Bartered Betrayal: The Billionaire’s Wife, Part 8

Ava Lore

Copyright 2012 Ava Lore

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This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons either living or dead is purely coincidental.

Bartered Betrayal: The Billionaire's Wife

Ava Lore

Part XIII

I went home.

Not Anton's house—that wasn't home any more, if it ever had been—but my home. My tiny shitty apartment where this had all started. My studio now, I supposed, since all my shit was in Anton's house. I doubted he'd try to keep it all like some kind of jealous ex-boyfriend, but I didn't care about it anyway. It was just stuff. You can lose stuff. You can't lose yourself.

Or you shouldn't, anyway.

And yet that was what I'd done. I'd trusted Anton, let him fold me up and take me in and use me however he wanted because I loved the way my body felt when he touched it, and I'd loved seeing the man behind the mask. The one who sometimes laughed despite himself, the man who couldn't let himself lose control for even a moment, the man who sometimes seemed completely confused by me, as though I were some kind of exotic creature he couldn't understand. But I still didn't know him at all, no matter how many times I gave him control. I'd lost myself to him, and had nothing to show for it in return. I needed to go somewhere that wasn't his, that had never been touched by him, and clear my head.

I walked the whole way there. It was cold. My sneakers, my old familiar sneakers, were just canvas. The leather boots I'd been wearing would have been better, but those clothes were for Anton's wife. I was just Felicia Waters. I shared his last name, but nothing more. Not his house, not his life, and certainly not his secrets. He didn't even share my secrets with me.

My heart was a hole in my chest.

The wind cut through my hoodie, but I kept going until I reached my building. Wearily I climbed up to my floor, and when at last I found myself in front of my old door, I realized that I didn't have the key. I didn't even know what time it was, only that it was now fully dark and I'd been walking for hours. My feet ached. My head ached. My chest ached. And now I was locked out of my old apartment. Locked out of my old life, if I wanted to get all metaphorical about it. Locked out of my old self, if I wanted to be truthful.

I started to cry.

I really hate crying, but I knew I had to get it over with sooner or later, and it might as well be sooner, so I leaned against the door and let it come over me like an avalanche.

My shoulders bowed, my face crumpled, and I collapsed to the floor. Grief bubbled up in my chest, great wracking sobs that seemed to come from someone else completely, and a small, detached part of me listened to the anguished howls filling the small hallway, wondering what could have been so horrible that someone should make such a terrible, frightful sound.

I didn't even know. I didn't even know.

It's not like Anton loved me. It's not like he ever even hinted that he might. He'd explicitly said he didn't want a wife to love. And yet I'd allowed myself to hope, all the same, that our marriage might be something more than just a convenient arrangement. My stupid, dumb, hopelessly romantic heart had told me to hope, and I'd foolishly listened to it.

Sadie was right. I was stupid.

The sound of a door opening next to me startled me, and I quickly tried to wipe my tears away and pretend that some other girl covered in snot with a face like a tomato had been wailing like a banshee. It couldn't be me. I would never do anything like that.

My next door neighbor, Mrs. Andersen, stuck her head out into the hallway and glared at me.

“Felicia!” she snapped. “You don't even live here any more and you keep making a racket!”

I stared at her, tears leaking from my eyes.

She gave an exasperated sigh. Good old Mrs. Andersen. I could always count on her to not care. It was comforting. Almost.

“Well, what's wrong?” she demanded. “What are you doing here?”

“I'm locked out,” I said. It sounded inane even to my ears, because no one was going to bray like a wounded cow just because they were locked out of their apartment, but I wasn't about to explain myself to Mrs. Andersen. She could just go on believing I was the worst neighbor in the world. And I probably was. I'd had the audacity to come back after moving out and leaving her with peace and quiet.  The fact that I was going to be staying—given that I could get in, of course—would probably put a huge crimp in her day. Night. Whatever.

She fixed me with her beady old-lady eyes. “That's why you're bawling?” she said.

I nodded. “Yup.” I sniffled and settled back against the door again, just to let her know that I was Very Sad and Not Planning on Being Sad Elsewhere, so she had Better Get Used To It.

“Well, call the landlord!”

I'd neglected to take my phone with me as well, and told her so.

She sighed again and slammed her door. I pulled my knees up to my chest and put my cheek on them, trying to get back in the crying groove. I may hate crying, but getting interrupted when you're having a good cry is the worst. I'd had a good head of steam going, probably on the brink of losing my mind with sorrow and rending my clothes, and now I'd been cut off at the pass. I shivered in the cold hallway and closed my eyes, exhaustion sweeping over me.

Mrs. Andersen opened her door again and it was my turn to sigh with exasperation, but before I could passive-aggressively comment on how I wanted to be alone with my grief, thank you, she stomped over to me.

“Get up,” she ordered. “Stop sniveling.”

Ouch, I thought. For a moment I thought about not doing it, but then I realized that since I had no plans, going along with whatever Mrs. Andersen had in mind was probably a net gain in forward momentum. I could use a little push. Crying wasn't going to help anything, except maybe my mental health, and who needed that?

I stood.

Mrs. Andersen stepped forward, clearly ready to do battle with something, and shoved me out of the way none-too-gently.

"Hey!"

"You want to get into your apartment or not?" she asked me, her voice clipped. Then she squatted down in front of the door, her old knees creaking, and stuck two lock-picks in my door.

My jaw dropped open. "What are you doing?" I said.

