22
CRAZY BITCH
AS THE SUN peeked up over the horizon and slipped through the shades I’d drawn the night before, I trailed my eyes along the man lying beside me. With the sheets drawn to his waist, and his head resting on the plush pillow, Dylan looked calm and peaceful as he continued to sleep beside me. A far cry from how he’d arrived on my doorstep the night before. His hair, which had grown back to the familiar longer strands I’d originally known him to have, were tousled where he’d worried it with his fingers all night.
God, last night had been difficult. I’d opened my front door to Dylan expecting one thing, and ended up getting a whole boatload of something else. The second his face had come into view, I’d known. Even if I wasn’t as connected with him as I was, seeing the strain on his face, the bloodshot eyes, and the hard set of his jaw would’ve sent up all the red warning signs. And when I’d reached for him, he’d practically collapsed into my arms…
“’Bout time you got here, Daydream. I’m starving. For food and…” My words trailed off, and the smile I’d been sporting since Dylan had called to tell me he was back home slipped from my face to be replaced by a severe downturn of my lips. My guy looked as pale as a ghost.
“Dylan? What’s wrong?” And it was blatantly obvious that something was wrong. Dylan had his arms hugging his waist, his eyes were glued to his feet, and there were no plastic bags containing the dinner he’d told me to order for us that he would pick up.
No, he was pulling a statue routine, right there on my front stoop. Mute and all.
I took a step forward, out the door, and that was when Dylan finally raised his eyes to mine, and the lost and vacant look inside of them matched the hollow feeling now growing in the pit of my stomach.
Without another word, I opened my arms, and Dylan stepped into them—practically crumpled into them.
“Hey,” I whispered, running a soothing palm up his spine to the back of his neck, and when he trembled, I knew I needed to get him inside. “Come with me,” I said, and then shifted to wrap my arm around his shoulders and draw him into the house.
Watching Dylan fall apart in front of me as he told me the story of Brenda showing up on his doorstep was heartbreaking—and it also had me seeing red. The fucking nerve of that woman… How could she possibly think it was okay to approach him like that? To approach him at all? After everything she’d put him through…
Dylan stirred, his brows pinched together, as if he was seeing something he didn’t like. I reached over and, with a light touch, smoothed the wrinkles from his forehead. When his eyes flitted open to focus on me, he gave a small smile.
“I like watching you sleep,” I said, running my fingers along his jaw.
He gave a low chuckle. “Why? Because I drool?”
“Because you look so peaceful. Almost innocent. The exact opposite of you when your eyes are open.”
“Smartass.”
“Always,” I said, grinning. “And you don’t drool or I’d make you wear a bib to bed.”
“Please tell me that’s not a fantasy of yours.”
“You’re a sick man, Prescott. But I like that about you.” I rested my head in my hand as I trailed my fingers down the scruff on his neck. When they came to a stop over his heart, I said, “I think…that you should stay here for a while.”
Dylan’s half-mast eyes fully opened then, and his forehead scrunched again. “You mean a while as in all day today, or…”
“Or several days. In a row. For”—I gave a one-shoulder shrug, trying to act nonchalant about what I was asking—“a while.”
A shy smile crept across Dylan’s lips as he rolled toward me and mirrored my position, elbow bent, head in hand, eyes on mine. “Are you asking me to move in with you?”
I opened my mouth to tell him yes, but before the word could get past my lips, he brought a finger up to hush me, and his smile vanished. His eyes turned serious then, as though another thought had just entered his mind, and then he spoke.
“Are you asking because it’s something you want? Or because of what happened with Brenda?”
I reached for his wrist and drew his hand down to the mattress between us, and then I stroked his cheek and lips and said, “I’m asking you because I want to be with you. Morning, noon, night. I’m greedy. I want any spare time you have to be my time.” I rolled to my back, staring up at the eyes focused on me.
Yeah, I probably sounded like a control freak. But that wasn’t what I meant. I didn’t want to be the only thing in his life. I just wanted to be in it in some kind of permanent capacity. I wanted to share the good times and the bad with him. “That sounds crazy, I know—”
“No,” he said, scooting across the space between us. I extended my arm on the bedding for him to come closer, and the sheet slipped down the curve of his hip as he molded his naked front to my side, and then laid his cheek on my shoulder. “It sounds like a dream,” he whispered in my ear.
