by Victoria Fox
‘I want your cock,’ she moaned, clasping his ass and bringing him closer, though he pulled away, taunting her, forcing her into desperation. ‘Now!’ she howled.
Bodies slick, their skin soldered with suction, Cindy’s hands crossed her boss’s belly, finding the coarse trail that ran from his navel to his groin and then to the head of his penis. She wrapped her fingers round its width and drew from them both a groan of desire, using her wrist to bring him off. Finally she raised her knees and pulled him inside, driving him in and out, back and forth, locked with him at their most essential point, the burn of the room almost unbearable as the parched air scorched her throat and she began to feel light-headed, delirious and dehydrated but totally ready to come.
‘Oh, yeah, big boy!’ she cried, thinking she had never been so wet inside and out, dripping and sodden and slipping around on the bench so that if it weren’t for Jax’s weight pinning her down she’d have slid on her back right across the floor. Treating her lover to his favourite bonus, though he never admitted it after the fact, she clasped him to her and slipped her index finger inside his asshole. With a guttural, repressed cry, Jax tensed around her and bucked to ejaculation, squeezing and grinding through her till he was spent.
‘Jesus fuck,’ he mumbled, rolling off her. Cindy let the spasms rock through her, one after the other, and reached to touch him but he sprang to his feet.
‘I need a drink.’
Jax tugged on the door—and again, and again. It didn’t budge.
‘What the…?’ Using his whole weight, he dragged again. Something was stuck.
‘What’s the matter?’ Cindy whined.
He grunted, giving it a haul.
‘Jax, Mr Jackson, sir…?’
‘What d’you think’s the damn matter?’ There was a reedy edge to Jax’s voice, a shade close to panic. ‘Freakin’ door’s got jammed.’
Cindy rose to his aid but he threw her off. The oxygen burned in her lungs.
‘I’m roasting to death in here,’ she wigged. ‘Do something!’
‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ he lashed, jerking the sauna door, and, when it failed to give, slamming his bulk against it repeatedly. ‘We’re trapped!’
Cindy whimpered. ‘Oh my God.’ Frantically she doused the coals in water, sending a puff of searing mist rising into the chamber.
‘What the hell are we gonna drink now?’ Jax spluttered, drips flying off his lip. ‘You just made the place three times hotter, you dumb cunt!’
‘Oh God,’ Cindy said again, hunched over the benches, wheezing for breath. ‘We’re going to die. We’re going to roast in our own skins!’
‘Quit freaking, that’s what panic buttons are for.’ Jax punched the red panel with an open palm, blinking beads off his eyelids. The coals hissed and steamed.
‘Who’s going to hear it?’ Cindy was gasping, dread stealing what air she was able to take in. ‘We’re in your basement, Mr Jax Jackson, Jax, sir! We’re the only ones here!’
Jax watched the blinking light. A muscle clenched in his jaw.
‘Shit.’
‘What do you mean, shit?’ she shrieked. ‘Come up with something!’
‘Shut your pie-hole, bitch!’ Jax warned. He slumped down, his back against the wall. ‘I’m gonna sue whatever sons of whores installed this joke.’
‘If we ever get out!’
‘Save your breath,’ he huffed, ‘you’re gonna need it.’ But they were both still panting from having screwed so hard and his words fell on deaf ears.
‘Nobody knows we’re here,’ Cindy squeaked. ‘How long can we survive?’
Jax suppressed a flourish of fear, stamping it out before it caught hold. He was a champion, a superhero, and not being able to open a bastard door wouldn’t be the end! Imagine! What a way for the titan to go, locked naked in his own goddamn sauna with his own goddamn secretary. How would the world recover? It was unthinkable. He pictured the paramedics recovering his slack-skinned body, flaccid as an over-boiled ham.
‘Don’t move,’ advised Jax, standing and inflating his chest, ‘conserve energy. Stay low, heat rises. I’m gonna get us out of here.’
Cindy started crying. She lifted the empty jug and sucked desperately at the dregs of water before collapsing on the floor. ‘I’m going to be sick.’
