A Starlet in Venice

by Tara Crescent

Chapter 3

  Liam:

  Some days, Tia was early and just went straight up to my apartment. She usually texted me when she got there, and so, as I always did, I had my cell phone in the pocket of my trousers, like some kind of eager teenager waiting for the hot girl to acknowledge him.

  I might have been in love with Tatiana Cordova.

  But she hadn’t texted this evening, and I caught the elevators upstairs to my penthouse apartment located right above Casanova.

  She was sitting on the couch, wearing a faded sweatshirt that said ‘London’ on it, and an old pair of jeans. No makeup, her hair in a ponytail, and she was still so beautiful she took my breath away and made my heart lurch.

  The first time Tatiana came over to my house with no makeup, I knew that she considered me a friend. Tia was an actress; she was always carefully combed and made up and primped. The day she felt comfortable enough with me to not bother with any of that stuff? That was a good day.

  She held a glass of wine in her hands, and she was just staring at the liquid, her expression pensive. “I didn’t know you were already here, rabbit,” I said, coming over to hug her. As always, the scent of her perfume washed over me. She smelled like the roses that my parents planted in their tiny garden, wild and fragrant and free.

  She smiled at me, but something was off. I thought I’d ask her what was wrong, but Tia was pretty private. She’d tell me if she wanted. “Do you mind if I shower?” I asked. “I’ll be quick.”

  She nodded.

  ***

  As I’d done several times in the last year, I was kicking myself on the ass for that ‘I want to be your friend’ comment. Not because I didn’t want be her friend, but because I wanted more. I wanted everything from Tatiana Cordova.

  I wasn’t proud of it, but I jerked off in the shower. It was something of a survival strategy. I’d met Tia last December. We’d agreed to be friends, but as time went on, I found myself falling in love with her. And because I was in love with her, I wasn’t going to sleep with anyone else. I’d slept with a lot of women in my life, but every woman in my bed got my undivided attention as long as she was there. Which meant celibacy, and it was killing me. Especially when Tia was just a few steps away, soft and warm, and all I wanted to do was draw her into my arms and never let her go.

  I watched my come coat the shower walls, and I groaned silently.

  ***

  “I opened a bottle of wine,” she said when I came out.

  “You didn’t eat dinner, rabbit? It was in the refrigerator.” I pulled out the stew and put it on the stove to reheat. Tia couldn’t cook, and I always made dinner the nights she came over. When she was on set, the film people fed her. In Venice, she survived on takeout. She had once wryly commented to me that she had all the attributes of a woman that men fucked, not married.

  Silly rabbit. If there was the slightest chance that she would accept, I would have proposed in a heartbeat.

  “I thought I’d wait for you,” she responded. “I haven’t been here long, in any case.”

  “How was the shoot?”

  She grinned more cheerfully this time. “It was pretty awesome,” she replied. Her entire face lit up when she talked about her work. I could have watched her all day. “How’s the writing?”

  It was my turn to smile. “The book is in my editor’s hands,” I said.

  “And?” she prompted. She knew this book had been giving me trouble.

  “And I think it’s pretty damn awesome,” I said. She laughed and we clinked wine glasses.

  “Let’s drink to your book and my shoot,” she said.

  I shook my head. “Not today, rabbit. Tonight we are drinking to the night we met,” I said. “Exactly a year ago today.”

  ***

  Tatiana:

  I didn’t even know how to process the fact that he’d remembered this was the one-year anniversary of the night we met. So in classic avoidance mode, I didn’t.

  “Movie?” I asked him brightly instead, getting up to put the film into his DVD player. Liam had been vocally horrified that I’d never seen either part of Kill Bill, and we had planned a viewing marathon tonight to rectify the situation. We were going to watch movies till the sun came up.

  “This is really good,” I said, as I ate the stew that he had made. I had never learned how to cook. All I had learned in the orphanage I had grown up in was to feel violated from the leering gazes of old men. “You are so very domestic,” I teased him. “The Dom of Casanova, the Domliest of them all, and he makes an amazing beef stew.”

