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Strum Me

Page 4

by Allison, Ketley


  I jolt when fingers trail down my shoulder and play with my shirt collar.

  Mason’s hot breath coats my cheeks. “Say one word of this, Big Mack, and you’ll regret it.”

  Unable to resist, I meet his eyes, and I’m confronted with what I fear the most: emptiness. There’s nothing behind them. No savageness, anger, rage, or worry. Mason’s a shark in territorial waters, and he claims the ocean as his own.

  “I—I wasn’t going to,” I stutter.

  Mason tilts my chin up. His lips are close, so close that the skin under his eyes clues me in that he’s grinning. “Because you’re a good girl, right? A classy, stuck-up, rich snot who has no sense of survival.” He cocks his head. “Like right now, a scared, mousey girl, unable to stick up for herself because she’s so afraid of the big. Bad.” Snap.

  I flinch as he bites the air between us, nearly catching my lips in his teeth.

  Mason chuckles.

  “Wolf,” he finishes.

  “Mason, really,” Miss Lucas says. Now that her outfit is straightened, hair is smoothed, and second heel is found, she strolls over to us. “Threats aren’t the way to keep secrets around here.”

  “It is with her. Big Mack cows easily.” Mason laughs at his own joke.

  Miss Lucas grabs Mason’s arm to pull him out of my comfort zone and points to the seat beside me. “Last I checked, I’m still the teacher and you’re my student. Sit. Then I’ll tell you how this will go down.”

  Mason licks his top lip, sliding his gaze to mine as his lean, muscular body folds into the neighboring chair. “See how I like my women, Big Mack? Strong, hot, and rough.”

  Miss Lucas ignores his comment. I thin my lips and keep staring at my desk.

  “McKenna, are you still looking to pad your extracurriculars for your college applications?” she asks.

  The question is so out of place that I glance up and answer. “Yes.”

  Miss Lucas nods. “Good, since I have the perfect solution. Take on another student to tutor in English.”

  I glance between Mason and Miss Lucas, noticing Mason’s deepening frown. “I, um … what?”

  “Look, kid,” Miss Lucas says, “All of our asses are on the line, here. If we all get something out of this, no one will want to speak up.”

  “I might.” Mason raises his hand. “Since you’ve been touching me inappropriately, Miss Lucas.”

  “You are going to end up back in my classroom next year, Mason, if your GPA doesn’t rise. McKenna can do that for you.”

  “Can’t you do it for me?” Mason asks with a buttery smile. “Cheat my grades a little? Then I’ll eat you out just the way—”

  If anyone wants to get out of this school and never, ever come back, it’s me, in this moment. Forever. I’m desperate to bolt out of this chair, but smart enough to know that these two will chase me down relentlessly until they’re sure their secret is safe. Well, Miss Lucas would. I doubt Mason cares how this scenario will play out.

  I’m not so sure about Mason and his motives, but what I am sure about is, “I can’t tutor him, Miss Lucas.”

  “Yes. You can,” Miss Lucas says. “Because doctoring his grades in any other way would cast too much suspicion. If you do, and Mason’s grades become passable and believable, I’ll also become one of your personal references in your application. My father is a Yale alumni, which I know is your top choice. I’ll even get him to write something out for you.” Miss Lucas leans her palms on my desk. “If you do this for me and pretend you saw nothing, anything you need will happen for you. Do you understand?”

  Mason scoffs beside me, his arms crossed. He’s glaring so hard, the side of my head might as well crack like a raw egg.

  What’s worse, I have the astonishing urge to explain myself to him.

  “I’m not accepting any handouts,” I say, though it’s unclear who I’m addressing. “I don’t want or need favorable treatment. I won’t say anything, okay? I won’t. If you’ll leave me alone, I’ll leave you guys alone. Okay?”

  “Is that a threat, rich bitch?” Mason asks.

  I jolt. “What? No!”

  “‘Cause I ain’t ever leaving you alone. Not until the first day of summer, and even then, I may not want to give you up so easily.”

  I seethe through my teeth. “I’m not tutoring him, Miss Lucas!”

