Bound to Love by Emma Lyn Wild Read Free Book Online

could Troy.
    I saw the difference at once, when they came on. Troy seemed more uncertain, but not about his role. He’d nuanced it so that toward Cleopatra, he was unsure, but his dealings with the other characters in the play were more strident, and assertive. Antony had been a great military general, undone by his affair with the Egyptian queen. She was flawlessly lovely, her skin smooth, her mouth a perfect pout. She treated everyone arrogantly, holding her head high, looking down on everyone.
    I don’t know how they did it, but by the end of the first act, I was hooked. My lover had become someone else, but I by then I’d seen what he’d done.
    He’d taken his private terror, and he’d put it out there for everyone to see. Cleopatra was a predator. She’d discovered Antony’s weaknesses and exploited them, used them to trap him before she’d shown him what she really was. He couldn’t break away from her. Then he’d discovered his attraction to her. That was their version of what Troy’s mother had done to him. He’d taken the terror and the trapped feeling and externalized it.
    Antony returned to Rome and agreed to marry Octavia in a political alliance. His movements were freer, his actions more decisive without Cleopatra’s influence. Then Cleopatra went into her tirade. When she’d played this before, Cleopatra was a dignified, tragic queen. Now she was a jealous cat. Sonia Riley had turned the part around completely. She ripped off her wig and hurled it at her servants, screwing her face up so that her perfect, painted mask of makeup was wrinkled, turning her into a grotesque.
    She got Antony back, and the audience watched, horrified, as he came further under her influence. This man of so much promise was destroying himself for a woman who didn’t deserve him.
    “This is fantastic,” Cindy murmured to me. “They could make a movie from this.”
    Except the leading man was going on to play Foxman.
    The play showed the progress of a strong man ruined by an older woman whose only concern was herself and the continuation of her dynasty. While being true to the words on the page, Sonia and Troy had torn the play apart and put it back together. What they’d created before was gone. In two weeks, they’d worked to make this.
    The audience lapped it up. It chimed with the times, recent news events, and of course Troy’s history, although they wouldn’t know that. If his mother and her three friends were in the audience tonight, then five of us knew what he was doing. Troy was opening his heart and soul and showing how a man could be destroyed by a woman who had power over him.
    I wasn’t ashamed to say that I wept. So did many of the audience.
    By the last scene Cleopatra’s make up had deteriorated, and her wig was often askew, so the shock when she lost her wig as she fell to the ground, poisoned by the asp, didn’t have the effect it’d had in the preview.
    I saw what Troy meant when he’d said that Sonia had helped him. She’d taken over before, become the tragic queen and owned the play. Now it was as much Troy’s as hers. The whole cast seemed energized by the change in direction. No wonder I’d hardly seen him that week.
    Fuck, but it took courage to expose yourself like that! I couldn’t have done it. My admiration for Troy’s acting went up tenfold. I couldn’t wait to see him afterward.
    I had to wait. They took a standing ovation and call after call. The audience wouldn’t let them go. They could have expected three or four curtain calls, because this was a star vehicle at a prestigious theater, but anything else was gravy. And there was a lot of gravy flowing over the stage tonight.
    This time we had our wristbands ready, but we could hardly get through the press of people in the lobby. They were chattering excitedly. Troy didn’t make an appearance at first, until I was nearly there. Then the door opened and he came out with Sonia.
    He reached out and tugged me to his side. He