Eternally Seduced (39 page)

“Staffan?”

He shook the irritable thoughts of photo shoots away and glanced at his watch again.
Fuck
. 10 minutes before midnight. “I need to put the phone down. I have to make the call now.”

“Understood.” Yanna beamed at him. “We look forward to spending more time with you when you come here to Florida!”

He gave her his sexiest smile. “After the tour, I’ll go straight to you, darl---” The last thing Staffan saw was Constantijin kissing Yanna as his friend reached for his girlfriend’s iPad to end the call.

It almost made him smile. These frequent displays of Constantijin’s possessive jealousy were extremely amusing, mostly because his friend had never been like that until Yanna entered the picture.

Staffan used to think he had that with---

Fuck.

To distract himself, Staffan reached for his iPad again and signed in for the administrator account of his fan club’s website. He went to the members’ page, clicked a button to have it sorted according to birthdays, and picked the first name he spotted on the list who was celebrating her birthday today.

One of the perks that his fans club members enjoyed was having the chance to receive a birthday call from Staffan himself. He had been doing it for eight months now, and so far all the women he had called had acted the same. They would pretend they didn’t recognize his voice, did everything they could to prolong the call, and when they finally realized that he would be putting the phone down, they’d ask him to fuck them.

He had no reason to believe this call was going to be different.

~~~

Sapphire “Saffi” March tumbled out of her bed in her haste to get to the phone. It had to be him. It just had to be. She didn’t have any close friends, had never gone out on a date, and none of her family would ever have considered calling her at this hour of the night.

After all, an eccentric bookworm like her had no reason to be up this late. No one would have reason to expect that she was the most diehard of all fangirls and that her locker had a pin-up of Staffan Aehrenthal, hidden behind the evolutionary chart of ichthyology she had taped to her locker door.

Oh, please, it just had to be him.

Saffi lost her footing as she got hold of her phone, falling flat on her face as she pressed the green button to answer the call. “Suffering sardines!” The words escaped her as she bit back a groan of pain, her chin connecting with the floor in a small thump.

On the other end of the line, Staffan sputtered in disbelief when instead of ‘hello’ he heard two words he had never imagined he would hear in his entire life.

Suffering sardines?

Perhaps he had dialed the wrong number? But---did sardines actually suffer? When they were canned perhaps?

Saffi quickly stuck the phone to her ear, hoping
he
had not put it down yet. “H-hello?”

He had probably imagined it
, Staffan thought. He decided to put his half-empty glass of whiskey away, placing it back on the glass cabinet hidden cleverly behind one of the limousine’s paneled doors. Nothing good would come out from chatting with a fan while drunk.

“Is this---” He glanced at his iPad to confirm the name. “Saffi March?”

Saffi
swooned
.

That voice. Oh dear, THAT VOICE. How many times had she dreamt of Staffan Aehrenthal saying her name? It was pointless to count. It was that many.

Wondering where he could be as he talked to her on the phone, she tried to recall the schedule of his tour. Fangirls knew their favorite stars’ schedule the same way sports buffs could recite the entire season’s schedule of games.

Tonight, he would probably on his way to JFK Airport since Staffan Aehrenthal was well-known as a man of habit. And when it came to working while on tour, there were quite a number of those habits that were, well, notorious.

Supposedly, Staffan always “hand-selected” which girls got a backstage pass.

Supposedly, Staffan’s definition of stress relief after a concert involved getting naked.

Supposedly, Staffan needed stress relief more often than a thirsty man needed to drink water.

Mmmm…
could she be his stress relief on the phone?

She blushed at the thought just as Staffan said, “Hello?”

Fluttering flounder!

She had actually zoned out on Sweden’s #1 Sex God!

Staffan choked, shooting up on his seat, so amazed that he actually put the phone away from his ear to stare at it in amazement. This time, he hadn’t been wrong. This girl was…weird. Funny as hell but she was still weird. Who the fuck used goddamn species of fish as exclamations of surprise?

“Sorry, sir, I mean, Mr. Aehrenthal.” She wanted to kick herself several times the moment the words went out of her mouth.
Playful piranhas
! Hadn’t she been rehearsing for this call the entire month? Hadn’t she firmly told herself every day that she would
not
act like Emily Post’s protégé with him?

Staffan Aehrenthal likes his women slutty.
The former groupies Saffi was friends with online had told her that, too!

At the mention of his last name, the ennui resting so heavily on his shoulders fell off like a winter coat he no longer needed.

This girl had broken rule #1 for fans: she had not acted coy. She had admitted knowing who he was.

It was refreshing to say the least. It was interesting, too, enough for him to sit up and take notice, enough to make him forget that most women in the world were only good for fucking.

He said huskily, “Hello, Saffi March.”

THAT VOICE sent shivers down her spine. Saffi slowly covered the mouthpiece of the phone.

And then she squealed, like a baby, and like the excited fangirl she was.

