by Kelly Favor
The alcohol had had its intended outcome, although her eyes were watering a little from the burning in her throat after drinking so much so quickly. “I’m just not used to this type of party,” she said, finally.
“Not your scene?” he said, taking his beer and tossing a fifty-dollar bill onto the bar for the bartender, who exclaimed his thanks.
Good tippers were an instant turn-on for Raven, who’d been waiting tables ever since she’d left home at seventeen—and the really good tippers were rare where she came from.
“Fifty dollars for opening a bottle of beer?” she said, raising her eyebrows.
“Too little?” he said. “Fine, then.” He turned and dropped a one hundred dollar bill on the bar. “Compliments of my lady friend,” he told the bartender, whose eyes were now bigger than a pair of dinner plates.
Raven told herself to take a breath.
You’re standing here talking with Jake Novak, but it’s okay. He’s just a human being. He’s no different than anyone else. He’s just a human being. Remember that.
But when she tried to meet Jake’s gaze, all of her big talk went out the window. Her legs shuddered, her mouth got even drier, her hand felt too weak to hold her drink. Because the truth was that Jake Novak wasn’t normal. He wasn’t just like everyone else, and standing this close to him brought that point home with absolute and devastating clarity.
She knew, just as everyone else knew, that Jake had gone into the marines and served two tours of duty in the Middle East right out of high school. He’d been in combat when other guys his age were doing keg stands and rushing fraternities.
What made the whole world fall in love with Jake had been not just his good looks and pop songs, but his life story. Everyone had heard about his beautiful fiancé who’d waited patiently for him as he fought overseas, only for her to get cancer, passing away just a few months after Jake had come home for good.
Standing there looking him in the eye, all of her knowledge about his life came crashing in on her. Despite what she’d said to Skylar about hating his movies and music, the truth was that she did love that dancing movie he’d done—it was called Jump In—and she’d watched it more times than she could count.
And she also had three of his singles on her iPod and played them over and over again whenever she went for her three-mile run in the park.
What made it all so much worse was that his physical presence made her want to get on her knees and beg him to have sex, just like Skylar had joked about doing.
Raven wasn’t that kind of girl and never had been—despite what some people might have claimed. But looking into his gorgeous brown eyes, seeing the fullness of his lips, the strength of his jaw, his styled short brown hair, and that muscular body bulging out of the fabric of his loose-fitting shirt…
Just fuck me, she thought, her emotions desperate. In the last four years, she hadn’t allowed herself to want anyone, to really picture herself with any man—and here she was picturing herself with the most wanted man on planet Earth.
Of course, the fact that she was a virgin might have complicated matters, but right then she didn’t particularly care.
“Where are you?” Jake asked her.
“Me? I’m right here, same as you.” She was surprised at how calm and almost arrogant her voice sounded in her own ears. She took a long sip from her drink.
“You looked like you were deep in thought just now,” he said.
“Well some of us do that,” Raven told him.
“Some of who do what?”
“Some of us girls do think,” she replied. It suddenly seemed that blistering sarcasm had become her best method of defense.
Jake stepped closer to her then, and she had the sudden urge to run her hands down his chest, to feel the tightness of his well-muscled torso, those washboard abs that had been featured on dozens of magazine covers.
She suddenly imagined herself lifting his shirt and licking his stomach, tasting his salty skin, and then unbuckling his belt…
“I get it,” Jake said, interrupting her bewildering fantasy.
“What do you get?” she said, trying not to sweat. She felt like he could read her mind, like he knew exactly what she’d just been picturing.
He smiled at her. “You’re frustrated.”
“Not at all.” She shook her head.
How can he tell?
“You sure about that?” he asked, smiling, his eyes seeming to pin her down and hold her.
“Maybe I am frustrated,” she allowed. “But then again, I bet you are too.”
He stepped closer to her yet again, and now she could actually feel his body heat and sense his strength, like some kind of wild animal. He reached out and softly touched her wrist, and it was like she’d been burnt by a flame. “You’re right,” he told her. “I do get frustrated with the same old parties, the same silly conversations, the same types of women wanting the same things from me.”
“It must be so hard for you,” Raven said, allowing the sarcasm to show.
Jake’s eyes narrowed a fraction. “It is hard,” he said. “Very hard.” He stared at her, and she found herself unable to even speak.
She was picturing doing more than unbuckling his belt, now. She was picturing sucking his perfectly hard cock, taking it in her mouth, doing things she’d never done to any man before.
Raven tried to make the images leave her mind, but she couldn’t. It was as if Jake Novak had taken control of her brain.
He smiled, like he knew exactly the images his words had triggered in her brain. “I think maybe you and I have more in common then you think,” he told her.
“I doubt that very much.”
“That’s too bad,” he said, sounding genuinely regretful. “I bet we could’ve had fun together.” And then he turned around and walked away.
As he left her, it was as though the sun had gone dark, as if all of the heat had been sucked from the room.
