Girl After Dark Read online

  Copyright © 2015 Garden of Eden Press

  Cover Images © 2015 aarrttuurr – Depositphotos.com

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 1511752408

  ISBN-13: 978-1511752404

  Due to adult themes, this novel is suitable only for those aged 18+.

  Part One:

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Part Two:

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Part Three:

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Part Four:

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  A Note from Charlotte

  BONUS NOVEL: Taming Blake

  Also by Charlotte Eve

  Also by Charlotte Eve

  Charlotte Eve was born to English parents and grew up between London and New York. She returned to England to study, and has now settled in London, where she loves the history, the culture and the tea. Maybe not the rain though. Charlotte still visits New York as often as she can, to shop until she drops.

  To be the very first to find out when Charlotte publishes something new, and to find out about free book and ARC offers, be sure to sign up for her mailing list today!

  http://tinyletter.com/charlotteeve

  A knock at the door. Loud. Insistent.

  My heart lurches.

  This is it. The moment I’ve been anticipating and dreading in equal measure. The moment when I find out if fantasy really does live up to reality.

  “The door’s open,” I call out, trying to make my voice low and sexy, to sound like I know what I’m doing, to sound like I’ve done this before.

  The door to the hotel room opens, and at first all I can see is his shape — a broad, athletic silhouette, standing there in the doorway.

  I feel another shiver of … what exactly? Excitement? Fear? Both?

  He’s every bit as tall as his profile suggested. And as he makes his way confidently into the room, allowing the door to slam shut behind him, it dawns on me that we’re completely alone in here. It’s just him and me. Anything could happen. He could do anything he wanted to me. Anything.

  I want to look him straight in the eye, but I can’t quite do it. Instead, all I can manage is a timid little glance.

  Now he’s stalking towards the bed, like he owns the room and I’m his prey. I automatically pull my flimsy silk robe a little tighter around my body. I’m wearing almost nothing beneath it: just my equally-flimsy black silk bra and panties. And I look up at him, towering there above me, fully dressed in his immaculately tailored suit, I feel so naked and so much smaller than my already petite 5’ 4” frame.

  No matter how hard I try, I still can’t quite bring myself to look at him directly — to see if reality matches the face I saw in that photo.

  So Instead, I look down at my hands and wait for him to speak, hoping he’ll be the first to break this pulsing, heady silence. And as I wait, I can hear my own breath shivering past my lips.

  But still he doesn’t speak and eventually, I just can’t take it anymore. My words come out in a dizzy rush of nerves:

  “So, um, how was the traffic? Did it take you long to get here?”

  Oh my God, I think immediately. Why did I say that?!

  I feel like I’m going to die of embarassment, and the feeling increases with each fresh second he doesn’t speak.

  I’m silently begging him to say something now, absolutely anything at all, to save me from making an even bigger fool of myself than I have already.

  But still he doesn’t speak. He just steps forward from the shadows, his face for the first time becoming fully visible. And now I can’t help myself. I look at him head-on for the first time, my gaze taking in his impossibly chiseled jaw, his full, sensuous lips, and his eyes …

  Oh my God.

  Those eyes.

  It’s what I imagine being shot by an arrow might feel like, the moment he fixes me with those big, green-grey eyes of his. They’re even more dazzling in real life than they were in his profile picture. And in that half-second, I know I’m lost. I’m his. And I will do anything he demands of me.

  The silence between us now is no longer embarrassed; it’s electrifying.

  He takes another step towards the bed. Towards me. But it’s all too much. Too soon.

  “Wait,” I blurt out, stalling to buy myself a moment longer. “Let me fix you a drink!”

  At this, he smiles. A slow, playful smile that lets me know he can see right through me. He knows exactly what I’m playing at.

  And then, finally, he speaks:

  “You didn’t invite me here to drink,” he says, his voice so low and confident. “You invited me here to fuck.”

  I tremble at the word, feeling another shiver of excitement flash right around my body.

  Fuck.

  Hearing it said aloud, I’m aware just how different my fantasy is from this reality. Because this is so much more intense that I could ever have imagined. And we haven’t even touched yet. I think back to our messages. Sure, it was one thing then, to tell him that all I wanted was sex. But here in this hotel room? As that word vibrates and pulses between us? I realise I’m way out of my depth.

  He hasn’t taken his eyes off me, not for a second. And I can feel his steely gaze demanding an answer, willing me to speak now.

  “I … I …” I stammer. “I just thought, you know, a drink might help get us in the mood?”

  For the first time, his gaze unlocks from mine, but only so that it can travel the full length of my body, covered only by the silk robe, those big green-grey eyes taking me in so hungrily, so greedily..

