RICKI

I waited a few days before I went out in public. I called in sick to work. I didn’t watch TV. I didn’t look at the newspaper. Paul kept me up to date on what appeared. Fortunately, there was not a word about one Richard Hamilton nearly choking to death or his hospitalization afterward. Maybe it really wasn’t notable that yet another middle-aged rich white man had a drinking problem and was being sent to rehab. My father had ceased to be interesting to the tabloids years ago and I hoped it stayed that way.

Meanwhile yes, apparently there had been some buzz about the “kidnapping” stunt, with a few write-ups here and there and mentions in post-awards columns. Axel had been on some talk show the next day where he even said he’d “accidentally” picked me up instead of my friend.

“And I quote,” said Paul, reading from the notes on his tablet while briefing me, “ ‘It was too late to do anything but, you know, run with it. Sorry again, Ms. Hamilton.’ And then he waved into the camera. End of segment. Do you want to see it? I have the video clip right here.”

“No, not necessary.” I breathed a sigh of relief. I was still angry at him but at least Axel had said exactly the right thing to keep it from blowing up in my face. “Sounds like it died down relatively quickly.”

“Especially when you consider all the press this guy has done as a result of the win. He’s in New York on a junket right now.” Paul was wearing a skinny black tie and an impeccably white shirt, buttoned all the way up, but with skinny jeans and Doc Martens. “But yes, more of the buzz is about the band than about you. When your name does come up, it’s as an amusing sidebar.”

Amusing sidebar I could live with. Amusing sidebar was safe. Not laughingstock, not object of pity, and not sex-crazed maniac.

After that I decided it was safe to leave the mansion. I went to work without incident; not even a condescending joke about it came from my male colleagues. Good.

I had other things to worry about. Things I hoped Sakura could help me with.

We met at her favorite sushi joint, Hiro’s. The place had a couple of advantages. For one, it was in an unfashionable part of town and therefore unlikely to be staked out by paparazzi. Two, just in case, they had private tatami rooms. Three, the fish was absolutely fabulous, or maybe Hiro was just that good.

We were quickly steered to a private table with a sliding paper screen door. Sakura told the waiter to bring us tea, water, and “whatever Hiro wants to serve us tonight.” The man left with a bow and slid the door closed behind himself.

We made small talk until after he’d returned with the tea, and I ordered a bottle of sake.

“That bad, huh?” Sakura asked. “You almost never order alcohol.”

“A little something to calm my nerves wouldn’t hurt,” I said. “You’re not going to make me drink the whole bottle myself, are you?”

“Of course not! Just, you know …” She gave me a sideways look. “How’s your father doing?”

“In rehab? Fine, I assume.”

“You assume?”

“It’s hardly the first time, Sarah. And it’s not like they call and tell you every day what they’re doing.”

“What are they doing?”

The waiter slid aside the door and placed a sake bottle that looked like a bud vase on the table with two tiny cups. They were like ceramic thimbles. When he was gone I filled the thimbles and answered Sakura’s question. “A lot of sitting around in groups talking about how sorry they are. At the end of twenty-eight days, he’ll come out packed with remorse over every little thing he ever did while drunk and swearing he’ll never drink again. I’m sure the staff already have a pool going on how long until he falls off the wagon this time. I’m sorry to sound so jaded about it but it’s happened so many times I just can’t get my hopes up that this time it’ll be different.”

I pushed both cups toward Sakura suddenly. I’d lost my taste for it.

She shrugged but didn’t say anything, just picked one up and ignored the other. “Well, if it’s not your father who has you in a lather, which one of the men in your life is it this time?”

“What kind of an assumption is that? It could be Gwen.”

“Your sister is the sweetest, kindest person who ever lived and she adores you. I’m betting it’s not Gwen.”

I tapped my finger anxiously on the shined lacquer of the table. “You’re right. I think Axel hypnotized me.”

She nearly spat out her sake. “What!”

I waited until she’d dabbed herself with a napkin before I went on. “Is that possible? For a dom to … to brainwash a sub?”

“Hang on, hang on. I thought you just had a quickie in the limo, a spur of the moment thing.”

I had to consciously stop myself from chewing my lip. “We did. But it was, you know.”

“No, Ricki, I don’t know. What’s up? Did he do something you didn’t want him to?”

“Well, no. I mean, but he’s got like a … pheromone or magic spell, I swear. It was like my resistance just … melted away.”

“You resisted, though?”

