Love Unbound: A Valentine's Day Romance Anthology

by Dee, Cassandra

  But there was no sign of the alpha male among the proud parents, the smirking siblings. There was no dark, looming figure, no gleam of blue eyes, no raffishly ruffled hair. Among the chattering crowds, there was no huge, masculine frame, ready to catch me up into an embrace, or even to share an awkward hug. I was alone, just like always.

  So heart heavy, I turned within myself. Slowly but surely, my mind shuttered as I consciously tried to block out thoughts of Tristan and our wild weekend, to focus on the life ahead. There was no sense in mooning over the impossible. I’m an eighteen year-old girl with the world at my feet, a ton of opportunities, about to enter the most exciting phase of my life. So why wasn’t I more excited?

  Because despite the happy smiles, the perfect clothes and sassy figure, life has gone dim. The fact is that I still crave Tristan, miss Mr. Marks so much that my bones ache, and every night alone in my dorm bed is a painful reminder of what we had, his big frame loving me, owning me completely. Those blue eyes saw deep into my soul, and I really thought we had a connection. But clearly, that’s not true. I was nothing more than a dust mite to the big man, a fun weekend fling with a nubile female body, and although reality hurts, life has to move on. There’s no other way.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Tristan

  A year later …

  “Sir, good to see you again,” bowed Bowles, my butler.

  “Thanks, it’s been a while,” I rumbled, stepping into the foyer of the New Jersey mansion. It was quiet, but then I expected it to be.

  I haven’t been back in a year. I took off after my illicit weekend with Daisy, realizing that I was playing with fire, that we were both going to get burned to cinders, going up in flames. Because Daisy was gorgeous, funny, smart, and ambitious. She was everything I needed, everything I’d ever wanted. But the fucking problem was me, an older man cum lech who used that nubile body every which way when the sweet teen didn’t know better.

  Because sure, she was eighteen but that hardly excused things. I’d been ordained by her mom to take care of her, make sure the girl didn’t get into trouble. But instead, I’d been the cause of the trouble, popping her daughter’s cherries, violating all my promises. For one illicit weekend, one incredible, once-in-a-lifetime occasion, I let myself revel in the taboo, take what I’d wanted, however I wanted.

  And it had gotten out of hand. True, Daisy and I had been careful – to the outside world we were just a guardian and ward on a college tour, visiting my alma mater, nothing special. But holy shit, it was so much more than a simple tour of the campus. I showed Daisy the Labyrinth, the down and dirty nook in the library where couples got it on, taking her cunt, her ass, her virginity, her everything.

  And after it was done, she was so good, so tasty that I needed more. I fucking went ape-shit, putting it in her ass, making her cry out and scream, forcing her to fuck a dildo for crying out loud. Who does that to a virgin? Who the fuck? Me, that’s who, and I hated myself for it. I’m so depraved, such a fucking user, and I’d taken that girl for all she was worth, sating myself, watching that pink pussy pulse around my cock again and again.

  But I couldn’t live with it. I’d violated my sacred oath to Carolyn, I was the monster in the closet, I’d made promises and instead, taken from the vulnerable, the needy. And fuck, but as CEO of Marks Holdings, I’m responsible for a vast portfolio of publications including publications like Sixteen, a teen rag for adolescent girls. What would the subscriber base say if it got out that I was banging my ward? That the guy who literally founded Everyday Dads and put Rachel Lewis Living, Healthful Life!, and Moms and Tots on newsstands was now drilling an eighteen year-old night after night, parting those cunt lips for countless sperm deposits? It was fucking bad business and there are shareholders to keep happy, a business to run.

  So I took off, leaving for Europe, managing my conglomerate long-distance. My staff was aghast at first, stuttering and grasping.

  “Mr. Marks, we need you in New York. Who’s going to preside over the board meeting?”

  “Mr. Marks, we’re looking at three executive hires, we need your input at the senior level.”

  “Mr. Marks, we need you for the quarterly earnings call. It can’t happen without you.”

  We need, we need, we need. I ignored it and as expected, the problems magically resolved themselves. Or maybe the problems had never been problems to begin with, they’d merely been the nervous blabberings of annoying underlings.

