Confronted (Beauty And The Billionaire Geek Book 1) (4 page)

“How long have you been in this industry?” I asked. The skepticism in my voice came across loud and clear.

“Please be quiet.”

Knowing that I’d drawn out an over pretentious newb, made me feel a little less intimidated. I chuckled to myself and a smile lit my face. I moved my body in a way that I thought would be pleasing to the camera since he hadn’t bothered giving me any direction. The shutter clicked continuously.

“Touch yourself.”

I slid my hand between my legs and cupped a breast with the other hand.

“Press your finger inside.”

I leaned up on my elbows and stared at him through the blindfold. “This isn’t that kind of shoot. I don’t do porn.”

“I’m not shooting your crotch. I’m shooting your face. I want to see you with a finger inside.”

Was this guy for real? He didn’t care if I look scared but he wanted to see how I looked fingering myself. What a freak. “You aren’t going to get what you want. I’m totally weirded out and a long way from turned on.”

“Just do it.”

“Fine. You’re the boss.”

“Yes. I am. Why don’t you put the finger inside and say that again.”

“Oh. My. God. What is wrong with you?”

“Do it.”

If this guy hadn’t sounded completely clinical about the whole thing, I would have thrown the blindfold off and marched out. His voice didn’t give off an “I’m about to rape you” kind of a vibe. I rolled my eyes under the blindfold and lied back down. Whatever. He was paying me well enough. I’d play along. 

I slid a finger inside my mouth and sucked. I heard a little grunting noise and the frantic snapping of the camera shutter. Rubbing the finger between my legs, I cupped my breast with the other hand, and then pushed the moist finger inside.

“I like that,” he whispered. “Pinch your nipple.”

I did as he asked. My body reacted and a shiver of arousal rippled through me. I could feel the heat of his body come closer to stand over me.

“Good,” he breathed. “Faster.”

My skin pricked with goose bumps and I felt awkward with him over me. “I can’t get excited like this,” I replied. “I feel cold.”

“The water in the bathtub is warm. Come.” He grasped my hand and led me to the edge of the bathtub then stepped away. The camera snapped. I groped for the edge and lifted my foot into the warm water. I felt for the bottom of the tub and thought I had my balance. When I put my weight on the foot in the bath and lifted the other, I slipped and fell hard.

I fell on my back under the water, blind. My leg bashed against the edge of the tub and my back smashed into the bottom. I gasped and sucked water into my lungs. Flailing, the blindfold slipped over my head. I sat up in the tub coughing up water and sucking in air.

I hand grabbed me and pulled me from the bath. My eyes squeezed tightly shut against the dripping hot water. I was still blind. The photographer hit my back as I coughed, holding me close to his aroused body.

Before I had a chance to look up, he let go of me and walked away. When I finally opened my eyes, all I saw of him was his back before he slipped through a door at the far end of the room.

Standing there like a naked, drowned rat, my hair clung to my body and dripped in rivers down to the splintery floor. I started to shake even as the steam rose from my skin. I held myself with my arms and tried to keep from falling apart.

“There is a robe by the tub,” the voice boomed. I turned and looked at the bathtub. There was a hook near the wall with a bathrobe on it. I hurried over, hunched and freezing. I grabbed the robe off the hook and flung it around my shoulders.

I wiped my face with the fluffy cuff, allowing me to finally see straight. This was probably the second most humiliating day of my life, right up there with the charity auction at the Space Needle last weekend.

It was a good thing I wasn’t the super emotional type; otherwise, I probably would have been bawling my brains out about now. Regardless, I was pretty close to snapping. I did want to bust up this guy’s photo equipment and start screaming.

Instead, I huffed and walked toward my clothes, trailing wet footprints across the worn out floor. My back and leg still hurt. I thought about sending him the medical bill, or maybe suing for an unsafe work environment. Hmm, that sounded like a good idea. I kept that tucked away at the back of my mind.

