Table of Contents
Can’t get enough?
The Breakdown
The Solution
The Negotiation
The Healing
The Return
The Contract
The Dungeon
The Masks
The Date
The Revelation
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Insatiable
A Dark Billionaire Romance
Sophia Desmond
Contents
Can’t get enough?
1. The Breakdown
2. The Solution
3. The Negotiation
4. The Healing
5. The Return
6. The Contract
7. The Dungeon
8. The Masks
9. The Date
10. The Revelation
Join my mailing list!
Can’t get enough?
Hi, darlings!
This is my very first novel, and I hope you like it. It’s a full standalone novel, 50000 steamy words, with a happy ending—don’t you worry.
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xoxo,
S
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1
The Breakdown
I needed protection. And fast. Isn't that how these sorts of things always start out?
"And another thing, Tara..." the thick, drug-laden voice on the phone was saying. "If you think--just for one fucking second--that I'm going to let it slide if you open those ruby red lips of yours and suck my cock... It ain't working this time. Do you hear me? You can get down on your fucking knees and do I don't know fucking what and I'm still going to carve a new smile into your skanky, anorexic throat."
Okay. That's pretty brutal. I needed to take an oxycontin just to get through the phone call.
"Mario, baby, you're overreacting," I tried to coo into the phone, but the pill had made me strangely disconnected from everything that was happening. Some girls I work with, they drop pills left and right--they're like walking pharmacies, clack-clack-clacking in their high heels with bottles and bottles of illicitly acquired pharmaceuticals in their Gucci purses. Me? I stick to cigarettes and cocaine, thank you very much. I barely even drink, though mostly because of the calories. I tell you what--if they ever come out with Diet Alcohol, something with no calories? Then I am all over that. Then I'm done for.
I looked out over the glittering city. Mario was paying for my apartment. I wondered how fast he could evict me. I wondered if he could. Didn't I have squatters' rights at this point? I struggled to remember anything from my first year of law school. God, what a joke that had been. I would need more than the paltry knowledge of tort law and criminal process I had acquired over the six months I did at Fordham Law before dropping out to become a full-time model to save my swanky TriBeCa pad.
I guess I should explain. I'm always bad about stuff like this. I always jump in too fast, don't think about things before I start talking. I'm a real pistol like that. Men seem to like it. Or, I mean, they seem to like it until they don't anymore, if you know what I mean.
My name is Tara North. I'm twenty-five years old. I'm a professional model, here in the capitol of the universe, New York City--wretched hive of scum and villainy if I've ever seen one. Some days, it gets me so despairing that I'd do anything to go back to the small Wisconsin town I grew up in. Some days, I wonder what would have happened if I had just stayed there, gone to the University of Wisconsin and become, oh, I don't know--a large animal veterinarian or something like that. I've always liked animals.
I came to New York for college. But college wasn't my main concern while I was here. Even though I was at New York University and, ostensibly, doing very well in my classes, that was never my main focus.
See, I had done some modeling back in Wisconsin. Not much. There's not much to be had out there--mostly advertisements for a few local big box retailers and the like. I'd drive down to Milwaukee with my mom once every few months, do a couple of shoots, go to Benihana (that was always a real treat--those knives! The acrobatics of it all! It seems so quaint compared to the lavish dinners I go to now in New York, but the difference is that now, I just look and hardly ever eat--a little house salad for me, please, sorry, I'm just not that hungry--oh, but sparkling water would be lovely, thank you! At least I ate what our chef in Milwaukee whipped up) and then come home. That was it. That was simple. Easy. It didn't pay much, but I was the envy of all the other girls in my high school. I could hear them pointing at me in the hallway--"There's Tara North--she's a model! A real model!"
And I guess I was, as far as Wisconsin went. But now I'm in New York. And that's a whole different game. A horrifically different game, if I'm being honest.
My parents convinced me to give law school a try, even though I was already making very nearly the salary of a first year associate as a model by the time I graduated from undergrad. I applied and gave it a try--really, I did. But law school was harder than undergraduate. I had to go to class, had to try, had to do my reading--hours and hours of reading every week. And it wasn't interesting like the stuff I had read in undergraduate. It was boring, maudlin stuff, stuff that made me want to pull my eyebrows out, which is very unlike me, because I pay a Korean drag queen on 42nd street to do that for me. Su-Park does one hell of a job.
I remember rolling into class after a night out, still stoned, unable to concentrate, unable to even speak when the professor cold called me. My finals weren't as bad as they could have been, thanks to my ready supply of study drugs, but it was still a slaughter. I did not exactly have a golden future as a supreme court justice ahead of me.
I guess I could have tried harder. If I had tried harder--if I had given up the modeling, or even just scaled it back--maybe I wouldn't be in this position now? Maybe I wouldn't be wondering how quickly I could get out of the city, wondering if Mario would have thugs in track suits waiting for me at JFK, ready to splatter my brains all over the sidewalk?
