Page 7 of Deviant Desires

Bambi goes from guests to staff with ease, her smile never wavering. She speaks to a petite-looking blonde that could easily be her younger sister. The nameplate on the girl’s shirt says Sahara, like the desert, and she wears a smile that easily reminds me of Bambi. The two of them are constantly in contact with one another and I take it that Sahara is her assistant.

A few minutes later, I narrowly avoid getting seen and have to duck behind a group of people when she starts turning my way. My brothers laugh as I curse under my breath, they don’t have to hide like I do. “Just go say hi,” Stefano tells me, but I can’t do that. I want my first meeting with Bambi to be memorable. I don’t want the eyes of the rich and famous in Manhattan to watch the two of us rekindle our romance right here in front of everyone. Besides, this is the Dean’s retirement party. God forbid I steal his thunder.

I remember seeing a staff roster on my way in. Engraved in bronze on a wooden backdrop were the names of each person in the building and their office number. I leave the reception hall and head back for the entrance, taking a peek at the board to find out where Bambi is located. Office number 326, it says.

One look down the hall leading in the opposite direction of the reception area tells me that the ground floor holds all the 100 offices. So I head for the elevator and go to the third floor. When the doors open, I am met with a hallway that extends for ten offices on each side. In the middle, there is a hallway jutting off perpendicular with another ten offices on each side.

It isn’t hard to find hers. The nameplate next to her door gives her away immediately. I’m briefly stumped by the door code, but I imagine that the numbers have to be easy for the janitor to remember. I try 0000, 9999, and 3260 before stumbling on the winning code: 0326. The light on the keypad turns green and I’m allowed inside. I contemplate turning on the lights, but if anyone comes down the hall and sees me in here, they might call security. Instead, I rifle around in the dark with only the glow from my phone to lead my way.

Of course, her office is immaculate. Her pens are lined up next to a notepad—black, blue, and red. There are five different colors of sticky notes neatly arranged in the top right corner—yellow, pink, green, orange, and blue. When I open her drawers, I find whiteout markers, file folders meticulously labeled by event name and date, and dozens of drawer organizers filled with highlighters, paper clips, index cards, and more. She’s a neat freak and it shows. Just like everything in her life, Bambi has a place for everything and she doesn’t like to see things lying about.

I thought about bugging her office when I was taking care of her home, but it was harder to get past security cameras and locked doors in a fully staffed building than to break into her house when she wasn’t home. As a result, seeing this professional side of her is like peeling back another layer of Bambi Schelling that I never knew about.

Five years ago when we were still dating, she shared an office and worked as one of the Event Coordinator’s three assistants. Seeing her growth almost brings a tear to my eye. She’s gone from being an assistant to having her own. I hope she’s as proud of herself as I am.

As I’m sitting behind her desk looking through all her things, I hear someone at the door. There’s nowhere for me to hide in this square office. I scramble to get across the room to shield myself in the shadows of the filing cabinets she has standing against the wall, but I still stick out like a sore thumb. The second someone flips on the lights, I’m toast.

I half expect it to be a janitor coming in to empty her trash can and dust off the pictures on her walls, but I’m rewarded with the sight of the love of my life instead. Bambi slams the door shut behind her and leans against it, her breaths coming in sharp, quick bursts. She starts to mumble to herself and I have to crane my head to hear her properly.

“You’re fine, Bambi. You’re okay,” she tells herself. Bambi has always been the type to give herself pep talks. It’s like she has a voice in her head that always knows just what to say. “Nothing bad is going to happen to you. It’s a party. We’re in public. I have a stun gun in my purse.”

I almost snort in derision because that’s hardly the only place she has a stun gun. She carries one with her everywhere, along with a variety of other weapons meant to protect her from me. When the two of us met, she had a pepper spray keychain that expired the year before. Bambi never worried about her personal safety until I came into the picture.

“Mateo wouldn’t try anything with all those people out there,” she whispers a little louder to herself.

In a way, she’s right. I might have approached her in the reception hall, but I never would have done anything that could have been witnessed as inappropriate. If she went to the police, I’d have dozens of witnesses saying that all we had was a cordial conversation. I might be a Valenti, but I am a gentleman through and through—when someone is looking, of course.

But now we’re behind closed doors. We’re on the third floor, a far cry from where the guests of the party can hear her scream. There’s no one around to witness what I might do to her. There’s no one around to save her from me.

I can’t help but chuckle as I step out of the shadow cast by the filing cabinets. The universe answers all unspoken prayers, I swear. I couldn’t have asked for a better first meeting. “Or would I?” I ask with a shrewd smile.

Bambi opens her mouth to scream, but nothing comes out. She just stands there with a horrified look on her face unable to move or talk.

I take a step toward her, now standing fully in the moonlight shining in from the window. “Hello, my love. It’s been an eternity. I’ve missed you tremendously.”

6

BAMBI

I’m not stupid, I’ve looked up Mateo on social media since he got out of prison. He doesn’t update much and he rarely shares photos, but he’s been tagged in a few by his more extroverted brothers. None of them do him justice.

He’s a tall, dark, and handsome Italian with the facial structure of a Greek god. The shadows cast by the light peeking over his shoulders highlight the sharpness of his jaw. The stubble on his chin is neatly kept and his hair is perfectly messy. He’s two years younger than Raniero, but there isn’t a stitch of gray in his beard. His dark eyes bore into me like they’re demanding that I fall to my knees in submission.

It’s been five years since I’ve seen him face to face, but he is still just as devastatingly handsome as I remember.

Everything in my body screams at me to run. Get out of this situation as fast as I can. I remember the threats he uttered over the phone when he got out of prison. I remember him swearing to make me keep my promise to marry him. I’ve been afraid to run into him since the day I got his first call.

But my legs feel like they’re weighted down by cement blocks. My blood feels like it’s made of the thickest syrup. I’m frozen in fear staring at this handsome man I once called my fiancé and I’m ashamed to say that the place between my thighs dampens with desire.

“You’ve avoided me for so long, Bambi. It hurt my feelings.” He takes another step closer and the smell of his cologne hits me like a Mac truck. My knees feel wobbly and my heart is pounding out of my chest.

“What’s wrong? Cat got your tongue?” Another step and a shiver races down my spine. “You had so much to say at my trial, B.”

He’s going to punish me. He’s going to hurt me. He’s going to make me wish I was never born.But as Mateo closes the gap between us and I feel the pressure of his suit pressing up against the fabric of my dress, he doesn’t snap my wrist or slap me across the face. Instead, he brings his thumb up to my face and draws it gently across my cheek. “You’re so soft. When I was behind bars, I thought about you every night. Nothing was this soft in prison.”

I should have kept my mouth shut. All the signs were there that Mateo was a bad guy. If I was a smarter woman, I would have broken things off after the first few dates. Once I realized who he was, I should have known what he was capable of.

“The guards let me keep a picture of you, you know. It was the first time in my life that I begged for something. Ibeggedthe guards to let me keep the picture of you that I had in my wallet.” He lets his hand drop, but not too far. Mateo plays with the lace on the neck of my dress. I can feel his touch scalding my skin through the fabric. My breaths come in shallow waves and I’m terrified of what he’s going to do to me next.

---