I Need A Bad Boy: A Collection of Bad Boy Romances

by Sophie Brooks

  “Me?”

  “Did you miss me?”

  I stared at him, incredulous. How self-serving could this man be? I was beginning to think that my enemy was no more than a man-child, and since his question didn’t really merit an answer, I just took a seat across his desk.

  “So, where do we start?” I asked, crossing my legs and holding up my pen and notebook.

  6. A LESSON

  The first few weeks working for Theo were weird, awkward, but charming in their own way. I had to learn to be always available, 24/7, for any whims or requests he had at any given moment. But I also had to learn to avoid falling into the trap of his eyes and his smile... One second he’d be giving me complicated instructions about business meetings, and the next one he’d be hitting on me like there’s no tomorrow.

  I had to avoid making any mistakes or risk suffering his ultra short temper. But, of course, everyone makes mistakes. I was bound to make some, working under all that pressure, while I maintained my charade.

  Like the day I switched around two of his appointments for the week.

  In truth, I was switching his appointments around all the time, for reasons of efficiency, priority, and availability of both parts –but this time, he’d arranged one of these meetings himself. Turns out the guy was a lifelong friend of his who he hadn’t seen in years, but I only knew him as a business partner. That didn’t go well.

  Or, seeing thing from a different perspective, it went wonderfully.

  “When is Sam coming?” he asked me that day, as he entered his office hurriedly.

  “He’s not coming today,” I reported, standing up. “I moved your meeting for tomorrow. Today you’ll see Vanessa, who’ll run the EquiMind numbers for you.”

  There were a couple of seconds of absolute silence. Then, Theo walked out of his office and into mine really slowly, with an astonished expression that I tragically misread as admiration. I was pretty proud of what I had done.

  “You did what?”

  “I switched the appointments. Since you and Sam are going to talk about EquiMind, and you haven’t seen the numbers yet, I moved Vanessa for today so that you—”

  “You moved it?”

  In retrospect, it’s embarrassing to admit that I misread his reaction again. I was genuinely expecting him to congratulate me for a smart move. I wanted to win him over, and making things easier and more efficient for him seemed to be a good way to do it.

  “I moved it,” I repeated, “because you and Sam are going to talk about EquiM...”

  “I heard you the first time,” he hissed. His voice suddenly became alarmingly soft, like a velvet glove covering an iron fist. “You see, that’s not how this works.”

  I realized then that he was so close to me that I had trouble focusing my eyes on his. Even his mouth... oh God, his mouth... with its smell of fresh mint and whatever it was that he treated himself to, was at barely four inches from mine. I reeled back and my buttocks found the edge of the desk. I leant backward as he advanced towards me, unrelenting.

  “Then h-how does it work?” I asked, my voice failing me.

  “It works this way: you do exactly what I tell you,” he said. “You’re my assistant now, not my counselor. If I tell you to arrange a meeting at a set time and date, you pay attention and do as I told you. Understood?”

  This last word he said with his nose almost touching mine. I felt the warmth blow of his breath on my mouth, and my lips opened on their own accord. My eyes were half-closed as I surrendered to the intensity of his gaze.

  “Y-yes. Understood. Yes.”

  “Turn around,” Theo Lambert whispered.

  “Wh-what?”

  “Turn around.”

  I froze in place, my eyes fixated on his, my hands clutching at the desk. His smell was filling my nostrils, awakening a primal instinct deep inside me. I knew what was about to come... and I wanted it.

  “Turn. Around,” Theo Lambert repeated more firmly. There was a sharp edge in his voice that made me obey this time. “Say what you did.”

  “I... I didn’t pay attention.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t pay at—oh!” He didn’t let me finish. His hand landed on my right buttock with a smacking sound that seemed to blow away all my prejudices. “I didn’t pay attention!” I repeated.

  “Are you a bad girl?”

  “Yes, I am a... ouch!” He spanked me again. “I’m a bad girl!”

