Thorne Princess(92)

I pulled away, quickly unbuckling my belt.

With the room around me still spinning, I felt the tip of Hallie’s leg as she pushed me off the mattress, her foot pressed against my chest. I lost my balance and fell flat on my ass at the foot of her bed.

“What the hell?” I inquired from my new position on the floor.

“The hell, is you’ve been an asshole to me all day. A mistake, my ass, Random. We’re going to have sex on the reg. Now that you’ve given me what I wanted, I’m ready to go back to sleep. Make sure you close the door on your way out.”

She offered me another yawn, turning around to her original position, on her side, hair flung against her pillow.





The weeks after Ransom stumbled into my room in the middle of the night smelling like a low-end brothel passed in fake domestic bliss.

Max was MIA, due to Ransom never leaving my side. Day and night, he followed me everywhere. To my stupid Hollywood premieres, tacky friends’ birthday bashes, and even to my Pilates and smoothie dates with Keller.

The day after he ate me out, I slept late, went down to the kitchen in my sunglasses, and demanded he give my credit card back.

“You want in my bed, you’ll need to give me equal rights.”

To my surprise, he didn’t argue. He didn’t try to sleep with me again, either.

…until three days later, when I dragged him with me to a secondhand shop and tried on a fabulous Balenciaga mini dress.

“Random, could you help me zip it up?” I purred from the changing room.

He joined me inside, slipping the zipper up my back silently. I turned toward him, smirking. “How do I look?”

“Good enough to eat,” he said dejectedly, turning around, about to leave.

“Then do.”

He pinned me to the floor-to-ceiling mirror and fucked me mercilessly, playing out our fantasies while I tried to kick him off, our moans muffled by the hot, dirty kiss we shared the entire time, until he came inside me.

That had been one of the many times we had sex. Each time he had sex with me, he hated himself for it, and I knew it. It didn’t sit well with me. But I couldn’t help it. I became so addicted to him, I couldn’t stop.

One day, we took the car and drove out to Runyon Canyon, and he ended up bending me over the trunk of the car and taking me from behind.

Another time, he snuck into my room in the middle of the night.

I couldn’t decide if he felt guilty for doing something unprofessional, doing it with a twenty-one-year-old, or because my background made him wonder if I was somehow punishing myself by sleeping with him.

Either way, I was enjoying not only his body, but also his attention.

Ransom protected me fiercely. Much more than before. Sometimes—oftentimes, actually—I wondered if there was more to his behavior. Why he flung himself in front of me whenever someone rushed toward me to ask for a photograph or an autograph. Why he now patrolled the house three times before he went to bed every night. Why he insisted on armoring my car. But Ransom didn’t give me anything. Even when I tried to pry information about who those people were who’d taken pictures of me the other day with Keller.

“You’ve nothing to worry about,” he’d evaded the question. “As long as I’m here, they won’t get to you.”

“And after you’re gone?”

“They won’t bother you. Trust me.”

That wasn’t a satisfying explanation to say the least, but it was all I had to work with.

My parents still tried to call and arrange for me to come home. I rarely picked up, and when I did, I told them I was busy trying to find an interesting college program. It wasn’t a lie. Not entirely. I had looked into programs, but mainly for sketching and painting.

Hera and Craig went on their two-week honeymoon to Montenegro. Neither of them tried to contact me, and I fooled myself into believing I could probably avoid them for a few more years.

All I had to do was make sure that next time we were in the same zip code, I had a bodyguard with me. Just in case Craig sought revenge.

Ransom stopped bothering me about what I wanted to do with my life. Or at least, he stopped pestering me about it. He still brought the subject up, but never pressed.

The only issue that did give us a constant reason to argue was him asking me again and again to see a therapist about what happened with Craig, and the dyslexia.

Each conversation went the same way.

“Do you have a therapist, Random?”

“No.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’m beyond repair.”

“And I could be easily mended?”

“You show promise. Potential. A soul. Things I don’t possess.”

“I’ll go to therapy if you go to therapy.”

This was the part he’d usually give me an are-you-insane? look.

The part where I smiled back in triumph. “There you have it.”





Life was good. Suspiciously good, actually. I should have known it would come to an end. Specifically, in the form of my family.

Three weeks after Ransom and I got back from Texas, I woke up to a string of text messages from Keller.

Keller: <<<Link>>> The Thornes Like You’ve Never Seen Them Before! Anthony, Julianne, Hera, and Craig discuss Love, Marriage, and Loyalty!