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“I prefer to look into your eyes, Mr. Asher.”

“You’re bad,” I say, smiling.

“You called me Grace and that means I can call you by your name. So I choose Mr. Asher.”

“Who made that rule?”

“We did,” she says back smartly. “Together.”

“We’ve known each other one day, there’s not enough time for traditions, Grace.”

“Maybe not. But”—she smiles with mischief and I find myself eager to hear her reasoning—“we’ve set a precedent. So same thing. You call me Grace when you want to explain things to me, so I can call you Mr. Asher after you call me Grace.”

I shake my head at her. “Fine, girl. We wouldn’t want to break past precedent, so we now have a tradition. Now, what do you want to do next? Go back to your bungalow and sleep?”

“What’s my other choice, Master?”

Jesus Christ. That right there makes me want to fuck her. “You’re a good girl, so if you’d like to stay here on the beach with me, you may.”

“OK, I choose to stay here on the beach. What will we do here?” She waggles her eyebrows at me and the grin on my face has got to be huge. Who knew she could be so sweetly manipulative? “You’re the master, so you get to decide.”

“I always get to decide, Grace. I don’t need you to tell me that.” She bites her lip to stop her smile. “Tell me about your life. Where do you work and what do you do?”

And then her mouth opens and words and sentences spill out. Paragraphs and paragraphs of details tumble out of her tender pink lips. I listen with an eager ear as she describes her new job, her old job, her loft in the city, her car, her fascination with cats—she doesn’t have any because her building doesn’t allow pets—and then, after she’s all talked out, her pause is longer than it should be and I find her almost asleep.

“I guess I don’t have to play the get-to-know-me game then. You’re too tired.”

“I’m not tired, I just put myself to sleep with my boring life. So, no,” she whispers. “I want to hear, I’m not asleep. My eyes are just heavy. Tell me. Tell me something about you.”

“What do you want to know? The plot in the
Invisible Man 2
movie? My upcoming appearances? How much money I made this year? What kind of car do I drive? Choose.”

“Certainly not any of those things.”

“No? Why?”

“Asher, I can look that stuff up online.” She opens her eyes and grins up at me. “In fact, I have. I already know all of that. No, I want to know what it was like to be you growing up. What was schooling on set like? What did you do on the weekends? Who was your best friend?”

I’m puzzled at her request. And now that I think about it, she never told me anything about her childhood. Only her present life.

But it’s my turn to talk about me, and no one ever asks me these kinds of questions. Not anymore, at least. Maybe back when I was a little kid these were the kinds of questions they asked. But I never told the truth. I always lied.

“My childhood sucked,” I finally say.

Her eyes fly open immediately. “Why?”

“Because I didn’t have one. It was non-stop work. I’ve been working since I was five years old. I never had a best friend, or played on the baseball team, or had to stay up late to finish homework. It was all about acting. And don’t get me wrong, my career doesn’t span twenty-seven years because I couldn’t make the sacrifices. Acting is the only thing I know. It’s the only thing I do.”

“You guys have a production company though, right?”

“Oh, yeah, we have our hand in pretty much every aspect of the showbusiness pot. But I’m an actor first. I do love my work, but all the sacrifices are adding up. The lack of privacy, the grueling schedules, the pressure, the politics—they all add up to an extraordinary life. And to be honest, Grace, I’d like a little bit more reality in my life.”

“Huh,” she says softly. “That’s funny. I’m always on the lookout for a little more fantasy, myself.”

I wait to see if she’ll expound, but she doesn’t. Just lies there, her head in my lap as I talk about everything and nothing all at the same time.

I like her, I realize once the darkness of night is breaking for the light of day. So I scoop her up and take her to her bed. I stare at her for a few moments after I place her on top of the sheets.

She’s different, I realize. She’s real.

I’m not sure what makes me think that or why it matters, but she’s real in a way I haven’t seen in a while. She’s got an innocence to her, but at the same time, she seems hardened by something. I want her. I wanted the last sub too. But I never
liked
the last sub. She was just a body to use, a mind to manipulate.

But Grace…

I turn on my heel and walk out of her bungalow before I ask myself any more questions. She has one more day here at the resort and then we both have to go back to our normal lives.

It’s best not to think too hard about her. I’ll probably never call her again after I fuck her wild tomorrow.

Chapter Fourteen

#PleasePullMyHair

I
WAKE
to Bebe and Steve in the room. Bebe is right next to me, and she’s not hiding her lackluster feelings for her boyfriend, because she’s arguing with him in a nasty tone. “What’s going on?” I ask as I roll over.

“I’m so sorry, Grace!” she exclaims. “I feel terrible for leaving you here all day yesterday and then brain case over there forgot to put gas in the boat he wanted to rent after parasailing, and we got stranded on that stupid island. We had to beg a local family to take us in. Did you know there’s like, no real services over there?”

I didn’t, but I’m thinking her question is rhetorical, so I don’t even bother answering.

“And now
he
”—she snarls that last word out as she points to poor Steve standing sheepishly over by the door—“is mad because I refuse to go snorkeling with him today.” She looks down at me and smiles her big Bebe smile. “I’m not leaving you again. It’s bullshit. And I’d be so pissed at you if you did this to me, so I don’t blame you one bit if you hate my guts.”

