CLOSER (Taint Book 2)

by Carmen Jenner

  “When has fucking ever fixed anything?”

  “It fixes my boner.” We come to the end of the hall, and it’s tricky, but she manoeuvres us so she’s still supporting some of my weight while the stone wall takes the rest.

  “Can you even get hard with this much liquor in your system?”

  “I can get hard any place, any liquor, any time,” I slur as we reach the bottom stair and enter my room. “Want me to show you?”

  “I really don’t.” She drops me on the bed and walks away.

  “Brie?”

  She turns. I can’t see her face, but she’s no doubt glaring at me. She’s always glaring at me. “What, Levi?”

  “I’m not always this much of an arse.”

  “We both know that’s not true.” I hear the smile in her voice, more than see it, because I can’t see a fucking thing in this room.

  “You gotta stop that,” I warn. “I told you I like the mean ones.”

  “And I told you, never going to happen. Dors, tu es fou, bel homme.”

  “I don’t speak French.”

  “I know,” she says and disappears up the stairs.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  GOOGLE IS NOT YOUR FRIEND

  BRIELLE

  For the second time in as many days, I’m woken with La Vie En Rose blasting from a speaker system the kitchen. It fills the whole house, bouncing off empty walls, slipping through cracks, and even shaking the floorboards. It puts my teeth on edge and rattles my bones. La Vie En Rose is Maman’s favourite song. She would hum it around the house for hours, and it was one of the first songs she encouraged me to play when I was just learning the cello. But even Maman is not this crazy.

  Unable to sleep with such noise, I pull back the drapes and let the sun stream in through my window. It’s cold, but this week is warmer still than last week at the wedding, and spring is getting ready to return, and Levi will likely be sleeping off his permanent hangover, so I grab my phone, and put on the one-piece swimsuit I wore at Hotel Cap Estel. The one with the hundred little vertical straps that I still haven’t mastered, and cheeky cut over my butt. It doesn’t cover as much of my body as I would like, but then, I don’t expect anyone to see it because the pool area is as empty as a graveyard in the rain.

  Well, maybe not completely empty, I realise, as I walk outside and find Dog asleep on the warm concrete. He lifts his head, and I get an imperceptibly small tail wag before he rolls over for me to scratch his belly. Then it’s all-out tail wagging and doggy sneezes, and goofball faces. From him, and me. I don’t know where Levi found him, but he is not so bad after all. Gentle and goofy, and always happy to see me. Unlike his owner.

  I settle onto a sunbed, pull my glasses down on my face and let the birds chitter and sing to me. I’m restless. I long to play, but I have a tendency to push myself too far, and Levi will want me to play later no doubt, when his belly is full of whisky, his eyes are bloodshot, and his heart is sick. After last night, I cannot help but feel sorry for the man.

  I have the sudden urge to know more about him, about his relationship with Ali, and his bandmate, so I venture onto Google. The first thing that comes up is his Wiki page, so I click on it. There is the usual stuff about the band, their rise to fame. Pictures of him playing live line the page, and then I come to the personal life section. I eat up the words as if they are a banquet and I am a starving woman. And then I stumble on a link to a sex tape. I worry my bottom lip with my teeth, glance around the empty yard, and click on it.

  The screen is filled with a dark video that then switches to night vision. It’s grainy, but I can still make out their faces, and their body parts. Ali looks different than she did on her wedding day. She’s pretty, even without the bridal make-up, but she doesn’t look like the rest of the Victoria Secret models he appears to have dated. And from the pictures, and list of names, there have been a lot. Ali is different. Her face is much sweeter than those other women. And then her face is all but forgotten because whoever was operating the camera, zeros in on Levi unfastening his pants. Of course I saw his massive penis the first day I arrived, but then it hung low and heavy between his legs. This cock? It’s bigger, and when fully erect, it’s almost absurd. My current employer is hung like a horse. A thoroughbred, and I am suddenly hot and itchy all over.

