April, Dani - Superstar (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) (19 page)

She slapped him hard and loud across his cheek. Neither of them flinched at the resounding echo in the room, too intent on staring into each other’s eyes with animosity. “I don’t give a fuck what you think about me,” she challenged him. “I know you’re wrong. As long as Brad and Scott love me, I could care less about you as long as you leave us the fuck alone.”

“Oh, you’re right about that. They do love you, Chrissie. But do you love them? I mean, really love them, and not just what they represent, a chance for you to have a little fling and escape life for a while.”

“How would you know?” Her voice was laced with bitterness, and she was showing him more emotion than she wanted. “You’ve never loved anybody. Girls just spread their legs for your big cock, and you use them.”

“Shut up, Chrissie,” Ethan told her, discounting her completely as he stepped past her into the front room of the cabin.

“Don’t fucking tell me to shut up, you bastard!”

He turned back to her and motioned for her to be quiet once again. “No, I mean really shut up. You’re on TV.”

“What?”

He picked up the remote and took the TV off mute. It was still the entertainment news channel Chrissie had flipped to earlier. An announcer was just leading with the top story of the hour.

“Chrissie Murphy, the young actress and talented pop singer of the hit single ‘Cute Love,’ has now been missing for three days. She was in Aspen, Colorado to attend a fundraiser for mentally challenged children. The last anyone saw her she was leaving her hotel in a car she had borrowed from a friend. That was a couple of hours before the dinner was due to start. She never made it to the dinner. Colorado law enforcement officers became officially involved in the case yesterday, and we have more on the story from our reporter in the field…”

In spite of her feelings for him, Chrissie walked over to stand next to Ethan and watch the story about her on TV. She readjusted the towel she wore under her arms and listened.

The screen switched to the reporter in the field who was standing in the snow outside a Colorado police station. “Law enforcement has just confirmed this morning that they have found the car Ms. Murphy was last seen driving. It had apparently gone off the side of the road in a storm that blew through here on the night she went missing. Ms. Murphy was not in the car when police found it. Now local police here tell me that the car was hopelessly trapped in a snowbank, and so that probably means that she would have had to get help from someone because temperatures had plummeted to near zero and she could not have stayed safe in her car for very long. Police speculate that she may have gotten help from a passing motorist. This is where things get confusing, however, because no one has reported seeing her since she left her hotel. Meanwhile, the father of the young superstar, former country western great William Roy Austen, held an early-morning press conference from his hotel in Aspen…”

Chrissie’s father came on TV standing at a podium facing a room full of reporters and photographers. He was a distinguished-looking, middle-aged man with long, white hair falling to his shoulders. On the TV screen, his face was flushed and his voice hoarse with emotion.

“We have set up a reward of half a million dollars for any information that leads to Chrissie’s safe return. I’m not going to borrow trouble and start to think the worst. As of right now, we can’t confirm that Chrissie was kidnapped or that any harm came to her. We just want her back with us, and we’ll do anything to make that happen.” He paused, and his voice cracked dramatically. “I will say this…that if anyone out there has her and is preventing her from returning to me, and if they are mistreating her or harming her in any way, I will do everything in my power to see them hunted down like animals…”

Then the news program switched back to the anchor, and she went on to talk about a political sex scandal. Ethan muted the TV again and turned to face Chrissie. She took the remote out of his hand as if somehow that was taking his power from him, and she turned her back on him.

“Okay, Chrissie,” Ethan told her in a voice that brooked no insubordination. “You better call your dad and let him know you’re all right.”

“I already called him last night.”

“Then why is he on TV talking crazy this morning?”

“Because he won’t listen to me anymore than you will.”

“Either you call him or I will,” he threatened.

“No, you can’t call him,” Chrissie warned him, turning back to face him. “Daddy doesn’t know who you are. If you call him, he’ll think you kidnapped me for sure.” She slumped, feeling a wave of depression and despair hitting her in the pit of the stomach. “He has a lot of important people as his friends. He’ll get you guys in trouble, and I couldn’t stand to see that happen.”

“Then you’ll have to make the call, Chrissie.”

“He doesn’t understand me. He makes my life miserable. Sometimes I think I hate him, too.”

Ethan left her alone in the big front room of the cabin for a moment. She paced back and forth, feeling like an animal in a cage, feeling trapped as she waited for him. When he returned, he was holding her phone. She watched him as he turned it on and punched through her long list of contacts.

He found the name he was looking for and tapped it one more time. Chrissie heard the ringtone come over the receiver as he held it to his ear. She began to shake inside. Good God, was it possible for her to be so afraid of her own father?

“Hello?” Her father’s voice sounded clearly in the room with them.

“Hello, sir?” Ethan was bold and had no fear in the world of the loud voice on the other end. “You don’t know me, but I’m one of Chrissie’s friends. She is staying with me at my place for a few days. She’s okay. I promise no harm is going to come to her. We’re taking good care of her.”

“Now you listen to me!” Her father shouted on the other end. He was yelling over the connection at Ethan. “If you return her to me immediately, unharmed, I will pay you three million dollars. Have you got that? Three million dollars!”

