by Chase, Jenna
I sigh in relief. Daphne manages a small smile of appreciation. She has no idea what bullet she’s dodged by not making my mother think she’s some flashy heiress who barely knows how to slap together an outfit.
“Thank you so much, Ms. Dean.” Daphne regains her feisty countenance now that she has my mother’s approval. Great. Now they’re going to gang up against me, aren’t they? “You’re stunning as well. Are you wearing Cartier?”
A delicate hand flutters to my mother’s neck, where a thick necklace encrusted with diamonds rests. “Indeed, I am. You have a good eye.”
So much relief right now. I was expecting the absolute worst with my mother, having never introduced her to someone before… and considering the state Daphne was in when she ran away from me, I had no idea how she would have handled this on the fly.
My good mood may have come too soon, though, because my mother suddenly bursts into a slew of questions, the first of which I can’t even really answer.
“So!” She glances around the theater lobby, probably searching for some cameramen to flash a smile too. Or, God forbid, grab Daphne and I into a motherly embrace so we can look picture perfect for tomorrow’s gossip columns. Or maybe I’ll be shoved out of the way entirely so she and Daphne can hit the “HOT” lists in the fashion pages. I wouldn’t put it past her. My mother loves her exposure. “Did you enjoy the movie?”
Daphne blushes such a deep crimson that she almost turns purple. I, on the other hand, am used to playing this game with my mother and can give her my opinions uncensored.
“Loved it, Mom,” I say. “Although I think Daphne may have liked it even more than I did. Every time I looked at her, she was flushed and fanning herself through the sex scenes.”
Daphne gasps. “There were sex scenes?” she whispers in my direction. Uh, duh. Did she miss the part where my mother walked into the professor’s office and gave him a blowjob beneath his desk?
I laugh. Daphne looks like she wants the earth to swallow her whole, but not before she smacks her satchel against my arm. As always, I appreciate getting a rise out of Daphne DeMarco. Not that it’s hard or anything.
My mother is more than shell-shocked over this playful exchange between us. That’s right. This is something not even the tabloids have been able to capture between girls and me. Anytime we played for the cameras it was always so forced and posed that my media savvy mother must have noticed.
Her perplexity is soon replaced with a dreamy smile. “Yes, that was done quite artistically, don’t you think?”
Let me tell you, I had the great misfortune of seeing my mother’s cleavage pop out of her blouse before she disappeared beneath that desk, and nothing about any of it screamed artistic to me.
But I can’t resist the opportunity to torment my sweet Daphne even more.
“Indeed,” I say, somber. “Daphne is artistic herself. That’s probably why she got so into them. I could swear I caught her panting at one point.”
Daphne’s pretty pink lips drop open. My mother laughs, although is shortly interrupted by a rough photographer calling out her name. She politely excuses herself to go tend to the world at large, leaving me with my date who looks like she wants to slaughter me.
“Wasn’t that good fun?”
I don’t get the reaction I thought I would get.
I don’t get playful banter. I don’t get a light slug to the arm again. I don’t even get a joke at my expense.
What I get is hot tears of humiliation and a growl in her throat.
Before I can react, her hand hits my face with a crackling smack! Daphne spins around and storms off for the women’s room while I’m left to stand here and nurse the burning sensation spreading through my cheek. That slap is still echoing in my ears!
“Trouble in paradise, Logan?” a photographer shouts at me. Of course, this whole debacle has been caught on camera.
It’s all I can do to not send them a million daggers from my eyes and shout back, “How’s that for a hot story!”
Chapter 4
DAPHNE
I don’t think I can eat another scoop of ice cream for the rest of my life.
For the past week, I’ve cooped myself up in this stifling apartment, eating junk food when my stomach aches get too bad. Basically, I’ve been existing on Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Dough and a box of donuts Ashleigh brought over a few days ago. She claimed to be worried about me. Not worried enough to block me from seeing Logan Dean that first time!
