Taunt Me (Rough Love Book 2) (2 page)

“Are you okay, really?” he asked.

“I’m okay. It’s just that…things get intense here sometimes.”

“Yeah. When I’m here I like to let my hair down, in more ways than one. But it’s good, don’t you think? I like that dude,” he said, gesturing in the direction the bear had gone. “He really gets into it. We hook up now and again.”

“Oh. And you like that?”

He shrugged. The chains on his harness tinkled with the movement. “I don’t dislike it. I’m looking for The One like everyone else, but in the meantime, I might as well have a little fun. Stay in practice and all that,” he added with a wink.

“When you were with him... The intensity...it reminded me of someone I used to know.”

“Really?” His eyes were dark like mine, and he had straight, white teeth. “And did you sub to this ‘someone you used to know’?”

“Yeah. I was the sub in our relationship, I guess.”

“If you’re guessing, honey, he wasn’t doing it right.”

I sucked in a breath. “He definitely wasn’t doing it right, but I was for sure the sub within our...thing.”

“Your
thing
?” He put a hand on my arm and gave me a sympathetic look. “I love a girl who’ll refer to a relationship as a ‘thing.’ I’ve had a few ‘things’ myself. That sounds like the beginning of a painful and fucked-up story.”

“You have no idea.”

He threw a look around the room, at laughter and perversity and lust. Like everyone else, he knew I didn’t belong here. Unlike everyone else, he was friendly to me anyway.

“You want to go get some coffee somewhere, and tell me your painful, fucked-up story?”

I looked around too, everywhere but his dark, earnest gaze. “I don’t know. It’s possibly too painful and fucked-up to tell.”

“Then I’ll tell you some painful, fucked-up stories instead. Most of them are good for a laugh.”

I hesitated. I’d been living as a closed-off, emotionally unavailable hermit for so long, rejecting even the kindest advances of my classmates. But here was someone who might understand my dark inner world.

But...

“Will you tell me your name?” I asked.

He laughed. “Of course I will. I should have before. It’s Andrew.” He held up a hand just out of reach. “I’d shake, but you know where this hand has been. Let me clean up and put on some real clothes...” He trailed off, expectantly waiting for my name.

“Chere,” I said. “Like the French word for dear.’”

“Okay, Chere, my dear. Wait here, all right? And we’ll go get some coffee and something to eat. We Norton
artistes
have to stick together, especially when one of us looks so fucking bleak.”

That was me, the bleak one, and him? He seemed kind and bright, so different from Simon’s tortured level of painter-
artiste
. “I’ll wait here, Andrew,” I promised.

And silently, to myself I added,
Thank you for telling me your name.

There’s a difference between being private and being an asshole. I never told Chere my name because I was an asshole.

For the record, my name is Price Thomas Eriksen. I’m forty years old and I live on Bleecker Street, across from the apartment I gave her. Never been married, no kids. I work a lot, more than anyone should, and I travel a lot, to China, the Middle East, Europe, Russia, more places than I can remember.

I’m known professionally as P.T. Eriksen, sort of the way Edward Estlin Cummings was known as E.E. Cummings. I can’t defend the fact that I never revealed any of this to her, except that I was an asshole, and I thought secrecy and privacy might maintain some barriers between us. When they didn’t, I got uncomfortable and left.

I didn’t leave her with nothing. To atone for my crimes against her body and her psyche, I gave her an apartment. I got her into my alma mater, the prestigious Norton School of Art and Design, by arranging a fake scholarship in my grandmother’s name. You could do that kind of shit when you had money and influence, even if you were an asshole. I’d watched from across the street as she arrived for class the first day, nervous, newly dark-haired, clutching a large leather portfolio. She didn’t see me, although I was sitting in front of a coffee shop not fifty yards away. In the beginning I’d watched her a lot, watched her in her apartment, watched her on the subway. It wasn’t stalking.

Well, yeah. It was stalking, but only with benevolent intent. I had to be sure she’d swim instead of sink. I had to be sure she wouldn’t go running back to her drug-addicted boyfriend or her smooth-talking pimp as soon as I was out of the picture. I had to be sure she was as strong as I thought she was, and she’d impressed me by being even stronger than I thought she was.

