Tethered

by L. D. Davis

  He laughed and said “Yeah, or something.”

  “Thanks for the shirt, Felix,” I said as I looked around the set for my tank. “As soon as I figure out where mine went to, I’ll return it.”

  “Keep it,” he said, though I knew it wasn’t necessarily his to give. He had been dressed by a stylist moments before coming on set.

  “Thanks,” I said with a small smile. “Have a good day.”

  I started to walk away in the footsteps of the whiny girls that had exited the space, but the photographer stopped me. He bitched about me not following directions and then raved about my creativity. I smiled gently the entire time, listening carefully to everything he said, even if some of it sounded like nonsense. I must have behaved appropriately, because he was already discussing my next gig with him.

  By the time I left the room, I could barely contain my excitement. As soon as I saw my mom I grinned. I was about to go tell her everything that happened, when a strong hand closed on my shoulder. I turned around, startled, and found myself face to face with Felix.

  “You’re the only girl in there that wasn’t pawing over me,” he said, his cute face curled into confusion. “I put my tongue in your mouth and you walked away from me afterward like it was nothing.”

  “What do you want?” I asked, crossing my arms. “An apology or something?”

  “Do you not like my work?”

  “I like your work,” I shrugged.

  “But you don’t like me,” he said, frowning.

  “I don’t know you,” I shook my head gently and offered a small smile.

  “Huh,” he said and looked at me thoughtfully. “You may not have an opinion about me, Donya, but I think I like you.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “Are you?”

  “Kinda,” I said with another shrug.

  To my surprise he grinned. “I like you.” He motioned to a man I didn’t immediately see and then I wondered, as the man approached, how I had missed him. He was huge. There were muscles bulging out of every part of his nice suit. Felix asked the man for paper and a pen. He reached into his suit and produced both pen and paper.

  “I’m giving you my phone number,” Felix said and motioned for me to turn around. When I didn’t comply, he insisted that I turn around. I turned. Seconds later I felt pressure on my back and realized he was using my back as a writing surface.

  “You call me whenever you want. This is my mobile number, so I can be reached almost anywhere.”

  “I’m not going to call you,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Sure, you will,” he said. “What’s your number?”

  “You’re not going to call me either,” I laughed, despite myself.

  “Sure, I will. Number.”

  Laughing at the absurdity of Felix freaking Hunter writing down our phone numbers on my back, I told him both my hotel number and the number to the mobile phone I recently acquired.

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said a minute later as he handed me his phone number. “Don’t lose that.”

  “I won’t.”

  Felix and his beefy bodyguard went back through the door. My mother rushed over to me, grinning as she grasped onto my hands.

  “That was Felix Hunter!” she said excitedly.

  “Yeah, I know,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “What did you do to impress Felix Hunter?”

  I shrugged, pulled my hands from hers and started for the exit. I looked over my shoulder at my hesitant mother and said “Took off my shirt.”

  Even with my back turned, I knew her mouth had dropped to the floor.

  *~*~*

  An hour later, after I had dropped my tired mother off at the hotel, I decided to take my school work to a coffee shop not far from the hotel to get some work done. As I was on my way there, the mobile phone rang in my bag. I wrestled it out without stopping and answered without looking. Very few people had the number. I expected my mom or one of the Grayne’s, or even Max. I did not expect to hear Felix Hunter’s voice so soon. Honestly, I didn’t expect to hear his voice at all.

  “Donya, Felix Hunter.”

  “Who?” I asked, biting back a grin.

  “The guy who had his tongue down your throat not that long ago.”

  “Which guy?”

  I held back my laughter as he groaned and said “You’re killing me here.”

  “I just saw you, Felix. Do you miss me already?”

  “In fact, I do,” he said playfully. “That’s why I’m calling to see if you want to come out and play with me tonight.”

  I almost stumbled over my own two feet. I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk so I wouldn’t risk falling on my face in the middle of the busy New York sidewalk.

  “You’re asking me out?” I asked, not hiding my surprise.