“Sir, we don’t want any money.” Ethan raised his voice back into the receiver. “Chrissie is free to leave anytime she wants to. She is staying with us of her own volition.”

“Listen to me, you slimy piece of shit!” Now her father was completely losing his cool. She knew all too well how her father could get. “I know your kind, and I know what you want and what you’re trying to do! Believe me it won’t work! If you do not give her up to me right now, today, I will have you hunted down like an animal! I will personally have you killed, and everyone who is working with you will be killed! Your whole family will be killed! You got that?”

“Nobody kidnapped your daughter!” Ethan yelled back at her father, his voice every bit as loud and authoritative. “She was running away from you! Everyone she’s staying with here cares deeply about her. I’ve only talked with you for ten seconds, and I can already see why she’s like she is and why she’s got the problems she has. Leave her alone for once. She’s a smart girl. She’ll work things out on her own. She’ll do a whole lot better in life without your interference to mess things up some more for her. If and when she ever wants to go back, I’ll personally drive her to her front door. In the meantime, you back the hell off and let us take good care of this girl. We love her!”

Chrissie watched Ethan’s face. It was positively contorted with fury as he spoke with her father. Inwardly, she felt glad to hear someone who had the strength not to back down from her father’s aggression.

“Boy, you listen to me!” Her father ranted over the phone. “You’re making a mistake you’ll regret for the rest of your life…”

“Good-bye, sir,” Ethan told him and calmly pressed the end key.

“Now you’ve met my father.” She gave Ethan a sad, ironic smile.

He threw her the cell phone. “Better get rid of that,” he told her. “He’ll eventually get someone in law enforcement to track you down by it.”

She looked down at the phone and then up at him. She never thought any man had ever looked so handsome in her life, and she had never felt so much love for another human being as she did right then.

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me.” He still sounded as mad as when he was speaking on the phone to her father. “You’ve complicated the hell out of my life and that of my family.”

“I can only say I’m sorry so many times, but if it does any good, I’ll say it again.”

He stepped up to her. He towered above her and took her roughly in his arms. She was frightened of him. “Why did you have to be so beautiful?” Without waiting for a response, he bent to her and crushed his lips to hers, his hands angrily pulling the towel off her body. “Tell me how much you hate me again, Chrissie.” His words were mocking whispers as he bit her ear.

“Don’t!” she tried to pull away from him, suddenly realizing she was completely naked beneath the towel. “Stop it! You’re hurting me!”

“Fine!” He pushed her, and she fell backward onto the cushions of the couch.

She looked up at him, tears streaming her face. He loomed above her strong and violent. She lay beneath him naked and vulnerable, too frightened to even cover up. Letting her racing heart catch up for a moment, she was still and did not say a word.

“What’s the matter?” She thought his voice sounded evil. “Are you afraid of me, Chrissie? Afraid of me like you are of life? Are you going to run away from me, too? Or maybe the precious baby will just curl up into a little ball and die…”

Anger flared in her at his unfair words. Her knee jerked up and caught him right between the legs, doubling him over in pain. Picking herself up off the couch, she fled from him back into the cabin.

As she ran down the hallway, she heard his boots on the wood floors running after her. He was only a couple feet behind her when she flew into the bathroom. She tried to close the door behind her, but he put his boot in the jam and forced his way into her.

She ran backward from him across the tile. Hopping over the bathtub, she reached for the window overhead and started to pry it open. She would have done anything to escape him and his evil words and actions.

He threw back his head and laughed as he watched her trying to crawl out the window to get away from him. “It’s a little cold to be running around outside in your birthday suit,” he mocked her.

As soon as she pried open the window the truth of his words hit home. The chill of the early morning air against her naked flesh sent goose bumps up her spine. She was trapped and not just figuratively this time. A villain had trapped her for real.

He stepped over the edge of the tub and came up next to her. The lust was simmering in his eyes. Then he had her breast in his palm and was fingering her nipple, causing it to swell under his touch.

An idea came to her. She was going to try and even up the playing field. Reaching past him, she found the hot water nozzle for the showerhead and threw it over full force. The hot water was still fresh in the pipes from her shower half an hour before.

The hot water blasted out over his head and fell down his still fully clothed body. Steam from the showerhead filled the room and fogged the window and mirror. Chrissie fell back against the wall to protect herself from the deluge.

He shoved his soaking hair out of his face and smiled at her. He looked pleased with her. “That’s right, Chrissie,” he urged her. “Fight me, baby!”

Making a slight adjustment to the nozzle to change the water temperature from boiling to merely warm, Ethan continued to stand beneath the spray and started to remove his clothing.

“I know a thing or two about fighting, baby.” He finished unbuttoning his shirt and cast it away. The sound of his zipper was next. “I’m going to teach you all I know about fighting right now, and I’m going to fuck you like you’ve never been fucked before.”

His jeans were wet, as well as his boots, and he had trouble getting them off and had to sit down on the edge of the tub for purchase. It took him a long time to get naked with her. She never took her eyes off him for a second. When his massive cock bobbed out from his jeans, angry and erect, she could not take her eyes off of it.