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Fuck!
I don’t have time for this shit. Letterman Industries have sent me work to look through already to get myself acquainted with what they do and I still have end of year shit to deal with at Uni. It’s bad enough that I’m missing precious days to babysit her, but now she’s gone and pulled this stupid stunt. I could let her go. Give her what she so obviously wants. If being found dead on the streets of Manhattan is her thing, then so be it. Not having her here will make my life so much easier and I have to admit I’m glad to see the back of her. She’s more trouble than she’s worth with Nix’s moping over her and Mercier drooling over her. The two are obsessed and ruled by their emotions. I don’t care that she’s superior pussy, but knowing how much money has literally gone out of the window is enough to make even me pause. Do I need thirty million dollars? Is screwing over my father really worth all this shit she’s putting us through?
Goddamnit. Without that money, I’ll end up in a flea pit hell hole before I even start my internship. I can’t count on my parents being away for much longer so this apartment will be off the cards by the time I do start.
Irritation causes pressure to build behind my eyes. Fuck it. I’m going to have to go find her. The window in her room is open and the obvious means of escape. She’s blind and famous. It never occurred to me that she’d try anything so stupid as climbing out of the window. I thought Manhattan would be enough of a jailor for her, but it seems I was wrong and she’s much more feisty than I pegged her to be. I follow her route, out through the window instead of running through to the living room and out through the French doors to the balcony. It’s dark and foggy outside. I don’t want to look over the side, but I have to. Something compels me to look down onto Fifth Avenue below. Common sense dictates that if she’d fallen to her death hours ago, I’d know about it by now. But then again, this is Manhattan. It happens more than most people would think. The air is wet and so thick I can barely see the sidewalk, but it’s clear that she’s not down there. The streetlights would show the blood splatter. I take off down the fire escape, practically jumping from landing to landing. The stairs curve around the building and down the back into an alley. Rain lashes down on me, almost blinding me. Either way I run will take me to a busy road. I cannot get over the sheer gall of this girl. If I was blind, I’d be terrified. I circle the building until I get right round to the front. The concierge greets me as he always does with a friendly good morning.
“Hey man, did you see a girl around here? About five four, choppy dark hair... blind?”
It’s the longest of long shots, but like some long shots, it pays off.
He nods his head. “As a matter of fact, I did see someone matching that description last night. Just after I came on my shift. She almost went and got herself killed. Walked right into the road. I called out to her, but she ran into the park. Crazy. Blind, you say? What’s she doing out here all by herself?”
I toss a ten-dollar bill into his hand and take off across the road, dodging cars. It’s a miracle she survived.
I vault the low wall into Central Park. I can barely see three feet in front of me with the thickness of the fog. It’s like walking through gray gravy. If she’s in here, I may never find her. Someone who is blind will have the advantage over someone who is used to seeing. Central Park is almost three and a half kilometers square. I could spend all day searching for her and never find her.
I pass the summer house and keep going until I hit East Drive, one of the more well lit parts of the park. Even in this weather, there are plenty of people walking through. People insane enough to think that they won’t get mugged or worse, and those that are the ones that do the mugging... or worse.
Why did she come to the park in the middle of the night? Lucinda has spent half her life in Manhattan. Her father owns an apartment just a couple of blocks down from my parents’, which she has been photographed at more than once by the paparazzi. I can’t begin to comprehend her thought process, but I try to see it from her perspective. Sure, Mercier is a dodgy fucker and Josh has been an asshole to her, but we’ve not threatened her. Hell, she has all the food and shitty daytime TV she could want. Stupid bitch doesn’t know how good she has it. Most women would do anything to be staying in a Fifth Avenue Penthouse with the three of us. Still, she’s been acting the part of the strange little weirdo since we picked her up. Nix is right, there’s something off about her. Something that I can’t quite put my finger on.
I close my eyes and try to get a feel of what she must be thinking. The bright streetlamp light filters through my eyelids, so without opening my eyes, I walk away from the path into the dark. I don’t know if Lucinda can distinguish between light and dark, but here it’s also quieter. If I was her, I’d stick to the grassy parts under the trees. I rest my hand on a tree trunk and open my eyes. Thick fog impedes my view in every direction. The only light is back at the pathway. I don’t go back. I know she’s not that way. I walk silently through the trees, acutely aware I’m acting like a prowler.
It takes me an hour and thirty-seven minutes to find her. I almost miss her. I would have missed her if I’d not heard the muffled sounds of crying. She was curled in a ball in one of the tied up row boats on the small lake. On good weather days they are available to hire to tourists, but at night and in bad weather, they are tied up in a row at the lake’s edge.
She already knows I’m here by the time I see her. I expect her to try to run away. I wouldn’t put it past her at this point to jump in the lake.
“Hey Lucinda. It’s me, Alexander... uh, Dacre. I’ve come to take you home.”
She flinches as I reach out to grab her hand to help her out of the boat.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
She’s trembling and soaked to the skin. So she did fall into the lake. I still can’t get over how she made it so far. If I’d not found her, she’d either die of pneumonia or she’d figure out a way to get away. Our thirty million dollars is going to sift through our fingers if we aren’t more careful.
“I’m going to hold your hand and help you out of the boat,” I repeat. I expect her to reach out to me, but she only pulls back farther. With nothing left to do, I step into the boat and do the unthinkable. I haul her over my shoulders as though I’m a firefighter saving her, not her kidnapper. She doesn’t struggle against me, but her entire body is trembling with the cold.
Once we are out of the boat, I drop her carefully to the ground, keeping a strong grip on her in case she gets it into her head to run off again. I’m not prepared for her putting her arms around my neck and clinging to me, soggy and wet and tear stained.
