Authors: Bebe Wilde
When I began to understand this, it was a revelation, to say the least. This meant I finally realized that it was all on me. I was the one holding us back, not him. But that’s what he did to me. He opened my eyes and made me take responsibility for myself. He showed me that the world of love wasn’t so callous and that it was what I made of it. But then again, it was his world that I lived in. He
definitely
never had to remind me that it was Roman’s world and I just lived in it. I knew that. It was fine by me. He was everything to me. He just didn’t know it. Neither did
I
.
Before we had met, I refused to acknowledge that I would ever love again. I was done with that, I told myself. I thought I had transcended love.
But I hadn’t transcended love, of course, as it is a real, human need to give and receive love. It’s in all of us and it was in him.
And in me.
But I just couldn’t do it. I wished I could have. I wanted to. I wanted to be that woman who fell in love and threw caution to the wind. But I wasn’t. I had baggage.
Lots and lots of baggage that I couldn’t put down for even one second of the day.
But he knew how to work me. He
knew.
He didn’t start out softly or slowly, that was for sure. Just shortly after we started seeing each other, and right after we made love—or fucked, rather—he gave me a long, thin box wrapped in red paper and topped with a black ribbon.
“What’s this?” I asked.
“Open it,” he said, his eyes smiling.
I stared at him, completely thrown off. He was already giving me gifts? Wow, I must have been really good the other night.
“Go on,” he said.
I smiled a little and opened it. When I saw what it was, I was just a little confused. It was a crop, a riding crop. I held it up, taking it in. It was nice, a good quality leather. But what the hell was I going to do with it? I didn’t need it, obviously, as I did not own a horse. Deep down, though, I knew what it was for. I knew what he wanted to do with it. Oh, boy.
He smiled at me and took it from my hand. “Shall we?”
“Shall we what?”
“Play a game.”
Was he serious? He was.
“Come now,” he said. “Remove your dress.”
I stared at him, not knowing if I liked this or not.
“Let’s try it,
Teagan
,” he said. “Take off your dress.”
It was a dare more than it was a command. He didn’t think I had the guts to go through with it, especially since we’d only just started this sexual relationship. I’d show him. Without a second thought, I took off my dress and stood in my panties and bra. He nodded and waved the crop over my body, indicating that I should remove my underwear as well. And so I did. I took them off and stood there, almost naked in front of him. In one fell swoop, he had me turned me around, bent over the couch and the crop was stroking my skin. It felt nice and I began to get turned on, thinking that this was it, just this little bit of teasing.
Was I ever
wrong.
In a flash, the stroking turned into a whipping. One, two and three! Smack, smack, smack!
“
Ow
!” I screamed and stood up, holding my ass. “That hurt.”
He grinned at me. “It was meant to.”
Well, he said it.
I wouldn’t say Roman didn’t excite me. I wouldn’t say it wasn’t a lot of fun but I’d been down that road before and I had gotten burned. Love was nothing more than a four-letter word to me. This kind of thinking was my block, the thing that was holding me back from really submitting to Roman. But, like I said, I’d been there, done that and didn’t plan on doing it again. Roman was a wealthy guy and had built an empire by building houses. However, he had been a former actor and actors, even actors who were no longer working, were toxic to me.
It’s true. I had been in love with an actor, the second man I’d ever loved. When I looked back on it, my first love was more of an obsession. Long story short: I was young and in college and he was an asshole. However, it killed me when he broke it off. I beat myself up for a while over what I’d done wrong, what I could have done better. But then I realized I hadn’t done anything wrong. From there the feelings changed and I began to feel so stupid, wondering for months how I could have been such a fool, such an idiot, beating myself up for hours on end, telling myself that I had gotten played and that I should have known better.
And, probably, I should have. But I was younger then and when you’re young, you just see the possibilities, not the reality that there will usually be some obstacle in your path that keeps you from getting what you want. Eventually, I wrote him off, chalked it up to experience and moved on. And I went on, moved forward and into a really great real estate career that eventually brought me to California and to my next, and, thus-so-far, only, true love.
