“They’re rich, beyond comprehension rich, so I don’t have to work.” He looked at my unimpressed face and carried on talking, “I’ve tried to get work, I enjoy acting myself. But it’s proved difficult. I’m not taken seriously because of who I am.”
“So have you tried doing another job where you are taken seriously?” I pressed on, enjoying watching him squirm under my gaze.
“Well, no.”
“So, you surf all day and don’t try to achieve anything in life? Sounds kinda dull.” I took a sip of my coffee.
“I have friends. Best friends. We all grew up in Carbon Beach. They’re like family. We’re all so similar. We hang around together. It’s not a bad life.” He smiled. “And you know, why work when you can play all day?”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve had to work ever since I left school and had jobs before that too to help my family. Sounds like you and your homies just bum around all day rejoicing in the fact you don’t have to do a day’s work.” I swiped my purse off the table. “Sounds a good gig if you can get it, but please don’t insult me by saying you can’t get a job because of who you are. Anyone can get a job. Maybe you’d have to come down from that high pedestal you seem to be sat on, but it’s not impossible. I need to go.” I told him.
He reached over and grabbed my hand. “I’m sorry.” He said. Words I wasn’t expecting from the playboy. “I guess I don’t know how to be. You see I’ve never not had money, privilege.”
I scowled but stood still.
“Please sit back down. Look, having you as a friend would be good for me. You can advise me, help me to not come across as so ‘privileged’.” He pouted. “Please?”
I retook my seat. “Fine. But don’t expect me to worship you like some goddamn star. You’re in the position you’re in because of your parents, right? Not because of anything you’ve achieved for yourself?”
“Ouch.” He said, clutching his chest. “You’re a mean girl.”
“Just honest.” I told him.
“Yeah, well be careful here in Malibu, because people don’t tend to stay that way.” He gazed out of the window into the distance. “I’m lucky. Although my parents are wealthy, they’ve done their best to be normal people, normal parents.” He paused. “Maybe not your idea of normal, but for Hollywood’s elite, they’ve done a great job.” He stared into my eyes. “There are many people to watch out for here and you’re fresh meat. Be careful.”
I wanted to laugh. I wanted to clutch my stomach and ask him if he was for real because I was here as I’d been told he was exactly one of those people.
Now I was intrigued. Was he really a very good actor who should get an Oscar for his current performance, never mind not being able to find work as one? Or was something not adding up from Leonie’s story? Well, that’s why I was here, so I might as well make the most of my current opportunity.
“So, I think I’m going to order a burger? What do you recommend?” I asked him. “And do you want another drink or anything to eat? This time they’re on me, rich boy.”
When I returned to the table, Carter told me how he’d lived here for years. How he was settled here and that even if he did find work he never wanted to move away from either Carbon Beach or his friends.
“I have to say you and your friends, it sounds very unique.” I said. “You know, how you’re all so close. Are you like together?” I pushed it. “Sexually, I mean.”
His face flushed. “Whoa, you don’t hold back, do you? In this industry, it’s hard to trust people.” He sat back and laughed. “My God. I just realized that here I am spilling my guts to you. Someone I’ve only just met. You must think I’m crazy. I’m starting to think I am. I don’t normally overshare like this.”
“Hey, I must have an understanding looking face.” I told him.
“You must.” He laughed again. “Anyway, no.” He paused. “If I tell you something, do you promise not to be shocked?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “How can I promise that if I don’t know what you’re going to tell me?”
“True.” He said, and I watched as he bit his lip. “Sometimes we’ve shared women. Like threesomes and stuff. We haven’t done anything with each other.”
“Right. Well, I should imagine that’s quite usual behavior among the elite. I read it in the papers all the time. You know. Bored celebrities looking for kicks. So they do drugs and seek sexual highs.”
“None of us do drugs.” He glared at me. “Never have. One of us had an almost addiction with booze. It’s not a secret. I’m not betraying his confidence telling you this. But no drugs, and no non-consenting women either.”
No, you just destroy their confidence afterwards by rating them sexually and telling them they’re not good enough. I decided these guys were so far removed from the real world they probably had no idea of how cruel they were.
“Well, that’s your business, not mine. You don’t need my approval.”
“And yet somehow I want it. You intrigue me, Serena. I can’t put my finger on it.”
“Maybe it's because I don’t fall for any BS.” I sat back as the waitress delivered my burger and our drinks. She asked if we needed anything else and left after we said no.
He nodded his head very slowly. “Maybe.”
I took a bite out of my burger. It was so damn tasty, I could see this becoming an addiction of my own. I’d better get my daily running routine underway, or I would put on weight fast.
I decided to change the subject. “So, do you know The Dream? Is it a nice place?”
“The best.” He told me. “We eat there a lot. Their restaurant is phenomenal, and also we’re members of the health club and the sports club. As residents in the area we can use the facilities.”
“I guess it doesn’t hurt to have Carter Cole and his famous friends hanging around the place.” I dissed.
“You’re very cynical you know.” Carter scratched his chin. “I’m going to have to work hard on my reputation so you realize I'm a nice guy. I’ll make sure my friends stop by The Dream and introduce themselves.”