  “Are you going to be good?”

  “Yes! Yes! OUCH! Oh, yes!”

  I kept saying yes as he hit my ass again and again. I felt a tremendous heat radiating from my buttocks to the rest of my body, making my face flush and burn in shame. What am I doing? I thought.

  “That’s what I thought,” Theo said after a good while, stepping back. Without him close to me, I became aware of my situation. I was leaning over the desk, with my face almost touching the surface, my ass pointing up and my breasts resting on the glass. Humiliation came at once as I stood up and tried to make my face recover its natural color. I turned around and stared at Theo, his beautiful blue eyes penetrating my soul.

  “Do you... do you want me to be good or bad?”

  I didn’t know where my audacity was coming from. I was not like that, not by any stretch. But Theo turned me into a different person. It was like a chemical reaction between two components that couldn’t be more different but developed an unexpected affinity when put together.

  “I want you to be what I need at every moment,” he said.

  What an asshole.

  “Will you hurt me?”

  “Yes. And you’ll learn. And then it won’t hurt anymore.”

  7. DANGEROUS

  I desperately needed to talk to someone about what had just happened; more generally, about what was happening to me, with Theo, right from the moment I met him for the first time. It felt so wrong, but at the same time so right, that I didn’t know what to think or feel anymore. It was too much to bear, and I needed someone with a pair of ears and a sane brain to listen to me. So, that night, I phoned Callie.

  “Hi, what’s up?” she asked jovially. I heard giggles in the background. Turns out she was with some friends. When I told her I needed to talk about something, she said: “OK, let me go to another room first. It’s getting silly in here.” I heard more giggles and protests as her friends booed her for saying that.

  I told Callie about the situation. As I was explaining it to her, it sounded unbelievable even to me. “He’s so hot,” I said, but at the same time I was telling myself, So what? Is he not the man who sent your father to the hospital? What are you thinking? And yet, even as I talked to Callie, my body felt strangely hot, as if Theo was fondling it and groping it right then and there.

  Callie listened and kept silent for a minute after I finished my explanation. Then she uttered a single word.

  “Really?”

  “Well... yes, really,” I replied.

  “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  I didn’t know what I expected from her, to be honest. She was reacting like a normal person.

  “I’m not. Well, I... I don’t know,” I said. I realized, at that instant, that it was very likely that I was out of my mind indeed.

  “Lara, you hate the man. Your father is lying in a hospital bed—”

  “I know. I KNOW!” I screamed, suddenly letting out all the anger that had been growing inside me. Not a small part of it was anger against myself, for allowing this to happen.

  After a long silence, during which I thought Callie had ended the call, she spoke again, softly, letting her voice carry her love for me as a friend.

  “Look, I know what it’s like. Did you hear those giggles? I was telling the girls about my new conquest. I’ve been seeing one of Theo’s friends. He’s a multimillionaire too. So don’t think I can’t possibly understand you. There’s something about them... these men... they can really turn you on, am I right? They’re charming and beautiful and they have travel
led the world and they know how to treat people, including women. Especially women. Also, they are not wasting their lives. For good or bad, they are making a difference. But you don’t want this man. You want to destroy him. For what he’s done to your father. Remember?”

  “I do. I do remember. I just...” I stopped, not knowing what to say. I felt my face reddening, as if I was a little child who’d got caught in some mischief.

  “Lara, listen to me,” Callie said. “This is dangerous. You know what kind of man he is. Also, you’re lying to him, hiding who you are, because you’re out to harm him. You can’t let your guard down. Understood?”

  I did understand. Truly. But Theo’s eyes kept bouncing inside my head, hitting neuron after neuron, as if they were a terrible virus that was infecting my brain.

  I still felt the touch of his skin on mine, his hand hitting my buttocks, once and twice and then again, making my flesh tremble and spreading heat all over my body. I’d never been a submissive woman, but Theo was something else: he had awoken something inside me, something I’d never suspected was in there.

