“I take my job seriously, even if you’re just paying me out of some dodgy, misguided pipe dream to get in my knickers.”
This makes me chuckle because the girl holds no punches.
“Jude Davies.”
Locating the person who just spoke my name, my eyes land on a tall, slim woman with a face that has graced billboards in London and New York alike.
“Celine.” A wolfish grin shot in her direction.
Without invitation, the modeling industries current darling sidles up next to me on the sofa, her small knockers practically visible through the sheer sheath dress covering the essentials on her body.
The brunette skims her hands over the crotch of my pants, and I thrust out of instinct.
“They should have let you on the pitch today. I love watching you work.” There is so much innuendo laced through her words.
My fingers trace the line of her neck, and I feel Aria’s eyes boring into my forehead. “Some would say my best work isn’t done on the pitch …”
It’s a typical industry encounter, fast and loose as if we’re well acquainted enough for her to toss me off under the table in this lounge. There are no feelings, not even a mutual appreciation … just sex and the awareness that someone will see us at this party and tell a reporter. At least we’re both cognizant of the fact that this attraction is false, that this entire sequence of events is false theater.
Except when I look up from the imaginary trance Celine has me in, I see Aria’s form, retreating quickly from my booth in the back of the lounge.
What in the bloody hell?
Before I can talk myself out of looking like a schoolboy running after his puppy, I’m up and chasing her across the place. It’s not until the hallway leading to the bathroom that I catch her, spinning in circles because she has no idea the layout of the building.
“What are you doing?” I swarm her, giving her no space to run.
Why my body and mind are possessed right now, to get up in her face, I’m not even sure myself.
“I need air,” Aria bites out, squaring her shoulders at me.
“No, you don’t,” I challenge, backing her down the hallway as she tries to step away.
She opens those peach, pouty lips to say something, and then closes them again.
“You didn’t want to see another woman’s hand on my cock?” The words are dirty, but we both know they’re true.
“You’re a bastard.” Her voice might be quiet, but it’s steady.
“And a dangerous one, at least to a pretty little thing like you.”
I watch as Aria backs herself into a corner, my arms pressing against the wall to bracket her head. “Why even bring me here at all?”
Against all of my better judgment, the question worms itself between the bricks I’ve constructed around my heart.
“There is somewhere I want to take you.”
Then I take her hand in mine, the first time I’ve really touched her, and pull her gently out of the club.
10
Aria
The venue might be small, no bigger than a room, but the dozen or so people staring up at me might as well have been a hundred thousand.
That’s how bloody nervous I am. My palms are so slick, I can barely grip the microphone.
When Jude pulled me out of that god-awful lounge, his fingers lacing through mine, I nearly fainted. That’s not an exaggeration, I was simply stunned … almost as if I had whiplash.
One second, he’d been pawing some model in front of me, forcing me to look on as he openly seduced her. And the next, as I was walking away to collect my unnecessarily envious heart, the prince of English football was backing me into a dark corner, apologizing, and telling me he wanted to take me somewhere.
My foolish, girly head had thought that meant back to our hotel room. And I let him lead me away. As if I had no brain at all, just a damsel in some romance movie who blindly followed the rascal hero who’d given her no reason to trust him.
But … I would be lying if I said I wouldn’t have gone along with it if he had kissed me as soon as we’d gotten into the car.
What in the bloody hell is wrong with me? Lack of sleep and a new environment … let’s blame it on that.
I never expected, in a million years, that Jude Davies was actually taking me to an open mic night. Being discovered in the locker room whilst singing at the top of my lungs was something I’d tried to scrub from my memory.
Apparently, the gorgeous devil bothering me these days had not.
After the ride into London last night, one I spent entrenched in my music and watching new scenery out the SUV window, and the game today … it seemed I couldn’t escape him. Staying in the same hotel room, not to mention being thrust into his world without a parachute … it was all a head rush. As if I’d stood up too fast and found myself in an alternate reality. Penthouse suites and chocolates on my pillow, box seats at the most famous stadium in London, a full-throttle football match that was more exciting than anything I’d ever watched on the telly. Chauffeured cars and catered meals, VIP club access and designer clothes I could never afford.
Gosh, had I felt daft in my twenty-pound Primark dress. And when Celine, a model whose face has graced my copy of Cosmopolitan more than once, strode up to Jude and put her hands all over him? I’d needed to smack myself back into reality.
I need to remind myself what I am here for … the money. And who it was for … my father.
But then Jude had gone and sucked me back in, crooking me around that debauched finger. Now, here I stand, about to sing for a crowd of strangers.
There is no way I can do this.
And then I find his face in the crowd, watch his lips as they mouth, “let go.”
It was the last thing Jude Davies had said to me before he pushed me toward the mic, his tall, dark form barely visible from the side of the stage.
“No one here knows you. Take this one chance to let go.”
How this bloke, one I’m realizing I can’t stand, knew the exact words to say to help build enough confidence in me to follow through with this, I’ll never know. How he found this place …
As the guitarist and piano player, the only two musicians on stage at this small venue, play the opening chords of my song choice, the realization dawns on me.