“As long as they don’t distract me from my job and get me in trouble. Some of us need to work.”
“So where are you staying?” He asked.
“Hotel digs. Basic rooms at the back of the building.”
“Hmmm. Well, if you ever fancy trying a little luxury, maybe as my friend you could come stay with me for a while.”
“Are you serious? You just met me. I could be a serial killer or worse, a journalist.” I quipped, playing it close to the wire.
“Nah, you don’t have horns.” He quipped back.
“So is this normal behavior for you? Find a new woman in town and try to seduce her?” I decided to cut to the chase.
He sat back and laughed. “I’m not trying to seduce you. I could just use a friend and I don’t know what it is about you. Certainly not your sycophantic behavior, but I want to be yours.”
“You’re a strange one, Carter Cole.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” He said as he absentmindedly stroked the front of his lip.
“Well, I need to concentrate on my new job right now, but maybe we could meet up for another burger some time? This one was incredible.” I reached into my purse and took out a pen. Then I scrawled my number on a napkin. “Here, call me in a few days.”
He smiled broadly at me. “I will. It was lovely to meet you Miss Ripley.”
He leaned over to kiss my cheek. His lips were so cold to the touch, I jumped back a little. I wasn’t expecting that on such a hot day, and he’d had coffee, not an ice tea!
“You need to get your circulation checked out by a physician.”
“Concerned for my health and not complaining I kissed you. I’ll take it.” He said, and he threw money at the woman behind the counter and walked out of the building.
I watched the sway of his ass and the muscles of his calves as they tightened as he walked. I thought he’d look back, catch me watching him, but he never did.
> It bothered me and it shouldn’t.
Asshole.
Chapter Four
Carter
As soon as I got home, I got all the guys on a conference call. "I found someone for us all to befriend, see what we think."
“Oh yeah?” Flynn said drily. “Heard this all before.”
“Her name is Serena Ripley. She’s starting work this week as an Event and Conference Manager at the Dream. Hot as all fuck. I met her at Waves. Thought I was going to come in my shorts. She’s all blonde, wavy hair, down to her pert little titties. Sunkissed freckles, and sass. So much sass. Not like the simpering females we usually end up with.”
“Sass? So she gave you some mouth, and it wasn’t around your cock?” Smith’s voice was lit with amusement.
“You betcha. She didn’t fall for any of my charm. She even went so far as to tell me I was a waster, living off my parents' income. It just made me harder.”
“So, how are you going to see her again, dude, if she didn’t give you the time of day?” Jayden joined in.
“Look, we said just friends, right? So I told her I could use a friend to help mend my bad ways. She told me to call her in a few days, but said she was focusing on the new job. She gave me a number so I can’t have annoyed her that much.”
“Okay. It’s Saturday. Let’s all find a way of spending time with her by Friday. See what we all think to the woman and then talk things over. I’m sure one of us will have a problem and then we can scrap this whole stupid idea and go back to the real world. Well, as real as it gets for a vampire.” Flynn sounded like he was almost out of patience for the whole thing.
“Yeah, Friday. Boom or Bust.” I said and ended the call.
Chapter Five
Flynn
I loved the other guys. They were my brothers. But this idea would never work.
I knew it had all started with me and my relationship with Rose. The four of us had been best friends more or less since birth. Our parents deliberately moving to the area, advised by their Vampire Elder. We’d wanted for nothing, showered in love from parents, their staff—all of whom knew our secrets—and money, endless reams of money. But I was the only one who’d found love. True love.
I’d met Rose when I was seventeen at an art exhibition of my father’s work. Rose was a model, and she’d posed for him. His painting, ‘Angel of love', had seen Rose laying on a carpet of red rose petals dressed in a tight white gown and lace wings. I think I’d fallen for her the minute I’d seen the painting and from the moment we met we’d been inseparable.
But Rose had been possessive, and she’d hated my friends. Hated the bond between us. She’d felt threatened. I knew nothing of love and thought I had to put my woman first. My father always seemed to have done that with my mother.
So that had been the first problem.
The second had been the small fact that I was a vampire.
The first time we’d fucked, my fangs had lowered, and I’d thanked God that she had her eyes closed in ecstasy. To not bite the sensitive flesh of her neck had almost killed me.
When I finally plucked up the courage to tell her the truth about myself, at first she had laughed. Until I’d shown her my fangs and then she’d not laughed any further, she’d screamed. I’d had to compel her—tell her she’d seen nothing, that I was just her regular boyfriend Flynn.
I should have ended it then, but I’d loved her.
As the years went on, I made love to my girlfriend and then found a whore and fed off them, compelling them afterward to forget. I hated myself.
Rose pushed me on the subject of marriage and eventually I proposed. She told me after we wed I was to only be with her. I was to say goodbye to my friends for good.
They hated her. Hated the fact that to see me was hardly worth the grief they knew I was given afterward. They begged me to leave her, but I was in love.
Until the night it all went wrong.