  “I’m pretty sure that is what I am doing.”

  “What if I decline?”

  “I’d insist upon it. It is the least you can do considering how you violated me today.”

  My anger flashed and I almost stomped my foot. “Violated you!” I cried indignantly. “You’re the one that shoved your tongue in my mouth.”

  “Babe, you had your hands all over me. Then you put your sweet lips near mine as you manhandled me. What was I supposed to do?”

  I blushed when I considered where my hands had been on his body. I had only touched Emmet’s body like that in the past, and no other. I didn’t get all heated and slick touching Felix at the time, but standing on the city street thinking about how brazen I had been sent a warm tingle crawling up my spine.

  “Donya,” Felix said my name softly, sensually.

  “Yes?” I managed.

  “Come out with me tonight.”

  I wanted to say yes, because being seen with Felix could be an asset to my career, but as I looked at the bracelet on my wrist, my mind began to fill up with Emmet. Plus, there was the obvious issue.

  “I’m only sixteen,” I blurted.

  “And I’m only twenty. Do you have a point?”

  This is the lifestyle I wanted, right? I wanted to be seen and to rub elbows with the big guys, and from what I rubbed on Felix, he was a big guy.

  I covered my face, mortified even though he couldn’t see me.

  “Donya,” he prodded less patiently than before.

  “Okay, sure,” I said quickly, releasing a long breath. “What did you have in mind?”

  “How about dinner and a movie?”

  “Seriously?” I questioned with suspicion. Felix Hunter can’t just go out like a normal guy to dinner and a movie.

  “Seriously. Wear something spicy.”

  “Spicy?”

  “Hot,” he said the word with emphasis on the H.

  “Hot?”

  “Sexy.”

  “Sexy,” I said resolutely. “Okay.”

  “I’ll send a car for you at six-thirty,” he said happily.

  “You don’t know where I’m staying.”

  “Yes, I do. I asked your agent. I have to go. See you at six-thirty. Remember, wear something spicy.”

  “Hot,” I added.

  “Sexy,” he added in a voice that maybe made me melt just a little bit.

  *~*~*

  “Does this suffice?” I asked Felix after I climbed into his limo later that evening.

  His driver had just walked me out of the hotel to the waiting car. Felix didn’t get out and I didn’t blame him. As a star, he virtually had no privacy. If he got out of the car chances were he’d be bothered by some undying fan.

  “It wasn’t what I was expecting,” he said to me, gazing at me from head to toe. “But this definitely, definitely suffices.”

  There were so many different directions I could have gone in to be ‘spicy’. I could have been spicy-slutty, spicy-scary, spicy-bad girl, and so on and so forth. I chose a little bit of everything, and squeezed into a pair of skin tight dark blue jeans, a red halter top that made me appear to have more boobs than I actually had, and fire en
gine red stilettos. My hair was pulled back in a ponytail with a bit of a poof up front, and while I went easy on the red lipstick, I applied a more than generous amount of eyeliner, mascara, and eye shadow. My hazel eyes looked so awesome with the make-up it took me a good ten minutes to stop admiring myself in the mirror.

  “So, what movie will we be seeing?” I asked, crossing one leg over the other.

  “First thing is first,” he said. He moved from his seat to the space immediately next to me. His arm slipped across my shoulders. “That’s better,” he said with a sigh.

  I looked at him with raised eyebrows, but he ignored it.

  “We are going to go see the new Bruce Willis movie.”

  I nodded appreciatively. “I like Bruce Willis. He’s a native of New Jersey, like me.”

  “That’s all very entertaining,” Felix said dismissively. “But what I’d really like to talk about is that kiss today.”

  My eyebrows shot up impossibly higher. Beads of sweat formed on the back of my neck and I shifted beside him, accidentally rubbing my thigh with his. No other guy besides Emmet ever had this effect on me before.

