Chapter 1
Lior
It was a truth universally acknowledged, at least by me and my dry cleaner, that if I wore a designer dress to a party, it was going to end up with something spilled on it.
“Oh shit,” a familiar voice said. “Please tell me you were doing your impersonation of the early catwalk years again.”
I glanced in the mirror and laughed at the sly grin on the flawless face of my good friend and fellow fashion model Katya. She had just entered the bathroom where I was trying to rinse red wine from the front of my many-thousand-dollar frock.
“Hey, finding one’s signature walk is hard,” I reminded her.
She snorted and glanced into the sink, and then at my chest. My stained, nude, barely-there bra was on display for anyone who walked in the door.
“It wasn’t even my fault this time,” I said, watching the burgundy color cloud and swirl around the ivory porcelain as Katya disappeared into a stall.
I glanced at myself in the mirror and snorted laughter. I looked ridiculous, the halter top of the dress unbuttoned and lying damply in the sink, my stained bra and naked stomach revealed for anyone who opened the door to see. But it wasn’t anything anyone out there hadn’t seen before. Half my portfolio was me in sheer clothing.
“Someone turned around and walked straight into me,” I said, defending myself
“It’s like you have a sign on you,” Katya called over the sound of her peeing.
“I’m afraid to know what it says,” I muttered.
The toilet flushed and Katya appeared again, striding to wash her hands in the sink beside the one I was rinsing my dress in. I watched her turn her face this way and that in the mirror and then shrug and turn her attention to the fabric I was tending to.
We were at a birthday party for our friend, Petra, and it seemed like the entirety of today’s ‘It’ girls and boys of the modeling world had turned out for it. After flying in from Paris the night before, I’d almost decided not to come. But an important new designer, Daniela Rossi, had been on the invite list and word around town, and from my agent Jen, was that she was dying to work with me. Not showing up could mean her gaze landed elsewhere. And so would her designs. Designs I loved and was dying to wear. They were soft. Feminine. But with a surprising edge to them. Flowing pale pink chiffons with black leather trimmed cut-outs. Celery green satin with charcoal beaded necklines and wrist cuffs. They felt like a fairy tale, but with a dark twist.
Thankfully Daniela and I had crossed paths earlier in the evening and she’d already left, so I didn’t have to worry about her seeing what happened to clothes I was gifted by designers. This unfortunate Chanel number might not live to see another day, its beautiful cream fabric still a shocking shade of merlot, despite my rinsing. I lifted it and wrinkled my nose at the stain splattered across the wet and sheer material.
“It looks like one of those ink thingys,” Katya said, leaning a slender, gleaming thigh against the counter and staring at the mess.
“A Rorschach test?”
“That’s it,” she said, snapping her fingers, her silver-painted talon-like nails flashing under the overhead lights. She peered closely at the stain. “I see… a disaster.”
“Are you looking at the dress, or at me?”
She laughed and slid from the countertop. “Stop that and tell me how I can help you. Did you wear a jacket? Did you come with someone who can plaster themselves to the front of you?”
“No jacket,” I said and then met her ice-blue eyes. “And I came with Oliver.”
“Fuck.”
Fuck was right.
Oliver Manning was a movie star who had dated his way through at least a dozen of Hollywood’s latest leading ladies, and had since moved on to the model scene – starting with some of the lesser-known girls before setting his sights on a bigger fish.
Me.
I wasn’t new to the celebrity dating game and the almost diabolical match-making schemes that people – and their agents and PR people – dreamed up for the sake of getting more bodies to a movie, to stream a show, or to buy a brand. I’d tolerated many a date set-up for the good of both parties getting their faces in magazines. But, despite being in the twenty-first century, the men still got applauded for being seen on my arm, while my face was the one plastered on magazine covers and social media sites alongside headlines like, “Lior Flynn Couldn’t Hold Onto Another One” when it inevitably ended. It was a tale as old as time: men sleeping around equals hero, women even alluding to sleeping around equals slut. Bring on the scarlet letter. Jump onboard the shame train. Woot Woot! I’d never understand why a woman getting hers was a bad thing. We deserved nice things too!
Unfortunately, Oliver Manning had gotten it in his head that we were a great match, and had let the press know he was serious about me by making a spectacle out of his wooing. He’d even given an interview on a prominent nighttime talk show that he thought we’d make beautiful babies together. It had actually been printed in a notable magazine that I might be the luckiest woman alive to be wanted by a man like Oliver Manning.
Of course, nowhere did the article mention that he was lucky too.
As is the nature of things, him dating someone new meant magazines and talk shows brought up his past history with women… and a rumor that had plagued him for years. Somewhere along the way, whispers of him being into the “classic” sexual practice of caning had arisen. Not giving. Only receiving. Of course, no one ever asked him outright in interviews, and he never addressed it on his own, so it was up in the air if it was true or not. I’d never believed it myself. One, because I knew how it was to have untrue rumors get started, and two… caning? It seemed a stretch. And with as many movies as he’d been on, surely someone responsible for dressing him or doing his makeup would’ve said something about seeing bruises on his body?
So, despite a possible fetish that might eventually require me to whack the man repeatedly in the bedroom, I’d entered into the relationship with a curiosity – although I was totally up front about not looking for anything serious. A good time was all I was capable of having. Anything more was off the table.