  I close the Wiki page window but decide to keep the video up for later, and then I add another browser and search “Levi Quinn penis”. A lot of images come up. A lot. But I finally zero in on one that looks legitimate. It’s a gif, and I can see his face, so I click on it. He’s taking Ali from behind. He’s not even all the way in, not even close, as she takes Cooper’s cock in her mouth, and Levi’s face twists in pleasure as he comes inside her. My cheeks flame. My breath comes hard and fast and my insides tighten. I tell myself it’s a natural reaction to seeing an erotic display, but then the sense of jealousy, of spite, and wishing she’d choke on all the cum these men are bestowing her with worms its way through my gut and I cringe.

  “Whatcha doing?” A voice comes from over my shoulder, and I swear I jump about six feet in the air.

  I scramble with my phone, surprised I haven’t accidentally thrown it into the pool, but then I do lose my grip on it. I fumble. It flies across the daybed, but not before my hand could switch browsers.

  Levi snatches up the phone before I can reach it. “The Angry French Girl likes porn, huh? Let’s see, what do we have here?” I make a grab for it, but he wrenches it out of my reach. “Uh, uh, uh. Not yet, mon chéri.” He is a butcher of the French language.

  “Give it back. Now!”

  “He swipes the screen with his thumb and the tiny window advertisement blocking the video disappears. His devil grin curls in the corner, as his molten gaze sweeps across me, and examines my flushed chest and cheeks.

  “You googled my sex tape?”

  “Non.” I insist.

  He taps a few more times at the screen, no doubt searching my other browsers. One masculine brow raises, and the infuriating grin spreads wider. Oh, how I hate this man. “You know if you wanted a sneak peek all you had to do was ask.”

  He slides my phone down his pants and snaps a picture. Then he studies the screen before deciding it must be good enough to pass his test, and hands it back to me. I gasp in horror as he walks towards the pool, shedding his clothing along the way. I wet my suddenly dry lips and avert my gaze as he dives in.

  With my skin flushed from embarrassment and desire, I’d like nothing more than to take a dip in the icy cold water too, but he is naked, and I do not trust either one of us. Instead, I hold my head high and stalk away, feeling his eyes on my arse the entire time.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  BABY, BABY, BABY

  LEVI

  I sit at the piano, my fingers tinkling over the keys without any thought as to what I’m doing. I like the emptiness of this room, the acoustics, and the dissonance of two flats being played at once that sends a tingle through my balls and up my spine. I think of her in that black dress. No. Not a dress. A gown. Her wedding gown, and I bow my head and lean it against the sleek white finish of the piano. Heavy footsteps echo through the room behind me, and I have half a mind to tell Margaux to fuck off because I’m attempting to wallow in my misery and that’s a little hard to do when the maid is encroaching on your space, but I don’t bother. She probably wouldn’t understand me anyway.

  But when I turn my head, it isn’t Margaux who sits on the chair across from me, and it wasn’t her footsteps on the hardwood but her cello as she set it down leaning the beast back between her knees. It’s Brie. I’ve got a beast she can slide between her thighs, but my little French Japanese princess isn’t having a bar of that.

  She lets out an exasperated breath. “You want to make music?” Her accent’s so thick half the time I have no idea what she’s saying, but my dick’s still hard anyway.

  “Yeah, I wanna make music, but I can’t. All I have is shit, an arse-load full of despair.” I give her a brittle
smile as I play another chord. “And dissonance.”

  Brielle studies me for a beat. She raises her bow. “Then use it, idiot.”

  “Ah, Brie, I love it when you talk dirty.”

  She gives me a wan smile and plucks the first few strains of a song I’m all too familiar with Nine Inch Nails’s “Hurt”. It isn’t at all like the original and for several bars, I get lost watching her play, her nimble fingers working quickly, and her bow gliding effortlessly across the taut strings. Her hair falls around her shoulders, shivering with each movement, a curtain of dark, glossy thread. She’s fucking gorgeous, and I’m hard as fuck. But I tell myself it’s because of the music, because how can my heart possibly be broken, smashed into a million pieces and still fall a little more for the Angry French Girl each time she plays?