  “Puh-lease,” I said, trying to sound cool. “You’ve kissed a girl on set before. I have seen a couple of your movies. It was just work.” I shrugged and looked at him like I didn’t care, and I hadn’t really, until he brought it up earlier in the day when he called me.

  Felix’s fingers lightly trailed over my bare shoulder and down my arm.

  “All of those kisses I was prepared for,” he said, pushing my hair back off of my neck with his other hand. His knuckles grazed my skin and I had to fight back a gasp. “First I read them in the script and then we read them together. Then we discussed what the kiss would look like and how it would be approached. It was all very technical. Kissing you, however, was completely unexpected. If it was just work, it had to be one of the hottest days at the office ever.”

  I cleared my throat and shifted away from him. I had a “What the hell am I doing alone in a limo with a twenty year old bad boy actor” moment, but if I was going to enter into this world of high fashion and celebrities, I was going to have to get over some of my reservations. Hell, I did it so easily earlier in the day when I took off my shirt in a room full of people.

  “That’s all very entertaining,” I said, using his tone from earlier. “But what is for dinner, Felix? I’m starving.”

  He tilted his head back and laughed. I liked it. It was loud and obnoxious but genuine.

  “Most women in your position don’t eat.”

  “I’m going out to dinner with Felix Hunter,” I said. “I better get his money’s worth.”

  Felix laughed again and said “I knew I liked you.”

  “I like me, too,” I said loftily.

  “Yes, very entertaining, Miss Stewart, but back to that kiss…”

  “Well, damn, Felix,” I said with amusement. “You keep coming back to that kiss. You must not get too much action if you keep coming back to the moment you violated my mouth with your sticky tongue.”

  Now his eyebrows rose and the look of surprise on his face had me biting my tongue to keep from laughing.

  “Violate?” he said. “Sticky!”

  “Mmm hmm,” I said with a nod. “Tacky. Like glue.”

  “For the record, Donya, you’re the one that smashed your cute little tits up against my back. You’re the one that put your smooth, little hands all over my bare chest and in my pubes.” I blushed furiously, but didn’t change my expression as he continued. “You’re the one that bit my neck like a vamp and went all cannibal on my ear. You can’t blame me for wanting to repeat that kiss. You should feel lucky that’s all I want – for now.”

  “Is that all?” I asked, rolling my eyes. “You just want a little kiss?”

  “For now,” he said huskily, drawing nearer.

  “Then you should ask your driver to stop at the store so I can go buy you some,” I said with a big smile. “A big bag of chocolate Hershey Kisses.”

  His eyes narrowed even as they heated. “I want chocolate and I want a kiss, and you sure do taste like candy.”

  “I don’t remember what you taste like,” I said nonchalantly. “I’ve already forgotten.”

  Felix’s hand gently cupped my face. His thumb slid over my lips and I tried really hard not to gasp but I let a little one slip through anyway.

  “Are you always so hard to get?” he asked softly.

  “Always,” I confirmed in a whisper.

  “Good. I like it.”

  Felix Hunter pressed his mouth to mine and I damn near melted. I moaned softly, giving him an opening to dip his tongue into my mouth. His hand continued to hold my face possessively and his arm around my shoulders squeezed, pulling me in close to him. I held onto his nice button down shirt, held on for dear life, because his kiss was sweeping me away.

  When he finally pulled away from me, my lips ached and my mouth felt hot.

  “There is something very unscrupulous about a twenty year old man kissing a sixteen year old girl in the back of his limousine,” I said, gasping softly for air.

  “That’s a mighty big word for a sixteen year old,” he teased, tracing my moist lips with his fingers.

  “We’re not all clueless,” I said.

  “Clearly not.”

  He kissed me again and I didn’t mention his lack of scruples again.

  Chapter Twenty

  “I can’t come up there,” Emmy mumbled on the phone. “I caught some kind of bug. I’m hurling and shitting and shitting and hurling. Sometimes at the same time.”

  “Ewww,” I said, scrunching up my face. “I did not need all of the details.”