"Picking your lock, what does it look like?" she said as if I were stupid. She jiggled the picks, turning and fiddling. I don't know. I'm not a master criminal. But she certainly looked like she knew what she was doing.

"I..." I stared at her. "I didn't know you knew how to pick locks."

"Very valuable skill," she said. "You should learn a valuable skill yourself."

Ouch, I thought again. "I have a couple," I said.

She snorted at that. "Sure. So what are you really crying about? Your pervert husband spank you too hard?"

My face flared. Of course she would know about that. Everyone knew about that. She was just the only person I knew who would be so gauche as to say something about it to my face. "No," I said. "He..."

"Cheated?"

"No. He broke my trust, though."

Mrs. Andersen made a very expressive sound. "Of course he did," she said. "That's the way of men."

I sighed. I didn't need life lessons from a woman who once told me to cough more quietly when I'd come down with bronchitis.

"Well, you wanna work it out with him?" she asked.

"I don't know yet," I answered truthfully. "I came home to think."

"Good luck with that," she said, and then something made a little sproing noise and she pulled herself to her feet. "There," she said. "Should be open now."

I reached out and turned the knob. The door swung open and the old, comforting smell of mold and dust and clay brushed against my face.

"Ugh," Mrs. Andersen said. "Figure it out soon, your place stinks."

"Thanks," I said. She just hrmphed at me and tottered back to her apartment, slamming the door behind her.

What a peculiar old woman, I thought, and went inside.

In the dark, the place was stripped and empty except for the old mattresses that I'd been using as my bed—now without linens—and my sculptures and tools, now just hulking shadows in the light spilling in from the streetlamps outside. They sat in my lonely apartment, the last remnants of myself that I didn't take with me into my new life with Anton. Anton hadn't touched them. My last piece, done while drunk the day after I had first met Anton, was a goat tied up and blindfolded. A crude metaphor to say the least. Clearly I was the sacrificial goat. But when I had become Anton's wife, I hadn't quite felt that way. I didn't know how I had felt. I still didn't know.

I walked over to the area where I'd worked. It looked so small now, after Anton's enormous mansion, and now that there was nothing left in my apartment I realized I could spread out. I could make whatever I wanted here.

I sat down on the bed and tried to think of something to make, but nothing came to mind. All I could think about was Anton, and the great sadness yawning inside me.

I lay down and looked at the ceiling, full of cracks and old water stains. The mattress under me was scratchy and sagged, and I tossed and turned, unable to get comfortable.

What was I going to do?

I reached down inside myself, searching for the answer, but nothing came to hand. I was lost. I wanted to talk to Sadie. I wanted to talk to my mom. But I didn't have my phone with me. And what would they be able to tell me anyway that I didn't already know? That I'd married a guy for money and shock of shocks it hadn't turned out very well? Who would have seen that coming? Clearly not me.

You should learn a valuable skill, Mrs. Andersen had told me, and she was kind of right. I was pretty helpless. Being Anton's wife... it had been somehow freeing in the way that solid ground frees you up to run. I had enjoyed the idea of no longer fighting to survive, no longer struggling to make it on my own. I had enjoyed being subject to his needs, knowing at any time I could stop what he was doing with a word. I had enjoyed trying to get under his skin, trying to make him laugh. I had enjoyed being the one who made him come. A powerful man, but he was still a slave to his own desires no matter how he tried to control them. And I was just a girl who wanted to give up the fear and the exhaustion and let him take it out of my hands.

Pretty stupid of me to think love could grow from that. Love had to be there first before we could be those things to each other. And trust had to be there.

I closed my eyes. I was just going around and around in circles and getting nowhere. Thinking was stupid. I hated thinking. Thinking about Anton, who was nothing but feelings inside me, jumbled impressions and bright flames of desire, was even stupider. It was like trying to think about... about something like food. You could think about it, sure, but it could only be experienced. Anton was purely experiential to me. I experienced him. I didn't know him. I didn't love him. And I probably never would now.

I curled up on my bare mattress and tried to sleep.

*

I dreamed about Anton. We floated together, high in the sky above the city. Lights gleamed on his skin, flashed in his eyes, and when he reached out and touched me I flew with him. Or perhaps I was falling. My stomach tipped and turned as we tumbled in midair, his mouth finding mine, his hands on my body. Everything went upside down, and I lost track of the difference between the lights on the ground and the stars in the sky.

When I woke up I was nauseous, my empty stomach rumbling and roaring at me to put food in it. I'd neglected it all yesterday since the moment I'd found out my mother was going to rehab instead of chemo.  Unfortunately I'd left everything at Anton's house, including my wallet. Not that I had anything in it except credit cards linked to Anton and the three faded dollars I'd had to my name the day Anton came into my life.

I rolled off my old mattress, stumbled into my kitchenette and spat bile into the sink for a few minutes until I felt less like death. Then I went over to Mrs. Andersen's door an knocked.

The old woman opened the door on the third try, wearing curlers in her hair and a lacy bathrobe in a startling shade of chartreuse. “What do you want?” she said.

I blushed. “Could... could I borrow a few dollars?” I asked. A few dollars could get me almost a week's worth of ramen. I wasn't sure what I would cook it in, but if worst came to worst I could just eat a block of dried noodles and call it a day. I'd done it before. I have a lot of flaws, but pride, I don't think, is one of them.

“Haven't you made up with your husband yet?” she demanded. “Seems like you should talk to him or something.”

I stared at her. “I haven't even been gone for a full day,” I said.

“So?” She waved a bony hand at me. “Time is wasting. Isn't your head on straight by now?”