The thought of slipping about in baked vomit galvanised Jax into a second bout of action. ‘Come on!’ he roared, smashing against the door and wrenching the handle with all his might. ‘Come on, you fuck!’ He punched the wall, cracking his knuckles. ‘Damn!’
‘Isn’t there an axe or something?’
‘An axe?’
‘We’ll have to smash through. Why isn’t there an emergency axe?’
‘I’m gonna smash you through if you don’t shut your cake-hole; you’re trippin’ me out, girl, chill the hell down.’
‘Chill? I wish! We’re cooking!’ Cindy surrendered to full-blown panic. ‘We’re going to die, don’t you get it? We’re going to die!’
‘Wait.’ Jax lifted his head. ‘I hear somethin’.’
Silence—then, yes, distant voices, female voices, coming closer…
‘HELP!’ Cindy shouted, leaping up. ‘HELP US!’ She battered the door with her fists, so that when it suddenly opened she went hurtling, naked, through, sprawled and weeping.
‘Oh,’ said one of their visitors, ‘it’s you again.’
Jax squinted. ‘What…?’ he spluttered through his sweat and relief. ‘Kristin?’
What was she doing here?
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Interrupting, by the looks of things.’ Kristin was carefree and casual in a white tee and denim shorts, her blonde hair in a topknot and her limbs long and tanned. Immediately Jax forgot all about his brush with death and returned his attention to his dick.
‘You just saved our lives.’ Cindy was scrabbling up, gasping her appreciation and clamping her hands ineffectively across her modesty.
‘That’s lucky,’ said a new voice.
To Jax’s considerable alarm Turquoise da Luca stepped into view. She looked like a goddess, all dark green eyes and ebony hair, her tits beautifully round in a peach silk vest.
‘What’s going on?’ he demanded, feeling faintly worried.
‘You’re going to do me a favour, Jax,’ said Turquoise. ‘And I’d say you owe me right about now, wouldn’t you?’
57
Scotty Valentine’s first public appearance since his sexuality exploded stole the headline slot on a late-night news show. Speaking out about the scandal was deemed by management to be the only way forward: with luck they could spin it towards a generation of young fans who were carving their own identities and would welcome a positive, unafraid role model. In an ideal world they would sever ties to Fenton Fear and play Scotty as the victim, but since the label had as much to lose through Fenton’s conviction as they did through the expiration of their number-one boy band, there wasn’t a great deal of choice.
Millions would be tuning in to see the biggest heartthrob of twenty-first-century music account for the deception. Some believed Scotty had tricked their youngsters in an unforgivable way; others questioned whether that wasn’t the nature of fantasy, gay or straight, and pitied the poor boy who was compelled to toss his private life to the lions.
Right now the poor boy was bolted to the make-up chair, his knuckles white as they gripped the armrests. Given that Scotty hadn’t left his apartment in weeks, not only did he have to contend with the horror and humiliation of laying his intimate secrets bare (he’d been briefed in every feasible question and had prepared his responses, each as evasive as the last), but he was also wrestling with agoraphobia. Every so often the ropes he had shackled it with sprang free and he thought he was going to faint.
‘You feeling OK?’ asked the make-up girl as she slathered foundation around his sunken eyes. ‘It’ll go great, Scott,’ she said kindly. ‘You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.’
He
gulped. ‘I look like death.’
‘Not once I’ve finished with you.’ Though he noticed she didn’t dispute it.
It was agony waiting in the green room for the other panellists to speak. One was a politician and the other a comedian, the idea being to capture a cross section of society that would give fair representation to whatever debate had been sparked that week. But Scotty understood he was no sideline commentator, he was at the centre of this examination and the audience and the nation were only killing time before the main event.
He wasn’t even used to making these appearances all by himself. He’d always had Fraternity to bounce off, five of them together, and he endured a searing bolt of loneliness.
Live TV…Was there anything more petrifying?
‘Now our next guest has been at the centre of a storm of controversy,’ their chair announced, seamlessly changing into a lower, graver gear. Scotty consulted the time and saw that there was still an hour remaining: clearly this would be no surface-skimming interview.
