by L. D. Davis
“Well…I’m not yours!” I snapped. “Besides, you don’t do relationships anyway.”
“I didn’t say it was a commitment.” He scowled. “I just said I consider you mine.”
“Are you fucking serious?” I laughed humorously. “You consider me to be yours while you’re still picking up women?”
He shifted from one foot to the other. “What are you talking about?”
“Oh, just because you’re not doing it in front of me, doesn’t mean that it’s not happening. You’re Alden Breck. You have a sea monster to feed. Oh, don’t look at me like that. Last night, you spent the evening at a club stuffing your tongue into a Main Line socialite’s mouth, and no doubt stuffing your one-eyed monster into her after that. Philly’s a small town, Alden, don’t look so surprised that I know.”
The image of Alden slobbering into the woman’s mouth was all over social media when I woke up early in the morning. It had irritated me and put me in a bad mood for the first part of my day. It wasn’t until I saw the helicopter that I had forgotten about why I was so pissy, but now I remembered and I was ready to throw something at his head.
He let out a loud growl of exasperation as he stormed toward the door.
“Get whatever dress you want then!”
“I will!”
He slammed the door and I went back behind the curtain and tried to slam that shut as well.
***
Alden and I barely spoke for the rest of the day. I left the shop with three dresses. To be spiteful, I tried to pay for them with my credit card, but he scowled at me and knocked my hand away. In the end, I was glad I didn’t pay for them because together they cost almost as much as a new car.
A limo took us to an apartment that Alden owned in the city. Lunch was already waiting for us, spread out across a table that was situated in front of a wall of glass that had a beautiful view of the busy city and Central Park. Alden spent the entire meal on the phone with his manager and publicist. I didn’t really pay attention to what he was talking about, but every now and then, he’d raise his voice to get his point across. When I finished eating, I left him at the table and just stood at the window for a long time, watching people move along with their lives. I wondered if any of their lives had changed as quickly and significantly as mine had.
When I got tired of standing at the window daydreaming about other peoples’ lives, I walked around the living area. I looked at the guitars hanging on the walls, the artwork, and pictures of Alden with various influential people. I stared a long time at a picture of him with a gorgeous Hollywood starlet he had rumored to spend a lot of time with a couple of years ago. I wondered how far their relationship had gone. Was it just sex? Just friends? Or friends with sex? Or were they in a full-on committed relationship that he no doubt destroyed when he was unable to keep his dick in his pants?
“Noa,” Alden called my name.
I turned around. He had the phone on his shoulder, obviously still busy with work. He held something out to me. I took the credit card but looked at it with confusion.
“Al will drive you to Jimmy Choo’s. They know you’re coming.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “But I can buy my own shoes.” I tried to pass the card back to him, but he refused to take it.
“Victoria’s Secret is also expecting you, just tell them your name,” he said with a straight face. “When you’re all finished, just hang on to the card and I’ll see you in a couple of days. Al will drive you back home.”
I could practically feel the coolness radiating off his body. Alden was looking right at me, but he was withdrawn. There was a wall between us that had not been there before, at least on his side. I didn’t understand it, and I especially didn’t understand why it troubled me so much.
This is your own fault. You just let him walk right in with all of his smooth talking.
I didn’t say anything to him. I pushed the card into my back pocket and moved away from him. I got my coat out of the closet by the door and put it on.
“Noa,” he called my name as I pulled open the door, but I kept walking and pulled it shut behind me, even though he was still calling me.
I punched the button for the elevator as Alden came out of the apartment, but to my surprise the cab doors slid open and someone was already inside.
“Oh!” the beautiful starlet started as she stepped off the elevator and almost ran into me. “I didn’t realize anyone else was up here.” Trisha, I remembered. Her name was Trisha Livingston. Her gorgeous red hair was swept up away from her creamy, lightly freckled skin, and even under her winter coat, I could see how curvy her body was. She reminded me a lot of the actress Scarlett Johansson. Beautiful and timeless.
She walked over to Alden who was now looking very tired as he put a hand in his hair as he looked from Trisha and back to me.
“No one else is up here,” I said dryly and stepped onto the elevator.
“Noa,” he said, moving toward me. He stood on the threshold, holding the doors open with one hand.
“The elevator won’t move until the doors are closed. The doors won’t close until you move,” I said in a very tight voice.
I could hear someone yelling on the phone and Trisha was calling for him. But he stood there, staring at me as if he wanted to say something.
I reached into my back pocket as I said, “Seems like you’re wanted by everyone – but me.” I pushed the card into the front pocket of his jeans. As he reached for it, the doors started to close and I pushed him backward. The last thing I saw before the doors closed was his startled expression.
When I got home from New York that night, I found my brother, Warren, sitting on my couch. I nearly had a heart attack before I realized who it was. I still had nightmares from time to time that I would come home and find Larson sitting in my living room or hiding in my bedroom closet.
“I almost pepper sprayed your face,” I told him as I released the trigger on the spray and dropped my keys onto the hook. “What are you doing here?”
