by Holly Hart
We break out in quiet giggles.
“Nothing about our life together has been normal,” I say. “Maybe this will be a first step towards something a little more ordinary.”
“God, I hope not,” he says. “Why on earth would I want normal when I can have what we have?”
I snuggle into his shoulder and kiss his neck.
“You’re right,” I whisper. “Normal is boring.”
As we drift off to sleep, I see a flash in the clear night sky outside the window. It’s a falling star.
I don’t make a wish.
What would be the point?
Part One
The Chase
One virgin.
Two weeks.
Twenty billionaires.
She can run, but she can't hide...
The Chase. It takes place every year. If you're not invited, you'll never even know it exists.
It's a game - a Chase - entered only by the world's richest and most powerful men.
And one, lone, solitary woman.
A virgin.
Winner takes all. Literally.
But our prey isn't as innocent as she seems - she's CIA trained, and kick-ass strong.
And she gets paid $250,000 for every day she evades capture.
Sounds simple, right?
If only it was.
When I entered, it was because I was bored of easy lays and easier women.
But suddenly Cassie is back.
She's the girl who stood me up at prom - who I've spent my entire life proving wrong.
And the girl I never heard from again.
But Cassie's not a girl anymore. She's most definitely a woman.
And maybe she's not just the one who got away...
Chapter One
1. CARSON
I’m standing at the edge of a cliff, looking down at the 1,500-foot drop just beyond my toes and thinking very hard about jumping off.
Under other circumstances, it would be breathtaking: the Italian Alps positioned against a clear azure sky, the dappled surface of Lake Garda in the distance, the red tile roofs of the villas in the town. If I had binoculars, I’d be able to make out the jagged fingers of granite pointing up from the valley floor below me. As it is, I have to imagine them. I’ll be seeing them up close soon enough.
It’s not a situation your average thirty-year-old billionaire playboy finds himself in, I’ll admit. One might well ask why a guy with more money than he could ever spend, more women than he could ever sleep with, and less body fat than most men could ever hope for, is standing here, of all places, contemplating what I’m contemplating.
The answer is simple: I’m bored out of my fucking mind.
The wind caresses my cheeks and I turn my face up to the diamond-hard summer sun. I’m starting to sweat under this outfit, which is kind of gross. No point in putting this off any longer.
I fill my lungs with clear mountain air and leap off the cliff. I have to make sure I clear the outcropping right below me—wouldn’t want to clip it and end up going ass-over-teakettle all the way down. That would make for an incredibly ugly corpse.
As I fall, my body naturally tilts forward into a dive position. I travel about forty feet in an instant, then I spread my arms and legs wide. Time to embrace the inevitable.
The motion allows the billowing fabric under my arms and between my legs to catch the ambient air, slowing my descent velocity by about eighty percent and pushing me forward, away from the mountainside and toward the lake. The so-called “wingsuit” carries me on natural air currents at a 2.5:1 angle of descent. That means that for every meter I drop, I gain two and a half meters moving forward. That’s important math, because I’m going to attempt something ridiculously dangerous, and I’d really prefer to live through it.
As I glide over the rooftops of Sirmione, the town on the south shore of Garda, I lower my arms several inches to reduce my angle. Easy? Hell no – it’s tougher than it sounds when you have several thousand pounds of air rushing up at you.
In the distance I can see Isola del Garda, the island where St. Francis of Assisi founded a monastery in the thirteenth century. I doubt old Frankie would approve of my current lifestyle, but I’ve got more important things to worry about.
The surface of the lake is rapidly filling my field of vision, but my goggles are polarized to keep the reflected light from blinding me. I need every sense on high alert right now to make sure that I don’t come in at the wrong angle. Too steep and I risk smashing head-first into the immense stopping power of the water. Too shallow and I’ll come in too hot, which means I might not be able to slow myself down before I hit the side of the boat like a bug on a windshield.
Timing here is everything.
Still, it would be a hell of a way to go, wouldn’t it?
The coolness of the water kisses my face as I draw parallel with the surface of the lake. Raising my arms again lowers me closer to the skin of the lake. If it wouldn’t completely fuck up my trajectory, I’d reach down and run my fingers through the cool wetness.
I feel like Superman.
In the distance, my target comes into view: a catamaran anchored about a mile off shore. As I draw closer, and lower to the lake, I finally make out silhouettes of people on the deck – still tiny, like ants.
According to the incredibly detailed math that went into my computer simulation, that’s my cue to drop one last time. I silently thank every crunch and sit-up as my abs strafe the surface of the water, providing the friction I need to slow my forward momentum and begin my long stop.
After several seconds, I lower my legs and arms, and the water pulling against the fabric yanks me backwards, hard.
My teeth grind as the bow of the catamaran fills my field of vision, growing until I can see Maksim Orlov grab his head in his hands and hear him shout “Look out, you idiot!”
The stress on my joints is painful, but I can handle it.
Just.
I don’t spend hours a day in my gym with a giant Swedish personal trainer just to rock a tank top and dance to Europop. That’s just a side benefit. No, I’m all about functional strength. And really, what could be more functional than wingsuiting off a thousand-foot cliff?