  I collapsed onto the bed. I had just returned from a photo shoot, expecting to find Emmy already at our suite. A few weeks after my photo shoot and subsequent make-out session with Felix, Emmy was supposed to make the trip to New York to accompany me to a party Felix was throwing. I wasn’t going as Felix’s date because we weren’t dating.

  After we saw the Bruce Willis movie, we made out in the car again on the way to dinner. As if we were in some comedy, my bracelet got caught in his hair. After the initial laughter, I looked at the charm bracelet and felt a crushing guilt on my chest. I loved Emmet, and though we weren’t together and had not spoken in months and months, I still felt connected to him, especially while wearing the gift he had given to me. How could I just kiss someone new as if Emmet had never been? Felix noticed my change immediately and had the decency to pull back.

  “Hey, what’s wrong?” he asked, gently lifting my chin with a finger.

  I fingered the bracelet and didn’t meet his eyes.

  “Someone very important gave me this,” I said softly. Then I sighed with exasperation and looked away from him.

  Why shouldn’t I move on? Emmet left without saying goodbye. Emmet made no effort to call me or contact me at all. Emmet didn’t send me a note and congratulate me on my first photo shoot or call me during the holidays.

  But he gave you this bracelet, and that means a lot of somethings.

  “Ex-boyfriend?” Felix asked, touching the bracelet.

  “Something like that,” I said with a humorless chuckle. “Whatever he was to me…” I put a hand on my chest, feeling my heart beat wildly under my palm. I looked at Felix. “I love him. I’m not over him.”

  The words hurt to say out loud. I balled my hands into fists and tried hard not to cry. For all I knew, Emmet was lying in bed beside Stella or some other girl and not thinking about me at all, but until I could not think about him, I couldn’t be with anyone else. Especially someone like Felix with far more experience in the world than me. I would do nothing but slow him down, and I had to face the fact that this may all have been just a seduction. Felix Hunter wasn’t known for monogamy – or keeping his dick in his pants.

  Felix put his fingers in my hair and twirled. His voice was soft and gentle when he spoke.

  “I want you to know that I really, really,
really like you,” he said.

  “Are you trying to make me feel bad?” I asked and bit down my lip.

  “No, not at all,” he said soothingly. “But I really like you and even though I want to keep kissing you until the sun comes up, I respect you and what you’re feeling. You’ve been real to me since the moment I stepped on set and you barely paid me any mind.” He smiled at the memory. “It’s rare to find someone who is real when you’re a guy in my position. If you promise to always be real with me, Donya, we can be friends. I would love to have a friend like you.”

  I looked at him suspiciously. “You’re not ‘acting’ are you?”

  He laughed and shook his head. “Nope. Just being as real as you are.”

  I looked away and then looked back at him bashfully. “Do you still want to take the stick in the mud to dinner?”

  “I like mud,” he shrugged and grinned. “And I like a girl with a good appetite. Of course I want to take you to dinner. I’d be honored if you’d go to dinner with me.”

  “You know that you’re tarnishing your bad boy image, right?” I asked with a small smile.

  He shrugged and grinned. Smugly he said “Adding a little sweet to the badness makes me all that more appealing to the ladies.”

  I had rolled my eyes and laughed. Moments later I followed my new friend out of the limo to show him how real women eat.

  Now a few weeks later, with Emmy sick, I had no one to go to the party with. I had made a few acquaintances while in New York, but none that I wanted to take with me to Felix’s party. It was a private party and I didn’t really trust anyone enough to bring along with me. I had been stabbed in the back more than once in my months in New York and I wasn’t looking for anyone to stab Felix in the back, too. I sure as hell couldn’t go to the party alone. Well, I could, but my mom wouldn’t let me, and most likely she wouldn’t have approved of any of my acquaintances either. She barely approved of Felix.

  “I guess I’m not going,” I sighed miserably. I had met a few more celebrities through work and hanging with Felix, but his party would put me elbow to elbow with people that could really elevate my career. I wasn’t using him that way – that was what he had told me when he insisted that I attend.