ONE
BELLA
When I first set eyes on him, I was naked. It feels strange now to think that my first reaction wasn’t fear. But then, why would it be? I had no reason to suspect what he was going to do to me, that he was going to kidnap me and do all of those things to me.
It was another beautifully sunny day. The spring had been hotter than usual and it had turned into the hottest summer in as long as anyone could remember. By the time August came around, the grass in my garden was dying, yellowed and parched, no matter how often it was watered. The flowers were wilting and so was I. I’d been inside all morning, working on my book.
Procrastinating would be a better way of putting it. The work had consisted of everything but typing. I’d rearranged my desk, organised the bedside drawers, swept the kitchen floor, the open laptop shouting at me to come and start actually hitting the keys. I finally succumbed after every item of crockery I owned had been washed up, dried, and put away.
I managed to get halfway through chapter seven before the heat inside the house got too much for me. “Just an hour,” I told myself as I went upstairs to change into my bikini. It wouldn’t kill me to sunbathe for an hour. I’d get the rest of chapter seven done afterwards. What was the point of working from home if you couldn’t enjoy the sun from time to time?
I was in my bedroom when he arrived. Having removed my clothes, I was just reaching down to pick up my bikini top when I caught sight of movement out of the window. It was a removals van. I paused to look, watching as it pulled up outside next door. Behind the van, a red car stopped and a man climbed out of it, arching his back before he turned towards the van. He glanced my way and I ducked out of sight, not wanting the first impression I gave my new neighbour to be that of my tits flashing him through the window.
He had to be my new neighbour. The way he was directing the removals men couldn’t be interpreted any other way. A new neighbour. And a handsome one at that. Once my top was on, I looked out less shyly, watching as he walked up the path to the front door and unlocked it. He looked hot, very hot. Six foot at least, solid looking, tidy black suit, dark brown hair over a face that screamed mature, confident, all the things a man should be. I felt a fluttering deep inside me and I became very aware that I was wearing nothing on my bottom half.
The height of the window meant at least no one outside could tell but I felt as if he knew. Even without him looking my way, I felt he was judging me, seeing me as nothing more than an underdressed child. I shook my head. Why did I even care what this stranger thought? I was eighteen. I was an adult. If I wanted to bend over and moon him, I could. He wasn’t the boss of me. No one was. Apart from my agent. I could flash my ass and press it against the window. Now that would be a way to break the ice. And the window.
He did look my way just as I thought that and I found myself blushing. Our eyes locked for the briefest of seconds before he vanished inside the house. I was frozen to the spot for a long time afterwards. He had looked so damned sexy, the way he’d looked at me, in that second, I thought I’d happily flash him if he told me to. I’d have done anything he told me to.
Not that it mattered. He was about twenty years older than me. Probably married. No doubt the wife and kids would be following on to join him. The house was far too big for one man on his own, especially with a removals van that size. It was a family moving in. It had to be.
The word family caught in my mind, sticking in place as if it was coated in glue. I felt a flare of jealousy. I had never had a proper family, not really. An aunt doesn’t count.
I turned away from the window and began tying my bikini bottom in place. Once it was done, I grabbed a towel and the sun cream and then headed out into the garden. The sun lounger was waiting for me in the middle of the lawn and I sank onto it, enjoying the feeling of heat soaking into my skin already. Bees droned in the flowerbeds, somewhere in the distance a lawnmower was starting up.
I rubbed sun cream into my arms, humming quietly to myself as I did so. Once I was sufficiently covered, I closed my eyes and lay back, letting my mind wander.
It wandered back to him. My new neighbour. What was he like? Would he be friendly? The suit he’d worn told me he was a professional, maybe a lawyer. The car looked expensive. The house was expensive. He had to be earning enough to pay for both. Would he hate living next door to a creative type like me? Would he even notice that I existed? Or would he be too busy making big bucks and screwing his secretary?
As I thought about him, my mind drifted in on itself until I was daydreaming. I was upstairs again only this time I didn’t put the bikini on. I came down and went out into the garden naked, feeling him watching me from his house. I laid down and he tiptoed over, staring silently whilst I pretended to sleep.
I felt myself getting hotter, though I told myself it was just the effect of the sun’s rays on me. He’d watch me. I’d let my legs slide apart and feel his eyes on me, staring hungrily as I flashed him, pretending I didn’t know he was there. Then he’d…
God, I was like a schoolgirl with a crush on one of her teachers. I had seen him for about ten seconds and already I was fantasising about him. It was ridiculous. I told myself to stop. No one that old would be interested in someone like me. No money, no prospects. Just her aunt’s house and a quarter finished book that would probably get panned anyway. If it wasn’t for the last dribbles of my advance, I’d have been working for minimum wage somewhere, not sunbathing. I should get back to work. I should get the bloody book finished and stop mucking about. How many eighteen year olds managed to even get a publishing deal? But then how many eighteen year olds have an aunt working for the publisher in question? I should be grateful for the opportunity and get to work.
In a minute, I thought to myself. The sun felt just too nice to leave. I didn’t want to sit inside in the gloom and until someone invented a laptop screen that worked outside without turning into a mirror, I couldn’t sit in the garden and type.
I think I drifted off for a while. If I’d been awake, I’m sure I would have heard him approaching. But the first I knew of his presence was when a deep voice next to my ear said, “Good afternoon.”
I bolted upright, blinking away the fuzz from my brain as I turned in the direction of the voice.
There he was, further away than I’d thought, leaning on the top of his fence, smiling over at me, the leaves of the trees behind him waving lazily as if they were saying hello as well.
“Hi,” I said, thinking again how hot he looked. “Hi.” I cursed myself for sounding like a parrot, wanting to remove the grin from my lips but being unable to. “I’m Annabelle. Bella.”
“Good afternoon Annabelle Bella.”
His voice was like honey and gravel combined, the kind of voice that wrapped around you like a warm hug. It made my insides melt.
“Just Bella,” I said with a giggle.
“Enjoying the sunshine just Bella?”
“Yep.” My mind went completely blank. I could not think of a single thing to say. My mouth opened but all that came out was a strangled nothing. My toes curled as I fought with my brain. All the while he stared at me with an amused expression on his face, though his eyes spoke of something else, something that at that time, I didn’t understand. I understood later what it was, though of course by then it was too late to realise it was hunger. He wanted me.