I looked his way, and when that shy smile reappeared, I felt my chest close to burst with love for him. “It does?”
Dylan nibbled his lower lip and nodded, before leaning in to nuzzle into the crook of my neck. “I’m greedy too.”
As he said that, Dylan trailed his fingers across my chest then mimicked my move from earlier, flattening his palm over my heart. “Thank you for last night.”
“I didn’t do—”
“You were there,” he said, and then his lips brushed my cheek. “You listened to me. You held me. And Ace?”
“Yeah?” I asked, turning so our noses touched, and when I saw the glistening remnants of a lone tear on his cheek, I gently kissed his lips and he whispered, “You made me feel safe.”
I rolled him to his back then, and as I hovered over him, I cradled his head between my hands and skimmed my thumbs over his cheeks.
I had no doubt as I gazed down at him that I was in as deep as I could be with another person. And as Dylan lay there looking up at me with such trust—which, if I wasn’t out of my mind for him, would have me running for the hills—I took pride in it. I wanted that trust. And the fact that he’d handed it over to me, when I knew it wasn’t something he gave lightly, made what we shared all the more sacred for it.
* * *
A COUPLE OF days later I was sitting in my agent’s office as she showed me the proofs from the Provocateur fragrance photoshoot. Claudia was leaning back in her leather office chair tapping her bottom lip with the end of her reading glasses.
“Sexy, aren’t they?” she asked, as I studied image after image, and she was right. With the waves rolling into the shore, the snapshots of me, Rochelle, and Lorenzo, the two models I’d worked with the other morning, were extremely sexy.
The images I’d taken with the two of them writhing around in the sand had come out in a stunning display of sensuality at its best. They were a tease of what could happen and what might have happened while wearing Provocateur.
Rochelle was positioned on her back, arched up on her elbows with her head tilted back to expose her throat and chest in her miniscule string bikini while the water rushed to shore, surrounding her feet and ankles. Lorenzo was on her right side dressed only in a pair of faded jeans, just as I had been, and was leaning down over her with his back to the camera, his mouth obviously heading for her chest.
And then there was me.
I was on the other side. Stretched out in unsnapped jeans, with my fingers slipped into the band of her bikini bottoms and my eyes directly on the camera. My hair was slicked back, and my face was the only one front and center, my eyes inviting whoever was looking to come join us with our wet jeans and wandering hands. And my pouty, parted lips, which Ace always got a hard-on for, told the customer that what I was doing was just as sinful as they imagined.
“Yeah. It’s sexy, all right,” I said. “Good thing no one knows how cold the water was and just how uncomfortable these shots here, the ones draping ourselves all over the rocks, were.”
Claudia sat up straight in her chair and reached for the final shot. “No one cares about that. They care about what you all did after this shot. They care that the perfume she was wearing made two hot men attack her on a beach. And they will all care that someone as sexy as you are inviting them to join in.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that as I pointed out the obvious. “Even if they all know I’m gay?”
“Pshh, please,” she said with a flick of her hand, her eyes sparkling at me. “Probably more so because of it. Wouldn’t surprise me that that was why they cast two men. What woman wouldn’t want to be the object of two men’s affection, as well as—”
“Yeah, yeah Claude. I get it.”
“Exactly,” she said, jabbing the air with her finger, as if she’d just solved the answer to world hunger. “This campaign is going to sell millions of bottles of Provocateur, and they know it. The camera loves you, Dylan, and so did the photographer and Osare who called to tell me they would love a contract with you ASAP to lock in some more dates. What do you think?”
What did I think? Wow, was the first thing. The second was that the offer was a stroke to my ego. Osare was a big company, and for them to want me…it was exciting. But still, I didn’t want to be anyone’s exclusive property, shoot-wise. I didn’t want to have the ability to say no taken away. That was very important to me. Actually, it was one of the original stipulations I’d put firmly in place when I’d entered into the world of modeling way back when. Because if I was going to use my face and body to make cash, then I was going to say who got the privilege to profit from it. That way, if I needed a break or I wasn’t comfortable, I could get the hell out of Dodge. And I wanted to make sure that was still understood.