‘Scott Valentine has ducked out of the limelight since an exposé destroyed squeaky-clean boy band Fraternity.’ People had long ago stopped calling him Scotty: he didn’t warrant the cute factor any more. ‘Here, at last, choosing The State Show to give his first candid conference, Scott answers those questions you’ve all been burning to ask. Please welcome him generously—’ the chair stood up and the cameras swung round ‘—it’s Scott Valentine!’
Scotty very nearly scrammed, and had to be manually shoved on to the stage by a producer. Instantly the lights were blinding and the audience’s yells rang hollow in his ears. Even if he freaked out, he figured, and buckled like a weirdo to the floor, there was no way his image could be any worse than it already was. The realisation was strangely freeing.
The chair didn’t take his hand; he embraced him, patting him solidly on the back. The audience continued to clap despite the cue telling them to stop. A cry rose up from the audience—’We love you, Scotty!’—followed by yet more whoops and yells.
He thought he might cry. Perhaps there was hope, after all.
Kristin sat back on her sister’s bed and tuned into The State Show, just in time to see Scotty take to the stage and face the performance of his life.
Her ex-boyfriend looked pale and fraught, but just on the right side of disagreeable to remain appealing, in the way that only the handsome sufferer can. Directly above the plasma screen was a torn poster of the man himself, pinned up lovingly by Bunny, bronze-skinned and smiling. What a difference a year made. If her sister were here, what would she think?
Bunny’s room had been cleared. Many of her belongings had been sold and the proceeds given to an animal charity (Kristin’s suggestion), but her spirit remained and it was soothing to be in the space her sister had spent so much time in. Bunny’s more expensive possessions had stayed with Ramona, who was moving out of her mourning-mom phase in suspicious tandem with the wrap of the TV documentary. Her mother had jetted south to Hawaii, claiming she needed time out, but managing to tip off several contacts to ensure she was photographed on a beach reading a self-help book and looking gloriously thin in a bikini.
‘I can’t lie,’ Scotty was saying. ‘The facts speak for themselves. I should never have pretended to be someone I wasn’t. I accept responsibility.’
But had he been in love with Fenton? Had it been a fully-fledged relationship?
‘I’m afraid I can’t discuss that.’ Scotty was composed, his every utterance rehearsed and analysed by a military PR team. ‘Fenton and I grew close over a number of months and neither of us were thinking clearly. That’s all I can say.’
‘Fenton’s been arrested. Are you happy?’
‘I can’t talk about that, I’m sorry.’
‘Should he be in prison?’
‘Like I said, I can’t talk about that today.’
The panellists were doing their job but they would never get the juice no matter how hard they pressed. These were the lines Scotty had been given. Fenton was still languishing in jail, as much to pacify an army of irate moms across America who felt he somehow posed a menace to their misled, heartbroken daughters (more to the point, their sons?) as on any criminal suspicion. It would buy Scotty time to get the public back on side and to weave whichever story he chose without fear of it being countered. The tack was to wheel out the same phrases, refuse to meet on the same points but to seem genuinely apologetic about doing so, and to appear frank and willing without actually giving much away.
‘Are you gay?’ the comedian asked, in trademark style tight to the point.
‘Yes.’ Scotty didn’t shy away from that question. ‘But that isn’t the mistake I made. Being gay is no mistake. The mistake I made was in lying to my fans. My fans are the most important people to me in the world. Without them, I’m nothing.’
‘Why did you conceal it?’
‘It was the hardest thing I ever did. When I decided to come on this show I promised myself I’d be me, not the idea of me or the boy-band fantasy or whoever that was, but just be me. So that’s what you get…just a guy. And I’m sitting here now telling you it was tough. I was dealing with a lot of confusion, a lot of feelings and stuff I didn’t know what to do with. Anyone who has struggled with his or her sexuality will identify. It can’t be suppressed, however much you try. And I tried.’ He ran a hand through his hair, still as beautiful as ever, and gave a wry laugh. ‘I had girlfriends and I figured I loved them but it never felt…I don’t know, it never felt right. Then the band got big, bigger than anyone expected, and the whole thing spun away. There was never going to be a right time to do what I needed to…Ever.’
