LIKED
(A Dark Romance)
Diana Quippley
This tale of dark obsession has been locked and sealed in a fancy, copyrighted © treasure trove belonging to the lusty Diana Quippley in the year 2015. It is highly advisable that you do not attempt to pilfer or purloin any parts of this enthralling story...
However, on the bright side, I do not believe in any of that horrid DRM software. And as such, this book is presented to you without any hint or trace of the vile substance – meaning you are free to view this book on whatever device you see fit to read it on! There are zero restrictions... You have paid for the tale, now please delight in the many thrilling pages wherever you like!
And alas... you are to be told that this is indeed a work of fiction. Any resemblance or similarity to real-life individuals, places, or things is purely coincidental.
A Quick Word
LIKED is a stand-alone dark romance novel with mature, graphic, and explicit content. Do not expect to find sappy love scenes and heart-felt cuddles! Not all love comes with chocolate and flowers… Sometimes it comes with rope and blindfolds…
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What You Will Find
LIKED
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LIKED
Chapter 1:
Corsets, Engagements, & Pink Hats that Can’t Exist
“Putting on a corset by yourself is a joke.”
Gia Sorah’s voice was husky and sultry anyway. Some of that was put on for interviews and public interactions. Some of it was from a smoking habit she was fighting to break. When delivering movie dialogue, it was even more vamped up than usual. Between being a scream queen for indie horror films and eye candy for films with a little more budget, she was known for a voice that was a cross between Marilyn Monroe and every guy’s school girl fantasy. It was a delicate balance that kept the film roles and fan mail coming. And the checks. The checks were important too. At the moment, her voice was rough and strained because she was already lacing up her corset alone in her dark bedroom with her arms twisted up behind her back in the most unnatural way.
Her bedroom window hung open the way she liked it in the hot summer in LA. Air conditioning was expensive for a horror movie starlet. The city and state might be on drought restrictions, but she was on air restrictions. The premier party for Splatter Love might be tonight, but the checks had not come in yet. She supposed it was really a PayPal payment rather than an actual check, but that was the lingo still. It did not help that she was dating the director. Don Blackheart had started paying some of the crew and other actors. She suspected that intimacy was going to move her to the bottom of the list even though she was technically the star.
She got the corset tied off and took as deep of a breath as she still could. Gia leaned up and smoothed down the shimmering purple and black material of the skirts of her gown below the ornate corset. She looked out the window and smelled the stink of onions and garbage wafting up on the hot air coming through her second floor apartment.
“That is the stink of success,” she said to her neighborhood street below.
A kid riding by on a bicycle with high handle bars looked up at her and she stepped back from the window.
Not all of LA smell this way, but the street she lived on seldom smelled any other way.
The car wasn’t waiting yet, so she had time.
She realized that she had forgotten to put on panties though. She was used to putting on a bra first, so not wearing one with the corset had thrown off her whole system. Her dress was long, so there wasn’t much chance of a crotch shot from the cameras tonight. If Don knew that it was an option, he would probably suggest it. She didn’t feel like bending far enough over to add panties now, so it would be commando for Splatter Love tonight.
Gia went to step into her shoes pushing her heels up at severe angles and she started strapping them on. It would give her calves and ass the toned look she needed for tonight, but she might barely be able to walk in the morning. This was the sacrifice required for promoting art and earning the metaphorical checks when they actually came.
Gia thought again that Love Splatter was actually a better title. It had a better flow and rhythm. Don had said that Love Splatter was a porn name while Splatter Love carried a mystery to it. Don would then go into explaining the irony that the film was a psychological thriller without any splatter or gore at all. Gia would explain that fans would be looking for it and then Don would go on a rant about breaking expectations with art. Eventually, she stopped talking to him about it. Gia thought that if it had been a porn, she might have had her clothes on more during the filming.
She rounded up her clutch purse that matched her elaborate dress and made for the front door. Gia left the lights out and the window open as she locked her apartment behind her.
As she negotiated the stairs, Gia employed the practiced grace that went with the show of being an elegant starlet. She could not afford to look like a baby giraffe stumbling around in her heels like she knew many of the drunk girls would tonight.
She reached the front, glass doors of her complex. Gia checked her blond curlets again. Her spiraled hair bobbed as she turned her head from side to side. All the men would have raging boners from it and not really be able to explain why. She went with a dark lip and classic natural with the rest of her make-up. Natural took forever to achieve.
Gia opened her clutch to be sure she had her phone. It was the only thing in there besides a single key because that was all that would fit. She was glad to find it there because if she had forgotten it, she might cry going back up the stairs and ruin her natural look.