When I met him, Kier was a bit-part actor and a part-time model. He was shooting a perfume ad at a house I wanted to list, a spectacular Malibu beach pad; and that’s what it was, a pad. There had been no renovations to the seventies décor and it went along perfectly with the somewhat subversive perfume ad, which was being shot by one of the world’s leading photographers. The ad was for a pop princess and she sat on the beach, dressed as a mermaid with all these absolutely gorgeous “men of the sea” surrounding her. It was a sight, to say the least. The house had been rented out for a week, but the owner had told me I could come by to assess the value, as he wanted to get it on the market as quickly as possible.
So, I was there on business, walking around the place with a clipboard and taking notes when I caught his eye. At least that’s what he told me.
I’d
caught
his
eye. To be honest, while I was intrigued by the whole glamorous spectacle, I was more intrigued with the house, thinking it would sell in no time as the location was superb. It was
right on the beach.
Houses like that rarely came on the market and buyers didn’t care what they looked like. They were buying the lot, which was
right on the beach
, because this was
what mattered most
. Besides, most of the people who bought such places either gutted them or tore them down and built something much, much better.
And bigger.
This was what my prospective client wanted to do. He’d bought the place and was about to start renovating when an even better one came up for sale. So, he needed to unload this one as quickly as possible.
It was slam-dunk, that house. I was excited to say the least. I heard the sound of a slot machine going off in my head after I completed my assessment:
Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding!
The owner, a man in his mid-fifties who produced TV talent shows, and I stood at the sliding glass door and watched the photographer work his magic.
“What’s the ad for?” I asked him.
“Perfume,” he replied. “I can’t believe they wanted to use this old dump but they wanted a seventies feel, retro or something. Anyway, what about the house? What do you think I can get?”
I grinned. “You will be very pleased at the number I came up with,” I said and wrote it down, then showed it to him. He broke out into a smile. I smiled back. “Give me two weeks, tops, and you’ll walk away happy.”
“I heard you were the best, Ms. Finney,” he said.
“So, do we have a deal?” I asked and held out my hand.
“We do,” he said and shook it. “What if it doesn’t sell in two weeks?”
“Oh, honey, it will sell,” I said. “I’m expecting a bidding war. But let me ask you this, why would you sell this place? This location is killer.”
“The taxes are killer, too,” he said. “And it’s not that private.
Too much beach traffic.
The other place I bought is more secluded.”
I nodded that I understood, then glanced out the window and locked eyes with this gorgeous man who was in the photo shoot. He was tall and had a body that was ripped and refined and thin and absolutely delicious. He had his shirt off, of course, and was standing in a pair of perfect black boxer brief shorts. They fit him like a glove and covered his sublime ass to a “T.” His hair was dark brown and a little longish, with that cool seventies thing going on that was popular at the time. His face was handsome and though I couldn’t see his eyes, I knew they’d be some gorgeous blue color. And they were.
As I stared at him, he turned and caught my eye. I blushed immediately, knowing he’d caught me staring but also knowing that as good as he looked, he should be used to this kind of thing. But I didn’t look away. Neither did
he
.
“So,” the owner said, turning to me. “Can I take you out sometime?”
I was still staring at the model, so I barely caught his question. I turned to him and said, “Uh, no. sorry. I don’t do that. It’s nothing personal,” I said and laid a hand on his arm just to assure him. “I just don’t date clients.”
“I wish you did,” he said and winked. “I’d like another ex-wife.”
I stared at him, wondering what he meant,
then
I got it. It was a little much, but it was a good line, so I laughed and said, “You’ll find her, I’m sure.”
“Not soon enough,” he replied with a wink.
I stared at him, thinking I liked him but not
that
much and then turned back to the window. The model was back at work and not looking at me. I thought that would be it, just that one little look we shared. But it wasn’t. He called me that night, introducing himself over the phone as, “That dude you saw on the beach with the mermaid.”
“Excuse me?” I said.
“I’m Kier
O’Mark
,” he said. “I was on the beach today.
