by Nigel May
As he’d made his way into the club earlier that evening a gang of Japanese girls had begun screaming at him. Their shrill tones hit his ears faster than a speeding bullet train but it was a sound Blair loved. It was the sound of an easy lay. The girls, in no more than their late teens or early twenties, were wearing the tightest of clothes and obviously had the loosest of morals. Their cute Japanese fashion sense screamed sweet Lolita, a riot of comic-book prints and fluffy edges, but there was nothing sweet, wide-eyed or innocent about these young women. As two Velvet bodyguards had moved Blair through the club to the DJ booth, the girls were all hands, rubbing their palms across his chest and face and venturing down to the growing mass between his legs. He clocked their faces and he knew that he would be seeing them later.
Towards the end of his set, as he looked up from his line of coke, the latest of many, he could see them dancing provocatively at the front of his DJ stage. His head spun as they looked up at him, enthralled by their god at the decks. They were in his domain. He did a quick head count: there seemed to be six in the group. He smiled and pointed down at them with one hand, fisting his hand in the air with the other. Even above the joy of the nineties classic ‘Finally’ pumping across the club he could hear their screams as he made eye contact with them, blissed out to the beat. If Blair had his way it wouldn’t be the last time he heard them scream tonight. There were still a few minutes before he needed to drop the last track of the night; he took off his headphones and spoke to one of the bodyguards, pointing to the women as he did so. The nodding of the man’s head showed that he had understood Blair’s evident meaning.
The rush of the coke hit Blair again as he slipped the headphones back on and lined up the final track. He’d spoken to loads of DJs who couldn’t handle coke during their sets, but Blair found it made him ride the wave of the evening with even more precision. The next song was one of his current set essentials – a track with a breakdown-into-drop combo that would send the crowd wild. He could sense it. The music layered the air, a fusion of expectation and wonderment as the tune filled the club. A heavy slab of beats sent the crowd to new heights before the beat dropped out altogether, leaving just the track vocal. The Lightsaber-bright strips of light angling across the club slowed down, bringing the pace of the audience down a notch: the calm before the final dramatic storm. They swept around the club, their only accompaniment the crowd’s giddy hope that musical salvation would come. The loops of the tune started building and Blair watched out from his stage, knowing that the night on the dance floor would end as he’d planned – on an incredible high. The beat dropped, the lights went crazy, strobes blanketing the dancers as a bank of CO2 cannons at the front of the stage fired across the space and the partygoers went wild, their climax complete. Blair held his hands aloft, screamed goodnight and bounded off the stage, the ringmaster of his own world and one who had satisfied every person on that dance floor.
An hour later, in his suite on the top floor of the Velvet Tokyo, overlooking the multi-coloured technological splendour of the Anime City billboards, it was a different kind of climax and satisfaction that was on Blair’s mind. As he held a coke spoon under his nose and snorted another steep pile of white powder up his nose, he watched as the cherry-red lips of one of the girls from the crowd worked their petite yet filthy way up and down his erect cock. One of the other girls lay naked alongside him, her fingers exploring the shaved space between her legs as she watched Blair take the drug. Of the six young women, four had come up to Blair’s suite. Two had dropped out, lost their nerve. Their loss, thought Blair, as he watched the girl nibble the end of his cock between her teeth before swooping it back into her mouth again. She took his full length, deep throating him. What was it about Japanese girls? They always seemed to be able to do that so well. He turned to face the girl alongside him and crushed his lips into hers, the taste of Japanese beer on her breath. He made sure all of the girls who came back to his room had more than their fair share of booze and drugs; it was all paid for by the hotel. Well, maybe not the drugs, but there was always a way to get around that, and he found that it loosened up his sexual partners even more.
The other two girls had already left, Blair having fucked one of them from behind in the bedroom while she feasted on her friend’s pussy. That was another thing Blair loved about girls from the Far East, they seemed to love a bit of girl-on-girl action. He’d sent them on their way as soon as he had finished, preferring to end the night with the other two, the prettiest as far as he was concerned. What was the word for cute that Japanese fans used about him all the time? Could you be cute at thirty-three? Apparently in Japan the answer was yes. Kawaii? Yeah. That was it. They were kawaii.