She took the phone out of the clutch and scrolled through e-mail and all her social media notifications. Promotion was a full-time distraction for her.
She sighed as she deleted e-mails from men that claimed to be in prison. She understood they were allowed to write letters, but how were they getting to e-mail? She also deleted the pictures of guys sending images of their junk to her. It was in every inbox on every site. Gia had thought about starting a website where she posted all these pictures she got with the guys’ names. She wasn’t sure that a guy who sent pics of his cock and balls could really be shamed. She’d probably start getting more of them if she really did start the site. She was surprised by the number of black dudes sending the pics. Gia apparently had a very specific fan base among the junk pic dudes.
She paused as she found a message from him again. It was on her public Facebook page, but in the private message section. This was usually some of her weirder stuff in this inbox.
Jack was back. He had been liking her pictures still. He always liked her pictures. He liked them everywhere all the time. If there was a like button anywhere near a picture of Gia Sorah, Jack clicked it. He had not messaged in a while, but there was one right here in her inbox again. Good old quiet Jack the Liker was back.
Gia opened the message and read: Can’t get enough of, Gia. Who can? Right?! Haha Good luck with the premier party tonight. XXOO – Jack the Liker
Gia smiled and then frowned. Jack the Liker was a clever little name if she could ignore the reference to Jack the Ripper, of course. Or Jack the Licker which was somehow even creepier than Ripper for some reason. It was good enough of a name to keep her attention when he messaged her every so often. She frowned because he was t
he only person that had wished her luck tonight. Her family, friends, co-stars, and director/boyfriend hadn’t given a word of encouragement about the whole thing. Only her quiet, little stalker Jack the Liker had taken the time.
Thanks for taking the time, she typed back, that means a lot, Jack.
She looked outside and saw the car wasn’t there yet.
When Gia looked back down, Jack had responded. He messaged: “I’ll be out in the crowd fantasizing that you can see me. Haha.”
Gia smiled. She typed: “Wear a Blue Bells baseball cap.”
His messaged popped up in a couple seconds: Your little league team from back home in Kentucky?
She felt a chill run through her that reminded her that she wasn’t wearing panties. How could he know her little league team? Gia guessed that if he liked every picture she ever posted, then he would pick up on it somewhere. She was the one that brought it up after all. That was the part that was weird as she was the one messaging a potential stalker. No one else had wished her good luck though.
Jack messaged again while she was lost in her thoughts: “That’s a tall order. I’ll see what I can do.”
She started to type: “Are you going to go back to Kentucky and” …
But then she deleted it. The thought of him driving to her hometown to try to find a little league ball cap made her a bit sick to her stomach. Instead, she typed: “And make it a pink hat.”
Jack responded: “A pink BLUE Bells cap? Do they even make those?!”
Gia typed: “If you really cared, you’d find a way.”
She looked up and saw the boxy, silver Prius she was waiting for from Uber. Gia opened the door and stepped out trying to not catch her dress in the door.
Gia looked down and realized she still had messages up to Jack the Liker’s private message thread. He had not responded again. Gia typed, “JK HAHA”, before she shut off the phone and returned it to her clutch.
***
She climbed into the passenger’s seat fighting her dress in with her before getting the door closed. The driver was an incredibly skinny girl with auburn hair tied up in a pony tail. She had horn rim glasses. She looked so comfortable in athletic shorts and a tee shirt. Gia was jealous.
The girl said, “The parking lot by the Stinson Bodega, right?”
Gia had to think. “Um, yes, that’s it. Thank you.”
As she girl drove, she said, “I like your dress. It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you.”
Gia expected the girl to ask where she was going dressed up so oddly. As they made the first turn, Gia guessed that the Stinson Bodega parking lot was all the explanation that was needed; like she might be shopping in her Friday Night Bodega Corset or something. It was tough to stand out as weird in Los Angeles.
Gia was kind of sad to think the girl didn’t recognize her.
Gia shifted in her seat and tried to smooth her dress down again. She was having trouble breathing the way her stomach was bent in the seat against her ribs. This was not a dress and corset combination that was designed for hopping into an Uber.
They pulled into the parking lot that was adjacent to the bodega, but not really for it. The lot was empty with several tufts of grass breaking through the pavement around clusters of sand. The outline of the foundation for whatever building had once used the lot could still be seen. There was no other evidence the place had ever existed. Gia was only twenty-five, but she began to think of the vanished building as a symbol for what her career would be one day.