  “You are,” she says, then turns away from the both of us. “Because I need the assurance, too. That’s the last I’m going to hear of it.”

  Who has the power in this scenario? Shouldn’t it be me? I could go to the principal right now and—

  “Don’t even think about it,” Mason mutters beside me. “I will make your life such absolute hell if you narc.”

  With my bottom lip trembling, I retort, “Maybe I don’t care anymore and I’m tired of being pushed around—”

  Mason gets up and swipes my paperback off my desk. He fans through once, musing, “Hmm,” before he opens the book to a random page and shoves it down his pants.

  “Uh. Uh, oh, yeah,” he says while grinding against the pages, his gaze drilling into mine.

  With one side of his mouth tilting up, he pulls the book from his pants and flings it at me. It hits me square in the chest, and I instinctively fumble to catch it.

  “Since you’ll never get good dick in real life,” he says as he stands, “I figure I might as well have you smell it on those fake-ass men of yours.”

  Mason strides to the back of the classroom and flops into his regular seat right as the rest of the class funnels in.

  I bite down hard. Swallow against the hot swell in my throat. Fight through any threat of tears.

  Mason will not see me fall.

  With trembling hands, I stick the book I was so looking forward to reading back in my bag, resolving to return it to the library as soon as this horrible class is over.

  I hate Mason Payne.

  Hate him more than anything.

  6

  McKenna

  My keys jangle against the marble kitchen counter as I toss them across the room, and my clutch follows suit.

  I strip my clothes off as I walk down my hallway and into the master bathroom, desperate to get the filth off me.

  Naked, I step up to the sink, throwing my hands under cold tap water and washing, washing, washing.

  When I look up, I lock eyes with myself in the mirror, and my lips part.

  Jane Landers is no longer. The girl staring back at me is McKenna Beckley, with messy auburn-brown hair, red-rimmed green eyes, and a freckled, pert nose with cheeks that are swollen from held-in emotional turmoil.

  I hate this girl.

  Ridding myself of McKenna, the prissy, wimpy, mouse of a human who barely squeaked enough to speak up for herself was the best thing I ever did.

  To see her come back tonight is the worst feeling in the world.

  All because of two men.

  Granted, Giles is worth being frightened of. He’s the reason I’m turning my shower to scalding and scraping away at the top layer of my skin like there’s healing to be found underneath. His money sits in my purse, collecting dread like interest the longer I don’t do anything with it.

  But Mason? Mason shouldn’t bring this out in me. He’s nothing but a high school bully I fell in love with who ended up breaking my heart so badly, many small pieces are still scattered across our hometown.

  And now, ten years later, he wants to pay for my company.

  The guy who guilelessly made fun of my lack of sex appeal, my virginity, my curves for god’s sake, wants me to remain in his presence for at least eight weeks for an exorbitant amount of money, for reasons or motives yet to be revealed.

  Ugh. The fact I’m considering it makes me almost as stupid as I was when I had sex with him for the first time.

  Yet … it might be an offer I can’t refuse. There could be a way out of this Giles mess that doesn’t include me being forever subservient to that asshole. Maybe I could use Mason’s cash to pay off Giles and make
him go away for good. Maybe I don’t have to turn into Giles’s money laundering lackey.

  Maybe I can escape, use Mason as my jumping point, and never come back to Giles or New York City.

  I’m a professional at making a new name for myself.

  The idea of bunking with Mason brings forth a strange wash of feeling, similar to the beginnings of our relationship where he was so mean, yet my body responded to his magnetism and utter confidence. If he wanted me naked and willing underneath him, he’d get me there.

  Even now, when I saw him tonight, zaps and zings hit my skin with sensitive, erotic accuracy.

  Disgusted with myself, I towel off with rough swipes. I dismiss the flutter in my heart as one of the holes Mason left behind leaking air.

  There are more important issues to consider.

  For one, how in the hell Mason Payne found Jane Landers’s current location.

  Throwing on a thin robe, my damp hair falling thick and heavy down my back, I pad into the kitchen and pull my phone out of my clutch, tapping the screen until I find my Safe Number.

