Bare

Chapter Fourteen- Commitments and Faults

Due to her voluptuous frame and saccharine act, Gwen was never one to understand rejection. But as she was forced to watch Deacon quickly dress and remove himself from the area, she was left feeling like a tissue-just used and thrown away. This forced her high self esteem to crash and lead her to dress herself up and move to the bar in the hotel. Her intentions for appearing like Betty Boop with better hair had been to distract herself for the night. But each time she went to strike up a conversation with someone or took a gander in the bar and its secluded area, she was forced to think of Deacon. She then tried to drink the thoughts of him away, but found this only led to more s****l thoughts of him. Borderline drunk, Gwen moved back up towards her room and onto the bed, passing out in the tight cocktail dress she had been in to try and pick someone up. 

When she woke up the next morning, she could feel the weight of an arm outstretched over her, in such a way to where she knew she had given herself to someone the night before. The scent of cigarettes and Vodka wiped away all chance of the man she went to bed the night before having been Deacon-and learned rather quickly who it was due to her familiarization of the place she found herself in. Speaking expletives in her mind as she snuck from the room with a walk of shame. Managing to close the door with the perfect amount of silence to not awaken Owen, she moved to the hall before finding Deacon's figure look to her in surprise. She let out a groan and went to move into her actual room as she recalled the details of how she ended up in bed with owen...a drunken call...one she wanted to take back more than anything. The look of amused judgement on Deacon's face did not help anything to aid her. 

"Come with me." He spoke as he took her down the elevator and to a small cafe, where they took comfort in a booth secluded from the rest of the establishment. The shop had been part cafe, part bookstore, which supplied for an aromatic and rather quiet place for her to recover through her hangover. The scent of coffee acted as a heaven sent to her as she blew on the steam and took a sip of it black, letting out a moan. He seemed amused by this before being brought a piece of coffee cake and his own drink order, consisting of an herbal tea. 

"I've been thinking…" she repressed the urge to speak against him as her brain throbbed when trying to think at all. "You are right." She paused, shock filling her expression, lighting her tired complexion.

He nodded. "You are a big reason we have consecutive customers. But, you can't seem to keep your clothes on...in or out if work, it seems." She glared as he managed to reference their game of strip poker, the day at the club that she broke the rules, and him coming upon her taking the walk of shame. "I have decided to give you a second chance." She breathed a sigh of relief as the thoughts of having gone to prison or back on the streets terrified her. "But I am placing you in the VIP area exclusively. Mine." Her eyes shot up to him. 

"You are making me into a strip slave?" A few gazes from nearby caffeine junkies looked to her with sideways glances from her words before going back about their own business. 

"No. I believe we have a game of truth or strip to finish. And I intend on winning." He spoke with a smirk while bringing the tea to his lips. His eyes looked over the brim of the glass perfectly enough to appear evil, making her study him for this moment of silence. 

"What other choice do you have?" He challenged her as she sneered at him in a perfectly adorable fashion that only made him smirk. "Do you really think you can spend countless nights not sure if you will have food? Or sleeping on a bench? When you could have that spacious and luxurious hotel room…" his words dripped with sensuality as she could only imagine him in the room with her. She was able to hide the fact she had been fantasizing, but not by much, as he went to ask her a question, and she had to be asked twice from daydreaming. 

"Here…" he moved from the table for a moment to take a pen from a woman behind the counter, unaware of how the woman flirted with her gaze at him, before returning to Gwen. Taking a napkin, he wrote in enviable penmanship as to how Gwen would not "allow others to see her do her job" aside from Deacon. He then wrote the stipulations of abstinence with others and a clean bill of health-free from all drugs and ailments. "One-"

She stopped him. "One week. Then I can be showcased again."

He became pensive before nodding, adding a new stipulation. "A week of no drugs, no sex...and only working for me." She adores the idea, but hid it beneath a well believable sigh. He then proceeded to mark two lines for signatures, marking his first, before then handing the pen to her. Deacon's eyes followed her signature, smiling at the way she set a heart where the "e" would be in her first name. 

"Then it is official." He spoke upon sliding the napkin back into his own possession. Then, silence fell between them for just a moment before his eyes rose back to hers and the corners of his lips were lifted into a smile. "You're mine." Usually the thought of being owned would make her go into anger or a verbal fight, but as she looked across the table to Deacon, she wanted to be his. 

They began their way to the club, finding Yasmine on the steps. 

"Thank you again for last night...I hope I didn't tire ya out." Her words spoke harsh against Gwen's heart as she clenched her teeth and moves to her dressing room. She hated how she could go from elated to infuriated within a matter of seconds-but that just happened to be the passion she had in regards to him. However, her stubbornness fought against this many times, leading for her to lock herself in her dressing room until she would be expected to see him. She had a. Large fear of being on the streets again, getting hooked on a stronger drug even, and being taken advantage of as she had been so many times before. With Deacon, there lay a physical safety...but emotionally, he scarred her more than anyone else. This thought made her protect her heart even further as she felt that perhaps he had become too close and she was too vulnerable. Due to this, she brought her focus onto the job that would be expected of her, as agreed upon. Instead of thinking of Deacon's eyes on her and soft groans leaving his lips, she would think about the view from her balcony and the feeling of the bathroom jets upon her skin. She had grown rather creative in allowing her mind to wander to endure the situation she had found herself in-yet growing more and more anxious by the second. 

As she could hear Yasmine take the stage with MKTO's 'Bad Girls' playing, she knew she was expected in Deacon's office within a handful of minutes. She stood before the mirror to compose herself, finding nausea to replace any other feeling she held inside of her. She wanted to run and never look back as she felt as though her heart had been taken and smashed, without her having even known until it was too late. But she couldn't be angry as Yasmine, in fact, she envied her. She wished Deacon would leave a s****l situation with another girl whenever she called. Perhaps that was what deepened the blow into her heart-the fact it wasn't her. But now it was, and he was desperate to have her all to himself-unaware that he had met his match, and she wasn't going to let him get off so easily.