Complete Control Bundle

Chapter One: Disaster Date

Chapter One: Disaster DateVanessa is rapidly losing interest in her 'date'. He's good-looking and pretty interesting in theory. He's an entrepreneur and is always on the look for great ideas. She just didn't think he would be on the look for said great ideas while he's on a date with her.

He had been droning on and on about how much money he could stand to make on his latest 'revolutionary idea'. It has something to do with solar panels and self-filling water. Or something. She really stopped paying attention ten minutes ago.

A ridiculously hot guy walks into the bar and she gladly lets herself be distracted by the strong jaw and powerful build.

She wishes she could trade her date for that guy.

The online dating website had set her up with the guy and their time together is looking less and less like a date and more and more like a scam. She makes a mental note to block the guy after she manages to extract herself from her current predicament.

It's not like he didn't try to be interesting. He was all suave and interested in getting her in bed when they first got together but now that he realized she's a flight attendant for private jets, he began to think of her as a job opportunity rather than a quick lay.

She doesn't know which is worse, really.

She's a flight attendant trainee, which is to say she does everything a flight attendant does, but she's doing it for free at the moment. She's only eighteen, though. She's lucky to have this job in the first place.

She has a lot of online courses that she has yet to finish hand once her training period is completed successfully, her employers agree to pay for her to get an actual degree so she can be a paid stewardess.

Oh great. The guy's trying to pitch ideas to her so she can invest. Or get some of her rich clients to invest. He promises to double- no, triple- her initial investment.

Losing interest in her date altogether, she focuses instead on the hot guy, who's getting more and more attractive by the second. He finds a seat in the most isolated part of the bar, a booth in the corner. His dark hair is so black it almost glistens in the fluorescent light and his clothes, even from afar, looks expensive. He wears them really well, too.

She's experienced with rich people wearing clothes that don't work for them at all. His suit seems tailored specifically for his dimensions, shifting appropriately when he moves. He manages to get a drink and she silently approves of the choice of whiskey on rocks.

Her date had ordered two glasses of beer without asking her what she wanted. She's lucky the bouncer let her in at all. She's nowhere close to twenty-one years old. She isn't interested in drinking it, though. She tried beer once before and she doesn't like the bitter taste it leaves behind.

"Vanessa, are you listening to me?" her date asks.

"Huh?" She turns her attention back to her date, whose name she realizes she has forgotten already.

"So, what do you think?" he continues. "I think five-thousand to start and we'll go from there??" he flashes her a smile that makes her want to slap his face.

She has five thousand dollars in her bank, but only through painstakingly saving every penny she earns. She wants to get a degree and even if her employer sponsors her education, she still needs to pay for food and accommodations. "Look," she starts, trying to find a way of letting him down gently. "I thought this was a date, not a marketing opportunity?" she says finally, letting every bit of her disappointment drip into her voice.

"Oh," his face falls. "But you'll think about it, right?" he insists. "You'll be earning your money back in no time at all. You don't really need to go to college. I mean, the whole point is to make money and if you can-"

She stands up to get out of the uncomfortable situation. "I- I've got to go," she says, not even bothering to come up with a good reason.

"Wait," he cries out suddenly. His hand shoots out and he grabs her by her wrist hard enough to pinch.

She tries to yank her hand back instantly, but his grip is tight and it only causes herself more pain.

"Just- why don't you sit down and have a drink before you go? You barely touched the drink," he says, gesturing to the beer on the table in front of her.

"Why don't you drink it?" she counters, pushing it towards him. "I'm not really a fan of beer," she says. A part of her wonders if he's being pushy because he doesn't even have enough to pay for the drinks, but she recalls him paying for the drink the moment it was set down, so that's not it.

To her surprise, he eyes her drink with distaste, which is odd considering he had downed his own glass so readily. The expression passes as quickly as it had appeared and she wonders if she was imagining things. "I'm sorry for being pushy. I know I can be really passionate-"

Pushy, she thinks to herself.

"-when it comes to my projects. Why don't you sit down? I've been talking about myself all day. Tell me about yourself," he urges, nudging the drink her way.

That's- well, that's nice of him, actually. She doesn't have much free time to herself and she would really like to have a good time. He's good-looking enough and she's always been interested in having s*x with a hot white guy. Not that she's had much experience in that regard. She's been trying to put herself out there and experiment a little bit, live free and be more... open-minded with new experiences and all that, but it's difficult when the people she seems to meet are douches.

"Sit. Have a drink. You can decide whether you still like me after you finish that," he says.

He's being awfully insistent about her drinking the beer. She sets her jaw and tries to remember if she had left him alone with her drink. "I'm not a fan of beer," she repeats.

"The brew here is really good," he insists.

"Why don't you drink it and I'll have something else?" she is pushing it at this point, trying to get him to drink it himself.

His jaw tense and there's real anger in his eyes for a second before he manages to mask it with a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. She attempts to pull her hand away but it's impossible. She has always been petite and she's feeling that size difference now. He's not even a particularly big man and he's able to keep her right where he wants her.