by Ava Lore
At the bottom, Hudson pushed open the heavy metal door and charged into the parking garage as though he were late for his very important date with two blond nymphomaniac twins. I had to jog to keep pace with him, and by the time he stopped I was completely out of breath. It turns out that lying on your sister's couch for a week was not conducive to maintaining one's cardiovascular health. I stumbled to a stop and stood there, panting, as Hudson held up his key fob and unlocked his car.
His car. Right. How do I put this? I am not, by any means, a car person. I don't even know how to identify cars by their company logos. I always get them mixed up and I'm never sure of myself. However, I had seen a lot of junk cars in my time. Cars whose windows don't work, cars that had people living in them for several months, cars that had such huge patches of rust that a fun highway game was to count how many bits of the car fell off and went skipping along the interstate before you reached your destination. I knew bad cars. I had seen bad cars. I had lived bad cars. Hell, I'd owned a bad car right up until a little over a week ago. I knew what I was talking about when I saw a bad car.
This car? Was the opposite of a bad car. If the great war horses who carried kings into battle had mated with panthers and then made huge, lithe, graceful panther-horses and those panther-horses had died and then been reborn as cars, then this car was surely their final life before achieving Buddhahood.
It was black. It was sleek. It was solid and shiny and expensive. I was afraid to breathe near it. It squatted in the neon lights of the parking garage and stared at me with it's spotless silver headlights. Licking my lips, I tried to step back, but Kent Hudson was already walking to the driver's side door. Reaching out, he yanked it open and got in.
His casual treatment of a car that could probably have bought me a small house in a bad part of town goosed me into action. I shuffled quickly to the other side of the car and opened the door, sliding in just as Hudson started the car up and stomped his foot onto the accelerator.
"Whoah!" I nearly shouted. "Why can't you wait until I had my seatbelt on? I thought you said we have an hour and a half." I scrabbled for the buckle and clicked it into place, shooting him a glare as I did so.
The darkness of the parking garage could not completely obscure his eyeroll. He didn't answer my question. "Your seatbelt is on now," he pointed out. "You're an adult, you will figure it out. I'm afraid the real question here is why did you come to an interview to be the band's personal assistant dressed like a bartender from the early 90s?”
I almost laughed at that. "Because all my other interviews today were for bartending gigs," I told him. Then his words started to sink in. "Uh, wait a second. What band?"
Mr. Hudson snorted at me. "Are you serious? You just walked into my office without even reading the job description?"
"I didn't think I was going to be applying for a PA position, I thought I was going to interview for a housekeeping gig with some computer consulting company In fact...." I sat my messenger bag in my lap and flipped it open, sorting through it until I found the file folder. "Here it is." Pulling it out, opened it and began to thumb through the listings.
Ah, yes. The consulting firm. I pulled the paper out and read it aloud. "Maid needed for Monday and Wednesday cleaning," I said, reading the little headline. "And they'll be taking applications all week. In... Oh. Oh, shit."
Suite 503. They were located in Suite 503.
I put the paper down and collapsed back in my seat, groaning. "Dammit," I muttered.
"You read the paper wrong?" He sounded amused as he flashed his badge to the ticketeer, then gunned the engine. Under us, the car roared to life and we pulled out into the early afternoon sunshine.
I thought about it for a second, and then snapped my fingers. "No," I said. "I didn't. My sister was helping me get ready this morning and she typed all the info into my phone. She must have made a typo." On a hunch, I pulled my phone out and scrolled through the information Rose had given me. Sure enough, she had switched the three and the five. Sheesh, what were the odds? How on earth did that happen? Two jobs in the same building, just separated by two floors, and I'd gone to the wrong one. I felt like an idiot.
See? I told myself. You should have asked. You should have looked at the original documents or something. Who cares if you look stupid? If you had, you wouldn't be in a car right now with an epically gorgeous asshole on your way to Vegas.