“That’s very flattering, Claudia. But you know how I feel about exclusivity.”
“Yes, but—”
“No,” I said, getting to my feet. “That’s a non-negotiable. I’m good to go on next week’s shoot. Just let me know what time to be there.”
“Got it. You’re the boss,” she said, getting up and rounding her desk. “I’ll get you those details as soon as they call. I’d expect to hear something tonight.”
“That’s perfect.”
“Oh, Dylan. You’re the real deal, you know that? Beautiful on the inside and out. Have you ever thought about being a spokesman for—”
“Claudia.” I laughed, shaking my head. “One thing at a time, huh? My life has been kind of a whirlwind lately.”
“I know, I know. But there’s so much potential ahead for you. I just don’t want to forget anything.”
I gave her a soft smile, touched that she really was thinking of what was best for me. It was one of the things that had drawn me to her when she’d first approached. And I was happy that it hadn’t changed, even with the rising volume of work and the increase in our paychecks. She still treated me as she had when I was making a hundred dollars for a catalogue spread.
I was about to head out, and then at the last minute remembered. “Oh, one other thing. This is my new address.” I scribbled Ace’s—well, my address down on the notepad and gave it to her. “If you need to send contracts or checks. That’s where I’ll be as of today.”
“Oh, new apart—” She stopped short when she read the suburb and zip code, and then raised her eyes to mine. Yeah, nothing more needed to be said. It was more than obvious where I was packing up and going. “Congratulations.”
“Thanks.” I grinned, and then turned and headed for the door. I stepped out into the hall and then made my way down through reception and out onto the street. And when my flip-flops hit the sidewalk, I stopped dead in my tracks.
There, standing by the side of a beat-up beige truck, was Brenda. She was leaning against the hood, and when she spotted me, she straightened up and stepped up onto the pavement.
This was unfuckingbelievable. How was she here? How did she even know where here was? And how had she known I would be here today?
Remembering what had happened a couple of nights ago, the way I had frozen and then basically fallen apart, I drew upon all of the strength and safety I’d felt when I was in Ace’s arms and told myself to walk over to her and demand she get lost or I would take the matter to the police.
Firm in my resolve, I marched in her direction, and couldn’t stop my hands from balling into fists. She made me feel helpless and violent all at the same time. When she dared to throw a hey, how you doing smile in my general direction, I glared and continued coming until I was finally towering over her.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, not giving her the opportunity to spit out some bullshit pleasantry.
She stuttered a little, probably having expected me to freak out again and run away. But not this time.
“I asked you a fucking question,” I barked.
Having located her lying tongue, she swallowed and took her sunglasses off to try giving me the puppy dog eyes, but really, did she think I was that stupid?
“How did you find this place? Find me?”
“I told you, Dylan. I’ve been following your career—”
“Bullshit,” I said, crossing my arms for something to do rather than strangle her.
“I have. I looked you up. This company was listed as your agent and agency, and I thought if I waited here you might show—”
Of all the-— “Are you serious? You’re stalking me now? What is wrong with you? I don’t want to see you. Not now, not tomorrow. Not ever.”
I turned, ready to walk away from her. Ready to be done with her. But when small fingers with razor-sharp nails and a surprisingly powerful grip wrapped the width of my wrist and dug into my flesh, I whirled around on her so fast she was lucky the momentum didn’t upend her. “Get your hand off me.”
“Please, Dylan, just talk to me. I’ve changed.”
That was the second time she’d claimed such a thing, but there was no way I was buying it. What a convenient bunch of horseshit. As I was about to express that opinion out loud, I caught sight of someone out of the corner of my eye. I glanced to the left and yes, right there, standing beside one of the palm trees planted alongside the road, stood a man with a camera held up to his eye, pointed in my direction.
Great. This was just what I needed. Just what Ace needed. Questions about the woman I was arguing with outside my modeling agency. I could see the headlines now. Not to mention what would happen when they worked out the truth.
Feeling my blood pressure reach its boiling point, I looked back to the woman oblivious to what had just happened and lowered my voice to a menacing sneer so any passersby wouldn’t hear me.