Once she’d settled into her new life, I tried to settle back into mine. There was always work to do, a skyscraper to design in Jordan, and then a suspension bridge to consult on in Brussels. I stressed about her when I was away, but then I’d return and look through my binoculars into her sixth floor apartment, and find her completely safe. She was secure and busy, if not happy.

She hadn’t been happy in a while now.

I’m sorry I left you, Chere. It was better that way.

Now I was just back from Edinburgh, skulking around the same coffee shop, watching her leave Norton with her curly-haired buddy. They’d been hanging out for a couple weeks now, but he wasn’t her boyfriend. I’d checked. No, he was gay as fuck, and steady and well-adjusted, so I approved. He smiled at her and seemed to care about her. She needed that, all those things I could never give her. Kindness. Nurturing. Love.

I preferred hurting and mindfucking to love. I liked rough, encompassing control and sexual mayhem. Unfortunately, Chere didn’t need another asshole taking over her life and jerking her around. Oh, I would have treated her better than Simon, but I wasn’t sure it would feel better to
her
, because she was looking for romantic, caring love, and I had none of that to give.

I have nothing against romantic love. I don’t care if other people want to believe in it, but I personally think it’s shit. I think it’s fake, imaginary, stupid, a fairy tale made up for the weak and needy people of the world. It’s a construct created to sell roses on Valentine’s Day, and seats at fantasy-fulfillment chick-flicks. I avoided romance as a rule, even if I’d written out a few lovey-dovey poems for a bleach-blonde prostitute. Momentary weakness, nothing more.

Now Chere had dark hair and spiral curls she tugged on while she sat at her computer working on her design projects. I wanted to fuck those curls. I wanted to fuck Chere, but I couldn’t, because I wasn’t what she was looking for. She’d taken so many positive steps to turn around her life. She was in school. She was kicking ass. I had to leave her alone. She was serious about becoming a designer, and she’d be happier as a designer than an escort. As much as I enjoyed fucking her, she wasn’t for me.

But sometimes I wished she was for me. Sometimes I sat in the dungeon next to my bedroom and imagined her bound to the rack, or manacled to the chains anchored in the ceiling. Sometimes when I stared at her through my binoculars, I imagined knocking on her door and inviting her to my place, and taking her in that dungeon and keeping her there, even against her will.

Chere thought the worst thing between us was the leaving. She was wrong. The worst thing was what I had started wanting from her by the end, what I still wanted from her with inappropriate intensity: her tears and misery, her trembling surrender, and my selfish perversity unhinging her soul.

Andrew half-skipped, half-walked me down a silent hallway, past office doors and faint fluorescent lights. It was almost midnight and the studio wing was closed, but Andrew knew the night guard and managed to get us in.

“Are you sure we’re allowed to do this?” I asked.

He turned back to me. “You heard what I told Grayson. I have a project to finish. I might have lied when I said it was due tomorrow, but I want you to see it.”

“I thought we were going to do something fun, not hang out in the paint lab. I don’t make you hang out in the metals lab.”

Andrew rolled his eyes. “Because the metals lab is horrifically boring. Spoons and drain grates and thermostat covers. Kill me.”

I designed spoons and drain grates and thermostat covers, and I knew Andrew was only kidding. When he got out of Norton, he’d probably take some workaday design job too until he caught a break with his painting.

“It’s called the Norton School of
Art
and Design,” he went on. “Notice which one they put first? Art. We’re the acknowledged badasses of this place.” He pumped a paint-stained fist, pretending not to notice when I muttered something about asses. “Besides, it’s fun hanging out in the studio at night.”

“How is it fun?”

“It’s fun, Chere. It’s peaceful and super cool, and you can look up at the night sky.”

I followed him a few steps farther, and then the smell reached me, the odor of stripper, primer, and oil paint. It transported me right back in time to my ex’s art studio.

“Jesus.” I stopped in the hall. I wanted to see Andrew’s work, but that smell triggered too many memories.

“I know.” Andrew wrinkled his nose. “The stench of creation. You get used to it.”

“It’s not that.”

He looked at me a moment, then understanding dawned. He reached for my hand.

“Are you thinking about Simon? Don’t think about Simon.”

