Avoiding Intimacy by K. A. Linde Page A

been dying to know!”
    “This conversation is getting a little out of hand,” Giovanna said, pulling Ravenna back.
    Desperate to have answers, Ravenna had moved forward until she was mere inches from Chyna’s face.
    Ravenna swept her hand through her long red locks and walked around the room.
    “She’s a bit nuts,” Brigitte said, pointing her thumb at Ravenna. “Running for two years off of hearsay.”
    Chyna managed to laugh through her hammering heart. She wasn’t sure why she was so worked up at the moment. It wasn’t like it meant anything that Marco had tied up another woman to a sex toy. He had to have had them for a reason, but it was something in Ravenna’s eyes that had made her uneasy. She couldn’t even place it, but now, all she wanted to know about was Natasha. Whatever happened to Natasha?
    “What…” Chyna cleared her throat.
    She couldn’t ask that question. “What was she like? Natasha. To catch Marco’s eye?
    If she wasn’t that talented.”
    “Oh, she’s talented enough,” Ravenna said, waving her hand. “Just took her a long time. Marco was obsessed with her, like he is with you. She was a bubbly blonde with short curly hair. An American. Guess you have that in common, too. Actually, I think the centerpiece was American last year, too.
    Don’t remember her name.”
    “What happened to Natasha? After they were together, I mean.”
    Ravenna smiled, looking more and more true to the animal form her name was a derivative of. “Modeling still, I think. I remember my friend saying she was pretty devastated when Marco left her.”
    “Why did she get attached?” Chyna asked with a flippant air about her. She had been wondering that about herself for the past couple of weeks. She didn’t care if he fucked someone else, but she cared about him keeping her. Not even keeping her in the sense of a girlfriend by any means, but she wanted him to finger her irreplaceable. He needed her.
    “How could you not?” Brigitte asked softly from a corner of the room.
    “Yeah,
I
    mean,
    I’m
    attached,”
    Giovanna whispered into the silence that followed.
    Chyna looked over to Ravenna.
    Ravenna was too strong, too abrasive. No way would she feel attached, too.
    Ravenna sighed, her eyes softening.
    “That’s the reason I’m back, isn’t it?”
    Chyna stared around at the three beautiful faces in front of her. Had she been in her own world so much the past two months that she hadn’t even noticed everyone else’s reaction to Marco? They didn’t talk about it. It had never come up.
    Yet, here they were all feeling the same thing in varying degrees of obsession.
    And then, there was Natasha.
    Chyna didn’t know what to make about her or that scenario. She hated the feelings running through her body. All she wanted to do was push them away, stomp on them in her high heels, and bury them six feet under. Was it terrible that she had thought she was special? Was it worse that she was disappointed?
    The only time she had ever felt completely and singularly special was with Adam. Look at what she had done with that! Stupid Adam! Why was she even thinking about him today? That was the second time.
    “I think I should get back to the party,”
    Chyna said, her strength returning. “I have an Italian designer I need to speak with.”
    “Just one thing,” Ravenna said, grabbing her arm before she passed through the door, “was there kink?”
    Chyna smiled at her like she was a child. “If you think tying me to a chair is the kinkiest thing Marco is interested in, you should think again.”
    With that, she brushed past Ravenna and walked back into the ballroom. The room had started to clear out, but there were still plenty of stranglers binging on the free booze. Her radar went off as soon as she entered, and she spotted Marco with the same reporter from earlier. He was blatantly flirting with her at this point.
    Guess he wasn’t coming for her after all.
    She passed a drunk couple who started