Resist (3 page)

I smiled though it came off as a bit too flirtatious when I desperately wanted it to seem more laid back—more like my personality and me. “I don’t need a hundred dollars. It’s just . . . odd. I’m not used to traveling like this.”

“Traveling like this? I’m not sure I understand what you mean.” Blaine stared at me as if I’d grown a second head. “How are you used to traveling if I may ask? It’s not like you grew up in a family of limited means.”

How would he know that?

Suddenly I felt like I was on display. Had he done research on me? For someone who I barely knew, he seemed to push all the right buttons with me.

Overly aggressive alpha male.

Take charge, no bullshit attitude.

Not patronizing but quick to call me out on my crap when I acted below what he considered intelligent with well thought out answers and questions from me.

Right now, he was definitely plunging the third button with gusto.

Then again, his parents were two of the most prestigious professors in the world. Of course he knew people and could get a sense of their attitude right from the start. I might not have exactly been an open book but I wasn’t exactly overly guarded or cautious about my emotions or my feelings towards certain subjects.

“Well, my parents were very tight with money . . . let’s just put it that way. I grew up in a ‘waste not, want not’ household. I guess that comes from having family that has been well off for several generations. They almost act like . . . I don’t know—British aristocracy or something. I would swear my dad must be secretly related to Queen Elizabeth and my mom can’t be too far behind. She’s just so damned . . . concerned with having enough. The only splurging they did was on my education and they didn’t do a lot there, mostly because I always qualified for scholarships, and worked my way through school. Usually internships.”

Blaine smirked though his expression almost verged on a smile. “Must have been hard. It’s not like you chose general psychology. Abnormal psychology is difficult. My parents wanted me to get an advanced degree but I stopped after I received my Bachelors. They weren’t exactly pleased I only graduated Magna Cum Laude. After all, I grew up surrounded by the science my whole life. I’ve always been brilliant in math too.”

I sipped from my champagne and grimaced at the taste. I’d always hated it and preferred an aged Pinot Gris to the carbonated crap that left me with raging headaches and feeling slightly out of body.

“Then why didn’t you graduate with the highest honors?”

“I simply didn’t care.” Blaine finished his champagne, grabbed my flute and downed mine too. “I’ll let the flight attendant know you prefer Pinot Gris to champagne.”

I turned toward him, fascinated by how easily he changed the subject. However, the disconcerted feeling of my body somehow responding to the warmth of his as we brushed one another left me with my face overheated and blush suffusing my face, neck and chest.

“I don’t understand. Why didn’t you care? And how the hell do you know I like Pinot Gris as opposed to champagne?”

“I’ve been around it my whole life, Vie—may I call you that? My father told me that was the name you go by along with your favorite wine.” He stared at me intensely as he continued, “I don’t give a shit about why humans do what they do. We act and react to situations and circumstances around us. It’s as simple as that. Are there diseases of the mind that cause certain people to act and react differently? Of course. Can a traumatic experience change a person’s attitude beyond recognition? Obviously—it’s a no brainer.”

Blaine’s blue eyes bore into my own. “To be honest, dealing with manic depression when I was younger, and my parents telling everyone about it . . . it was weird. I mean, everyone expected me to be this
odd
person. It didn’t help me during high school when
Six Feet Under
was on television and everyone expected me to be
just
like Billy Chenowith. You know, one day I’m fine and then the next, off my meds and either crying like a fucking baby in the corner or flying through a manic episode where I wouldn’t sleep for days at a time.

“I don’t take the medication . . . well, except lithium. It does its job and the rest, well I deal with it homeopathically. I try to get plenty of rest and exercise and when I sense a swing in my mood coming on, I do a shit-load of breathing exercises. It’s worked so far and I can honestly say that I live as normal of a life as the next person—whatever the fuck normal is
supposed
to be.”

“Well, we all have our issues. I’m not perfect either.” I looked down at my clasped hands and away from his face. “My interest in psychology and psychiatry came about because I discovered at the age of sixteen I suffered from a severe form of genophobia.”

I could feel my face burn as I turned toward Blaine.

I expected him to burst out laughing or perhaps wear one of his famous smirks but he merely glanced at me for a long time before he replied, “It’s obvious. Not many people can get to your ripe age and not have experimented with sex. Is that why you’re interested in what I do?”

“Well, yes and no.” I swallowed before I continued, “Sex is a form of violence. Even the act itself—no matter how gentle or lovely it’s portrayed, a man or woman is inserting objects into a place with enough force for there to be pain afterwards. I thought perhaps I could learn more about myself because it’s the pain itself that turns me on—not the act of sex. I wanted to find out why infliction of pain would be something that I would find pleasurable yet the act of sex—where pain can be found and is often enjoyed—repulsed me.”

Blaine leaned closer to me as his fingers wrapped around a loose wave of hair caressing my face. “If you’re repulsed by sex then do you really suffer from genophobia? Isn’t that a
fear
of sex?”

“I suppose so but my condition has improved over the years. I can even masturbate now where three years ago, I couldn’t even touch myself for physical pleasure. It’s a process that gets better as I get older but it can make relationships very hard. My ex was coitophobic so we kind of fit together like peas and carrots. He didn’t want to have sex with me and I had zero desire to have sex with him. To be honest, it worked very well but Professor Baasch reminded me our situation was unhealthy and unsustainable. If I continued to seek out people who were similar to me then I would never make sufficient process in getting over my revulsion of sex in the first place.”

