Blind Girl: A Dark Billionaire Romance (5 page)

“Untie me,” I say with weak words.

“No.”

“Please.” The urge to touch him, to hold him against me, takes control.

“No,” he says again. He raises an eyebrow. “Not yet.”

The promise of it is enough for me. I lie back and let it happen, enjoying every thrust he bestows upon me, each one dragging me closer to another climax.

“You’re so beautiful,” he tells me again. He leans over to kiss my lips. “I’m never going to let you go…”

My heart swells with happiness and it shoves me over the edge. Another orgasm shoots through my body and my inner muscles vibrate around his hardness. For a moment, I close my eyes, but I will them back open to look at him. He stares at me, enjoying my pleasure just as much as I am.

Charles lets out one last animalistic grunt and pumps his heated desire into our latex barrier. His thrusts slow steadily until he finally comes to a halt inside of me. Sweat drips off his brow, sliding down his skin until it flows onto mine. I feel him quiver inside of me. His breaths heave out against my body, blending with my own.

Finally, he reaches out and unties me.

I let my arms drop to my sides. He moves off the bed and sets the neckties back inside his briefcase. I silently inspect my wrists to find subtle red and pink markings scratched along my flesh.

“Alice…” I look up at him. “Are you all right?”

I’m shaking. I can feel my body trembling more with each breath. Not from cold, but from a shock that grips me so tight, I can barely move. Somehow, I manage a nod.

He doesn’t believe me. He lowers himself back onto the bed, his gaze never straying far from mine, and opens his arms to me. I fall into them like a wounded stray. His touch acts as an instant sedative, nullifying every ounce of doubt from my body.

“I should go home,” I finally say after a time has passed.

Charles looks upon me with kind eyes and nods as a smile slowly extends across his face.

***

“You dirty whore!”

Gabby stands in the nearly deserted lobby with her hands on her hips and sadistic grin dancing along her lips.

I step off the golden elevator and breathe a heavy sigh of relief. Not only is she in one piece, she’s fully clothed. “Oh, thank god, Gabby. I thought you were dead or something.”

“Well, your concern for my well-being
obviously
didn’t keep you occupied for very long.” She holds her phone up to my face with the time on display. “It’s four in the morning. We should get back to the dorm.”

“Are you kidding?” I grab her wrist to get a better look. “Oh, my god…” Five hours. I was with Charles for five hours.

Gabby nods with a shit-eating grin. “Uh-huh, did that tall, dark, and time-consuming stranger have a name?”

I step deeper into the lobby, charging towards the entryway as fast as my feet can carry me. “Charles.”

“Ooo,
Charles
,” she coos, rushing to keep up with me. “Was he
in charge
?”

“Yes,” I answer with my head held low. “Yes, he was.”

“Okay, okay, stop, stop, we’re both in heels—” Gabby reaches for me and snatches my wrist to pull me back. “Can we just do something here real quick?”

“What?” I pause to face her, my eyes glancing suspiciously around the lobby for prying eyes. I catch the receptionist eying me briefly before turning back to the computer.

Gabby leans in closer and keeps her voice low. “Did we both just lose our virginities to billionaires?”

I look her in the eyes. “Yes,” I confirm.

“Holy shit,” she breathes.

We share a silent cab ride back to the university. I wonder if she has the same thoughts as me as we sit amid the dull tremblings of our ruined hymens. I doubt it. Gabby seems genuinely happy with the decisions she just made, but me, on the other hand, sit completely torn. I can’t decide between regret and contentment, but it’s too late to do anything about it now.

Charles is my truth now, a truth that I will have to live with for the rest of my life. That was, after all, his intention from the very beginning.

When you deflower a virgin, you are inside of her forever.

I stare out the window and watch the world roll by in slow motion.

Chapter 3

I’ll Sleep On It

“Alice, you have a package!”

Her voice comes in low and muffled beneath the music coming through my ear-bud headphones. As I step towards the front desk, I pull them from my ears.

“Who’s it from?” I ask Margie, the receptionist at my dormitory. She’s a short, middle-aged woman with thick-rimmed glasses and a Golden Girls-era haircut. She reminds me a lot of my late grandmother and I always take the time to say hello to her as I pass by the desk on my way to class.

