“Did you not understand what I just said? The only place I’m going is back to work. I have a lot to do.”
“Christian, this is ridiculous. This little cat and mouse game has been going on for far too long now. We’ve been in love since we were little kids. Those kinds of feelings don’t just go away.”
“Read my lips. It’s not happening.”
“You know we were supposed to be together. You know that it’s fate. I don’t know why you’re fighting this. You know that this is what’s meant to happen.”
“No, Raina, what I know is that I was very much in love with you and you shattered my heart into a million pieces in front of all our closest friends. And for what? The ring I bought you wasn’t adequate. That’s bullshit. Imagine the kind of ring I could have bought you if you would have accepted my ring and stayed with me. You weren’t interested in me when I didn’t have anything to offer you so I’m not going to be around for you now. Besides, I’m with Sarabelle and I’m happy.”
“Look, you can spend time with your precious little Sarabelle as long as you come home to me. We can have an open relationship for all I care. You can fuck her all you want as long as at the end of the day, you come home to me and then I get you all to myself.”
“I think you are fucking crazy, Raina. Maybe you need some help. The answer is no. Now get the hell out of my office. If you come back here, I’ll have you arrested for trespassing.”
CHAPTER 13
Sarabelle
It was coming up on a month since Christian and I made our relationship official. I know a month might not seem like a long time, but to me and Christian it is since I’ve never really been in a serious relationship and for him because he was always such a ladies man. Our relationship has been blossoming quite nicely, much like a beautiful flower. We have some learning to do but we’re both putting in equal effort. I have to admit, I never thought I could fall for a man like him but the truth is, I’m falling harder and faster than imagineable.
When I first started dating him, I was sure that things were going to fall apart. He was a playboy and they say a leopard never changes his spots. Christian surprised me, though. He spent as much time with me as he could and didn’t even look twice when a pretty woman crossed paths with us. When I’m with him, I feel special and wanted. That was all I could really ask for from him. I managed to pick out a few gifts for him as a small token of my appreciation of our newly found relationship; which happened to be cologne that I personally like. I placed my order, closed my laptop and went to sit on my bed with my phone so I could see what Christian was up to. Just as I slid onto my bed, my door burst open and Lexi came flying through it. She was in tears and crying hysterically.
“Oh my God, Lexi. Are you okay? What happened?”
She tried to reply but I couldn’t understand a single word she was telling me. Each syllable was separated by her sucking in air as she mumbled with a shaky voice. The sounds I could hear didn’t make any logical sense as words.
“You sit here for just a second and I’ll get you all fixed up,” I said to her.
I ran into the bathroom as quickly as I could and grabbed a rag from the towel closet. I ran it under cold water from the faucet before wringing it out. Finally, I took it back into my bedroom and placed it around Lexi’s neck. Sitting on my bed, I had my sister lay her head on my lap and played with her hair while she did her best to try to calm down. I didn’t think she was ever going to stop crying but she eventually managed to collect herself.
“I did a bad thing Sarabelle. I did a really, really horrible thing,” she said between sobs.
“What happened sissy? What did you do?”
“It’s so bad that I don’t even wanna say. I’m so ashamed of myself.”
“Lexi, it’s just you and me in here and you know I’m not going to judge you. You can tell me anything.”
“I slept with someone I had no business sleeping with. I don’t even know why I did it. Why do I always make bad decisions?”
“Who did you sleep with?” I asked, ready to choke her if she dared to utter Christian’s name.
“It was Kade. I slept with Kade Nichols. God, what the fuck is wrong with me?”
“There’s nothing wrong with you,” I lied. “Not everyone can make the right decision every time.”
That’s what I told her but those were not the thoughts I was having in my head. I wondered what in the hell was wrong with her? Of all the people she could have chosen to sleep with, why would she want Kade Nichols? I know she would never admit it but I was sure that she did it as a shot at me. If anyone—especially me—is ever happier than her, she is not above doing whatever she has to do to change things. I’m sure that she had witnessed how happy Christian had been making me so she decided to get back at me by sleeping with Kade. She must have been doing it to hurt me. Why else would she choose to fuck a guy who was hellbent on sexually assaulting me just a couple months earlier? At the same time, the way she was acting had me confused. If that was her reasoning for sleeping with him, why was she coming to me and using me as a shoulder to cry on? Typically, if she did something out of spite or to hurt someone, she would be the first person to flaunt it in their face. Showing remorse was not something she typically did. There had to be more to the story than she was telling me. I wasn’t going to pry. I knew that I’d get the rest of the story if I just kept my mouth shut and I was right. Almost as if on cue, she started telling me more.
