by MV Ellis
I was the opposite. I was the physical embodiment of the fact that with a decent, but not excessive, amount of talent, and the recommended ten thousand hours of training required to reach virtuosic proportions in any discipline, great things could happen. Well, not great, but pretty fucking good. Except it had probably been more like twenty thousand hours, and I still wasn’t as good as Rome if he never practiced a day. He’d probably come out of the womb playing as well as I did as a grown man, with years of the best classical training that money could buy.
“Well take your fucking piss, and stop ogling my junk.”
“What, so you can ogle mine?”
“Ha! You wish. Nope. I’m gonna have to take another shower to wash away the fact that I just came while staring into your eyes. Pee, and get out before I lose my shit.”
“Hahahaha! Okay Waspy Boy, I’m shaking in my boots.” His lips quirked into his signature smirk, and I fought the urge to swipe it from his face.
“Eat a dick.”
“That’s the best offer I’ve had all morning. Open the door, I’m coming in.”
Christ. He was a pain in my left ball. I loved and hated him in equal measure, most days. I cupped my hands and splashed water over the top of the shower at him. While he laughed maniacally, I turned my back on him and got on with showering for the second time.
He wasn’t going to leave me in peace as long as I kept engaging him in banter. The only way to get him to go away was to freeze him out, and even that approach was only ever partially successful. I did have a few tricks up my sleeve from years of dealing with him, though.
“Remember we have that meeting with the label later. Maybe try not to dress like a street urchin this time.” I knew exactly what buttons to press to piss him off.
“Why should I? We all know that’s exactly what I am. I’m not trying to polish that turd. I refuse to be ashamed of my humble beginnings. I’ve got nothing to hide.” Game on.
“I’m not saying that you’ve got anything to hide, or that you should be ashamed, but there’s no need to play up that shit, either. We all know you’re a long way from your street-busking, Artful Dodger days. You’re one of the world’s most highly trained and accomplished musicians. It wouldn’t fucking hurt you to act like who you are, for once, instead of who you used to be.”
“Bullshit. That’s not who I used to be. It’s who I am. Right now. Today. Every day. Forever. You can take the boy from the streets, but…” He spread his arms out expansively in his legendary “here I am in all my cocky glory” pose.
“Whatever dude. I’m just saying wear a fucking shirt and don’t show up reeking of vodka and pussy. Is that too much to ask for a business meeting? You’re a millionaire, not a fucking bum.”
He flipped me off. Mission accomplished. That was always his answer when he had no answer.
Chapter 2
Rome
* * *
Speaking of pussy, as if on cue, the door to my suite opened and out stepped last night’s company. A model, if I remembered correctly.
“Morning, Carla. This is my father, King. At least you’d think he was my father with the way he rides my ass like one.”
She looked confused—quite rightly so—her gaze darting quickly between the two of us. I mean, I’d be confused about a father and son conversation conducted when both were butt naked in the bathroom connecting their hotel suites, and at least one of the two was sporting wood, too.
“King, meet the delightful Carla.”
“It’s Carolina, actually. Caro for short.” She smiled lightly, not seeming altogether too concerned that I’d spent most of the night screwing her like my life depended on it, but wasn’t entirely sure of her name.
“That too. King, Caro. Caro, King.”
King nodded her way, after taking the time to survey her from head to toe, and, judging by the fact that his dick had sprung back to life, he was fairly impressed by what he saw.
Carla/Carolina/Caro returned the favor, taking in his fine form—including his hard-on—with a slow sweep of her eyes. A small smile graced her lips as she sashayed closer to me. When she was in front of me, she used her index finger to draw a trail across my collar bone, then dragged it slowly down the center of my chest to my waist, then lower still.
She hesitated when she got to the start of my dark brown pubes, hovering close enough to my stiff dick that I could feel the heat radiating from her palm, but not close enough to touch it. She was waiting for me to make the next move, and I didn’t hesitate in taking the hint.