Raven felt so cold, so alone—and totally devastated.
What did you expect? She asked herself. Did you really think he was going to become your new best friend? The guy is the most famous, most powerful celebrity in the world who could have any woman he wanted.
But she wished she could have taken back that last sentence, when she’d said they had nothing in common. The truth was, she felt something pass between them, and it was something she’d never felt with anyone before.
Something she’d been waiting for her whole life, maybe, only she’d been too terrified to act on it. Instead, she’d chickened out and pushed him away.
She walked slowly back to where Skylar was waiting. “Oh my God, Raven! He spoke to you!”
“Yeah, and I spoke back,” she said, sighing.
“Don’t you even care?” Skylar said, aghast at Raven’s lackadaisical attitude.
Raven shrugged, not wanting to admit just how much she did care. She cared so much that it was like physical pain. For a brief moment, she’d felt such a connection, such chemistry between them…the way he’d looked at her, talked to her, the way the conversation had flowed, as if they knew one another intimately already.
Clearly, though, that was the effect that a man like Jake Novak had on the people he came into contact with—hence how he’d become bigger than Christian Bale and Justin Bieber rolled into one.
A little while later, as Raven continued to drink and pretend to ignore Jake Novak, the man with the tuxedo who’d let them into the party walked up beside her. “You need to come with me,” he said.
Raven looked at him, her brow furrowed. “Why? Did I do something wrong?”
“It’s a private matter,” he said, glancing from side to side as if to indicate that even this was too much public conversation for his tastes.
“Where are we going?”
“Just around the corner, it will take a minute or two at most,” the man told her.
For some reason, Raven decided to look over at Jake Novak in that moment, and she was shocked to find t
hat he was staring right at her again. It was like an electric shock through her system.
Had he sent this man to speak to her for some reason? She didn’t understand it, but at the same time, she wanted to know more.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Raven said.
Skylar was staring after her with wide eyes as the man in the tuxedo ushered her around the corner and into a small private room that he opened with a key.
The room was bare, except for some bookshelves and a desk and some art on the walls.
“I need you to sign some paperwork,” the man told her, turning his back to her and gathering what looked like an entire binder of material.
“Paperwork? For what?”
“A guest has expressed interest in speaking further with you,” he explained. “In order to make the guest comfortable, we have arranged for you to sign our standard non-disclosure agreement.”
Raven’s head was spinning. She knew that Jake Novak must have sent this man to speak to her, but she couldn’t believe they wanted her to sign paperwork just to have a conversation.
“This seems a little extreme,” she laughed. “I need to sign stuff just to talk to a guy at this party?”
The man in the tuxedo placed a stack of papers on the desk and handed her an expensive, heavy fountain pen. “Yes, you need to sign stuff to talk to a guy at this party. Especially this guy.”
“It’s going to take me a year to read all of this,” she said, trying to scan the document. On the very first line of the first page, in bold, it said:
CLUB ALPHA INTERNATIONAL STANDARD NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT
“You don’t have a year to read this,” the man said. “And you don’t have to sign it at all. But if you refuse, I’m going to have to ask you to leave the party.”
“Why?” she said, stepping back. “What’s the big deal?”
“It’s very simple. We make it possible for our very famous guests to engage in a relaxed environment without fear of their every word and deed being exploited for financial and political gain. In order to do that, we must at times make use of legally binding contracts.”
Raven was flipping through the astoundingly long contract, trying to make heads or tails of it, but it was no use. It might as well have been written in a foreign language.
“I can’t understand any of this.”
“As I explained, it’s a standard non-disclosure. Do you have any interest in selling the story of any conversation you might have tonight?”
“Selling it to who?”
“TMZ, People, US Weekly…”
“Of course not.”
“Then you shouldn’t have an issue signing this contract.”
Raven hovered over the contract, trying to figure out what to do. If Jake Novak had asked for this, then she wanted to do it. If that’s what it took to get more time with him, she was powerless to say no. But at the same time, she felt crazy for signing a contract that she couldn’t even understand.
Luckily, I’m just drunk enough not to care.
“Okay, show me where to sign,” she told him. “And hurry up before I change my damn mind.”
For the first time, the man in the tuxedo smiled at her. “Just a few places,” he said, and then began flipping through the contract. “Here. And here…and here…initials and date here.”
By the end, she might have been signing her life away.
The party continued, but the conversation with her mystery suitor never materialized.
Raven was vaguely drunk, dispirited, hanging around and trying not to keep looking over at Jake Novak, who had seemed to make a point of drifting from one girl to the next as he made the rounds.
Why isn’t he coming over to talk to me? I signed the stupid forms they wanted me to sign. Isn’t that what he was waiting for?
None of it made any sense to her.
Maybe some other rich man had been interested in her—but so far, nobody had approached, and the only she cared about was Jake Novak.
Each time he talked to a new woman, Raven felt the same sense of jealousy and fury and then shame for feeling those things.