“One of my friends shared a video on my Facebook page today. Would you like to guess the content of the video?”
I didn’t have to guess. I knew. I just didn’t know where and when the video was shot. It could have been anywhere – the museum, the grocery store, any of the places we’d gone to eat.
“I’m sorry,” I said, wincing. “I was going to tell you soon.”
“Tell me which part exactly? That you’re screwing one of the biggest womanizers on the planet or that he’s whisking you away for two months.”
“I’m not—”
He cut me off when he stood and held up a hand. Then he marched over to the small closet by the door and threw it open. He gestured madly inside.
“It’s a closet,” I said slowly.
“Come see what is in the closet, Noa,” he demanded.
Confused and curious, I joined him at the entrance of the closet. What I found there were the dresses I had just tried on hours ago. They were each inside a thick, black garment bag, but I knew what they were without having to investigate. I was wondering how the hell the dresses made it into the closet when Warren spoke up.
“Some guy just dropped these off a little while ago. Why is he buying you dresses if you’re not fucking him or going with him to the galas?”
I closed the closet door. I really didn’t know if I was still going with Alden to the events. He had not called me after I left his apartment, which was just as well. I got way too close to him in too little time.
“I really don’t know if I’m going with him,” I told Warren as he followed me back into the living room.
I stretched out onto the couch as he stood over me, looking pissed off. “You’re the girl that got trampled at his concert, aren’t you?” he demanded.
“Yes, I’m the girl that got trampled at the Friction concert. You’ve figured it out. You should be a detective. But like, somewhere else.”
“Noa,” he said tiredly, wiping at his eyes. He m
ust have come to my place right after work. He was still wearing his work clothes, minus the suit jacket, which was strewn over the back of the couch, and his tie was loosened around his neck.
“It’s not a big deal. I’m fine,” I said.
He looked at my hands, eyeing the bruised fingers. I still had a small bruise right at my hairline on my head, and by the way I was laying, it was obvious I was in some amount of pain.
“Kristy said your ribs were badly bruised,” he said.
“I told you I’m fine,” I said irritably.
“Noa, why don’t you ever tell me when you’re hurt?” Warren asked. I could tell he wasn’t just thinking about recent days, but he was thinking about Larson and my teenage years when I was still at home with our mom.
“You can’t change what happened in the past by knowing every time I fall down and scrape my knee in the present, Warren,” I said and closed my eyes.
“You kept me in the dark every time, Noa,” he said as if he still couldn’t believe it. “For some reason, you thought you had to endure it all alone.”
“Warren, you left me alone with her,” I flared. I had told Alden it wasn’t Warren’s fault, but there was this part of me that I didn’t like to see, this part of me that blamed him.
“I was just a kid myself, Noa, but if you had just come to me—”
“Forget it,” I said in exasperation. “Can we please move forward?”
“Not until you promise to talk to me when you’re hurting or when someone is hurting you.”
I was hurting right then, and not just physically. I didn’t know how to tell him about my current pain because I couldn’t really describe it myself.
“I promise,” I said, more or less to get him out.
“I guess I’ll be talking to you very soon then, because Alden Breck is definitely going to make you hurt,” he said dryly.
I felt his lips on my forehead and then he was gone, leaving me alone with my thoughts and the pain I was unwilling to admit I had.
***
Fifteen minutes after my brother left, someone knocked on my door. I was tempted to ignore it, but the person on the other side was persistent. The knocking wasn’t only annoying me, but it was most likely annoying my neighbors. I got up and looked through the peephole. Alden stood on the other side, looking right into it.
“How long are you going to keep me waiting out here, Little One?” he asked in a slightly irritated tone.
“How much time you got?” I countered.
“Just open the door so I can properly apologize,” he commanded. “I’m giving you the opportunity to open the door yourself.”
“If I don’t, are you going to break it down?” I asked doubtfully.
“No, I will use this,” Alden said and held a key up to the peephole.
“Impossible,” I gasped. “You never had the opportunity to copy my house key.”
Alden rolled his eyes and muttered something about me doing shit the hard way. “Always have to be complicated,” he said.
I looked down at the doorknob when I heard a click. I took a few steps back and watched with astonishment as Alden let himself into my apartment.
“Where did you get that!” I demanded, reaching for the key in his hand.
“You’d be surprised what fame and fortune can get you, Little Noa,” he said as he locked the door behind him.
I crossed my arms defiantly and narrowed my eyes at him. “Maybe I don’t want you here.”
“I’m me,” he said, as he stepped toward me. “Why wouldn’t you want me here?”
I backed away from him, rolling my eyes. “What are you doing here anyway? I thought you had business and Trisha to take care of.”
“Are you jealous?” he asked with a smirk.
“Not on your life,” I said, trying to push him away from me, but he continued to advance and I continued to walk backward to get away from him.
“Why are you running from me,” he sang.
“You’re unpredictable. Why wouldn’t I run from you?”
“For the love of all that’s good in this world!” Alden yelled and grabbed my shoulders to keep me still. “Stop moving! I don’t feel like chasing you around this apartment.”