  “You look like you’re already in the mood to me,” he says confidently, arching an eyebrow, his eyes fixing on my obviously stiffening nipples standing up in prominent bumps from beneath my bra.

  I don’t know what to say — how to reply.

  And this time he fills the silence not with words but a gesture, reaching out to softly touch me — his fingertips gently stroking the flesh I already have on display, tracing lightly but firmly upwards, from my ankle towards the inside of my thigh. And as his fingers graze over my skin, they leave in their wake a trail of goosebumps. It must be clear to him just how turned on I am by now.

  “Your skin’s so soft,” he murmurs, more to himself than to me, his hand coming to rest confidently at the top of my thigh, right at very point where my robe ends, his thumb brushing back and forth against the tender flesh just inches from my sex.

  I can feel every little movement his thumb makes: his touch is burning and radiating against my skin, stunning me into a trembling, electric silence.

  Once more, his eyes lock onto mine.

  “So?” he says. “Are we gonna fuck?”

  One
Month Earlier …

  “So, Vintage Honey, your real name’s Melissa, right? Is it okay if we use your real name for this article?”

  “Sure,” I smile back, trying to cover my nerves. “That’s fine. You can call me Melissa. Although sometimes, I’m not sure where Vintage Honey ends and Melissa begins. Honey’s kind of a nickname for me, you see …”

  “Great!” says Clara, the Teen Vogue journalist, smiling at me warmly from across the table in my kitchen. “Okay, so let’s get started …”

  And with that, she reaches over to set her dictaphone recording then flips the page in her notebook to the questions she’s already scrawled down.

  I take a deep breath and wait for her to begin, hoping I’m not going to make a fool of myself. This is my first time being interviewed for a real magazine, you see and so as you can probably imagine, it’s a pretty big deal.

  “So Melissa,” she begins, “can you tell me how you got started doing this? I mean, no one had heard of you this time last year, and now you’ve got legions of teen fans. So, tell me how it all began.”

  “Well,” I say, casting my mind back, realizing all over again just what crazy journey the last year of my life has been, “I’d just graduated from the London College of Fashion. You see, I’d always dreamed of being a fashion designer, setting up my own label, or maybe working in fashion PR or something like that? But of course, things didn’t turn out quite the way I imagined …”

  Clara smiles and writes something down in her notebook. I wait for her to finish, then continue.

  “I knew it wasn’t going to be easy to get a start in Fashion,” I say, “but I had no idea it was going to be impossible! After graduation, I’d done loads of internships, handed out my own body weight in CVs, and written about a million and one covering letters …”

  At this Clara actually laughs and I feel myself relax a little bit.

  “But of course then came the recession,” I continue, “and nobody was really hiring. And the only girl’s who did get jobs? Well, their mummies and daddies helped them out. You practically have to be called Vivienne Westwood to get a job in the fashion industry these days.”

  “Sure, sure,” Clara says, making another little note and nodding.

  “So,” I continue, “six months out of uni, I found myself working in Topshop on Oxford Circus instead. I mean, at least I was working in the fashion industry, but it was hardly the dream, was it? The hours were long, and I was on minimum wage, and I was constantly, totally broke.”

  I pause to take a sip of my coffee, hoping that this is all making sense and I’m not garbling my words or getting too far ahead of myself. After all, it feels so different to be actually talking to another human being instead of to my camera, like I usually do …

  “Rent for my tiny bedroom in my shared house in Mile End, grotty though it was, was still completely extortionate. My student debts were mounting up higher and higher, and even with the staff discount I got at Topshop, I could still barely afford any of the clothes in the shop. And that degree I’d worked so hard to get suddenly seemed kind of worthless, and I really felt like I was never going to get any further in the fashion industry than working on the shop floor.”

  Again, Clara nods and shoots me a friendly smile.

  This is actually going okay! I think.

  “And even worse?” I continue. “I felt totally useless, too. For the first time in my life, I felt like I had no skills and was never going to get anywhere. I’ve always been really driven, you see, and this was a real shock to me. But despite all this, there was one thing I was still really good at … Looking good on a budget. Back then, it was about the one thing that made my life bearable. You see, despite how broke I was, I always stayed up to date with the latest trends, and kept my look original by scouting car boot sales and bric-a-brac shops for cute little vintage finds.”

  At this, I take a moment to nod down at my current outfit, to hopefully illustrate my point. I’m wearing a cute pink dress with a really delicate black and white floral pattern on it and Clara smiles warmly, nodding and making another note.

  “Take this dress for example,” I say. “I bought it in a bargain bin in a vintage shop in Shoreditch. It was about twenty sizes too big for me, and floor length. So I took it in at the waist, shortened it to knee-length, then I had all this leftover fabric, you see, from the bottom? So I made this bow, too! It cost me, in total, eight pounds plus a few hours on my sewing machine, for a totally unique look. And this is exactly the kind of affordable, everyday fashion tip that I’m really keen on showing my viewers on YouTube and the readers of my blog!”