  So yeah, things worked out business-wise, I’ve still got Marks Holdings under control, our shit is selling like hotcakes, money’s pouring in in waves, making me a very rich man.

  Except that I’ve been miserable here in Europe, missing my little girl. I’ve tried my best to keep my mind off her, taking out a bunch of highly eligible women, supermodels, PR chicks, marketing babes, all of them six feet tall in stilettos and cocktail dresses, glossy hair swinging over their shoulders, stick thin with calculating smiles.

  But I’ve felt absolutely nothing. I smile, flashing a grin for the cameras, my arm around their waists, but I literally can’t focus. The women jabber on, their voices running like water through my head.

  “Tristan,” the latest one purred, hanging off my arm.

  “Hmm?” I replied, turning distractedly to her. What was her name again? Oh right, Jenny. I’d agreed to be seen with Jenny because she had brown hair, the waves rippling under the light, reminding me of another woman, a sweet, sassy girl.

  But just as she was about to speak, a photographer ran up and snapped a pic, the flash bright in our faces. As if on cue, Jenny struck a pose, jutting her hip out, throwing herself into my arms, and I reflexively caught the woman as her body pressed tight to mine, not an inch of daylight between us. But as soon as it was over, I pushed away, disgusted. The female was so thin, so frail, all skin and bones, like I’d been hugging a skeleton and not a ripe, curvy female. What I wouldn’t have given at that moment to feel Daisy’s huge tits against me, those pillows molded against my chest, that sassy ass wiggling and jiggling. Fuck my life, dreaming about my ward even while on date with an international supermodel. I was so fucked.

  But work has brought me back to New York now. Marks Holdings is in talks to buy PrettyGirl, a “gentleman’s magazine” of the best sort, the kind where girls go at it triple-X style, baring everything, pushing everything and anything into their cunnies. Naw, this wasn’t soft-core stuff, not like Playboy where you see breasts but no ass. This was no-holds-barred real shit, skimming the line of vulgarity, dicks out, tits out, cocks in cunny.

  And fuck, but sex sells, bringing in shitloads of moolah, far more than Sixteen or Moms and Tots, our current cash cows. It’s not PrettyGirl, the magazine itself, but rather the on-line website. People purchase subscriptions to PrettyGirl.com for fifty bucks a month and there were currently twenty million subscribers. That’s one hundred million in cash per month. Count it, folks. One hundred million dollars. Per month. And that didn’t even include the live streams, the on-air talk show, the “talent” that circled the world dancing at various clubs. We were talking some serious bucks, my empire would expand dramatically with the acquisition of this beauty.

  But PrettyGirl’s an odd one. It’s still owned by the original founder, Jerry Echo, a sleazy douchebag of a dude, seventy and constantly wandering around Hollywood with three blonde starlets on his arm. He’s fucking disgusting, there’s no way that guy can get it up without Viagra, but hey, to each his own and he’s built an empire on his image, living the life in a silk bathrobe and wheelchair.

  And Jerry wants to make sure his baby is sold to the right buyer. Old fuck Echo wants to make sure that Marks Holdings has a niche for the magazine, that we’re going to market it well, that we’re going to keep feeding his pet project, max out its value even after he hands over the reins. And so I’ve got to change my image. Gone are the days of Tristan Marks, alpha billionaire, model-dater, serial womanizer, the man with the Midas touch. Hell, that was the old shit, way too tam
e for Jerry’s tastes. He wants someone in his image, someone who’s just as nasty, dating girls decades younger, sweet and nubile, sassy and fun, and I know just how to get it. I’m re-branding myself as Tristan Marks, billionaire alpha … and the asshole who seduced his innocent ward.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Daisy

  Life at school has been fun. Browning is in downtown Manhattan and there’s no campus per se. Instead, the administration refers to the city as our campus, all of New York at our fingertips, Lincoln Center, countless museums, heck even the High Line and Freedom Tower as outstanding examples of art and architecture, intellectual stimulation for the mind.

