"You look nervous," he says, smoothly. Is he slipping into character already? I can't tell. My heart is racing and my mouth is starting to go dry.
"I'm fine," I say. "It's just weird. Hearing somebody read what I wrote. Kind of embarrassing, you know?"
He shrugs. "I guess. Don't see why you should be embarrassed. People love this shit, don't they?" Realizing what he just said, he makes a little face. "Not...you know, not shit like it's shit. Shit like stuff. Sorry."
"I know what you meant," I say, absently, folding my arms across my body and rubbing my elbow lightly. It's a nervous habit I've been doing for ages, but I never noticed until somebody pointed it out. Now I'm painfully aware of it, but that doesn't mean I can stop.
He sighs a little, smiling ruefully. "I'm guessing Landon Steele doesn't accidentally insult women, does he?"
"Nope." I manage a small smile in return. "If he insults them, it's on purpose."
Josh is laughing. "You know, before this, I actually thought I understood women." He gives a helpless shrug. "If you can believe that."
"We're just people." I'm feeling a little defensive, a little raw, and I swear it's not just because I'm nervous. But the nervousness doesn't help. "Treat us like human beings, you won't have a problem."
He looks a little irritated, his forehead knotting slightly between the eyebrows. "I know that," he says. "But this guy doesn't exactly do that, does he?" For emphasis, he waves the copy of my book that he's holding. Seduced by Mr. Steele.
"He absolutely treats them like people," I insist. "He just understands that their experiences aren't going to be exactly the same as his."
Josh cocks his head slightly. "Okay, okay," he says, lifting his hands, palms outwards. "So, do you want to do this, or what?"
I don't. I don't at all, but I can't think of one single good reason with him standing in front of me, watching expectantly.
"Let me just get another copy," I mumble, pushing past him to go to my office. "I don't exactly have my own writing memorized."
I stop by the bathroom on my way, shutting myself inside and splashing some cold water on my face. Keep it together, Tuggey. You're a mess.
My reflection looks exactly how I feel. Cheeks flushed, eyes wide and a little too bright, even my hair's starting to come out of its bun, frizzing out at the sides, as if my over-active brain waves are actually making it stand on end.
I smooth it down, letting out a long sigh. After a few deep breaths, I head into my office and grab another proof copy of Seduced. For a moment, I glance longingly at the full-size window in there. I could easily climb out and escape this skin-crawling situation.
You're losing your mind. This is your place. Just tell him to leave, tell him some kind of emergency came up.
Yeah, right. He'll know. He'll know you chickened out, because he makes you all flustered. Is that the kind of impression you want to leave this guy with?
It doesn't matter. I could tell him to leave, and he'd go, and I'd probably never even see him again. But that still doesn't solve my problem.
I need a Landon Steele, and this guy is the best candidate I'm going to find. Guys like Landon just don't walk around in real life. And even if they did, I wouldn't want one of those types playing the part. Landon's a loose canon. He's too arrogant. He'd never take direction like Josh will.
Then again, right now, Josh is calling the shots. Isn't he? That's not really something I'm used to, even though it's apparently my secret fantasy. That's the conflict - I guess part of me secretly wants to be under someone's authority, but only someone who knows me inside and out. Someone like Landon - because I created him, so he knows exactly what I want. He can give it to me, without me bearing the burden of feeling selfish or greedy.
Being in charge of my own writing, my own business, calling the shots every moment of every day...it's exhausting. Completely and utterly draining. Okay, I'll admit it: I'd love to submit to someone. But I'd have to trust them. And that's the rub, isn't it?
In my head, I've created the perfect Dom. One who can never exist. And it's going to be humiliating to hear someone reading those words, acting out those actions that reflect everything I want. Everything I can never have.
I've got to do this. And I've got to stop being such a drama queen.
I step out into the hallway, only to find Josh peeking around the corner.
Peeking isn't exactly the right word. He's leaning casually against the edge of the wall, looking at me. "Stage fright? Don't worry, it happens to the best of us." There's that smug smile again. "But it's just you and me. No need to be nervous."