The donuts are all that are left now, since I can’t fathom eating another spoon of ice cream. Since they’re so old – and the box has been opened, yay – they’re getting moldy, and I won’t risk it.
This is when I realize I can’t stay in my apartment forever.
Never mind that everyone, from Ashleigh to my housekeeper to my stylist, have warned me to keep to myself for a few more days. This past week has apparently been nothing but a shit storm of blog posts, tabloid articles, and terrible high society gossip that no one will cop to having – but you know everything does it!
It all started with Logan’s damn interview. Then someone took a photo of me arriving at his place, even though I swear there were no paps around. All hell subsequently broke loose after the movie premier in New York.
Photos of everything exist. Everything. No, not the naughty shit we did up in the balcony, but everything else that mattered. God. If anyone knew about me stroking Logan’s cock or him finger fucking me until I came… I would die! Not to mention my parents arriving to throttle me and cry for my dead virginity. I think my mother would literally head to the nearest cathedral and light a candle to the Virgin Mary to make this all right.
Speaking of my parents, they desperately want me to go home and hide out there for a while. The only thing on my side is that my father doesn’t bother with the tabloids or gossip, and my mother quickly found out how many deplorable lies they spew when she moved here to marry my father. Back in Italy, she only had to worry about the busy-body gossips in her affluent village. Here? She had barely stepped off the plane in 1990 when the tabloids were saying she was having affairs with five other men. My mother was a proud, God-fearing virgin when she married my father, so you can imagine the amount of strokes she had upon facing the American gossip mill.
So they don’t care… for now. Except my father has called me no less than once a day to suggest I go to the family estate to “relax.” Oh, and there’s someone there he really wants me to interact with. Maybe take a few pictures with. Like I don’t know what he’s up to after the stunt he pulled over a month ago…
My maid has brought me my usual stacks of magazines, but I can’t bring myself to look at them. My old favorite The Daily Social is headlining with a picture of me as red as a tomato while Logan implies to his mother that I am a perverted slut.
To Camilla Dean. The woman who has so many Oscars she needs a walk-in closet to display them. And Logan was teasing about fingering me in front of his famous mother? Can I die already?
Pictures of me and him are in every tabloid. On every blog. On the lips of every asshole who thinks they know all about us now. People have been tagging me on Facebook about it. Who fucking does that? Isn’t it bad enough that there are a million articles speculating why I slapped America’s favorite playboy?
Meanwhile, I’m not letting myself think about him.
Which means I try to stop it, but sometimes those toxic thoughts still slip through.
On one hand I’m too embarrassed to even acknowledge what we did in the theater, but on the other… it’s quite telling that he hasn’t said a single thing about this kerfuffle to the media. From the sounds of it, the media shit storm has sent Logan Dean into hiding. Where? I have no idea. Maybe his shitty apartment, or one of his mother’s many homes. Maybe he’s in Boca porking some floozy who is so happy to be another notch in his metaphorical bedpost. God, why am I thinking about that? Why am I letting it make me angry?
The whole thing is only mildly shocking. I was
expecting a photo of him leaving a club with a model totally shitfaced by now.
I don’t let myself dwell on it too much, because Logan Dean is a complete, utter asshole. I don’t want anything to do with him. I swear it.
My phone keeps ringing – and has been all week - but I don’t answer it unless the ringtone says it’s Daddy or Ashleigh. Not many people have this number. I don’t know if the media got a hold of it or what, but I don’t want to take my chances. At this moment I’m too busy throwing magazines into the recycling bin.
However, staring at my moldy donuts makes me realize that something has to give.
A sigh powers me through the next hour. I take a shower and go sit down to do my hair and makeup. Somehow, despite the fact that I’ve been existing on junk food for the past week, I seem to have lost weight. My cheekbones are jutting out even more than usual, and it’s not a good look for me. Now if I get papped people will say that I have an eating disorder.
On a whim I pick up my phone and check out my messages. I press play on the first one out of thirty-seven.