“Not seriously. I mean, I knew I could tell him to stop. But I tried to break free, push him away, and … I am not explaining this well at all.”

“Take your time.” She downed the sake and then refilled her thimble.

“It wasn’t like he spanked me or one of those things. But it felt like …” I groped for the words. “Like he was in complete control.”

“Okay, and that was a bad thing?”

“Yes! Because he made me forget all the reasons why I might want to say no. Like it was some kind of mind control.”

Sakura gave a little shrug. “Sounds to me like you fell for his dom aura.”

“Dom Aura? Is that the name of a band?”

“Very funny. Call it what you want but when a guy, or a woman, for that matter, is dominant—like me—we kind of have an air about us.”

I thought about that feeling, like his will had wrapped around me. “An air.”

“You know what I mean, Rick’. Like when a dog trainer walks into the pen and all the dogs quiet down, even if it’s not a trainer they know sometimes. They respond to the air of authority.”

“You’re saying I’m like a trained dog.” Yeah, he snaps his fingers and you salivate between the legs. Fuck.

“No. It’s just an analogy. Jeez.” Sakura sighed. “Look, Ricki, I’m your friend. So I have some advice for you. Sometimes a submissive—”

“I am not submissive!” I was a competent, take-charge woman who wanted to run a movie studio, not a pushover.

She held out her hands. “Okay. Sometimes the person who played the part of the submissive in a scene doesn’t feel so great afterward. Even if the scene was great, a kind of morning-after syndrome can set in. I kind of wondered if you were having some of that when you first told me about it.”

She was right: I hadn’t even waited until the next morning to feel regrets. “What’s the cure?”

“Talking it over with the person who played the dominant role, typically. They feel responsible, after all.”

That was the word he’d used: responsible. When he’d tried to get me to tell him what was wrong.

“No way in hell,” I said. “I think he programmed me. Hypnotized me.”

“Hypnotized?”

“How else do you explain it?”

“Explain what? That you did what he said and the result was really, really great sex?”

Here’s where it gets really embarrassing, I thought. “There’s more. It’s not just the whole … lack of resistance on my part that worries me.” I balled my hands in frustration. You’re not some sixteen-year-old virgin, I told myself. Just spit it out. “Since that night, I’ve been having … trouble.”

“Trouble.”

I said the next word so quietly she didn’t hear it. “Coming.”

“What?” She leaned in, trying to hear.

“You know, getting there! Ever since Axel, I … can’t!”

Her eyebrows eloquently expressed her skepticism. “And you think this means he hypnotized you?”

“How else do you explain it?”

“Well, how many times have you tried?”

“Sarah!”

“Don’t sound so scandalized! We need data to figure this kind of thing out.”

“More than enough times to be convinced that there’s something going on,” I said, my cheeks flushed with embarrassment. I wasn’t about to give her the exact details on what I’d fantasized about—or not fantasized about—while masturbating. Though thank goodness I had someone like Sakura to talk to about it. “He put some kind of a dom whammy on me.” It was too embarrassing to tell her the whole corny thing he’d said about there being an on-off switch under my choker, but wasn’t that just the kind of thing hypnotists could do? Make you sneeze every time you said the word “aardvark” and that kind of thing?

Sarah didn’t seem to think so. “Okay, first of all, there are a lot of folks into hypno-play, but you wouldn’t do it without consent. Just like you wouldn’t do any other thing without negotiating it first.”

“Oh, like the way he negotiated kidnapping me?”

Sakura bit her own lip. “Point. But like you said, that was a spur-of-the-moment thing. Far as I know Axel isn’t into hypno.”

“But it’s a thing that doms do? Hypno means hypnosis?”

Sakura looked at me seriously. “You’ve really never heard of this?”

“No.” I could feel my face flushing as if I’d downed the sake, even though I hadn’t. “Look. I know I’ve been acting like I know all about kink because my parents were into it, and the club and all, but you know I’ve never done anything like that. Until now, I mean.”

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s back up. First of all—hypno, yes, it’s a thing some couples do. I mean, we play with minds as well as bodies. That’s half the fun. But Ricki, like I said, not without consent. Can you describe the scene you did? Any special trigger words or anything like that?”

“Um, no. Not exactly. He snatched me, we wrestled a bunch, it got really sexual, and then there were things like he …” I tried to say it without blushing but describing it meant remembering in vivid detail what it felt like when he … “sliced my underwear off with a straight razor. And he told me to bend over so he could do it. And well, he told me to say his name.”

“His name?”

