Captivated Read online

  CAPTIVATED

  BY

  TESSA BAILEY

  AND

  EVE DANGERFIELD

  Copyright © 2018 Tessa Bailey and Eve Dangerfield

  Kindle Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  DEDICATION

  Tessa

  For Dean, who brought us together.

  Eve

  For the Filomena’s. And the Raffella’s.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About Tessa Bailey

  About Eve Dangerfield

  CHAPTER 1

  Autumn was drunk. Well not that drunk, just not that sober either. She hadn’t been sober all weekend, as far as she could tell. Such things were hard to figure out when you were drunk. A real chicken or the egg, potato or the vodka situation.

  Despite her working class background Autumn had never been one to hit the bottle in times of stress. Alcohol was for celebrating; champagne at weddings, wine with fancy anniversary dinners, the occasional tequila shot with friends. Seven years studying veterinary science had trained her to stay clear-headed as much as possible so she could keep up with her schoolwork. Even once she was a qualified vet she never really felt like cutting loose. Ian came to rely on her to drive them both home from parties.

  “You’re the prettiest Uber driver in the world,” he would slur from the passenger seat. “You’re the prettiest taxi.”

  Which, when Autumn actually thought about it, wasn’t much of a compliment. Then again neither was the fact that her boyfriend of six years had dragged her ass to New York, allowed her to support him for months, then cheated on her with a bunch of improv groupies. Improv groupies not only existed, apparently, but were so horny for Ian’s Kylo Ren impression that they just had to suck his dick after the Sunday matinee. Or at least that’s how he’d told the story. Ian told a lot of stories, maybe he even believed some of them.

  As awful as their break up had been and despite the fact she still hadn’t told her family or friends about it, Autumn didn’t think the cheating alone would have driven her to spend all weekend locked in her apartment drinking straight gin through a straw and playing Arkham Asylum. What had gotten her was New York.

  People had a lot of opinions about New York. Ian’s had been that it would make him a star, catapult his comedy career from YouTube and tiny theaters to SNL and movies. Other people praised its architecture, its give no fucks attitude, its ‘energy’, whatever the hell that meant, but for Autumn Reynolds, the Big Apple was enemy territory and she’d been air-dropped into it without any reconnaissance.

  Ian had been the one with the job offer. A reasonably well-known improv troupe—Sparky Spark and the Electric Bunch—had seen a clip of him impersonating Channing Tatum and suggested he fill a vacant position on their crew. Then her boyfriend, the man who swore he wanted to marry her someday, had asked if she’d like to go on an adventure with him. Of course she’d said yes. Moving to New York, what could be more glamorous?

  Being thrown into a swimming pool of curdled milk, apparently.

  There weren’t a lot of adventure novels about working ten-hour shifts putting wealthy people’s dogs on anti-anxiety medication while your boyfriend was out drinking and learning the Stanislavski method of pretending to act like a human on camera. With good reason. It wasn’t an adventure. It was shit-boring and lonely. All Autumn did was work and go to Ian’s shows and think about what a stupid name ‘Sparky Spark and the Electric Bunch’ was. She told herself to give it time, but as the months passed she only felt more isolated.

  New York wasn’t the city dreams were made of, it smelled like hot garbage and if she didn’t know better she’d think it was personally trying to kill her—loose grates, derailed trains, homeless people wielding broken bottles. The food was crazy expensive and tipping was a nightmare and air conditioner juice kept dripping on her head whenever she went outside. Her work colleagues were nice but they weren’t really her friends, and everyone in Ian’s improv troupe was awkward around her. In hindsight, that was because they knew he was cheating and felt weird about it, but still, they could have asked her if she missed home or wanted a beer or whatever. She had never been so lonely in her life.

  When Ian’s cheating had finally come out—one of the improv groupies texted nudes to his phone, which he stupidly asked her to read while he was in the shower—the longest romantic relationship of her life had blown up like a bottle rocket. Ian had packed his bags and moved into a friend’s house and she was alone, alone, alone.

  It had been two weeks now and Autumn wasn’t sure why she was still here, going through the motions of work, groceries and home. She had no reason to stay in America. She could quit her job at the clinic for sad dogs and even sadder people. She could go back to Melbourne where her old friends and family and life were waiting for her. Yet here she was, camped out in her tiny, insanely expensive apartment eating fistfuls of Doritos for breakfast. But that couldn’t be mistaken for affirmative action. She hadn’t decided to stay, either. Her work visa renewal form had been stuck on her fridge for a month, its final approval date edging closer and closer, yet she couldn’t summon up the motivation to fill out her name. She was stuck. Suspended between her past and an unknown future and apparently content to simply dangle there.

  Autumn barely understood the mindset she’d gotten herself into. She wasn’t the kind of person who sat back and let things go to seed. She was Miss Organized, Miss One Hundred and Ten Percent. If her parents knew what she was doing, they would be shocked. Tears and tantrums and threats of flying out to get her would follow, but for the first time in her life, fear of what her parents would think wasn’t enough to spur her into action.

