Exclusive Contract (6 page)

Carter was still protesting as Kent led him into the bathroom, ordered him to wash his face, drink some water, and go to bed. I stood in the small living room, feeling awkward. The house was just like any other house—pretty messy, but nothing like the disaster I'd imagined after the horror of the rehearsal loft—and I had to remind myself that the Lonely Kings were still on their way up. Their names may be everywhere on everyone's lips, but they were still new. Whatever money they were making was only just now starting to trickle in as everyone took their cut off the top. Still, the house was pretty big for Cali. Real estate was still grossly expensive here as opposed to where I grew up.

Reasoning that the house was now, for all intents and purposes,
my
home for the time being, I set my things down and collapsed on the couch. I closed my eyes for a moment.

Kent's hand on my shoulder, shaking me gently woke me, and I jerked out of a shallow slumber to see him standing over me, giving me a tired smile.

“Thought you might like to use the bedroom instead since you've been sleeping on a couch for a week,” he said.

“It was a lot longer than a week,” I said. “It just wasn't the same couch the whole time.”

“Surfing,” he said, nodding sagely. “Well, come on. The guest room is yours now.”

He picked up one trash bag and I hefted the other, following him down the hallway to the last room at the end. Together we heaved my bags in through the door, and I walked in, surveying the place.

A nice bed, covered in the ugliest orange and lime comforter I'd ever seen, stood against one wall. An easy chair and a dresser with a TV on it also decorated the room. It smelled a little musty and disused, but I didn't mind. It was clean, and a bedroom, and I could finally, finally
sleep.

“Yeah,” I said. “This is nice. Thank you.”

Behind me, Kent cleared his throat. Then, abruptly, he said: “Rebecca. We can't touch each other again. Now that you're here, you have to be focused on Carter completely.”

I almost protested that it wasn't
me
that was doing all the handsy shit, but when I whirled around to confront him I stopped.

He actually looked sad. Contrite. His shoulders, normally so hard and set, drooped slightly.
A heavy weight,
I thought, not for the first time. He had heavy weights to bear, and now I did, too. He'd hired me to help him, not go crazy all over his cock. I had a feeling he was telling
himself
as much as me that we needed to concentrate on Carter.

After a moment, I nodded. “Okay.”

If anything, his shoulders drooped further. “Can you get yourself settled?” he asked.

I gave him a little smile. “I'm a big girl. When I have to be.”

He nodded. “Good. You'll have to be.” He turned to go, then paused and looked back at me. “Rebecca?”

I raised my brows, telling him to go on.

He hesitated. “Thank you,” he finally said. Then he turned and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

I stripped down in silence, turned out the light, and got into bed, suddenly too tired to even look for my pajamas. I crawled between the sheets and was asleep in seconds.

––––––––

I
n the early morning hours I awoke, terrified.

Panic reigned, and for a long moment I forgot where I was. I was no stranger to waking up in strange places, so that part didn't bother me. It had all been a part of my life with Jason, whenever we ran out of money. Some nights I even slept at the bar. There was a cot in the back for drunks too wasted to go home, but me—I usually didn't have a home. Sometimes I was in a strange bed, or sleeping on a strange floor, or in the back seat of a car or on a couch in a house I didn't recognize. I'd woken many places before, so that did not scare me.

No, the terrifying thing was the sudden fear that I was back there, back in time, dating a washed-up wannabe rocker, treading water, scraping for the next rent check and failing and moving on.

What scared me was not waking up in a strange place; what scared me was the thought that I was not
done
waking up in strange places.

I sat straight up in the bed, panting, my eyes darting wildly about the room.

There was a figure in the doorway, and for a second my heart leaped straight into my throat.

Good thing, too, because it blocked the scream that threatened to break free there.

“It's me.”

Kent. The band, the contract, the new house.

And of course it was Kent. Who else would be so audacious as to sneak into my new room right after he told me we needed to keep our hands off each other?

I remembered I was naked and snatched the sheet to my chest.

“What are you doing in here?” I hissed. “Didn't you just tell me we had to stop touching each other?” I couldn't see his face. In the darkness of the room he was a hole cut in the world.