In
Malibu
?”
“How did you get my number, Kier
O’Mark
?” I asked and smiled to myself as I was very, very pleased he’d called.
“I asked the guy who owned the house,” he said. “And he gave it to me.”
“He gave you my number?” I exclaimed.
“I told him I had a house to sell and I needed a good agent.”
“And do you?”
“Not yet,” he said, his Texas accent coming out strong. “But I’d like to
buy
a house, someday.
With you.”
“Whoa, cowboy,” I said. “I don’t know you. You don’t know me. I could be an ax murderer for all you know. Or you could be one for all I know.”
“Listen, let’s cut the shit,” he said. “You’re no ax murderer and neither am I. We got a connection and we should go out and see what it means.”
I had to admit, I liked his forwardness, his inability to take no for an answer. And so I agreed to meet him at a restaurant for drinks only. He showed up right on time, met me at the bar and then told me we were having dinner somewhere else. I was both surprised and charmed when he took me to Pink’s for a hot dog, then we drove to the to the beach for a walk, then a walk to a little dive bar he knew for a beer. We talked until one in the morning and kissed as the ocean lapped at our feet. He took me back to my car and told me, under no uncertain terms, that he was going to marry me.
I had laughed and said, “What is it this week? You’re like the second person who has, more or less, proposed to me.”
“You’re a hot item,” he said. “And one I plan to have.”
I rolled my eyes. “Kier,” I said. “You’re cute but you
ain’t
that cute.”
“I think you’re wrong about that,” he said and winked.
He was right. We were married within a month. A month! It wasn’t so much a whirlwind as it was just something that happened naturally, organically, as they say. Looking back, I know we moved too fast, but that’s the way love is. When you feel it, there’s no need to wait. Why wait to start your life together? Life was for living now, in the moment and in the moment we lived. I thought we’d live that way forever, having hot and wild sex, falling asleep in each other’s arms. Everything was fun with Kier, he made it happen,
he
made me laugh. Even buying groceries was fun with him. He was a terrible cook but he tried—and burned—many good meals. And that was the thing. He
tried
to please me, even when he came up short it didn’t matter because he put the effort in to let me know how special I was to him.
Maybe I was just ready for him. Maybe that was it. Maybe a person has to be ready for someone to come into their lives and sweep them off their feet. My first love, or, rather, obsession, Adam, was nothing more than a peanut-sized memory in my brain after I met Kier. Nothing mattered but him.
And, of course, my career as a top real estate agent.
I was over the moon for him as they say. He fit right into my life perfectly. He moved in with me, taking over the other side of the bed, taking over half of the closet, talking over half of the counter space on the sink. (He was a model, so he had a lot of stuff.) But it didn’t matter. I wanted him to have that and more. I was renting a fabulous apartment then but knew he was the man I wanted to buy a house with, to share with,
to
have a family with. I went on a hunt for the perfect house, knowing that it had to be just right for us.
He became my life. I never knew I’d love someone like that, so much. I never knew I’d fall so hard but I did and I did so readily. Soon, I found the perfect house, a newly renovated two-story in
Bel
Air. It wasn’t a mansion but it had a killer zip code and spanned a good three-thousand square feet. It came with a gorgeous pool and an attached two-car garage and a gigantic mortgage. I’d always rented before so this was a big step for me. We moved in and he promised he’d take over the mortgage as soon as he landed better work. And I knew he would. I had no doubt.
I worked my ass off to make even more money to cover all our expenses and Kier kept hitting the bricks to auditions and taking bit parts and modeling as much as he could. And then it was like fate interceded. I got a listing with a well-known film producer who turned out to be this really, really cool guy who loved my Southern accent as he, himself, was from the South. We struck up a friendly, business relationship and he invited me to a cocktail party, telling me to bring my husband. I knew this was
Kier’s
chance and that he’d blow them away with his good looks and personality. And he did. But he played it cool. Kier was never one to ingratiate himself. He knew he was a star and he acted like one even if no one had discovered him yet.