Okay, bad argument. If this wasn't a good way to get out of any further job hunting this afternoon, I didn't know what was, but it still put a kink in my plans to go home and rot my brain with daytime talk shows for the rest of the time I was conscious. Maybe I could get around to cleaning up the baseboards or something...
"The band?" Hudson prompted after it became apparent that I had disappeared into my own little cleaning-fueled world. I snapped out of it and turned to listen to him. The car beneath me hummed and rumbled as he switched gears. His long, strong-fingered hand gripped and moved the knob of the stick shift with grace and ease. He had musician's hands.
Suddenly I was intensely aware of the way the sensitive space between my legs pressed and rubbed against the fine, buttery Italian leather seats, and the way his muscles of his thighs shifted beneath the fabric of his fine, expensive trousers as he changed gears. It took great strength of will for me to drag my eyes back to his face, and when I did I saw he had a faint smile on his face. He had been watching me check him out.
Humiliated, I whipped my head around and stared out the window. The silence in the car was deafening. Where were we? Oh, yes. “Yeah, um,” I said. “Right. About the band... what band?”
He chuckled, and the dark sound dragged over my raw, exposed nerves like black velvet. I shivered in pleasure. “Have you ever heard of a band called 'The Lonely Kings of Lifeless Things?'”
Had I? Had I ever. Only a few months ago they had burst onto the music scene with dark, grungy melodies and a female vocalist with the voice of an angel, singing beautiful songs with complicated lyrics written by the band's guitarist, Carter Hudson...
Hudson.
My mouth dropped. Humiliation forgotten, I whipped back around and stared at Hudson. He was watching the road, his pouty lips parted in a pearly grin. “You're...” I groped for words. But the guitarist was Carter. This man had said his name was Kent. “You're a relative of Carter?”
“His brother, actually. Also the bassist and the band manager.” He seemed incredibly pleased with himself, and he should be. The Lonely Kings were blowing up all over the charts, their songs showing up in a thousand and one teen flicks, their concerts sold out within minutes of tickets going on sale. And here I was, sitting in the car with the band's bassist.
“Wow,” I said. “That's... I had no idea.”
“Hmph,” he said. “I think I actually believe you.”
“You should,” I told him. “I'm a terrible liar. I seriously... I thought I was applying for a housekeeping job.”
“And the pool of strictly-business applicants didn't somehow tip you off?”
“I've been awake since Sunday morning,” I said defensively. “I'm not at my sharpest.”
“Obviously.”
He gunned the car as we neared the highway, and the force of momentum slammed me back in my seat. A thrill bolted through me, and I sucked air through my teeth in appreciation. I'd never been in a car this nice in my life. The car seemed to fly low along the ground as we slipped up the on ramp and slithered into traffic. Traffic in LA is always atrocious, but Kent Hudson was blessed by the god of automobiles with hair-trigger timing, and I had to grab the door to keep myself from flipping out as he wove the car in and out of traffic at almost seventy miles an hour. Jesus.
“It will be interesting to see if the other candidates make it to the airport in time,” Hudson said. He seemed amused by the idea. “I'd meant for this to be a part of the test—if you can get from point A to point B in time, but since you don't have a car I can't test you on that. Should you win the job, what methods o
f conveyance do you have at your disposal?”
I pressed my lips together. “None,” I answered truthfully. “My last car... yeah. I had to sell it quickly.”
“Oh?” The car swerved around a semi, and my whole body tensed. The rumble of the engine through the seat had me on edge, sending little ripples of something that could almost be called pleasure through my limbs, and it was hard to ignore. “May I ask why you had to sell it?”
“You can,” I said. But I didn't want to think about it. Parting with my car, poor Sir Percival, had been a terrible wrench, especially since he had been worth only a thousand dollars. It had barely covered the debts I had to my name, and the guy I'd had to sell it to... I didn't even want to think about him. “But, um. It's touchy for me.”
“I see.” His voice took on a slight tension. “Was it trouble?”
I bristled. “Not trouble with the law, if that's what you're asking,” I snapped at him. “Just personal trouble. I don't want to talk about it.”
