A Beauteous Flower

Chapter 18 - The Incursion

Madison saw to it that things moved quickly after that night. Daniel had ticked all the boxes that she and her girlfriends had deemed most important. He was good-looking, successful and in love with Madison. In their estimation, Madison had captured Daniel's heart and that was well and good, but now it was time for boss bitch Madison to get down to business. Now Madison's sole purpose in life became to get Daniel locked down and off the market as soon as possible. With that goal in mind, boss bitch Madison launched her plan to integrate herself into every aspect of Daniel's life.

Madison's first move was to satisfy her jealous bone and insure there were no other woman in Daniel's life. To confirm this, she petulantly demanded access to Daniel's phone, both of them. Daniel shrugged and gave them up without protest. Madison immediately memorized his passwords and then maniacally scrolled through his photos and contacts with a CSI focus. In the end she was a little surprised and a little disappointed to find exactly nothing for her to get snippy about. A man's phone and social media were supposed to be an endless source of little violations that a boss bitch could pitch a fit over without the serious need to end the relationship. Boss bitch Madison needed to hoard those little leads as ammunition in any future conflicts, but even Daniel's browser history was vanilla to the point of dull.

Apparently, Daniel, unlike every other person Madison had ever met, would go days without so much as a peek at his social media feeds and simply deleted hundreds of emails, photos, DMs, friend-requests and the like without even a once over. Madison, who could not go twenty minutes without a check on her various feeds, was amazed and asked Daniel how he could be so cavalier about his social feeds, especially since he was famous. Daniel simply shrugged and said that ninety percent of the attempted contacts he received weren't worth his time. He didn't elaborate any further, and Madison moved on in her search for boss bitch ammunition.

As Madison had suspected Daniel did in fact have two cell phones; a black phone and a red phone. Daniel's black phone was for what Daniel termed "public access" and he gave that number out to business contacts and other people he knew but wasn't particularly close with. He always left it on vibrate and it buzzed constantly with texts and phone calls, mostly for business. He had a strict "leave a message" approach when it came to calls and texts on the black phone and never answered it unless it was by appointment. Most of the texts and voice mails people left were summarily deleted without so much as cursory attention. Every couple of days he would compile a list of noteworthy messages from that phone and then block time out of his day to answer those he deemed important enough for a return contact.

On the other hand, for his red cell phone Daniel had the ringer turned up to maximum. It contained the contact information of Daniel's close friends and relatives and every one of them had their own special ring tone. The number for Daniel's red phone was a jealously guarded secret among those special few and they never sent him texts. If a person's contact information was on the red phone, their call would command Daniel's full and undivided attention on demand and Daniel tried hard to answer whenever it rang. Within their first few days as a couple, Madison had seen Daniel end a business meeting to take a red phone call from his sister. If he missed a call from one of his red phone contacts, Daniel would not rest until he called them back.

Madison immediately put her contact information into the red phone and selected the chorus from "That's my Girl" by Fifth Harmony as the ringtone. Just to be extra sure, she dialed the red phone's number and smiled in satisfaction as Fifth Harmony loudly proclaimed to the world:

"That's my girl!
That's my girl!
That's my girl!
What you wait, what you wait
What you waiting for?
That's my girl!
That's my girl!
That's my girl!
That's my girl, that's my girl!
That's my girl, that's my girl!"

With that Madison was confident that no matter where Daniel went, when she called him every female within earshot would know he was most definitely off the market. From there Madison quickly inserted herself into other aspects of Daniel's life.

Her next move was to integrate herself into Daniel's home. To that end, Madison began to spend every night she could at Daniel's house where she obsessively placed clues to warn potential female interlopers, real or imagined, that Daniel was in a committed relationship with another woman. Within two weeks, she had seeded every surface in the bedroom with earrings and other jewelry, planted feminine hygiene products in the medicine cabinets and vanities of every bathroom, hung a spare purse on the back doorknob, and left two mismatched pairs of cute, pink ankle socks on the dryer in the laundry room. Before a month was out, Madison had clearly marked Daniel's house as her territory, which laid the groundwork for the ingress of her big-ticket items like clothes and shoes and furniture and houseplants. Soon Madison had secured the bureau in the bedroom for her clothing and had appropriated more than half of the walk-in closet.

At the same time, Madison began a furtive, but insistent campaign to have sex with Daniel in every single room in the house. It took about three weeks for her to coax him into some of the areas he didn't use much. Much to Madison's personal delight, the project included the pool, but excluded the basement because it was unfinished and dusty down there. The only concern Madison had was that the neighbors might see them when they had sex on the balcony off the bedroom, but she insisted, and Daniel politely obliged her. Doggie had always been Madison's favorite sex position anyway, and she especially enjoyed the leverage the steel railing gave her as she bent forward and enthusiastically shoved herself into Daniel's thrusts.

Finally, the preliminaries were over, and they had christened every room in the house. Most of Madison's stuff had made the trip to Daniel's house and the few items that remained at the apartment comprised less than a trunk load. All Madison had to do was pack them in her car and drive over to Daniel's house and she would be fully moved in.

However, before she could make that final trip, something had to happen, and that something was Daniel's invitation to move in with him. Her primary goal was virtually accomplished, as Madison spent five to six nights a week at Daniel's house, but without an invitation, Madison could not complete the final step.

This was a touchy thing and the key to the next step of Madison's plan. Madison wanted to establish herself as Daniel's live-in girlfriend so she could fully integrate herself into Daniel's social life and, more importantly, begin to execute on the list of redecorations and renovations she had in mind for what would then be "their" house. That's why the invitation was so important and without it, she would still just be Daniel's girlfriend with no rights or privileges to redecorate or renovate.

At the root of this problem was the fact that, once Madison had determined to fast track their relationship, she had skipped a step or two. Truth be told, Madison might have kind of neglected to consult Daniel on a few topics. For example, she might have accidentally forgotten to have a conversation with Daniel to ascertain whether wanted a live-in girlfriend, and, if he did, whether he wanted Madison to fill the role of his live-in girlfriend. It was a minor oversight on her part at first, but over time it became significant enough to put an annoyingly large crimp in her plans.

So, that little pile of Madison's belongings sat in a few boxes on the floor of the apartment and waited for Madison to scheme up a way to get a green light from Daniel for the final step. Unfortunately for Madison, no matter how she hinted or plotted, Daniel kept silent on the matter. Dejectedly Madison settled in for a final siege and waited for an opportunity to present itself.