Struck By Lightning: Slow Satisfaction Part 29

"I do! I've met him! The real him!" Becky cried. It sounded like they were wrestling. "That's not him."

"Ben? Pascual? Which one of you is it?"

I heard Pascual's voice then. "Ferrara, this isn't the way you said the scene was going to go."

"Pascual, let me go! She lied to you! Where's James? Where's Jasper! Get me down!"

My heart surged with relief as I felt him working at the ropes. He couldn't quite figure out how to get them off me, but he did figure out how to release my legs from the suspension and my feet touched the floor. He took the blindfold off next and then unhooked me from the track, which freed my arms. I still had gauntlets made of rope running up my forearms and shins, but they didn't hinder me from moving now.

I turned around to find Becky had Ferrara in a headlock. I guess those self-defense cla.s.ses her parents made her take were good. I slipped the Gucci scarf from Becky's shoulders and got it around Ferrara's wrists.

"You b.i.t.c.h!" she shouted. "Now who's committing a.s.sault?"

"Enough. I've had it with you and the videos and the threats to my family." I stepped back so I could see her face and I put my back against the door. "Now we're going to talk."

I noticed Pascual had put his clothes back together, at least. He was in a typical James-style suit, no tie, his jacket slung over one shoulder. He stood to one side, looking calmer than I would have expected.

"Becky, put the camera on."

Becky did as I asked, but she gestured at me, as if asking if I wanted to cover up or something. I looked down. There wasn't much to see now, with the flying rig hanging down and my legs together. Plus I didn't care. Nudity didn't make me weak unless I made it out to, so I ignored it.

"Pascual, do you mind telling me what's going on here?"

"Honestly, Karina? I'm hoping to find out. I mean, when you take a Lord Lightning gig, you know that a whole lot of secrets come as part of the territory. I've been a stand-in for Jasper for years now. h.e.l.l, that first six months he was so cagey I thought he was some kind of stand-in, too." He took a step toward Ferrara.

"Uh-uh. Stay put. I'll tell you what's happening. Ferrara has been trying to blackmail him for months, claiming he married her and now she's ent.i.tled to half his net worth."

Pascual looked at her curiously. "Using that video we shot?"

"Yes. She's claiming that's Jasper. Or as she calls him, James."

"Well, he couldn't go do it himself, so I stood in." Pascual shrugged.

Ferrara sobbed.

"All right, Ferrara, spill it," I said.

She shook her head. "I'm not telling you anything. You have no proof. All you have is a lot of lies. It's a house of cards. Just let me go and I'll never bother you again."

"I believe that about as much as I believe your lies." I folded my arms. "Blackmail seems to be something you understand, though. So how about this? You tell me everything that's been going on, and then you get the h.e.l.l out of our lives for good, or-" I paused to think of how to word it, but she took it as a dramatic pause.

"Or what?" she snapped.

"Or I'll have you thrown out of the Crimson Glove Society for filming that ravishment scene with Vanette you showed me. You know, the one where you said she was being raped? I hear it was quite a specialty of hers."

"How do you...?" She stared at me.

"I imagine the society takes very, very poorly to anyone flouting their rules. I heard stories when I was a trainee about how they ruined someone they expelled, financially and socially."

This time when she started to cry I think they were the first real tears I'd seen from her. She struggled to hold them in, and made an ugly snorting sound, nothing like the dramatic weeping she'd shown so many times before. "Well, it hardly matters, since I'm ruined anyway!"

Pascual went and dabbed her nose with a handkerchief and this time I didn't stop him.

"What do you mean, ruined?"

"In the divorce from Huntington. He was an imbecile, wrecked our personal finances first and then looted the company. I inherited a company on the verge of bankruptcy. And then I find out our biggest earner is going to retire? I had no choice. I won't go back to a life of dest.i.tution! I'm too old to model now. I've already sold off all the property I could to try to pay off the company's debts, but without continual income from the Lord Lightning franchise, we're sunk."

"And forced marriage was the best plan you could come up with to keep him?"

Her only answer was to cry harder. Pascual put an arm around her.

I looked at him. "You know what? I think you're the one who is actually legally married to her."

"I know," he said, and pulled her close so that she was crying on his shoulder. "That's what Jasper told me."

Ferrara's head snapped up. "Since when are you in cahoots with him?"

"Since he explained what you were trying to do. He knew it had to be me or Ben in the video. He took us both for a long car ride and I spilled the beans. There's only one reason I made all those videos with you Ferrara, the marriage one, the wedding night one-"

"Why?" She looked up through mascara-damp eyes.