I reached up and pulled gently on her neck, bringing her lips to mine, before using my other hand to pull roughly at her waist, jerking her body toward me. I kept my gaze locked with King’s as I kissed Caro harder, shoving my mouth roughly onto hers. She kissed me back, savage in her intensity, and at the same time lifting her leg to hook it behind my butt.
I stepped back a little, so that I was resting against the vanity to stabilize us. I reached over to the box of condoms I’d discarded there the previous night and slipped one on quickly, only breaking gazes with King long enough to get the deed done. While I looked away, he’d gripped his dick, and as I pounded in and out of Carolina, he pumped hard, just as he had been when I’d walked into the bathroom a few minutes earlier.
By now Carolina had both legs wrapped around me, and was riding me wildly, plundering my mouth at the same time. King’s gaze shifted slightly, and I turned my head, pulling my lips from Caro’s in order to see what he was focused on. Looking over my shoulder, I realized he was eye-fucking her in the mirror behind us.
I turned toward him again, sliding my lips back onto Carolina’s. She had good lips. Plump and firm, but not cosmetically enhanced. Just how I liked them. King met my eyes again, and for the next few minutes we eye-fucked while I dick-fucked Carolina, and he solo-fucked his hand. Then he slid his gaze back to hers in the mirror, and we carried on like that, alternating until I, for one, couldn’t hold back anymore.
I picked up the pace and intensity, sliding back and forth inside the sexy model harder and faster, until I felt the telltale clench around me. Two more deep, hard thrusts and she was there. As her orgasm kicked off, and she came loudly and unselfconsciously, I did the same, slamming my eyes shut as I got lost in the oblivion of my climax. King’s grunts of pleasure told me he was doing the same, though I had no idea if he was still watching Carolina and me, and I didn’t really care.
When I came down from my high and opened my eyes again, surveying the scene, King was back under the shower, lathering himself for the third time that day, and Carolina was looking at me as though awaiting her next instruction.
“Hey, babe, that was great. Last night, too, but I gotta call it a day. Or night, or whatever. Go get dressed. I need to take a shower. We have a meeting to go to, and apparently I’m supposed to look half presentable, or some shit.”
I flicked my gaze over to King again, and he was looking straight at me, smirking. He knew he’d won this particular battle, but we both knew that I always won the wars.
“Sure thing. No problem.” She actually looked and sounded like she meant it, too. My kind of girl. She unfolded her gazelle-like legs and slid gently off my dick, then stood on tiptoes, swiping a quick kiss across my lips.
“Ciao.” She turned toward King, giving him a small wave. She sauntered back into my room, as though it was every day she fucked one guy while both she and he eye-fucked his best friend. Then again, maybe it was.
King opened the shower screen and stepped out of the stall, tying the thick, fluffy hotel towel around his waist.
“Okay, so what are you waiting for? Hit the shower like you said, otherwise you’ll fail at the reeking of pussy part. Seriously, I hate these meetings with the label suits at the best of times, but this one is giving me a bad feeling from the get-go. Something just doesn’t sit right, especially with all the shit that’s been going on over there.”
I walked into the shower and turned it back on. “Dude, you
worry too much. I’m sure it’s some typical boring business bullshit. Don’t sweat it.”
Chapter 3
Quincy
* * *
As I pulled into the underground parking lot at Audio Dissonance Records, a feeling of dread settled in the pit of my stomach. I hated these types of meetings at the best of times, but with the merger of ADR and Sonic Bully Records, a meeting could only mean bad news for me.
Everyone with half a brain cell knew that deals like this were never what they seemed, and weren’t ever equal. Companies didn’t go into these negotiations with an evenly loaded deck, and the general rule was that the smaller and/or financially weaker of the two was inevitably swallowed by the bigger, stronger one.
Unfortunately for me, my contract was with the little fish that was just about to get lost in the belly of the whale. I had no idea what that meant for me, but my gut told me that I was Jonah, about to be cast adrift, and some time spent poring over job ads was in my not-too-distant future. Shit.
