by Paris Rose
* * *
The CAVS game was spectacular. We sat courtside with the other VIPs. I had never had such good seats. It was an amazing and exhilarating experience. A few people stopped Trevor for pictures and autographs, but it wasn’t intrusive. Mrs. Dunaway and I bonded more than I expected. She seemed to relax after she had a few drinks. She liked that I still worked for a living, instead of expecting to be taken care of by her billionaire son. She seemed to respect and admire my ambition. And she told me she had faith that one day I would realize my vision of having my own entertainment news show.
Despite the fact that she was a bit tightly wound, I liked her “dream big” attitude. And I could tell that she loved Trevor and Heath with all she had. I was actually starting to like Mrs. Dunaway, but she made me feel uneasy when she glared at me, every time I jumped up and cheered with the guys when we scored. We won the game with a three-point shot in the last thirty seconds of the fourth quarter. Trevor and I went wild and so did Heath. But Mrs. Dunaway just sat there looking at us as if we had lost our minds. I guess live sports aren’t for everyone.
The Dunaways threw a party for Christmas Eve and a good time was had by all. Heath and Contessa Dunaway were clearly the proverbial Joneses that everyone wished that they could keep up with. They had a long marriage, thriving careers, and a successful son. And if they could possibly be any more perfect, they also knew how to throw a great party. I admired Mrs. Dunaway’s organization and hosting skills, and I loved watching Heath work the room. He was just as much a star as Trevor, even though he wasn’t famous. Aside from Trevor and I being forced to sleep in separate rooms, it was shaping up to be a good holiday week.
Trevor gave me over a dozen limited edition vinyl records, a record player, and state of the art headphones for Christmas. It was one of the greatest gifts I have ever received. I have always loved music, and I was excited to have some of the legends on vinyl. He said he already owned everything he could ever imagine wanting, so he insisted that I not get him anything. But I surprised him with a few gifts anyway. I got him some Under Armour workout gear, two Brooks Brothers’ ties, and a flask with his initials engraved on it. The Dunaways exchanged a whole department store worth of luxury gifts. I guess that’s what happens on Christmas amongst millionaire parents and their billionaire sons. Even though Trevor and I were getting along amazingly well and the Dunaways were being friendly enough, I was still out of my element. I felt like I was some girl Trevor picked up from the opposite side of the tracks. I was having a decent time, but I was relieved when Christmas was over and it was almost time to go home. That is until I remembered that I had to make my decision about the contract in less than a week.
Both Heath and Contessa had to work the day after Christmas, so we decided to get a hotel for our last night in Cleveland. We had dinner at Nighttown, a really cool jazz bar on the east side, then we had our driver take us across town to the trendy west side bars. Both Trevor and I drank quite a bit at Velvet, a really high end speakeasy. The drinks were of such high quality, at times I forgot I was drinking alcohol. I couldn’t taste my rum at all, but I certainly felt it. We shut the bar down, and we didn’t make it back to the town car until two hours after last call. They kept the bar open late for Trevor. It was exciting to be with someone that had that kind of pull.
I welcomed the dim lighting inside the town car. I crawled inside and immediately leaned back and closed my eyes. My head was spinning, and my eyes were sensitive to light. Trevor always held his liquor well, but tonight his cheeks were rosy and his eyes were glazed over. I could tell he had a few drinks too many. He slid in next to me and placed his hand on my thigh. His touch made me feel warm and tingly. He reached over, grabbed my chin, and turned my head so that I was facing him.
“Giavanna, look at me.” I slowly opened my eyes and gazed at Trevor. I felt like I was in a dream. My lips curled into an involuntary smile. Trevor was captivating, even when I was practically seeing double.
“I’m looking, Trevor.” I giggled.
“Don’t laugh. Be serious. I have something important I want to say.”
“Okay, I’m serious.” I straightened my shoulders and put on an exaggerated serious face as I stifled another giggle. I wondered what Trevor could have to say that was so important at three in the morning.
