Saving Sandra (West Coast Doms #3)

388 Pages·2021·0.39 MB·english

by  Nicolina Martin

SAVING SANDRA
WEST COAST DOMS #2
NICOLINA MARTIN
Saving Sandra
By
Nicolina Martin
Copyright © 2020 by Nicolina Martin
Cover design by Sarah Kil Creative Studio
www.sarahkilcreativestudio.com
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CONTENTS
West Coast Doms
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Nicolina Martin
WEST COAST DOMS
Rough and jaded, hardened by a cruel life, these men don’t hesitate when it comes to what they
want. In love and war nothing is forbidden.
New series by Nicolina Martin.
1
Sandra
M
y fingers fight to find support as I crawl across the rubble of sooty old bricks and
broken shards of marble pillars. Lightning strikes, once, twice. I flinch. The thunder
claps almost immediately after the second flash, echoing between the gray concrete
walls. A sticky, dark red substance soaks my dress from the plunging frilly neckline down past my
painfully nipped-in waist. A knife protrudes from my right shoulder where its shaft shudders with my
every move. Beneath me lie piles upon piles of corpses of my fallen faithful soldiers, their unseeing
eyes staring at the gloomy overcast sky.
Two well-worn brown leather boots appear before me, and I scramble back in shock as I exhale
with a little whimper. I crane my neck to look up at my foe as I clutch my hands into fists, furious and
saddened. I mustn’t beg, but it’s all I have left.
“I’m hurt! I… can’t breathe! Please, sir, don’t do this to me. I will do everything you command. I
fought the devil. I slayed the demons from the underworld. This cannot be how I end!”
Tears stream down my cheeks and the lenses they put in my eyes really irritate me.
“The hell.” I stand and brush off my dusty palms on the skirt. “Look, who wrote this shit?” I turn
to the crew, squinting, seeking out the unmistakable thick stark white hair of the director, Gerard
Fourier.
“Cut!” he shouts without looking up from his monitor.
The boom operator pulls the pole with the microphone away from above my head, sighing, rolling
his shoulders.
“Miss Hooper! We went through this—” Fourier is finally paying me attention, his piercing gaze
seeking mine across the set.
“Yeah, look, I’ve tried, but Allegra would never bow to any man. She wouldn’t weep and
whimper. She’s a warrior. She’d fucking pop his kneecaps.” I look for my assistant and gesture
impatiently. “Water, please.”
Fourier, the star director they brought in after the first one botched every scene, throws up his
hands while my assistant dashes over with a bottle of water she unscrews and hands me.
“Mind the lipstick,” says someone behind me as I put the bottle to my lips.
“This is what the audience wants. They want blood and tears and despair. They want to feel the
heroine break and then see her saved by the hot hero.” Hero sounds like ‘erooo’ with his French
accent. “I’m saving our collective asses here, miss. Blood. Tears. Sex! Visceral, Miss Hooper. That’s
how it’s done.”
I glance at my colleague who plays the other lead. He’s as bloody and dirty as I am. His assistant
is bringing him a cigarette that he lights and then pulls on before he blows out a light gray cloud
toward the sky. His eyes are a spectacular blue and his jaw chiseled. He’s also naked from the waist
up and extremely buff. Bailey Todd is hot, all right, and an up-and-coming action star. He’s five years
my junior, and I wouldn’t mind a taste of that. Our love scenes have been banging, and the passion is
going to knock the audience. This shit, though…
Gerard raises his arm and makes a circle above his head. “Again!” he shouts.
I sigh and briefly close my eyes as a makeup girl brushes my cheeks and nose and makes sure I
haven’t spoiled my face. This will be a long day. I don’t know how to make it convincing when it
goes against the whole script, suddenly making my character meek and obedient. I fall to my knees.
Bailey tosses the cigarette, and his assistant is quick to snuff it and pick it up. No littering the set. No
smoking either, actually, but no one has the guts to oppose him. He’s young, but he’s pretty
intimidating and has a reputation of being damn moody. Everything I like. Everything that is bad for
me.
“Action!”
“I’m hurt!” I gasp. “I can’t… breathe. Look! If she can’t breathe, she can’t keep babbling.”
“Cut! Merde! Miss Hooper!”
“Ger. I’m not—”
“It’s just a thing you say. Just have her say it.” He throws up his hands and looks around at the
crew as if seeking confirmation that I’m being stupid.
“—trying to be difficult,” I finish, my voice taking on a slightly pleading tone I hate. I loathe
showing weakness.
“You’re not very good at that,” he snaps.
“Allegra—”
“Hey.” Bailey’s deep voice booms across the set. “Sandra’s right. This all sounds fake. Let’s take
this back to the drawing board.”
Gerard’s jaw clenches and unclenches. And then the thing happens which always happens. Man
to man, a silent agreement. He listens to Bailey but not me. I scoff and don’t take Bailey’s hand as he
reaches for me to help me to my feet. A prop girl comes to remove the knife from my back, my
assistant hands me a yellow throw blanket to put around my shoulders.
“Can I get you something?” she asks kindly. “A coffee?”
I keep feeling Bailey’s eyes on me. He seems to be itching to talk. I don’t feel at all talkative at
present, but I don’t think I can dodge this.
“Yes, please, Anya. Black.”
“On it.”
I follow her with my eyes until she disappears into the cantina while I listen to the steps behind
me, getting closer, stopping. A large hand touches my shoulder, urging me to turn.
“You can’t be so difficult, Sandra. You’ll get a rep in the biz, and before you know it, you’re
replaced by someone younger and—”
“And what, Bailey? Hotter?”
“I was gonna say weaker.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose and accept the coffee Anya puts in my hand. “Can you get me a pain
