Random Acts of Fantasy (25 page)

So what?

Do your worst.

“My penis isn’t here, and it saved me,” Darla said as Trevor knelt on the other side of her, eyebrows up.

“I have no idea what she’s talking about.” Burly came over and explained to us that the twin dudes thought Darla was a willing role-play member in a sex game with transgendered big, beautiful women that involved a fantasy about being taken without choice.

“A
what
?” Trevor shouted, on his feet, fists curled. My body had the same response, and I cradled Darla in my arms, my heart doing an angry dance like an MMA fighter in a cage.

“Your kink is not my kink,” Burly said. “They assumed Ms. Jennings—whom they thought, as well, was a natural-born male—had consented.”

“But I don’t have a cock and balls, so it’s all good,” Darla murmured. “No stones and a stick. No chicken to choke.” I stroked her hair and tried not to laugh through my gut-wrenching anger. 

“Suzy set them all up,” I said.

A curt nod from the bald dude was my only reply.

“I am so sorry,” the twins kept saying, and as my anger drained out, the fear of not getting here before Suzy hurt her, the rush to figure it out and the concert—fuck! The concert!—all splintered inside, I mumbled a non-answer and just rocked Darla.

“I love you, too,” she whispered, looking up, makeup smeared and face pale. Trev had stepped aside and I leaned down to kiss her, tasting blood and terror and relief—

And my future.

“Showtime,” she murmured against my ear. “Go break a leg.”

I looked at her scratched ankle and Trevor came over, somber and worried.

“I mean it,” she said, peeling herself off the bed, wincing as her ankles hit the ground. “
We
have to go. You have to play.”

“After all that just happened? No fucking way,” Trevor said. “We’ll…” He seemed to fight for the right words.

“You’ll play.” Her words were firm and clear. “If you love me, you’ll play.”

And so we did.

And it was awesome.

Chapter Thirteen

Darla

The concert was incredible. No fewer than one hundred guests told me so, dressed in costumes that ranged from their birthday suits to chipmunks to Princess Leia to an impossibly-cute Klingon Dr. Who. Not that I would know whether the concert was any good, unfortunately:

I
fell asleep. That’s right. Slept through the biggest show Random Acts of Crazy ever performed. Me. The manager. Snoring like a big old lumberjack. 

The resort sent a doctor to tend to me in our room, with Trev, Joe, Liam and Sam all racing off to get on stage. I made Trevor and Joe leave, and the security dudes Joe called “Big” and “Burly” stayed behind.

My own bodyguards. A girl could get used to this, especially when one of them looked an awful lot like Mr. Bubbles from
Lilo & Stitch
.

In the chaos of Joe charging in and rescuing me like he was a younger, darker version of Liam Neeson, and Trevor and Joe and the twin kinky dudes talking to me, I didn’t see Suzy.

And when the doctor walked in, I realized Suzy was gone.

Uh-oh. “She escaped?” I sputtered, looking at Big.

He frowned, clearly offended by the mere idea. “Of course not. Ms. Bergen has been taken to be held in a secure location.”

“Say that in plain English,” I snapped at him. One eyebrow lifted but he said nothing.

“Ms. Jennings, I am Doctor Ashwari,” the nice, white-jacketed woman said to me, placing an emergency kit on the bed next to me. “I am so sorry to hear of your injuries. Can you tell me what happened?” Her long, dark hair was braided in a beautiful plait streaked with grey and white. Kind, motherly eyes met mine. Her suit under the white coat was a lovely, light grey.

You would think I was getting my tetanus shot updated, and not being tended to on a sex resort where I’d just been mistaken for a man with my penis taped up my ass.

I held up one finger to Dr. Ashwari and finished with Big. “She didn’t get away?”

A conspirator’s smile spread his scary features into a warm, teddy-bear look. “Oh, no, Ms. Jennings. Ms. Bergen will get exactly what she has coming to her.”

That made all my muscles relax, including the ones strained in my earlier ordeal. Now I could look at the doctor and catalog my injuries, starting with my ankle.

“Can you hurry up?” I asked as I yawned wide, my hand so heavy I couldn’t cover my mouth. “I have to manage the band.” The pillow felt so good. Soft and sweet, like Trevor’s inner thigh.

“You’ve had a tremendous shock, Ms. Jennings. I’m quite certain that the resort staff can attend to the needs of the band,” she said, so soothing. My body went limp. Then tense.

“No! When I set up earlier today there was a problem with,” – yawn – “one of the....” What was the word? I forgot.

“Mmmm,” was all Dr. Ashwari said, taping some kind of salve-covered bandage to my ankle. She moved on to my wrists and damn if that pillow didn’t get even more comfortable, like resting between Joe and Trevor’s inner thighs.

“The push of adrenaline is fading now, Ms. Jennings, and sleep is your best friend,” the doctor said in a voice like one of those new-age tapes my boss’s boyfriend, Mike, sometimes listened to in the office when he was there.

“Can’t sleep,” I said, then yawned. “But when do they start?”

“Forty minutes.”

“I can take a nap...” And I did. For the next three hours.

Damn it.

The next thing I knew, Trevor was leaning over me on the bed as I opened my eyes. He smelled like sweat and excitement and soap, the hair around the edges of his face ringed with wetness, his body pumped and primed.

Yet tender.

“What?” I sat up, confused. Some dream about a chipmunk and a princess having sex gummed up my mind, followed by a twenty-one penis ejaculation salute. “Trevor – huh? Oh, is it time for the concert?” I was still in my shimmery green dress and one ankle had a huge bandage on it. I looked like a mermaid with a gashed fin.

His eyes. So bright and warm as he leaned down and kissed my forehead gently, his hand running down my cheek and over my hair. “No, Darla. The concert’s over.”