  Maybe I don’t want to admit failure, she’d written in her comedy notepad on Friday night. Maybe I don’t want everyone to know that the boyfriend everyone thought was way too charming and hot for me cheated and the widely acknowledged best city on earth smashed me into the ground like a tent peg.

  But there was another reason, one she was too scared to write down even within her booze, sodium and video game haze. Ian wasn’t the only person who’d dreamed about making people laugh for a living, the difference was his parents hadn’t told him he was too smart for that, that he should be a doctor or a lawyer or something suitably prestigious, instead.

  Autumn loved her parents. She didn’t want to disappoint them, she didn’t want to disappoint anyone, she just wanted to feel not so goddamn terrible. So, she’d gone to the grocery store on Friday after work and stocked up on junk food, then she’d come home, put a straw in the gin bottle and let everything unravel.

  It was Sunday afternoon now. She was avoiding the mirror but whenever she caught sight of herself, it wasn’t great. Her long hair was one big honey-colored tangle and her skin was pale and greasy. She’
d removed her contacts in favor of the big purple-framed glasses Ian hated, the ones that made her hazel eyes bug out even more than they already did. All weekend, she’d worn nothing but cotton panties and a huge University of Melbourne t-shirt. Bras were for people who gave a shit and for the first time in her life, Autumn soundly did not. She and New York might finally have something in common.

  The apartment wasn’t the way she usually kept it, either. Once neat and homey, it now looked like a cross between a squatter’s den and a trash compactor. The curtains were drawn, empty Dr. Pepper cans, pizza boxes and chip packets dotted the floor, and her vibrator was lying on the couch like a discarded karaoke mic. She had sad feels, sure, but that wasn’t keeping her sex drive down. Nothing did. Even when their relationship was going to hell in a handbasket, she’d still tried to initiate sex with Ian most nights.

  “You’re a teenage boy, Autie,” he’d say, and something in his tone had made her wonder if he meant her constant desire or her small boobs and narrow hips. ‘Petite’, her mother called her, but at twenty-six, Autie knew better. She was tiny, barely five feet tall, and skinny. Everyone envied the way she could smash through a packet of doughnuts and not gain a kilo but she’d happily give up that superpower for an extra cup size or a bigger ass. She’d drawn herself that way in her improvised pornography; curvier and softer, her bare breasts straining against the ropes she’d been tied in.

  “Please let me go,” her cartoon self begged her captor. “I’ll give you anything you want, just let me go.”

  Ah, yes. The improvised, comic-book-style pornography. That had started happening around Saturday afternoon. She hadn’t been sleeping much (but wasn’t this the city that never slept? hur, hur hur) and Tumblr just wasn’t doing it for her anymore. The porn GIFS were all so artificial. All the women looked like busty mermaids with legs, their long hair spilling down to their round asses while celebrity-handsome dudes rode them from behind.

  It reminded her of Ian and the groupies he’d cheated with and really, she didn’t need more reminders. She’d already seen the nudes. So, since she was already knee-deep in debauchery and incapable of finding anyone who understood her perverted longings, Autumn decided to go all in on her fantasies and make herself some porn. Not with actual pictures—she wasn’t that drunk—but drawings. She’d always been a decent artist and she had nothing but time. The problem had been choosing a male figure for her to draw. She tried movie stars but that felt a bit pervy. She tried generic handsome guys but they lacked the realism of her own, if slightly exaggerated, figure.

  Then she remembered The Landlord.

  Neither she, nor Ian could ever remember his name, so they got in the habit of calling him ‘The Landlord.’ He’d been the one to give them their keys and show them around the apartment, pointing out electrical sockets and architectural quirks. He was big, like crazy big. Six-foot-four or five and broad as the proverbial sword. Autumn still wasn’t sure if The Landlord was hot or not. The entire time he’d led her and Ian around their new home, his face had been scrunched into a perma-scowl, as though the only thing he hated more than his job was newly migrated Australians with comedic aspirations.

  Whenever she’d seen him since, he’d looked equally pissed, hulking down hallways carrying ladders and buckets, his boots making a noise like cannons firing. The Landlord’s height and bulk would have always been intimidating but he also had a limp, relying heavily on his right leg when he walked. Combined with his shaggy black hair and beard, he cut a rather sinister figure as he made his way around their building.

  “All he’s missing is a gold tooth and an eyepatch,” Ian once said when they ran into him at the mailboxes. “What’s the bet he’s got about six hookers dissolving in the basement?”

  A mean assessment, but Ian was always bitchy about guys who were taller than him. Just call it ‘guy who plays Jon Snow’ syndrome.

  Scary and growly as The Landlord was, he was the perfect man to slot into her dark fantasies. Grizzled like a bear, big and mean. She drew him following her down a darkened New York street, stalking her as though she were a deer. Drawing-Landlord then captured her, threw a bag over her head and when it was removed, she found herself bound to his kitchen chair.

  “That’s enough out of you,” he growled, as she begged to be set free. “If you had any idea how long I’d been planning this, you’d know your blonde ass wasn’t going anywhere.”

  She made The Landlord more beast than man, a hulking collection of shadows. He tucked a clean dishcloth into her mouth and used a set of kitchen scissors to cut through her clothes, first her t-shirt, then her bra, then her—

  A sharp knock at the front door.