The girl working his cock with her mouth stopped what she was doing and looked up from between his legs. Blair was lying on his back on the huge suite couch, the other woman alongside him fingering herself. Both women looked at each other as if sharing some secret code. As the girl who had been fellating him moved into position over his erect cock and slid herself down onto it, parting her pussy lips as she did so, the other girl withdrew her fingers from her own sex and kneeled upright, straddling her legs either side of Blair’s head, facing the girl riding the DJ’s cock. As a rhapsodic Blair stared upwards into the woman’s sexual flower, she lowered herself onto his face. His tongue eagerly found her lips and parted them greedily, burying his head as deeply into her as he could. The taste filled his senses. The girl said something, maybe let out a scream of pleasure, Blair wasn’t sure. To him it was just a blur of noise, his head locked between her legs, her meaning lost in translation. The medley of the girls riding him simultaneously, one his mouth and the other his cock, was a double delight that even Blair hadn’t planned for. He could feel his excitement rising.
The young woman on his face lifted herself up slightly, her wetness sticking as she did so. For a moment the DJ caught sight of the two girls fondling each other’s small pert breasts as they rode him. The sight sent him wild with desire and he gave a few final thrusts, pounding into the Japanese girl’s pussy with force, his meaning clear. He tried to say he was coming, but his words were silenced by the other girl lowering her sex back onto his face. The intoxicating aroma of the space between her legs filled his nostrils again. Blair continued to lap as the girl working his cock pulled herself off him and took his cock in her hands, working the shaft as a hot fountain of thick liquid shot from his tip and landed across his stomach. The girl on his face rocked herself back and forth, her movements faster as she let herself climax as he did, the feel of his tongue on her tender flesh taking her over the edge. She let out a squeal of joy as she gave in to her own orgasm.
‘Fuck, I love Tokyo,’ said Blair as the two women collapsed alongside him on the sofa, a film of sweat coating their bodies. The two girls smiled up at him, happy that they had pleased their idol.
They weren’t so pleased an hour later when one of the bodyguards came to have them removed from Blair’s suite. The naked DJ, finally succumbing to a deep sleep despite the coke he’d taken, didn’t see a thing as the bodyguard ordered them to fetch their clothes and get out.
When Blair woke up eight hours later he couldn’t even remember them being there.
4
Max Stoneham took another sip of his ouzo and stared out across the port at the small fishing boats bobbing up and down with their daily catch. The slight breeze coming off the Aegean Sea was still warm despite it being early evening; the sun lingered in the sky for a final few moments before darkness threatened to replace it.
‘I’ll say one thing for your father, Heather, he sure can sniff out the most idyllic of places,’ he said, turning to his wife. ‘So he’s planning to build a Velvet hotel here if he can? Do you know where?’
Heather Stoneham placed the brochure she’d been reading on the restaurant table she was sharing with her husband of eighteen months and took his hand in hers. It was something that she did often. As far as she was concerned, the more she coul
d touch her beautiful husband the better. His wholesome high-school jock, Ken-doll appeal had not faded since she’d first met him at the age of sixteen. And now, eight years later, Max was still the only man who could truly make her heart flutter like one of the yellow-smudged Cleopatra butterflies she had been studying around their hotel pool earlier that afternoon. Heather adored the beauty of nature and when she and Max had been given the chance to visit the sleepy fishing town of Elounda in Crete, with its picturesque port, white buildings and unspoilt rustic charm, the free-spirited and romantic Heather had leapt at it.
Not that she didn’t wonder just how long the beauty of the place would stay intact given that her father, Sheridan Rivers, would be juggernauting his moneymaking, empire-building ways into Crete in just a few days’ time.
