The Girl Who Can't Say No: Bound To The Billionaire (Part One) (A BDSM Erotic Romance Novelette) (5 page)

"Daniel fucking Grant."

I strain my eyes at her, feeling a twinge of
something inside that sets my heart back into overdrive - guilt?
Panic? Lust? - as she repeats those words with sizeable relish, and
plants herself at the foot of my bed.

"Wait, what?" I manage to spit out,
cautiously. She's almost humming with excitement; her outline
against the harsh, brutal Sunlight buzzes with a certain juvenile
energy.

"You didn't tell me you'd spoken to Daniel
fucking Grant this morning!"

"I uhm..." Oh
fuck
, what does she
know? Did he call? Did I get the job?
Does she know about my
indecent audition?
I play it safe;
act cool, Chlo
. "I
didn't know you cared."

If I didn't know my own twin sister better,
I'd almost say she looks insulted. Her face turns from giddy
excitement to pointed dejection, and before I can sleepily draw my
arms to my face in defense, she's picked the pillow back up from
the floor, and flung it back into my eyes.

"You bitch," she rasps between gritted teeth,
using every bit of that law-room education of hers. "Don't you
think I need to know these things?
Huh
!?"

"I audition all the time!" I yell back,
scratching my head of unkempt black hair, trying not to let her
unprovoked incredulity get the better of me. "What, are you my
agent now?"

Silence
. Her expression inverts from a
fizzling anger, to something much more sly. With a knowing grin,
she drops to her elbows to the bed, and leans over to me, trying
her hardest to read me. Then, in an apparent
eureka
moment,
she's figured it all out.

"You don't know do you?"

Again, heart-pounding guilt; dry-mouthed
confusion; nerve-wrenching anxiety.
What the fuck is going
on?
She puts me out of my misery with a pointed finger to my
laptop in the corner of the room, sitting precariously upon a pile
of un-ironed clothes.

"Wikipedia. Daniel Grant. Check him out."

And with that moment of self-satisfied
smugness, she picks herself up and leaps out of the room, leaving
me to wonder just what the hell I've gotten myself into. Shaking
the panging pain of a headache from my skull, I reach across for
the laptop, boot it up, and do as she says.

***

"So," is the only word I manage to coax from
her as I sullenly plant myself back upon the couch next to her,
taking an abstract moment to scan the place for rats and
cockroaches.
Jesus this place is filthy
. I look over to her,
and quietly process all the excitable questions she asks, and all
incredulous protests she makes about my
so-called
audition
this morning. I try to act cool; try to remain the icy and aloof
Chlo that's won me so many icy and aloof-looking extra roles.

"You know, we should really clean this place
up."

"What's he like!?" she barks at me with
crazed eyes and flared nostrils, "What did he say? What was he
dressed like? Oh, tell me everything!"

I can't even believe it myself. I don't make
a habit of researching my directors and casting agents and
co-workers and so-on online. I guess I'm just scared of what I
might find out. And, of course, I could think of better things to
do than bury my head inside a gossip magazine for hours on end. But
how come everyone knows who Daniel Grant is in this town, apart
from me?

My first audition with a renowned
billionaire. Not just any billionaire, either. But, as I've come to
learn via a poorly written wikipedia article, one of the foremost
movie producers in town. From what I understand you'd be
hard-pressed to find a movie made in this giddy little city that
didn't have his signature, somewhere along the way.
Daniel
Grant; the man who makes the Sun shine
, or so said the
Vogue
piece about him.

She stares into me with wide, impatient, and
impetuous eyes, waiting for me to dish the dirt on my auspicious
audition. It's now that I realize that I should feel great about
all of this; I mean, for one morning, at least, I had the ear of
the richest man in Los Angeles. And, not to mention, his wandering,
lustful eyes for a good five minutes. I'm sure if I'd been a little
more assertive, I could have gotten any role I desired. But I don't
feel great, rueful, or even disappointed in my ascension to
Hollywood heaven. I just want one thing: to know why he'd leave me
naked and frustrated like that.