I come to a full stop no more than ten feet from the boat. I release the handles on my arm wings to keep them from dragging me down into the depths and pull my goggles up onto my helmet.
My breathing is already starting to slow and I can feel the adrenaline ebbing out of me, leaving me faintly cold, even in the Italian summer heat. I grasp the rungs of the ladder and pull myself up, knowing that within minutes, the thrill of the experience will be all but gone. As usual.
It seems the further I push myself, the more I have to keep pushing to maintain the excitement.
“You are the crazy son of my bitch!” Maksim hoots as he clasps my hand and pulls me onto the deck. As always, his comical Russian accent and mangled English make me grin. And, as always, he’s surrounded by girls.
The latest additions to his posse are bikini-clad British tourists we met at a club last night, looking to act decidedly un-British for a couple of weeks. They swarm me, wide-eyed, passing me around in a hug train.
“That’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen,” says Joanna, a statuesque blonde who’s straining the confines of her bathing suit. She’s a little unsteady on her feet, thanks to the cosmopolitan in her hand and the baking afternoon heat.
“The most incredible thing so far,” I correct her as I shrug out of the wingsuit. Underneath is a Speedo and nothing else. “Wait until later tonight.”
Her eyes run down my body and widen as they reach the bulge under my suit. She smiles.
On to the next thrill.
Sigh.
Chapter Two
2. CASSANDRA
Every instinct in me is screaming out not to do this.
I spent years training in the bowels of a faceless building in Langley to resist exactly this kind of situation. I’ve kept
my wits through sleep deprivation, pharmaceutical interrogation, physical torture. Every time, I’ve come out the other side, wiped the sweat off my brow and said: “Is that all you’ve got?”
But this is something else, something much more insidious. It comes to you as a friend, lulling you into a false sense of security. I’m here for you. I won’t hurt you. You love me.
It doesn’t love me, though.
Sure, it wants me to give in, to feel the brief surge of pleasure. It doesn’t talk about the crushing shame that follows, the hours of torment as you realize what you’ve done. That you can’t undo it, no matter how hard you try.
Do I have what it takes to resist this time? They just keep coming at me. I’ve given in every time – does it even matter any more? At this point, do I even want to resist?
That’s just it: I don’t. God help me, I don’t want to resist.
Fuck it, I tell myself, plucking the little spoon from the paper cup and sliding it into my eager mouth.
“Jesus Christ, that’s the best one so far,” I mutter through a mouthful of ginger-spiced carrot-cake ice cream. As I do, flecks of cream fly onto the lace napkin I’m holding under the treat.
Tricia Clarke folds her arms across her ample chest. “That’s the last of them,” she says. Her strangely masculine voice always sounds odd coming out of her mouth, all full lips and cherry lipstick. You might actually mistake her for a guy if you couldn’t see her Meghan Trainor body.
“Finally,” I say, placing the napkin on the counter. “I’m going to have to run a marathon to work off all of those, you crazy bitch.”
Tricia rolls her eyes. “Yeah, you should probably call the cops, the way I held that gun to your head. You know I need another set of taste buds when I’m working on new recipes. And if you want to be a partner in this thing, those taste buds, for better or worse, are going to be yours.” She sweeps her hands down her body like a game show hostess showing off a new car. “Besides, this doesn’t just happen, you know.”
We look sternly into each other’s eyes for a full second before we both lose it.
God, this feels good. Tricia and I laugh so easily together that it’s hard to believe we’ve only known each other a few months. I’ll never forget it the first time we met at yoga class: she was on the mat in front of me, doing downward dog, and our eyes met through her legs.
It was just so utterly absurd that we both burst out laughing, like we’re doing now. After class we met up for a glass of wine, and she had me in stitches.
“What if I’d farted at that exact moment?” she’d asked, wide-eyed. She was totally serious. The look on her face made me howl so hard I actually started to worry that I might wet myself.
We finally settle down and I take a deep breath to clear my head from the laughter and the sugar overload. Tricia pours us both a coffee and we sit down at a table. It’s early afternoon, just after lunch, so the shop is deserted. Business will pick up in a couple of hours as people drop in for their afternoon fixes of banana splits and root beer floats, but for now, we have Patty’s to ourselves.
“Why Patty’s?” I ask, savoring the bitterness of the coffee after the sweetness of the ice cream samples. “I mean, I get your name is Patricia, but I’ve never heard you call yourself Patty.”
“Irony,” she says. “My whole life I wanted to be called Tricia, but everyone – teachers, relatives, strangers – always called me Patty. I finally stopped answering to anything but Tricia when I was a teen. They finally got the message.”
I can relate. My given name is Cassandra, but I’ve always been Sandra. My father always told me it sounded more dignified and serious than Cassie, and he’s all about being serious.
Only one person ever called me Cassie, and I doubt I’ll ever see him again.
“I’ll tell you what: I’m going to put your preferred name on the line of ice cream,” I say, cocking an eyebrow. “How do you feel about Tricialicious?”
“I like it,” she says. “Then again, if you’re willing to drop millions into this pipe dream, you can call it Sandra’s Snatchtastic Sherbet, for all I care.”