  “That’s awesome!” Clara says. “So how did you go from working alone on your sewing machine to telling the world about it?”

  “Well, actually,” I explain. “It didn’t start out with clothes. It started with makeup. My girlfriends would always ask me to do their makeup on a night out. And they were always complaining that they could never do ‘cat flick’ eyeliner half as good as I could. So one day, my best friend Katy showed me this YouTube video. It was a girl — a really sweet, normal girl about my own age — just sitting there in her bedroom, doing a Kim Kardashian makeup tutorial. ‘You could do this, too!’ said Katy. ‘I bet there’s loads of people out there who’d love to know just how you do your amazing eyeliner, and that’s just for starters.’”

  I take another sip of coffee as I think back on those early days — it seems like an age ago now but in reality, it’s only about a year.

  “And you know what?” I continue with a smile. “As I sat there watching this girl’s makeup tutorial, I knew deep down that I could do it. Then I looked at how many views this simple video had received so far: 600,000. That’s crazy, I thought. I can’t believe that many people are watching a girl who isn’t an expert, who isn’t even famous or anything … She’s just totally normal, like me. So that night, I raced straight home and recorded my very first video.”

  I stop and laugh, shaking my head.

  “Looking back now, that first video is totally cringeworthy. I’d just recorded it on my phone, the lighting was really bad, and I hadn’t even properly tidied up my bedroom. It was a total mess!”

  I shudder to remember it and I hope I don’t sound like a slob. But luckily Clara laughs, too.

  “But you know what?” I continue. “‘Perfect Cat Flick Eyeliner’ was a hit! Not at first, of course. At first, I got, like, 20 then 30 then 40 views, mostly just my friends. But slowly and surely the view count began to creep up, a little more each day. And then one day, oh my God! 6,000 views out of nowhere! I was really confused. I couldn’t work out why all these people were suddenly watching my video. And it turned out, that girl I’d watched? The very same one who’d done that Kim K tutorial? Well, she’d mentioned me in her latest video!”

  “That’s brilliant!” Clara smiles and I nod, remembering all over again that rush of excitement when I first found out, when I first thought that maybe, just maybe, I could actually make a living doing this ...

  “After that,” I say, “people wanted more videos. I received a barrage of messages and comments — all desperate for more. So I made them: starting with vintage style makeup, then moving more into fashion. And with each new video I uploaded, I received more views and comments and subscribers. I started a blog to go with it. I’d always loved writing in school, you see, which I’d forgotten about while I was focussing on my fashion career. It was so exciting to finally start writing again, too, and to have people actually care about what I wrote.”

  “And just look at you now!” Clara says brightly as she scribbles something else in her notebook.

  “So somehow,” I continue, “just a tiny little bit at first, I actually began to make money, too. And within a year, I realized that I was making more from all this than I was working full-time behind the tills at Topshop. So, that’s when I handed in my notice. I think Topshop were quite pleased, to be honest. Customers had started to recognize me on the shop floor and i
t was holding up the queues, all the questions they were asking me.”

  At this, we both laugh.

  “It’s kind of crazy, right?” I say, thinking again about how strange my current life is. “I just feel so lucky. My teachers at school always told me I’d never amount to anything if I didn’t get my head out of all those women’s magazines and pay more attention to my studies than my lipstick. But look at me now!”

  §

  After an afternoon spent talking to someone about how I do my job, it’s once more time to actually do it.

  So, after quickly changing into a suitable outfit, I take a final deep breath. I glance at my image once more in the viewfinder, checking my glossy, cherry red lipstick one final time. The little red light on my camera is blinking on and off, which means it’s on pause: ready to record. I straighten the collar of my black crepe vintage blouse, tuck a stray strand of hair behind my left ear, then, only when I’m completely happy with my look, I reach out to hit record.

  “Hi guys! I do hope you enjoyed yesterday’s Get Ready With Me video. Well, today I’m going to do something a little different. I know lots of you have been asking for this one, so today I’m going to show you how to do THE perfect French manicure …”

  I still can’t believe that this is actually my job. Having spent the afternoon telling Clara all about it, finding myself once more sitting here, alone in my bedroom, chatting away happily to the camera. And so today, I’m doubly reminded just how strange it all is.

  But this evening, the video actually goes pretty well for the most part and even as I’m recording it, I’m already thinking excitedly about all the nice comments it might receive from my fans.

  I always try to record as much as I can in one continuous take, but this evening I keep stumbling over my words, perhaps from all the talking I did during the interview. So I’m relieved to finally wrap things up.