The Debt 7 (Club Alpha) (4 page)

He grabbed her wrist and pulled her down
onto his lap, and it worked out that she was facing out toward the rest of the
hotel room, and now she really was straddling him, giving him the lap dance
he’d requested.

The music was building in ferocity, and
she grinded her butt against Jake’s lap, feeling him stiffening and prodding
into her.
 
She moved herself on top
of him, throwing her head back as she felt the stimulation of his cock against
her pussy.

Jake’s hands slid up the front of her
dress and pulled her breasts loose, and as they popped out, she gasped audibly,
but continued riding him.

He slid his fingers over her nipples,
squeezing them, pulling her bra down.

As the music began to slow down again,
Raven suddenly realized that it wasn’t the drums that were making all the
noise.
 
Someone was knocking on
their
door, over and over again.

“Shit,” she cried out, turning to
Jake.
 
“Who’s that?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

She sprung away from him and started to
fix her dress.
 
She felt like a
teenager whose parents have just come home and caught her in the act with a boy
in her bedroom.

What if it was the hotel manager,
responding to a complaint?

What if it was someone from Club Alpha?

The knocks came louder, and now it was
like incessant pounding.
 
Jake was
on his feet and walking toward the door.
 
He peered into the keyhole and his shoulders relaxed, then hunched a
little, as if he’d seen something he didn’t like.

Jake turned to her.
 
“Just be cool,” he said.
 

She’d gotten everything tucked away, but
felt sweaty and rumpled.
 
“Be cool
about what?”

“We’ve got visitors.”
 
And then he was opening the door and two
people entered the room.
 
For a
moment, the first person to come through the door was so unexpected that Raven
didn’t recognize her at first.

But then her brain adjusted to the fact
that female pop star Courtney Taylor had just randomly shown up to Jake’s hotel
room.
 
Following right behind her
was a slender man in a dark leather coat and dark pants, thinning hair that was
still expensively styled and gelled.
 

“Nice pad,” Courtney said, as she came
inside like she owned the place.
 
Her honey blond hair spilled down around her shoulders and her lips
pouted effortlessly as she spotted Raven.

“Jake, good to see you,” the man said,
offering his hand, and Jake reluctantly shook it.

“Nobody told me you were coming to see
me,” Jake said, his tone wary, as he closed the door and watched Courtney
twirling around the room.

She was wearing a flowing blue dress,
boots, and she had a long scarf wrapped around her neck.
 
“I missed you,” Courtney told him, stopping
her movement briefly to give him a cute yet reproachful look.

She’s
flirting with him
, Raven
thought, her stomach souring.

“Hi, pleasure to meet you,” the man said,
now offering his hand to Raven.
 
He
smiled and she noticed his teeth were a little crooked and one of his eyes was
slightly off center.
 
“You must be
Raven,” he announced.

“Yes,” she said, shaking hands with
him.
 
His skin was soft and smooth
and almost slippery.

Raven felt like he knew what they’d been
doing just as he’d been outside the hotel room knocking, as he gave her an even
wider grin.
 
“My name is Sander
Edwards the third, and I’m with the label.”

“He’s the president of the label, to be
precise,” Jake said, watching Sander with a cautious expression.

“Just thought we should pop on by,”
Sander said, stuffing his hands in his pants pockets and rocking back slightly
on his heels.
 
“After all, you’ve
sort of disappeared and left us a bit in the lurch.”
 
He said this with a wide smile, as if it
was something enjoyable and even worthy of praise.

“Yeah, well…things have gotten very
complicated recently,”
Jake
said.

Courtney was back to gliding around the
room.
 
“What are you doing in here
all day, holed up by yourselves?” she asked, wrinkling her nose a little.
 
“Don’t you get bored?”

“We haven’t been here that long,” Raven
told her.

Jake shot
Raven
a warning glance, as Courtney’s eyes narrowed.
 
“So where have you been, then?
 
Because nobody seems to have a clue.”

Jake scratched his jaw.
 
“I’ve had a lot to deal with
recently.
 
It’s nothing I can really
talk about—it’s personal.”

“Oh, personal,” Courtney said, nodding as
if that explained everything.
 
She
peeked through the partially open bedroom door as she went by it.

“I heard from your lawyer a few hours ago,”
Sander said, moving closer to Jake.
 
“He mentioned something about you wanting to postpone the tour
indefinitely.”

Courtney broke into the
conversation.
 
“And then I talked to
Sander and I assured him that Jake Novak would never do that to us, wouldn’t
screw us and all his fans and the promoters—the Jake Novak
I know
wouldn’t just run out on his
commitments,” Courtney said, stopping to look at Raven as she said this.

You
barely even know him
,
Raven thought.

Raven felt as though the accusation was
that somehow this was all her doing.
 
She looked to Jake and then
back
to
Courtney.
 
“Jake makes his own
choices,” she said, her throat tight, anger starting to boil in her chest.

“I would hope so,” Courtney said,
blinking innocently.
 

Jake glanced at the floor as he
spoke.
 
“The thing is, as painful as
it’s going to be, I’ve decided not to continue with my tour.”
 
He finally looked up at Sander, who was
smiling still, as if it was frozen on his face.

