“Now, you’ve got what you came for,” she sneered at him. “Get out, or I’ll rub this on myself and claim you raped me. Got it?”
Tom stared at her, his mouth gaping. His cock still pulsed with the final shadows of the orgasm that Marilyn had taken out of him in a matter of seconds. He quickly leaned down, confused and disoriented by what had turned from a seemingly innocuous hook up to something dark and confusing, and put his shoes on. His cock was still out as he put his shirt on. He looked around confused, as if forgetting something.
I was staring at the scene before me, completely at a loss for words, fear growing in my chest.
He started to walk out, not looking at Marilyn, tucking his cock away awkwardly into his pants. He turned back to me and started to open his mouth to say something and then closed it, speechless. What was there to say?
“You’re welcome,” Marilyn mocked. As he passed her she slapped his ass and laughed meanly.
“This is so fucked up,” Tom said dazedly. He hurried out, not waiting for a response from Marilyn or me. When the front office door closed, Marilyn looked down at her hand again and a look of mild disgust adorned her face. She turned and saw my bathroom and walked in it, turning on the faucet to wash her hand.
“Men,” Marilyn said. “They’re so easy to manipulate. Well, at least most of them are. The dumb ones.”
I looked around my office and saw my purse hanging on the coat rack by the door. Inside, my cellphone sat, waiting for me to grab it and phone the police. As I got up to grab it, determined to call the cops and get Marilyn the hell out of my office after the scene I had just witnessed, she came out of the bathroom. When she looked at me, dread gripped my heart. Her face was twisted in a smile.
“Why haven’t you set me up with Leon yet?” she asked coolly.
I kept my calm. My heart raced in my chest and alarms were going off in my head. Yet I was determined not to show Marilyn. Who knows what she is capable of? Besides, I didn’t want to give her the upper-hand.
“When we had our first meeting, I was unaware of your history with Leon Christensen,” I said calmly, resorting back to my professional tone to deal with Marilyn. “I have a policy about ex’s.”
It was a lie. I had never had to have a policy about ex’s. Surprisingly, the only time that I had ever come across two people who had been involved together was on Leon’s case.
“Oh, is that so?” asked Marilyn. “Is it also a policy of yours to fuck your clients?”
A pang of shock hit my heart. I tried to maintain composure, but when she smiled I knew that she had seen how much it had unsettled me. I said nothing in response, choosing to give her a defiant stare instead. My phone hung in the purse only a few feet away.
“Marilyn, you need to get out of my office before I call the cops. You’ve already broken in here and then you threatened Tom,” I said defiantly.
“I ‘threatened’ him, huh? Looks to me like I gave him what he wanted,” Marilyn said, brushing her hands together as if his ejaculate was still on her hands.
“You threatened him with a false rape accusation!”
“Whatever, he needed to get out of here so we could talk. I had to be quick on my toes. A man with a hard-on is even harder to reason with than a normal guy. So I pulled out some, let’s say, leverage from him,” Marilyn said, laughing. “I didn’t make you jealous, did I?”
It became clear to me that Marilyn had deliberately made Tom come in an effort to get back at me in some small way for sleeping with Leon. I doubt she thought he was anything more than a random hookup, but she had marked her territory in some weird way by making him come in front of me, her eyes locked on me the entire time.
“Marilyn, I’m never going to arrange a meeting with Leon. Please know that. Your relationship with Leon has absolutely nothing to do with me. I was simply hired to find him a match.”
“You know, I bet Leon enjoyed fucking you like the little slut you are,” Marilyn hissed. “But don’t think for a second it bothers me. I actually would have liked to watch. Maybe he would have let me humiliate you a little bit. It wouldn’t be the first time that Leon and I had brought toys into the bedroom. Let me ask, did you let him fuck your ass? You look the type.”
I put on my shoes, carefully and slowly, not letting Marilyn’s words affect me. Her voice was vitriolic, but still playful. It was disturbing to hear her talk so candidly about using women as toys to serve her and Leon. When I met her gaze, her eyes burned with fury.