“Yes. I don’t know. We played around with whether I was supposed to call him Axel or Mr. Hawke, and it never got very … firm, you know? It was just some dirty talk.”

“Some light role play?”

“Yeah. Just some light role play and him giving me dirty commands.” And me loving it. How could it make sense that all fear, all resistance, all the usual things I felt during sex without a straight razor, all the things that made me jam my foot on the brake, had melted away when he was in control? Talking about it now, even in the broad strokes I was giving to her, was bringing back sense memories left and right. I remembered how right it felt to bow down, to press my forehead to the carpet and wait for him to reward me. “This really has me messed up, Sakura.”

“Obviously.” She schooled her expression quickly from concern to a smile though, as the door slid aside again and the waiter put down two tiny plates, one in front of each of us. He was tall for an Asian guy and very slim, with a few blond streaks in his otherwise very black hair. I assumed he was an out-of-work actor.

“Compliments of the chef,” he said with a grin and a nod and then slid the door closed again.

I let myself be distracted by the bite-sized serving of some kind of fish that had been crisped on the outside with a blowtorch but was still cool and raw on the inside, almost buttery to bite into. Delicious. But only a momentary distraction.

“Okay, where were we?” Sakura drank a bit more of the sake. “Last time I’m going to say this: if Axel did anything sketchy, beyond carrying you off for a lark, anything that violated the rules of consent, then his name is mud in the BDSM community and you definitely shouldn’t be inviting him to join your club. But nothing you’ve told me so far really sounds all that sketchy. He carried you off, you willingly had some light role play and heavy sex; you played the submissive role and had, if I’m not mistaken, some of the best sex in your life. And that’s why you’re upset.”

“Because the sex was good?”

“Because you discovered that letting someone else be in charge is a turn-on for you. Ricki, let me assure you, being submissive in the bedroom isn’t the same thing as being subservient or second-class to the pushy men in your life.”

I dug in my heels. “That’s easy for you to say because you’re dominant.”

She sighed. “The other thing is, really, if something’s going on in your head, it’s probably got more to do with you than with him. The way to straighten it out is to talk it out with him. Axel may be fairly new to serious dom role play but I know for a fact that he knows about aftercare.”

Aftercare. I huffed. He’d tried to take care of me and I’d kicked him out. Sakura was making sense but I couldn’t quite put it all together in my mind. It was a lot to take in at once. “Okay, I confess. The thing is, when I’m near him? All common sense flies out the window, Sarah. I literally can’t get together with him to talk about this without melting into a puddle.”

“Ahhh.” She seemed to think that explained a lot. “Well. Have you tried calling him?”

“Of course I haven’t. I don’t even have his number.”

“Yes, you do.” She gave me a sly, knowing smile. “I programmed it into your phone before I gave it back.”

“You sneaky thing!” I pulled my phone out to see if what she said was true: sure enough, there was an Axel Hawke in my contacts now.

There was also a text from Paul. Schmitt’s pressing me to schedule an appointment with you, his message read. Y/N?

“Tell him he can have an appointment with me after he gives me a slot to address the CTC board of directors,” I said aloud.

Sakura sipped her tea. “Huh. Speaking of pushy men in your life. Schmitt?”

“How did you guess?” He couldn’t want to talk about the upcoming kinky dungeon party. He’d want to meet with both me and Gwen for that. “I have no clue what he wants now. I guess I have to meet with him to find out.”

“Don’t be silly. Have Paul get an agenda from him. No agenda, no meeting. If the items are too sensitive to put on an agenda, well, that gives you the answer in another way.”

“Right. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“You’ve got to stop thinking of yourself as at the beck and call of these guys in suits, Rick’. Start thinking of yourself as the Queen of the Universe whom they all serve.”

“What are you talking about? I’m already Queen Bitch of the Universe twenty-four-seven these days and I’m tired of it, Sarah.”

“Tsk tsk. I didn’t say bitch. You do pretty well with your staff; I’ve seen it. You’re firm, fair, but very definitely in charge and demanding your due.”

“But they’re my employees. Of course I can be all leader-like with them.”

“And I’m telling you, act like that with these executives and lawyers in the club or they’re going to treat you like Cy’s little girl forever.” She set her sake cup down. “You’re afraid that being a sub in the bedroom means you’ll be submissive to these jerks, too? Don’t let it happen. I don’t care that they’re three times your age. You can buy and sell every one of them. Act like it.”

“I have a ‘game face,’ ” I said in my defense. “Ice queen.”