And each time, she saw how the new woman reacted to him just as she’d done—Raven could easily see how attracted they were to him, how any one of them would have done just about anything to make him happy, make him choose them.
It was really sickening, and mostly Raven was embarrassed for herself.
I’m no different, no better than any of them, just as star struck, wishing that Jake had seen fit to want to talk longer with me, kiss me, give me his number.
But not anymore.
“Hey, I’m going to take off,” Raven told Skylar, having made her decision to call it a night. Maybe in the end it had been disappointing, but she could still call it a success overall.
Skylar looked at her. “It’s only a little past midnight. And you know who might still come over and talk to you again.”
“Actually it’s almost one o’clock and I don’t think anything else is going to happen.”
“But I thought I heard someone say that Matt Damon might show up later.”
“Well tell him I said hi, and that I loved him in Good Will Hunting.”
“Wait like one more hour and I’ll go with you,” Skylar said, still looking around, as if searching for the perfect guy.
“No can do,” Raven said. “I’m leaving now.”
“Okay. Well I’m going to hang here awhile more.” Skylar leaned in and they exchanged a quick peck on the cheek, and then Raven was walking out of the enormous hall and trying to remember how the hell to get out of this maze.
She took one twisting hallway after another—they all looked the same.
Finally, she came upon a set of doors that she could have sworn led to the giant staircase, and opening it, was shocked to find that she’d inadvertently wandered into someone’s bedroom.
There were three girls, all naked, and two of them were kissing each other while the third girl was giving a blowjob to a pot-bellied man wearing what looked like a king’s robe and a crown on his head.
Raven groaned, disgusted at what she’d inadvertently walked into.
And then she realized that two of the naked girls were from the group that she’d met up with earlier in the evening at the dance club. In fact, the one girl going giving the blowjob to “the king” was the very same girl who’d issued the invitation for Skylar and Raven to come to this party.
Stopping her blowjob for a second, she turned and looked at Raven with a seductive smile. “Want to play?” she purred.
She’s very friendly. I’ll give her that.
“Uh, no thanks. You kids have fun, though,” she said, backing away and shutting the door.
Her heart was hammering away in her chest, beating out a steady, fearful rhythm as she walked in the opposite direction.
Now she just wanted to get home, get out of this weird and creepy mansion and forget it had ever existed.
Whatever this whole thing was, she was glad to have experienced it so she could cross it off her list. This wasn’t for her—these people, these parties, these mansions.
She remembered once again why she’d stayed away from parties ever since high school. Nothing had changed since that horrible time when she was seventeen. Here she was, four years later, and the people had gotten older but their true natures were still the very same.
Raven shook her head, half of her wanting to laugh at it all while the other half wanted to cry.
Finally, she was able to retrace her steps and find the big stairway that led down to the first floor and the grand foyer, which was surprisingly quiet. The unsmiling tuxedoed man was standing with his hands behind his back, seemingly waiting, for what Raven had no idea.
“I’m leaving now,” she said. “Can I get my cell phone back?”
He knelt down next to the basket. “I believe you had the pink iPhone here,” he said, retrieving the very phone she’d dropped in hours before. He handed it to her with a brief smile.
“Thanks,” she said, holding it gingerly, as if it had been infected by some strange virus, sitting with those other cell phones for so long.
The man in the tuxedo didn’t smile, but his eyes were softer now. “Maybe you’ll come back and join us again sometime.”
“Somehow I doubt it.” As she was crossing the foyer to leave through the front door, someone called out to her from behind. At first, she thought it was the tuxedoed man again.
“Leaving us so soon?” came the familiar voice.
But when she spun, Raven saw none other than Jake Novak walking down the stairs after her.
She caught her breath and tried her best to act natural, as if this happened to her every day. “Yeah, well, it’s past my bedtime.”
“That’s too bad,” Jake said, still coming closer. “I was hoping we’d get more time together.”
Raven shrugged. “A girl can’t wait around all night.”
“Nobody asked you to wait around all night. I’m standing right here,” he said. “And so are you.” He walked another step closer, and now he was so near that Raven could see the stubble on his jaw, the flecks of green in his brown eyes, the small scar above his eyebrow.
“I should go,” she said, not even knowing why she was saying it. She wanted to talk to him, after all.
But now that the moment had arrived, she was indescribably frightened.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
She hesitated. “Why do you want to know?”
He laughed. “That’s a very strange response to a simple question.”
“Maybe I’m strange. I just…” she didn’t know what else to say. She was getting more and more scared as he kept watching her. If he’d kissed her instead, it might have been easier.
“What’s your name?” he asked again, insistent.
“Raven,” she told him.
“I like that name,” he said. “It suits you.”
“Well, I guess it would. It’s my name, after all.”
He reached out and brushed a strand of hair from her face. “You don’t take compliments very well,” he told her.
Raven could still feel the heat from his fingertips as they’d grazed her cheek.