“Well, I’ll take your silence as a yes then. He really does like that naughty little act, especially when it’s painful. But I doubt it was painful for a seasoned pro like you,” Marilyn said, taking a seat behind my desk. “Although when me and Leon get back together, I don’t think we’ll be letting you enter our bedroom. You sleep around too much, who knows what diseases your dirty little cunt would bring with it, and I’m not about to watch Leon fuck some diseased slut.”
Marilyn took a long draft of the whiskey.
“Marilyn, you know you and Leon are finished. You need to get over it. Find some other guy to be your Dom,” I said.
Marilyn laughed harshly. She finished the drink and slammed the glass down on the desk hard enough to crack the glass down the side. I jumped back, startled.
“I don’t think so,” Marilyn said. “Leon might have his fun with little playthings like you, but he’s mine. We’re connected.”
I thought of Leon’s eyes. Those eyes that connected our souls together. A pang of sadness struck at me and I felt the gravity pulling me down. The fear that was growing in the room disappeared for a moment as I thought of the night where something had passed between Leon and I. There was no way that anything remotely like that had ever passed between Marilyn and Leon, despite whatever she thought.
I realized with a sudden clarity that I missed Leon Christensen.
“You need to leave, now,” I said. “Get out or I’m calling the police.”
“Wrong again,” Marilyn said.
She reached into her purse and pulled something out. My eyes widened when I saw what she was pointing at me. A wicked smile spread from ear to ear on Marilyn’s face. Her eyes were dead and without emotion. My heart pounded in my chest and my muscles froze, unable to move.
I stared into the hollow metal barrel pointed directly at my face.
Chapter 17
In the movies, when someone points a gun at the heroine, she’s unafraid. Maybe a fight breaks out and she’s able to wrestle away the gun or avoid the bullets. This wasn’t a movie. In real life, when someone points a gun at you, your heart stops.
“We were meant to be together!” Marilyn yelled, rising from the desk.
I stammered over my words, forcing something out that would hopefully save me.
“Calm down,” I said. It was the best I could do but it was still lame. I was pretty sure we were past the point of Marilyn calming down. “You don’t need the gun, Marilyn. I’ll do whatever you want.”
“We are bound together! Don’t you see that, you stupid whore?!” Marilyn yelled, pointing the gun at my head, her eyes growing wide and bloodshot. I raised my hands and backed into the couch.
“Yes!” I cried out. “I see, I see!”
I thought of a show that I had seen on PBS once about dogs and how they sensed fear. Fear was mistaken for aggression and only exacerbated a bad situation. I needed to control myself and bring the intensity of the room down. If I started to cry or freaked out, who knew what Marilyn would do.
“Ok,” I said. “We can talk if you just point the gun away from me. Is that acceptable?” I asked calmly. My heart slammed against my chest and sweat poured down my back in cold waves of panic, but my voice was a steady dam against my emotion.
Marilyn rested back against my desk and lowered the gun. She still held it in her hand, her finger on the trigger, but it was pointed down to the floor.
“Thank you,” I said soothingly. The situation had escalated into an entirely new thing and I n
eeded to act accordingly. I had no idea how I was going to maneuver myself out of this mess, but I felt confident that I could. There had to be a way. Marilyn was a torrent of emotion, but I was sure that she had not come here to kill me.
“Call Leon,” Marilyn said coldly. “Make him come here.”
“Marilyn,” I said calmly. “I can’t make Leon come here. He’s not even a client of mine anymore. He won’t come.”
Marilyn’s brow darkened as her eyebrows lowered. The gun twitched in her hand and my eyes fixated on it. If I could get her to put the gun away, everything would be so much better. Her hand gripped the gun even tighter and I saw the veins bulge out of her hand. When I looked up to her face, she was as dark as night.
“Liar,” she hissed. “You’re a lying whore. So you just fuck him and then kick him to the curb?”
I paused, considering whether to tell her everything that had happened. Would it upset her further or make her sympathize with me? I had no idea, but I didn’t want to give her the slightest idea that I was lying.