I barked out a disbelieving laugh. “I've been trying to get my head on straight for years,” I told her. “I did therapy with, like, three different counselors before—”

“Bored,” she said. “You are boring me. If I give you five dollars will you go away?”

I shut my mouth and nodded.

She slammed the door in my face. I heard her rummaging around in her apartment before the door opened again and she shoved a five dollar bill in my hand. “Here,” she said. “Go get something to eat, and then for God's sake go home.”

“I am home,” I told her.

“You are married now, this is not your home!”

My eyes stung. “What matters to me is still here,” I said, and it wasn't a lie. My clay. My tools. My art. Why had I left it here? Why hadn't I come back? Had I really been so swept up with Anton and planning my stupid wedding, pleasing my husband and my mother, that I'd just... stopped being an artist?

Stopped being me?

Well, yeah. I'd already had that little revelation about ten times. But the realization that I hadn't touched clay in almost a month hit me like a bolt of lightning. I needed to sculpt. That would help me work through my problems, wouldn't it? And even if it didn't I'd have a nice piece of art at the end.

“Yes, well,” Mrs. Andersen said, oblivious to the personal revelations occurring in front of her, “go get to it. And be quiet while you do.” And she shut the door again.

Thoughtfully, I walked downstairs and out of the building, running on autopilot to the nearest S & S. The wind was fierce and the sky full of clouds, but I barely noticed the weather. I was too busy thinking about clay.

Just like Anton, clay was experiential. It could only be experienced, rather than thought about, but that didn't stop me from trying. By the time I checked out with ten packages of ramen and two dollars and change left over, my fingers were itching to get to work. Flipping my hood up over my head, I jogged back to my apartment. I was almost in the front door when I realized someone was watching me.

He wasn't even being subtle about it. Just sort of standing there, huddled in the wind and sucking on a cigarette, staring at my building door. The second he saw me, he reached inside his jacket and pulled out a camera.

Paparazzo. Fuck.

I thought about flipping him the bird while he took my picture. I really did. But then I realized that any attention I gave him would just be juicy fodder for the gossip mill, and I turned my head away so he wouldn't catch my face, which probably looked horrible since I'd slept in my makeup. Keeping my hood between him and me, I ran up the steps and into the building, and I didn't breathe easily until I was in my apartment again, locking the door behind me.

I ate two packages of ramen, raw and dry. They reminded me of the really lean times, the times when I had no money for anything but clay and shit food, and when I let the rent notices pile up. I could have called my parents and had money, but I hadn't. I'd wanted to be my own person. Sure, sometimes Mom sent me a hundred bucks just because she worried about me, but I'd only had to ask her for money a couple of times, and those were to move out of a place I could no longer afford. The rest of the time, I'd been going it alone. Being a starving artist. It wasn't half as romantic as it seemed. Dry ramen noodles get pretty old after a while, but right now, they were my connection to what I'd wanted to do, what I'd wanted to be when I was younger.

I'd never wanted to marry a rich man who didn't love me. But I had.

I munched on the noodles and stared into space until I finally felt like a shadow of my old self.

I should sculpt, I thought to myself. I should make something. Making something would calm me down. Soothe me. Some kind of purpose. Anything other than knocking around this shitty apartment, waiting for my heart to heal back together.

I stood up and brushed the ramen noodle crumbs from my hoodie front. I'd left Anton's house wearing my old work clothes, and there was nothing I wanted to do more than get them filthy with clay.

I stalked over to my work area. I kept my clay in huge buckets, sealed well so as to keep them wet and easy to work with. It was cold in the apartment so it was going to be a little bit harder than I normally liked, but a good challenge would get my mind off things. My fingernails had grown in the past few weeks, between when I had ceased making art and started fucking Anton. I didn't have anything to cut them with, though, so I went ahead and dug in.

Huge lumps of cold gray clay came up in my hands, and I began to knead them together, pushing and pulling, squeezing and pounding. The rhythm relaxed me, putting my head into a soft space, a place where it was okay that I wasn't thinking, or eating, or sleeping, or crying. I just was. The smell of clay filled my nose, sweet and earthy and familiar.

I worked for a while, not letting myself think or feel anything, just letting myself build and move. I didn't have an armature to work with, but that was okay. I didn't have a plan, but I could always scavenge something from the dumpsters to use. I mean, I'm not picky or anything. An old kitchen chair is really solid. A lot of my pieces are kind of weird looking because I used whatever I could find to support the clay while I built my work. It's rare I don't start out with a plan and have to adjust to what I can afford, but right now I didn't have any kind of a plan. No plan for my life. No plan for my art. I was betting they would work out with equal degrees of success.

When I finally let myself surface, I found I had a huge lump of clay that looked like... well, like a huge lump of clay. My arms ached. My normal spate of activity is twenty or thirty minutes with the clay. I'd been at it almost an hour. Exhausted, I sat down on my mattress and stared at the piece.

It hunched in the middle of my floor, heavy and cold. Lifeless. But inside it, I knew, there was something waiting to emerge. The promise of something sweet and beautiful, just waiting for me to find it. Perhaps that was what I had been thinking when I'd first become involved with Anton. I mean, yes, we coupled out of convenience and necessity—at least, I thought it had been necessary—but no matter what I have in front of me, I know something beautiful can come from it. It just takes a little time and patience.