  She picks up on the second ring. “Dude, you’re fifteen minutes late in calling me. I was two seconds away from alerting the police.”

  “I know,” I say as I slide onto a stool, my elbows resting on the counter. “It was a rough one, Dee.”

  Deonne Warwick’s voice rises. “Seriously? You okay?”

  “He wasn’t a good egg.” I rub my eyes with my free hand. “I feel like I barely got out…”

  “But the references! The girls before! They’re not liars. We know them, we’re familiar with their client list.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “Turns out, Johns can be great actors when they’re working toward a particular goal.”

  I hear Dee smacking gum between her teeth as she thinks. “You’re saying that goal was you?”

  “He wants something from me. And he’s willing to blackmail and threaten to get it.”

  “Jesus. Usually we just blacklist the guy so no girls worth their salt in this city go near him ever again. But I guess that can’t work in this scenario.”

  “No.” I sigh. “It can’t. But I’m figuring it out. Hey, did you get a phone call today? About where I was?”

  Pause. More gum chewing. “I might’ve.”

  “Dee.” I smack my forehead. “What is the one rule we have for each other?”

  “Never give out our locations unless in an emergency. I know, I know, but you realize who FaceTimed me, right? Who was right in my fucking phone talking to me?”

  I gesture wildly with my free hand. “What if he wanted to know where I was so he could kill me?”

  Smack, smack, smack. “You’re saying Mason ‘Fuck Me Eyes’ Payne, three time Grammy winner and part of the most famous rockband in the world, an A-list celeb, wants to kill you?”

  “No! But that doesn’t mean I want him to know where I am!”

  “Why the fuck not? I get the secrecy. I mean, if he were my client I’d sew my pussy shut and open it only for him—”

  “Good God, he is not one of my clients.”

  “That’s not what he said.”

  I’m close to a migraine. I can feel it. “He told you he’s a client of mine?”

  “Yeah, and that you were owed money from last time. He was only here for one night, he said, so timing was an issue. If he didn’t give it to you now, you wouldn’t get your payment for another eight weeks. And girl, we need our money. That’s all I was thinking when I gave him your address. Not to mention he’s famous and I recorded the entire thing just in case he did show up there to kill you.”

  It’s difficult, with a raging headache and the night I’ve had, to parse through Dee’s words, yet I’ve figured out the following: Mason knows my current occupation, my call girl name Jane Landers, and how to get in touch with my emergency contact when I’m out on a job.

  How did he figure all this out after running into me at a bar one night?

  My forehead smooths as I answer my own question. Because he’s known longer than a chance encounter. Mason had the time to look me up, research me, and find me.

  But … why?

  “Dee, I’m pissed at you.”

  “Fine, but at least fuck that gorgeous piece senseless and then be pissed at me.”

  Unable to stay still anymore, I rise and pace the kitchen. “Mason Payne offered me two hundred and fifty grand to go on tour with him for eight weeks.”

  “He what?”

  Choking and sputtering follows Dee’s words.

  “Dee, you okay?”

  “Sorry.” More coughing. “Swallowed my gum. You have to go, Mack.”

  “It’s an irresistible offer, I agree. But with our history, and the threats from tonight’s client, I…”

  “You need to get out. Now. We only have ourselves. There’s no agency backing us, no pimp. If this John is truly scaring the life out of you, what better way to hide than in plain sight with a giant rock band and their entire public posse for two months? This guy can’t touch you there.”

  “He can touch me when I get back,” I say softly. He can get to my dad.

  “By then, you’ll have figured this out. If it’s money he wants, you’ll have tons of it. If it’s you he’s after—well, you know how to disappear. We have a failsafe for this. You’re gonna be okay, Mack.”

  I’ve been alone for a long time. I’m a pro at taking care of myself. And unlike what Mason was so sure of when we were in high school, I’m a survivor.

  My clutch lays open on the counter, the wad of bills spilling out of the envelope they were stuffed in.

  I was Mason’s ticket out when we were seniors.