“While I was at his place, he must have taken his cell phone out at some point. As I was getting ready to come home, he pulled it out and showed me the naked photos he had been taking of me through the night. Now he says he’s going to show them to everyone unless we give him what he wants?”
“What does he want? What do you have to give him to stop him from showing those pictures to everyone? Does he want money? He should have plenty of his own.”
“No, he doesn’t want money. What he wants is something I can’t provide for him.”
“So tell me what he wants and I’ll see if I can get it.”
“No, Sarabelle, you don’t get it. He doesn’t want anything you can buy. He wants you.”
“He wants me? What do you mean he wants me?”
“I mean he wants you. He wants you to sleep with him. He said that’s the only way he won’t put my pictures out all over the web.”
“What the fuck? You know that’s never going to happen, right?”
“Will you at least think about it? Do you know how hard it’s going to be on me if the world sees those pictures?”
“Do you know how hard it would be on my relationship to sleep with someone who isn’t the man I’m the relationship with? Or how hard it would be for me to have sex with a man who tried to rape me and almost succeeded?”
“Oh right, your relationship. Is that even real? It seems so odd that Christian Wilde would be in a committed relationship all of a sudden. It’s even weirder that he chose you to be in one with.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? You don’t think I’m good enough to be with him?”
“No, it’s just that he typically likes his women a little more experienced.”
“Okay, we are not talking about my relationship right now. Let’s focus on stopping Kade from putting those pictures up without me sleeping with him. Why don’t you text him and set up a time and place for me to meet him? I’ll get this taken care of for you one way or another and no, neither of those ways includes fucking the man.”
Later that evening, I met Kade in the gazebo outside our house. I had tried repeatedly to get him to meet me in a public place but he refused to go for it. That should have set off alarm bells right there but this was something I had to do for my sister, regardless of why she had chosen to sleep with him in the first place.
When I walked over to the gazebo, Kade had this smug look on his face that made me want to slap him. As I got closer, he held out his arms as if he was expecting a hug from me. He was crazy if he thought t
hat was going to happen.
“So Lexi told me the two of you hooked up,” I stated matter of factly.
“Yep, we sure did.”
“I also understand that you took some photographs of her without her permission?”
“Look, we’re not here to talk about who had permission to do what. She was at my house, in my bed and willing to do what bad girls do to make men happy. I don’t see what snapping a few pictures to commemorate the moment hurts.”
“It doesn’t hurt anything as long as you keep the pictures to yourself. However, she tells me that you are threatening to share the pictures if your demands aren’t met.”
“Damn Sarabelle, you make me seem like some sort of monster or something.”
“What is it that you want Kade?”
“I want you, Sarabelle. I was just using Lexi to get to you. You know you’ve always been the twin that I really want.”
“If I sleep with you, will you finally let this go? Will you leave me and my sister alone if I give you what you want?”
“Yeah, give me what I want and I’ll leave you both alone.”
“Okay, but first let me see your phone. I have to make sure these pictures even exist before I agree to this.”
He unlocked his phone and handed it to me. “Don’t even think about deleting the photos. You can try but it won’t work,” he warned me. Just to see if he was being honest with me, I attempted to secretly delete the first picture of Lexi I found on the phone and it wouldn’t work. A message popped up saying This photo has been saved to an external memory source. Please delete using its software. I am a little more savvy when it comes to electronics than Kade gave me credit for. I knew that the message meant that, instead of being saved to the phone, the pictures were being saved to an external memory card. I also knew that all I had to do was press on the memory card on the side of the phone and it would pop right out. That’s exactly what I did. Even after ejecting it, you could barely tell it was removed.
“You know what Kade, you can do whatever you want. I’m not going to sleep with you.”
“What do you mean you’re not going to have sex with me? Don’t you know how much damage I can do to your sister?”
“You can do whatever you want. I don’t care anymore. I have a boyfriend and I’m not going to ruin my relationship with a lowlife piece of shit like you. Take your phone and pictures and get the fuck off my property.”
Kade started to walk towards me as I handed his phone back to him. I had experienced how pushy he could be the night of the gala and knew there wouldn’t be anyone around to save me if he decided to force himself on me. Shaking, I turned around and started to make my way back into my house as fast as my legs would take. I was so scared he would notice that the memory card was no longer in his phone and sprint after me but he never did. I glanced back over my shoulder in time to see him getting into his car and speeding away.
Up in my bedroom, I tossed the memory on the bed in front of my sister.
“There’s all your pictures. Do whatever you want with them.”
“Holy shit, you really did it? You fucked Kade?”
