Dark Secret Love Read Free Page A

wrote, I had believed that he would treat me in the way that my prior beaus had. But no. He was very willing to be dominant about everything but sex. While we’d dated, he had teased me with public displays of affection. Kissing me at clubs, twining his fingers in my hair when we were out at plays. All of that stopped as soon as I moved in. It was as if he only would do those sorts of things with a disposable girlfriend. Potential wives were to be treated in an entirely different manner.
    Finally, in a fit of angst, I got drunk and confessed what I truly wanted. What I needed. I thought—hoped, prayed—that perhaps he was treating me with kid gloves because he was worried that he would hurt me. I couldn’t have been more off base. When I got his wood-backed hairbrush and begged him on my knees to use it on me, he gave me a look of such marked disgust that I wanted tovanish into the floor. In the morning, I blamed the X-rated confession on drunkenness and we never spoke of it again.
    Why did I stay? No fucking clue, except that I was younger, and dumber, and somehow under his control. When we went out to eat one night with friends, the lady in the couple let slip that I’d told her a secret about one of Byron’s buddies. I hadn’t known this was a secret, but when Keri turned to Byron and spoke the secret aloud, he turned to me and said, “You lost ten points.”
    All right, if this happened to me now, I would have gotten up and left. No question. But then, I panicked. My heart stopped. Ten points? Out of how many? How could I earn them back?
    The few times I had the nerve to fight with him, he would get a smug look on his face, listen to me rant, and then respond either with “You’re so pretty” or “Silly girl,” as if nothing I said managed to stick in his brain. The worst thing of all was that everyone always told me how lucky I was. We made a cute couple, and feeling sure that I was the damaged one, I tried my best to be the good little girlfriend he wanted. I bought the brands of soap (Dial), laundry detergent (Tide), mouthwash (Scope), and toilet paper (Charmin) his mommy had bought. I dressed in the style he requested—pencil skirts, crisp shirts. I wore my hair the way he liked, pin-straight and in a high ponytail. I acted the part of the sub in every way, except sexually.
    Until I snapped.
    When I asked him why we rarely had sex, he polled his brothers and father to determine whether we were on average with the rest of the men in his family. When I showed him books of erotica that indicated I wasn’t wicked for wanting more, he said he thought of me like a sister.
    Unfortunately, I didn’t break up well. I flamed out. With his diamond ring sparkling on my finger, I engaged in several devious yet delicious affairs. I’m no cheat at heart. But when I was honest with him and told him I needed to try life on my own, he demanded I seek professional help. He wouldn’t hear a word I had to say. (“You’re so pretty.”) I felt that there was nowhere else for me to go. Nowhere except into the cherry-red convertible of a handsome young man named Connor.



Chapter Four:
How I Became a Meat Eater
    Almost everyone in Los Angeles is a something-slash-something-else. A waiter/underwear model. A comedian/traffic school instructor. An actress/dog walker. Connor was a model/bartender who worked in a restaurant at an upscale office building in Beverly Hills. Of the four bartenders at this restaurant, one was a bartender/musician, one a bartender/actor, and one a bartender/model. Only one was a bartender/bartender.
    The building was where Byron and I both worked. Byron played the role of right-hand man to a flamboyant gay screenwriter, and he got me a part-time slot as the screenwriter’s personal assistant. Yeah, there’s a difference. Byron listened to Jody read his dialogue aloud for hours at a time. I organized Jody’s closets, booked his salon appointments, and kept his day planner (to make sure his