Chapter 31
Jimmy Jenkins had invited her here at eight o’clock at night and that fact alone was enough to make Ellie think twice.
He’d asked her to meet him for a drink in the bar of the Langham Hotel.
It was an opulent old world establishment in the heart of South Bank.
The bar served exquisite cocktails, but the main feature was, of course, the luxurious five star hotel rooms just overhead.
Everything about the set-up was uncomfortable, and she wondered if he deliberately wanted her off balance, the price she had to pay for walking out on him once before.
Still, she knew how much she owed this man and the power that he held, so there she was, right on time, riding the escalator up under the decadent chandeliers and making her way into the beautiful, low-lit bar.
She’d agonised over this outfit. What exactly could she wear that would say leading lady, up and coming and please don’t touch me in equal measure?
She’d never been more aware of the delicate balance she had to strike: be sexy enough to be featured on-screen but not so sexy she wasn’t taken seriously; be attractive but don’t attract the wrong gaze; be feminine but not so much that they forget to treat you like a human being.
She tried to project just the right amount of confidence as she strode into the bar in heels and a hopefully not-too-little black dress and found the discreet booth in a low-lit corner occupied by the most powerful man in the business.
He looked up at her, and she saw his expectant gaze flicker from admiring into fury for one terrifying second before it turned into a broad smile.
“Eloise.” He stood, grasping her hand and pulling her in for a slightly moist kiss on the cheek.
She felt it for what she suspected it was: a consolation prize and a warning.
He let her go. “Jared!” He greeted her agent, who was standing right behind her, with a firm hand pump.
“I didn’t expect to see you this evening. ”
Jared was, as Ellie had known he’d be, a perfect foil. He looked relaxed and exuberant, as if a night out charming Jimmy Jenkins was right up top on his bucket list. It probably actually was, come to think of it.
“Couldn’t turn down an opportunity to really sell you on my favourite client,” he enthused.
He took the booth seat ahead of Ellie, neatly inserting himself between her and Jenkins, and Ellie could have kissed him in relief.
She slid in beside him, opposite Jenkins and quite out of his reach.
Again, she saw the flicker of anger in Jenkins’ eyes and just as quickly he smothered it.
“I’m afraid you’ve wasted your time,” he said. “I’m sold on Eloise already. I’m only here to get to know the star of my show a little better. To assess her appetite for other roles.”
Eloise wasn’t sure if she was imagining the slight sound of salivation as he spoke of her appetite, but she was a far better actor than Jimmy Jenkins would ever be.
She smiled and twinkled at him, and as she opened her mouth to discuss her future, she knew her low-level disgust at the whole damn business — this man in particular — was perfectly hidden.
He’d walk away from this meeting with his dignity intact, because making a man like Jimmy Jenkins feel rejected was career suicide.
Still, she hoped her subtle message — that she had her guard up, that she wasn’t as naive as he’d like — was enough to keep him at arm’s length.
She’d picked up Lucia’s message loud and clear.
She’d never let herself be in a room alone with Jimmy Jenkins, ever again.
Afterwards, she stayed the night at Zara’s.
Despite how smoothly the evening had gone — thanks to Jared’s expert manoeuvring — she felt unsettled and she didn’t want to be alone.
When she made her way through her sister’s front door, she found the household asleep.
Arthur’s bedroom door was shut tight, but her sister was curled up on the couch, snoring into the cushions, the flickering light of the television keeping silent watch over her.
Ellie’s heart clenched. Her sister had many nights like this one, unable to sleep without distraction, unwilling to go to bed, but tired out from the strain of her days. She tucked the soft throw over her sister’s body and hoped she’d make it through the night undisturbed.
She showered in the family bathroom, remembering when the bath tub had once been crowded with bright plastic bath toys, a small chubby-limbed Arthur so lost in play he didn’t want to get out.
Now it was empty of all but basic shower products, a handful of them hilariously, almost spoofily masculine, as though the dark plastic bottles contained some kind of magical testosterone spell.