  And it’s been fun so far. I’m enrolled in a bunch of writing classes, I figure I’ll need them if I become a lawyer, and I’ve started volunteering with Legal Aid at the Courthouse. It’s not much, I do intake for prospective clients, taking down names, scanning IDs, making sure that all the folders are organized, all the forms where they need to be. And I like it, it’s nice to work with folks who appreciate you, the clients happy to have someone to listen, a sympathetic ear even if I can’t do much else.

  More importantly, it helps me take my mind of Tristan. Can you believe it? It’s been a year since I’ve seen my guardian and I’m still thinking about the blasted man. My mind likes to wander and at the most inopportune times, I’ll start daydreaming again, how his big body blocked out the light, becoming my everything, my all. Working with clients at the clinic is the only way for me to push him out of my mind, even momentarily, so it’s become a safe haven of sorts, a place where I can get away.

  So on Thursday, just as usual, I slung my bag over my shoulder. Shit! I was a little late already, drop-in hours for the clinic started at 4 p.m. and it was already 3:45. I’d have to book it to get there in time, huffing and puffing, scrambling like mad. And when I arrived, it was business as usual. There was a huge room of people waiting to be seen, already filling out the requisite paperwork, hoping against hope that a pro bono lawyer would be able to help them today. I eyed the crowd, stomach sinking. The room was too packed, too filled, and I could already tell that some of these folks were going to leave disappointed, there simply wasn’t enough time.

  So I dropped my bag and scooped up a pile of fresh intake forms, ready to input them into the computer when suddenly a big hand covered mine. I shivered sensuously for a moment, hopes rising but then it turned into a shudder of disgust when I saw who it was.

  “Hi Darren,” I said, trying to pull my hand out from under his discreetly. Darren was the head attorney here, handsome with an aquiline profile, thick brown hair and heavy-framed hipster glasses. I should have been excited at his touch but instead only revulsion ran through me. Darren was an asshole through and through, the kind that was mean to poor people.

  “Hey Daisy, you wanna help me with this client?” he asked, breath hot on my face. “Millicent Chalmers is her name, I think you’ve met her before.”

  I stood still, trying not to look repulsed. I didn’t want to spend time with Darren, but I did want to see Millicent. I love working with people and Miss Millie is one of my favorite clients, an older lady who was being sued by her credit card company for unpaid charges. We were helping her fight the claims, arguing that she’d never been properly served, that the credit card company didn’t have sufficient documentation, using every legal maneuver in the book.

  So I jumped up and followed Darren into a private meeting room, greeting Miss Millie with a warm hello. The old lady was cute, her grey hair with the slightest tinge of purple, her housedress a faded blue floral accented by a pair of bright blue shoes.

  “Oh dear,” she began, “I’m afraid they came to my apartment demanding money again, pounding on my door at midnight.”

  I gasped.

  “They did? The credit card company’s not supposed to do that, that’s harassment!” I said outraged.

  And what followed was a litany of borderline stalking by the folks at the credit card company, they were so bent on shaking Miss Millie down for a measly fifty dollar overcharge.

  The meeting was productive, filled with real action steps to benefit Miss Millie, but everything about Darren turned me off. Sure, his legal advice was sound but he acted like he was working at a law firm instead of Legal Aid. For example, his shiny silver watch gleamed under the fluorescent lights of the courthouse, a fifteen thousand dollar stunner, and his briefcase made of the softest calf leather, so smooth that it almost sparkled, nary a scratch nor wrinkle marring the surface. And those glasses? Well I could see the logo “Prada” inscribed on the sides, the trappings of a rich man. Our fearless leader didn’t care to hide his wealth, not even from our impoverished clients.

  But even worse was Darren’s demeanor. Taking a job working with the destitute means that you have to be sensitive to their needs, to their outlook, their station in life. But unfortunately, instead of being kind, open and thoughtful, Darren was strangely abrupt, acting like he was too good to be there. For example, when the appointment was winding down, Miss Millicent wanted to reminisce about her long-dead husband, a fighter pilot from World War One. I listened, genuinely interested, a smile on my face, nodding softly, laughing as she regaled us with her tales. After all, Miss Millie probably didn’t have many people to talk to and I was happy to listen.