  “Only the best for you, rabbit,” he winked. He drained his glass of wine, and walked over to the refrigerator, pulling out a beer. A stout, of course, but not Guinness. I’d asked once, and he’d given me this explanation that went on for entirely too long about how Guinness was undrinkable outside Ireland. Something about draught taps and nitrogen and I’d pretty mostly tuned out.

  “You are such a cliché,” I told him.

  He laughed easily. It was one of my favourite things about Liam. He was always good natured, always cheerful and always easy to be around. “An Italian drinking wine mocks the Irishman for drinking beer,” he noted dryly. “Shall we get this movie going?”

  We each leaned against an arm of his couch, sharing a blanket, our legs meeting in the middle. I’d done the exact same thing with Liam many, many times over the last year, but tonight, because of the punishment I’d seen earlier, something felt different. I was more aware of him. I felt the heat emanate from his body, and I wanted to curl up into him with a yearning that I didn’t think I could keep under control.

  He nudged my legs to move them out of the way – a game we’d played many times, trying to jockey for space. I pushed back and he grinned at me, a slow, lazy grin that sent shockwaves of desire through me.

  Stop this, Tia, I told myself sternly. He’s your friend, nothing more. If he’s looking for sex, there’s a roomful of women downstairs that’ll meet his needs.

  We watched the movie for a while, though I wasn’t really paying attention to it. When I watched the opening scene without flinching, the scene where Uma Thurman killed the woman in front of her five-year old daughter, Liam cleared his throat.

  “Are you okay, rabbit?” he asked me. His voice was concerned. “You seem a little sad tonight.”

  I had three big secrets. No one knew them all, and these secrets shaped the person I had become. I had never shared them with anyone, because to tell them would be to strip me bare. Revealed by them, I would be raw and naked and completely vulnerable, and I couldn’t let myself trust anyone that much.

  Yet in answer to his concern, I exhaled and I prepared to tell him one of these secrets. Because despite what I’d seen at Casanova, Liam was my friend, and tonight, I really needed a friend. “Not sad, necessarily,” I said. “Just thoughtful.”

  “Want to share?” he asked me, reaching over to refill my wine glass.

  I looked into the liquid as if it would provide me answers. I could feel him watch me. Finally, I spoke. “Twelve years ago today,” I said quietly, “I had an abortion.” I took a sip of the wine. “It was the right decision,” I said, “and I don’t regret making it. But it’s never an easy day.”

  That was only part of the story, only one secret out of three. I didn’t tell him anything else. No one knew the other parts.

  Liam was Irish, raised Catholic as I was. He was also the manager of a BDSM club, and I didn’t think he was particularly religious. But I still braced myself for judgement. There was none. “Tia,” he said, moving from his spot on the couch and pulling me into his arms. “Sweet rabbit,” he said softly.

  “You don’t think I’m going to burn in the fires of hell?”

  “Twelve years ago, you would have been seventeen.” His voice was infinitely kind. “You were barely a child, one who had never known her parents. You grew up in an orphanage.” He drew a deep breath. “I don’t believe in the fires of hell, and I don’t think I ever did. But even i
f I did, Tatiana, I don’t think there’s anyone less likely to burn in it than you.”

  I stared into my wine glass. I didn’t cry; I rarely cried. I hadn’t cried since last year, when the sadness had suddenly bubbled up and overwhelmed me, not because of the abortion, but because of what had preceded it.

  We watched the rest of the movie in silence. It was really late when we were done. I glanced at the clock on the DVD player. Three thirty. Late at night, when even the streets of Venice were dark and quiet.

  “You’ll stay over?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Sure,” I said casually. I’d stayed over many, many times, after many a late night of movies and dinner and laughter. I was no stranger to Liam’s guest room.

  ***

  Safely ensconced in the bedroom, I looked blankly at the closed door. Tonight, I ached to be held by Liam, and it was almost a physical pain. I considered. It was four, maybe five steps to the guest bedroom door. Then another ten steps to Liam’s bedroom, and to the comfort of his arms, keeping me safe and protected and cherished.

  I didn’t move. I buried my face in my pillow, and I forced myself to stay where I was.