For the first time since they’d split, Kristin felt a twinge of sympathy, untainted by envy or resentment or bitterness, just a pure tug of understanding.
‘And Fenton made it easier?’ the chair pressed, sensing Scotty’s guard was down.
‘Obviously people are going to want to talk about Fenton,’ he replied, ‘but I can’t. I’m really not allowed to talk about him right now.’
‘He must have helped you, guided you…?’
‘I arrived at this decision by myself.’
‘And he helped with the loneliness?’
‘It is a lonely thing. Anyone who’s been through it will tell you. That’s why I want to speak out instead of hiding away. There’s a whole heap of expectation, from family, from friends, and in my case from the public as a whole. Holding your hands up and saying who you are takes a lot of guts and if I can do it then I hope to inspire others…’
Kristin killed the channel and the screen extinguished to black. She’d heard enough.
Swinging her legs off the bed, she unpinned the poster of Scotty tacked to the wall, folded it carefully and placed it in the trash. She closed her eyes and breathed in through her nose, believing against all reason that she could still detect Bunny’s fragrance and hairspray and all the sticky-sugar products that had defined her life: sickly, intoxicating, hated, adored, the bitter-sweetness that would always be associated with her sister.
Downstairs she took a couple of calls, one from her manager about her upcoming appearance at the ETV Platinum Awards—the ceremony was taking place in July at LA’s Palisades Grand Arena: as the music industry’s flagship, broadcast to millions across the globe, it was a coup to be asked to take to the stage—and a second about her album design. The new material was a far cry from the whimsical naivety of her early efforts: this was harder, raw to the bone, a coming of age that for the first time expressed who Kristin really was. It had taken her through the Scotty break-up, through Bunny and her mother and the split with Jax, finally an expression of who she had become. She loved it.
She smiled when she thought of his name. Jax Jackson.
What a fool he was. Giving Turquoise Jax’s ultra-protected private address and accompanying her to see him had been a pleasure. In Italy Turquoise had given nothing away, but assured Kristin that she too had a cross to bear—and Jax owed her
big style.
It was time Jax faced up to responsibility. And if he were put in a delicate position (though any more delicate than his sauna stunt was difficult to imagine) then the more the better. He was a cheat and a liar. Men like Jax warranted everything they had coming.
On cue a magazine cover, discarded on the kitchen counter by her mom, caught Kristin’s eye. Jax was topless, his tattoos a wreath around his neck, an undiluted challenge in his dead-straight gaze to the camera. The headline read: IS THIS MAN BULLETPROOF? She picked it up. Inside, a six-page spread dominated on Jax and his archrival Leon Sway: the athletes were gearing up to the summer Championships.
‘The Olympic sprinter is naturally aggressive,’ the article read. ‘He needs to be wild when he gets out on to the track, ready to kill if he needs to. Like an animal unleashed after months in a cage, it’s the force and the fury that will carry him to the finish; he’s got to be fired up, ready to burst with pent-up frustration, so that by the day of the race he’s so pumped he’s ready to attack—and attack he will. That frustration can be attributed to one thing: testosterone. Athletes need the hormone in bucket-loads to perform, and months ahead of a major championship they’ll be sworn off sex until after the event—when they’ll really let go. There’s no telling what these guys are capable of when they’re preparing for the track. Jax Jackson, the fastest man ever to have lived, is no exception.
Kristin closed the rag. Judging by the display she and Turquoise had witnessed, Jax was far from succeeding with the sex ban.
That was the problem, and precisely why his hours on the track were numbered.
Jax couldn’t resist, and that would surely be his downfall.
58
The penultimate leg of Robin’s tour took her to Las Vegas, where she was performing at the world-famous Orient Hotel. The hotel had been scene two years ago to the legendary Eastern Sky movie premiere, during which a stalker had broken security and gained access to its star Lana Falcon’s suite. Lana would have died were it not for the owner of the Orient, Robert St Louis, coming to her rescue. Today Lana and Robert were the sweethearts of Sin City. One look betrayed how happy they were: theirs was a true love story.