Maybe that's why I trusted my father. Not stupidity, but sheer, dumb optimism. Which can be remarkably like stupidity, but perhaps is a more charitable interpretation of my motives. I'd wanted to save my mother. I've always wanted to save my mother. Save her from her own dumb decisions, from her bullheaded devotion to a terrible man. I've always wanted a father who I could trust, who I could have secrets with. Dumb little secrets, I mean, like who actually ate all the peanut butter straight from the jar, not secrets like keeping my mouth shut about his latest secretary sneaking out through the utility room window, or secrets like marrying a man I didn't even know to save his ruined ass. And maybe that's why I let myself fall into Anton. Because I thought I could make something beautiful from it.

And it had been beautiful in its own way. His touch, his mastery of my body, his locked heart, his iron control... they were all beautiful, like an old chipped china cup is beautiful, all the more lovely for its flaws and its history. Anton's history was a mystery to me, but I saw the scars of it on him all the same. I knew that when we fucked, he found something approaching catharsis. I knew that he wanted me to be happy with him, and he'd done what he could to facilitate that with the only thing he had that he knew I needed—money. I knew that he didn't understand family, or much about interpersonal relationships.

He was kind of a goon, to be honest. A really fucking sexy goon, with oodles of magnetic appeal and just the right amount of distance from humanity to make him a force to be reckoned with in the cutthroat world of business, but he was a bit awkward, to tell the truth. And I liked that about him. It made him human instead of a sociopathic sex god. I'd seen my way into him from his very isolation.

I rubbed my hands over my face, no doubt leaving streaks of clay over my cheeks. Now, all that was well and good, but what did it mean?

It meant I had to get over being angry with him before we could move forward. It meant I had to show him that I did want love in our marriage, even if he didn't. It meant I had to show him that I could be the one he could trust with his heart and his feelings. He'd been hurt very badly—anyone could see that—and he'd channeled that into an obsessive need to control his own life, and anyone that messed with that was an enemy to him. I was his companion, not his enemy. I wanted him to know that he could count on me. He really, really could.

But words are words, and actions are actions, and I was pretty bad at both. There wasn't really anything I could do to show him how I felt if he kept himself locked down so tightly no light could get in.

I stared at the lump of clay in the middle of my floor, then got up and began to pace.

I passed in front of the windows several times before I realized that the photographer might still be down there, snapping photos of me in my apartment. I paused, then looked down into the street.

He was still there, watching the door, waiting for me to come out. Christ, didn't these guys have anything better to do? What would they do if I started rooting through the garbage as I went in search of armature supplies?

A slow, bitter smile spread across my face, completely at odds with the misery inside me.

Why not find out?

*

All right, I'll be honest. It is a little embarrassing to know that some guy is photographing you as you hit every dumpster from your apartment to Queens. No one wants to be seen doing that. But when I found a huge dining room table that someone had decided was just too splintered to be usable any more, it took me about three seconds to decide what to do.

Rubbing my freezing hands together, I looked both ways and crossed the street, walking straight up to my trailing paparazzo.

"Hey," I said when I got near enough to him to be heard. A panicked look crossed his face—I don't think he realized I was specifically approaching him, and he'd probably assumed I'd gone mad with grief or something. I was sure someone was gossiping about my marriage and everyone was sure to have heard about it by now. Why else would I be moping around in my old apartment? So I got quite close before he realized he should probably have been bolting down a side-alley.

I put up a hand. "Wait! Don't go anywhere, I need your help."

"Yeah?" he said. He gave me the sort of look I'm sure lambs like to give wolves, which was pretty fucking funny given my history with the paparazzi. But I forced a smile on my face.

"Yeah," I replied. "I need you to help me break the legs off this table. You think you can do that?"

He squinted across the street, peering into the alley where I'd been ineffectually tugging at the dining room table for several minutes. My hands were so cold that any touch sent little spears of pain through my fingers. Meanwhile Mr. Paparrazo Moneybags had a pair of thick gloves.

"Why?" he asked.

I shrugged. "Does it matter?"

He grinned without humor. "Yeah, it matters if you're gonna knock my block off with one of those table legs."

I arched an eyebrow. "Is there a reason I should?"

"Oh. Oh, no. Of course not. I'm just saying..."

I was certain now that he was one of the photographers that took pictures of Anton and me during our more intimate moments. But whatever. I had worse things to deal with now. "I'm going to use it to make a sculpture," I said. "I need it to hold up my clay."

He looked faintly surprised. "Oh, you're an artist?" he said.

"Starving," I told him. "Didn't you read all the profiles on me in the papers?"

He shrugged. "Nah, I just take pictures."

"Right. So. Want to help?"

He appeared to consider this for a moment. It probably sounded an awful lot like work to some guy who spent all his time hanging out around famous people's apartments hoping to catch a shot of them in their skivvies. But after a second he nodded. "Yeah, all right," he said.

The work went a lot easier with his help. His name was Jake and he was a skinny guy, but he could kick like a mule, and in less than ten minutes we had the legs off the table and I was moving on to the next dumpster. He fell in beside me, since we were apparently friends now.

"So," he said after about half a block, "what are you making?"

"A sculpture," I said.

"Yeah, I know that," he told me. "What kind?"

"I'm not telling you," I said. "You'll just tell whoever writes those little blind items or whatever and then it won't be a surprise."

"It's a surprise?"

To more than just you, I thought. "Yeah, it's a surprise," I told him. "A nice surprise for good little paparazzi who take pictures of me naked."

He blushed red at that. "Hey, I never took pictures of you naked," he said.

"But you have taken pictures of me?" The spanking pictures maybe?

"I plead the fifth."

I shook my head. The damage was done. And it didn't really matter now anyway. "Well, stick around. Maybe you'll see what I'm making."

