Always Box Set

by Ward, Susan

  I cut off my thoughts and whirl to face the band. They are already sprawled on the dingy sofas, swilling booze from bottles…as if they weren’t already drunk before they left stage…and look ready to bolt out of here to take advantage of all the eager band whores in the hallway.

  I arch a brow. “Where did the big cock go?”

  Len Rowan grabs his crotch and laughs. “There’s more than enough cock right here for you, Linda.”

  I roll my eyes. “All four of you combined wouldn’t even be a six-inch cock.” I exhale and will myself calm. “Where is Manny?”

  “Putting it to someone, love,” Kenny Jones jeers, staring at me in that are you jealous, Linda kind of way.

  I make a face. “Pigs. You guys are pigs.”

  They all laugh. Whoever said Brits are gentlemen is a liar. Brits from the street are like Americans from the hood. Rough. Crude. Assholes. That’s what these guys are. Hoodlums with guitars and miserable accents I can barely decipher.

  Well, all of them except Alan Manzone. I haven’t quite figured him out, not even after two months here. He’s as vulgar as the rest of them, though he has that sexy British voice that makes you think tea and cucumber sandwiches. He behaves as coarsely as Kenny does, and Kenny is beyond disgusting. And Alan’s exploits captured by the tabloids are beyond colorful. The British tabloids are obsessed with him and he’s not even famous.

  Well, not yet. Jeez, the kid is brilliant at self-promotion. Though I’m positive he doesn’t even work at that. Not with his looks or his musical genius. If this band has a shot in hell of making it into the big time, it’s because of Alan Manzone. I look at the guys loitering in the room. What the fuck is he doing with this group of peckerwoods? Marginal musicians at best. But Manny is incredible—even if he is a full-blown prick 24 hours a day.

  There is something about Alan Manzone that’s different. Inescapable. Ever present. Elusive to define. He radiates stardom and he hasn’t done crap yet. One album. Brilliant. Successful in the UK and Europe, but nothing in the States. And a band isn’t anything until they’ve caught on in America so these guys are pretty much slugging it out in that hungry, working desperately to be recognized, unknown state.

  All of them except Alan Manzone. I don’t know what it is about this guy, but it doesn’t feel like I know him or have even met the real Alan yet, for all that he does spend a healthy amount of time trying to get into my pants.

  Shit, it’s probably a bet between the guys to see which one of them can nail me first. Trying to hit on me is all these miserable jerks do every minute of the day. Toy with Linda. Flirt with Linda. Piss off Linda. Touch Linda. Let’s see who can bag Linda first. Repulsive. Why are guys so repulsive?

  After a quick shudder, I fight to reorganize in my head what I’m supposed to tell them. I take my neatly organized daily planner from my leather satchel.

  “Listen up,” I say loudly in a dismal effort to quiet the room. I stare at them, lips tight and anger fully flashing. Len notices me first and then slaps Jimmy to settle down. “Tomorrow morning, there’s an early car. Pick up is 10 a.m. and if you want to complain, do it to Arnie. A fucking manager should know better than an early call after a performance. I am not open for complaints. You have an interview with an American entertainment program. Try to be human. Try not to be you. This is for American TV. And then we all get a four-day break, hopefully from each other and with none of you landing in jail.”

  Before they can say anything, I turn away and shove my calendar back into my satchel. I put on my coat and I can hear the guys starting to move about the room.

  “Are we free, love?” Len asks.

  Ah, just the right amount of mocking mixed with grudging obedience.

  I clench my teeth. “Of course you’re free. If you charged so much as a penny for you, it would be theft.”

  Len laughs. I turn to say my goodbyes. They’ve all already forgotten about me. Crud, Jimmy is nude and on his way to the showers. Hello, there’s a lady here!

  I start to move toward the door and Len hurries to catch me. “What have you got going on tonight, Linda?” he asks.

  I smile stiffly. “A book. A glass of wine. And not you, jerkoff.”

  Len laughs. “If you would stop toying with me, love, I wouldn’t have to jerk off.”

  He gives me a wolfish, paradoxically sweet grin, and I fight not to smile. He’s a good-hearted guy. Not like the rest of them. Not really. The bullshit I think is on the surface, maybe just to fit in.