But the thing with modeling is, unless you're very, very, very special, you've only got a few years for it. It's like the NFL or any other sport in that regard. You can make a go of it from about the age of fourteen until, say, thirty--but that's really the upper limit. And that's only if you keep your body thin and tight, if you don't eat practically anything, if you don't get addicted to something that'll suck in your eye balls and make you look like a middle America mug shot on COPS, if you don't show up with too many bruises from your boyfriend, if you don't piss off anyone--and it's easy to piss people off, people who are less pretty but more powerful than you, and the one thing that people who are less pretty but more powerful than you LOVE is to destroy you--to destroy a beautiful girl and watch her pathetic tears as she walks out of the studio, trying to figure out what she can do for money now.
What you save on food and clothing as a model--to the profession's credit, I haven't had to buy clothing in about four years, since just about everything is given to me--though what I wouldn't do for a pair of sweat pants and an Under Armor hoodie--you almost invariably lose on drugs and rent. There's a definite kind of keeping-up-with-the-Joneses mentality: if you're not living in Ma
nhattan, if you're not dating a guy in finance, if you're not doing the latest designer drugs--well, then, what are you doing, really?
To put that in perspective: I pay over six-thousand dollars a month for my apartment in TriBeCa. By which I mean, Mario pays that. I could downsize if I needed to, but if I were dead...
"I'm overreacting? I'm overreacting? You've been fucking around behind my back like a common street whore for months and I'm overreacting? I tell you what, cunt--" I winced--I've never liked that word. "I'm not overreacting. I'm finally reacting just like I should, for once in my fucking life. My therapist would be fucking proud of me."
Even through my medicated haze, I rolled my eyes.
"Whatever you say, baby. Why don't you call me in the morning--"
"No. No. No more of this, Tara. I am going to fucking destroy you. You had better make your peace with God, bitch, because this is the last night of your life."
And then the phone hung up.
I stood, drifted out onto my balcony, and lit a cigarette. It was raining, but I barely felt the rain on my skin.
I needed to do something. Mario had a key. Getting away was the first thing--even if he was just blowing smoke, I didn't want him coming over here, screaming, maybe shooting off his gun. Aren't most gun deaths in the US accidental anyway? I could be killed accidentally, which seems like the worst way to go, because at least if someone shoots you with intention, that means they really want you dead. But an accident? That was too sad.
I called Nora, my agent. She picked up, yawning.
"Jesus, Tara. It's three in the fucking morning on a Sunday. Don't you have any morals? It's a school night. What the hell are you doing?"
Nora had been my agent ever since I had gotten to New York, but ever since she had gotten married, had twins, and moved to Brooklyn two years ago, she had gone weirdly prudish on me. It felt weird, to get lectured about staying up so late from a woman who had once, and still did occasionally, supply me with blow.
"Listen, I wouldn't be calling you this late if I didn't have a problem."
Audible sigh on the other line. Fuck you, Nora. Fuck you and your Goldman Sachs husband and your twins--Madison and Rosalind, gag me--and fuck your immaculate, eternally tasteful Park Slope brownstone.
"Mario is saying he's going to come and kill me. And I think he might do it this time."
"Well, Jesus, Tara, maybe you shouldn't be cheating on him every chance you get."
"Okay, little late for that, bitch," I growled. "You're my agent. Doing something agent-y. Get me out of this."
"What the fuck do you want me to do? You pissed off a mob boss's son. You'd better hope Governor Christie has the turnpike tied up in knots again, because if he doesn't, this might be it for you."
"Shit, just do something."
"I don't want Mario coming out to Brooklyn, Jess."
I was starting to panic. Gotta' drop another Oxy.
"What are you saying?" I asked, my voice cracking. "What do I do?"
And then I was sobbing. I'm an ugly crier, which is the main reason I don't cry any more, but it was late and I was pretty distraught--as you might imagine.
"Christ, calm down. Calm down. Listen, Jess--Jess, bitch, if we're going to get you out of this, you need to be cool, okay?"
"Okay. Okay."
"Let me make a few phone calls. I... I've actually got a pretty good idea. It's a weird one, but it might just work. Okay? Until then--lock the doors, turn off your lights, hide in the closet or something. Or god, I don't know, go hang out at the bodega around the corner so at least there's a witness if some track suits do shoot you down."
And without further ado, she hung up.
2
The Solution
I followed her advice. I locked the doors, killed the lights, and instead of sitting in my walk-in closet, it seemed like a better idea to sit in the bath tub.
I smoked one cigarette, then two, then three. I heard voices in the hall way that made me jump. Then, it dawned on me--Mario had a key to the apartment. Hanging out here was a terrible fucking idea.