Another laugh ambush. That’s why I love Tricia so much: she helps me decompress. Around her, it’s easy to forget about what I used to do for a living, if only just for a little while.
“That might be a little too New Yawk for the masses,” I chuckle. “Remember, we’re going to be shipping ice cream all over the country.”
“Have you got any details yet?” she asks. “I mean, if anyone can pull it off, it’s you. You’re the smartest person I’ve ever known.”
I nod, ignoring the compliment. I’ve been hearing it all my life, to the point where I don’t even hear it when people point it out. Like my red hair.
“I’ve got my eye on a factory in the Bronx,” I say. “It’s cheap and can easily be retrofitted. It’ll be tight, but it’ll work. Then we’ll have to figure out supply chain, delivery, yadda yadda.”
“And all you have to do is come up with a few million dollars in venture capital,” she says, sipping her coffee. “Piece of cake.”
“That’s going to be the easy part,” I say. “You just worry about the production side of things. We’ll have to make thousands of those little pint containers if we want to take on Ben and Jerry.”
“Pft!” she sneers. “Ben and Jerry can bite me.”
As we descend into laughter again, the money is foremost in my mind. Tricia probably thinks this is just a pipe dream, but it will be easy to get.
Easy money always comes with a price, though. And in this case, it’s about as steep as you can get. The question is, am I willing to pay it?
I have to be. I’ve come too far to back out now.
Chapter Three
3. CARSON
I’m always amazed at how hard some Europeans have to work to have a good time. I mean, three-quarters of the people on the dance floor look like they’re in the middle of a physics exam instead of gyrating to a thumping techno beat.
You’re in Milan, for crying out loud. Relax.
I suppose that’s easy for me to say as I tip the third empty bottle of ’88 Dom Perignon into the silver bucket next to our table, signaling our waitress to bring another. I never see the bills that accumulate on my platinum American Express – they go straight to accountants I’ve never met.
I’ve burned money like it’s firewood ever since I sold my company three years ago and I still haven’t even made a dent in the principal from the sale.
I did the math once: assuming I live to the age of ninety – so another sixty years – I’ll have to spend upwards of a hundred grand a day to go through all of it. Of course, the money isn’t just sitting in the bank; it’s invested all over the place, bringing in very respectable returns, so you can probably up that number to $250,000. Sure, it’s easy to spend a quarter-million dollars in one day. Anyone could do it.
But spending that much every single day for the rest of my natural life? That’s a whole other ball game.
Our server sashays over with two more bottles of champagne and places them on the table in front of Maks and me. The British girls are busy giggling and watching people on the dance floor.
The server, a black-haired woman with chestnut eyes and a neck like a swan’s, leans in close to my ear, filling my nose with some exotic floral scent. I assume that’s how she spent some of the $5,000 tip I left for her last night. Her lips tickle the skin of my earlobe.
“Compliments of the house,” she says, raising her voice despite the closeness. It’s the only way to be heard over the driving thump of the music. I smile ruefully. I’ve just been comped about $4,000 worth of booze.
Even when I try to spend it all, I can’t.
Maksim pours the contents of his bottle into the ladies’ glasses. “You pour your own, big payer,” he says to me.
“Big spender,” I correct, shaking my head.
“What is difference?” he says, consternation on his face. “All it means is same thing
.”
I chuckle.
Sometimes it irks me that he never picks up a check – it’s not like he can’t afford it, his father is a billionaire – but I never actually get mad at the guy.
One thing about Maksim Orlov: if he’s around, it’s a party. He attracts people like moths to a flame. He’s always got a grin on that swarthy, stubbly face, and he’s always up for a drink, or a concert, or a swim in the ocean, or jumping out of a plane. He probably could have joined me on my wingsuit escapade this afternoon, but he’s also incredibly lazy.
He’s also got a knack for finding the most beautiful women on the planet. Case in point, our current companions. Joanna is seated to my right, wearing a stunning black evening dress I bought for her this afternoon. At least I think I did. She accepted my credit card happily enough.
To my left is Georgia, a petite brunette with huge doe eyes, in a tank top and an ivory miniskirt. Emily, another blonde, is all over Maks.
Joanna leans across me to talk to Georgia. “Pinch me!” she cries.
“No, you pinch me!” comes the reply. The two giggle like fiends.
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
Joanna lays a hand on my thigh, dangerously close to my crotch. “What do you think, silly? We planned this holiday thinking we’d be staying in hostels and eating at tourist traps! Then we met you two and – well, this happened!”
Georgia leans in to flank me and claims my other thigh. “It’s like a dream!”
“Well,” I say, “if we’re all dreaming, why aren’t we in bed?”
Their eyes light up. “We thought you’d never ask!” says Joanna.
The two of them grab their purses and stand up. Emily and Maks, who are practically sitting on top of each other, look at us with matching grins.
“Have fun,” Emily coos. “We’re going to stick around a bit.”
The girls pull me up from my seat as I wave to our companions. We amble toward the door, their arms around my waist, my arms around their shoulders. My head is a little fuzzy from the champagne, but I’m well aware of where tonight is heading.