  “Listen,” Callie said. “Go out. Clear your mind. Date someone. Maurice. Why not him? He’s crazy for you.”

  “Maurice? Maurice is cute, but...” I searched for words. I didn’t know what was wrong with Maurice exactly. He was just not... hot? “He’s not... I don’t know. I guess I should give him a chance. But I just... I just don’t feel it, you know? He doesn’t move me.”

  “Oh, he can move you alright,” Callie said, giggling once more. “I can tell you that the man has got some good moves. I know from a friend.” More giggles.

  I had to laugh, despite all the situation. I could see how someone could feel attracted to Maurice. He was tall, handsome, muscular, and really likeable. He was just... not my type, for some reason.

  The fact was I liked bad boys. More specifically, I was fascinated with the idea of penetrating deep into the personality of an attractive jerk and discovering a heart of gold. It was a silly fantasy, something that only happens in movies, but I craved for it nonetheless. I wasn’t even trying to show Theo anything; I was trying to show myself that he was redeemable. Even if he was an utter asshole that had crossed paths with my family. But I had to grow up.

  “Maybe,” I said, trying to avoid any definite answer. I would force myself to consider the possibility. Sometimes it seemed that Callie knew me better than myself. She would push me to go out with her when I was depressed and just wanted to stay home, and we ended up having a wonderful night, with much more fun that I’d thought possible. Perhaps this would be something like that. Perhaps I’d go out with Maurice and end up entranced by him. “OK, I’ll call him. One of these days.”

  “Excellent!” Callie said. “That will help you clear your mind. A bit of shaking does wonders.”

  8. MARCUS

  “So how is he?”

  Marcus looked concerned, and with good reason. Dad was still in the hospital, and the possibility of a new heart attack was not very remote. Marcus had visited him, but dad was unconscious at the time, so he left after a couple of hours.

  I took a sip and looked at him through the steam of my latte. The coffee shop was small and our hands were almost touching over the tiny table.

  “Not exactly OK, but he’ll get better,” I said. “He is resting. The doctors say he must be kept under supervision for a while.”

  “And they will charge good money for that supervision,” Marcus replied with a smirk. “But what do we know? Whatever’s best for him.”

  It had been good to find Marcus here at the coffee shop. I had nobody to really talk about that, nobody who I knew would genuinely care for him. Callie was my friend, but she only knew my father casually, and the people at the company weren’t my friends.

  I took another sip and looked around. Marcus followed my gaze. When I looked at him again, he looked a bit startled. He moved his eyes back to the table, quickly, and said nothing. I was about to ask him what had just happened when my peripheral vision caught some movement to my far left. I looked again and saw a familiar figure waving slightly at me from another table. It was Sandor Vandell. He had left a dollar bill under the napkin container and was already leaving. The table was clean except for the bill and the napkins.

  I returned the greeting and quickly came back to Marcus. I knew I couldn’t tell him how I’d met Sandor. I trusted him, but not so much as to be sure that he wouldn’t tell my father about what I was doing. And I didn’t want dad to learn about it. It could kill him.

  The whole situation was awkward, though. How did Marcus know Sandor Vandell? I couldn’t ask, without revealing my game. He didn’t ask anything, and how did I know they knew each other anyway? Maybe he had followed my gaze because of some other thing. Maybe he was embarrassed by a completely unrelated circumstance. I’d never know.

  How quaint, I thought. Both sides of the hostile takeover at the same time and place, and me, in the middle...

  I waved away the subject. “Tell me about Monica,” I said. “How is she?”

  “She’s doing well,” Marcus replied. “We’re thinking of moving to New York. If... this... thing happens. We’ve always wanted to live there. But the company... you know...”

  It was too sad to be talking about this. Of course, Marcus had always been loyal to my father, and it didn’t surprise me in the least to learn that he’d put aside one of his dreams to remain beside his old friend. People do that all the time for a regular job, after all. How many people stayed in one city just because they work there? In Marcus’ case, there was also a deep sense of loyalty, and decades of friendship. But if Everwood went under... well, he and Monica would be free. Free and jobless, most likely, if Lambert decided to just close everything and use the space for whatever he wanted.