I edged around the tiny, hideously inadequate lot. On my second lap, I was relieved to see that somebody was just leaving, so I pulled up alongside them and put on my flicker. As the person edged out of the space, I got ready to pull in, but as I rolled slowly forward, I was beaten to it by a shiny black penis extension posing as a sports car.
“Hey!” I pressed down on my horn, making myself jump as the angry sound reverbed around the small space. The other driver didn’t stop pulling into my spot. What the actual fuck?
I kept my hand on the horn, but this time also wound down the window.
“Hey, excuse me! What the hell? I was waiting for that space.” The car’s lights went out and the doors opened. As the driver and passenger exited, I continued my tirade.
“Hey buddy, you can’t do that! That was my space.”
The driver looked at me, then looked at the space where his car was now firmly parked.
“Oh really? I don’t see anyone’s name on it.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and sauntered away with his passenger, without a care in the world. What an asshole. Who took something that was quite clearly not theirs, and didn’t even show any remorse, like the world owed them a favor? I could barely contain my rage, but had nowhere to direct it, as the two leather-jacket-clad figures disappeared into the building.
I sat for a few more moments in stunned disbelief before inching my way back out of the lot. The likelihood of another space opening up was slim to a snowball’s chance in hell, and I couldn’t afford to wait around any longer.
In any event, I got “lucky” and found a metered space a few blocks away. Not that my feet considered themselves lucky, as I teetered along on my fuck-me heels that were way more practical for being screwed in than they were for traversing city blocks. Fuck. My. Life.
I was fuming as I hobbled into the sixth-floor reception area with blisters blooming on each little toe, and sweat beading my brow and other places I’d rather not think about. I saw Carson, my manager, just as the familiar and sickeningly overpowering scent of his obscenely expensive bespoke cologne hit my nostrils. He’d had it created just for him by a top-drawer perfumer, and, as such, nobody had the heart to tell him that he smelled like their grandma’s bathroom freshener.
“Hi. Sorry I’m a few minutes late. I had to park on the street and walk back, so now I’m pissed off and sweaty. Worse still, I would have been fine. I found a spot in the lot out back, but it was stolen by a shiny black endowment-enhancer-driving douche canoe.”
As the last words of my sentence died in the air, I took in the rest of the room: Carson was in front of me. To my right was the reception desk and receptionist, to my left, the douche canoe in question, along with his friend. Recognition bloomed in his eyes, and I was sure the same expression was reflected on my face. Oh. Shit
I’d gone too far down that route to extract my foot from my mouth, so I met his hostile glare with an equally frosty one, and called it quits. I turned my gaze quickly back to Carson, as though the douche was the least important thing ever to have happened to me. I leaned forward slightly and lowered my voice.
“Do you have any more information about this meeting?”
“Nada.” He shrugged. “Radio silence. I’ve called and left messages a few times, and sent two follow-up emails. Tumbleweeds. I guess whatever it is, they really want to tell us in person,” he responded in hushed tones.
“Why does that idea fill me with dread?”
“Because, it’s not their usual MO, and”—he lowered his voice further—“because of all the other shit that’s been going on. I mean I guess we’ll find out shortly, but the conclusions I’ve come to in my head ain’t pretty.”
“Same here,” I agreed.
He reached down to pat my hand. “Don’t give yourself an ulcer thinking about it. We could both be wrong”—I very much doubted it—“and even if we’re not, you have me here to handle it, whatever ‘it’ is. And handle it I will.”
Still, with the best will in the world, and all of Carson’s connections and skills, there was only so much anyone could do, no matter what. He was a talented and renowned manager, but he wasn’t the Wizard of Oz, or Jesus. Or Kanye. He couldn’t perform miracles. My unease grew as the thoughts swirled around my head.