  I wiggle the fingers of my left hand and do a jacking off motion. “Good to keep the digits exercised. It might improve your playing.”

  “Ah, so you tease me and get me hot for the sake of the music.”

  I sink my teeth into my lower lip. “Something like that. And I don’t tease you.”

  He touches my cheek with a finger. “You do by repeatedly telling me no and wearing such tight jeans.”

  I roll my eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself. You wouldn’t know what to do if I said yes.”

  He laughs again.

  This time I smile. “Good night, Len. You guys were terrific tonight.”

  I pass quickly through the door and into the crowded corridor. Manny, should I find Manny? Or just say fuck it and head back to the hotel?

  I run my hand through my curls in a familiar manner, suddenly remembering that I’ve cut the long locks into a blunt, more dramatic style. What made me do that? I miss my hair. Since leaving Jack and arriving in London I’ve done more than a few completely random things.

  The hair. The tattoo. The freaking piercing in my brow. How stupid. Trying to make myself trendy will never make me fit in here, and I definitely don’t really want to fit in with these guys.

  My eyes disobey my will and fix on the giant pansy boldly and permanently on my wrist. Jeez, I wonder what Jack is going to think of that when he sees it. He loves it when my look is natural, and I’ve turned my body into the poster child of desperate girl wanting to fit in.

  Grrr…lame, Linda, definitely lame.

  I cringe at the memory of each of Jeanette’s disapproving looks after the latest alteration to my formerly valley girl style. God, why am still roommates with Jeanette? By the time we graduated USC, I could hardly stand her. And yet, here I am, in the UK, enrolled in the very same intensive writing graduate program and sharing a flat with her.

  I definitely need therapy. And crap, I should definitely find Manny before I cut out for the night. My ass will be grass if he’s not at the hotel for the car pickup. My job may be assistant road manager, but Sandy Harris made it clear my job was to keep Alan Manzone on a leash.

  A handler. Fuck, how do they expect anyone to handle Alan? I start ticking off facts from the label’s investigation report of him. Genius mind. Musical prodigy. Vulgar weakness for drugs and women.

  Boy, they didn’t get that one wrong. If the kid makes it to twenty-six without frying his brains or using up his body it will be no less than a miracle.

  Brilliant musician. Former Oscar-winning child star. Now, that one surprised me. How the fuck did he bury that interesting tidbit about himself so well, never to be recovered? And why did he bury it? He’s already famous. That would be an enormous help in his long-range musical plans. But that history is forbidden to be spoken, ever. No one knows outside of Alan and the label executives and the investigators. Not even the band knows he used to be Alfie Wells.

  I navigate through the bodies still lingering in the corridor, poking my head into rooms. I hate being a handler and I suck at it. He handles me. Another room. Nope, not there. He’s probably not even still at the auditorium.

  “Nice show, Linda,” I hear from behind me as I’m patted on my back.

  I turn and stop, coming face-to-face with a reporter. Ah, press.

  I muster my press smile. “The guys really tore it up on stage tonight,” I say. I remember my talking points. “Alan Manzone is the most brilliant guitarist of the last fifty years. T
he label is all in with this kid.”

  Ronald Blake rolls his eyes. “Tell me something I can’t read in a press brief, Linda. Who is this guy? Where the fuck did he come from? Why won’t anyone talk about his history?”

  I tilt my head slightly to the side and give him a pointed stare. “Because they’d rather make history. Mark my words. By this time next year the entire world will know who Blackpoll is. Stop looking in the rearview mirror, Ronny. You’ll miss the show.”

  He laughs. “Give me something, Linda.”

  I shrug. “I don’t have anything to give. There’s no story there.”

  I continue making my way down the corridor.

  “There is always a story, Linda.”

  I look over my shoulder, smiling. “Then write one. Don’t ask me to do it for you.”

  He shakes his head and I disappear into the throng near the exit. I pause at security. “Have you seen Manny?”

  Jenkins shakes his head, amused. “What? You’ve lost him again?”

  “I didn’t lose him. He disappeared. There’s a difference.”

