His Obsession

  His Obsession

  ANNA BLOOM

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  HIS OBSESSION

  First edition. November 11, 2017.

  Copyright © 2017 Anna Bloom.

  Written by Anna Bloom.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  FIVE YEARS LATER

  HIS POSSESSION | SNEAK PEEK

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  CHAPTER ONE

  “How do I look?” She spun on the dressing table stool, re-crossing her legs, and my face folded into the habitual scowl I was wearing far too often. That deep recessed crevice now lived between my eyebrows whether I was frowning or not.

  “At what point are you going to put some clothes on?” Huffing a sigh that I hoped told her I wasn’t happy, I folded my arms across my chest and counted to ten in my head, the whole time looking anywhere apart from at her body which was currently clad only in black Victoria’s Secret. Make that twenty.

  Thirty.

  Her giggle filled the air, ringing in my ears just like it had for the last five years. “You’re so funny, Blake. I am wearing clothes.” She slid her hands down her body, her thumbs skimming along her exposed midriff, running under the edge of her ribs. My eyes danced as they unwillingly appraised her flesh. This girl was out of her mind with naive oblivion. She had no clear perception on how others viewed her. I did. This was why she needed me, to protect her. It was my job as her bodyguard. Laughing again, she slid off the stool and stalked towards me across the dressing room, her long legs sashaying while she swayed her hips side to side like she was on that charity runway from the previous month. If she could sense the hot sweat that sprung along the back of my neck she didn’t acknowledge it. My face twitched as I kept my eyes focused on her face, not daring to glance at the scattered freckles that dotted the skin of her chest like droplets of warm chocolate.

  I was beginning to realise I was just a game to her, someone to tease. A childish game born of naivety.

  I’d remember that next time she wanted a strawberry milkshake and fries at two in the morning.

  Taking a step back I dodged her long-legged approach.

  “You are such a bore these days.” She scowled and pouted her mouth as I shifted from her friendly hand on my arm and my lips twitched in response. I wished the room was bigger. That bottom lip protruded into a pink flushed bud as she stared up at me through long eyelashes. My focus zoned in on the puckered flesh and I wondered what it would feel like sucked into my mouth, teased between my teeth.

  Stop it Blake.

  I lifted one eyebrow at her. “Sophia, you have no idea what I do when I’m not here with you.” I leant in a little closer, despite knowing I shouldn’t, and whispered in her ear. “I get up to all sorts.” It was childish that I wanted to make her as uncomfortable as she made me.

  My attempt backfired as she slid a shameless hand up my arm and I flinched under her scorching touch before straightening and swallowing hard. “Blake, baby.” She leant in and her sweet breath fanned over my face. “How do you manage that when you are always here with me?”

  She wasn’t wrong but I would never admit that to her. I gritted my teeth and stalked away, pulling on the dressing room door and positioning myself on the other side. It didn’t help. I could still discern her through the wooden barrier. Could still hear her breathing, could still imagine all too well what those lips would feel like if I surprised her and called her bluff on the childish games she liked to tease me with.

  But, I never would. Sophia was my client and I’d looked after her since she’d worn pigtails and dungarees.

  She didn’t wear pigtails anymore.

  Things had been different in London, but here in Hollywood everything had changed. She’d changed.

  I breathed in the cool air of the hallway. This house was large and airy—a true Hollywood mansion—and the door to ceiling windows allowed the sunlight to stream in through gauzy curtains. The sunlight didn’t warm me though. I was chilled to the bone as I lived in my own personal hell.

  The door opened a crack. “I’m decent now.” Her voice was small, like it always was when she thought she’d upset me. Well damn right, she had.

  “Good.” I shouldered my way back into her dressing room and found her with a black dress clinging to her body like a second skin. Oh God, that wasn’t going to help. “Sophia, you aren’t a child anymore. Your mum will have a fit if she knew you were parading around in front of me wearing just underwear.” I knew I was scolding her like a parent, and I knew it wasn’t my job, but that was part of our relationship—which was all levels of fucked up.

  Sophia rolled her eyes, now that she hadn’t grown out of. “It’s just you.” She pouted. Shit I wanted to crush that mouth with my own. “You’ve seen me like this a million times before.”

  This was pain and discomfort on a level that was getting harder to control. I placed my hand on her shoulder and told myself that she didn’t just flutter her eyelids at my touch. “What do you mean ‘it’s just you?’ I am still a man.” I was painfully torn between whether I wanted her to see me as a real man or for her to see me as the man in the suit in the background. “Anyway, it’s not that, Soph. These walls are teaming with people you don’t know. You can’t trust everyone.” My body stiffened as I contemplated the scores of people who seemed to arrive at the house daily. Every time I’d conducted a thorough background search on all staff, someone new would arrive. I was inclined to think it was intentional.

  Sophia turned her wide smouldering eyes to my face and watched me like I was the sun in her universe, like everything I said was the gospel truth. “That’s why I have you.”

  I swallowed hard and shook my head ready to argue but she giggled and the sound caused a tightening of my stomach and an ache I tried to ignore.