“Hey, hey, hey. I can feel the worry pouring out of you. I know it’s hard, but try not to stress too much.” He led me gently by the elbow to some nearby seats and I sat down dutifully.
“There will be plenty of time for that afterward, if it comes to it, so you might as well save your energy for when it’s really needed. In the meantime, can I just tell you that you look amazing? That leopard dress brings out your everything.” He swirled a hand in my direction in his typically camp fashion. I silently thanked him for changing the subject and attempting to drag me out of my funk.
“Thanks. You should have seen me before I had to run a damned marathon to get here.” I shot a pissed-off glance across the room and found Douche Canoe staring at me as though he hadn’t looked away since the first time. He didn’t even have the decency to avert his gaze once he’d been caught in the act. Instead he winked, and I fought the urge to flip him off, remembering where I was.
Chapter 4
King
* * *
Rome’s body visibly bristled beside me as he stared down the beautiful woman from the parking lot. The amount of angry energy buzzing from him was phenomenal. It was like an electrified forcefield. I was sure that if I had a cigarette, I could have lit it just on the sparks flying between the two of them. Of course I didn’t smoke, so I’d have to borrow one from Rome, but that wasn’t the point.
I nudged him with my knee, to remind him where he was, and not to do anything reckless—which with him was tantamount to telling him not to breathe. The reckless gene was strong in his lineage. Either that, or he and his brother Marko had inherited the dose meant for their large extended family.
Rome leaned forward and glared at me. If looks could kill I’d have been past dead, but I’d stopped paying his daggered looks even the slightest bit of attention years ago. It was standard operating procedure for him. Instead, I tipped my chin, indicating for him to sit back, and chill the fuck out.
I found his caveman routine tiring, but it was just the way he was wired. He had two settings—too much, and way too much. Right now he was at the top of way too much, but looking like he might go over the edge.
We were saved by the appearance of James, our manager, looking every bit the greasy salesman that he was. Not that his greasiness was necessarily a bad thing—I didn’t have to like the guy; I just needed to know that he could get the best for us in the various negotiations on the table. He could. And he did. Often.
He pulled each of us in turn into a bro shake, then looked at his Rolex, I was pretty sure only because that’s exactly what he wanted us both to do—look at his grossly expensive watch. I didn’t know why he felt the need to do that—try and impress us with whatever s
parkly bauble was his newest acquisition—it was totally wasted on us. I just didn’t care about any of that stuff. Rome did, but only in as much as it made him angry that people lived that way.
Rome opened his mouth, and before he’d said a word, I knew whatever was about to slide out of it wasn’t going to be pretty. I sent him another warning glance. We really couldn’t afford for him to disgrace us before, during, or after this meeting—parking lot faux pas notwithstanding.
Luckily he took the hint—it really could go either way where Rome was concerned. He clamped his jaw shut and shot me another evil look. I ignored him, which was my usual way. I looked down at his fists as they curled and uncurled, and then addressed James.
“So what’s the 411? Do you have any more intel on why we’re here?’
He looked around furtively before leaning forward slightly.
“No clue. I’ve been trying to do some digging—a few off-the-record conversations with various contacts, but I’ve come up empty-handed every time. They are being uncharacteristically cagey, which worries me more than a little. But I guess we’ll soon find out either way, so let’s not jump to premature conclusions.” He grabbed a handful of his thick blond hair, and yanked at it before sitting down next to us.
“It’s fucking bullshit.” The words tore through the near-silence in the room, and all eyes were suddenly on Rome. I nudged him sharply again with my knee. “Do that again and you’ll lose the leg.”
Jesus. He was tightly wound at the best of times, but today he was too much.
“Then keep your fucking voice down,” I hissed out of the corner of my mouth.
“Why should I? It is bullshit, and I’m only saying what everyone else is thinking.”
That part was true enough, but in all the years we’d known each other, I’d never managed to make him understand that there were good reasons why grown adults didn’t verbalize every thought that came into their minds, no matter how right they were.
