I pulled away from him. “So what? The show isn’t going to go off the air. It’s my fucking contract!” The faces around me looked like a fun house. Jaws dropping, heads tipping, brows squinting.
Now they knew everything about me.
The elevator didn’t open right away, and that worked to Tristan’s advantage. He came back up behind me. I was tempted to throw him off of me, but we’d already caused enough of a scene.
“Let’s just go into one of the other rooms down here and talk about this,” he whispered in my ear.
I closed my eyes and counted to ten. The elevator dinged, signaling it had arrived to whisk me away from this hell. I looked back at Tristan, and he nodded to reaffirm his request, looking as serious as he possibly could.
I turned away from the elevator and followed him. He put his arm around my shoulder and the crowd parted without a word to let us by.
Tristan shut the door behind him and leaned against it.
It took me a minute to calm down enough to speak in less than a scream. “How did that happen?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why can’t you be mad about this?” I pitched back up towards hysteria. “You can’t possibly think this is okay.”
Tristan shrugged, and one corner of his mouth turned back up. I opened my mouth to flip out some more but closed it, sucking in a deep breath.
“I don’t hate it.” Now he smiled fully. “I could watch you doing that forever.”
“It’s not for the whole world to see!” I flopped down on the couch with my hands over my face. “I hate that everyone saw that. That’s for us. And no one else.”
He sat down beside me, wrapping his arms around me. I didn’t move my hands away from my face. He kissed my hair and sighed. “I know.”
“Who would do this? Would the producers do anything like this?”
Tristan didn’t say anything right away. “I really don’t think so. I know the numbers are down or whatever, but I don’t think they’d do something like this without telling us. We usually know what’s going to happen.”
My mind transported me back to the board room, with Blade coming in so smugly and insisting he had a way to boost the numbers for Immortal Dilemma.
“Oh, God.” My eyes burned, red for sure. “I know how it happened.”
Another board meeting in a never ending carousel of boring corporate things I now found myself responsible for. No wonder my parents hadn’t wanted anything to do with this crap. I wasn’t sure if I still had a soul, but if I did, part of it died every time I stepped into this coffin of a room.
Every single one of the suits looked me up and down as I approached the table, and then blushed and refused to meet my eyes. Even worse, I knew exactly what they were all thinking. Heat rose under my skin, but unfortunately, I was getting used to this. Pretending it didn’t bother me, I sat down and opened my laptop, bringing up screens full of columns of figures I didn’t care about, and held on to the fading hope I’d get some answers.
Blade entered without any fanfare. I didn’t want to look up at him, but his presence drew me in like a magnet, whether I liked it or not. He’d trimmed his beard and worn a suit jacket over his button down shirt and jeans. I hated thinking that he looked hot. I diverted my eyes back to my computer before he caught me mooning over him like an idiot.
“Does anyone have new business?” Tristan’s dad sounded weary. He knew exactly what the new business was, and I was sure it made him almost as uncomfortable as it made me.
“I do.” I didn’t want to say it, but I had to. Better it came from me. It gave me a tiny bit of control over the situation. I had rehearsed this so many times in my head since I saw that awful video. I cringed, knowing everyone in the room was picturing me in that video. I’d never been so happy that no one made eye contact with me. Blade grinned into space like an idiot. “There’s a video going around the internet. It’s a sex tape.” Like I had to tell them.
“What’s the matter, Callie? You don’t want everyone to see what a lousy lay you are?” Blade’s eyes burned into mine. I’d preferred it when no one wanted to look at me.
“That’s not for the whole world to see,” I whispered.
“It’s not like you’re picky with who you’ll screw,” Blade scoffed. The suits squirmed, a couple of them eyed me hopefully. “Now all your prospects will know what they’re in for, and thank their lucky stars they don’t fall into your little Venus flytrap.”
“I don’t have any ‘prospects’, Blade.” I could barely speak through my clenched teeth.
He burst out laughing. “Truer words never spoken.”
“Did you do this?” What I should have asked him was how he did it.
Blade picked up a pile of papers from a manila folder and passed them around the table. Him and his handouts. I took one when the pile came to me but didn’t look down at it. I refused to take my eyes off of him.
“So, as I mentioned in the last meeting, I planned to put some new revenue paths in motion to save the sinking ship that is Immortal Dilemma.” He smiled right at me like no one else was even here. “This new video peaked interest in the band again. The advertising opportunities are up fifty percent—“
“You’re seriously talking about advertising right now?”
“All anyone cares about in this room is money. It’s about time you get paid for what you do, anyway.”
He did it. He finally made me hate him.
“You’re going to get sued, you know that, right?” I tried to keep my composure.
Blade stretched out in his chair, looping his fingers together over his head. “There’s nothing you can prove. And the only person who loses is you. Everyone else gains. As far as I see it, it’s perfect.”
“Are all of these meetings going to be fights between the two of you?” A middle aged man who looked like he cared about nothing but numbers spoke up. He might have been the only person in this room who wasn’t picturing me naked. I didn’t remember his name, but he was my favorite one of them. “We’re here for business, not to watch some lovers’ quarrel.”