For some reason tonight, the idea of her young nephew dousing himself in those heavy scents brought unexpected tears to her eyes.
Before Arthur existed she’d never spent a moment considering the desperate tenderness of boys.
Please god, that he turn out to be a Jared and not a Jimmy Jenkins.
Despite her tired ache, she lay awake for a long time, her eyes open and unfocused, staring into the dark.
She’d tried all damn day not to think of Estella, but it was an impossible feat.
Her job was to think about Estella after all, to remember every fluid commanding movement of her body, to recreate her sexual confidence with her own limbs, to express her hunger through her own lips.
Ellie was an incredible mimic; it was a lifelong talent, and one she’d honed for years at drama school, but giving life to a character was so much more than that.
Playing Estella meant looking out at the world through her eyes, and oh what a complicated experience that was now.
Slipping quite literally inside Estella Grant had been a terrible error, but it was a mistake Ellie had leaned into with everything she had.
She regretted it now, and yet she knew that in a heartbeat, she’d do it all over again.
To have tasted that level of pleasure, of hunger, of freedom — even as Estella had tied her to her bed — Ellie felt like she’d experienced something deeply and fundamentally human she’d gone her whole life without.
Oh, she’d always liked kinky sex. It had been an early discovery, all things considered, of how it felt to bottom when that exact right kind of strong-desired woman walked her way.
It was a balance so delicate it almost couldn’t be described: yes she wanted to be over-powered, but never to be taken advantage of; yes, please she wanted the threat of all the terrible things someone wanted to do to her, but never without knowing she was truly being taken care of.
Estella Grant was genuinely dangerous, so how the hell did she manage to make Ellie feel so safe?
Because here was the secret, the key — finally — to Estella Grant’s character, and it was one Ellie felt deeply queasy about using now.
Estella wasn’t an all-powerful super villain; Estella was every bit as scared as Ellie was.
She was — beneath all that red lipstick, bloodshed and power — a vulnerable human woman.
It had never struck Ellie as strongly as it did now: everyone was walking around figuring things out as they went along.
Whether they were prime minister, a CEO, a brain surgeon or a mob boss.
People were all just fragile collections of childhood wounds, secret hopes and dark desires. Did anyone truly feel in control?
There were unequivocally bad people in this world, Ellie knew that as well as anyone.
But was Estella one of them? Surely the line stopped at literal murder.
Of course it did; it must. Somewhere along the line, Ellie had stopped looking too closely.
She just knew that Estella kissed her out of helpless desperation, that the woman who ran an empire had shaking hands as she’d touched Ellie’s skin, that uncertainty flickered into her gaze almost as frequently as ferocious hunger, that Ellie had needed to take just as much care of her as she had of Ellie, the night that they both took what they wanted.
Estella took, but she watched Ellie like a hawk, assessing her wants, protecting her safety.
She asked Ellie for a safe word before she’d gotten her naked.
She’d checked, with care, the comfort of the ties that bound her.
She’d soothed down the hair she’d pulled; kissed the skin she’d bruised with her teeth; held Ellie as she slept; and most of all…
she’d let her go. She’d refused to let Ellie kiss her with tenderness, held her back at the precipice of deeper feeling, pressed her out the door the next morning with unrelenting firmness.
Ellie knew, beyond anything, that that was Estella’s biggest kindness.
Anyone else would have kept on taking. She’d seen the pleasure Estella had wrung from her, oh how Estella had looked each time she’d come.
Ellie had never seen anything as hot as Estella Grant driving herself crazy as she took everything she wanted, and she was pretty sure she’d never see anything to quite match that again.
If Estella was a true villain, she’d simply keep Ellie hanging on, keep her as a goddamn pet, keep her at her beck and call, because Ellie would take it, that was the worst truth of all.
But Estella wouldn’t let her. She’d seen the desperate want in Ellie’s eyes and like a principled bartender, she’d cut her off.
Not out of cruelty, but out of protection for her heart.
And that was the most devastating thing of all.