He shook his head. “I didn't come here for that.”

I stared at him, not buying it, and he appeared to have a brief attack of conscience. “Well,” he amended, “not entirely.”

“Then what
are
you doing in here?” I demanded.

He spread his hands. “You were crying,” he said simply.

My mouth dropped. “Crying?” I said. “I wasn't crying.”

“Our rooms are very close,” he replied. “The head of your bed meets mine. I thought I heard you weeping...”

The revelation that he had set me up in a room literally next to his freaked me out, but not enough to override his insistence that I had been
crying
of all things. I'd been dreaming, but I couldn't remember what it had been about. Surely not something so bad it made me cry.

I brought a hand to my face, just to reassure myself, and I was startled when my hand came away wet.

“Oh,” I said after a moment. “I guess I was crying.”

“May I come in?” he asked. His voice was gentle, nothing like the hard-ass business man that I'd first met, nothing like the pushy, sexual rock god who loved to eat pussy and wanted nothing more than to fuck me until I screamed his name. This Kent was... sweet.
This must be the caretaker Kent,
I realized,
the one that's worrying himself into his grave over his baby brother.

“Um,” I said. “Yeah. Sure.”

He walked further into the room, his steps slow and sure. A small easy chair sat in the corner next to the window, and when he reached it the small glow coming from the streetlamps down the street lit his face very softly through the curtains. Sitting down, he stretched out lazily. He wore only a sleeveless undershirt and a pair of pajama bottoms. “Rebecca,” he said.

I swallowed and waited. I loved the sound of my name on his lips. It sounded like something he wanted to eat, a delicate dish he was ordering at a restaurant.

“Rebecca, I'm sorry.”

I blinked. “I'd never expected him to say
that.
“What do you mean?” I asked him.

The thin line of light falling against his cheek and jaw bent supply, a sign of his teeth clenching. “I mean,” he said, “that I've been taking advantage of you. Sexually.”

A tiny snort escaped me, and he shifted. “What's so funny?”

I shook my head. “Nothing,” I said. “I mean, I guess you could say you've been doing that. But it's not like I'm not a willing participant.”

His sharp intake of breath told me that he hadn't been quite sure, and I realized that while he had been preoccupied with keeping his hands off of me, there had been a fear in the back of his mind that I may have been under duress. I needed a job, after all, and he was in a position of power over me.

“I suppose that is true,” he said after a moment. “It's still inappropriate. I was attracted to you the first moment I saw you. I thought the airplane could scratch the itch, and, if you were the right candidate for the job, then there would be no further trouble...” He cleared his throat. “That's obviously not the case.”

My heart was beating faster and faster, adrenaline spiking in my veins. My core was wet and my breasts suddenly felt heavy, anchors weighing me down. The need to touch myself, to touch him, was almost shocking. I clenched my hands tight. “So?” I said.

He sighed. “So now you're an employee. I decided that I would make you Carter's girlfriend because it solved a number of problems for him, and for me. For him, it would give him someone who could look after him, keep him in line while I try to help him launch his career in film. Keep him in line before he falls off the deep end... And I told the rest of the band you were his real girlfriend because it was the perfect incentive to stay away from you. After all, if everyone thinks it's real... and anyone got wind that I was hung up on my brother's girl... that would be disastrous.”

“Would it?” I asked him. “Would it really? The publicity would be great.”

In the dim light, I saw him shake his head. “No. That's just it. The Lonely Kings are always in the news, always on the blogs. We're wild children. That image isn't bad for rock stars, but Carter... he needs something to challenge him. He's never been challenged by his guitar, or by his songs and writing ability. I thought if I could get him an acting gig he might stabilize. But the sorts of roles he's up for, in teen flicks with vampires and fairies and werewolves and things, he needs to be healthier. More wholesome. No one is going to want to let their teenage girl go to a movie starring Carter Hudson, the Red Carpet Shitter.”

I gasped. “Did he?” I'd seen the piss photos and Kent was right. Carter needed to shape up his image if he wanted to get into the kinds of films that would make him a star.

Kent shook his head. “No,” he said, sounding almost rueful, “but the fact that you just had to ask me that shows how far I have to go to rehabilitate him.”

