Page 31 of Tease Me


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“Your hair is a fucking disaster,” I say, grabbing a hairbrush and attacking the strange choppy cut. I can’t hide the savage cut, but with a bit of brushing over, at least she looks half human. I cover up what I can with a jeweled headband of my mother’s.

“Have you made me into what you want me to be?” she whispers.

It’s a weird thing to say, especially after what Mercier did to her. He completely changed her appearance. I only took it down a notch and buffered the edges.

I stand back and survey my work. I hate to admit it, but even with the shawl, she drips sexuality. It’s fallen slightly, exposing one shoulder. She reminds me of a gothic Marilyn Monroe.

“I’ve made you look decent,” I say, tugging the shawl back on her shoulders. “This stays on all night.”

Her eyes stare up at me widely. I’m glad she’s wearing contacts. The brown eyes take something away from her, though there’s a hint of the pale blue around the pupil that’s not quite fully covered.

It feels like she’s looking right into my soul, and it’s unnerving. She has a way of looking right through me and I have to remind myself that she can’t see me at all.

“I’ll find a broach of my mother’s to hold it up so you don’t have to clutch onto it all night. If anyone asks, tell them you are cold and want to keep the shawl on. Do you understand me?”

She nods, without moving her eyes away from me. Heat erupts in my belly, and I have to look away. “You’ll have to wear some black glasses. We can’t cover you up being blind, so we might as well go with it. You are my blind cousin, visiting from California.”

She nods again. So far she’s barely said a word and yet I feel exhausted from conversing with her. When I put the sunglasses over her eyes, I find myself being able to breathe easier. Any semblance to Lucinda Waldgrave is now gone. She’s still too beautiful for her own good, but with the shawl, the black hair and the glasses, she could be just another Manhattan socialite. No one knows she’s blind, which will work to my advantage. Plus, with the bonus of her just visiting from California, no one will ask her too many questions. They better fucking not do, because neither of us have the answers.

I can’t believe I’m doing this as she links arms with mine and we both step out of the apartment. I’m so aware of the camera and I wonder if Bobby is watching us. This is fucking madness. Insanity. The stupidest thing I’ve ever done and if things go wrong, it might be the last time I see this apartment.

26

LUCINDA

The cold air hits me as we step outside, my arm linked in Dacre’s. The noise of traffic has my heart pounding, but Dacre helps me into a car so fast and slams the door behind me that the panic subsides quickly. He steps into the driver’s seat beside me and starts the car. It rumbles to life, vibrating in a hum. It sounds and feels different to the car that drove me here, but then again, this time, I’m not in the trunk. We’re no longer captive and kidnapper. I’m Dacre’s date for the night. I can’t help the sharp thrill I feel as we pullout into the traffic.

“I thought Mercier and Josh had your car?” I ask as we pull out into the traffic.

“They do. This is my father’s Merc.” Irritation fills his voice as though this is all my fault. He didn’t have to bring me with him. I’m doing him a favor. A fact I want to remind him of, but I keep my mouth shut. I twist the shawl in my hands as he speeds through Manhattan. I really have no real way of knowing how quickly he is going, but my back is pressed hard into the back of the seat and I jolt with every turn he makes.

“Don’t touch anything. Don’t make a mess,” he instructs like he’s talking to a petulant child. I don’t know what he thinks I’m going to do. It’s almost laughable how precious he is with his parent’s stuff, but uses women he hardly knows to advance his career as though they are worth less than the crap he surrounds himself with. Expensive crap though it may be.

I try to calm my panic by listening to the sounds outside and trying to follow the route we are taking. It doesn’t really matter. There’s no way I’m going to try to walk back to the apartment. If I do manage to escape, I’ll run in the opposite direction from him, from Mercier, from Josh, but it’s ingrained in me. I can’t see where I am or where I’m going, so I feel it. A left turn, a right, another left. We are zigzagging across town, and when we finally come to a stop, I feel confident I know where I am in relation to the apartment. I might never want to go back there and it’s inconceivable that I’ll ever talk to the police, but just in case, I store the information in my mind, taking up space next to all the other nuggets of information I’m keeping safe about my three kidnappers.

Dacre opens the door for me and takes my hand in his. I grip it as I step out. The cars whizz by so quickly, each one sending my heart pounding. I adjust the glasses and, keeping a grip on his hand, let him lead me. Beneath my feet, the floor is soft like carpet. It doesn’t make sense, as I know we are still outside. I stomp my foot in the shoes Dacre gave me.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Dacre hisses in my ear while squeezing my arm.

“We are on carpet. Are we inside?”

His voice is low when he answers. “It’s a red carpet event. Stop stomping. Everyone is looking at us. Look up and smile, for fuck’s sake.”

I hate that I need him to make sense of it for me. I should know. I should understand, but I don’t. I feel hopelessly out of my depth and any thoughts I had of escaping are laughable. People are watching us, though I don’t know why. I do as he says and give them my widest smile.

“Better,” he snaps. His fingers thread through mine and he rests his other hand on my arm as if to guide me. I’ve never felt so exposed in my life before now. The sounds of the traffic mesh into sounds of people speaking and other sounds I can’t place. The air is thick with cologne and perfume and a hundred other smells that swirl into one, making me feel nauseous. He pulls me close and hurries me along. “There are steps.”

I lift my foot and step up, gauging the height and breadth of them before stepping onto the next. All the while, I keep my head high and my smile wide. Then we are inside. The blare of traffic falls away, and the cold is left behind. In the distance, I can hear the sound of an orchestra or a string quartet.

“Mr. Dacre. So glad you could make it with such short notice.” A man, an older man by the sound of his voice, speaks up. He’s shorter than I am judging by the direction his voice is coming from.

Dacre moves his hand to the curve of my back and swings me round toward the voice. “Mr. Letterman. Thank you for inviting me, sir. I didn’t expect to get an invitation, being only an intern, and one that hasn’t even started yet.”

The older man laughs. “You aren’t only an intern. You hold a prestigious family name. Your father was one of my colleagues at Harvard. Besides, we had a last minute cancellation, and I thought you might like to see how things work.”

Dacre stiffens beside me and the hand around my back squeezes me tightly. “Well, that’s lucky for me. May I introduce you to my cousin, Kiranna.”

Kiranna?

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