“Then don’t, you ass-hat. Go home or to your hotel room or to hell.”
“Are you going to fucking let me say I’m sorry or what?” Alden snapped, shaking me lightly.
“Well, get it done and over with so I can go on with my life. I have plans tonight,” I said, raising my head a little higher. I so didn’t have plans, but he didn’t need to know that.
Alden growled in frustration and looked up at the ceiling for a moment.
“You are exasperating, Noa Harlow Eddington.”
“You don’t exactly set the bar for non-exasperating personalities,” I snapped.
He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again – holy shit – his eyes were – he was…smoldering.
I’d written about smoldering gazes, and I always thought that I imagined them just right, just how they would be, but I was totally unprepared for the severity of a real life smolder. I felt as if his hazel eyes were radiating pure, lava-level heat. If I had been wearing pearls, I would have clutched the hell out of them.
“I apologize for my cold behavior earlier today,” Alden said in a quiet voice.
“Okay. Apology accepted. Thank you. See you tomorrow,” I said as I tried to get away from this hot, smoldering man.
“I’m not finished,” he growled. He snaked an arm around my waist and roughly pulled my body against his.
Oh boy.
“You can’t finish from…say the armchair while I sit on the couch?” I asked in a small voice. My torso ached from being forced against his body, but I hardly noticed because I could feel how hard his body was. And not just the sea serpent – which seemed to be waking up – but also the muscles in his abs and chest were hard.
“No, I can’t,” he scowled. “Stop being difficult, will you?”
I sighed noisily. “Carry on,” I said in a bored tone, looking at his shoulder instead of his face.
He tilted my head up to look at him. “That’s better,” he murmured and then stroked my cheek.
Aw, shit.
“You have such beautiful eyes, Little Noa,” Alden murmured.
I rolled my “beautiful eyes” and said, “Yeah, okay. Plain brown eyes are so attractive.”
“Your eyes aren’t brown,” Alden said disdainfully. “They’re like…burgundy, with little specs of green.”
“I think your contacts are drying up or something. You can’t see right,” I said.
I squeaked when Alden suddenly picked me up in his arms and carried me into my bedroom. He stood me up in front of my large floor-mirror and turned on every light in the room. He moved the mirror to a brighter spot and then pulled me over. He stood behind me, his body flush with mine as his hands rested on my hips.
“Look at those eyes, Noa,” he whispered in my ear. “Move closer and really look at those eyes.”
“This is ridiculous,” I started to argue, but Alden shut me down.
“Look!” he commanded and moved me forward until my toes touched the mirror.
I sighed and moved forward to look at my damn eyes. At first, I didn’t see anything more remarkable than my usual plain brown eyes. I looked a little closer, and then closer still until I saw what he saw. Little dashes of dark green against dark, dark burgundy.
“Oh,” I gasped, widening my eyes.
“You see it now?”
“I do.” I frowned. “I never noticed before. How could I not have known?”
“I’m under the impression that you don’t really look at yourself – I mean really look at yourself.”
I stood upright again and met his eyes in the mirror. “I never wanted to,” I admitted quietly. Then hastily added, “Besides, it’s not like there was much to stare at. I don’t think I’m ugly or repulsive, but I’m not in the same league as Kristy�
�or Trisha.”
I hated that I sounded jealous when I said her name.
“Baby,” Alden whispered, his lips moving softly against my ear. “You’re above them all.”
My brow creased with irritation. “Now you’re just fucking with my head, Alden.” I began to pull away from him, but he held me there.
“Noa, look at yourself. Really look at yourself. What do you see?”
With narrowed eyes, I looked at my reflection in the mirror.
“I see a vertically challenged woman with plain brown hair, okay boobs, and I can stand to lose a few pounds.”
Alden looked at my reflection’s face with what could have been…sadness? Pity?
“Hasn’t anyone ever told you that you’re beautiful, Noa?”
Yep, it’s pity.
I shrugged. “Not with any sincerity.”
Right, because telling me I was beautiful while I was sucking a cock or after leaving bruises on my face just didn’t make the statement ring true.
Frustrated, humiliated, and anxious, I shrugged him off me. “I’m so over this. I thought you came here to apologize, not to have a heart-to-heart about my body image.”
When I tried to move away again, Alden held me there with his hands on my hips. Once I was still again, his hands moved to the top of my shirt and he started to unbutton it.
“What the hell are you doing?” I asked with my eyes wide and my heart pounding. I slapped at his hands. “Stop. Stop!”
Alden’s hands stilled on my shirt as he watched me carefully. I was breathing heavily and my pulse beat wildly in my throat.
“I’m showing you your body,” he said gently. “You need to see yourself how I see you, how countless of other men probably see you. I promise that I’m not going to hurt you. Don’t be afraid of me, Noa,” he whispered close to my ear. “Please, don’t ever be afraid of me. I’ll never hurt you. Do you trust me?”
I stared at him in the looking glass. I shouldn’t trust the pelvic thrusting, womanizing, arrogant son of a bitch, but I did. There was no explanation for it, but I felt it in my chest.