Blade laughed. “There’s no love here. I’m with you, buddy. All business.”
Once again, Blade made my heart crumble. There was nothing I could say that wouldn’t make me look stupid or petty. I had to man up and pretend to care about the business side of this.
“You know,” I said after some other business about the hotel had been discussed. “If you’d really wanted to make money off of these sex tapes, you would have made them for sale.”
I couldn’t believe the words just came out of my mouth. I really was a whore.
“That’s a great idea,” another suit said. I wanted to crawl in a hole.
“There’s plenty more where these came from.” Blade’s face brightened.
That was the problem. I knew there was endless footage for him to choose from. How could I ever look Tristan’s dad in the eye again after knowing he listened to this conversation? Had he watched the videos? Could he even be shocked any more, having Tristan for a son? He hadn’t said a word.
“This isn’t really going to happen, is it?” Maybe everyone would see how horrible this really was. I could only hope.
“All in favor?” My mouth dropped at Trevor’s words.
The entire table raised their hands. I pushed my laptop aside and put my head down on the table. How was I ever going to get out of this one? I must have some sort of line item veto power, like the president.
This couldn’t happen. No one in this room, except for maybe Blade, had to worry about money badly enough for me to compromise what little of my morals were left intact.
I had to do something. “I’m not.”
Blade laughed. “You should have thought of that before you volunteered your services to this little project.”
“It will never happen.”
“I’ve got like six more of these in the can. What can I say, people like to watch your boy toy do the nasty.” Blade wrinkled his
nose. “And it is nasty. What’s even better is how many different people I have him on video with. It doesn’t have to be you in the video, Callie. You’re not special.”
My skin must have been as red as my eyes at that moment. All the blood wanted to burst out of my body. Blade knew how to peel away any self-control I had. Not only that, but he had an incredible knack of doing it at the times that would make me look the worst.
The only thing I hated more than the idea of the entire world watching Tristan have sex with me was the entire world watching Tristan have sex with someone else. I knew it was a reality, but I shoved it deep into a dark, dusty compartment of my brain. Having to see it made it real.
“You won’t release those videos.” I kept my voice as level as possible. “I won’t allow it.”
Blade leaned forward, and it was as if we were the only two in the room. “What are you going to do to stop me?”
I didn’t need to see those videos with the other girls, ever. Still, I couldn’t get the idea of it out of my mind. It was like scrubbing a stain that wouldn’t go away. Exhausting and painful.
Tristan sat on the floor, his back against the couch, playing guitar and writing down notes. I lay on the couch above him, absent mindedly playing with his hair. Every once in a while, I dove inside his brain, but he was so fixated on his work, all I got was his melody stuck in my head.
When he realized what I had done, he looked up and grabbed my leg.
“What are you thinking about, beautiful?” he asked.
“You don’t know?” I continued swirling my fingers around his scalp. “You’re slipping.”
“I know you’re trying to get inside my head.” He raised his eyebrow. “What are you digging for?”
No secrets. I wished it worked both ways. “When you pick other girls to, you know, feed from, what makes you choose them? What is it about them?”
“You mean, what do they have that you don’t?” Tristan sighed.
The question I didn’t want to ask, but had to. “Pretty much.”
He got up from the floor and settled on the couch, in the space created by the curve of my hips. He cradled my face in his hands and looked into my eyes. “Absolutely nothing.”
I tried to read him, but all I got was him looking at me. It was like looking in a mirror, but I looked much better through his eyes than my own. “Then why—“
“Do I do it?” He paused to let me nod. “It’s an animal instinct. It has nothing to do with passion. It’s a need.”
“But why don’t I ever feel that way? Like you can’t satisfy me?” I choked on the words.
Tristan looked up at the ceiling, blinking. “It’s not that at all. What I do with them, it’s not good enough for you.”
My brain fired warning signs not to buy into this bullshit. There was no explanation he could give me that would make this okay.
“I don’t believe you,” I whispered, closing my eyes. His hands were so warm on my cheeks.
He leaned down, kissing my forehead. I usually loved it when he did this, but I flinched. I opened my eyes. Tristan was still close to me, his face filled with sadness.
“I know you don’t.” His voice was little more than a whisper as well. “Do you want to come with me the next time I do it?”
My muscles froze with the shock of his words. Not, I’ll never do it again, beautiful, but do you want to watch? Really? And I thought Blade was the master of torturing me. Tristan just became the king.
He smiled. He really thought this was a good solution. I wanted to scream. “I’m not trying to hurt you. I want you to see how little it means.”
“But it means something to me.”
“It’s not what we do. You won’t believe me until you experience it.”
Probably not after that, either. “And some girl is just going to let me sit there and watch?” I scoffed.
“Some of them ask for you.” He grinned. “There’s something in this for you, too.”
“You mean there’s something in this for you.” He liked this idea way too much. I wanted to slap that look off his face. “I’m not into girls, Tristan. I’m not going to do some girl on girl thing to get you off.”
His head tipped skyward and he laughed, hard. I sat up and shook his hands away from me.