“Drop the ice and just think queen. Think: crown on your head.” She pointed to the top of her own head where a tiara would go and I felt myself sitting up straighter without even trying. “Demand their respect and you’ll get it, Ricki. Axel already respects you a hundred times more than these assholes.”

“Does he?”

I tried to imagine what getting on the phone with him would be like. Part of me longed to hear his voice again. But what exactly did I want to say to him? Could I make him understand the reasons why I couldn’t be with him? Could I make him understand what was going on in my life? “I just don’t know, Sar’. What do you say to a guy who’s turned your whole world upside down?”

The door slid aside and there was our waiter with a gigantic wooden tray shaped like a boat in his hands, well laden with a display of fish as colorful and gorgeous as a jewelry display at Tiffany’s. He sailed it onto our table, gave us another smile, and then retreated again. The arrival of such a feast distracted us completely from the fact that Sarah never answered my question.

* * *

I finally got the chance to pitch my idea to David Meyers after the next development meeting, when I caught him by the sleeve and asked, flat out, if I could meet him later that day. I had been thinking a lot about what Sarah had said about how I was too deferential to the men in power, about how I needed to demand my due. Amazingly, it worked. He said he didn’t have much time but if it was something quick to follow him down to his office right then. I hurried behind him and after stepping into his spacious corner office I closed the door behind us.

“Now, Ricki, what is it that is burning you up so much you had to come talk to me privately about it?” he asked as he went around to his side of the desk.

“Oh, nothing bad, I assure you. I just have an idea I’ve been wanting to suggest and I didn’t want to bring it up in the meeting today after that debate about why Polly Girl is screening so badly.”

“I noticed you were very quiet during that discussion.” He gestured to a chair and I sat.

“I haven’t seen the movie myself so I wanted to withhold judgment,” I said. “But my proposal is relevant to these issues.”

“I’m all ears.” He reclined back slightly.

“I believe the reason there’s the impression that ‘women’s movies’ don’t do well is that, well, Hollywood doesn’t do movies for women.”

“Romantic comedies aren’t for women?” He looked puzzled.

“Too often, honestly, they’re not. They’re sometimes about a woman, but they tend to be packed with things that are there for their husbands and boyfriends to enjoy, not the woman who is the ticket buyer to begin with.”

“Intriguing thought. What makes you say that?”

“Well, for example, the rom-com that Blue Star released last year, Evergreen Summer?”

“Yes? I thought that was a pretty good film.”

“It was. And it was marketed toward the female audience, right?”

“Yes, of course, all romantic comedies are.”

“Okay, if that’s true, then why in the big sex scene do we get treated to long loving pans of the camera over Jolene Hingham’s bare legs and back and shoulders, but all we see of Charlie Cameron’s body is a shadowy shot of his saggy boxer shorts?”

“Well, that was the director’s artistic decision. I would never presume we should interfere at that level,” Meyers said, pointing his chin into his own chest and steepling his fingers as if marshaling his defenses. “Perhaps the camera was much kinder to Jolene’s figure than to Cameron’s.”

“If that’s so, then shouldn’t we be casting male leads in so-called women’s films who are attractive to women? Who look good on camera in their sex scenes? Or, for pete’s sake, use a body double if Charlie Cameron needs to lay off the doughnuts or is some kind of prude.”

Meyers looked surprised. “That might have been a body double for Jolene for all I know.”

“Which is my point. You had a male director make a sex scene that is sexy to the men watching. Not to the women the movie is supposedly for.”

“That’s quite a good scene, though; mentioned often in the reviews as to how tastefully done it was.”

“By male reviewers,” I pointed out. “Of course they find it tasteful if the woman is the one artfully displayed for their eye.”

“Whereas they would have called it pornographic if the scene had shown any more.” Meyers sat up, putting his feet flat on the floor and trying to close the discussion. “I’m sorry, Ricki, but this—”

Demand my due. “You haven’t even heard my idea yet.”

“If your idea is to put more male nude scenes in our films I’m afraid you’ve been watching too much porn on the Internet.”

“My idea is not to put more male nudes in!” What had Sakura said? Act like there was a crown on my head. I raised an eyebrow and put an imperious edge in my tone. “You haven’t even given me a chance to tell you the idea yet. All you’ve done is argue with me.”

He let out a long breath, his gaze flickering toward the closed door. “All right. Two minutes. Only because it’s you asking.”