Jude Davies planned this.
He heard me sing, remembered it, and … what? Found me a place to perform when I accepted his offer to accompany him to London? The idea is just too farfetched, but my gut tells me this isn’t just a spontaneous gig.
The tune for Etta James’ “I’d Rather Go Blind” hits me square in the chest, and keeping my eyes on him, I open my mouth to begin.
My lips move, words fill the air, and my heart gives itself over to the music. For the life of me, though, I can’t seem to focus on anything else but Jude Davies.
Staring at me from a table in the middle of the room, a small smile gracing his lips. His eyes hold nothing but me in them, and for a second, it all melts away. The nerves, the worry, everything I’ve given up and all the insecurities I feel. When he looks at me up on this stage, like I’m the only girl he’s ever seen, I feel … powerful.
Something in my stomach dips, something in my heart gives way, and not only do I feel powerful, but I feel desired. I tip my head back as a big note swamps my vocal cords, drowning my body in sorrowful emotion.
The tragic heartbreak of the lyrics, the difficulty of the notes, both high and low, that a master like James nailed in this song … I hone in on them rather than the dinosaur-sized butterflies fluttering in my belly.
I’ve never done drugs before, only gotten pissed a handful of times with the responsibilities I’d taken on at such a young age. But I imagine the feeling of invincibility is something quite like this; heart in throat, head in the clouds, tingling limbs.
The weightlessness is so freeing that I could weep.
11
Jude
The heel of her hand rubs at the s
pot in her chest that I know must burn with adrenaline. “Blimey, is this what it feels like to be high?”
My eyes blaze down on hers. “When I’m out on the pitch, thousands of people watching as I perform … yes, it’s the best kind of high. I know a way to keep that going. Trust me?”
It’s the moment of truth. We’ve spent two days together, and while that might not be a sufficient amount of time to know a person, there is … something indescribable here. Aria can see through this egotistical, prattish facade I put up for everyone else. The way she hands my shite right back to me proves it. She shouldn’t trust me, not for all the jewels in the tower of London.
But after I heard her sing? No, not sing, it’s too small of a word for what Aria’s voice did.
That ability … I’ve never heard anyone sound like her. I wasn’t even aware of what the song was, but by the time she finished, I was bloody sure it was my new favorite.
Her tone was raspy but clear, soulful but could hit a high note that shocked your heart like a defibrillator. The way she played coy, with both the audience and the world around her in general, and then packed a musical punch so hard it could knock your socks off … I was fascinated.
“I want to keep it going.”
In a single sentence, she puts her fate in my hands.
I shouldn’t do this. Bringing her with me to London was specifically designed to avoid chaos such as this. But … Aria had just let it slip that she’s never felt a high like this before. And besides playing in front of a packed stadium of thousands, there were only two other ways I’ve learned to have an out-of-body experience.
Shagging is off the table, that much I know. Pinning her against a mattress or taking her from behind up against a wall … that was my first idea. But I’m not pushing my luck, not yet.
So I’m down to the only other method I know that works for me; driving as bloody fast as I can in a really posh car. One call to Leonel, the upscale car dealer I deal with in the city, and a brand new Porsche 911 is delivered within twenty minutes. This is one of the outrageous perks to being filthy rich; you could call someone up at ten minutes to midnight and they’d have to procure whatever you ask for.
“How much does this car cost? No, on second thought, don’t tell me. It’s probably more than our house and my life savings.” Aria runs her hand over the leather of the passenger seat and then moves those delicate fingers to the wood paneling on the dash.
“Who cares how much it cost? The question you should be asking is, how fast does it go?” Pressing my foot down on the gas as we’re still in park, the engine revs smoothly.
“Maybe we shouldn’t do this …” Aria’s beautiful features twist into an expression of cautious doubt.
My fingers dance over the material molded to her thigh, and her breath hitches. I knew it would, just like I knew that if I touched her, she’d succumb to my idea.
“Don’t you want to ride the high?”
“Isn’t this exactly what I’m supposed to be talking you out of?”
“But isn’t it so much more fun to do away with what’s right and go with what feels wrong?” I flash her my most diabolical smirk.
We answer every question with a question, and before she can answer, I ram the stick shift into drive and take off.
Zero to eighty in ten seconds and Aria has the complete opposite reaction to what I thought she’d do.
Most girls I take for a life-threatening thrill ride in a sports car … they shriek the entire time. Make the whole experience as annoying as a public roller coaster and do that damsel in distress thing where they pretend to chastise me after.
But Aria Lloyd? While I can see her white knuckles gripping the sides of her leather seat, she doesn’t make a peep.
Just lets the speed weave through her cells as I throttle us down the motorway, the whole time with a fiendish grin lighting up her entire face.
We’re rocketing toward something monumental, and the excitement in not knowing whether we’ll crash and burn or fly is the best kind of high. It’s what I live my life chasing; that eye of the storm where uncertainty and possibility live immortally.