This is not the Lucinda Waldgrave I’d imagined when I looked at those magazine covers, but then again, that Lucinda Waldgrave wasn’t yet blind and hadn’t spent half the night dripping wet and freezing cold in Central Park. I pull off my sweater and pull it over her head. It’s clear she’s too weak to walk, so I pick her up again, this time cradling her. She weighs nothing in my arms. I’ve never been more grateful for the shitty weather as I walk, carrying her through the park. I keep away from the pathways, not wanting to be spotted. I don’t have time to be dealing with strangers’ nosy questioning. Getting her back in the building is going to be another problem. There’s no way I’m going to make it past the concierge without scrutiny. Not with a drenched, blind girl in my arms. If I want to fly under the radar, I’m going to have to go back in the way I came, and that means climbing up the fire escape. Like most other New York fire escapes, it’s usually a one way route. The ladder comes down then retracts back up, leaving a fifteen foot gap before the first landing. I haul Lucinda’s weight to one arm and heave the pair of us onto a closed dumpster, before reaching up and pulling the ladder down. If it wasn’t for the security systems, most of the apartments in this block have in place, this would be an easy route for a burglar to take. I shut ours off, which is why she was able to escape unnoticed in the first place. Once again, I have to haul her over my shoulder to be able to climb. She’s barely conscious as I begin the ascent. By the time I get us up to the penthouse, her skin is turning blue and her lips are chattering. Her pajama bottoms are clinging to her skin. She’s shaking so hard, I can barely keep my grip on her. Inside it’s warm, but it’s clear that the heating won’t be enough. She’s going to die of hypothermia. I take her to the bathroom and lower her into the tub. Her eyes remain closed as I turn on the hot water. Her breathing deepens as though she’s not getting enough oxygen to her lungs.
“Lucinda. Wake up.” I slosh the warm water over her, willing her to wake up. I’ve known fear before. I’ve been living it since we brought her into my parents’ apartment, but nothing has come close to the visceral terror I feel when she doesn’t respond. I turn the water hotter, dousing her with it. My wool sweater is as soaked as the rest of her as it soaks up the bathwater. I angle her body forward and drag the sweater over her head. Her pajama top comes with it, leaving her naked from the waist up. I throw the lot to the floor where it lays in a soggy mess. I’ve got the most beautiful woman in the world in my bath and at my mercy, but I don’t notice anything except the color of her skin, and the way her chest is rising and falling too rapidly.
“Lucinda. Wake the fuck up.” Anger rolls off me in waves at what she’s done. Having the most beautiful woman in the world in my bath is only desirable until the point that she dies in it. At that point, it’s a fucking liability. Thoughts of trying to find somewhere to bury a body in Manhattan, has me jumping in the bath with her. I rub her body down vigorously with my hands, trying to get the blood circulating.
She murmurs slightly. I latch onto it, urging her to wake up. She cannot die in my parents’ bathtub. Her eyelids flutter open. “Dacre.” Her voice is weak and breathless, but at least she’s able to speak. What little color she had is coming back to her skin and her lips are no longer chattering. I pull off my dripping wet shirt and add it to the soggy pile that’s building up on the bathroom floor. The water is practically up to our necks in the deep bath. I lean past her and turn off the taps before I can add flooding to the list of my problems.
Her teeth chatter despite the warmth of the bath. “What happened?”
“You thought it would be a good idea to run away in the middle of the night in your pajamas,” I say, gritting my teeth as I step out of the bath. The tiled floor has a slick sheen of water from the bath coating it. I throw a towel down and mop it up using my feet. She tries to stand, but it’s clear that she’s still wobbly from the ordeal.
“It wasn’t raining when I left,” she murmurs as I pull her up into a standing position. She can’t hold her weight, so I’m forced to lift her out of the bath. Her tits press against my chest as she clings to me. My cock twitches against her. I’m not planning on fucking her, but it takes the constitution of a saint to resist. I don’t need the complication, but having her soft skin sticking to mine with water rolling down the pair of us makes it almost impossible not to start something with her. Something I know I won’t be able to put a stop to. I’m not immune to her beauty, but I need thirty million dollars more than I need a quick fuck with a half conscious socialite model.
“You need to get out of those wet pants, I say, pulling her arms from around my neck. I need to get out of here before I succumb to her. Mercier didn’t heed Nix’s warning, but I did. She’s a manipulator. A user. I try to keep that in mind as she gazes up at me, droplets of water clinging to her eyelashes and her perfect tits on show. She has no modesty at all. It doesn’t seem to bother her in the slightest that her body is on show. Years of getting her tits out for anyone and everyone must have made her immune. Mercier is insane to think she’s a virgin. No virgin holds herself the way she does. I want to turn away, but like a magnet, my eyes are drawn to her as she reaches down and lowers her wet pajama bottoms before kicking them off. I salivate at the sight of her. I’ve seen her naked before. Hell, half the western world has seen her naked in one magazine or other, and I’ve seen her naked in the flesh before Nix hauled her away, but this is different. It’s just her and me in the apartment. She’s practically inviting me to touch her. My mouth waters with the desire to kiss those nipples of hers. My cock is hard as nails, but there’s no point in me trying to hide it. She can’t see it. It’s almost liberating having someone so close without being able to see. With every ounce of will power I possess, I grab a dry towel and wrap it around her. I will not let myself fall for her, not with how much money she is worth to me.
I have to focus on the big picture as she stumbles away, her ass cheeks just visible beneath the towel.
“Go get some clothes on,” I snap, before slamming the door, leaving me in the bathroom alone. I close my eyes, not letting go of the picture of her in my mind and fist my cock, emptying my load into the bathwater she just vacated.