  “Shit!” Autie realized it was the first time she’d spoken aloud in hours. She swallowed thickly, wondering who the hell that could be. Ian knew he wasn’t welcome and it wasn’t like any friends or relatives could have come to visit. Had some electric company salesdouche somehow gotten into the building? Had she drunkenly ordered another pizza and forgotten?

  She looked around the room for clues and saw nothing but her own grossness. It was obvious she was home, Courtney Barnett was playing from her Bluetooth speakers, but she didn’t have to open the door, she’d just stay very quiet and—

  Another sharp knock.

  “Ms. Reynolds? Mr. Fletcher? This is your landlord, open up.”

  Autumn’s brain went numb. It was The Landlord. Sweet. Fucking. Hell. Was this some kind of joke? Had life not punched her in the tits enough these past couple weeks? It had seriously come to this? The Landlord knocked again and, remembering he had his own set of keys into her apartment, Autumn knew she was out of alternate options. She was going to need to respond.

  “Just a second,” she called, flipping her sex-comic notepad shut and shoving her vibrator under the couch. “I’ll be there in one second.”

  “Sure.” She’d forgotten what a deep voice The Landlord had. Instantly, her mind flashed to her sex-comic and she shivered. She crammed a couple of the more disgusting food items into the overflowing bin and then ran to her bedroom to yank on a pair of tracksuit pants. Knowing she had only seconds to avoid serious suspicion, she stuck her head into the bathroom. As expected, Harvey, Birdman and Pigioto were still in there, pacing around in the tub, fluttering their grey and white wings. Autumn pointed a finger at them. “You guys need to be fucking chilled in here, you get me? Chilled. We could get in big trouble if you cunts don’t stay quiet.”

  The pigeons all cooed politely up at her, which she took to mean yes, and she shut the door.

  “Be cool,” she told herself as she polished her glasses on her filthy hoodie. “It’s probably nothing, don’t get paranoid and talk too much, just answer his questions and send him on his way.”

  “Ms. Reynolds?” The Landlord called again. “I need a word with you.”

  “Sure! Yes! No problem!” Autumn unlocked the door, plastering a big smile on her face as she swung it open.

  Oof. Somehow despite all her sex musings, she’d managed to underestimate both the height and bulk of her landlord. As soon as he stepped into the apartment, he made the place look like it was for elves. His heavy jaw was rigid, as though he was clenching his teeth, and his expression was stern. Mean even.

  A little shiver ran down her spine. When she was playing captive in her mind, it had been fun to imagine The Landlord abducting and mistreating her. Now that he was here in the flesh, it was unnerving. It was obvious that he could snap her like a toothpick, she wouldn’t have a hope in hell of fighting him off. His enormous hands, thickly muscled body and height gave him power, a power she’d never possess, and that was both impressive and intimidating.

  What was a dude like this doing running a building, anyway? He should have been wrestling bears or pounding the shit out of people inside an MMA octagon. He was younger than she remembered, too. She’d thought he was in his forties, but aside from a few wrinkles that were probably the result of his perma-scowl, his skin was smooth. The par
ts of it that weren’t covered in beard anyway. He said nothing as he surveyed what had once been a very clean, relatively nice New York City apartment.

  “Sorry about all the mess,” she said in her most chipper, everything-is-totally-fucking-fine voice. “I don’t usually keep it like this, but I’m having a staycation.”

  “Okay.”

  The Landlord continued to look around the room, his gaze falling on the three cans of spray cream on the coffee table. He raised a brow and Autumn was sure she knew what he was thinking. “Yeah, no, I was putting the cream in my coffee, I wasn’t doing nangs. I mean…what do you call it in America when you suck the nitrous out of whipped cream cans and get stoned?”

  The Landlord stared blankly at her.

  “Is it ‘whippets?’” she said, a little desperately. “I think it’s whip-it’s. Two words. Either way we call them nangs in Australia, after the sound your brain makes when you do one, like, that loud whining nannnnngggggggggg.”

  The Landlord’s thick black brow rose even higher and Autumn realized what she was implying. “I don’t do nangs! I don’t do drugs at all! I just live here, and no one who lives here would ever do drugs. Ever. For fun or because they were sad…or for any other reason.”

  The Landlord stared at her as though she were a gibbering monkey at real risk of throwing fecal matter at him, and Autumn felt her cheeks burn. How fucking drunk was she, anyway? “So uh, what can I help you with?”

  He was silent long enough to make her skin start to itch, then he cleared his throat. “Your rent hasn’t come through this month.”

  Autumn clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.”

  “You and your boyfriend don’t answer emails.”

  The look on his face as he said the word ‘boyfriend’ told her she wasn’t the only person who thought Ian Fletcher was a tool. That helped with her nerves. At least until she realized he probably thought she was a tool, too. As for the rent not coming through, that was obvious. She’d closed her and Ian’s joint bank account after noticing Ian was still making withdrawals despite not having put any money in there for six months. She thought she’d transferred all her direct debits, but trust her to forget about the most important one.