It was working! Any other underling would have been tossed out at that point. “In the meeting, people were saying Polly Girl had screened terribly and they were baffled as to why.”

“It isn’t because we showed too much female skin,” he said.

“No. But it is, I believe, because instead of a movie that is supposedly for women, aimed at women, we ended up with a movie that caters to the men who wrote it and directed it. The impression I got from the marketing campaign was that, frankly, it’s misogynist crap.”

“Misogynist is a very strong word to throw around, Ricki.”

I let him have that point, jokingly adding, “Hey, you hire an Ivy Leaguer, you’re going to get some Ivy League words,” and he smiled. Good. Time to hit him with the actual point. “But here’s the thing. You want to compete for women’s dollars? You have to at least make the thing look like it might be relevant to them. Just because something has a love story and some emotions in it, or more than one female character, doesn’t make it a ‘women’s movie.’ I can give you a very long list of Hollywood flops with female leads and I can tell you every time it wasn’t that ‘movies about female characters don’t sell.’ It was that these movies were made by men for men and utterly failed to interest the female audience.”

“Like what?”

“Like the Mariah Carey movie Glitter. She was at the peak of her fame, yet it flopped. Why?”

He tapped his fingers on the desk. “You didn’t ask to speak to me privately so you could harangue me about films we didn’t even make.”

“No. I’m here to harangue you about the films we’re going to make.” Here we go. Time to sell him on my dream. “I want to start a new development initiative focused on women’s films. That is a huge cash chunk we’re leaving on the table if all we concentrate on is the teenage boy market.”

“And how do you propose we keep these films from having the same problems as every other arm of Blue Star?”

“Put a woman in charge of the development team, first of all.” Crown on my head, crown on my head, I thought.

“Aha.” He nodded like he had suspected something like that was coming. “Well, Ricki, I’ll take it under advisement.”

“You’ll be wanting this, then.” I pulled out the sheaf of papers I’d carried with me to the meeting. “That’s a blueprint for structuring the team and a proposed budget.”

He took the papers and put them in the middle of his desk, glancing briefly through the first two pages before he stood to dismiss me. “Well, you certainly did your homework.”

That MBA had to be good for something, I thought, but instead of saying it, I smiled in what I hoped was an appreciative way. I stood, too. “Thanks for your time, David. I know you’re crazy-busy.”

“You’re quite welcome, Ricki. You’ve given me some food for thought. Let’s talk about this again next week? You can leave the door open on your way out.”

I gave him another smile and then sailed out the door thinking, at last, I’m getting somewhere.

And once again ran practically smack into Grant, who appeared to be on his way into a meeting with Meyers. “Ricki. So good to run into you.”

Ha. “Grant.” I moved to go around him.

He put a hand on my arm. “I haven’t seen very much of you outside of meetings. And I, um, just wanted to apologize for my conduct a couple of weeks ago. I was on a medication; I didn’t realize it reacted so strongly with alcohol! But that’s no excuse for what an ass I made of myself. I especially apologize if I embarrassed you in front of your guests.”

After all that had happened that night, Grant falling down drunk now seemed barely worth remembering. Here we were two weeks later and I wondered what had spurred him to bother to say anything about it now. “Apology accepted, Grant. Now if you’ll exc—”

His hand on my arm pulled at me, though. “Just quickly. Sorry. I know you’re in a rush. I wanted to clear it up before … you know.”

You know? I blinked at him blankly. What on earth was he talking about?

“Oh, ha-ha, I know, shouldn’t mention it, but Saturday is coming up quickly.”

Oh. The BDSM party. I tried to keep my face completely neutral. Who invited him? Gwen? Or Schmitt? It had to be Schmitt. My stomach sank even as my slow-lit anger fuse began to burn. Did he really not know this was a completely inappropriate place to mention it? Utterly against club rules.

Maybe he didn’t know yet. “This is a highly inappropriate forum for such a discussion,” I said, my eyes sliding to look at where his hand was still holding my arm. Full-on lizard eye.

He pulled his hand back as if my skin had suddenly become burning hot. “Oh, ah, of course, but you know I didn’t mention anything unmentionable!” He grinned smugly, gave me a smarmy “gotcha” salute, and beat a hasty retreat.

It almost wasn’t fair to think “what an ass” when Grant Randolph wasn’t really any worse than most of the men in the industry, but I thought it anyway. What. An. Ass. I went directly to my office, which was small but private, and texted Paul. Did Schmitt ever send an agenda?