Our conversation was cut off prematurely as the head flight attendant began to explain the instructions listed in the brochure.

If Blaine had flown as much as I had—and I was under the assumption he’d flown many, many more times than me—it was just a rehash of what we already knew. However, we still had to be quiet and listen to the mundane instructions of what to do if the plane crashed or had to make an emergency landing.

Finally, she finished and the plane was cleared for takeoff. This was my least favorite part of flying. I could handle the landing but the actual ascent into the air drove my nerves to pieces and it took almost everything in me not to have a panic attack.

As my hands gripped the leather console and I slowly counted in my head, Blaine placed his hand nearest to mine over the one closest to him.

“You’ll be fine, sweetie. Just remember, nothing could be as bad as the Spanish Inquisition.”

I laughed out loud, his play on a
Monty Python
routine and was surprised he knew it at all.

Mutual silence followed until we’d taken off and began to cruise at a comfortable altitude of somewhere between twenty-five and thirty thousand feet in the air.

“So, what do you think of this all? Is it still what you want?”

I turned toward him and looked into his crystal blue eyes. “I couldn’t want anything more. It’s a joy—a dream—to watch you do what you do best.”

Blaine chuckled though there was little mirth in his laughter. “Listen, you’re a gorgeous, intelligent young woman. I have absolutely no doubt you will be bored one week into our little excursion. Therefore, to please your parents and make them understand your Stanford education wasn’t
completely
wasted, I have a project for you but only if you want it.”

His words intrigued me deeply but I wasn’t foolish enough to think anything in this world came without a price. He would want something from me but the answer to that question was what exactly?

“Well, it will take a while for me to observe what it is you do. I hardly doubt I’m in a position to do anything . . . I mean, I’ve been in
academia
for so long, what could I possibly be qualified for?” My hand slowly separated from his as I clasped them together and began to wring them in a form of desperation.

“You’d be surprised what you could learn over the next few months,
min beskidte lille engel
.”

I glared at him in a mixture of surprise yet I was still taken aback by how he’d decided to address me—a woman he barely knew. “How is it you know Danish?”

“Well, I have my ways. To be honest, both maternal grandmothers were Danish though my mother has a French last name and my father, a German one. I know quite a few different languages if it makes you feel better. The fact that you are half-Danish hasn’t escaped me you know.”

I attempted to roll my eyes but it was half-hearted. I wasn’t nearly as cynical as I would have liked to be. It just wasn’t in my bone marrow.

Not yet at least.

“And what makes you think referring to me as a your ‘dirty little angel’ should endear me to you?”

Blaine laughed out loud. “It’s just my dark humor I guess—I meant nothing crude about it. For God’s sake, you haven’t even been soiled or tainted . . . yet. But eventually, you will be my dirty little angel and you’ll revel in your new status.”

I crossed my arms against my chest and tried not to sulk. “So, what’s the project you have in mind? Will I get paid? Is it an internship? Will I be working directly for you?”

“That’s a lot of questions for a woman who reveals as little as possible about herself.” He contemplated quietly for a moment before he continued, “You would be working underneath my guise of control but the project is yours. You would direct it and I know you’d be perfect for it because you have all the training needed to handle a bunch of spoiled bitches. Me? I’d kill them all the first day.”

“Well, what is it?” My heart thundered with anticipation.

“There is a reality show that Celebrity Today wants to add to their lineup. It’s asinine and nonsensical—think
Housewives
or some bullshit like that. Anyway, they already have a title,
WAGs
apparently.”

“Wives and girlfriends? Of sports stars?” I wondered though it came out more as a question than a statement. “Are you serious?”

“I wouldn’t have said anything about it if the project hadn’t already been given the green light. They’ve got four would-be wives already lined up. Chardonnay Alamilla—wife of mega-superstar football player, Carlos Alamilla from Manchester United. Laurelynn Branson—second wife of superstar Lawrence ‘Cheetah’ Branson, the American golf player. Sasha Radford—wife of mega-basketball player Keyshawn Radford. Zola Matthews—wife of superstar quarterback Keoni Matthews for the Los Angeles All Stars,” Blaine explained casually as if he were just rehashing information he’d gleaned previously.

“Whoa,” I murmured. “They all wanna do this reality show? Why?”

“They’re all the rage, aren’t they? They figure if the Kardashians and a few washed up pseudo-celebs can make it big, why can’t they? It does feed into your whole Andy Warhol, fifteen-minutes-of-fame thesis and whatnot.”

“True. Still, I can’t believe you’re doing this for me. I don’t even know if I would be a good ‘anything’—I haven’t stepped out of the academic environment in so long, it’s hard to maintain being a ‘people person.’”

Blaine wrapped an arm around my shoulders and for some reason, this didn’t bother me as much it should have. “Well, everyone has to start somewhere, right? I won’t do the project although I would be more than happy to help supervise you. Besides, why
not
you? I have the connections and I don’t go out of my way to do anything nice for anyone. It’s just not in my DNA. I am an inherently selfish person. I’ve come to terms with that a long time ago and I’m fine with it.”