  I place my hands over the ivory and join her, hitting the notes in the bridge as furiously as her hands are plucking, and still there’s none of the menace and maliciousness of the original. This could be an entirely new piece of music, but I can feel all of the sadness and despair written within its melody.

  I meet her eyes as we crest the bridge, and the tempo changes again, sliding back into the haunting melody of the verse and the outro. She holds my gaze as she plucks the last note and brings her bow to rest beside her cello.

  For the first time since we met, she’s smiling—not that amused quirk of her lips, but an actual fucking smile, and goddam me if my chest doesn’t swell with pride because I got the devil to smile, and she just stole a piece of my heart that I didn’t even know still existed.

  “Didn’t know you were a NIN fan.”

  “I’m a music fan.” One dainty shoulder lifts in a shrug. “I find beauty in all melody.”

  I cock a brow. “Even Bieber’s?”

  She laughs and raises her bow, plucking several notes of the shit song that made him famous at like eight. I cover my ears, even though I could pretty much hear her play anything and still find enjoyment in it.

  “Jesus, make it stop.”

  She rolls her eyes.

  “So, does that mean you find Taint’s music beautiful?”

  “No.”

  “What?” I frown. “Why? Because it’s mine?”

  “I think you’re capable of more.”

  I stare, incredulous. “More?”

  “Your song writing is great, but your melodies are lacking.”

  “Jesus. Don’t sugar coat it, sweetheart.”

  “You asked.”

  “And if I asked you to ride me?”

  She raises her bow to the strings again and makes a distinctive womp wow sound. Words aren’t necessary.

  My fingers glide across the ivory, playing the first few bars of “Your Sex is on Fire”. “You know anything else?”

  “I know everything.”

  “Why do I not doubt that?”

  She shrugs again, her small shoulders lifting gracefully. “Because you’re not as stupid as you look?”

  “I don’t know about that. I did invite an angry French girl to stay with me.”

  She narrows her gaze. “I take it back, you are as stupid as you look.”

  For the first time in days, I laugh, because she’s right. It wasn’t just her music that had me tracking down her agent. It was everything about her. What can I say? I like my women hot, smart, and mean as hell. That doesn’t just make me stupid, it makes me a fucking chump. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  DOCTOR DONG

  BRIELLE

  I come in from the pool, not bothering to put on my cover up because I plan on heading straight for the shower. As I approach the ballroom, I hear voices, and neither of them are Margaux’s.

  “Stop wriggling,” an American woman says. I stiffen and attempt to just keep walking because it is none of my business what the rock star does in his own house, but I find myself huddled behind the wall, listening to their conversation.

  Levi groans. A low, erotic sound that makes my core tighten. My stomach clenches, and not in a good way. “I’m trying. It’s not exactly comfortable. It’s sticky and cold.”

  Sticky? What could possibly be ... Oh my God. Really? In the room we ... the room that I play in? I have half a mind to storm in there and slap him across the face, and then I realise that it’s me who is out of line, because I am nothing to him, and he is nothing to me. Why should I care if he’s having sex with some strange woman in his house? I am a guest here. Non. I am being paid to be here. To provide a service. Like the maid.

  “Bonjour, mademoiselle,” Margaux says from behind, and I jump and almost knock over her tray containing an unopened bottle of expensive whisky and four glasses.

  “Er ... bonjour.” I give a startled laugh, and try to back away, but then Levi calls to me as Margaux enters the ballroom.

  “Brie, is that you lurking out in the hall?”

  I sigh and close my eyes, because there’s no point in refuting it, but that doesn’t mean I want to see him fucking someone else. I have no desire to see that, and why is Margaux coming in and out of the room during all of this?

  “You know you don’t have to hang out in the hall like a creeper.”

  “We don’t bite,” the American woman says, and then I hear laughter coming from more voices. All male, and none of them Levi’s.

  “Speak for yourself.” Levi chuckles. “My little Angry French Girl could use a mauling or two.”