Trevor gazed at me. “I want you to know I care about you more than I am capable of showing. Being with you is quite literally the best thing that has ever happened to me. You make me forget who I am. Before we met, I was this fatally flawed tortured artist. Now I’m somebody else. I think I really see a future with you Giavanna.” Trevor put his arm around me and pulled me in close. I could tell that he was completely inebriated because he rarely opened up like this. My heart fluttered and my eyes welled with tears of joy. Maybe Trevor was capable of having a normal relationship after all. “Giavanna, don’t cry. Why are you crying?”
“I don’t know. I’m just so happy right now. You make me so happy, Trevor. I hope that we can make this work without the contract,” I mumbled.
Trevor’s jaw tightened. “Hmm…I don’t know about that, Giavanna. I want you to be mine so bad. I need to have you as my sub.” He caressed my cheek with the back of his hand. “I would be so good to you, Giavanna. You could move in with me in L.A. and let me take care of your every, want, need, and desire. I would spoil you forever Giavanna, as long as you obeyed me. And I’d make you come so hard every night that you’d be begging to do as I say.” Trevor’s eyes flickered with a dark desire. For some reason his words both aroused and frightened me at the same time.
“Trevor Dunaway, my beautiful boyfriend…” I spoke slowly as I struggled not to slur my words. I was having trouble stringing together a coherent thought. “Beautiful Trevor…so gorgeous…so brilliant, why do you have these dark desires?” I reached up and softly touched his face as I looked deep into his eyes. He looked open and vulnerable. I could tell I had caught him off guard.
“Because I’ve been through a lot of shit, baby, and it’s the only way I know how to cope. I try to hold it together when I’m with you, but I’m constantly fighting to keep certain things from coming to the surface. The only time I can stop fighting myself is when I’m in a committed Dominant/submissive relationship. Otherwise, it’s a constant battle.” He took my hand and softly rubbed it against his cheek and across his lips, before interlocking his fingers with mine. “I’ve been to hell and back. I’ve lived nightmares and faced demons. There are many things about me I don’t want you to know, Giavanna.” Trevor spoke quietly. We were sitting so closely, I could see his eyes glisten even in the dim lighting.
“Tell me baby, you can talk to me. I want to know what you’ve been through. Talk to me, I’m here,” I prodded softly.
He bit his bottom lip and averted his eyes. When he finally looked up at me, I saw a deep sense of pain all over his face. “You really want to know my story?”
“Yes, I want to finally know who you really are and how you came to be that person.” I gazed at him affectionately. I was eager to learn more about him.
He looked down as he spoke. “Not that many people know that much about me. I am very careful to control what goes out in the media. I worked with a team of publicists to handcraft my personal image. Even when seemingly bad news comes out, I’m usually behind those stories, too. I’m really good at covering up the parts of my life that I really don’t want anyone to see. I’m fortunate enough that I have the means to thoroughly guard my privacy.”
“Yes, I know. I’m your girlfriend, and I can’t really say that I know you all that well.” He grimaced. I think my comment made him feel bad.
“Well, here’s what you need to know. This is the first time I’ve ever talked about my past to anyone, and I intend on it being the last.” He shifted his weight and took a deep breath before continuing to speak. “There are three women who made me the man that I am today—my mother, Contessa—my first and only true love, Sasha—and my first sub, Angel. Angel is
the woman who saved me from the path of self-destruction I was on, and that’s how I got involved in the BDSM lifestyle.”
In my mind, I had already decided I didn’t like Angel. I imagined her as some trashy slut that lured Trevor into the darkness. I hated her on one hand, but deep inside, I knew there had to be something special about her if she was one of the three most influential women in Trevor’s life. I decided to listen with an open mind. I made a mental note not to judge any of the women from his past. They were just that, the past—I was the only woman in his present and future.
“What do you mean the path of self-destruction? What exactly did Angel save you from?” I asked quietly as I leaned in closer to hear what he was about to say.
He sighed and looked away. “Even though I’m drunk out of my mind, it’s still really hard for me to talk about this. But I’ll try only because you asked.”
“Thank you, Trevor. I really appreciate your willingness to open up to me.” I squeezed his thigh.