“Painful?” Sander asked.
 
“Painful for whom?”

“For everyone,” Jake said, still looking
at him.

Suddenly, Courtney began laughing
hysterically.
 
She was shaking her
head and laughing so hard that it became awkward listening to her.
 

“Is something funny?” Raven asked her,
feeling like she truly wanted to slap the girl’s obnoxious face.

“This has to be a joke.
 
Jake, please tell me you’re putting us
on right now.”

“It’s not a joke,” he replied evenly.

“Look, whatever’s going on with you,”
Sander told him, “all you need to do is ask for my help.
 
We can take care of this, Jake.
 
We’ve always been good to you, haven’t
we?”

“You’ve been fine, Sander.”

Sander’s smile faded for the first
time.
 
“I hope I don’t need to
explain to you that we’ve got an ironclad contract, Jake.
 
You’re a smart man.”

“I’m not continuing the tour.
 
I can’t do it anymore.”

Courtney was staring at him now, and the
good-natured pretense had drained from her expression.
 
She looked more like some kind of feral
dog, her nostrils flared, eyes wide with a desperate expression of need and
fear and mistrust.

“I want to show you something,” she said
in a low voice, taking out her cell phone and quickly hitting the touch
screen.
 
She walked close to where
Jake was standing, and handed her phone to him.

Jake took it, a puzzled expression
crossing his features.
 
“I see it,”
he told her.

“That’s our video—the one of us
singing together.
 
Do you see how
many views it has?” she asked.

He nodded, shrugging.
 
“So?”

“So,” she said, “
it
’s
got almost two hundred million views.”
 
She leaned close to him and began touching her cell phone as he held it.

Raven hated how she was brushing her bare
arm against Jake’s arm, her beautiful hair grazing Jake’s shoulder.
 
He was giving her a sidelong glance, and
Raven wondered if he was perhaps remembering how stunningly pretty and
seductive Courtney Taylor was in the flesh.

Was he thinking how she might look out of
those clothes, laid out on his bed?
 
Raven tried to shake off her fear and insecurities.
 

Jake
loves me.

“Now what am I supposed to be seeing?”
Jake asked, a bit of impatience creeping into his voice.

“That’s your most recent music video from
your solo album,” she replied.
 
“Look at how many views it has, Jake.”

He frowned.
 
“Eighty three million.”

“Not even half of what we got together,
with some silly little video that was shot by an amateur.”

Raven felt herself grimace, since
Courtney was referring to her.
 
She’d been the one to shoot that video.
 
She was the one that Courtney was calling
an “amateur” dismissively.
 
But
Raven kept her mouth shut for the moment.

Jake handed Courtney back her phone.
 
“I’m not sure I get the point,” he
said.
 

“The point should be obvious,” Sander
told him.

“The point is that you and I are a great
team,” Courtney said.
 
“Don’t you
see the potential of this tour?
 
For
both of us?”

Jake shook his head.
 
“It’s not about that.”

“Then what is it about?” she said.
 
“Do you think you’re too big to fall,
Jake?
 
Are you really as arrogant as
everyone’s saying you are?”

“If you thought you were going to come
here and change my mind by showing me some YouTube videos, you were mistaken.”

“I’m trying to help you avoid making the
biggest mistake of your life,” she said.
 
“You and I can go back out on tour tomorrow and sell out every venue in
the country, in the world.
 
We can
make it fun again, Jake.
 
My new
single is blowing up all over Europe and Japan—“

“You’re going to have a wonderful
career,” Jake told her softly.
 
“But
I don’t want that kind of career anymore.”

She threw up her hands.
 
“There’s no talking sense to him!
 
He doesn’t realize that he needs me way
more than I need him.”

Raven couldn’t keep quiet anymore.
 
“How many views does your last video
have on its own, Courtney?”

Courtney spun and glared at her.
 
“You should know better than to involve
yourself in the business of successful people who actually create art, who actually
do things.”

“It’s a simple question,” Raven
said.
 

“And you’re simply not worth my time,”
Courtney said.
 
“I’m putting you on
ignore.”
 
She turned back to Jake.

Raven took out her own cell phone and
looked up the video herself.
 
“You’ve got two million views on your latest video, Courtney.
 
Correct me if I’m wrong, but two million
is way less than eighty-three million.
 
Like, Jake could probably film himself eating a hamburger and get more
views than your latest single did.”

“Fuck you,” Courtney said, turning to
face her again.
 
“You dumb skank,
you have no idea what you’re doing here.
 
You think you’re helping him?
 
Do you actually believe this is all going to work out and you and Jake
are going to live happily ever after?”

Raven smiled sweetly, even though inside
she was furious and a little afraid.
 
“That’s exactly what I think, Court.”

Shortening her name seemed to enrage
Courtney all the more.
 
She pointed
a long, witchlike finger at Raven.
 
“You must be stupider than I ever gave you credit for.
 
Jake’s not going to want anything or
anyone to remind him of the mess he’s made of his life.
 
And after he hits rock bottom and loses
his fortune and career and everything he worked so hard to build—the very
last thing he’s going to want to do is see your face everyday.
 
The face of the woman who caused his
entire life to fall apart.”