  I can’t help it. I can no longer hold my curiosity at bay, and I stalk into the room, hell-bent on giving him a piece of my mind. “I am not your little anything, and I would not allow your mouth to come anywhere near my body.”

  He grins. It’s obnoxious and salacious, and completely unwarranted. I hate the way my stomach flips when I lower my gaze and find him naked with a woman sitting on the floor at his feet. She’s holding some kind of big clear plastic pipe with a thick pink substance in it, and it appears that his ample penis is shoved inside. I glance at the woman, who is cute in an American hipster kind of way, and then at the men standing nearby. One is heavily tattooed, fully clothed—thank God—with a bald head and forearms bigger than my thighs the whole way around. He appears to be covered in some kind of pink plaster dust. The other is also fully clothed, and holds a camera on his shoulder, filming whatever it is that’s going on here.

  “Brie, this is Celia, Doc, and Chuck.”

  Doc tilts his head to the side and appraises me as if I’m a piece of meat. “What do we have here?”

  “No!” Levi points at Doc, and accepts the glass that Margaux holds out to him. “I know exactly what you’re thinking, and it’s a big fuck N.O.”

  “What?” Doc shrugs as if he is unafraid of Levi’s status. I’d be willing to bet that is not something this rock star is used to—people not doing everything he tells them to. “I can’t ask?”

  “Not if you want me to pull out of this cast and out of this deal, then fuck no. You can’t ask.” Levi’s eyes are all challenge now. “Frankly, I’m fucking insulted.”

  Celia rolls her eyes and twists her head to see me better. “Hi, I’m Celia. I’d shake your hand, but I kinda have them full.”

  Levi smiles at her. “Occupational hazard?”

  I do not like this woman.

  “You’d be surprised at how unfunny that joke is after your thousandth casting,” she says as if she’s made of unicorn sprinkles and candy, but her cheery voice is completely passive aggressive.

  Then again, maybe she and I could be best friends. I’m certainly in the market for one after Piaf sold me out with this job knowing full well how I felt about the arrogant rock star.

  “Do I even want to know what is going on here?” I say, and turn to Doc, who is circling me as if I’m prey. “And why is this big, bald animal staring at my arse?”

  “Doc, I mean it,” Levi snaps, downing the rest of his whisky.

  “Forgive me—Brie, is it?”

  “Non, Brie is what this bastard calls me.” I point to Levi. “It�
�s Mademoiselle Kagawa to you.”

  “Oh, baby, my clients would eat you up.” He puts extra emphasis on the word eat. It’s disgusting.

  “Your clients could never afford me,” I stare at Levi, wondering who these people are and what they are doing with his cock.

  “It’s true, you couldn’t afford her. She’s costing me fifty large, and I only get her for the week.”

  Doc steps back and fishes something out of his pocket—a business card. He hands it to me. I stare at the arrogant logo done in red, white, and blue. Why America thinks they own the French Tricolore is beyond me.

  Doc Dong.

  Perverse Pleasure Products.

  There is a phone number, and a website on the front, and it finally dawns on me that Doc wants to pay me to cast my ... body.

  Never. Going. To. Happen.

  I try to hand it back to him, as I want nothing from this man—especially having come from so close to his crotch—but he just smiles, and presses my palm closed around it.

  I frown and walk around him, stopping as close to Levi as the cast—and the woman holding it—will allow. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Why not?” Levi shrugs. He reeks of liquor, and his eyes are bloodshot, but more than that, they are lonely. Margaux has already refilled his glass, and he lifts it to take another sip.

  I snatch it away from him and drink it myself. Wincing when the horrible taste hits my palette and the alcohol burns as it settles in my stomach. I am French. I drink a lot of wine for a single woman living in Paris—or maybe I drink because I am a single woman living in Paris—but I cannot stomach the hard liquor that Levi swallows as easily as water. “Are you really so vain that you want thousands of women to have sex with a replica of your penis? Because that is absurd, even for you.”

  “Careful, AFG, you’re starting to sound jealous.”

  I scoff. “I am not jealous. I am just curious as to why you would sell your cock for money, comme une pute?”