"Well, I just don't want to mess you up." I'm just babbling, with hardly any idea of what words are coming out of my mouth. "If I don't give you something good to bounce off of, well, that's not a very fair judgment, is it?"
"Don't worry about that." He beckons me into the living room. "Come on, let's do this. Don't want to lose the magic."
I give him a look. "You sound like a douchebag," I tell him, because he does.
"Great!" he enthuses, cracking the book open. I wince as he puts a crease through the spine; I was going to ask for that back. "That's what I'm going for."
I'm fighting an increasingly heavy sense of trepidation. He doesn't get Landon at all. The subtleties are completely lost on him, and I don't know how to break through that initial impression.
"Actually, I think this would be easier in your office," he says, frowning a little. "I'm supposed to be sitting at a desk."
Oh, shit.
I know exactly what scene he wants to do. And there's no way. There's just no way.
"Um, I don't think that's the best scene to practice on," I blurt out, clutching my copy of Seduced to my chest. "We should really...go with something a little bit lighter, right? Landon's not really acting himself in that scene. We really need to get a good sense for the character and..."
I stare at him, helplessly. He has to know what he's doing to me. He has to notice how much I'm blushing and stammering, like a damn schoolgirl.
"Look, Kimberly." He smiles warmly, taking a step towards me. "Relax. There's nothing to be embarrassed about."
Fine. Fine.
"My office is over here," I say, pushing past him once again to hurry down the hallway. I can feel his eyes burning into my back. "It's kind of a mess, though."
"That's fine. I'll use my imagination." He walks right over to my desk like he owns the place, and plops down in my chair. I'm fuming, but I don't know why. I never considered myself to be particularly territorial. I'm trying to remember if another human being has ever been in here.
I guess not. No wonder I feel so off-balance.
"Step into my office, Ms. Denecour."
Oh, shit. Shit. He's starting. He's doing it right now, and I'm Ms. Denecour. It's been a few years since I wrote this scene, but it's not like I can exactly forget what happens to the trembling, virginal Ms. Denecour. My readers wouldn't let me, anyway. I get at least one email a week talking about how hot it is.
He's still smirking, and it's not right. That's not what Landon would do. He's serious, smoldering. He doesn't think it's funny when a woman blushes and quivers under his stare.
I can give him notes later. I step into the room, acting just like the timid ingénue I'm supposed to be, without any effort at all.
I glance down at the book spread open in my hands.
"I'm sorry about the mess, Mr. Steele. I promise it won't happen again."
He tuts, shaking his head. "How can you possibly promise that, Ms. Denecour? That you'll never make another mistake?"
My own words tell me that Lily Denecour goes as white as her name, all the blood draining from her face. I don't know how to make that happen, but I suddenly feel cold all over, so maybe it's happening anyway.
"I'm sorry," I whisper. "It's just something people say. I mean...I'll try very hard to make sure it never happens again."
He crooks an eyebrow. That smile just won't go away, and when he talks,
he's trying too hard to sound country-club-posh. I've never been that specific about the details of Mr. Steele's fortune, just that he's very comfortable. Independently wealthy, you might say. But I've always believed him to be a self-made man. Not some whiny pissant kid born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
"I understand that, Ms. Denecour," he says. "Lily. May I call you Lily?"
I look down at the book again, even though I don't really need to. "I suppose you can call me whatever you want to, sir. You're my boss."
He chuckles darkly. "I may hold you to that, Lily. Be careful what you wish for."
My heart pounds against my ribs. How far is he going to take this, exactly? We both know how this scene ends, and I know he's not going to do that. I know it, the same way I knew that good-looking kid with the loud dirt bike in my high school drama class was not going to kiss me, in our practice scene. Even though the stage directions called for it, even though we were playing John and Elizabeth Proctor, so it didn't exactly need to be a passionate tongue-battle. Just a chaste peck. But I was too unappealing, even for that.