  But Darren wasn’t having it. Instead, he stood up abruptly and held out his hand.

  “Millicent, thank you for coming by today, I’m so happy we could help you,” he boomed. “Now if you don’t mind …”

  Miss Millie looked surprised, she’d been in the middle of describing how she and her husband met as teens in the Bronx.

  “But, but ...” she stuttered.

  “See you next time,” Darren dismissed her with a cold nod. I was about to intervene, to protest that I loved listening to Miss Millie’s stories but the elderly lady was already getting up, leaning on her walker and hobbling towards the door.

  “Of course, of course,” she wheezed, looking at us with gentle blue eyes. Oh gosh, her cataracts were really bad now and I hoped she’d be able to get them checked out. “You young folks take care,” she said, shuffling slowly away.

  Darren plopped down with a huge sigh, exhaling pompously.

  “I swear Daisy, these people just want to prattle on and on and on. Can’t they tell that my time is precious? I’ve got two hours to see a million clients, I can’t be chit-chatting about random stuff that has nothing to do with the case,” he complained.

  And I tried to be understanding.

  “I get what you’re saying but Miss Millie is alone a lot, she doesn’t have much family. Surely five minutes wouldn’t make a difference,” I began hesitantly.

  But Darren wasn’t having it.

  “Five minutes!” he said scornfully. “In five minutes, I could see another client, my time’s too precious,” he snorted, adjusting his glasses.

  And I was silent because what Darren was saying was true to an extent. We were horribly understaffed, there were far too few pro bono lawyers available, and yes, if one more person could be helped, that would be ideal. But I still valued a personal connection. We’re humans who care about others, not just robots in a corporate setting, and a little chitchat helps the clients see us as people and not machines.

  But what could I do? As a volunteer intern, I could hardly tell the head honcho that I disagreed with his approach to the job, that I thought he was a mean mofo. So in the interest of self-preservation, my words remained unsaid. Despite my boss’s crass tactics and bad attitude, the position was a good one and I could still make a difference in my own small way.

  But Darren evidently had other thoughts for me that night. As I packed up my book bag, the last of the clients gone, the smarmy man strode over to me, looking me up and down. His eyes crawled over my figure and self-consciously I pulled my sweater down, only to have the move back-fire. The gesture highlighted my huge tits, the way the Double D’s swelled beautifully under the soft pink wo
ol.

  “Need a ride?” he asked casually, eyes glued to my chest

  I shook my head.

  “No, no thanks, I’ll get back on my own,” I said with a fake smile. “See you next week!”

  But Darren wasn’t taking no for an answer.

  “We’re in the Bronx right now, it’s not safe for a girl to take the train all the way back to Lower Manhattan by herself. I’ll give you a ride,” he said peremptorily, “It’s not a big deal, lighten up.”

  And I hesitated for a moment, torn. It’s true the Bronx isn’t exactly the safest area. I needed to walk through a couple semi-sketchy blocks to the subway, and it was already getting dark. But if I accepted the ride, I’d have to be in a small space with Darren, the tiny confines of his Miata. Could I handle it? I shook my head, scolding myself. Even if I hated his personality, it was only ten minutes. Better than potentially being mugged.

  So I hopped in the car, holding my backpack over my lap protectively, making idle chitchat as we whizzed down the freeway. And when we pulled up to my building I was about to jump out with nothing more than a nice smile and “thank you,” but to my horror, there was a parking spot right in front of my building and Darren swung the tiny car in.

  “Wha-what are you doing?” I asked, trying to sound casual, hiding my horror.

  “I thought I’d come up, maybe talk over some clients with you,” he said smoothly, face impassive. “I think you have a lot of potential as an attorney, a sharp legal mind, a thirst for knowledge.”

  Bullshit. Darren was joshing me, he wanted to come up and steal a quick kiss, maybe do some necking, which roiled my stomach. I wanted no part of this guy. But how could I refuse? Here was my boss offering to talk with me about career development, I’d look like an idiot if I didn’t agree.