Total pages in book: 206
Estimated words: 192184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 961(@200wpm)___ 769(@250wpm)___ 641(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 192184 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 961(@200wpm)___ 769(@250wpm)___ 641(@300wpm)
“Tia, where are you?” he asked.
“The Mandalay, in the shopping part between hotels. The bathroom’s definitely empty.”
“Go to the concierge’s desk in the Luxor and tell them you need security immediately and then put me on the phone with the concierge. Get out of that fucking bathroom in case someone’s behind this. Now. Keep me on the phone as you make your way to the front. Tell me if anything looks suspicious. The guys’ll be on their way.”
What now? I couldn’t wrap my head around this. Was this life, my life, going to entail one drama after another? Had Tommy been kidnapped or something? I prayed there was a logical explanation for this.
The fact that the concierge didn’t even make a weird face when I told him I needed immediate security and then passed my phone to him was beyond wonky to me. I guess in Vegas they are accustomed to weird requests.
My phone got passed back to me and Dario said, “I’ve got people on it. Don’t stress. I’m sending Jimmy to pick you up.”
I thanked him. I was taken to an office and offered refreshments and then I sat there, fidgeting with the water bottle I’d been given, until Tommy walked in. Not Jimmy. Tommy. I was shocked and relieved to see him. I jumped up and threw my arms around him.
“Thank God. Are you okay? What happened?”
He gave me a little smile and a big squeeze, momentarily lifting me off my feet. “We’ll talk after. Let’s go.”
Flying colors. She’d passed again. The way she’d handled that was just about perfect. She could’ve hocked the engagement ring and the earrings to get out of here, get away from me. She had at least $250 in her bag, too, as I’d given her pocket money for tips. The jewelry would’ve given her enough money to get gone and possibly even stay gone if she was smart about it. She could also have handled things the wrong way, called the cops and reported me missing, and involved them or something stupid like that.
But she didn’t. I saw her mind working from a security booth; I knew it’d crossed her mind to run. It was almost like I could see the thought bubbles above her head. I could see it in her body language as she chewed her lip, chewed her cheek, looked around herself, blew her hair out of her eyes like she was faced with a dilemma. But she did the right thing. The exact right thing. She called someone she knew I trusted and got advice.
There was only one problem. I needed her to misbehave. I needed her to misbehave so I had a reason to punish her. I was about to crack. Yeah, it was good to see she could handle an emergency, but why I probably really ran this test today was because I knew there would be fall out. I needed fall out.
When she’d put my necklace on me that morning it had floored me, made the reason for my mood swings and my needs so clear to me, and it hadn’t even done much good to wear it. I was tired, yeah, hadn’t had a lot of sleep in the past few nights, but I was craving confirmation and release. Confirmation that she was really mine and fear that she really wasn’t. And sexual release. I was fucking exhausted but had all this unused bottled-up sexual energy.
Last night didn’t help, either, when Ben Goldberg, the real estate developer I’d met with to talk about a new club here in Vegas, lined up some girls for us. I could’ve taken that redhead in the red leather dress wearing the bondage collar and grabbed the collar and fucked her up against the wall roughly. But I didn’t want her. I’d stared at her, thinking about that collar on my Tia.
The desire I had to be ice cream shop guy for her was overshadowing things. It was fucking with my head. That, the sheer fucking exhaustion, and the million things going through my head… overload. So, I got loaded, feeling sorry for myself instead, which was something I didn’t do. I needed a release, to get back to feeling in control again.
Our limo was out front waiting for us. She got in and I told the driver to just drive for a while, so we could figure out where we were going next. I closed the privacy glass.
“What happened to you?” She was wide-eyed and had her palm against her heart, like she was filled with relief, relief that I was okay.
I ignored the piercing sensation in my chest at that and I took a big breath. “I wanted to see what’d happen if something happened to me in a place like this without my security around. You handled it beautifully. If, God forbid, there’s a next time don’t stand around like a sitting duck for an hour, though.”