And in this case, we're not just talking about kissing.
I have to remind myself that Lily doesn't know any of that. Lily is naive, but at the same time, she's driven by nameless desires she can't understand.
She takes a step forward. I take a step forward. I try to forget about Josh and just see Mr. Steele, my boss, who's upset that I broke a whole pot of coffee in front of the senior partners.
Lily expects punishment. She's mortified to have disappointed her boss. She can't possibly know what's coming next, the turn of events that's going to change her life forever.
"I'm so sorry, Mr. Steele." I don't have to look at the book, this time. "I...I didn't get enough sleep last night."
He sneers at me. "Up too late last night with your boyfriend?"
The line's not quite right, and the delivery - no, it shouldn't be so disdainful. He's toying with her, but he's flirting, not actually trying to intimidate or humiliate her. He doesn't need to. She's frightened of him, because of what he can do to her. Though she certainly doesn't know the full extent of that yet.
He knows full well that she doesn't have a boyfriend. But he wants her to say it.
"I don't have a boyfriend." My voice sounds too flat and detached, but there's nothing I can do about it now.
"You don't have a boyfriend?" he echoes. "Oh, Lily, I think you're lying to me. There's no need to pretend. Not with me. I won't judge you, even if you are living in sin."
Mr. Steele is making a joke, but Josh doesn't seem to understand that. The whole point of the line is to make him say the word sin, to hear it dripping from his lips like a promise.
"He's her boss, not her pastor," I hear myself blurt out.
Josh looks up, his eyes momentarily cloudy with confusion. "That's...sorry?"
"I don't mean to break character," I say, a little too loudly, forcefully, like I'm trying to highlight the difference between me and Lily. "But you're talking to me...to her, like you actually disapprove of what she's doing. You need to be more playful, less overtly menacing. Lily's supposed to be intimidated because she's confronting feelings she doesn't really understand, not because he's actually scolding her."
"So he doesn't care about the coffee?" Josh glances down at the book. "Because he seemed pretty pissed when it happened."
"It's just an excuse to talk to her." I fold my arms across my chest, feeling defensive again. "Of course he was annoyed, but he's over it."
"He's her boss, he doesn't need an excuse."
"But this way, he's tipping the scales even more in his favor. She feels like she needs to make something up to him, so she won't..."
"Call Human Resources?" Josh suggests, flipping through the pages. "I gotta admit this is a pretty hot fantasy, but I don't think anybody's gonna be using this book in sexual harassment classes."
"I didn't exactly invent this kind of thing, you know." I'm frowning at him, simultaneously grateful and incredibly fucking upset that the mood is now broken. "This is just a safe way for women to explore a fantasy that would be a terrible idea in real life."
"I'm not judging," says Josh, sounding incredibly judgmental. "But you're not exactly convincing me that this guy should come across as anything other than super fucking creepy."
"Just take my word for it." I'm quickly running out of patience. Hell, I knew this scene wasn't really going anywhere. I knew it wasn't actually going to end with something that would help to dissipate the tension that keeps winding itself tighter and tighter in my body. But this is just awful. I hate having to defend my work, and I particularly hate feeling judged by some tattooed wanna-be bad boy with a blue collar drawl. He thinks he knows everything. Probably has his "Education" status set to "School of Hard Knocks, University of Life." That's assuming social media isn't too bourgeois for him.
"Okay." He frowns down at the page. "Did you want to start over?"
"No," I blurt out. "Just pick up where we left off. Do the 'living in sin' line again."
He does, and it's still pretty far off the mark. But I just plow on forward.
"I'm not living in sin," I insist. Lily insists. It's getting more difficult to keep my own hard edges out of her lines. "Mr. Steele, are you going to fire me?"
"Lily!" he exclaims, laughing. "Of course not. I assure you, all the stories you've heard about me are greatly exaggerated."