“No, it’s the truth. I went to his office this morning and he was with another woman,” I admitted. The pain of the morning wormed its way into my voice and Marilyn’s face lightened slightly when she looked at me. She believed me. Good.
“So what?” asked Marilyn harshly. She studied me as I searched for a response and then her eyes opened wide as she began to understand. “You have feelings for him, don’t you?”
“No, it’s not that at all,” I said quickly. Too quickly.
A dark shadow cast down over Marilyn’s face as her brow dropped again. There was no confusing the look on her face; she was angry.
“So, you fall for my Leon and then when you see him enjoying himself, you get all hurt and run off crying like some little schoolgirl? Did you really think he could ever care for you? I doubt he even finds you attractive. Leon likes to seduce. You were probably just a little practice for him.”
I barely registered her insults. The tone of her voice was startling. While she dismissed me as nothing, she was becoming visibly upset. I tried not to look at the gun but my eyes defied me and stole a quick glance. Marilyn had raised it to her waist as she crossed her arms. The gun pointed towards the door, towards my purse.
“No,” I said. “I never thought he had feelings for me. How could he have?” I said, pandering to her. I needed her to believe that I agreed with her, pride be damned. Marilyn was obviously more unstable than even Leon had thought and now I was face to face with this woman’s wrath.
Marilyn said nothing. She studied me with eyes that looked as if they were staring at something far away and alien. I felt like her eyes were dissecting me, trying to see inside me. My skin crawled as those eyes focused in on me, but I refused to turn away.
“Call him,” Marilyn said.
“Marilyn,” I began.
“Call him now!” Marilyn screamed. Her voice broke as she yelled. Rage twisted her face into a distorted parody of the beautiful girl she normally was. My hands began to shake and now I was running on pure adrenaline.
“Alright, let me get my phone,” I said. I got up from the couch and walked over to the door, slowly.
The exit was agonizingly close. I fought back the urge to just run away, but Marilyn was far too unpredictable for that. If I scared her or made her feel threatened, she might do something crazy like shoot me. I would play it cool.
“We were made for each other. Two sides of the same coin. Puzzle pieces joined together. I am the bottom, he is the top. Do you get it?” Marilyn asked wildly. Her voice was becoming more frantic now, more manic. Every word seemed to pulse with a nervous energy that made the sweat on my skin grow cold with fear. Marilyn was breaking down in front of me with a gun in her hand that she had already pointed at me once.
“Yes,” I said, my hands fumbling. I reached into my purse and pulled out the phone. Marilyn was holding the gun up again, pointing it at me. I noticed the gun was shaking slightly.
I pressed the button on my phone to bring it to life and tried my best to steady my hand. I closed my eyes for a moment and breathed in deeply, calming myself. I felt the weight on my shoulders lift slightly when I opened my eyes. Don’t panic. Breathe. Everything is going to be fine. I entered the code on the front screen of my phone and brought up the keypad on the digital screen.
“I’m calling him now. Can you stop pointing the gun at me?” I asked calmly. Marilyn lowered the gun, but it was still pointing at me vaguely, albeit not at any vital organs.
I began to bring up Leon’s contact information and then thought it over. If I called Leon and convinced him to come over, what would Marilyn do? She wouldn’t hurt him, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t hurt me to prove a point to him. I canceled looking up his info and dialed 911 slowly, trying to mock that I was pressing other numbers as well. When the phone began to ring, I lifted it to my ear.
“Give me that,” Marilyn hissed as she walked over and grabbed the phone out of my hand.
Marilyn stared at me and then I saw rage boil over her like a volcano erupting with hot magma. Her voice became sweet as honey when she spoke, a stark contrast to how she actually felt.
“Oh my god! I’m so sorry! I meant to call a friend.”
“Help me! I’m being—” I yelled, but it was too late. Marilyn had hung up the phone and cut me off by throwing it at me. I raised my arms defensively and the phone bounced off my forearms.
The gun was raised, pointing at me. Before I had time to think, before I had time to even move, I heard Marilyn yell something. Then the sound of the gunshot drowned out her voice. Everything fell away and the world turned dark.