"Carissa," I begin, mindfully obscuring the
naked parts of my version of events, before a whole different thing
entirely pops into my head; "how did you know I met with Daniel
Grant?"

In her effervescently innocent way, she
points to the house-phone, nestled between a delicate arrangement
of trash on the coffee table.

"Voicemail."

Voicemail? Why don't I ever fucking give my
mobile number out on my portfolio, rather than the fucking
house-phone! I snatch it from the table, and under the giddy eyes
of my sister, replay the message he left.

"Hi Miss Everett," it begins, in that
strangely chimeric monotone I've had bouncing around my head all
afternoon. He breathes deeply, and for a second, I'm transported
back to that white room, my eyes closed, and his hot breath on my
neck. My heart races and I feel a twinge of something
ever-so-slightly naughty between my legs. "I just wanted to say
that after our meeting this morning, I have a role in mind for you
after all. Let me know if you're interested."

And with the curious way he emphasized
interested
, he hung up.
Holy fuck, a role
!?

"My sister, the big Hollywood starlet,"
Carissa sings with relish, as I sit frozen upon the couch. "You'll
still visit me, won't you? When you get that mansion next to Jack
Nicholson's place?"

I barely hear her; I'm too wrapped up in my
own little world. I can't help but replay that entire message in my
mind, over and over.
A role in mind for me
? He speaks so
tempered, never letting his voice rise an octave, yet makes
everything he says sound so sly. Maybe I'm reading too much into
it. Maybe I distrust him a little too much after this morning's
frivolities. But then again, something doesn't seem - well -
right
.

"So come on," she whines in my ear, jolting
me from my day-dreaming trance. "What's he like?"

I pause for a moment, before ripping the
phone from its charger, and springing up from the couch, leaving a
very disappointed and audibly dissatisfied Carissa yelling in my
wake. Back to my room; back to my own world. I'm going to call him.
I'm going to get that role. And for the first time in my life, I'm
going to go into this so-called
role
with no preparation, no
lump in my throat, no colony of butterflies in my stomach, and no
nerves. I'm going to be me: Chloe Everett.

Ring ring

I've barely gotten into my room and closed
the door behind me before I hit redial. Who am I kidding? My hand
trembles even as I call him, clutching the phone perilously close
to my ear, and screwing my eyes shut, unwilling to allow any part
of this cruel world to interrupt me right now.

Ring ring

I'm back in that bright, white room. I can
feel the warm air against my naked skin. I feel his breath exciting
the hair on the back of my neck to stand on end, and I feel the wet
twinge of dampness between my legs, as I fidget around on the
spot.

"Hello, this is Daniel."

That voice
; I come tumbling back to
Earth with a bang and a shudder, and after a moment's brief
hesitation, finally make myself heard.

"Hi, Daniel; Mr. Grant, hi."

Fuck
, why didn't I decide what I was
going to call him
before
I'd made the call? Speaking of
which, I really, really don't know what to fucking say next.

"Miss Everett, hello." He remembers my name;
my voice
! I briefly catch myself swooning like a schoolgirl,
before I shake myself out of it, and get back on track.

"Yeah, I uhm, thought I'd get in touch about
this role of yours."

He waits. I wait. The silence is killing me.
With a spluttering cough, I continue:

"Is there a casting office somewhere you want
me to go to, or -"

"No," he barks back, interrupting my nervous
train of thought. "How about you meet me in town first. There are a
few things I need to make clear."

I listen intently, pressing the phone against
my face as tightly as I can while he gives me the address of a
restaurant. I assume he's picking up the bill.

"And, one more thing Miss Everett," he says,
finally raising his voice to an enthralling high, "I'm looking
forward to seeing you again."

His words strike a strange and worrisome
chord within me. I gulp, loudly, finding a knot in my throat that
spitefully stops me from answering his final words, and he hangs up
duly.
Looking forward to seeing me again
? Given everything;
my unrelenting and obvious attraction to this man, the unworldly
and unimaginable power he holds over my fledgling career, and most
of all, my absolute and irreproachable desire to find out just
why
he did what he did this morning, I'm not so sure I look
forward to seeing him.