I snort. I can't help it. The way he says I assure you is so ridiculously over-the-top, and he just doesn't sound like a guy who'd ever say that. I know that Mr. Steele's dialogue is a little stilted - it's supposed to be, and his overly-formal way of talking stands out in sharp contrast to the way he talks dirty once things start to heat up.
"What?" Josh looks offended, and he has the right to be. I feel pretty bad, now, but I can't help it. Why did I think he could play this part?
"Nothing," I insist. "Just, try to make him sound a little more natural."
"I can't," he mutters. "Nobody talks like this."
"Some people do!" Now I'm really pissed. He's been dancing around the edges of outright criticizing my writing, but now he's really stuck his foot in it. "If you have a problem with the way I write, maybe this is a bad idea."
He lets out a frustrated sigh. "I don't have a problem, I'm just saying people don't talk like this. It's not going to sound natural. That's fine, dialogue's not real speech, but if you want me to make it sound like real speech, you're gonna need some vicious editing."
"Oh, look who's the expert all of a sudden," I snap. "You sound like Eliza Fucking Doolittle."
"Right," he says, his mouth twisting. "I knew it was gonna come back around to that. Sorry I'm not high-class enough for the spank-bank of middle America's horny housewives. Can't help what I was born into, can I?"
What the fuck is he talking about?
"Plenty of women like your type," I tell him. As if he doesn't know that. But apparently, there's some confusion. "That's just not who Landon Steele is."
"Landon Steele is a fictional character." His jaw is clenched. Why the hell is he so pissed off at me? "Maybe the real-life guy behind the facade is just an average bricklayer who went to community college. You ever think of that?"
No. That doesn't work. I don't know how to start explaining it to someone who's already so judgmental of the whole thing, but I've already said that the distinction between Landon Steele, author and Landon Steele, fictional protagonist is blurry. Readers are going to think it's dishonest if the "real" Mr. Steele acts nothing like he does in the books.
I can't bring up the concept of honesty, though, because that's a whole other can of worms with Josh.
I'm biting my lip. I think it's a weak gesture and I hate it - it's something Lily would do, not me. "Do you want this part, or not?"
"I can't exactly afford to turn it down," he says, mouth twisting again.
Well. That's a ringing goddamn endorsement.
"I'm not exactly sure what we're doing h
ere," I mutter.
"Shut the door, Lily," he says. "Sit down."
I swallow hard. He's snapped back into his role like nothing, and even if it's not the role I meant for him to play, it still makes my base of my spine tingle. His eyes are stormy-dark and I find myself wanting to remind him, once again, that Mr. Steele is not angry.
But Josh is. Right now, that's all that matters.
I don't shut the door, but I do sit down.
His eyes flash like he's going to say something, but ultimately, he sticks to the script. "I take disciplinary matters very seriously, Lily. I do. I know this is just a mistake, and it could happen to anyone, so I won't fire you. But I don't want you to forget this. I want to make sure that you remember how important this is. Every little move you make represents the company. Represents me. Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir," I say, faintly. "I understand. I won't forget."
He smiles indulgently. "Oh, no, Lily. No. This is just going to be another conversation, in your mind. You might feel like it's sharp and memorable now, but it won't be. In just a few weeks' time, you'll forget. And you'll make another mistake. That's not acceptable. I have to make damn sure this sticks in your mind as something other than that time my boss got a little irritated with me." He gets up and circles around the desk, just like it says in the book. "Stand up, Lily."
Lily stands up, but it's my shaky legs that necessitate grabbing the edge of his desk - my desk - to steady myself.
"You feel guilty, don't you?" he says, softly. "Wouldn't you feel better if I helped you release some of that guilt?"
"I don't know what you mean, sir," I whisper.
"Oh, I think you do," he murmurs. "Don't you feel it? Your back is arched, you're presenting yourself to me. Just like an animal in heat."
I make a small noise of protest, and he tuts softly.
"Don't, Lily. It's nothing to be ashamed of. We're all animals. You've always found me attractive, but just now, you're really starting to think about the possibilities."
Meeting Mr. Steele Page 3