Bought To Love

She looked even more dangerous than beautiful up close. Annie’s mouth left opened with shocked. She was drop dead gorgeous, yes...but faded. Like a rose which had been plucked fresh for a man’s buttonhole before a wild night of partying, but which now lay wilted and drooping across his chest.

She was still fast asleep, she laid wasted on top of a white leather mattress. She was wearing a white hoody, which curved over her breasts and bottom, ending midway along amazingly long legs which seemed to go on forever. Beside her lay an empty wine glass the finger-marked crystal upended and glinting in the spring sunshine. A faint breeze drifted in from the open windows leading onto the balcony, but it wasn’t enough to remove the faint smell of cigarette from the room, along with the musky scent of incense. Annie made a barely perceptible click of distaste and anger. Cliché after cliché were all here embodied in the magnificent body of Karen as she laid on the bed with her head on her hands as a pillow and her black hair pouring over her beautiful body.

Annie couldn’t help but think if it had been one of her male staff she would have knocked his head till he got up, but Karen wasn’t one of her male staff. She was a woman. A spoilt brat who had let her beauty and rich lifestyle get to her head a spoil brat who was now her responsibility and for some reason she didn’t want to lay her hands on Karen. She didn’t dare.

Damn her father, she thought viciously, remembering the old man’s continuous appeal to her. “You’ve got to save her from herself, Annie.” “You have to show her she can’t carry on like this for her sake and that of her future.” And curse her own stupid conscience, which made her agree to this crazy deal between her and the old man.

She decided to listen to find out if the apartment was empty and the apartment was silent but maybe she should check if truly it was empty. She moved around and found no other bodies scattered in one of the many rooms.

She moved from room to room, among all the wreckage of cold pizza lying in greasy boxes and half-empty bottles of vintage wine, she could find no one. Only once did she pause when she pushed open a door of a spare bedroom, clustered with books and clothes and a dusty-looking exercise bike. Hidden behind a velvet sofa was a stack of paintings and she walked over to them, her natural collector’s eye making her flick through them with interest. The canvases were filled with swirls and splurges of paint, some of which had been highlighted with a sharp edge of black ink. She studied them for several minutes, until she was forced to remember that she was here for a purpose and she turned away from the pictures and returned to the sitting room, to find Karen lying exactly where she’d left her.

‘Get up,’ she growled. And then, when she received no response, she repeated it more loudly this time. ‘Get up, I say.’

Finally she moved, one of her arm reached up to brush aside the thick sweep of her black hair which covered most of her face, showing Annie a sudden clear view of her face. Her cute little pointed nose and the natural thickness of her soft red lips. Her thick lashes were open and as she slowly turned her head to look at her she realized

That her eyes were the most beautiful shade of blue she’d ever seen. They made the breath in her lungs dry completely, those eyes. They made her momentarily forget what she was doing there.

‘What’s going on?’ she questioned, in a subtle voice. ‘And who the hell are you?’

She sat up, blinking as she looked around but not creating the kind of fuss she might have expected. As if she was used to being woken by strange people who had walked into her apartment at midday. She felt another feeling of distaste and disgust. Maybe she was.