“So, Sasha, my first love…I met her in high school. We were both the misfits of the neighborhood. Both of us were picked on and bullied every day because we dressed in dark clothes, dyed our hair, and loved hard rock music. Neither one of us really had any friends, so we decided to team up and be lonely together, so it wouldn’t be so bad.” He smiled at the memory. “We spent every day together from the first day that we met. I found out she had the same dysfunctional family background that I had so that brought us even closer to each other.” I furrowed my brow as I tried to make sense of what he was saying. His family wasn’t the least bit dysfunctional. They were nothing short of perfect. I made a mental note to ask him what he meant later. “Sasha was my best friend,” he continued. “We shared a lot of firsts together… I even lost my virginity to her.” He spoke softly. “We dated from the time I was sixteen until I was twenty-two. It was my longest and strongest relationship in history.” He bit his lip as his voice trailed off. I started to get the feeling that he was still in love with her. I felt a pang of jealousy, but at the same time, my curiosity was piqued.
I sat quietly as I waited for him to continue. When he didn’t say anything, I decided to speak up. “Why’d you guys break up?”
“We didn’t. She died of a drug overdose. I blamed myself all of these years. I really should have looked after her more. Like I said, we both had family issues, and we were both terrorized by the cookie-cutter perfect popular kids in our neighborhood, all through high school and even into college. Being with each other helped us cope, but the pain was sometimes more than either of us could bear, so we started using drugs together.” He was speaking so quietly, I had to lean in close to hear him. He silently refused to make eye contact. I had never seen him look so uneasy before. “I only used recreationally, or when I was having a particularly hard time dealing with things. But Sasha became addicted. She used almost every day. I should have been more adamant about making her quit. And I wish I would have been strong enough for her to lean on so she wouldn’t have had to turn to drugs in the first place, but I was dealing with my own shit. I probably could have saved her if I had been stronger.” His face flushed. He brought his fist to his mouth and bit down on his finger. I could tell he was on the edge of breaking down.
“Trevor, don’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault.” I caressed his bicep. I felt so much empathy for him that my eyes welled with tears. I bit my bottom lip to stop myself from crying.
“I can’t help but to blame myself. I was all she had and I failed her. After I lost her, I went completely insane. I stopped talking to my family, and I distanced myself from the few friends that I had. I was a total recluse. The only time I allowed myself to be around other people was when I was at band rehearsal or on stage performing. But even then, I was never fully there. I felt like my spirit died with Sasha. I was always high out of my mind, or just so depressed that I felt like I was sleepwalking. I was hurting so bad, and nothing I did ever made the pain go away, not women, not writing music, not performing. Nothing. The drugs kept me numb for a while, but then they eventually started to make me feel worse. There were so many times that I wanted to kill myself. I came close more than once, but I never had the guts to pull the trigger.” He inhaled sharply as he reached for my hand. I took his hand in mine and squeezed. His palm was sweaty and he felt unusually warm.
His pain made my stomach tense. I’d always sensed that he had a dark side lurking beneath the surface, but I never had any idea it was to this extent. It blew my mind that Trevor went from being addicted to drugs and on the brink of suicide to becoming a platinum recording artist and a billionaire music mogul. Maybe his past wasn’t the most flattering, but I still perceived him as a superhuman rock star god. I struggled to find words to comfort him.
“Aww Trevor, I’m so grateful that you braved through it and that you’re still here to tell me your story. I truly do believe you were put on this earth for a reason. You’ve changed the music industry. And you’ve really touched a lot of people’s lives, including mine.” I rubbed the back of his hand with my thumb.
“You know, if Angel hadn’t have saved me, I’d probably be dead now. I met her at exactly the right time. It was when I was on tour with my first real band. It had been almost two years since Sasha OD’d, and I was headed down the same path. I remember it was around the time when I first started attracting groupies. The security guards would sometimes pick a few girls to come backstage during the show, to do shots, and sometimes we’d do drugs with them. Angel stood out because I had seen her at a lot of our shows, but for some reason, she had never been backstage. The night of our Detroit show, we hosted an after party with the bands that opened for us. I got so messed up that night, I passed out. When I woke up, I was sitting in a chair on the hotel balcony, and Angel was on her knees, doing things to me that I won’t mention.” My stomach turned at the thought of another woman going down on Trevor. I looked away so he couldn’t read the jealousy on my face. The more Trevor talked, the less I liked Angel.