“The check will be on the stool when you finish dressing,” the voice informed me. I turned my head and glared. I needed the money. Period. Case closed. That was the only reason I was here. Instead of flipping him off, I just went into the bathroom and changed. It had only been an hour, and it looked like we were done. Fifteen grand for an hour wasn’t bad. Maybe I wouldn’t sue.

When I finished dressing, the check was on the stool but all the equipment and the photographer were gone.

Five Years Ago

We’d been able to see Mount Rainer from the time we crossed the border into Washington State. For the last two days, Stacy and I had taken shifts driving her dad’s hand-me-down farm truck all the way from the northern coast of California.

This move was my big chance to leave the small town where I grew up, go back to school, and get my dance career on track.

By the time we made it to Seattle, we were both exhausted. We parked the truck and trailer in front of Stacy’s cousin’s house at dusk and stepped out into the warm night air.

I felt a shiver of apprehension as we approached the front door of the blue two-story, craftsman bungalow. A lush green law tumbled toward the sidewalk and mature hedges grew under the windows.

The front door swung open and a girl with dyed black hair and a Rainbow Bright T-shirt ran toward us, down the stairs. She and Stacy jumped up and down in each other’s arms, squealing. Stacy stopped giggling with her cousin long enough to introduce me.

“Zoe, this is August,” Stacy said, grinning.              

“Hi August.” I shook her hand. The girl pulled me into a hug, catching me off guard. I smiled at the unexpected display of affection and gave her a little squeeze. She drew back and beamed at me with pursed lips and a silly smirk. “Thanks for letting me stay here,” I said.

“Any friend of my cuz is a friend of mine. Let’s get the guys to help you unpack. You two are going to have to share a room. Chris came home yesterday, and we had to give him his old room back. Don’t ask me why,” she said, rolling her eyes.

Stacy and I looked at each other. Sharing a room had never been part of the bargain. We were promised our own rooms for three hundred dollars a month each. I grimaced. This was not starting well.

August jogged up the steps on the front porch and called into the house. Two guys in skinny jeans and printed T-shirts shuffled outside. Stacy yanked open the back of the trailer and motioned for the guys to start working. We stood and watched them pull a heavy dresser down the ramp and up the sidewalk.

“Oh, by the way, that’s Justin, and that’s Max,” August said pointing to the guys. They both said “hey” and continued moving the dresser into the house.

Stacy, August, and I grabbed boxes and followed the Justin and Max up the stairs to the room Stacy and I would share. We set everything down, and the guys went back for another heavy load.

“I don’t know if this will be big enough for our stuff,” I said tensely.

“I’m really sorry about this. Chris is Max’s best friend. If you ask me, Chris is a total loser, but Max keeps letting him come back to the house. Since Max is the one with his name on the lease, he really gets to choose.” August had an anxious look on her face.

“We should have signed a rental agreement before coming up here,” I said, feeling stupid for trusting the unknown situation. I’d been over enthusiastic to leave home, and my sister Claire had been too nice and didn’t lecture me about things like rental agreements. This wasn’t her fault. That was squarely on my shoulders.

My twenty-year-old sister Claire had been my mother stand-in since our mom committed suicide two years ago, when I was sixteen. Claire had to leave design school in San Francisco to come back home to take care of our older, out of control, sister Regan and me. Thank God, Regan was getting help now, or I never would have been able to leave Claire alone.

Claire had done more for me than anyone in my life, even my own mom, and I wanted her to believe I could take care of myself. I didn’t want to disappoint her.

The boys hefted a twin mattress through the door. We ducked around them and ran back downstairs to the trailer. Stacy and I didn’t have a lot of stuff so it only took about half an hour to unload everything. When we’d finished, Stacy drove off with the trailer, back to the rental place.

I stood in the room, assessing the crush of boxes and furniture stacked against the walls. Only about four square feet of space remained at the center of the room. What a nightmare. The room was already small in the first place, fitting two beds, dressers and desks into it would be impossible.