“You ran up debts?”
“I didn't!” I exclaimed, then clammed up. “It's complicated.”
“Mm,” he said.
“So tell me about this job,” I said, desperate for a change of subject. “You said I'd be a personal assistant for the band?”
Hudson laughed, but it was without humor. "I said that, yes, but I'll be honest with you, Rebecca." The way he said my name was like a caress running over my throat and down my body, leaving me breathless. "I am looking for someone who will babysit the band with me. There are three other members besides me. There's Carter, whom you already know of, doubtless because he's the most trouble. Then there's our vocalist, Sonya Kyle, and our drummer, Manny Reyes. Neither of them are going to win an award for responsibility, but Carter is the worst.
“What I'm really looking for is someone to watch over Carter the most. He manages to give his personal assistants the slip easily, hence why we are headed to Vegas. His current assistant called me just before interviews were to begin and quit because he'd lost Carter yet again. I knew it was coming, don't get me wrong, but it's always bad when a well-compensated employee tells you they won't put up with their employer any longer because it's not worth the money. I made a few calls, found Carter in Vegas, and here we are. That is the gist of things. So prepare yourself. I'll be throwing you to the lions in a few hours."
The lions. I tossed my head. I'd heard of Carter Hudson, sure, but he couldn't be much worse than most of my terrible friends back in San Diego. They were all shiftless drug addicts or lazy artists always trying to break into the biz while smoking enough juanita to kill an elephant. Which is a lot, because marijuana can't kill you. Those guys were sure trying, though.
"Okay," I said. "I think I can handle it. I've handled a lot of stuff. No big."
"No big?" I glanced over and saw his face take on a hard expression. "It is big. Carter is a handful. I can handle the other two, but I need someone on Carter's ass twenty-four seven. In fact, it might be good that you don't have a car..."
"It is?" I said.
But he shook his head. "Never mind. Just a stray thought." He cleared his throat and gunned the engine again. I felt my blood rise in response to the raw expression of power. His long fingers wrapped around the stick shift and moved the car into high gear. He wore silver rings on most of his fingers, and the tattoos on his wrists were bright flashes of color against his monochrome businessman's uniform. I swallowed and forced myself to look at the road. An exit sign for LAX was coming up. How was it that we were already here?
"You say you think you can handle this job?" he said suddenly.
"What? Oh. Yeah, I bet I can. I worked as a bartender for years and I hung out with some people that were basically walking drama bombs. They all went off like clockwork, too."
"I see," he said, but he sounded as though he didn't believe me. Suddenly he reached forward and turned on the radio player. It roared to life, right in the middle of a song I recognized.
High, beautiful vocals soared over a hard, grinding beat.
'You came from nothing, nothing came to me, I missed your face as we passed by, in the boundless dark of the sky...'
“A Dark Moment,” one of the singles off the first album by The Lonely Kings. I recognized it because it wouldn't stop playing everywhere.
Then Kent Hudson put his hand on my thigh and all my thoughts flew out the window.
Everything in the world funneled down to that hand. It was huge and warm, splayed across my raggedy jeans, the heat of his palm leaking through the denim and spreading across my skin. He hadn't even bothered to put his hand on my knee. Instead he'd left it on the inside of my leg, mere inches from my suddenly red-hot arousal. My mouth went dry and my body was suddenly paralyzed. What the hell does he think he's doing? my brain demanded.
My body, of course, didn't care what it was he thought he was doing as long as he kept doing it. The car swerved off the road and down the exit ramp as Kent Hudson slipped his fingers down the swell of my thigh to the hot valley between my legs. I tensed, clamping my legs together, and he chuckled over the pounding din of the music.
"You see?" he said. "Anything can and will happen to you in this industry. You will be expected to rise to meet the occasion each time."
But what occasion did he want me to rise to? I wondered. The occasion where a top man in the music industry made an unwanted advance on me, or the occasion where that advance was very much wanted?
I shot him a glare and saw the smug look on his face. He was trying to scare me.