“It’s about the energy and the blood, Callie. It’s not sex like humans think of sex. You have to stop thinking of it like that. You’re feeding, you’re not proclaiming your love for some person you might never see again.”
My skin burned and I couldn’t look at him, never mind respond. So I was just an all you can eat buffet. He was right. I couldn’t separate the human emotion from sex. I might have made some mistakes, but I never did anything without emotion.
I could feel him inside me, prodding my brain. It was a relief, actually. I didn’t know if I could find words to explain how much I didn’t believe him. “It’s survival, beautiful. Think of it that way.”
Sinking back on the couch, I tried to wrap my brain around that concept. Sex as survival. The blood was an incredible high, and we needed the energy and the emotion of humans. How better to get it than skin on skin contact? Going inside and experiencing their ecstasy?
Something about it still seemed like bullshit to me. It was cheating. Whatever he called it, it was something he needed to get from someone else.
Or did I just have a problem with the fact I couldn’t be Tristan’s whole world? He’d been mine ever since he’d walked into my life.
“What is it about those girls that I can’t give you?” I sounded like a little kid who didn’t understand her punishment. My heart pounded, this was like putting every flaw I had under a microscope and asked the world to debate about what was wrong with me.
If they’d watched that sex video, they probably already were doing just that.
Tristan knew better than to come too close to me. He’d leaned back on the opposite end of the couch, letting the tension that this conversation created sit on the cushion between us. I concentrated on him, hard, and for once he let me in easily.
Was he afraid to tell me? Self-conscious about revealing his own desires? He hugged his arms around his stomach, slumped down a bit.
“It’s their fear, their desperation,” he said quietly. “You don’t have those emotions to give to me. There’s a high to dominating those girls. The adrenaline rush when they realize I’m really a vampire. That’s all they’re good for. I’m not proud of it, but I need it.”
I’d made him reveal his darkness to me, and for a moment, I regretted it. Without a word, I got up and went to his end of the couch to sit. He opened up his arms and welcomed me, almost swallowing me.
“And some of them, the ones who want to use me,” he continued, and I looked up at him in surprise. I didn’t think there would be any more. “To shake their self-centered core, it’s like revenge.”
He didn’t smile, but I could feel his satisfaction and relief of putting it all out there and not driving me away. Tristan had spent his whole life hiding from who he was, and who people thought he was. No wonder he was afraid of the truth. He spent so much time living a lie.
“So what do you want me to do?” I asked.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.” He buried his face into my hair. “But you’re welcome to come with me the next time I feed from a Vulture.”
THE NEXT night, I went with Tristan to see Immortal Dilemma play. But instead of watching Tristan, I watched the fans. Quite a few of them had their eye on me as well; my roadcase perch on the side of the stage was well known at this point. Now many of them had seen a side of me I’d never planned on showing them. Usually, I shied away from eye contact, but not tonight. I wanted to read their emotions.
Mostly I felt their curiosity and confusion. The more I zeroed in, I could see the images of my naked body against Tristan’s, soaked in blood. Revulsion. I tried not to be offended, I understood. It wasn’t making love on a bed of rose petals, and it was definite
ly not what I fantasized about before I’d experienced it.
I picked up on one girl more than the others. She was projecting her thoughts towards me, like she knew I’d be able to pick them up. Her envy was so tangible I could taste it. We locked eyes, and dared each other to blink first.
She didn’t stand out from the crowd looks-wise. She was pretty, with big brown eyes and high cheek bones, but if I were to draw a picture for someone of a stereotypical Immortal Dilemma fan, it would look just like her. Her dyed black hair was cut with short bangs and she wore it up in pigtails fastened with black bows. Cleavage spilled out of a corset top, her arms were covered with lace, and the tiniest part of her body I could see, her neck, was adorned with a velvet cameo choker.
She was the one.
Tristan came over to me during Monkey’s drum solo for a kiss. “What are you looking at?”
“That girl, down there.”
Tristan smiled against my cheek. “You found one you like?” He turned around as I nodded. “Good choice.”
“You don’t even know who I’m talking about.”
“Yeah I do.” He grinned at my surprise. “That’s Honey. She’s down for it.”
Honey. I tried not to roll my eyes, because I could still barely take my eyes off of her. With a name like that, this girl knew exactly what she was getting herself into. Which made one of us. Then I remembered her name. She was the same girl who gave me a lap dance on Tristan’s birthday.
“We’re really going to do this?”
“I’m really going to do it,” Tristan said too quickly, making my heart sink. “And it’ll be much more fun if you play too.” He nibbled on my earlobe.
He left me for the rest of the show, my heart pounding. Suddenly I felt shy about returning Honey’s stare. I felt inadequate. Tristan was too excited about this, and from what he said, I was pretty sure Honey was a repeat customer.
It intimidated the hell out of me. What had I got myself into? I didn’t want to share Tristan with Honey, or anyone else. Before, it was about me and him. Now that it was real, it was Callie vs. Honey, and I didn’t know if I could win. I didn’t want to lose everything to satisfy some morbid curiosity.
We Own the Night (The Night Songs Collection Book 3) Page 11
