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Chapter One
Beth
I could barely breathe. The movie theater was dark, several degrees too hot, and the volume was unusually low, rendering the dialogue to an indistinct mumble. I felt like I was suffocating.
To make matters worse, my boyfriend, Lionel, was feeling me up while he was scrolling through his phone, as if I was nothing more than a thing to fiddle with in order to pass the time. The glare from his phone screen cast his face in ghoulish shadows.
As his hand wandered toward the hem of my skirt, I caught his wrist and pushed him away.
“Not here,” I whispered.
Lionel glanced sideways at me with a disapproving frown. He sighed heavily to indicate how he felt about my rejection.
Five seconds barely passed before he nudged my shoulder and gestured toward the exit.
“Let’s go. This movie is garbage anyway. I’m bored out of my mind.”
I considered ignoring him and staying in my seat. If Lionel wanted to leave, maybe I could get some peace and quiet in the theater without him.
Ever since my mother set me up with Lionel Holmes on our first date a year ago, he’d been glued to me. Declaring what I was—and was not—allowed to wear. Telling me who I was allowed to associate with. He even took over making business decisions about my modeling career.
The worst part was that my mother backed him up. For everything. She thought Lionel hung the moon and the stars. As a Harvard graduate, with a multi-billionaire-dollar financial firm ready to be handed off to him when his father retired, Lionel fully believed he was God’s greatest gift to mankind.
So, if I made him wait outside the theater while I finished the movie, he would not be happy about it. On the other hand, he was my ride home. And I knew how temperamental he could be. There was a very good chance Lionel would leave me here if he felt like it.
Reluctantly, I gathered my purse and trailed after him. I didn’t really care about the movie—I wasn’t paying that much attention anyway. But I wanted a choice. I wanted to make the decision whether I stayed or not.
By the time I followed Lionel out of the theater, the sunlight was gone and the sky was velvety black. To the left of the theater parking lot was a bar and grill with the dull throbbing beat of bass music hanging in the air on a Friday night. A handful of motorcycles were lined up at the front of the restaurant, with a few bikers hanging around, drinking beers, and laughing.
Lionel was several steps ahead now. He glanced back, impatient that he had to wait for me to catch up.
“I’m taking you back to my place,” he said. “We can open a bottle of wine and you can give me a private show of that new lingerie line you’re promoting.”
Of course. Lionel didn’t care what happened on the date as long as it led to sex. I rubbed my bare arms against the chill of the evening.
What the fuck are you wearing a jacket for?Lionel had demanded when he picked me up for our date.It’s the middle of the desert in August. Ditch the jacket. You look stupid wearing it anyway.
I regretted obeying him now. With my thin white top and plaid pencil skirt, my clothes didn’t provide much warmth.
Before I realized what I was doing, I slowed to a stop. In the theater, enduring Lionel’s touch, I felt trapped. Now, my option was to go home with him, and he would touch me even more.
Maybe if the sex was better, I wouldn’t mind it that much. But it was stale, boring, and Lionel never bothered to get me off.
It was my job to be his pretty little girlfriend. The hot model he could show off at business brunches and fundraisers, the same way he bragged about his Bugatti, or his penthouse suite in New York and his summer home in the Virgin Islands.
But Lionel didn’t seeme.
To him, I was merely a sex toy.
“Actually,” I said. “I’m not feeling well. Could you take me home instead?”
Lionel scoffed and glanced up from his phone with a scathing look.
“Bethany,” he said in that tone I hated. The one that made me feel like a chastised schoolgirl instead of a grown woman at twenty-one years old. “You’re whining. It’s not attractive. You know I hate it when you do that.”
I clenched my teeth.
“I’m notwhining. I said I don’t feel well.”
