Dominic! Dominic! I love you, Dominic!
Their voices blend together as security pushes them back and ushers me through the masses, through the sweat and perfume, and into the building. I take a deep breath as we step into the silence and I don’t glance back. I know what I’ll see.
People scrambling to get another glimpse of me, hoping that I’ll come back outside. They don’t even know me, but they think they do because they’ve seen me on-screen so often.
My fans are why I am so successful. I know that. And I appreciate them. I do. But I’m an intensely private person and having people tear at my clothing unnerves me in a way I’d never thought possible.
But in order to avoid looking ungrateful, I grin and pretend it doesn’t bother me. I flash the sexy smile that the world recognizes as mine.
They don’t have to know that it’s a mask, that it’s all an act.
I’m an actor. They should expect it.
*******
“I want to see the Tower of London this time,” Amy demands as she takes a bite of cracker slathered in caviar.
I stare at her. “Aren’t you worried they’ll keep you in it? They’ve confined witches in it before.”
Amy stops chewing for a moment, her blue eyes astonished. Then she laughs.
“You’re such a dick, Dominic,” she chuckles, leaning over the sofa arm to slide her fingers along my cheek. “But that’s why I adore you. You say what you want to say to me.”
“I just call a spade a spade,” I shrug. “You know you’re a bitch and you don’t care. It’s one of the things I like about you.”
She eyes me, her expression hardening a bit. “You like about me? I just said I adore you. And you like me? What the hell, Dom? I’m not feeling the love from you lately.”
And here we go. I knew this was coming.
I set my whiskey tumbler down and level a stare at her.
“Amy, you knew going into this what I’m like…. What I’m after. I’m not after a relationship. At all. I like you. I respect you. I enjoy having you in my bed. But love? That’s not who I am, Amy.”
She leans back, her eyes narrowing now, but filled with amusement.
“That’s what you think now,” she tells me knowingly. “Just wait.”
“For what?” I raise an eyebrow. “Until hell freezes over? Because that’s how long you’ll wait if you’re wanting more from me than what we’ve got.”
She shakes her head. “Whatever.” She waves one hand, the diamond rings adorning her fingers sparkling in the dimmed light of my sitting room. “I’m going to be jetlagged. So I should take a sleeping pill and go to bed. But first, let’s go to bed.”
She stares at me, her gaze turning dark and sultry, as she stands up and slowly begins shrugging out of her clothing.
I lean back in my seat and enjoy the show.
Half of Amy’s body isn’t real… it’s been enhanced by plastic surgeons. But because of that, it’s perfect. Her tits are large and round, her nipples pointed to the sky. Her stomach is perfectly flat, her hips swelled to perfection. Due to liposuction, there isn’t one trace of fat on her.
She’s unnaturally perfect. I personally prefer real curves, imperfections and all.
But I don’t say that. Instead, I just enjoy the show.
Bending over in front of me, she slides her panties off and tosses them into my lap. I pick up the lace with one finger and hold it to my nose, inhaling it.
“You smell good,” I observe.
She smiles.
“You know I do,” she purrs, gliding to my side and dropping onto my lap. Reaching into her nearby purse, she pulls out a pair of padded handcuffs.
“Get on your bed, Dom,” she commands. “I want to be in charge tonight.”
It’s a good thing I’m in the mood for that. Lying back and zoning out… letting the intense feelings of pain and pleasure blend together until I can’t tell one from the other?
Yes, please.
“Fine,” I smirk, as I get to my feet and head for the bedroom. “But stay the hell away from my nipples. If you pull that nipple clamp out of your bag, so help me, I’m out of here.”
“This is your room,” she points out dryly.
“Whatever. Then you’ll be out of here. And I won’t give you time to put your clothes on, either.”
She giggles now, unconcerned.
“You’d like that, you freak. Watching me strut down the hallway naked, with everyone watching me? I know you’d love that.”
It’s true. I would. And I’d also like to watch.
“Don’t blindfold me,” I instruct her as she folds her body against mine and begins to unbutton my shirt with experienced fingers. “I want to watch your tits as I lick you.”
She sighs into my mouth, her tongue plundering my own. She tastes of vodka and caviar.
“Lick me from back to front and everywhere in between,” she tells me. “And then,” she pauses as she reaches one more time into her bag. She pulls out a pierced dildo, ten inches long and pierced through several times, Prince Albert style. “And then fuck me with this. After I unlock your handcuffs.”
“Consider it done,” I murmur huskily as she snaps the manacles around my wrists. “And you’re a fucking freak, too.”