I pick up my small makeup brush and start applying eye shadow. I nearly stab myself in my left eye when I hear Logan’s voice.
He’s pleading at me. Pleading! I don’t really catch any of the words because I’m trying to concentrate on my makeup, but that is a pleading tone in Logan’s voice. I should turn the message off and delete it. I don’t. I tell myself it’s because I’m too stubborn for my own good. Yes, that’s it. It has nothing to do with his deep, sexy voice. The voice that was murmuring all that nasty shit into my ear while he fingered me…
Logan is apologizing. He’s sorry. He fucked up. He was nervous about me meeting his mom. He feels strange around me. He trips over his words in a rush to get them out, and it’s kinda cute, I guess.
Next, he attempts to flirt with me. Not going to work. If anything, it’s making me angry. Then again, I can’t say I hate hearing a ton of compliments hurled in my direction after my week of endless self-pity.
Now he’s annoyed, because it’s been almost a full week of me not answering my phone and he really, really wants to talk to me. Did I know it’s even worse for him because Ashleigh refuses to give him my address? Poor thing! Smart Ashleigh.
Yet… why am I kinda mad that she hasn’t given him my address? Sure, I’d be pissed based on principle, but then Logan would be here…
Everything Logan says goes from angry, to frustrated, to flirtatious and then some more apologizing for everything he previously said. By the end of it, I am completely exhausted. My makeup also happens to be finished, and it only takes me a few minutes to get dressed in something simple. All that’s left is to take a deep breath and prepare myself for my first foray into the outside world after a week of seclusion.
I figure a little shopping never hurt anybody, so I call my driver and he confirms that he’ll be waiting for me downstairs in a few minutes.
Even though I know better than to leave early, I am so restless that I can’t take being cooped up in here any longer. I grab my purse and sunglasses, toss my cell phone into my bag, and take off for the fresh summer air.
As soon as I step out into society, I regret my decision. A whole swarm of photographers are camped out in front of my building, and I can barely shade my eyes with my sunglasses before they start snapping their cameras in my direction.
Questions regarding Logan are fired at me. I ignore every single one of them. This isn’t my first walk of shame, although I am sure to keep my chin pointed high in pride as I approach the sidewalk where my driver will be.
That’s when I am convinced that I have gone insane. Because that’s the only explanation for seeing a man who looks a lot like Logan Dean behind the tree across the street.
The paps must be so consumed with staking out my building that they never thought to look behind them. They thought Logan Dean would stroll right up to my door, did they? Pshaw. As if. Until a few minutes ago I was led to believe he didn’t even know where I lived! (Whose ass do I kick? Ashleigh’s?)
My driver pulls up and helps me get into my car. Photographers are to one side, and Logan is to the other, still keeping to the shadows. Against my instincts, I climb to the other side of the back seat and stare at him through the window. The bastard stares back. He motions to the street behind him.
I tell my driver to drop me off two blocks over and to drive elsewhere to keep the paps off my tail. If nothing else, I will get some closure with Logan. It’s time to move on from this haphazard tryst.
I get out of the car and hustle into an empty alleyway. Logan meets me there not two minutes later, appearing out of thin air.
“Fuck, you scared me,” I mutter. Then I clear my throat, because his mere presence is embarrassing me. Like I need a crazy reminder of everything’s that happened in the past two or so weeks. Wait, how long has it been again?
“Sorry about that. I really need to talk to you.”
I’m afraid to look up and meet his gaze. His closeness alone is making me lose my mind. I’m angry. Cheated. Annoyed. Sexually frustrated. Because there’s still that underlying attraction between the two of us. If I look up and face it? I’ll lose any resolve I had when I came out of my building.
At least God blessed humanity with sunglasses!
“Daphne.” He says my name in a breath, and my heart does this wild thing in my chest. Hearing my name on his lips like that… he should say it more often. It sounds damn good.
“Yes?” I remain stern. Or at least my tone is, anyway. Inside I’m wobbling.