"Can I take pictures of it?"

I slowed down. I hadn't thought about that. An idea started to form in my head.

"Yeah..." I said after a minute. "You can. You can take pictures while I'm making it, even."

"Do you sculpt in your underwear?"

I pursed my lips. "I'm sure I can make it worth your while. Maybe it'll be a nice juicy tidbit for the tabloids. Recently Estranged Wife of Billionaire Businessman... I don't know... Goes Mad or whatever."

"Are you crazy?"

"How would I know if I were crazy? Crazy people never know they're crazy." Like Anton. He didn't really seem to think of himself as a crazy person, but he kind of was. Maybe I was crazy, too.

...Yeah, probably.

Jake scratched the side of his nose. "Yeah, okay," he said after a minute. "That sounds like it has a good hook. Give someone an exclusive deal for the photos, move a ton of copy. How long do you think it'll take you?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. My big pieces take at least a couple months, but if I really work on it... maybe three, four weeks?"

“Good,” he said. “That's good, a good amount of time. A month. Long enough to be titillating and drag out the suspense, but short enough to hold their attention.”

I stopped and tucked the table legs under my arm before sticking my hand out. He stared at it like it was a snake waiting to bite.

“Shake on it,” I said. “You get the exclusive photos, and I'll act like a crazy person to make them worth selling.”

“So you want the world to see you acting crazy?”

I shrugged. “No such thing as bad publicity, right?”

“I'm not so sure about that,” he muttered, but after a moment he grabbed my hand in his gloved one and gave me a good shake, nice and firm. I squeezed his fingers as hard as I could.

“Ow,” he said.

“I know your face, now,” I said. “Don't forget that.”

He grimaced, and I smiled, feeling good for the first time since I'd walked out of Anton's house.

*

Sculpting takes a while. A long while. Clay is a very warm medium, very responsive. Every interaction you have with it is preserved. Even when you're beating it to death with a two-by-four.

I worked naked except for a pair of panties. A little nod to Anton's command, telling me never to wear underwear again. Well, I'd goddamn wear underwear if I felt like it, and I did feel like it. More specifically, I didn't feel like getting clay stuck in my snatch.

But I still thought of Anton while I worked. Not necessarily the beating of the clay, but the sheer physicality of the task I'd set before me put me in mind of other physical activities. Wet clay slithered under my hands as I smoothed it out. With every pound and hard push, it responded to me, the way Anton did.

Every time I had to climb on top of my sculpture, I thought of Anton. I thought of riding his face, of riding his cock. I thought about him when I had to straddle my creation and push it into new shapes, my clay-covered ass in the air. I'd presented myself to him this way, and he had taken me without thinking twice about it. I remembered the feel of his hands on my hips, his cock in my pussy. I remembered how raw and animal we were, and I channeled it. Slowly, surely, my work began to take shape, and I knew even before it became recognizable that it was the best work I'd ever done.

I left my blinds up and turned the lights on in my apartment while I pounded clay. Not my favorite way to work, but definitely the only way to let Jake take pictures without alerting everyone that we were in collusion. I leaned out the window when I became so hot and covered in sweat that I couldn't take it any more, my body burning with effort and memories. I didn't bother to put clothes on. The world had already seen me. It wasn't like I was giving anyone a show who didn't want it. Besides, I worked mostly at night so Jake could get the best light from inside my apartment, so it wasn't like I was walking down the street with my tits hanging out in broad daylight.

I slept on my mattresses when I was too tired to work any more. I washed my mouth out with water, ate blocks of dry noodles, and stared into space, reliving the past three weeks.

Anton invaded my head even when I wasn't thinking about him. I'd stretch out, trying to work the kinks from my back, and I would remember the way his hands felt as they massaged away my tension. It didn't matter what the tension was over—even if it was over him and his insatiable needs—just his touch calmed me. I'd been addicted to him, and now that I was doing my detox, I started to see how unhealthy we had been.

And yet I still missed it.

It's hard to work with a hole in your chest. Inside me, there was a void, an aching sadness that I couldn't chase away. No matter how hard I kicked my sculpture, no matter how hard I pounded it, it remained. More than once I rained my fists down on a particular lump of stubborn clay only to find myself sobbing, my hands bruised as tears ran down my face. I was a hole with a woman wrapped around it, and it felt like that would never change.

*

I lost track of time. The tabloids must have come out, because people started knocking on my door and ringing my bell, asking me if they could have a few words with me. Sadie came by, and even though I knew she had a key, she didn't barge in. Instead she knocked on the door until Mrs. Andersen told her to go to hell and die, and I heard her audibly sigh and shove some money through the crack under the door. When I opened it later that night I found a garbage bag full of my old work clothes sitting on my doorstep with a few blankets, soap, my toothbrush and toothpaste, and some shampoo and conditioner. It made me smile. Good old Sadie. She knew what was really important to an artist. Sleep and a shower.

Anton didn't show up.

But I didn't expect him to. I had to call him to me. I had to let him know it was okay.

I worked harder.

*

A knock on the door, again, sometime during the second week. I looked up from my meticulous detail work and wiped sweat from my face. I was starting to get so lost in my art that I now didn't jump immediately when someone knocked on my door. It felt strange, but also freeing. No, I thought, I don't have to get up and answer the door for you. Go away.

They kept knocking. And knocking.

An unpleasant sense of deja vu swept over me. That was how this had all started, hadn't it? My father knocking on my door, refusing to go away until he tricked me into saving him from his own stupidity. The knocking increased in intensity.