“That’s what you like about me,” she whispers as she crawls over me and arches her hips against my lips.
That’s true. It is.
Amy grinds into my face and I absorb her taste, her smell. She bends backward and rakes her fingernails into my thighs, hard. I’m sure she drew blood, but I don’t care. I’m already at the point where the lines between pain and pleasure have blurred.
I know that tonight will be spent in just such a place, a place filled with varying shades of gray, where no guilt or worry lingers. Memories from my past will be gone, guilt from my past nonexistent.
Just for tonight. It can all resume again in the morning, but for tonight, I’m going to enjoy every kinky hour of oblivion.
There will be no blacks, no whites, and no rights, no wrongs.
I’ll do what feels good, without regard to what society might think.
Because I’m Dominic Fucking Kinkaide….and that’s what I do.
Chapter Five
“Why won’t you fuck me?” Amy asks me, out of the blue.
I look up in surprise.
After Amy slipped out of my hotel room in the middle of the night, we met here on set for breakfast, and have been curled up in my trailer for the past hour. As we wait to be called into makeup, Amy’s got her head buried in a magazine, but she’s staring over the top of it now, her blue eyes accusatory.
“Excuse me?” I ask stiltedly, although I heard exactly what she said.
“Why won’t you fuck me?” Amy demands again. “Everyone on the planet wants to fuck me, and I offer myself to you on a platter and you won’t do it. Not really. You have no problems fucking me up the ass or letting me suck you off….but you won’t actually fuck me. I want to know why. I know you don’t have a problem getting it up. So what is the problem?”
Icy pangs shoot through my heart and I try to ignore them, to push them back down to where they belong. I knew this was coming.
I knew this was coming, I remind myself. A confrontation about what is wrong with me. I knew it.
But knowing it never makes it any easier.
“I don’t have a problem,” I answer icily, staring her down, her blue eyes locking with my own green ones. “Just because I won’t fuck you, you think I have a problem?”
She shrugs with her slender shoulders. “You must. Everyone wants to fuck me.”
She’s tense now, poised stiffly on the edge of her seat, prepared for rejection as she waits for me to answer. I know her. I know what she thinks, how she feels. And like most artists, she’s secretly insecure. She’s afraid that there’s something wrong with her and that’s why I don’t want to fuck her.
I don’t allay that fear. I’m not a good enough person for that. She does
n’t hesitate to cut people down to size simply because she feels like being a bitch. I feel no guilt over not soothing her ego right now.
“Maybe everyone does,” I tell her as nonchalantly as I can. “But I don’t. Not right now.”
She sits up straighter, her shoulders back and her chin stuck out. “Oh, really? And why exactly is that?”
I stare at her coolly. “Because I don’t feel like it. Too much drama. You’d only fall in love with me.”
I play it off like that, like I’m arrogant and cold and like I really believe my own words. Everything’s an act, you see. And this is part of my character. I’m an arrogant asshole.
Except, of course, I really am. At this point in my life, the act has become my reality.
But regardless of my words, I’m not afraid she’d fall in love with me. That’s not the reason that I haven’t fucked her… or that I haven’t actually fucked someone in six years. Six. Fucking Years.
Six years since it happened.
The mere thought of it, of her, constricts my heart tightly in my chest, like a fucking vise grip has its claws wrapped around it.
Emma.
A vision of her wide blue eyes sparkling at me ripples through my memory and I squeeze my eyes shut to close her out. Reaching into my pocket, I grip the necklace, her necklace, allowing my fingers to trace over the cool aquamarine. It’s the only thing that helps, the only thing that calms me down. It reminds me.
And makes me forget.
“Dominic?” Amy snaps, bringing me back to the present, and away from Emma’s glistening eyes.
I open my own.
“What?”
“What’s wrong with you?” she asks curiously, her eyes softening just a bit as she stares at me. I realize that I’m clammy and cold. Anxious. On edge.
This is what Emma does to me even now.
I put her out of my mind and turn my attention to the needy woman in front of me.
I force a grin. “Nothing’s wrong. At all.”
Amy stares at me. “Then prove it. When we’re done here, let’s go on a date. Take me to the Tower of London, then take me back to your hotel room and make me scream your name tonight.”
“You scream my name on a regular basis,” I point out wryly. She rolls her eyes.
“You know what I mean. I want your penis inside my body while I’m screaming it this time. For real.”
I shake my head, then run one finger over the swell of her fully clothed hip.