As I came inside my fiancée, as she shattered around my cock, my thirst had been too great and I had bit down into her neck. She'd trembled under me as I sucked on her life source. It filled me with energy and light and Rose made the most erotic noises. When I stopped, and I looked into her eyes, expecting to see lust, I saw the stare of a dead girl. Blank expression. Nothing there at all. I withdrew, my cock withering with the shock. Had I drunk too much? I was sure I hadn’t. I screamed so loud my mother flew down the corridor at speed and threw open the door to see what had happened.
“She can’t cope with who you are. She is too weak.” My mom said.
“Weak? I drank too much?” I queried.
“No. Her mind is too weak, my darling. I’m sorry, but she is not the one for you. She can never be.”
My mom compelled her, and Rose fell into a deep sleep.
The next morning, I ended my relationship with her.
I’d loved her, but it hadn’t been enough. For either of us.
As time passed, and I reunited with my friends, I realized that although I’d loved her, we’d been wrong for each other. I needed someone who would love me as I was—a vampire with friends who were close as brothers.
Rose hadn’t been that woman.
She’d left, moved to London and married an aristocrat there. Now she was Lady Rose Hartley and was pregnant with her second child.
She was happy, and I was joyous for her. But it had left me invisibly wounded. Would I ever love again? Would I ever find the woman of my dreams? A woman who could stay with me for life as long as my life was likely to be—possibly hundreds of years?
Then the others had come up with the idea of a woman we could share. One for all. A woman who we’d love equally and she us. I sometimes wondered if the fact we could afford anything, ask for our heart's desires, meant that some of us were unable to see when their request was impossible.
I didn’t think we would ever find one woman.
The sooner this ridiculous proposal was kicked into touch, the better.
Difficult as it was, we needed a woman each, and those women needed to get along and accept each other and us. I was sure it would happen eventually. My parents had found each other, and it was two hundred and sixty years later when they finally got fed up of each other and divorced. My father was now married to one of the models he painted and my mother had taken up with an Elder.
This image of perfection was deluded.
I didn’t have a regular job. It was too complicated, leaving paper trails of employment when you never aged. Instead I’d taken up photography, inheriting my father’s keen eye for detail. Usually I took photos around Carbon Beach. My highest paid work so far selling for a cool $1.6 million was a photo of Carter in the surf. You couldn’t tell it was him, only I knew that, but the rays of the sun caught the surf as it hit the board and a renter here took the photo home as a reminder of paradise. My father had asked me if I’d take some photos of the Malibu Dream for them. They wanted to overhaul their website and brochure. The owners were family friends, so it was a given I would not only do it, but there would be no charge. In all fairness, I could take a room there when I liked, and we were allowed to use the facilities so I could hardly complain.
So camera and equipment packed away, I headed from my home to the hotel to get these photos underway.
I’d dressed simply in beige chinos and a white tee. I walked into the hotel lobby and one of the receptionists greeted me. “If you make your way up to the first floor and head for the Conference Suite, Miss Ripley is waiting for you.”
“Thanks, Arianne. How are the kids?” I asked the middle-aged woman as she smiled at me from behind the reception desk.
“Teenagers, don’t ask.” She replied before chuckling.
I skipped the elevator and headed for the back stairs. It was two flights to each floor, and easier than waiting for a car. From exiting the stairwell, I walked to my right where the main conference room was and knocked on the door.
“Come in.”
Pushing the door open I was
hit by the smell of new carpets and paint. The conference room had been overhauled and my feet bounced across the plush carpeting. I didn’t know a lot about technology but knew enough to know that the equipment Miss Ripley was looking over with Ted Johnson, the Manager of the hotel, was state of the art.
“Hey, Flynn. We’ll just be a sec.” Ted yelled from the front of the room as I made my way toward them.
“Flynn - Serena Ripley; Serena - Flynn Kelly.”
“Pleased to meet you, Flynn.” Serena said extending a hand. I took it and shook, “Likewise. I hear you are the new Conference and Events Manager?”
The blonde narrowed her green gaze at me. “News sure travels fast around here.”
“It’s Malibu. Gossip travels like the blood in our veins. You’ll not headline long though. Bound to be an overdose or sex scandal by Wednesday latest.”
That brought a small smirk to her lips.
I appraised her while she and Ted finished up their conversation about the new equipment. Serena was around five feet seven, with a curvy figure. Her skin was pale as if she’d spent too much time indoors. Malibu would soon bring a dash of gold to her cheeks. She held herself straight, but her posture was relaxed showing her utter confidence in her abilities. Wallflower she was not.
God, that was refreshing. I looked forward to spending time with her while I took the photos. I could tell that Serena was no simpering pathetic female who was going to be all, ‘Yes, Flynn, no, Flynn’. My heartbeat picked up in something I’d not felt in a long time—excitement. From doing my father a favor, I now was champing at the bit to get started on this project.
“This is amazing, Serena. The business people of Carbon will be fighting to book in here.”
Serena nodded at him. “That’s the plan.”
“Well, I’ll leave you two to sort out the photos. The quicker the website is updated the better, but of course you already know that, hence Flynn being here in the first place.” Ted told her. “You’re already making a difference, Serena. You’re a breath of fresh air to the hotel. Thank you.” He shook her hand.
Filthy Rich Vampire Playboys Page 3
