her brow furrowed like she’s searching her mind. “But I didn’t cry. I never cried again after that.”
“Jesus Christ, Stacey!” I say, hugging her again.
“Sometimes Mistress is really cruel,” she says like she can’t believe the words just came out of her mouth.
“From what I hear, she’s pretty fucking cruel most of the time.”
Stacey’s mouth curves into a weak smile. “She really isn’t a very nice person, is she?”
“No! In fact, I’d say she’s a total fucking bitch.”
Stacey snickers, and I get a glimpse of that warm, sweet person inside.
“Is there any chance Eva still has those videos?”
“Yes, she does.”
“And do you know where she keeps them?”
“Uh-huh.” She nods. “She has them in the vault in the playroom. She makes me watch them sometimes when I’m bad.”
“Stacey, those videos are illegal. We’re talking about child pornography here. That’s enough to put Eva in jail. If we can get those videos to the police, we could—”
“Oh, no! Mistress would kill me if she ever found out!” There’s true panic in her eyes.
“Listen to me, okay?” I say, putting my hands on her shoulders to get her full attention. “We have to stop her, Stacey. We have to. You’re the key. You can save yourself and save James at the same time. Please, please help me here, okay? We have to tell the cops.”
“Why are you being so nice to me?” She doesn’t ask it in a suspicious way, just with general curiosity.
“You’ve been dealt a shitty hand.” I sigh. “You’re a sweet, kind, caring girl, and you’ve suffered so much because of her. I don’t want her to hurt you anymore. I don’t want her to make James hurt you anymore. I don’t want her to ever be able to hurt anyone else again. Frankly, I’d love to see that fucking sociopathic bitch rot in a jail cell, but that’s just my opinion.”
Stacey grins and I think I hear the faint hint of a giggle.
“So, what do you say?” I smile warmly at her. “Are you in?”
She nods and reaches out to hug me. Wow! She’s hugging me. I really am getting through to her. If Stacey is on board with Operation Destroy Eva, then there’s a good chance all of our problems can disappear.
We have coffee at the Starbucks in the B&N. Stacey orders a latte just like the one I bought for her the first time we met. She’s warmer now, more youthful and alive. She’s initiating conversation, and I’m happy to hear her laughing and even making the occasional joke. I get the feeling that she likes me and she sees that I’m not out to get her. Sure, maybe initially I wanted to use her to get dirt on Eva, but now I want to free her and James from the shackles of Eva’s employment—no pun intended. I’m just hoping my little Dorothy has what we need to take down the Wicked Witch.
Chapter 16
James
LOLA’S OUT MEETING with her friend, and I’m chilling at her house. It feels like all the drama’s been put on the shelf for a little bit and I can just concentrate on the happy stuff. I’m in love. I, James Laird, am in love. I feel like I should buy a guitar and write some kind of romantic ballad or something. It feels great!
Bleak reality rears its ugly head when my cell phone rings. I can tell from the caller ID that it’s the last person I’d ever want to talk to.
“What do you want, Eva?” I snap as I pick up.
“I’m going to need you to do a scene tomorrow,” she says sharply.
“I’m not working tomorrow. I told you last time, I’m not doing this again,” I reply, feeling stronger now that I’m supercharged by love.
She pauses for a moment, and I think she’s shocked. “Let me explain something to you,” she says with that kind of quiet, terrifying power that scares the shit out of me. “You will do this scene tomorrow. Do you understand? The consequences will be dire if you do not comply.”
“I don’t buy that.” It’s possible that she’s all talk.
“Your friend Lola, her last name is Caraway, right? And she lives in the corner unit on the south side of your apartment building. She drives a navy blue Prius with an Obama sticker on the gas tank door. Her mother’s name is Theresa and her father is Kevin. Would you like me to recite her social security number for you?”
A shiver runs through me. Why does she have all this info on Lola? What is she planning to do with it? If she wants to fuck with me, that’s one thing, but I will go off like a fuckin’ atomic bomb if she thinks she can fuck with Lola.
“Do you understand me when I say that there will be consequences for noncompliance?” she says. “Whether those consequences befall you or your little friend is solely at my discretion.”
I swallow hard. I know how low this bitch can be, and it makes my blood run cold to think what she mi
ght do to Lola.
“Of course, there are other options.”
“The tape?” I reply, my voice low and rough.
“Smart man.” She chuckles.
“Look, can I meet you somewhere to discuss this?” I can’t have this conversation in Lola’s apartment where I’ve just had one of the best nights of my life.
“Of course.” She knows she has me on the ropes, and I’m sure she couldn’t be happier about it.
We make arrangements to meet at a café between my place and her office. On the drive, I fantasize about wrapping my hands around her fuckin’ throat and choking the air out of her right there in front of everyone. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this kind of rage.
Eva arrives just after I sit down at a table on the patio. She’s in skintight, black, shiny leggings; knee-high, platform boots; a white tank top that’s so tight I can practically see her implants through it; and her dyed black hair is up in a ponytail. She looks so cheap, so “porn-ish” as Lola would say.
“Are you mad at me?” she says with an exaggerated pout as she takes the seat opposite me.
“Cut the fuckin’ bullshit! We’re here to talk business.”
“I do so enjoy your take-charge attitude.” She smirks. “Well, on the subject of business, the shoot tomorrow will be at noon and you’ll be working with Savannah again. I’m bored with the usual stuff and I’d like to change it up a little. She can do a trick with a baseball bat that you’ve got to see to believe. You’ll assist her with that. I’ve also had some requests for fire play, and I’m sure she wouldn’t mind a few singes. Do you smoke? It will be easier if you do.”
“I’m not burning her with a cigarette, if that’s what you’re getting at.” I scowl.
“It’s not that I want you to burn her, James, it’s that you will burn her because I have ordered you to do so and you will not disobey me,” she says sternly. “Don’t think for a minute that I’ll allow you to question me. You will do as I say or I will make you do as I say.”
Captured (Vice, Virtue & Video Book 2) Page 16