  “Anyway,” she said, her hand sliding up my arm, causing a trail of tempting destruction. “Everyone is naked in this town,” she said, her eyes glinting as she grinned up at me. I found my own lips curving in response, although I held myself back from stepping closer. I could never go there.

  “That’s true, but you know you don’t have to be like everyone, right?” My hand grasped her elbow and I held it tight, hoping she could understand what I was trying to say. That she didn’t have to be like the others, that she was something else, something better, a true star. This town was vile, it turned everything bright into ash. The thought of that happening to Sophia made my stomach turn. In this town, girls became thin spectres of the women they could be. There was no beauty here, just decay. I hated it. I wanted to go home but I couldn’t leave her.

  My eyes scanned her face, her freckles these days were hidden under layers of make-up and she had darkened eyes, heavily outlined in pencil. Underneath was the girl with pigtails. The girl that I loved.

  I switched my mind back to business as she wormed her way out of my too tight grip and went to the mirror to check her lipstick. A ruby red, it made her wide lips resemble a fifties movie star. “The car will be here in fifteen,” I glanced at my watch. “Will you be ready?”

  Her reflection grinned at me. “Do I look ready?”

  “I couldn’t possibly say.” I tried to keep my tone professional, but I knew I’d failed when Sophia’s smile widened and showed dazzling white teeth. I rolled my eyes which I didn’t think was the professional front of a
bodyguard, but she teased it out of me, like she did most things. “You always look ready.”

  “I know.” She trilled a laugh and wiped at an imaginary smudge on her lip line. “I was born ready. Are we going to that party after?”

  Groaning, I was shaking my head, my body coiling at the prospect of having to watch her flirt and dance all night, when the door flew open and Simon slouched his way into the room. “Darling, you look fucking gorgeous.”

  I tutted under my breath and reserved the urge to punch the bastard.

  Hate wasn’t a strong enough word for the reaction he pulled from me. I didn’t trust the slice of sleaze as far as I could throw him and he was a fat fuck that even my gym time couldn’t contend with.

  “Language,” I warned, throwing him a critical glare, but he just laughed in my face and slapped me on the back like he had no idea just how hard I wanted to beat the life out of him. Nobody could be that oblivious, surely?

  “Believe me, the F-bomb is not the worst she’s going to hear tonight.” He moved from my side and ran a hand down her back, and the vein in my forehead I liked to call ‘The Simon is a Twat Vein’, pulsated at the way he casually pawed his vile hands on her skin.

  I took a step towards him ready to pull him off, but Sophia placed her hand on my arm and her heated touch rooted me to the spot preventing me from decking the smug arsehole. I swallowed my rage and etched a frozen smile onto my face, for her benefit not his. “She’s seventeen. We can have respect at home.” I insisted through gritted teeth.

  Simon’s eyes narrowed and he looked me up and down “It’s not your home, bodyguard.”

  I swear if it wasn’t for Sophia having her hand tight on my forearm I would have lunged, placed my hand tight around his throat and squeezed the life out of him. Protecting her made me want to do that. It created this boiling rage that bubbled under my skin.

  “That’s enough,” her expression flashed to one of boredom as she twisted her head between the two of us.

  “I’m just reminding him of his manners.” I sent her a sweet smile and pulled my jacket off the velvet-backed chair, flinging it over my shoulders and shrugging it on.

  “I’m not a child, Blake. You don’t have to worry about manners in front of me.” She looked up into my eyes and it was like the dressing room—filled with clutter, discarded dresses and pots of makeup that she didn’t need—evaporated. It was just the two of us in existence.

  “I know.” My words were a tangled, gruff bark.

  Hell did I know. Didn’t I think about it every waking moment of the day and then dream about it every second of the night. I, more than anyone knew she was no longer a child. Because, I could remember the child, but that wasn’t who I saw now. What I saw now was everything: every hint of skin, every hinted curve, every waft of scent that lifted from her skin. And every single one killed me. I straightened, stepping back and creating space from her liquid gaze.

  Davies clapped his hands together and it was like the grease that poured out of his pores slimed over the atmosphere. “So, ceremony,” he said to Sophie, “remember to look gracious if you don’t win.” Sophia pouted but didn’t say anything and I bit down on my grin. “Followed by the after party.” He gave her a lewd wink which I struggled to ignore in case the vein in my head erupted.

  Her eyes sparked and I groaned. I would have gone to get her strawberry shake and fries at any time if it meant not going to that party.

  Parties with Sophie were dangerous unknown entities. She attracted ... well she attracted everything: men, women, lost souls, puppies.

  “Now remember, Fie.” Fuck I hated it when he called her that. “There are going to be interviews. People Mag have called Marty and said they want an exclusive reaction after.”

  Sophia nodded and smoothed her dress. Could she get it much closer to her skin?

  “And remember,” he said, finishing up his substandard pep talk. “Fans want headlines. They want to see what you wear, see who you hang with.” I was sure his eyes flickered to me then. “They want to think they know you. Gush about kittens, favourite bands, what you like for breakfast—anything that’s going to resonate with young girls and old men.”

  A hiss blasted through my lips and I flung a hand onto his shoulder with more impact than I intended. “That’s enough of that talk.”