  I grabbed his hand. It was pale, wrinkly, and covered in a fine white fluff. The traces of life, of having lived. “We’ll miss you so much,” I said, “but I’m sure you’ll have dad’s blessing. We can always visit you in the summer.”

  9. VANINA

  It was late in the afternoon and Theo had gone home already. My apartment in the King of Hearts was bathed in a faint blue light, combination of the daylight that still entered through the glass wall and the glow from the computer screen. Smooth jazz flew from the speakers affixed to the walls, surrounding me in a relaxing atmosphere. Otherwise, there was absolute silence. I was about to leave already, but the music was so nice that I had decided to keep working a bit more until the album finished.

  It was then, as the last notes lingered in the air and seemed to fall down to the floor in tiny vibrations, that I saw the woman leaning on the doorframe. She was looking at me intently, with an expression that might well be of disapproval. She had her arms crossed and her head was resting on the frame, her dark curls covering part of her face.

  One thing I noticed immediately: she was astoundingly beautiful, like a Hollywood actress. Her face was as delicate as silk, her lips full and red, and her eyes were black, big, and attentive. She was wearing a dark tight dress revealing a perfect figure, with tiny hips and small but firm breasts.

  “Hello,” I said when I overcame the surprise.

  I studied her as she approached my desk erratically. Now that she was moving, I noticed that she was at least slightly drunk. Somehow this seemed to make her even more beautiful, like those models with a rebel attitude who pose for edgy fashion websites and pile up thousands upon thousands of followers in their Instagram feeds.

  “So,” she said, “you’re the new toy.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Don’t be,” she said brusquely, leaning over the desk and staring at me intently. “You know very well what I’m talking about. And if not, you’ll realize it soon.”

  This. This is what Callie warned me about. If I looked past the immediate threat, I could see that this woman was hurt. It was clear that Theo had a gift for leaving people hurt.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeated. “Who are you?
”

  “You know who I am,” she spit. “You get all his messages. Now tell me your name.”

  I realized that she was right. She was one of the women who left voice messages for Theo. Now that she mentioned it, I recognized her voice. Her name was Vanina, and if I remembered correctly, she didn’t have any particular matter to discuss with him; she just wanted him to return her calls, since at some point in the near past he’d just stopped seeing her or talking to her.

  “My name is Lara,” I said politely. “Now, do you have any message for Mr Lambert?”

  Vanina smacked the desk with such force that I feared she would break the glass. Then she swiped the surface and sent my pen flying against the wall.

  “Messages? There are no more messages!” she exclaimed. “You know what fucking useless those messages are. And if not, you’ll realize it when you are the one calling him every day.”

  I tried to look cool and distant, to keep control of the situation, but this woman was making me more than a bit uncomfortable. I felt that she was telling the truth...

  “I will ask you to keep calm or leave,” I said.

  Vanina gave me a scornful look. She straightened up, wobbling a bit in the process, and I could smell a faint trace of alcohol in the air.

  “I will leave,” she said with empty eyes. “But answer me this first: how many times did he fuck you?”

  I stood up. I could feel my face reddening in an instant.

  “You’re out of line. Please leave,” I said.

  “How many times?” Vanina asked again. She wasn’t even looking at me; her eyes were fixated at some indeterminate point in the wall behind me. There was a look of despair in them, something deep and cold that sent chills down my spine. “I think he will discard you after the fourth or fifth time. I made it to seven.”

  She looked at me again, her head moving erratically as she tried to focus. She got closer to me, until our faces were almost in contact, and the smell of liquor inundated my nose. Vanina gave me the saddest smile I had ever seen. “Seven times is good. Better than nothing I guess. Well, I must leave. Good bye and good luck.”