Heaving a huge sigh, I sat on a box as frustration flooded my bloodstream. I only had five hundred bucks in the bank for my brand new life. We’d spent everything else on our deposit, the trailer rental, and the gas to get up here. I couldn’t afford to find a new place now.

“Need some help?” a husky male voice said behind me. I turned and saw a massive, tall man standing in the doorway. He didn’t have the skinny, hipster good looks of Justin and Max. This guy looked more like a rugby or football player. His tousled blond hair hung around his blue eyes and his strong square jaw had been shaved smooth to show his tanned skin.

He crossed his muscled arms over his broad chest and raised an eyebrow. I realized I’d been staring and cleared my throat –– too angry and frustrated to care that he was hot.

“Are you Chris?”

“That’s me.”

“You stole our room.”

He threw his head back and laughed. “It was my room to begin with,” he said, giving me a serious look, his voice even and cool.

“Fine, whatever. I don’t need your help. I need the extra room we already paid for.

“I’ll talk to Max about giving you your deposit back. It’s only fair.”

“Sure. Do that.”

“I get the sense you’re unhappy with me.”

“Then you would be correct.” I jumped off the box and tore it open, staring at the objects inside. CDs! We didn’t have any damn room for CDs. What century was Stacy living in anyway?

“Let me make it up to you. How about I take you out to dinner some time,” he said, still standing in the doorway. I turned to glare at him.

“I’m too busy to be picked up on right now. I have the contents of two rooms to unpack into one room. So if you don’t mind.” I made a little shooing motion with my hand to dismiss him. I knew I was being rude, but after two days of driving and arriving to find we had to live in one cramped bedroom, politeness wasn’t my top priority.

“Have it your way.” He finally left me alone. Sure, the guy was hot, but he was also arrogant. Most of all, he’d stolen my room. That made him extremely unattractive to me. This whole move had become a disaster, and I had him to thank for it. He was the last person I wanted to date.

“That girl is a bitch,” I heard him saying down the hall. Great, now he was calling me names too. I had a right to be upset, and I had a right to turn him down. I growled and pulled a mattress from the wall to make space for my bed frame.

“Hey, sorry about the room.” I turned to find Max standing in the doorway. Was it “apologize with no solutions day” or something? “I’ll give you your deposit and half the rent back.”

I eyed him skeptically. “Why not all the rent?”

“There’s going to be two of you in this room so…”

“Great. Fine. Whatever.” I turned away and went back to assembling the bed frame. I was in a terrible mood and extremely exhausted from two days of travel. If they wanted nice Zoe, they were going to have to leave me alone for a few days.

By the time Stacy made it back to the house, I had my bed set up and had arranged my dresser in the corner. She entered the room behind me and whimpered, her shoulders hunched as she trudged over to give me a hug.

“This is beyond lame,” I whispered. “And that dude Chris, who took our room, had the nerve to ask me out.”

“Rude much?”

“Max is giving back our deposit on the other room but only half the rent.”

“Yeah, he told me. August is really upset. She went to high school with Justin, but she doesn’t have a lot of sway with Max or Chris. She’s so sorry this happened.

“It’s just stupid. If they’d bothered telling us before we’d driven all the way up here, we could have rented a different place.”

“It’ll be okay. Tomorrow, I start my new job, and you can get registered for school. Everything will make more sense.”

The next morning, I took the bus to North Seattle Community College. It dropped me off at the terminal in front of the school. I strode up the big, wide stairwell leading to the library and wandering around until I finally found the admissions building.

Inside, there were only a handful of students wondering around, wide-eyed and confused like me. A group of Asian girls walked by, clutched together and giggling over a text on one of their phones. I slipped into a chair in front of a curly haired office clerk behind the admissions desk and smiled awkwardly. I explained my situation to her, and she handed me a wad of paperwork to fill out. I stood and walked over to sit in an uncomfortable office chair in the dimly lit hallway.