No. He still wants a private meeting. But I gave him your terms and he brushed me off.

I tamped down my annoyance. Tell him he can have a phone meeting with me tonight, while I’m on my way home.

Will do!

The exclamation point at the end of Paul’s texts always seemed chipper, like him. I wished I could bring him to the office with me, but that would be weird. He was my employee, not Blue Star’s.

Just like it would be weird for me to be chauffeur-driven to and from the office when I wasn’t at that level yet. I might be Hollywood “royalty” but I could do without the coach and footmen. I drove myself to prove some kind of a point.

I debated what exactly that point was when, that evening, I was stuck in traffic on the way home. As I crept along, I hoped it wouldn’t hurt my chances of keeping cool with Schmitt. When his call came through, my whole car rang. I loved that. It felt like something out of a science fiction movie whenever a phone call came through the car stereo. I had controls on the steering wheel for answering and hanging up the phone, as well as voice commands.

Schmitt’s voice was more condescending than ever in stereo. “Rickanna, I’m so glad to have this chance to talk with you.”

“Schmitt, sorry to cut right to the chase, but the reason I need to talk to you is named Grant Randolph.”

“I’m under the impression you’re quite familiar with Mr. Randolph?”

“You bet I am, which is why I am trying to find out who invited him to The Governor’s Club this Saturday.”

“And you think it was me? I don’t much like the tone you’re taking, young lady.”

“And don’t you ‘young lady’ me, Schmitt. I’m not five. Or even fifteen. I’m in charge of membership.”

He cleared his throat and the subwoofer in the car made the floor vibrate. “Well, this brings me to the subject I wanted to broach with you. Speaking quite sincerely, my dear, I’m well aware of your discomfort over the position which has been thrust on you. I hesitated to bring this up at our initial meeting over the will’s terms, but now that I see your reluctance, I would like to mention that there is ample leeway in the wording for you and your sister to remain titular heads of the club, but leave its administration to a member, such as myself.”

I gripped the steering wheel tightly, trying to muster an answer. Was that a good idea? Wasn’t that what I wanted? I didn’t really want to be running a BDSM club …

But that meant giving Schmitt the power to invite total strangers to come have wild sex in my home. Yeah … no. Not if he was going to invite asshats like Grant Randolph.

I didn’t think it would gain me much traction with Schmitt to use the word asshats, though. “Well, thank you for your offer, but of course I should talk it over with Gwen first.”

“Oh, of course, of course.”

“After all, maybe I’ll feel differently once I get the first party out of the way. Perhaps some of my reluctance is simply nerves.”

“Perfectly understandable, my dear. Don’t hesitate to call on me for anything you need to make the evening go more smoothly. Anything at all.”

“Will do!” I said, trying to sound chipper rather than anxious. Traffic looked like it was breaking free for a little while and I tried to focus my full attention on the road.

AXEL

Life is not fair. That much I know. But did it have to be so freakin’ lopsided sometimes? I know everyone thinks rock stars are knee-deep in horny groupies 24-7, but the truth of the matter is that most of the time the opportunity isn’t there. On the road sometimes there simply isn’t the time, or you can’t get the privacy, or whatever, even when there are copious willing participants. Or you’re worried the girls are underage. Or various other things that might stop a man from acting on temptation, at least when that man is me.

But in the weeks since that limo ride with Ricki, I had plenty of opportunities. I wasn’t just knee-deep, I was waist-deep in fans with the tide still rising thanks to all the exposure the awards ceremony—and subsequent talk show appearances—gave me. For the press junket I was solo a lot of the time, in hotels, with ample time to spare. So why didn’t “America’s new heartthrob” (according to USA Today) enjoy the spoils of my fame?

Because Ricki Hamilton, that’s why. Other women ceased to interest me, even for a quick fuck. They kept throwing themselves at me, though. I found myself flirting reflexively, keeping up my public front, but Ricki was all I could think about.

Maybe it was the way she brushed me off, but I wanted to prove to her I wasn’t just a man-slut. But that made me think how? If I convinced her we should get together, I knew the magnetic sexual chemistry we had would kick in—but that could backfire. It might only prove to her I was easy.

I’ve never been a prude. I’ve always been happy to have sex whenever a partner wanted it. I’ve always enjoyed giving pleasure.