"Because I love you. I've been in love with you since we first met. I mean, sure, I knew you were interested in Jasper, but I had to hope that once you realized he was never going to give in, you'd realize I was waiting to take his place, once again." He hugged her then, and reached behind her and undid the knot in the scarf, and held her while she cried. I took the scarf and handed it back to Becky, who wrapped it around my waist like a sarong.

Someone knocked on the door. I opened it and was relieved to see James standing there. He slipped into the room and closed the door behind him.

"Where have you been?" I demanded.

"Catching Phil Betancourt and delivering him to the police, who want him in connection with a certain hotel camera p.o.r.n scandal," he said coolly. "I see you've been busy, as well." He nodded to Pascual. "Did you get a confession out of her?"

"Yes, I did," I said, poking him in the ribs. "Thanks to Becky, too. She's got it all on camera."

"Let me see it."

Becky handed him the camera, which had a small screen that stuck out from it like a wing. James took his phone from his pocket and used the headphones to plug into the sound jack. He watched, his face betraying no emotion while he did.

When it was done he said to Pascual, "Are you still interested in the plan we talked about?"

Pascual brightened. "Very much so. More so after hearing what she said about the company."

"Good. Go get into costume. Take her with you. I'll meet you downstairs by the stage." He ushered them out of the room. "Now, Karina, you and I need to get into costume, too. We're going to do just the first two minutes of 'Balladeer.' Mand.i.n.ka is waiting in the back room. Becky, you can come too, if you like, or go out and get in a good spot for the show. I really am going to want a lot of good video of this one."

"I'll do that!" She checked the camera. "There's plenty of memory left!"

We went down a set of back stairs and then into the small private dining room that had been turned into an impromptu green room. I changed quickly into my show costume and Mand.i.n.ka swooped down, surprised me by kissing me on both cheeks, and then redid my makeup.

The stage at the far end of the restaurant was small, so instead of the whole ensemble, it was only seven of us dancing, including James, Ben, Pascual, and Roland. So each woman had a partner for while James was singing. I was used to being paired with Pascual.

But when we took our places, it was James who paired with me. James, in no mask, no special makeup other than the standard stage makeup Mand.i.n.ka had put on us. I gave him a look, but there was no time to ask what was going on. The prerecorded music began and we moved into the first steps of one of the new songs.

Pascual took center stage with a cordless microphone, his eyes hidden by the half-mask I had seen before in one of the videos. Cheers went up, including some very excited screams from the fangirls scattered throughout the crowd. People pressed against the small stage.

It was only a two-minute version, so the music faded out at one point when the dancers were all on the floor and Pascual was still on his feet, holding a long note. As the music dropped away, his voice was all that could be heard, and the longer it went on, the more frenzied the cheers became. And then he ended it at last, flung off the mask, took a bow, and then retreated from the stage amid a flurry of flashbulbs. The dancers, myself included, scrambled up to follow him, but someone caught me by the hand and pulled me back.

James led me to the mic stand, took the microphone in his hand, and cleared his throat. "If I could have your attention for a minute, please. Indulge me."

People began to quiet down. Someone clinked the side of their gla.s.s the way you do to get attention at banquets and weddings.

He cleared his throat again. "I have a very important announcement to make and I may as well make it in front of you all."

I stood, stunned. Was he going to announce his retirement?

"I love you, Karina," he said. "I love you more than anything. More than dancing, more than art, more than life. So I have one question for you."

Before I was aware of what he was doing, he pulled a small velvet box from inside his costume. It was exactly like the one Phil Betancourt had shown me in my mother's dining room.

No. It was the same one. James dropped to one knee and cracked it open. The diamond shone insanely bright in the spotlight.

"Will you marry me?"

I don't know how the audience heard me say "yes!" since I forgot to say it into the microphone. But the way I attacked his face with kisses was probably as good as words, and the way I bowled him over onto the stage, with my mouth locked on his, cleared up any doubt about how I felt. By the time we sat up they were chanting "Yes means yes! Yes means yes!"

The proposal would rate two sentences in the story in Entertainment Weekly that bore the headline: LORD LIGHTNING UNMASKS! The article read, "The theme of finding one's soul mate that runs throughout LL's previous work even spurred two backup dancers to get engaged onstage at the Vegas publicity gala. Whether they had a Vegas wedding afterward is unknown."

Epilogue.

Two hours before opening night I had the worst case of b.u.t.terflies in my stomach ever. James calmed them completely by blindfolding me in a folding chair in the middle of the green room. He put his hands on my shoulders, standing behind me, and gave me one order. "Breathe."

I don't know how long I sat that way, but it worked. I calmed down immediately. I concentrated on my breathing and I could hear every conversation going on around the room. Someone was looking for Roland, found him, and delivered some flowers. A theater manager came in asking for Ferrara and was told she'd had to return suddenly to England on urgent business. Yes, the urgent business of keeping her promise to us that she would stay away from James. I heard James remark to Chandra that she had better order extra security for Pascual, and her reply was that she already had. "You can be less of a control freak now, can't you?" she complained. "Pascual's my boss now, not you."