  It had felt good to tell Liam, and his response had been exactly what I’d wanted. He didn’t ask a hundred questions, he didn’t ask who the guy was or if he’d stepped up to the plate, he didn’t demand to know any more than I had revealed. He had just accepted.

  I sighed. More than anything, I wanted to go back in time and erase the words I’d spoken about sex, because, as had been the case for the last several months, I wanted more from Liam. I wanted more than his easy smile and his laughs, I even wanted more than his cooking. I wanted to see passion in his eyes when he looked at me. I wanted him to take me by my hand and give me a personal tour of Casanova. I wanted everything.

  But though my body ached for Liam, my heart was afraid. Silly rabbit, I said to myself, hugging the pillow as I repeated the term of endearment he always used for me.

  Liam was whole and loved; I was broken and rejected. Nothing good could ever come out of this.

  Chapter 4

  Tatiana:

  “What do you mean, you’ve never had good sex?” Lucia’s voice rose in disbelief, and I winced.

  It was about a week after the night I’d seen Liam punish Simona at the club. Night after night, I’d dreamed about it, about the way the paddle had swung down on her ass, and the way she’d presented herself to Liam. As if she needed the pain, and he fulfilled something in her soul.

  “Lucia, keep your voice down,” Alice chided. Alice was smart, and since she was insanely rich and had been tabloid-fodder for much of her life, she was always aware of where she was, and who was around. She looked at me curiously. “Really? Never?” She exchanged a look with Lucia.

  “What?” I sounded defensive. “I know the two of you have glorious love lives, ugh, but it isn’t that uncommon to just not be that into sex. I’m probably just asexual.”

  Lucia rolled her eyes. “Umm, Tia,” she interrupted. “You’ve had sex with my fiancé, remember? He’s a fucking sex god. What the heck?”

  Alice giggled. “You Venetians,” she said, her tone devoid of judgement. Alice and Enzo played fairly regularly at Casanova, which made her very difficult to scandalize.

  “I barely even remember that night,” I said. “We were both really drunk.” I wasn’t lying to Lucia. Eleven years ago, I had plied Antonio and myself with vodka in order to have sex with him, as an attempt to replace a horrible memory with a better one. Both Antonio and I had ended up really drunk, and the sex barely even happened.

  “Umm, Tia, honey, we’ve got to fix this,” Alice told me. “You are clearly sleeping with the wrong guys.”

  “I doubt it,” I said, and they glanced at each other again. “What?” Some hidden subtext was going on with these two.

  “How about Liam?” Lucia asked.

  “Hang on, you both play at Casanova,” I said. “Have you both slept with Liam? Never mind, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.” A sharp lance of pain that speared through me at that thought.

  Lucia grinned and shook her head; Alice just laughed. “Actually, neither of us has slept with Liam.” “Somehow, we never clicked that way,” Lucia agreed. “But we are getting away from the topic at hand. From all the gossip at Casanova, Liam is very, very good at pleasing a woman. You should ask him. You guys are friends; I’m sure he’ll be happy to help out.”

  “Sorry, no. That’s just too weird,” I replied instantly.

  Alice leaned forward persuasively. “Tia, he sees naked women every single day, and they all throw themselves at him. Sex isn’t that big a deal to Liam. He’ll help you out, and there you go. Problem solved. Liam won’t have any trouble keeping his emotions separated.”

  Liam wouldn’t, I wanted to say. But I would. I couldn’t fly that close to the sun and not get burned. I deliberately changed the topic.

  ***

  “Well, well, guess who just walked in?” Alice’s voice was thick with amusement. I turned around to see who she was looking at. Liam.

  Damn it, yes, I knew this was a bar that he sometimes frequented, but what were the odds? Or did my subconscious pick this place hoping to run into him?

  “Tia,” Lucia said with a wicked look in her eyes. “This is it. This is your moment of glory. Ask him.”

  I looked at her, aghast. “I will kill you if you say something,” I promised, and she just laughed. There was a certain devil-may-care attitude about Lucia that made her dangerously unpredictable. “Alice, do something,” I appealed instead to the less impulsive woman.