I’m thinking about Vaughn and all that happened yesterday when Bebe pops in with another question. “So who did you see that you wanted me to play the guessing game with you?”

“Um—” And in that moment I know I’m going to lie to her. Vaughn never said I had to keep quiet, but if I’m going to sign a NDA, it would be a huge girlfriend mistake to tell her half the story and not the rest. She’d never forgive me. So I lie. “Oh, I think I saw like, some guy from back home. You know that one asshole who makes our drinks at the Starbucks in LoDo?”

“Oh, yeah, he’s such a dick. What’d you say to him?”

She’s smiling a bit. Steve is forgotten and she’s all interested in my gossip.

I’m glad I’m lying. That sounds wrong, but I want to keep Vaughn for myself, and sharing any part of him with Bebe just opens him up to being fair game when we gossip.

“It wasn’t him. Luckily I realized that before I said anything.” My phone buzzes under my pillow and I reach for it, absently wondering how it got there when I don’t remember walking home from the beach.

“Who’s that?” Bebe asks, leaning over into my space so she can read the text.

The number comes up with no name, but I don’t need a name to know who it’s from, because it says,
Good morning, girl
.

“Just a guy I met last night on the beach. He’s a local guy, so I’m not even going to bother with him.”

“Hey, we have one more night!” Bebe says. “Don’t cut yourself off just yet, Grace.”

“Yeah, but you—”

“No! Seriously, if you found a hot man to hook up with today, by all means, go for it.”

“See,” Steve says from his spot by the door. “I told you she’d have something to do. Let’s go snorkel and enjoy this day.”

I sorta hate Steve right now, but I don’t say anything because he’s what Bebe and I call two-hour parking. Get in, get out, move on. “Yeah, if you guys want to go snorkel, that’s fine with me.” I text Vaughn a message that says,
Good morning, Master
, just to see what kind of response I get back.

My phone vibrates almost immediately, but I stuff it under my pillow until Bebe leaves. It takes me several more minutes of convincing, but she finally changes into a clean bathing suit and leaves with Steve to go snorkel. I run to the bed after I close the door behind them, and reach for my phone.

You have thirty minutes to get ready. To the left of your bungalow is a closed path. Follow that until you get to a bougainvillea-covered wall, then turn left and follow that south until you get to a clearing. Remove your clothes. Kneel down. And wait for me.

I’m already tingling with anticipation. I was too tired last night to think about sex once we decided to be friends on the beach. But now that I’m rested, I’m hornier than ever.

I shower and change into my yellow bikini and white shorts, then pull a white tank top over my head. I dry my hair to make it dead straight as opposed to mostly straight, and then put it up in a ponytail that hangs halfway down my back. I stuff my phone and key card into my beach bag, and rush out the door, eager to see what all this master stuff is about.

It’s weird that I don’t think it’s weird. But I’ve read my share of sexy romance books and you can’t play Dirty Heaven every weekend without at least having some kind of cursory knowledge about this stuff, so maybe I’m just desensitized. At any rate, I’m more curious than alarmed at what I’m doing. Curious as to why I’m doing it? Maybe a little. But much more curious as to what he might ask me to do. How he might treat me. And what might happen after it’s over.

It’s a risk, I realize. A risk that has lots of potential consequences. Because whatever happens today, it will be happening with a famous person. That part is a little surreal for me. He’s so not what I expected. Maybe at first he was. Arrogant and demanding. But last night in the sand he talked for hours. And I did drift in and out of sleep for most of it, I was so tired. But I caught some of it. And nothing he said was extraordinary or special, and yet it was. It was because he was telling me things about himself that not many people would want to know. But the fact that he was talking about them makes me think they were all important moments for him.

Vaughn talked like he had years of things to say. Like he had no best friend to tell these things to, so he saved them all up for last night.

The path to the left of my bungalow is closed, like Vaughn said, but it’s just a low-hanging chain with a sign dangling off it. I step over it and proceed into the thick tropical foliage. The sunlight filters through in random patterns that give the whole place a magical quality. When I get to the flower-covered wall, I turn left. The path back this way has clearly not been used for a while, because it’s mostly covered by a layer of long, thick grasses. When I see the clearing up ahead I find myself holding my breath.

Am I ready for this?

Absolutely.

I step out and look around. It’s not a large clearing, but it’s about the size of the main room of the bungalow. There’s no grass on the ground, there’s too much shade here for it to grow. I like that because it keeps the temperature down.

Remove your clothes. Kneel down. And wait for me
, his message said.

A couple of voices scare the crap out of me and I turn to see where they’re coming from.

Oh, shit. I let out a sigh, because there’s a path nearby, only about twenty yards away, and there’s lots of people walking by. They must’ve reopened the resort after the party last night.

He wants me to remove my clothes here? There’s a break in the trees, big enough for me to see the people, which means it’s big enough for them to see me. I’m not sure I’m ready to take my clothes off if people can see. What if he leaves me waiting for a long time? What if people come down the path I just came from? Yeah, it says closed, but it’s not really.

“Do you want to back out?”

I turn to find Vaughn standing at the entrance to the path I just came from. “I’m not sure,” I answer truthfully.

“Do you think they’re going to see you?”

I look over my shoulder through the clearing and then back to Vaughn. “They could.”

“Do you think I want them to see you?”