“Hell no I didn’t sleep with him. I told him I told him that I needed to see the pictures and then slid that out of his phone. He has no clue it’s gone. He’s probably plotting how he’s going to spread them all across the web and he’s gonna be pissed when he gets home and finds out they’re not there anymore.”
At this point, most sisters would have been extremely appreciative of what I had done for them. Not mine. Lexi seemed disappointed that this hadn’t led to more drama. She sat the memory card on her desk and slipped on her headphones without saying another word to me.
Even though nothing had happened, I felt pretty shaken up by the whole ordeal. I felt like I needed to tell Christian but this wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have over the phone with him. This was something that would be better in person, and by telling him about the whole fiasco, I could finally put Kade in the past; everything about him.
CHAPTER 14
Christian
It had been nearly a week since I had last seen Sarabelle and I needed a fix badly. I was surprised when she called me and told me she wanted to meet at a bar so we could have a few drinks. That was very much out of character for her. The only time I’ve ever seen her drink was when we were out for dinner or sitting around my house. Even then, she only sipped on a glass or two of wine and that was it. While I was surprised that we were going out to a bar, I was excited to see if she might loosen up and let her hair down a little bit.
As soon as I pulled up outside the bar, I knew I was going to be out of my element. I could hear the loud music booming out on the street and the people walking around outside didn’t look like the type of people I would normally associate with. It wasn’t a bad part of town or anything of the sort. These were mostly college kids looking to party.
Walking into the bar, I was able to spot Sarabelle instantly. She was sitting at the bar, downing a shot. She slammed the shot glass down on the bar, ordered another, and turned around just in time to see me walk in.
“Make that two,” she yelled out to the bartender before jumping off the stool, running over to me and jumping into my arms.
“I missed you so much,” she said before kissing me. I could taste and smell the Jack Daniels on her breath.
“Well, hello to you too. It looks like you’ve managed to get this party started without me,” I joked.
“Yeah, I couldn’t wait. Come on, I ordered one for you too.”
Sarabelle grabbed my hand as we walked back to the bar where two shots of whiskey were waiting for us. We picked them up, tapped them together and downed them. The look on her face was priceless as her nose scrunched up and her eyes closed shut. It was obvious she didn’t like the taste of whiskey, yet it didn’t stop her from hammering the shots down.
“How many of these have you had already?”
“That was number four. You have some catching up to do.”
I nodded my head and held up two fingers towards the bartender, who promptly arrived with two more shots, both of which I sucked down.
“Hey, one of those were mine,” Sarabelle whined jokingly.
“Sorry. You told me I had to catch up.”
We sat at the bar drinking and having a good time. She had managed to get quite tipsy so I began ordering for us. Instead of shots, I started ordering beers for me and girlie drinks for her. In between each drink I ordered her I made her drink a glass of water. As the night went on, she started to get blunt with me, which was a side of her I was not used to seeing.
“You know, I’ve been thinking about going back to your place all week.”
“Have you now? Sounds like someone has missed me.”
“Get over yourself, Christian. I’m sure you’ve thought about me too.”
“Maybe a little.”
“Maybe a little? What is that supposed to mean?”
“I’m kidding. You know I’ve thought about you a lot.”
“Good, because if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be getting all of this tonight,” she said as she showcased her body with her hand as if it were on display.
“If you’ve been thinking about me so much, why don’t we get out of here and you can tell me what you’ve been thinking about.”
“I don’t think so. I think we should just stay here until they close.”
I knew she wasn’t serious but I decided to play along. I stood up from the bar and grabbed her hand. After looking around the room to make sure nobody was watching us, I guided her hand to my crotch, letting her feel the bulge inside it. Here eyes widened.
“Maybe we should take care of the tab and get out of here after all,” she said.
I closed the tab that she had started and we made our way out to the parking lot. She had taken a cab to the bar so I was her ride for the evening. When we reached my car, I pressed her up against it and put my hand on her left cheek.
“There’s no
way that I could never not be thinking about you. If you think otherwise, you’re crazy,” I told her as I pressed my lips to hers. She didn’t have much to say after that. She simply smiled as I opened the car door for her.
Back at my place, she opened my fridge and was looking to see what I had to drink. She settled on a Smirnoff Ice and reached inside to grab it. As she closed the door, I walked up behind her and pressed her body against her, kissing the side of her neck and making my way up to her ear. I took her earlobe into my mouth and nibbled on it gently. I could feel her knees becoming weak as she started to moan. She turned around to face me and kissed me hard.
Good Girls Do It Well (A Bad Boy Billionaire Romance) Page 9