“People like you don’t change. Bottom feeders rarely surface to the light, and if they do, it’s only to feed on the likes of others. I won’t tell you again. Stay away from me or I’ll call the police. And if you don’t want me to do that right now, you’ll get in your truck, and get the fuck out of my sight.”
As she backed away from me, my hands shook. But I stood my ground while she got in the piece-of-shit truck and left, just to reassure myself she wouldn’t trail me home.
* * *
I SCOWLED AT the television as I dragged the masking tape dispenser across the brown packing box between my legs. It had all the clothes Dylan owned folded up meticulously inside, and was one of the last boxes to be packed up.
It was the Saturday after I’d asked Dylan to move in with me, and we’d decided this afternoon would be a good time to come over and pack up his place so we could head out in the stealth of night just in case there were paps lurking and asking questions as to where he was moving.
They’d find out soon enough. They always did. Case in point: the current story being played on repeat over the entertainment news shows. It was one after another with them, and it always baffled me that they showed them back to back with nearly the—actually, the exact—same story on each. And today’s breaking news was the same as it had been yesterday, and the day before.
Who’s the dirty blonde with Prescott? A disgruntled ex?
Is trouble already brewing with PresLocke?
Christ, if anybody bothered looking a little closer at the grainy photo that had been snapped of Dylan and Brenda, they would see the uncomfortable posture, the rigid set of his jaw, and the disbelief stamped all over his face.
But they weren’t seeing that, because they didn’t know what they were looking at. As usual, they were merely speculating on the bugs under the microscope.
Shit. I hated that this was happening to Dylan. That once again Brenda had popped up when I hadn’t been there to support him. But when Dylan had come home that night and told me what had happened, I noticed a distinct change in him. There’d been a determination that night that he wouldn’t be ruled by her and his past fear that had made it a little easier to swallow. Until, of course, all of the news stories had started.
“Okay. I think that’s the last of it for now,” Dylan said, coming out of the bathroom and glancing around the tiny living room at all the boxes that were packed up and taped up, ready to be loaded in a couple of hours.
I reached for the remote and flicked off the TV just as Dylan came around the end of the couch and flopped down beside me.
“Perfect. We can get the rest next weekend.”
“Yeah. That sounds good. Just the tallboy, couch, and we can give away the TV stand,” he said, and then sighed. “I’m really going to miss this place.”
“Me too,” I said, settling back with my arm across the seat. Dylan took up the silent invitation and leaned into my side. “We had a lot of firsts in here.”
“We did, didn’t we…” he said, aiming a lecherous grin in my direction.
I nodded and couldn’t help but lean in and press a firm kiss to that flirty mouth of his, and as his lips parted for my tongue, I dipped it inside and lost myself in the taste of him. He moaned and brought a hand up to touch my neck, and the sound and touch made a shiver run right down my spine to my cock. He was delicious.
“Mhmm, you seduced me in here,” I said against his swollen mouth.
“Did I?”
“You did. You introduced me to your parents, then stripped out of your clothes, and seduced me out of my ever-loving mind.”
Dylan gently sank his teeth into my lower lip, and as he pulled his head away, dragging the tips against my flesh, I groaned and was about to tumble him to his back when—
Knock. Knock. Knock.
—happened instead.
“Shh…don’t answer,” Dylan said, until the knock sounded again. He groused and I laughed.
“It’s probably just Lloyd, and you have all those quarters. You might as well give them to him,” I said, and got up off the couch. I scooped up the jar of coins and glanced over at where Dylan had lain down on the couch, clearly having the same thoughts I was right then. “Don’t you dare move.”
I jogged to the door much quicker then, and when I pulled it open I drew up short because there, standing in front of me, was the woman from the grainy photo. The same woman Dylan had painstakingly described to me the first time he’d seen her a little over a week ago. And even without having seen and heard all of that, her eyes were the same as those of the boy she’d so carelessly tossed aside.
Yes. There was no doubt in my mind that I was finally face to face with Brenda.
“Oh.” She gasped, a hand flying to her chest, her eyes wide. “I’m sorry. I was looking for—”
“I know exactly who you’re looking for,” I said, cutting her off right from the get-go. Dylan had made it abundantly clear that he wanted nothing to do with this woman. He’d told Sunshine, he’d told me—hell, he’d even told Brenda, but she kept coming back for more.
