Yet, I didn’t give a fuck. Nice. My father would love that shit.
Kitten glared at me, his oddly colored green eyes shooting arrows of hate while his lips smiled sweetly. Kitten was the nickname the media had blessed him with, but he was so fucking far from a sweet, cuddly kitten that it hurt my voice to say his real name and Kitten in the same sentence. Barton, his true name, fit him so much more.
“Nope, Barton. As far as I know, the final walk still belongs to me. If you don’t like it, you need to take it up with your agent and stop shitting with me while I’m trying to party with friends.”
He snorted. “Oh? This is you partying? You’re a fucking blast, Jinx. It’s no wonder everybody in this room hates you.”
It shouldn’t hurt, but it did. It hurt because Barton, AKA Kitten, was probably correct. There wasn’t one person in this room that wouldn’t rejoice if someone threw acid in my face…like one of my emails had threatened. I looked around the room, wondering if my stalker could be one of the people partying with me. Was there really a stalker? My father insisted that it was just some teenage girl with overly excitable hormones. I wasn’t so sure.
Nor did I really care.
Everyone believed my life was one party after another…I might as well prove them right. “Fuck off, Kitten. You need to be fucking de-clawed or have your balls cut off—one or the other.” I got up and walked away before Kitten could even respond. Regardless of what he had to say, it didn’t have anything to do with how I intended to spend the remainder of my evening. With an attempt to escape Kitten, I sauntered over to the center of the room, where a group of my “friends” had gathered around. I figured they were simply taking turns snorting lines of cocaine but was surprised to see another type of game taking place. My so-called friends rarely did more than use drugs or compare inches and paychecks. No, not all models were like that—I just hadn’t met any of the good ones yet. In defense of the industry, though, I wasn’t very popular because everyone believed I had an unfair advantage because of who my parents were.
They were probably right, but I’d give a fucking million dollars not to have that advantage. I loved my parents, just not the shit that came with their last name and inherited genes. What kind of life did the bodyguard have? It was probably dangerous and exciting, something that saved lives…full of intrigue. Being part of my security detail was going to be the most boring, irritating job he’d ever been assigned to.
“Come on, Jinxi! Play with us,” Margo purred in her sultry, French accent. “We’d all love to see your beautiful lips wrapped around a huge cock.”
I’d seen hers wrapped around mine plenty of times, but not once had I been gobsmacked by the erotic picture as most people seemed to be. Yep, I enjoyed it. Sure, I made sure she got off. Had I ever thought the image of us together was beautiful? Hell, no. I refused to look at my own images, photographic or imagined.
I’d looked at my photo shoots, catwalk pictures, or tabloid shots during the first year but quickly stopped. Regardless of how beautiful anyone thought the pictures looked, I found them ugly and disgusting. They weren’t me…not the real me.
The thing was, though, I had an image to maintain. Everyone expected something from me, and who was I to deny it? While I might not particularly care for this group, they were all I had, so I plastered a fake smile on my face and stepped into the middle of the group. “Okay, how does this work?”
Tito, Kitten’s on-again, off-again lover, stepped forward and said, “Oh, my. This is going to be so much fun.” He picked up some rope and a blindfold. “On your knees, pretty boy. Show us what you’ve got!”
I hated Tito almost as much as I hated Kitten, but to back down now would be a show of weakness. In this group, weakness was associated with blood, which turned them into sharks. I hated sharks. I hated the ocean. As I dropped down to my knees, I realized that when I said I hated something, it truly meant I was terrified of the object…or person. Regardless, I didn’t make a move as they pulled my arms behind my back and bound my wrists together and then pulled the blindfold over my eyes, tightening it enough that there would be no way I could remove it. It was at that moment that I made yet another realization about my life—I didn’t care what they did to me. I was nothing more than a shadow walking through life, living but not feeling alive.