“You’re bad,” I say, smiling.

“You called me Grace and that means I can call you by your name. So I choose Mr. Asher.”

“Who made that rule?”

“We did,” she says back smartly. “Together.”

“We’ve known each other one day, there’s not enough time for traditions, Grace.”

“Maybe not. But”—she smiles with mischief and I find myself eager to hear her reasoning—“we’ve set a precedent. So same thing. You call me Grace when you want to explain things to me, so I can call you Mr. Asher after you call me Grace.”

I shake my head at her. “Fine, girl. We wouldn’t want to break past precedent, so we now have a tradition. Now, what do you want to do next? Go back to your bungalow and sleep?”

“What’s my other choice, Master?”

Jesus Christ. That right there makes me want to f**k her. “You’re a good girl, so if you’d like to stay here on the beach with me, you may.”

“OK, I choose to stay here on the beach. What will we do here?” She waggles her eyebrows at me and the grin on my face has got to be huge. Who knew she could be so sweetly manipulative? “You’re the master, so you get to decide.”

“I always get to decide, Grace. I don’t need you to tell me that.” She bites her lip to stop her smile. “Tell me about your life. Where do you work and what do you do?”

And then her mouth opens and words and sentences spill out. Paragraphs and paragraphs of details tumble out of her tender pink lips. I listen with an eager ear as she describes her new job, her old job, her loft in the city, her car, her fascination with cats—she doesn’t have any because her building doesn’t allow pets—and then, after she’s all talked out, her pause is longer than it should be and I find her almost asleep.

“I guess I don’t have to play the get-to-know-me game then. You’re too tired.”

“I’m not tired, I just put myself to sleep with my boring life. So, no,” she whispers. “I want to hear, I’m not asleep. My eyes are just heavy. Tell me. Tell me something about you.”

“What do you want to know? The plot in the Invisible Man 2 movie? My upcoming appearances? How much money I made this year? What kind of car do I drive? Choose.”

“Certainly not any of those things.”

“No? Why?”

“Asher, I can look that stuff up online.” She opens her eyes and grins up at me. “In fact, I have. I already know all of that. No, I want to know what it was like to be you growing up. What was schooling on set like? What did you do on the weekends? Who was your best friend?”

I’m puzzled at her request. And now that I think about it, she never told me anything about her childhood. Only her present life.

But it’s my turn to talk about me, and no one ever asks me these kinds of questions. Not anymore, at least. Maybe back when I was a little kid these were the kinds of questions they asked. But I never told the truth. I always lied.

“My childhood sucked,” I finally say.

Her eyes fly open immediately. “Why?”

“Because I didn’t have one. It was non-stop work. I’ve been working since I was five years old. I never had a best friend, or played on the baseball team, or had to stay up late to finish homework. It was all about acting. And don’t get me wrong, my career doesn’t span twenty-seven years because I couldn’t make the sacrifices. Acting is the only thing I know. It’s the only thing I do.”

“You guys have a production company though, right?”

“Oh, yeah, we have our hand in pretty much every aspect of the showbusiness pot. But I’m an actor first. I do love my work, but all the sacrifices are adding up. The lack of privacy, the grueling schedules, the pressure, the politics—they all add up to an extraordinary life. And to be honest, Grace, I’d like a little bit more reality in my life.”

“Huh,” she says softly. “That’s funny. I’m always on the lookout for a little more fantasy, myself.”

I wait to see if she’ll expound, but she doesn’t. Just lies there, her head in my lap as I talk about everything and nothing all at the same time.

I like her, I realize once the darkness of night is breaking for the light of day. So I scoop her up and take her to her bed. I stare at her for a few moments after I place her on top of the sheets.

She’s different, I realize. She’s real.

I’m not sure what makes me think that or why it matters, but she’s real in a way I haven’t seen in a while. She’s got an innocence to her, but at the same time, she seems hardened by something. I want her. I wanted the last sub too. But I never liked the last sub. She was just a body to use, a mind to manipulate.

But Grace…

I turn on my heel and walk out of her bungalow before I ask myself any more questions. She has one more day here at the resort and then we both have to go back to our normal lives.

It’s best not to think too hard about her. I’ll probably never call her again after I f**k her wild tomorrow.

Chapter Fourteen

PleasePullMyHair

I WAKE to Bebe and Steve in the room. Bebe is right next to me, and she’s not hiding her lackluster feelings for her boyfriend, because she’s arguing with him in a nasty tone. “What’s going on?” I ask as I roll over.

“I’m so sorry, Grace!” she exclaims. “I feel terrible for leaving you here all day yesterday and then brain case over there forgot to put gas in the boat he wanted to rent after parasailing, and we got stranded on that stupid island. We had to beg a local family to take us in. Did you know there’s like, no real services over there?”