“When I was finally coherent, I remember her saying she was drawn to me because she sensed that I was hurting and she wanted to make me feel better. She introduced me to the BDSM lifestyle, and after we went to a few S&M parties together, she asked me to be her Dominant from that time on. I read, watched, and studied everything I could about the lifestyle, and eventually I became the ultimate Dom. Dominating and taking care of Angel gave me something to live for. I tried to give her everything I’d failed to give Sasha. And the more I controlled and disciplined her, the more at peace with myself I became. There was something about having total control over another human being that gave me strength. Having a loyal and loving sub had such a therapeutic effect on me that I was able to get off drugs. I’ve been clean for nine years now. Practicing BDSM not only saved my mental and physical health, it also fueled my creativity. Once I came into my own as a Dom, my career as an artist thrived, and I was able to use the money and the recognition I got from my music to start my own record label, and as you know, the rest is history.”
I was speechless for a few moments. Although Trevor was only thirty-four, he had lived over fifty years’ worth of experiences. Even though I couldn’t fully wrap my head around the BDSM lifestyle, I was glad that Trevor was in a better place now than he was in his pre-BDSM life.
Maybe Angel wasn’t so bad. I guess she did come into his life for a reason.
“Whatever happened to Angel?” I asked, once I found my voice.
“She was my sub for four years, but ultimately we agreed to go our separate ways. She only loved me when I was sick and broken. Once I stopped doing drugs and started becoming more successful, she seemed to resent me. She was only attracted to disturbed and tortured men. While I still had my days back then, just as I do now, I became much happier and healthier once I started practicing BDSM, and Angel couldn’t handle the transition.” I heard a hint of disdain in Trevor’s voice as he recalled the demise of his relationship with Angel. “We really became d
istant when I started making money. Angel just wanted to eat fast food and drink cheap beer for the rest of her life. Not that there is anything wrong with that. But I wanted a sub that enjoyed being spoiled. I needed a woman that had a taste for the finer things in life, so I terminated my arrangement with her. I don’t think she was sorry to see me go, either.” His tone was angry. I think, deep inside, he felt even more animosity toward Angel than I did. The thought pleased me. “You would be a much better sub than Angel could ever be. You’re certainly better in bed.” That was more information than I needed.
Trevor leaned in and kissed me passionately. His kiss surprised me. I was still digesting everything he had disclosed. I wanted to hold him and make all his pain go away, so I did just that. After the driver dropped us off at our hotel, we made out until the sun rose. And we fell asleep in each other’s arms. It was the most passionate and intimate make-out session I had ever had. It was like we made love, without even having sex. I was really becoming attached to Trevor. It felt like he was finally letting his walls down.
Chapter 5
NEW YEAR’S EVE was enchanting. Trevor rented out the Signature Room on the ninety-fifth floor of the John Hancock building and invited some of his friends. The guest list included rock stars, socialites, and professional athletes. It was quite the high-profile event. I was pleased that Trevor agreed to celebrate New Year’s Eve in Chicago, instead of New York or L.A. L.A. was too beachy for it to really feel like New Year’s, and New York was just too crowded. In Chicago, we were able to stay under the media’s radar. And the view of the city from the Signature Room was a sight unlike any other.
We sipped Dom Perignon, and feasted on lobster and filet mignon. There was live music, and lots of love and laughter was in the air. We were having the most beautiful evening, that is up until after the ball dropped.
At midnight, Trevor swept me off my feet with the most mind-blowing kiss. The exhilaration of feeling him hold me and kiss me, with such unbridled passion, on such a joyous occasion, made my head spin. I was hoping that he was going to tell me he loved me for the first time. It certainly felt like he had crossed that threshold, and I know I had. I don’t know exactly when it had happened, but that night when I looked into his eyes, I realized that I had been in love with him for longer than I realized. And I thought he loved me too. I felt it in his touch, and in the way he kissed me that night.