Bad Girls Read Online Free PDF Page B

better roles.’
    â€˜No, it wasn’t. I’ve been hoping you’d do something new.’
    â€˜Oh, yeah? Any ideas?’
    â€˜How about Unfinished Business ?’
    â€˜What’s my role?’
    â€˜Just be yourself. You’ll be fine.’
    â€˜I wouldn’t be so sure.’
    â€˜Trust me this time.’
    â€˜When does shooting start?’
    â€˜After this thing ends. Room 873. Let yourself in.’
    Alex offered her his card key the way he might if he were betting all his chips on an uncertain hand. She took it, turned and walked away without looking at him. It was a small thing that meant a lot.
    The banter had worked. It got them where they needed to go, but Alex found the playfulness incongruent with what he was feeling. Was she playing because she was nervous or was she trying to duck the truth about her running away? Was their flirting a way to ease them into an intense encounter with their secrets, or was it a way to avoid facing them head-on? The truth was that he still burnt from last year. He had spent a year wondering if he’d done something terribly wrong. When she cut it short and ran out of his room she suddenly seemed erratic – dangerous even. He had worried about what she might do. He had even worried that he might make the same mistake – whatever it was – with other women. Since that night, whenever he was with a woman and remembered how things had gone so bad so fast, he became perceptibly more timid. As much as he fantasized about Sarah, he also resented her, wanting to continue the spanking, only this time he was motivated by a feeling of having really been wronged. Where the original spanking was to fulfill a mutual desire, this one would be to actually punish her for how she made him feel.
    The paradox in punishing bad behavior by fulfilling a lifelong desire wasn’t lost on Alex. But in the deep, sometimes backwards emotional logic of adult, erotic discipline, it made sense. He also understood that the intense, messed-up logic of it might be the very thing that drove her off. It was scary. They were doing something of significance. Her reluctance to trust a stranger was pitted against her strongest desire; her autonomy was pitted against her hunger to submit; and the need she felt for an intense experience was pitted against her fear of vulnerability and shame. Of course she felt conflicted about what she was doing. Who wouldn’t? Last year she had balked at giving up all control, not only the control over the punishment but also the control she normally exerted over her own emotions. Giving up these controls had triggered some inner alarm deep inside her. The panic had surprised her as much as it had Alex. Even more surprising to her was that when she tried to bury the panic, her famous self-control had abandoned her and she just made it out the door before she lost it completely, crying the whole elevator ride back to her room and for much of the next year.
    Alex didn’t know that Sarah, too, hoped to exorcise some demons that had haunted her ever since. All he knew was that this time it would be different.
    Using his card key and letting herself in meant she was doing it on her own accord. She stood outside the door, screwing up her courage and wondering what it meant that she was doing this. What would it mean if she went through with it this time? What would it mean if she didn’t? Alex had been right; there was something that needed finishing. She slid the card key in the slot and stared at the green light before forcing herself to turn the handle.
    Alex sat at the desk across the room. It felt like forever before he looked up.
    â€˜Hi. I was told you were looking for an actress for your film.’
    Her voice revealed more uncertainty than before. Was this the right thing to say? Was this game going to continue? Alex hadn’t expected it to. He had expected contrition, some real acknowledgement of what had happened.