The first night, over coffee, Andrew had wanted my “painful and fucked-up story” and it had been easier to talk about Simon than W, so that was the fucked-up story I told. Andrew had already known who Simon Baldwin was, because Simon was the current darling of the New York art scene. Since we’d broken up, Simon’s career had gone stellar, his drug-fueled mania and erratic craziness driving his burgeoning talent to unforeseeable heights. Critics dubbed him the
Tribeca Train Wreck
, tsking at his narcotic shenanigans while they crowed about the genius of his work.

And they were right, his paintings were genius. Since I’d left Simon, the art had come at a frenetic pace, the paintings and murals, the packed galleries and sold-out shows. He’d attracted a major following, not just in New York, but also in the international art world. I tried to be happy for him. It was hard.

When Andrew learned how abusive Simon had been to me, he looked like he’d been stabbed by a unicorn. But Andrew was faithful to our friendship and immediately demoted his hero from “best artist of all time” to asshole. He’d done that for me, because he was that kind of person.

“Maybe this will be good for you,” he said, tugging me forward. The smell was getting worse. “It’ll be good for you to be around painters who aren’t psychotic, abusive assholes.”

“But no one else is here.”

“I’m here! And you know what I mean. It’ll be good for you to be around art stuff. To be in a messy, creative place with good energy. You need good energy, girl.”

“I need to go to bed. It’s late.”

We reached a heavy door marked
PAINTING STUDIO
. Andrew swiped his student ID and the lock clicked open.

The smell inside turned out to be ten times worse than the smell in Simon’s studio, I suppose because this room was ten times bigger, with easels, canvases, and paint-strewn tables and work benches arranged in a mish-mash pattern.

“Come on,” he said, guiding me toward the center of the studio. We wove around corners, past half-finished paintings that looked ghostly under weak work lamps.

“Why is it so dim in here?” I asked.

“It’s best to paint by natural light.” He pointed at the ceiling, at rectangular skylights. “The lighting’s designed to complement, not illuminate. This studio’s not meant to be used at night.”

“It’s freaking creepy.”

“I know.” He grinned. “I love it.”

He left me and darted between two workstations, disappearing from sight. “Andrew?” I peered into the dark corners. “Come back.”

“Just a sec,” he called from a few rows over.

I hugged myself, trying to figure out if it was the ghostly lights or the reminders of Simon that made me so uneasy. I remembered all of this: the paintbrushes, the cans, the palettes and color-streaked towels, the thick, enveloping smell...

I jumped as music blasted through a speaker a few feet away. Andrew said “Oops” and turned it down a dozen decibels or so. Trippy 60’s music wafted from all four corners of the room, and Andrew reappeared, brushing an errant blond curl back into the mop barely contained by his furry fuchsia scrunchie.

“
Evermore
,” he said, pointing to the nearest speaker.

“This band is Evermore?”

“The band is Led Zeppelin. The song’s called
The Battle of Evermore
. Geez, you’re in art school. Why don’t you know stuff?”

Andrew’s insults were always delivered with a smirk that made it impossible to feel pissed. He grabbed my hand again. “My carrel’s over here. I’ve been working on some paintings for my senior exhibit. Come see.”

I’ve been working on some paintings. Come see.
Simon used to say that to me, at least until he got strung out on drugs and turned into another person. Andrew’s workspace was near the back corner, a disorganized but joyful explosion of color. Unlike Simon, Andrew painted real things, people who drew you in, and everyday objects that made you look twice. I’d seen some of his work at his apartment, but I’d never seen it in progress, spread around makeshift walls.

“This looks so...creative,” I said. “You hang out here every day?”

“Whenever I can. We’re old school in the paint lab. We can’t do our projects on computers like you design nerds.”

“I’m not a nerd, thank you.”

“You are, but that’s okay.”

Andrew’s work was like his personality, clear and fresh and unaffected. You couldn’t not look, and one look was all it took to fall in love.

“You’re going to be famous someday,” I said. “How could anyone not want to own this?” I pointed to a work in progress, a young child in rough brush strokes. Boy or girl, it was hard to tell, but the features glowed. “Who is that?”

“The daughter of a friend. She’s adorbs.”