“Can’t. Not tonight. I can take you to the Tower, but then I’m flying out to Amsterdam to see my brothers. I’ll have to take a raincheck.”
Amy’s interested now. “Sin and Duncan? I want to go. You know I love seeing the Devil’s Own. Maybe you can make me scream your name in Amsterdam, instead. In fact, let’s make a bet. I bet you that I can make you want to fuck me before we leave Amsterdam.”
That’s never going to happen.
But I don’t say that. Instead, I smile.
“And if you win?”
She smiles back. “Then you get to fuck me. That’s your prize.”
“And if I win?”
Amy scowls now, displeased by the mere thought that I might not want her. “If you win, your prize will be not having to hear me bitch about this anymore, because we’ll be done. You’ll go your way and I’ll go mine.”
“Interesting,” I reply calmly. “So basically, if I don’t fuck you by the time we leave Amsterdam tomorrow night, we’re done?”
She nods, pleased by what she thinks is her ultimatum. What she doesn’t understand is that I don’t give a flying fuck if I ever see her again…at least, in a personal capacity. She thinks she’s got all the power and control in this equation, but she’s wrong.
I’m going to see exactly what she’s willing to do to get me to fuck her… and then I’ll leave her without looking back.
I smile. “Okay. Challenge accepted.”
She smiles back and cups my crotch with her thin fingers.
“You’re going to like this.”
“I’m sure,” I answer. Because I know I will, but ultimately, Amy won’t. You don’t try to push me around—or manipulate me.
It will never end well for you.
********
“Dude,” my brother Sin shouts into the phone. “What the hell? You don’t call for weeks, then you call right before I step onstage?”
So that explains the loud screaming and noise in the background. Everyone is waiting for my rockstar brother to appear.
“Sorry, bro,” I answer, unconcerned. “Just calling to tell you that I’ll be there later tonight. I can’t make your show, but Tally figured out a way to fit a visit into my schedule at least.”
That perks up Sin’s attention and he hollers to our other brother Duncan. “Hey, little D. Dom’s coming to the party tonight. Order more hookers.”
He cackles into the phone and I have to laugh….at several things. One, because he called Duncan little. Like Sin and me, Duncan is tall. Really tall. 6’4 or so. Broad-shouldered, slim-hipped. Not little in the slightest. And two, that he’s ordering hookers in Amsterdam. The irony of it, because he’s surrounded by groupies all of the time who would do anything he asks… for free.
“Hookers?” I ask dubiously. Sin snorts into the phone.
“It’s Amsterdam,” he says, by way of explanation. “We can’t come into Amsterdam and not visit the red light district. That would be sacrilege.”
It’s my turn to snort.
“The red light district?” I chuckle. “And how exactly are you and baby brother Duncan going to slip into the red light district unseen by paparazzi?”
I can practically feel Sin shrug through the phone. Because he doesn’t give a flying fuck.
“I don’t care if they see me or not,” he answers flippantly. “I don’t live my life according to what they think is acceptable or not. And speaking of that, I’ve got to go. Are you going to be here for my party or not?”
“Yes.”
He hangs up without another word and I glance over at my manager. “It’s going to be a long night.”
Tally grins without even looking up from his smartphone. “Yep. You might want to drink a few cans of Red Bull, old man.”
I shake my head. “Do you have any?”
Tally glances up. “I had them stock the plane with it, enough for Amy too. She’ll need it if she’s going to keep up with you.” He pauses, then stares at me. “Be careful how you treat her. The public loves to see you starring together. You’ve got to think of your image, first and foremost.”
“I’m very close to being done with her,” I tell him calmly. “I’m not going to stay with her just to satisfy public perception.”
Tally continues his stare-down. “And I would never suggest that. I’m just telling you to let her down with respect. Don’t treat her like a whore. Break up like a normal person.”
I pause, considering that. “But what if she acts like a whore?”
Tally shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter. Be a gentleman. The public loves that about you.”
“Is Amy already headed out to the plane?” I ask, grabbing a gulp of Tally’s drink.
“The last I heard, yes,” Tally answers, getting to his feet and straightening his jacket. “Although, she got into an altercation in the lobby with some fans. Some little girl wanted her autograph and Amy went off on her for invading her personal space. For fuck’s sake, Amy needs some lessons in PR. She’s a nightmare. You ready?”
I nod and we walk from the hotel to a waiting car.
The drive to the airport doesn’t take long and within a few more moments, I’m walking up the stairs and entering the plane. I’m immediately struck with the vision of Amy sitting with two young blondes on a leather sofa.
Until We Burn Page 3