This was tough and I wasn't quite sure how to put it delicately. “Does... does Carter want to be rehabilitated?” I asked.

He was silent for a long moment. “I don't know,” he said finally. “I know he's having problems. I can't get him to tell me about them, though. And he drinks and parties to make those problems go away, but they keep getting worse and worse and worse...”

Kent trailed off. In the dimness, I could see his whole body tensing up, curling in on itself. It had been a long night, and it was going to be a long day tomorrow. He was tired. Any idiot could see that. He'd been dragging the band into stardom with his own two hands for years now, and he was probably ready to drop.

Weirdly, I felt sorry for him. Not for the riches or the fame or any of that other stuff, but for the poverty of his life away from it. He was a workaholic, and his work included trying to wrangle three unruly children who had the freedom of adults. He was strong. I'd seen his will at work. I'd seen how good he was at not giving a fuck to get a job done. But that sort of thing can take a toll on a man. No wonder he gravitated to me. I didn't know why he thought I was attractive, but attraction is a weird thing. If he got his tension out with sex, then he was probably working his way through a couple of years of backlog.

I dropped the sheet.

Immediately Kent stiffened in his seat. “We shouldn't...” he said.

I shook my head. “We don't have to touch to have a nice time,” I told him. “The more the merrier, right?”

I saw his eyes glitter in the light of the streetlamp. “Maybe.”

My hands trembled. I'd never been so audacious before, but Kent got under my skin. Slowly I peeled the sheets away from my naked body and heard his sharp intake of breath in the stillness. Licking my lips, I parted my legs and let my shaking hands wander down my body, over my belly, through the soft thatch of pubic hair on my mound, and down in between my pussy lips.

I was wet, slick and hot, like a jungle. Kent's breath picked up as I slowly dragged moisture over my hard little clit, my other hand wandering up to play with one nipple. I gave it a pinch and I squeaked, my hips twisting and jerking at the sensation, and then I began to play with my pussy in earnest.

“Christ,” Kent muttered, and from the corner of my eye I saw him move. I turned to see him reaching into the slit at the front of his pj bottoms, and in the dark of the room he pulled out his enormous cock.

God, he was huge. I knew it from our airplane encounter, but now I could fully appreciate it, standing tall and proud and heavy in the soft light streaming in through the window. I spread my pussy with my fingers and began to give my clit the quick, tight circles I knew would bring me to climax in a few minutes.

Kent's long-fingered hand began to stroke his cock.

Make that less than a minute.

Our breathing began to match up, pulsing in time with our frantic ministrations. My core tightened as I watched Kent stroke his shaft, and his glittering eyes raked over my naked body. I twisted and turned, my feet finding the mattress and pushing up into my hand. I bit my lip, tiny moans escaping from my throat as I fondled my breasts.

“Jesus, Rebecca,” Kent said. “Jesus,
Jesus...”

I forced myself to turn and watch him as his hips started thrusting into his fist. Beneath the thin white cotton of his undershirt his perfectly sculpted abs contracted and relaxed as he fell into the rhythm of pleasure. Gleaming beads of precum escaped his cock, making the soft head gleam in the dimness as he swirled his palm over the glans. I wondered if it tasted as good as it looked—dark and sweet and thick.

The sad thought—that this might be the last time we could do something like this together—flashed in and out of my mind like lightning. It was weird. I didn't know Kent. It was all hormones and stress and desperation between us, a way to relieve pressure, but I couldn't help but think that there could have been something more there. At the very least, the sex would have been molten hot. I wanted it badly. So, so badly.

But I couldn't. He was right. We had jobs to do, we were now boss and employee, and now he sat across the room, a thousand miles away, stroking his cock and watching me play with my cunt, feeling each other only in our imaginations.

How big would he be in me? Would he touch all the secret parts, the sweet, soft places that ached for him? Would he be quick, or take his time? Would his hips twist, would he grind against my clit, would the bulbous head of his cock pull and plunge in completely, or would he move in tight, quick thrusts? Would he, could he, what would his body feel like, all whip-cord muscles and rough, calloused fingers, teeth and tongue and hard and thick and
oh—