Staffan stopped speaking. The sudden loss of any sound at all from the other end was familiar to him. He knew that Saffi had covered the mouthpiece, probably to…scream? Hug herself? It almost made Staffan smile, but fortunately he held it back in time.

He was Staffan fucking Aehrenthal, infamous for his cruel tongue and foul-mouthed ways. He was the type to smirk, sneer, and snarl. But one thing he did not goddamn do was
smile.

The moment he heard her lift her hand off the mouthpiece, he drawled out, “I’m guessing you know why I called?”

Busted.

“Yes,” she admitted sheepishly.

God, that voice was too fucking cute, mostly because none of the women he had dated in recent
years
had ever sounded naturally
sheepish
. A thought occurred to him. What the hell did this Saffi March look like anyway?

“Happy birthday, Saffi.” Even as he murmured the words, Staffan was already clicking her name on the iPad screen. A new page loaded, which included her profile picture.

Fuck
was the first thought that came to mind when he saw her. Just one glance at her photo, and his sexual drought was over, and now he was struggling to keep at bay the lust that flooded his senses.

Staffan literally wanted to take Saffi March with his cock, see her melting around him, feel her warmth surrounding him as he made her his.

In the photo, she appeared unbelievably young with her face fresh from makeup except for the shimmery pink gloss on her lovely bow-shaped lips. If not for the fact that she had also listed herself as a post-graduate student in her final year, Staffan would have thought she was still a teenager. And God knew that although he was many things, he was no pedophile.

Saffi March was the most feminine-looking thing Staffan had ever seen in his life. She had on an Alice in Wonderland costume. The cerulean silk ribbon on her head was an exquisite contrast with her jet-black hair and almost-as-dark eyes, and as his eyes moved down, his gaze lingered on the delightful cleavage that the tight top of her dress revealed. A lightning bolt of desire struck his body, his cock springing up in attention.

Staffan reluctantly put the iPad down when Saffi spoke again. Fuck, he was so horny he had an embarrassing feeling he just might jack himself off later on while staring at Saffi’s photo.

“Thanks, Mr. Aehrenthal,” she stammered. She wished she had the guts to call him Staffan, like she did in her dreams, but in reality it was just too impossible to do.

This time Staffan couldn’t stop his lips from twitching.

Lately, the women he had banged liked to call him that.
Mr. Aehrenthal.
It irritated him to no end, and when he had asked Yanna – the only woman he considered his friend nowadays – about it, Yanna had laughingly told him it was
the
trend now, something that some kind of book with lots of fifties in it had supposedly started.

According to a giggling Yanna, being called “Mr. Whatever” was supposed to be incredibly sexy, but as far as Staffan was concerned, it just made him feel like a dirty old man fucking a Lolita wannabe.

“Mr. Aehrenthal?” Saffi prodded uneasily when the silence between them lengthened.

His cock swelled even more at the sound of his last name on her lips. He had never been called “Mr. Aehrenthal” so earnestly, without any attempt on seduction, and yet somehow it sounded sexy as hell.

Saffi March’s light, lilting voice was so angelic and sweet it made Staffan imagine tossing her Alice in Wonderland skirt up and showing her how it felt to be tumbled. By him.

He moved on his seat, his pants feeling unbelievably tight. That did it. To hell if it was going to make him appear like a fucking pervert. He would definitely jack off tonight while looking at Saffi’s unbelievably enticing photo.

“Is there something wrong?”

Staffan started to assure her that there wasn’t any problem when a warning beep sounded, reminding him that his phone’s battery was about to die on him any second.

Frustration seared him. “My phone’s about to die.” He paused, expecting her to protest, to do what all the girls he had previously called did just to make him stay on the phone longer. But she didn’t. That confused him, which he didn’t like at all, making Staffan speak more sharply than usual as he asked, “Do you want to say anything else before I hang up?”

Saffi’s silent response meant more than any words could say, her hurt traveling through the phone line that whipped him with guilt.

Shit.
Now he knew why the girl wasn’t saying anything. It was because she didn’t believe him, and it was like karma biting him in the ass. It had been his standard response to cut his call short with the other girls. Yet now that Staffan didn’t want the call to end, it had to, and she didn’t believe him.

Fuck karma.

“Saffi.” Saying the name out loud made him pause. It seemed as if his world had been altered with it, and the change was eternally binding. It was like fucking serendipity, literally---the kind that his cock sensed. “I’m---”

Saffi did not want to hear false apologies from Staffan, the thought of it not sitting well with her for some strange reason. Humiliation colored her cheeks, making her privately thankful that she was only having an ordinary call with Staffan instead of one that involved cameras and videos.

Mentally squaring her shoulders, she decided to take his words by face value anyway---because that was what a true fangirl would do: accept that famous personalities were humans, too, and they had off days like ordinary humans had.

She interrupted him quickly, “I, umm, do have something to say.”