Infamous (9 page)

CHAPTER
Nineteen

Lille woke up in a panic in her room in Mary's house. For a moment she didn't recognize it or the girl sleeping next to her. She glanced at the chair across the room and saw the camera—Kim. The girl seemed to be wearing all her clothes, which was good. Lille had had quite enough firsts last night. Looking down at herself, she saw that someone had stripped her and put her in a pair of shorts and a tank top. Mildly upsetting, but she figured it had been Carl, which was all right.

She sat up, holding her head just to make sure it stayed in place. She shouldn't have let Carl talk her into picking up another bottle of vodka and Slurpees from 7-Eleven, but it had sounded like a good idea at the time.

“Note to self,” she muttered, “never go out partying with Carl.”

She stood, and the aches in her body reminded her of another lesson she planned to take away from last night. “Don't fuck the Irishman.” Calling him the Irishman helped; then he was just the puffed-up arrogant ass who lived next door, not the man who'd made her world kind of tilt and wobble on its axis.

She located her bag in the corner of her room and pulled out her phone. Her battery was dead. She dug around a little farther and located the charger; as she bent down to plug it in, she grimaced with discomfort.

Sitting down, she held the phone's Power button down until the little green man lit up and the phone turned on.

While she waited for it to come all the way on and populate with her messages, she glanced around the room.
I've barely been in here an hour,
she realized, if she didn't count last night, which, as far as she was concerned, could be discounted altogether, preferably erased.

It was a pleasant room, even if it didn't feel like hers yet, and the warm sunshine coming in through the windows reminded her of San Diego, which she didn't miss, hadn't had time to miss. Of course, thinking of San Diego might also have something to do with the sand she felt in her hair and on the back of her neck. She'd been prone to late-night beach adventures when she'd first moved there, a year or so before she'd met Paul.

Her phone beeped, indicating that her messages had arrived.

One was from the private investigator, telling her he'd call her to give her an update later that day.

Mary had sent her a message.

Jordan said y'all made it home okay. The Fetish Box is closed on Mondays starting today—don't argue. John and I will be home around eight a.m.

“Closed?” Lille narrowed her eyes at the idea of closing a retail store, but a day off did sound nice, especially since she had the hangover from hell, and she'd been worried about Jordan at the store alone.

With no responsibilities and nothing in particular to keep her occupied except brooding about a certain Irishman—who hadn't texted her to make sure she got home okay—Lille decided to drag herself into the shower. The guest bath was next door to her room, though
guest bath
was a fancy term for a closet containing a tub, a tiny vanity, and a commode.

“At least it's not pink,” Lille consoled herself. She didn't think her eyes, enduring her current hangover, could take salmon pink. She'd hung her robe on the back of the door when she'd taken a shower yesterday; she located it with some relief, vaguely concerned that someone might have snagged it during the night.

She turned on the taps and let the steam fill the room before she stepped under the hottest spray she could tolerate with her stinging back. She stood there and let the water run over her head and down her sore body, washing away the sand and the sex and the smell of alcohol. The marks Max had made on her bottom stung a little, reminding her of the pleasure, reminding her of him.

She rinsed her hair, wishing she could stop thinking about him, about having given herself to him. It had been overwhelming, strange . . . but he hadn't gloated. He'd seemed almost as taken aback as she had been. She probably shouldn't have left as she did.

She turned around so that the spray hit her face and thought to herself,
You're too old for this.

Her stomach hurt, just a little, but she thought that had less to do with the hangover and more to do with Max. She'd freaked out, she realized. It was just that it had been so good, she'd been like a woman possessed—sex had never been that way for her, not with a man just taking her that way. She maintained control—always.

I'm going to have to continue to avoid Max,
she decided, though it galled her to do so; sometimes prudence won out over pride. If she couldn't maintain control around him, then she had to stay away. She didn't want to be vulnerable to a man like him, didn't want to seem weak. People preyed on the weak. She shivered, wishing she knew why she felt so unsettled, and turned up the hot water.

Thirty minutes
later she emerged from the bathroom
scrubbed clean of makeup, her hair combed but still wet. She put on her favorite pair of jeans, plus a pair of jeweled sandals and a simple white T-shirt, then followed the smell of coffee into the kitchen.

Carl and Jordan were sitting at the table with coffee cups in hand, both of them looking at the same laptop screen, their gazes rapt, their hair sticking up on the tops of their heads.

“Good morning,” she offered softly; she didn't think their heads hurt the way hers did, but she wasn't taking any chances.

They both looked up at her, eyes wide, and chorused, “Morning,” like a couple of child actors.

She frowned and strolled over to the French press, which contained enough coffee for her to pour at least one cup—thank God.

“Thanks for making coffee,” she ventured.

“How are you feeling, honey?” Carl asked from the table, his voice more than a little hesitant.

She fetched a plain white mug from the cabinet, recognizing the careful note in Carl's voice.

“Fine. So what's up?” she asked as she filled her cup. Clearly something had happened last night that she didn't remember.