‘Knowing my father, he’ll probably decide to bulldoze a few churches, the ancient city of Knossos and enough arid mountain crags to make those cute little goats with their tinkly bells that leap around up there extinct for good. No amount of beautiful scenery and Grecian history has ever stopped him from doing exactly what he wants. Especially if there are dollars to be made.’ She squeezed Max’s hand and paused for a second before adding, ‘Those goats were just so pretty, weren’t they? I loved them. I’d ship half a dozen back to St Lucia with us if I could. They’d look beautiful trotting around the beach in front of our house.’
‘So why did Sheridan pick here?’ asked Max, the warmth of the air, the ouzo in his body and the passion in his wife’s voice filling him with joy. Though Heather was the youngest daughter of one of the most powerful hotel tycoons on earth, billion-dollar contracts and five-star luxuries meant nothing to her. Her joys were much simpler. Heather was all about nature and nurture. She was never happier than when she felt at one with the insects, animals, birds and beasts that inhabited her world. If it had wings, feathers, fur or scales then Heather would love it. She’d been like that ever since she was a child. While elder sister Nikki would ask Daddy for the most expensive of gifts, Heather would happily spend hours exploring rock pools for crabs and starfish, or sit for hours up a tree watching a maternal bird with her feathery brood. Her love of nature was one of the many things that Max adored her for. In their time together they had swum in the corals of Borneo among the rays and manatees, cared for monkeys in a Malaysian sanctuary and, though they had been in Crete for less than forty-eight hours, Heather had insisted they venture as close to the daredevil goats that leapt around the island’s steep mountainsides as possible. He and Heather had talked on many occasions of how one day they would love to open an animal refuge near their home in St Lucia. A place where their own children – they had already decided that they would like four or five, if possible – would learn about the beautiful balance of nature. In Heather’s world bills belonged to birds, not bars.
Heather was quick to answer: ‘The brochure said it all. This place is becoming a celebrity haunt and a relatively undiscovered one as yet. My father will have been tipped off that its popularity is about to explode on a massive scale and before you know it you’ll find Caitlyn Jenner sauntering through the port in a designer frock and the judges from Dancing with the Stars foxtrotting around the local ruins. Apparently Leonardo DiCaprio has already been and Lady Gaga spent a fortnight here. So the signs are there. If my father can see an opportunity for another lucrative pinpoint on the global Velvet map then he’ll be moving the diggers in before you can say “ouzo”.’
Heather pushed her empty glass towards Max as she finished her sentence. ‘Talking of which, fill me up, big boy! That drink is gorgeous. I love the anise flavour. I should insist on some ouzo cocktails at every Velvet bar from now on.’
Heather leant back in her chair and raised her face to the sky, feeling the last few rays of the sun kiss her olive skin before it bade farewell until the morning. She ran her hand through the mass of deep, dark curls that looped around her face. Her hair managed to achieve that beautiful blend of untamed yet somehow flawless style. It fell naturally and perfectly, the ultimate decoration to her colouring. It was another of the things that the wholesome Max loved about her. As he watched her close her eyes to bask in the fading heat, he filled her glass and realised that his life had been blessed the day that he had met Heather Rivers, as she was then. To him she was perfection, beautiful inside and out. He had no doubt one day, hopefully soon, their children would be a beautiful breed. With a mother like Heather how could they not be?
‘So when does your dad arrive?’ asked Max, pushing the glass back towards his wife.
‘In three days, I think. He and his assistant, Kassidy, are flying in. I don’t think mother’s coming, or Nikki, but you never know. I wish it was just you and me staying here. I could spend months in this place. It’s just so…’ Heather searched for the words, before plumping for ‘divinely sleepy’.
‘That would be great, but we have another week before I have to head back for work and as much as your family will always be a constant source of bizarre amusement and wonderment to me, as they are all the complete opposite to you, it will be good for us to spend a bit of time with them. Maybe we can persuade your dad that he doesn’t need to flatten every Greek taverna in Elounda to build another Velvet hotel. Maybe he can leave it just as it is.’