So if she wasn’t going to listen to Dylan, if she didn’t take his threat seriously, then perhaps it was time she heard it from another source. Someone who wasn’t scared of her.
I stepped out the front door, the jar of coins still under my arm, and took great satisfaction from the way she backed up.
“Do you know who I am?” I asked, and I was sure to put on my most intimidating face. When she nodded, I opened my mouth to say more, but then I heard my name.
“Ace? Ace, who is—” Dylan’s voice came to a stop, just as I sensed him arrive behind me. “What the fuck is the matter with you?” he shouted, and moved to charge forward.
I raised my free arm, planting a hand on his chest. Dylan was seething, his chest rising and falling, and I had no idea what he would do if he actually got his hands on the woman now glancing between the two of us, her eyes narrowing.
“I believe Dylan was very clear when he told you not to contact him.”
“He was,” she said, her voice having dropped the saccharine sweetness from a second ago and taking on an edge. A rough, sharp edge that had my fight instincts rising to the surface. “But you see, this is what I was coming for. What I’ve been waiting for.”
“The fuck, Brenda? Get out of here,” Dylan said, but it fell on deaf ears, because just like she’d said, she’d zeroed in on her target and it had nothing to do with her son. It had nothing to do with reconnecting with him. Or mending broken fences. No. It had everything to do with using him to get her next big hit. And I had a feeling that was—
“Ace Locke. My, my, Dylan. Your pretty face sure landed you in a pot of gold, didn’t it? You always did aim higher than where you started. And thank God for that.” She cackled, and the sound dripped with the poison she was dead set on trying to spread. “This will work out rather nicely.”
“What do you want?” I snapped, but had a feeling I already knew the answer. I just wondered how much she thought she could milk me for.
“Two million dollars.”
“What?” Dylan yelled, and muscled forward again, making me really put an effort into holding him back. “You’ve lost your fucking mind.”
“On the contrary, son,” she said, using the word as an insult. “I’m of very sound mind. What’s a couple of mil to someone like him? Nothing.”
This woman had another thing coming if she thought she was going to get shit from me. “What makes you think I’m going to give you a dime?”
Her eyes cut to the hand I had splayed on Dylan’s chest, and the malicious quirk that curled her wrinkled lips made my skin crawl.
“Because I don’t think you want the entire world to find out you’re screwing a whore.”
Blind rage distorted my vision then, and the jar of quarters that fell from my hands and smashed to smithereens on the concrete didn’t even register. I charged forward and backed the bitch up until her back hit the rail so fast her feet barely carried her. Once we were toe to toe, I ground my molars together and growled. “I suggest you fuck off and crawl back to whatever hellhole you slithered out of. You won’t get shit from me. And if I ever catch you sniffing around Dylan again, you’ll have more than the police to deal with. Do you understand?”
Her eyes, the same ones I’d likened to Dylan’s only minutes ago, were close to black, and I realized just how wrong I was. Hers were dead inside. There was nothing there. Just a bottomless pit of cruelty and malice.
“He must be a hot piece of ass for you to—”
My hand whipped out, shocking her into silence as I grabbed a fistful of her shirt, and that was when I felt a hand on my back.
“Ace.”
Dylan’s hollow voice barely registered through my fury, but when he spoke up a second time, he caught my attention.
“Ace, let her go. She brought an audience.”
As if her shirt had burned me, I dropped the fabric and stumbled back, looking over the balcony for the first time since I’d stepped out on it. And sure enough, standing down on the lawn were several paparazzi with their cameras aimed up at the second floor. Aimed at me.
Brenda laughed, and the sound was so disturbing I stepped back into the apartment and reached for Dylan’s hand, tugging him along with me. Then just as I turned to slam the door shut, I heard her speak.
“Aww, isn’t love grand?” she cooed, making Dylan pivot to face her too. She ran a hand over her black blouse, then dug in her purse to pull out a little red square. “I think I said everything I wanted to. When you come to your senses and want to deal, lover boy, you can reach me here. You’ve got a week.”
She tossed the cheap pack of motel matches our way, and the both of us let them fall at our feet on the floor, then, without a word, I followed through on my initial impulse and slammed the door in that bitch’s face.