Gia climbed out being careful to keep her skirts down on her legs to hide any view of what was and wasn’t underneath. Her severe heels stabbed into the sand that coated the lot.
“Is this the right place?” the girl asked through the open door.
Gia leaned in. “Yes, they’ll be here soon or someone will murder me while I wait. How much do I owe you?”
The girl smiled. “You’ve already paid. It already hit my PayPal. We’re square.”
Gia nodded and closed the car door. As the hybrid backed out of the lot almost silently, Gia said, “Uber pays better than being the star of a movie these days.
As she stood in the middle of the vacant lot, she went to pull her phone out of her clutch. She wasn’t sure if she was going to call Don or check for a follow-up message from Jack. Before she found out, the limo pulled up to the curb at the edge of the lot and stopped. They didn’t even pull into the lot to let her in. She waited for a window to roll down and for Don to give her a cheesy line, but he didn’t give her that much.
Gia walked forward with as much grace as her heels and the sand would allow her. The driver stepped out and opened the door for her. As she crawled inside head first, she considered letting her dress ride up to give the driver a special tip and preview of the movie. The door closed behind her before she could follow through.
She sat down on the bench seat next to Don who had his phone up to his ear. His dark hair was slicked back and his deep, bronze tan was real from the beaches up the coast where he lived, but still managed to look fake on him.
He smiled and his blue eyes sparkled at her. She smiled back. He held up a finger to her and his eyes lost focus seeming to stare a thousand miles through the side of the limo which began to roll. He growled with the smile still pulled over his lips and bleached white teeth. “No. No. No! That is not what I said, so that is not what I want.”
His smile of happiness and his look of anger were almost identical. The focus of the eyes were the only difference she could see in either look.
Gia watched out her tinted window as he continued negotiating the set of a new picture – one she was not cast in. She did not expect to be the girlfriend cast in all his movies. She didn’t even really want to be that. Not being read for the part at all bothered her. If he had asked, she would have said yes. She always said yes. She couldn’t bring herself to turn down any role. Maybe it was good that Don didn’t ask then. It still bothered her though. He needed to pay her for the last gig before he got wrapped up in another one.
He brought the phone away from his face. As he started searching for another number, she asked, “Hey, should we talk about tonight?”
“I have one more call to make before we get there,” he said.
“Are we still announcing it?”
“Sure. Just let me do the talking. I’ve got this, baby.”
“We should talk about how it will all work at the other appearances,” she said putting her hand on his wrist to stop him scrolling through numbers.
He looked up, smiled, leaned over, kissed her on the cheek, and shook her hand off his to go back to scrolling. “We will. Tonight’s a big night personally and professionally for both of us. I have to make this call while I’m hot and on people’s minds tonight. You and I can talk any time.”
She sniffed and looked away. “Why couldn’t you come all the way to me to pick me up?”
He shook his head. “Don’t be like that. You’ll be the star when we get out. The limo would have bottomed out and got stuck, if we pulled all the way up in there. It’s a rental.”
“No, I mean, why couldn’t you come by my place to pick me up.”
He shrugged. “Your neighborhood smells funny. I don’t want to make a loop and make us late either. Big night. If you moved in to my place, this would all be easier.”
She looked back toward him. “Do you mean that?”
“Sure. Whatever you want. I have to make this call though.”
He brought the phone back to his ear and he was back to telling what he didn’t mean and what he didn’t want to the person on the other end. When they pulled up to the theater, he found the time to end the call and they stepped out together.
***
Flashes did their job and strobed over the red carpet. Gia did her job and gave her practiced answers to questions where they fit. She made them sound more convincing than her Splatter Love dialogue ever did. She still blamed the editing for ruining her performance, but she did not b
ring that up in any of her answers. They asked about Gia and Don’s relationship and they gave their practiced coy looks to each other and their non-answer answer.
As they turned to go inside, she scanned the stands across the street which were full. Gia stared for a couple beats wondering if Don had paid to have people to fill out the crowd to make it look full. If he had money for that, then he needed to pay her.
She saw the pink hat in the crowd and she smiled. What if that really was Jack the Liker showing up with one moment to prepare after their conversation? She started to focus on the person wearing it just out of curiosity, but then locked her attention on the outline of blue bells stitched on the pink front. They were overlapped and turned at canted angles as if they were ringing just like on her little league uniform. That hat couldn’t exist. The outlines were like the foundation of the building from the parking lot where she waited for the limousine – it was the after image of a life that no longer existed. That hat couldn’t really exist.
LIKED - A Dark Romance Novel (Story of Dangerous Obsession and Lust) Page 1