I leapt out of the tub and tossed on what I thought a normal person might wear--a nice, tight top that showed off my navel, a short skirt, and running shoes--the only shoes I owned that weren't heels. I looked a little odd, and worse, it was the kind of odd that stands out in Manhattan--if you look like a complete freak--I mean, raving lunatic, dressed up as Hello Kitty, telling everyone about the end of the world--then no one notices you. But if you look nice except for one or two details--that stands out, because then it's like, girl, what the hell are you doing? Did you have a stroke while dressing? She a fool.
I staggered downstairs, trembling as I walked, as if Mario or one of his dad's thugs was about to jump out of the shadows with each step. Still no one.
I made it to the bodega, where a group of old Jamaican and Dominican men were sitting in the back, drinking warm beer and engaging in another endless game of Mah-Jong. They glanced up at me, looked me up at down--I hated their eyes on me, undressing me mentally, but it was a hell of a lot better than the way the Italian thugs that Mario hang out with looked me, so I took it.
"What's wrong, mami?" the owner asked from across the bullet proof glass. The secret about New York is that nowhere ever gentrifies completely. The New York Times might say it does, but those guys all live in Connecticut anyway. "You look like you seen a ghost."
"Sorry," I said, shaking my head. "My boyfriend is acting weird and I'm afraid he might come over and hurt me. Can I have a coffee and hang out here?"
He rung me up, without saying another word--ah, the 24-hour bodega--the great and beautiful eternal refuge of the urban lonely and weary!
I hid behind a display rack of plantain chips and Fun-Yuns and watched the cars go by.
And then I saw it: two black BMWs pulled up in front of my building. I recognized one as Mario's car. There were rumbling shouts, and low and behold, three huge guys--two wearing track suits, another wearing jeans and a leather jacket--tumbled out of the first, while Mario and his personal bodyguard--Gennady, an understated Ukrainian immigrant whom I actually liked and had slept with a few times (he was much nicer than Mario; he made sure I came first always and complimented my looks, telling me I was "just like nice girl from Kiev" he had known--I think it might have been his sister but I didn't ask) got out of the second one. Mario wore a gross track suit too. Gennady, to his credit, was the only one wearing a full suit, though without a tie.
They entered my building and that was the last I saw of them. My blood ran cold as I imagined what I had just avoided.
I stood very still for a long time. I saw, just barely, the lights go on in the unit that I thought seemed to be mine--I imagined them ransacking it, looking for me, tearing apart my things--going through the walk-in closet, going through my old law school books (which I haven't opened in years but which I keep on the shelf to impress guests), screaming at each other. My only hope was that maybe the neighbors would take offense and call the cops to shut down whatever was going on. For being in TriBeCa, I had noticed that my neighbors were all--for lack of a better word, squares. Old baby-boomers who work on the Street, prudish, fine if you come home drunk and high, but for Christ's sake, there are kids who live here, Tara--children. What about the children?
Well, what about the black kids getting stopped and frisked to death north of the park?
Fucking Bloomberg. God, I was pretty far gone. I had barely eaten anything today--no, yesterday, I definitely hadn't eaten anything today--and I had had two martinis at a cocktail party, plus three pills and a few lines, so all of that, plus the, shall we say, emotional distress of the evening had put me out of sorts.
My phone started to ring. It was Mario. I didn't answer. I imagined he was thinking I was still in the apartment, thinking I was hiding and maybe they would smoke me out with a phone call.
Then I started getting texts from him:
Bitch where are u
I want to talk to u
Answer ur phone bitch
Tara baby I love u just answer ur fuckin phone
Im over at ur place where r u
They made my blood run cold.
A few minutes later, once the cascade of texts was in full swing, I got another from Gennady.
I do not know where you are, but you should stay away from apartment. Not safe.
That was capped off with a skull emoji. See, Gennady? Class act.
Finally, my phone was buzzing again. Nora.
"All right. I've saved your skinny ass," she announced as I picked up.
"Jesus Christ, thank you."
"Where are you?"
"The twenty-four hour bodega. Across the street and half a block north of my building."
"Right. I'm sending a car to get you."
"Thank god."
"Just listen, real quick, okay? Things are going to get weird from now on."
"They're already pretty fucking weird, Nora."
"But I mean, weirder. I called a guy who--well, he had inquired about you to me a few years ago. He was very interested in you. Not as a model but--I don't know, as a lover. He's an extremely wealthy man. He's so powerful, it's scary. Had me come into his office and everything--really freaked me out."
"I'm so sorry for you," I said, rolling my eyes. "Why didn't you tell me anything about this?"
"Well, because the specific things he wanted--it just seemed too weird. And maybe not legal? It was too weird, and I didn't think you would be interested, and he specifically wanted his identity concealed, so it just seemed like bad news all around."
"And now you're delivering me to this guy--is that right?"
"Well, fuck, Jess, what else am I supposed to do? Call the cops? I bet they'd be pretty interested in the cocaine flowing through your veins right the fuck now."
Insatiable: A Dark Billionaire Romance Page 1