From a bit further away I heard Pascual add, "More like you're my boss, Chandra!"

"I merely state my advice to you as a friend," James told her. "Speaking of which, did you get that place on Central Park you wanted? That will make it easy to drop in on me and Karina for dinner."

"Tsk. I would never 'drop in' on you two. I'm too likely to find you swinging from the ceiling buck naked. I'll call first."

In another corner, Mand.i.n.ka was giving Annika advice on how to treat a cracked callus on her foot. Alicia was chiding Ben for letting Pascual get the prime gig. Ben was saying he much preferred it this way. "Let him be the one to dodge teenyboppers in the streets! I'd rather collect my paycheck and go home. The couple of times I played the part of limo diversion were scary enough."

I could hear Pascual then, as Chandra quizzed him in a practice interview, getting him ready for a quick on-camera segment with Entertainment Tonight.

"What gave you the idea for Bonded?"

Pascual cleared his throat. "Um, well, as you know, my private life is closely guarded, but I have some familiarity with the worlds of bondage and discipline, and the storyline grew from there."

It was amazing how he adopted James's formal way of speaking. He went into character.

"And you don't have a problem with the subjugation of women in the BDSM lifestyle?"

"BDSM, contrary to some beliefs, is about empowering both partners, and who said the women are always on the bottom? That's certainly not true in any BDSM club I've been to."

"Eh, that might be a bit too wordy and too close to opening a personal can of worms." Chandra advised. "Think about it: You've been to a BDSM club?"

Pascual dropped into his regular voice. "Ah, I see what you mean. Yeah. That's saying a little too much."

"Try another one: And how do you feel about commercializing your s.e.xuality for the sake of the almighty entertainment dollar?"

Pascual cleared his throat and delivered a drop-dead droll James line. "My dear, that's rock and roll."

Chandra laughed. I'd never heard her laugh before.

I don't know how long I sat like that, but when James took the blindfold off and told me to get warmed up, the painful edge of the antic.i.p.ation was gone. From then, time flew and I knew I would be fine once the performance began. It was the waiting that had been difficult to get through. The performance went by so fast I barely had time to worry. I barely had a moment to glance into the audience, up at the side balcony boxes where our mothers sat together. Jill was there, too. Earlier today she told me she had finally talked to Troy and he would be showing up later in the week. His band had gigs all weekend. They were getting some local notoriety in the Bay Area. Well, I could introduce him to some people in the record business.

The only person whose face I could actually make out when I glanced up at the box, though, was Becky's, because she sat forward in her chair, hanging on the railing, her chin perched on her knuckles, her eyes wide as she took in the spectacle.

James and I met at the center of the stage and then dropped through the trapdoor to quickly get into our flying rig. We had exactly forty-four seconds to do it. We had gotten it down to twenty seconds in rehearsal, though. This time as I stepped into the harness, his hand slid over my b.u.t.tocks.

He unsnapped the three tiny snaps in the crotch of my bodysuit. I grinned back at him, not at all surprised by this turn of events. His cool smile and the glint in his eye told me all I needed to know. He was getting off on the fact that he was about to f.u.c.k me in front of our families and thousands of paying spectators. And none of them would be the wiser.

He didn't have to do much beyond give me that look for me to go wet for him, and in another few seconds he was seated deep inside me. Another few seconds and all buckles were snapped into place. He tested the lines above our heads and gave Barnaby the high sign, and up we went slowly at first until we cleared the parts of the set that didn't move. We hung there, waiting for the musical cue that would send us soaring out over the audience.

"How does that feel?" he asked, his hands on my hips as I stretched out into a full spread eagle.

"Mmm, fantastic. Is this just for tonight? Or every night?"

"Glad you asked. You know, the angle is not quite perfect like this. It would work much better with my c.o.c.k seated in your a.s.s."

"Oh, would it now?"

"Definitely. Good thing we have ten shows. I know a fabulous technique for stretching out orifices. I bet it'll only take five days until you're ready to take me."

"We'll need lube."

"I'm certain we can get that."

We started to rise again, now only ten seconds from our cue and hidden from the audience only by a small curtain and billows of dry ice mist.

"Hey," I said, in the moment we had left before we were visible to the crowd, "do you think we should have a Vegas wedding?"

He rocked his hips, driving his c.o.c.k deeper and sending sparks of pleasure through me. "Sweetness, this is our Vegas wedding. And the whole world are our witnesses."

The curtain dropped and out we flew, as weightless as if we were floating on our shared joy.