“No return address,” she replies as she steps out from the backroom. She holds the package in her arms, a black box, around twice as thick as a pizza box and just as wide, with a deep red colored ribbon tied across it. “Looks nice,” she says.

As she slaps it down on the counter in front of me, an involuntary shiver trembles down my spine. I nod cautiously and run my fingers through the soft ribbon. “Yes, it does,” I say. “Thanks, Margie.”

I ride the elevator to the sixth floor, staring at the box the entire trip. I don’t have to wonder who it’s from; I know who sent it. That dark red color, an unmistakable reminder of the night I spent with a stranger over three weeks ago. I re-live the night every time I blink my eyes, flashes of memories that will never go away, nor do I wish them to.

Gabby sits at her desk in the corner and glances up at me as I enter the room. When she sees the box, she drops her pencil. “What’s that?” she asks.

“I just received a package,” I say. I drop it down on my bed and take a step back from it.

She’s the only one that understands the red ribbon’s significance. Her feet touch the floor and she takes wide strides across the room. “Have you opened it?” she asks.

“No.” I chew on my lip. “It’s from him. You think it’s from him? I think it’s from him.” My words spew out of me like vomit, full of uncontrollable phrases and redundancies.

“Open it,” she suggests.

I pause. “Okay, if it’s from him, what does it mean?”

Gabby shrugs. “It means he had fun. It means he likes you.”

I shake my head. “But… what does that
mean
?”

“Alice, I don’t think we’ll be able to translate the meaning of the gift until we actually know what it is…. So, I think you should just open the box.”

I take a breath, one last ditch attempt at stalling, and reach out to slide the ribbon off the box. It falls loosely on the bed. I pull the lid off and set it aside.

“Oh, my…” I breathe.

Gabby slaps a hand on my shoulder and gives me a few pats. “Yep. He likes you, Alice.”

I touch the blue fabric. It slips through my fingers like silk, warm and inviting. My fingers tremble as I hold the dress up to my body. A perfect fit.

Gabby, being the girl she is, inspects the tag first. “Oh, Alice…” she says with wide eyes. “This is a real Faleuro.”

“Okay…” I can’t peel my eyes away from the dress. It’s the most radiant shade of sapphire blue, accented with shades of black along the waist and seams with a halter top. It’s gorgeous. Fit for royalty. And as such, ridiculously expensive.

“Alice, this is a
real
Faleuro,” Gabby repeats.

“I don’t know what that shit
means
,” I say, glancing at her with a chuckle.

“It
means
he really fucking likes you!” She stomps her foot and begins pacing behind me. “Only fashion models and movie stars wear real Faleuro dresses, Alice. If a man buys his lady a Faleuro dress—”

“I am
not
his lady.” I fold the dress and set it back down in the box.

“You sure as hell are now!” She snatches the dress back out of the box, unable to contain her excitement. She holds it up against her shoulders and looks at herself in the mirror attached to the door. “I mean, you’re like fucking
obligated
to be now! Ohhh, this is so cool! We’re both dating millionaires!”

Gabby’s night of the Blind Girl Party went a little differently than mine did. When she reached into her fishbowl at the end of the night, she pulled out Ian Botsford’s name, the owner of the hotel. Since then, Ian has taken her on quite a few dates, many of which ended with her sneaking into the dorm quietly just after sunrise.

“I’m not dating Charles….” I feel a darkness growing in the pit of my stomach. The horrid sensation overwhelms me.

“Don’t you dare send this back, Alice!” she shouts at me. “Don’t you dare ruin this for me!”

I laugh. Childish and selfish Gabby once again makes it about herself, but I don’t mind. It’s part of her charm. I glance at the box and notice a card lying among the black tissue paper.

Friday night? 8:30.

“Ohh, yeah,” Gabby coos as she reads it over my shoulder. “This is happening. This. Is. Happening.”

“Gabby, calm down.” I inspect it further to find a hotel room key with the numbers 1729 stamped on it. I toss the card and key back into the box.