It’s at the very moment that the high peaks, that I hear the sirens.
“Bloody hell …” I mutter, the dread extinguishing my fun with a cold bucket of water.
“What?” Aria turns, probably too wrapped up in the joy ride that she didn’t hear the police. “Oh. My. God. The police? No, no, no …”
I can see her start to panic as I pull over, and I snap in front of her face. “Aria, shut it. Let me do the talking and calm down.”
She is stunned, probably from being pulled over, and also from me telling her to shut it. But she does stay quiet.
Pressing the button to roll down the window, I come face-to-face with a pudgy Bobbie. “Officer, is there a problem?”
The twit studies his notepad. “Sir, are you aware you were going fifty kilometers over the legal speed limit?”
He hasn’t looked up at me yet, but his line of questioning will change when he does. “I’m not sure it registered with me, no.”
What’s life if you aren’t living it cheekily?
“Sir—” The officer finally looks up, and his words dry in his throat. I watch it happen. “You’re … you’re Jude Davies.”
“The one and only.” I grin.
His mouth opens like a fish. Open and close, open and close. “You, uh … you were speeding.”
“I apologize for my behavior if I was doing anything wrong. But I’ve had a stressful day and wanted to rejoice in the victory of today’s match.”
“Brilliant match, it was. Shame you didn’t see any playing time.” The officer nods his head vigorously.
“’Twas a shame.” I nod in agreement.
The policeman looks around, assessing the motorway up and down, and then bends down to the window of my car.
“All right, Mr. Davies, have a good night. Be safe, yeah? No more speeding … except for out on the pitch. I expect to see you in the next FA Cup match, okay?”
“Righto, officer.” I salute him and flash my best innocent smile.
He walks back to his patrol car and zooms off into the night, and I stay parked on the shoulder.
“I didn’t mean to yell at you,” I start, feeling the fury roll off of Aria in waves.
“I don’t know why you like to risk your life or get into a spot of trouble just to have a good time, but I don’t do this. You could have gotten us both arrested, or worse, killed. Your utter lack of regard for your safety or future is a posh man’s problem, and unfortunately, not a luxury I have. I have someone counting on me, and I have to be alive to make sure the bills are paid and that life goes on.”
I’ve rarely been made to feel a thing in the last ten years, and especially not anything akin to guilt or empathy. But maybe that’s because no one has actually appealed to those emotions in me. Everyone around me is just as much of a careless adrenaline junkie as I am … or that’s just who I’ve chosen to surround myself with.
But right now, I feel like a real wanker. And I’m not such a prick that I don’t see how upset, or irate, she is
“Aria, I apologize—”
She cuts me off. “Save it, Jude. I just want to go home, back to Clavering. Can you make that happen?”
I nod, unlocking my cell and calling whoever handles that kind of thing to send a car straightaway. We sit in silence on the side of the road, the sports car’s mighty engine of no fun to me now.
“Listen, this is not how I meant for this to go,” I speak into the void.
Her cornsilk hair tumbles down her back, her face is turned away from me. It doesn’t flutter over her shoulder, because she never faces me.
“We’re just from two different sides of life. It was reckless for me to even accompany you as an assistant when I have duties to see to back home. Don’t ask it of me again.”
“Got it,” I say, so that she knows I understand.
It takes another five
minutes for the car to get to us. Five minutes I spend with a sinking feeling working its way through my heart and stomach. I may have proposed this trip as a way to get closer to Aria, to seduce her into sleeping with me.
But as it’s ending in horrible fashion, I realize, she may have seduced parts of me I wasn’t aware even existed anymore.
12
Jude
“I don’t understand why we still have to go to classes. We’re twenty bloody years old … and in another life, I’d never be caught dead at university,” Kingston complains.
“Lord knows you aren’t smart enough to even get into university,” Vance quips, setting his books down on the desk.
Out of the three of us, Vance is clearly the least thick. And I say that because none of us is Oxford-level genius … from the moment we were born, we were meant to play football. But our keeper can at least do simple math, understands the laws of physics, and schools us all on the required reading we’re supposed to do. I say supposed to because I haven’t cracked open a paperback or textbook in nearly two years.
“That’s right, because I’m not meant for it. I’m meant to be out on the pitch or in the weight room … this is mad.” Kingston points to the front of the classroom where one of the professors sets up the presentation he’ll drone on about for the next hour.
I won’t be listening. My vote is on Kingston’s side for this one; higher education classes are a waste of my time. I barely made passing grades when I was in the secondary school level at the academy, and those were required if I wanted to play. Most of my schooling time has been done in the academy since I arrived here so young. And while they claim, to outside parties and sources, that the education here is top-notch … it is the worst-kept secret that football takes top priority. The classes are rudimentary, and professors slip passing grades into the pile so that the future players of England’s National Team can bring the honor and victory they were bred to bestow upon the country.
The Second Coming: Rogue Academy, Book One Page 5