I was decently dressed at least. Detail work is less strenuous, and my apartment was cold. I still hadn't bothered turning on the heat. That would dry the clay out too quickly, and I needed it to remain pliable. Standing up, I stretched and told myself that I still didn't need to hop to. I could just walk casually across my floor and check to see who it was. I did just that, pressing my eye to the peephole.

It wasn't just deja vu. My father stood on my doorstep. Again.

Full circle. Here we were. I opened the door.

My father stood there, hand raised, a look of incredulity on his face, as though he hadn't expected me to open the door. Truthfully, I hadn't expected to do so either. I'd told him I'd never wanted to see him again, and that was the truth.

Yeah, well, we all do things we don't want to do. Might as well get them out of the way, right?

"What?" I said.

He lowered his knocking fist, but didn't seem to know what to do with it afterward. He seemed awkward, as though he didn't know where to start. His hands floated uselessly in front of him, without purpose, until he finally shoved them in his pockets.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Okay," I told him, and started to close the door.

Then he knew what to do with his hand. His palm slapped against it, preventing me from shutting it all the way. I made an annoyed noise and paused, waiting for him to tell me whatever was on his mind.

"That's it?" he said. "Okay?"

"What do you want me to say?" I asked him.

His lips thinned. "That you forgive me?"

"Oh," I said. "Well, I don't. Now go away."

"Felicia, please!" The desperation in his voice sent a little tickle of suspicion through me. I was getting cynical. Actually cynical. At least when it came to him. Bout damn time.

"What?" I said. "What do you want? I mean, really? What do you really want?"

His hands found each other, began pulling and plucking at themselves. "I... I need you to talk to your husband."

I almost laughed in his face. I wasn't talking to my husband for myself. What made him think I'd do it for him? "Why?" I said. I couldn't keep the amusement from my voice.

The look of dejection on his face was comical to me now. "He's taken over the company. Kicked me out. I'm... I'm not on the hook for the debt any more, but I have nothing."

I quirked an eyebrow. "And?"

He blinked. "And what? I can't rebuild my life without that money, Felicia. I have a car and some clothes to my name. That's it."

I smiled. "So?"

A scowl crossed his face. "Your mother married me to avoid a life of poverty," he said. "She's in her sixties. She can't start working now, and her sobriety... this will threaten her sobriety."

I must be an idiot, because I considered his words for more than a fraction of a second before actually laughing. "Dad," I told him, one of the few times I'd ever called him that, "I can't help you. And I can't help mom. I have my own problems right now.

"But your inheritance!" he said as I started to close the door. "I know your prenuptial agreement leaves you nothing! I would give you everything."

Everything? I wondered. "No," I said. "You'd give me money. And I don't want money." Money made life easier a lot of the time, but it sure as fuck wasn't everything. The ache in my chest that had begun to return now that I wasn't wholly focused on my work was enough to attest to that. What did money mean when you just wanted to curl up and cry? What did it mean when you couldn't pick up the phone and speak to someone you cared for? What did it mean when you had no one to trust?

It hadn't meant anything to Anton, I realized. Anton was one of the richest men in the world, and yet so poor in love that he had to buy a wife because love hurt him so badly he didn't want to feel it again. I pitied him. I wanted to help him. My fingers itched.

"What do you want?" my father asked. "Tell me, I'll give it to you."

I looked at him, old and bent and penniless, his greed causing him to overreach so far that he had lost everything. I pitied him, too. But I couldn't help him. And I didn't really want to.

"Nothing," I said. "Go away. If you come back, I'll call the police."

I started to close the door again, but he shoved his way inside. "Felicia!" he shouted. "Felicia, you have to help me!" His hands found my shoulders, and he was shaking me so hard my teeth rattled. My father never touched me. Shocked, I let him shake me before snapping back to reality, twisting out of his grip. He was so weak now, so small. He couldn't hurt me any more. I heaved, pushing him away, and ran to my tools. One of my salvaged two-by-fours leaned against the wall, and I grabbed it, brandishing it in front of me.

"Leave," I told him.

He started to cry, but I found he couldn't move me any more. I knew what was really important, and it wasn't the past and the damage already done.

Eventually, he left, and I locked the door behind him.

With trembling hands I went back to work.

*

I stopped sleeping so much. I dreamed about Anton too frequently: his voice, his smile, his surprised laugh. I dreamed about his hands on me, racing up my thighs, his breath on my pussy, his tongue deep inside me, clinging to me wherever he could find purchase, like a man afraid of being swept away. I dreamed of grinding my clit into his face. I dreamed of being tied up, wrapped in plastic, fucked until neither of us was afraid any more.

Stranger things have happened.

I made love to my clay. My fingers caressed it, thinking of Anton's skin. I pushed against it with my heels, my back arching, my mind wandering to our couplings. My thighs always rubbed together at inconvenient times, and I would flush as I tried to carve out the patterns of my head into the flesh of my creation.

It was beautiful, if I did say so myself. Beautiful and dangerous. Everything was there that made me think of Anton. No one who looked at it would think I was speaking of anyone else. It was my greatest work to date. Midday, when I should have been sleeping but couldn't stop thinking about it, I would get up and touch it through the wet towels I'd laid over it, preserving its plasticity until the last moment when I would dry it and fire it. I'd peek at it, and I would see all my hopes and dreams in it. My hands would wander my body, and I would grind my fingers into my pussy, thinking about Anton, but every time I came I never felt satisfied. Release eluded me.