Chapter 18
The music was still on. I could hear a band playing soft, sensual harmonies, the kind of harmonies you could enjoy while having sex with a stranger and a few drinks in you. Thoughts came to me from far away, much like the music, and I wondered where I was.
A searing pain was tearing through my chest, burning a hole through me. It felt like I had been stabbed with a hot iron that entered my chest and exited through my back shoulder. Everything hurt. My head hurt. My chest screamed out with pain. Even my legs seemed to whine with a sore throb. But it was all far away. Distant.
I thought I could hear sirens in the distance, but that could have easily just been the music.
Everything was so distant, so far away, that it was as if it was happening on a television with low volume. When I tried to move myself, nothing seemed to work. All the energy was sucked out of me.
My hand was wet with some fluid. My eyes slowly looked around, noticing the bright lights that were fuzzy and clouded through my blurred vision. I blinked a few times, trying to clear my eyes, but I could only get glimpses of images. When my sight finally found my wet hand, red filled my vision. I managed to open and close my hand slowly, and I saw that red dripped from it as I did so.
Blood, I thought from far away. My hand is covered in blood. But whose blood?
The sirens, eons away, grew louder. I heard doors opening and the sounds of footsteps coming closer, but all I could do was open and close my hand dripping with red. Pairs of legs moved past my vision and surrounded me.
“Dispatch, we’ve got a gunshot victim at...” a man’s voice said before it faded out into a steady hum. Darkness enveloped my vision and I fought it, trying to stay awake, but to no use.
I could see Marilyn standing in front of me. I wanted to run but my legs wouldn’t move. The sound of the gun shot through the office like a crack of lightning and a searing pain tore through me. Blood pooling out across my dress as I dropped to the ground. On my knees, struggling to stay up, I heard Marilyn run out of the office. My phone had been so far away, impossibly far away. I had reached for it before collapsing entirely.
“Jesus, she’s fucking lucky that the woman upstairs heard the shot. If not for that who knows what...”
Hot, white pain exploded through my shoulder. My eyes shot open and then closed again. I was being li
fted up and whatever surface I was on jostled me. It felt like a sword of acid tearing through my shoulder, masticating the flesh and burning my skin. Everything was still far away, but the pain had been the exception. The pain had become my world.
Bright lights blinded my eyes. They would only open a crack, but I could see that I was somewhere new. The office was completely gone. Everything was washed white with light and people moved frantically around me. I tried to lift my head and a strap rubbed around my forehead.
“Ma'am,” a woman’s voice said. “You have to stay still, we’re getting you to a hospital. You’ve had a really close call and you’re not out of the woods yet.”
I opened my mouth to speak and no words would come out. I let out a sigh and closed my mouth, my tongue dry and uncomfortable.
The pain was unbearable. If I had any energy, I would have writhed and screamed. It was as if the bullet was continuously tearing through me, eating through the flesh as it entered and exited me. Tears fell down the sides of my face and I closed my eyes, praying to pass out again. Even if I died, it would be better than this pain.
A prick of a needle injecting into my arm caused me to try to open my eyes again, but they seemed to fight me. Soon, a pleasant warmth flowed up my arm and wrapped itself around the pain in my chest and shoulder. It rained down heaven on the white hot pain and it dropped away, a distant memory of the excruciating wound that once was. A fuzziness blanketed my head and I let out a long sigh of relief.
Morphine, I thought, the word coming out of the fog of darkness. Or maybe I had heard somebody say it. Either way, I began to praise the word in my mind, not sure as to what it even really meant. All I knew is that the warmth was associated with the morphine. Morphine was the salvation from the horror of my pain.
A calm, loving embrace of darkness touched me and I welcomed its reprieve. The lights of the ambulance faded away and I was left floating alone, floating down an unknown road to an unknown destination. A woman had told me we were going to a hospital. In the warm darkness, that sounded just fine to me.
Billionaire Erotic Romance Boxed Set: 7 Steamy Full-Length Novels Page 42