I wanted to give Ricki Hamilton all the pleasure she could stand. My fingers tingled with the memory of her nipples wrinkling under them. And deep in my gut, loneliness ached. I wanted her to believe me, to believe that my feelings weren’t just because I got off on bossing pretty girls around. She didn’t understand, not at all, that if what I wanted was willing “sex slaves,” I could have that on speed dial. But it wasn’t them I wanted; it was Ricki herself. I’d felt something in that stupid limousine, something I really hadn’t expected. I felt like I never wanted to let her out of my sight, and now that I’d been two weeks without her I wanted to claw my eyes out when I was alone. I tried assuaging my longing by Googling her, but seeing her photos online only made the longing worse so I’d shut that down pretty quickly. I was sure that, deep down, she felt more for me than she would admit, too. I’d felt a connection with her. It wasn’t just “chemistry”; we clicked. Obviously she struggled with it. She’d given me the cold shoulder, put up her walls, but then let me shave her bare and make her come three more times … before shutting me out again. I knew when I got past those walls I had reached the real Ricki. Why wouldn’t she let me in again? Was the only way in to dominate my way in?

Hm. Or would the backlash be even worse the next time I tried? I didn’t know.

Meanwhile, my heart was writing lyrics about broken hearts and broken dreams. With a few raunchy numbers thrown in. Most of it was going to end up in the trash bin but I’d learned I couldn’t judge whether an idea for a song was good until Mal and I sat down and worked out the music. So I wrote scraps of lyrics and choruses and cringed at how, on paper, the words always looked like bad high school poetry. It took a lot more than a clever lyric to make a song good.

Fortunately Christina agreed Los Angeles should be our base for the foreseeable future. Our record label would be setting up the studio time with a producer for us to record the next album at an all-digital facility in Van Nuys in a couple of months, and the search was on for a suitable place to rehearse and work on new material. Mal already had a condo in Santa Monica.

I flew into LAX after two weeks of appearances and promo work and he picked me up in a new cherry-red Alfa Romeo 4C. Which meant that once we were sitting in traffic I had to say, “What’s the point of a sports car that can go two hundred miles an hour in a city like this?”

Which earned me a dark glare from Mal. Of course that was Mal’s reaction to a lot of things.

But he was a good listener. Especially when I had my head up my ass.

“Help me figure out what to say to Ricki Hamilton,” I said, as we inched forward.

“The heiress?” Mal had been raised mostly in England and when he said a word like heiress it came out extra long.

“Yeah.”

“There are two Hamilton sisters, I seem to recall. Do you mean the blond one or the dark-haired one?”

“The dark-haired one.”

Mal grunted in approval at this fact and kept his eyes on the road.

“The one I kidnapped,” I added.

“Making sure that was who you meant.” He gave me a sidelong glance. “Your eyes followed her all around that party.”

“Well, she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

“I think perhaps you’re conflating your euphoria over the Grammy with the effect Ms. Hamilton has on you.”

“What are you, Mr. Spock?” “Give it a rest, Mal. There’s an amazing chemistry between us. Intense and fantastic.”

“Are you telling me you did something more that night than just drive to her house after making off with her from the ceremony?”

Ah. Confession time. “Yeah. I fucked her brains out on the way.”

“And?” He glanced at me, then back at the road. “You’ve fucked a lot of brains out of a lot of women in the time I’ve known you.”

I didn’t feel judged by Mal’s statement: it was simply a fact. He easily matched me when it came to number of sexual conquests. In fact Mal undoubtedly had tallied more sex partners than I did because he never did the same girl twice. I did, however, feel like I needed to defend Ricki’s honor. “Yes, but this one’s different.”

“Because she’s an heiress?”

“Because she’s gorgeous, she’s smart, she’s amazing, and I know if she’d just give me a chance—”

“A chance to do what? She’s out of your league, Axel.”

I was surprised by his negative attitude. Mal is never sunshine and light but I thought he’d be more supportive. “Which league is that? I don’t recall being assigned to leagues.”

“You know perfectly well what I mean. It’s like commoners and royalty.”

“I’m not asking her to marry me and extend the royal line, for fuck’s sake. I just want a date.”

Mal snorted. “It wouldn’t be you who—oh, never mind. Tell me what’s amazing about her.”

I guess Googling her had been a little helpful. “Ivy League smart, fresh out of business school, already a big donor to charities—”

“Like I said. Out of your league.” Mal gave a sharp honk to a car in front of us and I saw the driver guiltily drop his cell phone. “Her credentials can’t possibly be why you’re so stuck on her, though.”

“They can’t?”

“No, because you’ve never given a bloody thought to any of that before.” Now his frown looked concerned. “You didn’t get her pregnant or something like that? Are you being blackmailed?”