I sat up like a shot. “Over?” I screamed. “OVER?” Sliding past him, I stood, my ankle turning in. Limping toward the door, a stream of invective that would make an eighteenth century Scotsman blush on a pirate ship poured out of my mouth.

“Darla,” Trevor said, his voice filled with mirth. “It really is over.”

I was at the door, my hand on the knob, as I turned back and looked at him.

Really
looked at him.

He was taking me in, too. Call it sleepiness, call it post-traumatic brain, call it whatever the fuck you want to call it, but my ability to perceive anything changed in those seconds as our eyes just looked each other over. In slow motion, Trevor sauntered across the space that separated us, my mind’s eye etching him in there forever. The torn jeans. The sweaty cotton t-shirt that clung to the ridges of muscle in his shoulders. The look of love in his eyes.

Now, Trevor had plenty of looks he’d given me over the months we’d been together, and I could figure most of them out. This one, though...this one was different.

He reached me and clicked the door back shut. Taking both of my hands in his, he looked down at me, head tilted. Those eyes glittered in the low light like diamonds, and my heart thudded, heavy and out of beat, fluttering and thumping like it was confused.

I swallowed. Something big was about to happen, and it didn’t involve handcuffs or taping a penis under anyone’s taint.

“I love you,” he said, eyes burning with a physical representation of his words. “I love you more than I can show you, and I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you tonight.” His eyebrows went low with a frown, a wince, a tightening of his hands in mine.

“Darla, if something had happened,” he said, voice choking as emotion overtook him. His head dipped down and our skin touched. Each breath I took felt like his essence was mingling with my own, making another kind of love.

“You were great. Both of you,” I murmured, the words too little. Too contained to express what I really felt as my skin flowered with pure joy. My heart took flight and I stood on tiptoe, falling half over when my ankle started screaming. His hands, sure and strong, were about my waist in seconds, lifting me up.

I felt shy. Awkward. Alive and alight because his words...oh, those words.

“I love you too, Trevor.” I looked up and brushed my lips against his jaw. “I think I always have. I just hadn’t met you until seven months ago. But the love’s been there for far longer.”

The kiss he gave me next wasn’t about passion. Not lust. Nor want. It was authentic and timeless, a meeting of the deepest part of me and the deepest part of him. A reaching out to intertwine and unfurl. To mingle and mix. To be a part of him and allow a part of him in me, so that something bigger than each of us, separate, could exist.

Speaking of which – Joe appeared just then as the door opened of its own accord and I saw the bald heads of Big and Burly bookending him in the doorway. He was in the middle of a conversation with Burly and cut off in mid-word, taking me and Trevor in with eyes filled with more emotion to add to our giant ball of love.

Love was in the air, corny as that sounds.

You live in a relationship, no matter how unconventional, and you know you’re wanted. Needed. Cared about and part of the flow. But it’s different when the word “love” enters into it all, because that’s a word with power. Authority. Dignity. People like Joe and Trevor and me don’t make promises we won’t keep, and we don’t say I love you like it’s the emotional equivalent of
How’s it going?
 

This meant something.
Big
.

I opened my arms and let go of Trevor, turning toward Joe. His embrace was hot and damp, his body trembling from the pounding bliss of performing.

“The concert went well,” I said into his smiling face.

“The concert was fucking amazing!” he said. “Best job the band has ever done! You should have seen how crazy the audience went when Trevor played your song.”

The look on my face must have been pretty grim, because they both went from stoked to alarmed in less than a second.

“Nice job, Asshole,” Trevor said, punching Joe’s shoulder. “Way to make her feel even worse.”

“No! No! I didn’t mean...shit...” Joe muttered, rubbing his shoulder.

“It’s okay. I’ll see it on video, right?”

Joe lit up. “Yeah! The tech said they were videoing it. Only the stage, only us. No audience members.”

While I was sad I missed the live performance, it wasn’t like it was my fault. The night got away from me.

Hah. Understatement.

“Since I missed the concert, but got a nice little nap, and because you two look like you just drank nineteen shots of espresso, want to go for a walk on the shore?” I headed out the door, forgetting about Big and Burly.

Trevor and Joe were right behind me when I came to a halt.

“Ms. Jennings? You feeling better now?” asked Big.

“Yes, thanks,” I said, heading down the hall to my own room. All four men followed me. If we’d had one of those Cleopatra carriage things I could have traveled in style. Instead, I just limped.

“Mr. Connor, I’ve been asked to give you this,” Burly said, handing Trevor a business card. I squinted to read it. 

“Who’s Gabriel Dare?” I asked.

Trevor shrugged. “Don’t know him.” He gave Burly a questioning look.

Big and Burly both raised their eyebrows and gave mysterious looks. “He owns a chain of luxury clubs. Elite?” His voice implied we should have heard of them.

All three of us shook our heads.

“Nope,” I said as Trevor fingered the card. A handwritten phone number on the back made my heart pick up speed. That always meant something good, unless it was some skanky ho groupie trying to get her hole stuffed by one of my men after a concert.

From a guy who owned nightclubs? That could mean a gig.

“You will,” Burly assured us. He pushed his chin forward toward the card. “That’s one number not to lose.” Trevor pocketed the card and gave Joe a curious look as we walked away.

“Wait.” I stopped and turned back to Big. “What happened to Suzy?”

“She’s...” he frowned, “being taken care of.”

“Does someone need a statement from me?”

“It’s more complex than that, Ma’am.”

“
Miss
. I ain’t no ‘Ma’am,’” I huffed.

“
Miss
Jennings.” That made him smile. “I am not at liberty to discuss what happens to Ms. Bergen. However, hypothetically,” he said, “The master of the island may give her a choice. Prosecution in Florida or a position, here on the island.”

“A position? As what? A waterboarder?” I snapped.