  Now, he might need to be mine.

  7

  Mason

  The world sucks.

  According to the flat screen TV in our hotel suite, war would get us before climate change, but that doesn’t mean I should disregard the utter shit that is reality TV from turning every human brain into mush before nuclear bombs ever get the chance.

  Muttering, I toss the remote control to the side. A resultant grunt tells me I’ve hit my mark.

  “Dude, you know I’m here, you know I’m a solid mass, do not throw heavy objects at my ass when I’m half-asleep,” my bandmate, Wyn, says.

  He rolls over on the velvet couch, one leg hanging off the sofa as he lands on his back with a sigh.

  “There’s a one-hundred percent chance I’ll be following that up with the stereo system,” I say.

  Wyn frowns, his eyes remaining closed. “Relax, man. This is meant to be our time to rest before our tour starts. Need more weed? I think there’s some over there.”

  Wyn gestures vaguely to the circular table in the corner of our expansive room, where two women in tight, braless tops and mini-skirts snort and drink.

  It’s a hard one to gauge, but whether I’m less impressed with the girls Wyn brought home or the crowd of managers, agents, executives and other corporate types that will soon be invading our hotel room, is something I have to think about.

  Wyn cracks an eye open. “One of those chicks is for you. Or both for me. You decide.”

  I check the time on my watch. “You can barely get your ass off that couch. What makes you think you have the energy for a threesome?”

  Wyn grabs his crotch and grins as he calls, “Ladies! My man has given me a dare and methinks I’d like to accept it. Care to escort me to my room?”

  The two girls laugh softly at each other, then toddle over to our section of the suite. One grazes her hand across my shoulder as she passes. “You sure you don’t want to join, sugar? I don’t mind two swords in a fight.”

  I wait for my dick to twitch. My balls to stiffen. Hell, I’ll settle for increased saliva to coat my mouth.

  Nothing happens.

  “I’m good,” I say before tossing back a cool swig of beer.

  The girl moves to Wyn. He throws an arm around each, sends me a wink, then heads to his private bedroom.

  “Rex s
hould be back soon, after he’s done sucking face with Harper,” Wyn says. Once he’s at the entrance to his bedroom, he adds over his shoulder, “Don’t tell him I said that. Last thing I need is him punching me in my money-maker before we make our tour rounds.”

  “Wouldn’t want to mar that gorgeous jawline of yours,” I say while staring out the floor-to-ceiling windows.

  “Damn straight.”

  The door clicks shut, and the sound of feminine laughter quickly fades to moans.

  I lay the empty beer bottle on its side, idly spinning it on the table as I slouch in the sofa chair and wonder what the fuck happened.

  Our dreams have been reached. Nocturne Court’s band of merry vagabonds, Rex, Wyn, Easton, and me, made it out of high school—some without graduating—and scrimped, scraped, begged and stole to get to the position we’re in now. We dealt with seedy bars and seedier managers ripping us off in the beginning, chicks throwing up on us when we played on $1 shot nights, fists and brawls from guys who thought they were better than us, because somehow, our ability to play instruments pissed them off, broken bones, stomped-on pride, and a whole lot of facial fractures. All with empty pockets.

  Despite all that and taking those years of effort straight to the bank, I feel I haven’t moved an inch.

  Rex is busy saying goodbye to his girl and spending time with his daughter before we leave. Easton is occupied with his wife and stepson, opting to forego our hotel suite entirely, and Wyn … Wyn is a perpetual reminder that I’m the same dude I was in high school, just with a lot more money and bigger bedrooms.

  Mostly surrounded by drugs, hot chicks, threesomes, foursomes, orgasms, money, and music.

  How I always wanted it, right?

  Eighteen-year-old me would’ve bitten off heads to get where I am now. He may not have imbibed in the copious amount of coke and opiates on the table, but he definitely would’ve taken the the free pussy going around.

  I should be thankful I’m alone in this room before all the fuckery starts and the endless demands begin. Instead, I’m disappointed that my guys aren’t here for our traditional hotel room drinkfest before the tour kicks off.

 

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