My cheeks flared, but I wasn't going to let this bully push me around. I wanted to make him as off-balance and uncertain as I was.
"I don't understand," I said. "Are you trying to sexually harass me?"
"I am sexually harassing you."
"And what do you think you're going to get out of it?" I asked. I forced myself to relax, to set my elbow on the sill of the door, letting my thighs loosen and fall open. The hot private space at the apex of my legs heated intensely, flooded with moisture as Hudson's fingers stuttered and stalled in their bold exploration. "I'm not sure what you're looking for from me."
I lifted my chin and watched as he pulled up to the airport, still pedal to the medal as he pushed and weaved through the thick, snarled traffic. The hand on my leg grew tense. "I expect you to respond appropriately,” he said at last.
I might as well come out with it, I decided. "Appropriately how? You want me to come over there and make out with you, or do you want me to fight you off?"
He snatched his hand away. "What?"
"You've got me all hot and bothered now," I said. "You want to finish that off, or am I supposed to hate it? I can hate it if you want. Just tell me the right response and I'll do it."
He snatched his hand away, and though I felt an oozing satisfaction at winning, my body did not feel the same. The loss of his touch was an ache.
Returning both hands to the steering wheel, Hudson gripped it with white knuckles and kept his eyes on the road, studying it intently. "I wouldn't be paying you to be a whore," he said, bluntly.
I forced myself to laugh. "Yeah, but you aren't paying me yet," I told him. God, what was I doing? I was being so forward with him, as if I could go head to head with this kind of guy.
But he pissed me off and turned me on at the same time, and I wanted him to know that. I wasn't going to let him push me around, like everyone else had always done. I was through being the person who rolled over and begged for more when someone made me feel bad or confused or upset. If the past four years hadn't made me a stronger person, nothing would.
Hudson swerved into the short term parking garage and swung the car into the nearest spot. "I expect you to act like a professional," he said stiffly, turning off the car. The engine shuddered to a halt, but my engine was still going a hundred miles an hour. "I only wanted to underscore the fact that you'd have to deal with people who are rude and possibly want to harm you."
"I've been harmed," I sai
d. "I can handle myself. Don't try to teach me any lessons, by the way, unless you're sure I haven't already learned them." Unbuckling my seat belt I opened the car door and got out.
God, it felt good to tell a jerk off. He may have been very pretty and I may be aching between my legs to fuck him with abandon, but that didn't mean I had to put up with bullshit. I'd thrown him off balance, just like I wanted, and when he got out of the car with me he wouldn't meet my eye. That was good, because my face was probably as red as stoplight.
"Let's go," he said, his voice clipped. "We'll be late." And he took off at a pace even more brisk than before.
I ran a hand through my hair and hurried behind him toward the check-in counter. I wasn't going to let him lose me. I wasn't going to be intimidated. I was going to win this job, and when I got it, maybe I would laugh and rip up his contract and throw it in his face. Yeah. That would feel good.
Setting my jaw, I jogged after him.
*
Daniel didn't make it to the airport on time, so it was just Randy, me, and Kent boarding the plane to Vegas. Our seats were scattered over the plane, and I scored one right over the wing. I hadn't really planned to go on a plane trip so I didn't have a book with me, and I'd chewed through the money Rose had slapped into my hand already—LA is expensive—so I had to sit in my seat and stare out the window at the jiggling wing as we climbed into the sky. I hate how plane wings jiggle. It always makes me think they are about to fall off. That'd make a great headline, but would be a bad way to go.
Kent Hudson hadn't talked to me the entire time we sat in the boarding area. This was partly because I think I managed to actually shame him somewhat, but mostly because Randy couldn't stop jawing away at him about all his contacts in the industry and how this job would be his big break, thanks for considering him, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
It was embarrassing. I'm not industry bigwig, but even I could tell that Randy was committing a huge faux pas. Kent sat in his seat scrolling through his phone, clearly bored and annoyed with the entire situation while I surreptitiously looked up information about the band on the internet.