He starts to speak several times but halts himself before the words can come spilling out. Finally, he says, “I’ve been a jerk. Sometimes it’s hard to get out of my own skin… I think you drive me a bit crazy.”
I raise my eyebrows, not bothering to say a word. Yet I use my icy gaze to implore him to continue.
“Fuck it. I don’t know.” His frustration would be cute if it weren’t for the circumstances. “I… really like you. I can’t explain it. From the moment we met, I’ve had this compulsion to push you to your limits. I realize now I went about it entirely the wrong way.”
“I’d say.”
“I’m serious. The way I think about you is completely different from any other girl…”
“Woman.”
“…Woman I’ve ever been with before. See? That’s one of the things I like about you… but I digress. I’m afraid that one day you’ll realize what a loser I am and cut me loose. So maybe I’m trying to accelerate that so it’s at least on my own terms. If I see it coming, if I make you hate me, then I never have to worry about losing you.”
For all his blubbering, there is sincerity in his voice. It moves me to remove my sunglasses and look him straight in those deep, dark eyes of his. “I don’t like being messed with.”
“So I’ve noticed.” His boyish grin returns, and holy hell would I love to smack it off him again. All that gushing about how great I am and he tries to sabotage it… again? Even so, I’d be willing to smack him if it meant a long, slow kiss from one of the only guys who can kiss me so well.
No, Daphne, keep your head here on planet Earth. “Please,” I begin, keeping him at bay with my hand. “I need you to be respectful. Or at least when we’re not fooling around.” I smile, letting him know that I’m deathly serious, but not without my humor. “I’m fine with banter…” My fingers stroke his arm. “But I like to keep my image spotless. You haven’t been helping with that. Saying things like you did at the premier…”
A sheepish tone takes over his complexion. I move my hand up his biceps, already enthralled again.
Logan leans toward me, his voice lowering. “Like what you feel? There’s more where that came from.”
I back away, shrugging. “Could do better. There’s no shortage of muscular guys when you’re as popular as I am.”
“Oh, yeah? Bet I could take on any guy who comes sniffing around you. When I decide a girl – I mean woman – is mine, then by the skies a
bove, she is mine.” He winks. Nice try, Logan. I heard that edge in your voice. Damn.
He could give it to you really rough I bet. Lovingly rough. Is that a thing? Excuse me, conscience, but nobody invited you to this conversation.
“We’ll see.” I turn to leave. My driver is due back at any moment, and I want to get on with my day, sans Logan. Give me some time to think about this. He’s got my number, doesn’t he?
The moment I let my guard down, Logan grabs me by the arm and wraps me into his tight embrace. Holy shit. One second I have no idea what it’s like to be this close to him, and the next I’m inhaling his aftershave and spreading my hands across his chest. My thighs quiver from the impact.
“Going somewhere?” he whispers in my ear. “We’re nowhere near done… I have things I desperately need to do to you.”
He kisses me. Oh, God, do I want him to keep kissing me! His breath is so hot, his tongue so strong as it pushes into my mouth, consuming me. I’m not prepared for his teeth grazing my bottom lip when he finishes. My stomach drops; my heart quakes.
He’s found the small of my back. Now I’m being pulled closer, my whimpers muffled against his black shirt.
“More?” Logan teases, moving away a few inches. He’s doing it to torture me, I know. He wants to see the look of missed desire take over my face as I note his absence from my arms. He gets it.
I don’t have the words to respond. All I can do is pull him close to me again and attack his lips as if I haven’t kissed a man in ages. It certainly feels like it. All I want is for Logan Dean to kiss me until I don’t know how to live without him anymore. Grab me. Hold me. Tenderly kiss me and then rough up the back of my throat with this tongue of his. That’s not the only thing I want in my throat. My hand goes to his cock, and although I should feel embarrassed over stroking a man’s erection in an abandoned alley, it gives me a thrill. A part of me fantasizes about getting down on my knees and sucking him dry right here and now. The rest of me knows to save it for later, when we’re alone… in a hotel room…