Seven PM tonight, at a restaurant whose name
I scrawled so nervously inside my cell. I look to my open wardrobe,
and already know what I'll wear; my dark blue dress, strapless, and
similar to Carissa's red one in everything but color. Something a
little more... me.

"Carissa," I say lightly, poking my head
around the corner of the living room, finding her deep inside some
indecipherable law textbook. "You haven't told anyone about, you
know, Daniel Grant, have you?"

"What? No, of course not," she answers, her
eyelashes fluttering innocently, and her square white front teeth
glowing in the luminescent light. Without another word, she buries
herself back inside her book, apparently unconcerned with how my
call went. With an empty mind, I take myself back to my room, and
throw myself back upon the bed, replaying my morning's audition
over and over, and over again.

Chapter Six

I hate Los Angeles at night. For a city full
of stars, you wouldn't know it by looking; the smog and fluffy
pollutants belched into the sky by a million cars chokes up any
watching stars in the night, bathing us instead in a dull miasma of
thick, warm humidity. That's why when I managed to arrive at this
address in one piece, I already loved the view. I’m a little out of
town, elevated just high enough to escape the fumes, and close
enough to the hills to see the big, white iconic 'HOLLYWOOD' sign
without my glasses.

I got myself here twenty minutes early or so.
There's not a chance in hell I'm going to be delayed by police
chase or a crash or a gridlock or whatever the hell else the roads
of LA have in store for me tonight. The restaurant itself seems
nice enough; French dining, apparently. I wouldn't know much about
good food, considering that Carissa and I live on a diet of noodles
and popcorn. You know, the thing that strikes me most about this
place though - dimly lit, hidden away inside the court of a set of
towering well-to-do office buildings - is how low key it is. The
streets are illuminated by dim orange lampposts, and the final
moments of the Sun on the horizon can't find their way through the
hills.

I dig into my bag, taking a nervous look
around as if I were rehearsing a role in some hackneyed spy movie,
and find my cell phone. I know I said I was going to go into this
meeting with no preparation, but I can't help myself.

Daniel Grant was born thirty years ago to a
classical-era movie magnate and his scriptwriter wife, who died
just after he was born, according to a cursory glance at his
wikipedia page. Inheriting the family fortune, he was the pioneer
of that loved-and-despised Teen/Werewolf/Slasher movie trend. You
know, the movies where the guy gets the girl, the girl gets
murdered, comes back as a werewolf, yadda yadda. But apparently it
made Daniel Grant and his studio filthy rich.

I switch my smartphone off before seven, and
find the darkest corner of the courtyard to sit myself, scanning
every inch of the road ahead of me for limousines, hummers,
helicopters, whatever else I could imagine a bachelor billionaire
arriving in. In the end, I needn't have bothered.

"Miss Everett," I hear him say, with a stern
hand upon my shoulder. My heart practically bursts from my chest in
excited surprise, as I spin around to find him as gorgeous as my
earlier daydreams portrayed.

"Mr. Grant!" I bellow, trying my utmost to
stop myself grinning inanely.

"Daniel" he corrects me.

"Daniel."

"Shall we find a seat?"

How did he manage to sneak up on me like
that? I found a place so darkly closed off from the rest of the
street that he simply must have come from
inside
the
building.
Whatever Chlo
, I say to myself coolly, trying to
invoke that cool-as-a-cucumber feeling once more.

"Sure!" I giddily screech, instantly
dispelling any possibility of remaining as calm and collected as my
inner voice demands.

He takes me gently by the wrist, and leads me
inside. I expect the clattering of knives and forks, and chattering
of diners, and the shrill cry of a baby. I hear no such thing. The
place smells terrific; chicken and mushrooms and herbs of all
flavors, and each table is lit by a set of candles - flames dancing
seductively from side to side as we pass - but something's not
right. We're all alone in here.

"Daniel," I say, craning my neck around in
frantic circles, trying to find evidence of any human life, but
finding only the mustached maitre d’, standing alone by the shiny
silver kitchen door, staring into space. "Is this place even
open?"