“No! It was only two weeks ago. Seriously, Mal, I’m just … just …”

“Completely obsessed with her, I see.”

I pressed my fists against my thighs. “Yes. I know I’m not acting like myself. It’s that I’ve never felt this way about a woman before.”

“Some playboy you are.” Mal looked at me again. “You’re in love.”

Hearing him say it like that was like a knife through the heart. It wasn’t just the pain of being in love with someone who wasn’t, apparently, in love with me. This of all moments was not the time to fall in love. Not right now. Not when we were about to be on the road for most of the upcoming year. We were supposed to get to work on our next record while we were in LA, and then by March when the weather would start warming up, hit the road right through the summer. “Maybe it’s that it was the first time I really did the dom/sub thing for real.”

“What do you mean, ‘for real’? I’ve heard the spanking from your hotel room.”

“Yeah, but that never felt like anything more than some silly play-acting. This was like …” I could practically feel the way the curve of her hips had fit in my hands as I held her still and filled her with my cock, like my palms had imprinted the way she’d trembled, the way she’d taken me all the way in despite how tight she was. “This was like I owned her. Claimed her. Like we belong together and if I can’t have her again I’m going to go insane.”

“Hm,” Mal said. “Love.”

Fuck.

We drove in silence for a while, Mal snarling at the traffic from time to time. I think if it would’ve been legal to mount flamethrowers on the front of the car, he’d have done it. Fortunately for the rest of California’s drivers, it wasn’t.

“So,” he said when I was just starting to think we weren’t going to talk again until we got to the house. “You own her? You claimed her as yours? Explain to me, then, why don’t you just call her?”

I looked at my hands. “She’s really angry with me.”

“Why is she so angry at you? Over the publicity stunt? Or because you had sex? Or because she doesn’t want to be your slave girl?”

“All of the above,” I said. “I’m waiting for her to call me.”

He actually turned his head to glare at me this time. “You expect to get anywhere with this woman like that?”

Trust me, I wanted nothing more than to drive directly to her mansion, demand to see her, and then … and then what? My fantasies of talking my way into her panties again were undone by the memory that I’d tried that. I’d even succeeded in having more mind-blowing sex with her. And she’d still thrown me out. “I don’t want to come off like a stalker and scare her off completely. No one likes a stalker. And that’s assuming I haven’t blown it already. She’s got some issues.”

Mal shrugged. “Did it ever occur to you that maybe kidnapping her raised some consent issues?”

“But she kissed me first.”

Mal was heavily silent. I’d known him long enough to know the difference between the silence that meant he was paying close attention and the one that meant he was trying to ignore me. He was listening intently.

“In fact, she kissed me like a drowning woman taking my last breath,” I said. “And I was all too happy to give it to her. The sex was like that, too. Like she needed … every inch of me or she’d die.”

Mal replied with more silence.

“And now it’s me who feels like that.”

This time he added a thoughtful “hmm.”

“Come on, Mal. Give me some actual advice. You’ve been doing the BDSM thing a lot longer than me.” Mal was my best friend. We knew a lot about each other’s sex lives. I knew full well that between when we met when he was ten and when I ran away to his house in England when I was sixteen, he’d started tying up the girls he liked.

“All I can tell you is it’s very bad when one of you wants a relationship and the other one doesn’t,” he said.

“That’s true in general,” I said. “Not specific to BDSM. Seriously. I want her and I know I can establish total dominance over her if we’re alone in a room together. But tell me how not to freak her out. What should I say to her?”

“You’re the one with the fantastic chemistry with her. What do you think you should say?”

“Well, probably not ‘hey, can I kidnap you again?’” I couldn’t tell Mal, of course, that I might have a chance to see her in a kinky context again. I needed to figure out a vanilla strategy that would work better. “Maybe I ought to offer to take her out to a nice dinner. What’s the best restaurant in the city?”

Mal snorted. “Something tells me an heiress is going to be unimpressed by displays of wealth.”

“I didn’t mean most expensive restaurant in the city. I meant, hey, let me treat you right this time. As opposed to carrying her off like a Viking with a sack of … of … whatever it was Vikings pillaged.”

Mal started to laugh then, a slow chuckle that eventually put a wide grin on his face. “You’re ridiculous,” he said, and reached over to tousle my hair. “Are you at least writing lots of angst-ridden love songs?”

“Oh, yes,” I assured him. “Can’t wait to show you.”