I chased my memories of Anton, carved them into the clay, and hoped it would be enough.

*

In the middle of the third week the major part of my sculpture was done, hollowed out and in pieces, ready to be fired and put back together again. Then I would paint it. In the meantime, I had to get to the rest of it. But first I had to figure out how to get it to the kiln. I have a good friend who owns a great kiln for firing clay, but getting a piece there was usually a product of several friends helping me load it into borrowed or rented trucks. Right now, I didn't want to talk to anyone. My voice was rusty with disuse. I had to go to the only person I knew who could maybe help. Luckily he was right across the street, hanging out in an empty apartment across from mine.

"Hey, Jake," I said when he opened the door. The smell of take-out Chinese hit my nose, and my mouth watered.

He smiled at me, a huge predatory grin. Not half as sexy on him as the one that Anton sported. My heart gave a little twist, but I shoved it away. "Felicia!" he said, clearly happy to see me. And why not? I'd probably already made him gobs of money. Good for him.

"I need help to get part of my work to the kiln."

"Can I take pictures?"

I rolled my eyes. "Yes, god, of course. Just give me a hand."

Within the hour he procured a truck, and together we loaded it in. He stood back and took a few photos as I hauled a couple of the smaller pieces into the truck myself, presumably to send off to the tabloid he'd contracted with, but it didn't take long with his help. Hauling the big pieces downstairs is a lot easier if you have a second person.

"So what is it?" he asked me as we drove to my friend's studio.

"It's a sculpture," I said.

He blew air out his nose, clearly unimpressed with my clever sidestepping of his question. "Yes, I know, but... oh, forget it. Why is it in pieces?"

"Because it's too big to fire in one piece, duh."

"I haven't been able to get a good shot of it through the window," he said after a moment.

"Good," I told him. "You have my butt, though, right?"

"Yeah."

"I'm guessing that'll sell better than the final piece anyway."

His mouth twisted. "Then... okay, seriously. Why are you doing this if you think the final piece won't be worth much?"

"I said it wouldn't sell for a lot," I told him. "Personally I think it'll be priceless."

"Artists," he said, disgusted. "Why do you want me to take pictures of you building it, then? Just to show off your ass?"

No, I wanted to tell him. My ass just gets it where people can see it. Specifically where one person can see it.

"I'm sending a message," I told him, and refused to say anything more.

*

I had to call Sadie. I used Mrs. Andersen's phone, much to her disgruntlement. I actually had to enter her apartment to do it. The place smelled like roses and dust and had a scary amount of WWII paraphernalia.

"Don't you give me the stink eye," she said as I tried not to stare at her extensive collection of tank helmets. "I salvaged those fair and square."

"Salvaged?" I said.

"I was a little girl in Europe in the forties. You don't have to be a soldier to steal boots off dead bodies."

I decided not to press her on that claim and instead called Sadie.

"Yeah?" she said when she picked up.

"I need some glass," I said.

For a long moment she didn't say anything, and it's probably to her credit that she didn't immediately start yelling at me. "Yeah?" she said again. "How much?"

I gave her the measurements. "Though I dunno, maybe plexiglass would be better. Actually, yeah. Clear plastic glass. And I need a really big hammer, like a sledgehammer."

"I'll see what I can do," she said.

The receiver in my hand cut into my fingers. I was holding so tightly I heard it creak.

How is Anton? I wanted to scream. Is he okay?

"Thanks," was all I said.

"No problem," Sadie told me. "Keep it up."

She hung up, and I felt a great wieght lift from my chest.

Keep it up.

Okay. I would.

*

Four weeks after I left Anton's house, I assembled my finished piece in Times Square. I didn't have permission or anything like that, but I figured no one was going to stop me, at least not until I was done and everyone had taken their pictures. The paparazzi had been gathering outside my apartment for days after the photos of me loading the biggest part of the finished work into the truck came out. Jake told me blogs were abuzz about it, all the gossip sites, all the gossip mags, all the gossip tv shows. It's amazing who gives a shit about what you do when you're rich and take all your clothes off. Never in a million years had anyone cared so much about my work.

And that was okay. Because in a few hours, pictures of my art would be beamed around the world, bounced back and forth between here and there, until he had to see it. It would reach him without fail. I knew it would.

It was ninja. Enlisting the help of Sadie and some of our other arty friends, we hopped out of Jake's borrowed truck and spirited the pieces to the middle of the square. I worked under a tarp and I asked bystanders to help me out, like one of those performance artists. People were happy to be drawn into it. Most people had heard about my crazy sculpting, my brokenhearted grief. Jake had given me some of the tabloids I'd appeared in, and much of the story had come out. My mother in particular had taken the opportunity to capitalize on my fame. I suppose that now that my father was broke she had to make good for herself, and she didn't seem to be doing too badly. She'd come to my apartment a few times, but I hadn't wanted to really see her, so I hadn't opened the door.

I didn't begrudge her using my story to break free of my father. It's what I'd always wanted. And besides, it was a pretty good story, all the same. I knew my mother loved money. I knew she needed it. I knew that's why she had stayed with my terrible father.

But I didn't want to be like that. I wouldn't.

It didn't take as long as I thought it would. Those helping me were already taking pictures with their phones from beneath the tarp.

“All right,” I said when it was ready. “Let's show this thing to everyone.”

And they lifted the tarp away.

The clouds had lifted for once, and sunlight fell on my creation.

People raised their cameras and began taking snapshots. As per our understanding, I'd taken Jake with me under the tarp, and he had been able to scope out the best angles for taking his final photographs. I saw him at the front of the crowd, crouching down, snapping his pictures.