killer, love?”
She nods, “Sure thing.” Her eyes dart to Bailey and then she spins around and hurries off. She’s
infatuated with him. Everyone is. He and I will be the next juicy rumor in the magazines, no matter if
something happens between us or not.
Bailey lifts his hand and pulls at my dirt-streaked hair, all paint of course and not actual dirt. I
wasn’t the one rolling in the mud before this scene. My stunt double did.
“There’s no one hotter, Sandra.” He tugs a little, and I swat at his hand, scoffing.
“I need to get these lenses out. They’re killing me.”
“Want to grab a glass of wine tonight?” he half-shouts after me as I walk off toward where my
assistant disappeared.
All I want is a hot shower and my bed. I’m cold, wet, and pretty pissed.
A hand circling my wrist makes me spin around. I could get lost in those eyes. Holy hell. When
Bailey turns on his charm and smiles that crooked smile, even my knees weaken a little.
He’s only using you to climb the ladder, Sandra. Don’t go there.
“Let me buy you a drink.” He lets go of me, but the touch lingers.
I’m so tempted. I’m so lonely it hurts. Every second week, when Cole has the kids, I keep up the
façade of being the star, beloved, unattainable, sexy, and a bit of a bitch, but just enough to be
mysterious. In reality I’m just empty. Nothing is exciting anymore. Nothing is new. All the roles blend
into each other. It’s one heroine after the other, blonde, adventurous, spunky, and sexy. I’m just a face.
One day the wrinkles will come, and I’ll be a thing of the past.
“Another day, Bailey.”
“Another… night?”
I pull up the corners of my mouth into my most dazzling white smile, making him blink and drop
his mouth open. “Maybe…” I turn and take two quick steps up the stairs to my trailer, where I close
and lock the door behind me.
I massage my tender scalp through the wig. I need to head off to costume to get this thing off me.
The knock on the door makes me jerk and push the door open with a little more force than needed.
Outside stands my poor assistant who holds up a plastic mug that contains two white pills.
“Acetaminophen.”
I nod. “Thanks.”
Regarding her, I ponder if I should ask her to take Bailey off my back. She’s an attractive girl,
thick brown hair, dimples, a butt to die for. Then I change my mind. I can’t pimp out the poor girl. It’s
not a nice thing to do. He’ll take advantage of her, and I’ll set her on the same path I’ve walked. It’s
not pretty, and it’s nothing I wish for anyone else.
“You can go home, Anya. I’ll change out of these, and then I’m done for today.”
She smiles with relief. Like me, she’s worked for fourteen hours straight.
Samuel
“I .” I sink back in the armchair, red velvet, plush. There’s a slight scent of
KILLED MY WHOLE FAMILY
incense in the room, spicy. Or maybe it’s the perfume worn by the woman before me? She shifts,
frowns, wiggles a pen between her index and middle finger, up, down, up, down. I rattle her. I have
that effect on people.
“Do you want to talk about it?” She forces her face to stay neutral and professionally inquisitive,
but I can already see how she ponders where to draw the line and when to call the cops on me.
“I was nine.”
She cocks her head and puts on a look of empathy. “You were only a child.”
“I burned down the house. Mom, my dad, my two little sisters.”
She’s silent, crosses her legs. Her blue-and-green checkered skirt is a little too short, and I can
follow her long nylon-clad legs to mid-thigh. Her cream-colored blouse is made of silk, impeccably
wrinkle-free, buttoned all the way when I came, loosened one button after I sat down. There’s a thin
gold chain around her neck. In her forties, she’s still hot, botoxed like everyone else in this town,
fillers in cheeks and lips. She’s an attractive lady. No gold on her left ring finger.
“They were four and two.”
“What were their names?”
“I don’t remember.”
“I don’t believe that.”
I shrug, cross my legs at the ankles, and lean back further in the chair. “It’s the truth.”
“How do you feel about that?”
I snigger inwardly. “Nothing. I feel nothing.”
“Tell me about the fire. Why do you think it was your fault?”
“Because it was. I was playing with matches. I had kidnapped some barbies and had them hung
with a strip of sheet from the back of my chair. They had been bad, you see. They needed some
punishment. A lot of gasoline went onto that pile of paper I had pushed under the chair.”
“You seem to be good with details.”
“Oh, I’m very good with details.”
Actually, I’m lying. I don’t remember shit. I was known to play with matches, that much is true,
the rest I’m making up. She’d have a field day with my psyche if I really allowed her to peek inside. I
let my gaze travel her body, from her high-heeled black shoes, along her legs, her lush curves, and up
to her now-flushed face.
She clears her throat. “But you don’t recall your sisters’ names?”
“It’s because it’s irrelevant.”
“It’s not irr—”
“They’re dead. That’s how irrelevant it is.”
“That is not how feelings work, Mr—”
“Well feelings can go fuck themselves with a ten-foot fucking pole!”
“Why are you here, Samuel?”
“Because I can’t fucking sleep!” And it’s the goddamn truth. Pills and alcohol pull me under for a
few hours, then I wake around two in the morning, and that’s that. I have a serious lack of sleep, and
it’s driving me crazy.
The therapist leans forward, stops the fiddling with the pen. “Do you hear voices?”
I bark out a laugh. “No.”
“Are you feeling depressed?”
I shrug. “Do I have feelings at all? Is depressed a feeling? Maybe I should start telling people I’m
depressed and get them off my back.”
“Depression is a complex mental illness. I wouldn’t call it a feeling—”
“Well, there you have it! I don’t mourn the death of my family. I don’t care about the people I hurt.
I feel nothing. Maybe except the excitement when I fuck. Or kill.”
“You seem upset.”