  He shrugged his shoulders like he was limbering up before getting into the boxing ring. “I’m just saying it as it is, Henderson.” His sneer was wide and I wanted to wipe it off his face with my fist. Little girls want to be her and old men want to—”

  I stepped into his space.

  “Okay, let’s do this.” Sophia ignored our sparring and slipped on the silver bracelet that was a gift from me five years ago. The bracelet linked an alarm to the buzzer in my pocket. Flinging her mobile into a clutch bag that probably cost enough to feed a family in my Welsh village for a month, she gave me a grin. “Come on, Blake, let’s go party.”

  I went to follow her through the door. That’s what I did. I was always one step behind, never further away than one reaching touch, but Davies held me back, his fingers tugging on the material of my jacket.

  “Give her space. It doesn’t look good for her to be flanked by a bodyguard.”

  I brushed him away like a fly. “You know why I was hired.”

  A pulse of disgust flooded to a rush of blood through my veins when I remembered the perverted letters from when she was a twelve-year-old Oscar winner. The letters that had ensured our paths crossed. Davies shook his head. “That was years ago, and this is LA, things are different here.”

  “Don’t I know it,” I muttered but I didn’t bother to stop and chat. I needed to be one step behind her.

  “Blake, you need to give her space otherwise her career is going to die.”

  I didn’t acknowledge his remark with a response. How could I affect a career that was in a stratosphere all its own?

  The Theatre Guild was packed, sequins shimmering in the light and men sweating in tuxedoes. Circular tables filled the floor and from my position against the wall I kept one eye on Sophia. She was twirling her knife on the white starched tablecloth, her face smooth and expressionless, her lips turning down at the corners. The room was over hot and I watched with amusement as Hollywood’s finest leading ladies discreetly dabbed at their make-up trying to absorb some of the moisture from their skin.

  “Henderson.”

  I jumped at my name and glanced into the plastic face of Erica Jennings. “Mrs Jennings.”

  She offered me a tight-lipped smile and the nasty taste that filled my mouth whenever she was around mingled with my saliva. “Davies told me you didn’t want Sophia to go to the party?” She kept her smile on her face as she nodded at people passing by, but her voice was empty of warmth.

  “That’s not what I said.” I hadn’t said the words because the wanker had walked in.

  “You know, Henderson, I appreciate everything you’ve done for Sophia, but maybe it’s time for you to find a new client. I feel my daughter’s needs have changed.”

  The air rushed out of my lungs and I stiffened at her words. “Are you sacking me?”

  Erica acknowledged and waved at a passerby. I noticed her hair didn’t move, not one blonde strand. “No, no, you misunderstand me. I’m just wondering if maybe you have had enough of trailing a teenage film star around. Maybe you’d prefer to work with a sportsman or a politician?” She turned and her sharp gaze fell on my face. “That’s what you did before Si hired you wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.” My answer was a low murmur. It was Sophia’s dad who’d hired me five years ago, back before his wife had driven him to alcohol and he’d lost the plot. He still kept in touch with me, checking in with his daughter’s progress, but I knew Sophia hadn’t spoken to him in two years and I knew that it made her cry at night.

  “I’ll go when Sophia tells me to. If she thinks she needs me then I stay.” I offered her my own version of a tight smile and turned my shoulders away. So
phie would never say she didn’t need me. Would she? Erica murmured something under her breath and then walked towards the star’s table. Sophia was the star here. In a room filled with A-listers, no one shone like her; no one gathered as many lingering stares, filled with awe, jealousy and hope as her. Natural blonde waves curved around her face, and the poise with which she held herself made her seem in a different league to everyone else. She didn’t need the smear of ruby red on her lips to look like a fifties film star, her glamour was all natural, and at only seventeen years old.

  Erica air-kissed her daughter and slid into the chair next to her. She was always there: at every award, every dinner, every photo. But, she was never there for the tears, the nightmares, or the middle of the night runs to McDonalds.

  On Sophia’s other side was her co-star in the British movie that had propelled her from small time actress to a young woman with the world at her feet. He was holding her hand.

  I wanted to puke.

  It was all publicity. Sophia’s eyes were still focused on the knife spinning, reflecting the chandeliers overhead, and on her wrist I saw the glint of my bracelet and it filled me with a wave of calmness. I would always be there when she called.

  When the ceremony began, I slipped outside and went for a smoke. A gathering of guards and personal protection personnel gathered, chatting and time wasting. The Guild’s own security took care of the inside of the venue during the awards itself. It didn’t look good on television if there were a line of oversized men in suits.

  “Here he is, the luckiest man in showbiz.” Jameson called as I sauntered over. I’d known Mick Jameson since I was nineteen and just starting out.

  “Shut it, dick.” I growled and dragged on my smoke. Sophia hated cigarettes and always moaned when she could catch the linger of smoke on my breath and clothes, but it was the only thing that kept me sane when she was out of my sight.

  “How is sexy Sophia today?” he asked. I knew he was joking but it made me uncomfortable. What with Davies and Erica’s comments it was beginning to appear like people were guessing the way I was feeling. I didn’t want to feel this way, the last thing I needed was everyone else rollicking me for it while I tried to get it out my system.