His phone let out a soft ding as a notification came from the bank. Satisfaction burst in him when he saw the amount from the wire transfer safely in his account. There would always be money coming in, because she couldn’t afford not to pay him, or tell the cops.
He smiled, picturing her cool elegance on screen, while he was manipulating her behind the scenes. Blood rushed to his groin, making his dick shove against his fly.
Female voices reached him, and he looked around as the two girls came out of his bedroom, freshly showered. His dick pulsed, a new wave of power sluicing through him.
“Come here,” he told them both, reaching for his fly. “We’ve got time for one for the road before we leave.”
They thought they were going to a TV audition. He wanted to laugh at their stupidity. In less than an hour they would belong to the man Rick worked for. They’d start out doing porn, then become two more faceless victims sold into the sex trade to the highest bidder in Asia or eastern Europe.
They blushed but did as they were told, both kneeling before him as he freed himself. He grabbed a handful of hair in each fist, one blonde, the other brunette, and closed his eyes as they began taking turns sucking him off.
But it was another face he saw behind his closed eyelids as pleasure burned up his spine. Dark eyes, long, dark waves falling down her back. Sofia and Becca, blended into one.
He shuddered and gripped the hair in his hands tighter, pulling hard enough to hurt. He wanted them to hurt. He still controlled them both. Still owned them both, even now.
****
Becca looked up from the script in front of her on the table when the meeting room door opened, and her pulse skipped when Chase walked in. Those warm hazel eyes locked on her, the hint of a smile playing around the edges of his mouth. The skin on his face had healed almost completely over the past five days.
With Chase acting as Patrick’s body double, they’d spent a lot of time on set together this past week and had eaten lunch together almost every day. And every day, her attraction to him intensified.
She gave him a polite smile in reply, then focused back on the script, pretending her entire body didn’t hum with awareness as he came closer. They were behind schedule by about a week and scrambling to fit everything in before her co-star Patrick left to begin his new movie being shot in Texas in three days.
Today they were shooting the last two remaining scenes—which were actually from the middle of the movie. The remainder of the week would be spent doing whatever reshoots were necessary, without Patrick. The director had called her and Chase to this last-minute meeting to discuss a reshoot he wanted to do.
“Hey, Chase. Have a seat.” The director, Ian, waved him over.
He sat in the empty seat on Becca’s right, the deliciously clean, masculine scent of his cologne filling her nose. “Sorry I’m late. I was across town when I got your call.”
“It’s no problem. We were just going over some last-minute changes to the script. We’re on page one-nineteen.”
Chase flipped to the page in question and began reading it.
“Alice and I have decided we’re not going to go with the original take,” Ian went on. “We’ll have to shoot the new one differently, adjust the lighting and the angle so the audience still believes it’s Patrick and not you. But I think we can all agree that this new version is way edgier. It packs the punch we need leading up to the final scene.”
Becca skimmed the start of the scene. Ian and Alice had made several slight changes, but it was still pretty similar to the original scene they’d shot. Her character was on the run from the hero-turned-villain played by Patrick, trying to find an escape in the deserted basement of an old factory before he caught her.
In the original take, unable to get away, she’d grabbed an iron bar lying on the ground, clubbed him over the head with it, then raced out to the street to flag down a passerby to escape. She was interested to see what changes they’d made.
“What about the villain’s dialogue?” she asked. The costume and makeup departments made Chase look enough like Patrick as long as the camera wasn’t zoomed right in on his face, but their voices were completely different. Chase’s was deeper, more resonant. Sexy.
“Patrick can do the voiceover for us later if need be. But we’re thinking the scene might be strongest without dialogue at all.” Ian made a circular motion with his hand. “Turn the page and you’ll see what I mean.”
She did, and skimmed the first few paragraphs. Her character was running through the basement as before, looking for a weapon, knowing he was somewhere right behind her.
But then...
Her eyes stopped moving over the words. The blood drained from her face, her insides curdling.
This time the villain caught her from behind. Took her to the floor in the semi-darkness. A battle ensues. He tries to rip off her clothing. She screams. Flails.
He chokes her.
Cold spread through her gut as the present clashed with the past. A vivid memory straight out of her nightmares she’d been trying to suppress since the age of thirteen.
Her mind tumbled back in time, trapping her as it played everything back in slow motion.
Her bare feet slapped over the icy concrete as she ran. A sob caught in her throat, her heart about to explode from terror. She had to get away. Couldn’t let him catch her. If he did, he would—
Strong, cruel hands grabbed her from behind. Hauling her up against the length of a powerful male body. She could smell his aftershave, sharp and stringent in her nose. And she could feel his erection against her rear. The hot, excited breaths gusting in her ear.
Now you’re mine, little whore. You belong to me, just like your precious mother.
Then his hands wrapped around her throat. Cutting off her air as she stared up at him, helpless.
“Becca? Still with us?”
Startled, she shook the terrible memory away before the rest of it could play out in her head and swallowed to ease the sudden dryness in her throat. Her hands were clammy on the pages of the script, her stomach squeezing tight.
Even all these years later, that night still haunted her. She’d gotten away. But the memory of it was still as fresh as if it had happened yesterday.
“Yes.” She reached for her water bottle and took a sip, aware of Chase watching her and avoiding his gaze. He was too observant. She didn’t want him or the others to know anything was wrong.
You’re a professional. Act like it.
Acting was what she did. What she was best at. She could pretend nothing was wrong, that it was all good, when in reality the thought of having to act this out resurrected everything she’d worked so hard to bury.
“Why did you decide he catches her this time?” she asked in as even a voice as possible.
“Makes the dramatic tension so much better,” Alice, the assistant director said. “Before it was too rushed. Bland. We need to see her desperation. We need to see her fight, and draw out the question of whether or not she’ll escape so that when she actually does, the emotional impact on the audience will be that much greater.”
Becca nodded, keeping her eyes on the page as she read on. Her character was half-naked and crying from the attack by the time her flailing hand found the metal rod on the floor. Showing various amounts of skin was part of the job, but in this circumstance, she would feel worse than naked. Stripped bare emotionally for everyone to see.