  “Not to Sandy Harris or the label.”

  Inwardly I cringe. Does every member of the road crew and security know what my real job is? I choose to ignore that one. “Have you seen him?”

  “Left the second he came off stage. Fancy chauffeur-driven car waiting for him at the door. Not unoccupied, mind you. Two lovelies tonight.”

  Oh crud. The kid is going to fuck himself to death and the women flock to him like bees to honey, more than willing to let him. Self-destruction by fornication. Crud.

  I fight to keep my reaction from my face. “Thank you. You could have just told me that instead of giving me shit.”

  That he ignores.

  I push my way through the doors, step out into the damp air and instantly start to shiver. Shit, why don’t I own a single coat that can do battle against this? I tug my collar high up to my chin and tighten my arms around my body in a poor effort not to freeze to death.

  Jeez, I’m from Southern California. What the hell am I doing here? Why can’t it be sunny and dry year-round like in LA?

  I spot the car waiting by the curb, open the door and climb in. “Take me back to the hotel,” I order.

  Phil stares at me. “We’re not waiting for the band?”

  “You can come back for them.”

  I turn to stare out the window as if the issue is resolved. The car starts and we pull away from the curb. At least Phil is afraid of me and does what I tell him to.

  At the hotel, I climb out of the backseat before the doorman can open my door. Shit, I’m American. I can open my own damn door.

  I cut through the lobby, and enter the elevator.

  “What floor, Miss?” the attendant asks.

  “Third.”

  Jesus. Why did I say that? Manny’s floor, not mine. I shake my head as I feel the elevator start to move. You know why, Linda. It’s your job to keep close tabs on him.

  I close my eyes and will myself not to panic. Let him be in his room tonight. It will make it so much easier to make sure he’s here when the car arrives in the morning.

  The doors open and I step out, feeling a touch of dread. Alan Manzone hates the press. He’s probably a hundred miles from here.

  Reluctantly, I knock on the door. I wait. Nothing. I knock again. Fuck. I rummage through my bag for his room key. He’s nineteen years old. He doesn’t need someone doing a bed check. Why the fuck did they give me a key to his room and why the fuck do they expect me to do this?

  Scrunching up my face in apprehension, I slip the key into the lock and slowly ease open the door.

  God, I loathe doing this.

  I quietly step into the room, close the door and turn. My heart stills and everything starts to flash in disjointed images. The groans force me to look in his direction and the sight of Alan Manzone naked on the bed renders me flat against the door.

  I know there is more than him in the room, but for a time-stopping second that has the feel of eternity, I can’t focus on anything else.

  Jesus Christ, I’ve not seen him totally nude before—I’ve seen the chest, the arms, below the thighs, but not all of it in one showing—and nothing could have prepared me for what my mind only suspected. Tousled black hair, long limbed body, glistening rich olive skin. I feel my flesh rapidly heat. He’s only nineteen. He shouldn’t look this way. The height and muscled fullness of a man.

  Then my vision widens and I wish I could drop through the floor. Two blond lovelies. Models, by the looks of them. One with her mouth hovering over his cock and another riding his face. They seem oblivious to me…well, the girls do, but oh, not him.

  Something changed in the room when I looked at the bed. Something radiated from him and shot through my veins. He knows I’m here. He ignored my knocks on purpose. He knew I’d come in. He wanted me to see him doing this. Crap, his game with me—his subtle, relentless pursuit to get me into bed—has just taken a more perverse turn than even I expected.

  I feel the flash of my temper and it doesn’t do a damn thing for me. My mind is a blank. Like all things Alan, I stare and I can’t look away.

  His hand moves and I see it in a strange, slow motion kind of way. The elegant acts of his limbs are quiet, erotic, and seductive. Those long fingers lightly brush the ass of the beauty sitting on his face, and she begins to ride faster, moaning. His other hand moves to the girl giving him head, and with a lightness you can almost taste, his fingers dance through her hair.

  Perverse. Erotic. Seductive. Elegant. And gentle, somehow, gentle among the carnal.