Heather laughed at the idiocy of Max’s suggestion, even though she knew he was joking. ‘Max Stoneham, you may be one of the most persuasive people I know, tempting people to part with their hard-earned cash in your job every day, but not even your ridiculously handsome face can tempt my father away from a bit of demolition if there’s a pay cheque with at least half a dozen zeroes on it around the next cobbled-street corner. Viewers may adore you but my father is not so easily swayed.’
Max was the golden-boy host of one of America’s biggest TV shopping networks. Since making his blue-eyed, blond-haired debut on the Florida-based channel just over three years ago, he had become as bright a star as the gemstones and glittery cardstock he sold on the channel as part of their Happy Holideals offers. Ladies from Alaska to Hawaii adored tuning in to see what delights their friendly-faced fox would be selling them next. Whether Max was flexing his muscles on a Pilates power gym or feasting on the fat-reduced culinary delights of a non-stick griddle, his power to sell seemed to be as wide as his smile and as big as his love for Heather. Although neither of them craved life in the trashy media spotlight of fame, when bids had flown in for the exclusive rights to the photos from their wedding day, they had both agreed to use the million-dollar payout as a charity donation for one of Heather’s animal causes. To them it made sense. Magazines and blogs called them ‘a new breed of celebrities with a conscience’. Haters on Facebook and Twitter called them ‘do-gooders playing the charity card’. But Heather and Max didn’t care. Heather had been born into money and Max had earned enough through his TV work and endorsements to secure the couple homes in St Lucia, New York and Florida. Swanky sound systems and walk-in wardrobes were all well and good, but to them what made a house a home was love, and they certainly had that in their hearts. It was something that they considered priceless, and a love that they hoped to share one day in the not-too-distant future with a baby boy or girl.
The couple left the restaurant hand in hand to hail a cab back to their hotel. Heather snuggled into Max’s shoulder as the cab headed off. Life was good, had never been better. She was in a beautiful place with her beautiful husband and in a matter of minutes they would be in each other’s arms and entwined in their own love. Maybe they would be making a baby. That could be the one thing that would make life just perfect.
5
‘You know the routine, Hatton. When I’m done, you keep the clingfilm on for the next twenty-four hours, avoid any Caribbean holidays where you’re going to be baking in the sun all day for the next few weeks and don’t go swimming or getting six shades of shit kicked out of you in the boxing ring until any scab has cleared. And use the Tattoo Goo for aftercare.’
Hatton Eden didn’t need the t
attoo artist to inform him of all of this, even if the man was obliged to do so. He knew the routine by now and exactly what he needed to do to make sure that his latest inking looked just as good as the tattoos already decorating the length of his left arm. His collection was growing and his new addition, a work in progress, was a majestic bald eagle spreading its way from the top of his tattoo sleeve and onto his left pec. It was a masterpiece in ink. Hatton was currently reaching the end of what had been a session of several hours.
Not that the boxer minded. Patience was a virtue. As was dealing with the pain, not that there had been much during this inking. It was mind over matter as far as Hatton was concerned. Hadn’t he always been taught that from an early age? That the human body was capable of anything, as long as the mind housed within was as strong as the shell around it. Muscles and mind working in perfect choreographed harmony.
‘Thank you, Adam, it’s looking amazing. Strong and proud,’ said Hatton, admiring the tattoo. ‘Just what I wanted.’
‘You’re welcome, Hatton. We’re nearly done. Now just make sure you win that fucking fight in July! I need my artwork seen by millions when The Main Man holds up that winner’s trophy in Barbados. I don’t want to see that eagle freefalling onto the canvas, you hear me?’
‘I hear you,’ laughed Hatton, his words heavy with his Eastern European accent, a clue to his Bulgarian roots. ‘I will do my best, as ever. This one will make sure of that.’ He pointed towards Fidge Carter, the British personal trainer who had managed him for the last five years and had turned him from a penniless factory worker and gym-obsessed fighting machine into the current world champion. Back in Bulgaria he’d had huge promise, skill and drive but no clue about how good he really was. Fidge had worked Hatton beyond hard and that was how Hatton liked it. Results only came with actions. And actions needed to be delivered with skill. And Fidge made sure that there was no one more skilful than Hatton.