The sculpture was big—the biggest I'd ever made—and the plexiglass box glittered and shone from the right angles, obscuring the contents. I knew, though, that when you got close to it you could see the thing trapped inside. I had it memorized, and I closed my eyes and saw it in my mind.

It was a tiger made of water.

I was incredibly proud of it. When I'd first seen Anton, I'd noted that he moved like a predator or like water, smooth and flowing, and I'd tried to capture that essence in my creation. Bit by bit, a huge tiger had taken shape under my pounding and pushing. It crouched in a puddle of clay, its edges blurred and liquid as it emerged from the water. One paw, claws out, reached over its head, raking at the glass box, too small to contain its huge form. I'd painted it in pale gray and black, and its angry eyes glittered  gold as it's snarling muzzle bared huge fangs as long as my fingers. It stared up at the creature atop its box.

A rabbit. Small, lithe, and ridiculous in the face of those fangs. And yet strong. It clung to the end of a sledgehammer I'd buried in the plexiglass, gluing the bits and pieces of glass that I'd had to saw away to the end of the hammer, suspending other bits from the top of the box with invisible wire.

So there you have it. A tiny rabbit smashing the glass box containing a snarling tiger. Words are pretty shit to describe it, honestly, so just trust me. It lived.

“You're kind of simple,” Sadie said as she stood next to me.

I shrugged. “What use is art no one can understand?” I said. “I think this is pretty powerful.”

I glanced at her. She was staring at the sculpture, a faraway look in her eye. “So that's how you really feel, huh?”

I nodded.

Sadie licked her lips. “It's beautiful, Lis,” she said. “I'm not going to pretend to really understand your relationship with Anton, but if it makes you make art like that...” She trailed off and shook her head.

I looked back at my piece. Yeah, it still owned. “It's definitely something,” I said. Off in the distance, sirens were blaring. Good old NYPD. Always quick to pepperspray young women making a statement. I looked forward to it. The pictures were taken. I couldn't very well have dumped the sculpture on Anton's doorstep. That would just look desperate.

“You think he'll figure out that you like him?” Sadie asked me as a cop car pulled up by the curb.

“I don't know,” I said. “He seems a little dumb in the mooshy feelings department.” We watched as the cops got out of the car and began their investigation—namely, asking who was responsible for this. Fingers pointed at me.

“Maybe you should have made him a mix tape,” Sadie said.

“Maybe you should shut up,” I told her, and then I got arrested.

*

Okay, it didn't happen quite that quickly. First there were lots of questions and lots of pictures snapped by gawking bystanders, but the bottom line is that I ended up in cuffs when I refused to remove the 'illegal installation,' mostly because I really didn't know what to do next and getting arrested seemed like a good idea at the time.

Sadie promised to keep my sculpture safe for me.

“You better,” I told her as they shoved me in the back of the car. “That's what I pay you for.”

She made a face at me as we pulled away.

I got processed and put in a holding cell. My bail was set at five thousand dollars. I figured I was going to be there for a while and settled in, staring at the crude yet incredibly creative graffiti on the walls left behind by my fellow criminals. Some of them had been very good artists.

I was in the middle of scratching out my own contribution to the communal artwork—a loving rendition of a butt in a cop hat—when an officer opened my cell.

“You're free to go. You posted bail.”

I raised my eyebrows in surprise. Really? The only person I could think of who would come get me would be Sadie, or maybe my mom. My mom really wouldn't like the idea of me sitting in jail. It would look bad. Worse than marrying for money or your husband losing all your money. Like, you'd just be formerly rich then. Not a filthy criminal. Having a daughter who was a criminal? Well then you would be a bad mother.

I got up and followed the officer out of the holding cell. They gave me my shit—not much—and told me my court date, and then they escorted me to the front desk.

Anton stood there.

I stopped and stared. I hadn't seen him in almost a month. We'd been apart for longer than we'd known each other.

He was still beautiful. Still magnetic. But he looked tired. His green eyes were lined, and his face drawn. His fluid dancer's stance was stiff, as though he were in pain.

He watched me, and I watched him for a long moment.

“Felicia,” he said. Then he seemed to stop, as though he didn't know what to say next. I'm sorry, or come home, or—anything. He knew he should say something.

Finally he opened his hands, as though to show me he had no weapons. “Sadie told me you were in jail,” he said.

God, he was such a dork.

I ran forward and threw my arms around him, and it felt like waking up.

* * *

To be concluded in Bartered Surrender: The Billionaire's Wife, Part 9.

Author's Note

Felicia's art is based on the beautiful and amazing sculpture of Beth Cavener Stichter. You can visit her website here or view parts of her amazing “Come Undone” exhibition here. Felicia's paean to her relationship with Anton takes heavy inspiration from both The Question that Devours (detail) and The Sentimental Question (detail).

About the Author

Ava Lore was raised by wombats and lives to corrupt the innocent. When she's not writing erotic romance, she spends her time thinking about writing erotic romance and drinking enough iced coffee to kill a musk ox.

Discover more titles by Ava Lore at AllRomanceeBooks.com.

You can email Ava Lore at authoravalore@gmail.com or catch up with her at authoravalore.com. She yearns for your approval and always loves to hear from fans. Want more BBW? More Billionaires? More aliens? More menage? Something entirely different? Let her know!

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Bartered Bride: The Billionaire's Wife, Part 3

Bartered Desire: The Billionaire’s Wife, Part 4

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