  I hear the sound of his tongue flicking her clit, his face hidden by his long, wavy black hair and her thighs, and then him breathing into her when I can barely get breath into my chest. I fight my body’s reaction, but my sex ignores my will. I feel myself grow taut, pulsing and wet there.

  I’m about to slip out when he moves his face, his black eyes locking on my brown, and I’m frozen again. He doesn’t stop the moves of his pelvis, his flexing hips as he plunges into the girl’s mouth, the play of a hand where his tongue had been. The girls moan loader, climaxing as if by his will so it would happen in this moment he stares at me.

  The way he moves is mesmerizing, even in this. Fingers in cunt. Hips flexing in rhythm with the model deep-throating him. How the hell does a guy learn to fuck this way at nineteen?

  I start to turn back toward the door.

  “Don’t go. I enjoy you watching me.” Startled, I realize that low, raspy command was addressed to me. My eyes widen and Alan says, “Unless you’d prefer to join us.”

  Damn. I go from damp to dripping in my panties in a half-second, even though I know he’s messing with me, but the guy puts on one hell of a fuck show.

  Somehow, I manage to lift a brow. “Aha. I think you have all you can handle here.”

  As a response, that was pretty weak, but I tell myself not to be hard on myself. I doubt any woman could muster wittier words at this moment because the girl giving him a blowjob runs her mouth up the length of him, letting me get my first full view of the package as she flicks and runs her tongue.

  Jesus Christ, even that part of him is perfectly made.

  “The car is coming at ten in the morning,” I say firmly, enormously pleased that I sound unaffected when everything inside me is liquefying. “Be here. Don’t make me look for you.”

  I can tell by the change in his body, the huskiness of his moans, that he’s coming into the girl’s mouth. He didn’t even wait for me to completely finish my sentence to finish himself.

  I rush into the hallway, run to my room, and bolt the door behind me. I lean back against it, breathing rapidly, trying to quiet the alertness of my sex and the rapid pounding of my heart.

  If I had half a brain, I would have packed my bags and returned to California the day I met him. It’s only a matter of time before I go to bed with him. I know it and so does Alan. That�
�s why he toys with me. That’s why he let me see that. He knows whatever he does, it doesn’t matter. It won’t change what’s going to eventually happen between us.

  I knew it the first time I laid eyes on him. Some men have that power. They instantly ignite something feral in you, whether you want it or not, and the sexual electricity is always there, in every room and every moment, from the first time you see them. An inescapable web, swirling around you until you surrender. And at that point, they devour you.

  It was a revolting game he just played with me. Me watching him fuck them. I’m aroused and unnerved and I don’t want to be either. Alan Manzone unnerves me more than any guy I’ve ever met. And crap, he’s not even really a man yet.

  Two

  I sit on my bed and reach for my wineglass on the nightstand. I should be sleeping. Why am I studying this again?

  You know why, Linda. The flames may have cooled in your sex organs, but in the rest of you the Alan aftereffect is still going strong.

  My eyes carefully move from document to document neatly arranged in front of me. It doesn’t matter how I organize it, there are no answers here. I’ve read these reports a thousand times. If some insight into Alan existed in this I would have found it by now.

  I pick up a page, doing another fast scan as I run my lip along the rim of my wineglass. There is a chunk of Alan’s history missing. It jumps from child star to eighteen when he started popping up in some of London’s seedier clubs as lead guitar and front man for Blackpoll. Quickly signed by the label. First release a UK/European hit. A stint in rehab for a heroin addiction, and now here with me. But nothing from the age of ten until a year ago. Blank. Nada. Nil.

  How did he get from the posh side of town to the gutter, and why is this missing? Why does it bother me? And why do I care? He’s a job. Nothing more. Another two weeks and he won’t even be that.

  I check the clock. It’s after 2 a.m., but it’s early evening in California and I could definitely use a dose of Jack tonight.

  I grab the phone and request from the operator an overseas call and then give her Jack’s number. Crap, I hate that I can’t just dial direct, and I definitely don’t like that the charges of these calls are on a permanent record, even if it is only with my employer. The custody battle between Jack and Walter seems to reach a new low with each day. I can’t even imagine the direction it would take if Walter ever found out about me.