“What’s wrong? Why aren’t you happier right now?”

I sit down on my bed and push the box aside. “You remember how he was,” I say. We told each other everything about what happened to us that night. In extreme detail. Gabby insisted on the extreme detail.

“Yeah, I do,” she says. “Hot and ridiculously sexy.”

“And controlling and intimidating, but also…” I trail off, lost on how to properly phrase the argument.

“Also…?” Gabby speaks with her hands, making circular movements beneath her chin in an attempt to force the words off my tongue.

“He likes virgins. He said he did.”

She rolls her eyes and collapses onto the bed next to me as she carefully folds the dress back into the box. “So what?” she asks.

I shrug my shoulders. “I’m not a virgin anymore,” I say, remembering every detail of what Charles did to me in the blink of a moment. “I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel right. He’s not this kind of guy.”

“What kind of guy?”

I gesture to the dress. “The kind of guy that sends surprise gifts and love notes. I was pretty sure I’d never see him again.”

“I think you’re just nervous,” she says. “When is the last time you went on a date?”

“Never,” I answer truthfully.

“There… see? You’re just nervous.”

I swallow hard and try to tear the flight response from my body. “Maybe you’re right.”

Gabby smiles. “So… you’ll go?”

“I’ll sleep on it.”

“So, you’re going then?”

“So, I’ll sleep on it.”

“But then afterward, you’re going, right?”

I laugh again as a little more weight rises off my chest.

“Alice,” she begins, reaching for my hands, “he wants to see you again. And I mean, you guys didn’t have much of a goodbye.”

She’s right. Her night with Ian ended like a fairy tale, with a kiss on the cheek and an exchange of phone numbers. Mine ended with me slipping out of the room while Charles was in the bathroom.

I furrow my brow, my eyes studying the black box. “Wait. How does he know where I live? I never told him my last name or where we go to school…” A rush of panic flows through me.

Gabby bites her lip. “Yeah… about that…”

“You told him?” I deduce. “When did you see him?”

“I ran into him last week at the hotel while seeing Ian. He was worried about you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

She sighs. “Because he asked me not to. He wanted to surprise you, so I gave him our address. It’s not a big deal.”

“Was he with somebody?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” she answers. “I didn’t see anybody with him.”

I stand up and walk over to the window. “I’m not sure how I feel about this.”

“You should feel
pretty
,” Gabby says. “
Oh, so pretty.
And then, you should go on a date with a
fucking
millionaire.”

“He’s not a millionaire, Gabby,” I say. “He’s a billionaire.”

***

“Alice, are you sure you’re all right?”

I roll my eyes, an automatic Pavlovian response to my mother’s constant, and often times invasive, concern for me. “I’m fine,” I say into the phone. I lean back in my chair and stare at the bulletin board over my desk.

“You sound worried about something. What’s wrong?”

“It’s
nothing
,” I claim.

“Are your classes too much for you?” she asks. “I told you not to take more than twelve credit hours your first semester. It’s too much work. Go see your adviser on Monday and drop a class.”

“No, Mom. My classes are fine.” I breathe a sigh, knowing that if I don’t give her
something
, we’d be at this for the next hour. My eyes fall on the hotel room key balanced between a few push pins. “I have a date on Friday.”

She’s silent. I hear only the sound of her breathing, which has slowed to a near halt. It’s not the immediate response I expected.

“Mom?”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Alice,” she finally says. “You’re still getting used to being in college, you don’t need that kind of stress weighing you down.”

“
Nothing
is weighing me down,” I say. My eyes linger on the black box, settled neatly on the top shelf of the closet. “It’s just a date. I’m having fun, isn’t that what I’m supposed to be doing?”

“But you’ve never dated before, sweetie—”

“That isn’t my fault.” I regret saying it as soon as the words hit the air. My mother restricted me from doing many things growing up. Dating was one of them.

“You’re
not
ready
or prepared for the things men will
expect
of you.” Her tone has become agitated, her voice spiking high in desperation.

“I know more than you think I do,” I say, attempting, and failing, to keep a calm demeanor. “I can handle this, Mom. Not every guy is a predator, you know.”

“Not in my experience.”