  Alice gave me a straightforward look. “Neither of us is going to blurt anything out, Tia,” she promised, “but I do think you owe it to yourself to find out what you’ve been missing.” She lifted her hand and waved. “Liam,” she called out.

  “He’s coming over,” Lucia whispered gleefully to me.

  “My three favourite women in all of Venice,” Liam said easily as he joined us. His smile was so familiar to me, so untroubled. “May I join you ladies?”

  “Please do,” Lucia grinned and Liam slid into the seat next to me. “We were just talking about sex.”

  I could feel myself flush. Lucia wasn’t going to say anything, was she? I shot her a silent look of entreaty. I was going to die of embarrassment.

  “In that case,” Liam grinned, “please, keep going. I want to peek at the fascinating discussions women have about sex.”

  “Doesn’t the Dom of Casanova already understand what all women need?” I heard myself ask, my voice throwing down a challenge at Liam.

  He looked at me, oddly intent. “The first rule of Casanova is that you don’t talk about Casanova,” he said. “It’s very much like Fight Club.” His eyes wandered over my body. “If you were a member, you’d be getting punished right now.”

  Lucia was suppressing a grin. I didn’t know what devil jumped into me at that moment, but I looked at him. “I can play by the rules,” I said. “I can pay the price. Punish me then.”

  “And… that’s our cue to leave,” Alice said. “Liam, Tia, have a lovely evening.” She elbowed Lucia and they got up, both of them trying to look like they weren’t dying to know what was going to happen.

  Liam rose as they left, then slid back next to me. I could feel his strong thigh pressed against mine. “You want to get punished, rabbit?” he asked me, his eyes glowing with some unidentifiable expression.

  I felt my body tremble, but I hid my response. “What does punishment involve, oh Domliest of all Doms?” I asked, keeping my voice airy with effort, and trying not to remember Simona begging and pleading with him.

  His lips twitched. “Sassy rabbit,” he replied. “You are just digging yourself deeper into a hole here.” He looked amused. “You can’t take my punishment. Let it go.”

  ***

  Liam:

  I don’t know what possessed me to say the words. I knew Tia never walked away from a dare. I was deliberately escalating
the situation. But I couldn’t lie; every bit of me ached to tie her up so she couldn’t move, spank her beautiful ass, and watch her whimper. She would look at me with complete trust in her eyes, and I’d hurt her and I’d please her, and she would straddle that line where pain and pleasure blended into a whole. I wanted to take her somewhere she’d never been.

  Her eyes flashed with anger at my words. “I think you should let me be the judge of that,” she snapped. “Domly One,” she added.

  I pursed my lips together to keep from laughing out aloud at her moniker for me. Then I gave her one last out. No, scratch that. I gave myself one last out. Because if I got her in my dungeon, I wasn’t just going to cross the line I had with Tia. I was going to shatter it so hard that it wouldn’t ever exist anymore.

  “Walk away, Tia,” I said.

  “No,” she replied flatly.

  “Then let’s go.” I held out my hand to her, and she took it. I could feel her body tremble. We walked silently to Casanova.

  Chapter 5

  Liam:

  It was a Monday. Casanova wasn’t open. I punched in my access code in the usual side door I used, and gestured for her to go ahead of me.

  Antonio did his managers well; my apartment was on the top floor. In between though, there were four floors of decadence, of pleasure and pain that Tia had never seen.

  I was going to take her to the basement, which was set up like a creepy dungeon, for those who liked their punishment laced with dark and damp. I was hoping she’d back out when she saw it. If you were a novice, the dungeon should have made you bolt.

  The trembling in her body increased, but she didn’t pull her hand away from mine. “Rabbit,” I said again. “Walk away.”

  “Should I get naked, Liam?”

  Fuck. “Rabbit,” I said once again. “In this dungeon, I’m a different person.”

  In response, she pulled her sweater over her head. Underneath, she wore a white t-shirt that hugged every inch of her beautiful breasts, and I gulped. Fine. She wanted to play, my little rabbit? We were going to play.