“Drink your coffee,” Carl advised. So what she'd done was clearly not something that would make her mother proud. Or maybe it would—you never knew with strippers.

Lille did as he suggested. It was always easier to face your mistakes armed with coffee—well, coffee and a cream-cheese Danish, but she didn't see any of those. She took two sips and snagged a banana from a bowl on the center island.

She carried it and her mug to the table and sat opposite the boys, facing the bay window that overlooked the garden—and Max's house. She ignored that thought and peeled the banana, waiting for one of them to tell her whatever horrible news had them fixated on the computer.

“Tell me what has you two up and rapt. It's too early for porn.”

“It's never too early for porn.” Carl didn't take his eyes off the computer screen to deliver that little gem.

“Uh-huh, just tell me,” she ordered around a bite of banana.

Jordan and Carl looked at each other, but Carl was the one silently elected to deliver the news.

“Kim posted the first parts of the documentary last night. She went to bed only an hour ago, I think.”

“Yeah, to my bed,” Lille protested. “Who told her she could do that?”

“She didn't ask.” Carl shrugged and waved a hand. “But honey, the videos have already gone viral.”

“Gone viral? Like someone has already seen them and sent them to their friends, and to their friends, et cetera?” Lille didn't see what was so bad about that. That was what they'd wanted, wasn't it? That was the engine that was going to drive their success.

“Yes, but honey, I don't think you planned to put on the little show you engaged in last night.”

“Tell me I wasn't naked.”

Carl and Jordan looked at each other again. “You weren't naked.”

“Okay, then. What did I do?”

Jordan turned the computer monitor toward her. “Maybe you should watch for yourself.”

They'd pulled
up YouTube—she needed to give Kim
the information to post the videos on the Fetish Box Web site, she realized, but Kim had titled the series
The Fetish Box Documentary, Hollywood, Florida
.

She clicked the first one and watched an edited version of Kim's initial visit to the Box.

It started rolling with a close-up of Lille's face, which startled her, and made her fingers tighten on her coffee cup. The interaction between Jordan and Kim made her smile, as did some of Jordan's commentary on the merchandise.

“She's good,” she told the boys, who were still giving her worried looks.

She glanced down to watch the rest, looking for whatever was causing the boys so much distress.

She saw one titled “The Fetish Box: Clash of the Titans” and clicked on it. It was the pub scene, where she'd seen Max playing. There was stunned hunger on her face, she realized, and looked away, not wanting to see and remember how she'd felt. She closed it before it could play for more than a few moments.

She clicked on the last video, noting idly that the number of hits had reached the thousands and was steadily climbing. Kim had called it “The Fetish Queen: Unfettered,” and it showed Lille stripping down to her underwear on the beach and spinning around, her arms thrown high.

“I am the Fetish Queen,” she was calling. “Bow down to me, my loves.”

She walked into the water until waves were crashing against her hips, and then she turned to face the camera, both the moon and the light from Kim's recording casting stark shadows on her face. Her face changed expression so quickly that she, like Kim, wondered how the camera could catch the subtle shifts—drunk and conquering the world one moment; and the next, a sea nymph in her kingdom, alone and afraid, tottering on legs that she'd never used before.

Lille watched as her image tilted her head back suddenly and called to the sky, twirling around a little.

“I am the Fetish Queen!” she shouted. “Do you hear me?” And then she'd run into the waves, splashing and laughing while everyone shouted and offered encouragement.

Lille waited until the video ended and took another sip of her coffee.

“You're right,” she said after a moment, “I'm not naked.”

“It doesn't matter,” Jordan pointed out. “You're working on being famous anyway.”

“Not famous,” Carl corrected. “Infamous. That's what you wanted, right?”

At this point Lille wasn't sure what she wanted, but she nodded anyway and parroted back, “That's what I wanted.”

She didn't say anything else, and neither did the boys, but she thought they were all thinking the same thing:
Be careful what you wish for.

Look for the next installment in the Fetish Queen series!

Part Three: Cursed

In the final chapter of the daring, sexy Fetish Queen series,
Lille finds the place she belongs for the first time in
her life, but she can't escape the fear that her dark past
will ruin everything. . . .

Unnerved by the sheer force of her desire for Max, Lille retreats into managing the Fetish Box, making sure that it's a success. The online documentary she stars in becomes more and more popular, bringing business to the store and danger to Lille. When she's nearly killed at Jobman's Pub, Lille begins to believe that she might truly be cursed, bringing danger to all she loves.

Does she run away again, giving up her new life in order to stay safe, or does she take a chance, possibly endangering them all? She doesn't want to leave. She's learning what it means to be a Fetish Queen—and it is love, not fear, that gives her strength. But what Max and her friends don't realize is that Lille is willing to do anything . . . anything . . . to save them all.

Coming May 5, 2014, from Pocket Star

See how it all ends with the final sizzling installment in the FETISH QUEEN e-serial!