by James, Vicki
When you can have everything for nothing, you crave nothing at the cost of everything.
Our mutual silence spoke volumes, and I never looked away as she took her time to tease me. When she drew near again, her hands landed on the leather seat behind me, and her tits flirted with my lips while I looked up at her with nothing more than narrowed eyes and suspended seduction.
Bring it, Candy. Bring it.
Her mouth eventually fell to my ear, a soft whisper brushing over my lobe. “You got security with you?”
“One,” I mouthed back, barely a sound. “He’s removable.”
“Get rid of him. Meet me out the back in thirty?”
I smirked as the sweet scent of all her lotions washed over me, making me heave in a breath, only to blow it out slowly through my nostrils.
“Don’t keep me waiting.” It was all I needed to say for her nipples to get hard, and for her to push herself away from me to finish her routine.
She did what she had to do to satisfy those who were paying her wages, and I sat there like a motherfucking teen, my hand palming my dick as I took her in.
I couldn’t wait to do something I shouldn’t be doing.
I couldn’t wait to feel free.
* * *
“You sure this is a good idea?” Big bouncer boy asked, looking down on me as the two of us stood outside the gents’ toilets in the strip club.
“It’s the worst idea I’ve ever had…” Scowling, I tilted my head. “What the fuck are you called?”
“Finn.”
“Like on a fish?”
“If that helps ya.”
“All right, Finn, so, yeah… I’ll be out back, getting shit seen to.” I pointed to my semi, which was pressed down by my too-tight jeans. “If you need me, try to get a grip and sort shit out for yourself. Here’s two hundred dollars.” I tucked some cash into the pocket of his shirt. “Treat yourself to something sweet.”
“Rhett, if they find out I brought you here…”
I smacked his chest twice. The hard nut didn’t even flinch. “Let loose. Have fun. Despite what the founders of Big Ass Brutes Associates probably told you, it won’t kill you.”
Without further fuss, I spun around to go find Candy. In New Orleans, ‘out back’, as she called it, happened to be some seedy side-street that they’d somehow made to look like it belonged on a film set. This shit was weirdly quaint, and if I hadn’t been high off the white stuff I’d just snorted, I’d have loved to have experienced it through sober eyes.
I inhaled the air around me, losing the weight of the suffocating heat the strip club had wrapped me up in. When I heard a subtle cough to my right, I spun around to see Candy standing there with a cream, fluffy coat wrapped around her shoulders, and a cigarette perched between her delicate fingers.
I made my way to her. The black denim jacket I was wearing suddenly felt too restrictive. So did my black jeans. All clothing did. I was so fucking horny, I wanted to shed anything that wasn’t skin, strip Candy down, and then fuck her against the nearest brick wall.
She pressed her cigarette to her mouth and inhaled as she watched me draw closer. I immediately caged her in, pressing my hands to the wall behind her.
Neither of us spoke.
Candy parted her mouth and slowly blew out, and I caught that smoke in my own, sucking it in only to blow it back out through my nostrils.
“You’re too young to look at me like you’re going to break me,” she said smoothly, forcing my eyes to her freshly glossed lips. I shifted a hand to rub a thumb around that gloss, wiping it off carefully.
“Take that shit off,” I whispered. “I hate it.”
“You think I care what you like and don’t like?”
My eyes rose to meet hers. “I know you do.”
“Kind of a big shot, aren’t you?”
“Just living my best life, sweetheart.”
“Guys like you should repulse me.”
“But we don’t, do we?” I leaned closer. “You love men like me—men who make you feel sexy. Men who look at you like there’s no one else in the world but you. Men who make it clear that they’ll be miserable without having just one taste of what you’ve got to offer.”
She raised a brow. “Maybe.”
“So, shall we keep playing games with each other or just get to it?”
“How much do you think I’m worth?”
I was about to open my mouth to give her some quick-witted response when I heard the cock of a gun at the back of my head before the cold metal of it pressed against me. I stilled, my eyes widening as I took in the way Candy’s smirk grew at my discomfort.
“Gun got your tongue, rock star?” she asked as she pulled in another drag from her cigarette. “I’ll ask you again. How much do you think I’m worth?”
“Be very careful with your next answer,” a rough, deep voice warned behind me.
My body froze, my hands splayed against the wall as I stared at Candy blowing smoke in my face.
“My lady asked you a question, Playboy,” the man said.
He sounded like that big fuck in The Green Mile—only this one wasn’t filled with sunshine, butterflies, and lifechanging epiphanies. He was filled with darkness, demons, and a trigger finger that could make you say goodnight before you were ready to.
“What the fuck is going on?” I croaked.
Candy sighed and pushed herself off the wall. “Do you know how many times I’ve dealt with weasels like you? It’s pathetic. You’re pathetic. You rich kids waltz in here, dressed in black, hard, willing, and desperate for me to stroke your ego before I stroke your dicks.” She looked behind her, and I felt the barrel of the gun press harder into my head. “You think you can own people like me. Newsflash. We own you.”
A camera flash went off somewhere behind me, and I closed my eyes, imagining the shit that was being filmed or photographed while I stood there, caught between a hitman and a fucking stripper.
“Is this about money?” I whispered roughly.
“It’s always about money, sweetheart.” Candy dropped her smoke to the ground, and when I opened my eyes again, she was pushing the front of her stiletto into it before she used a single finger to raise my chin. “Money talks, right? That’s what you believe in. You think I want you to fuck me for free? Hell, no. You wanted this, and now you pay.”
“How much do you want?”
“How much you got on you?”
I shook my head. “I dunno. A grand.”
“A what?”
“A thousand dollars. A thousand.”
“That’s it?” Candy scowled. “I don’t believe you.”
The gun pushed against me, forcing my head forward.
“Fuck, dick, back off,” I huffed out, immediately regretting it when a fist pummelled me straight in the kidneys, forcing my whole body to scrunch to one side, and my hands to fall from the wall. I clutched that side of myself, hating the vulnerability of the moment more than the actual pain I was in. The memories of all those high school bullies taunted me, and the way I used to limp home and have to pretend nothing was wrong.
Nothing’s wrong.
I’m okay.
They can’t hurt me.
Fake it. Fucking fake it, Rhett.
“You hit like a girl,” I croaked, only to receive another fist in the same spot that made me groan out in pain. “Fuck, okay, fuck!”
“Not yet,” Candy hissed at her partner in crime.
“He needs teaching a lesson,” the guy groaned.
“Soon, Benji. Just wait. Let’s do this right.”
“Benji?” I wheezed, a small cough of misplaced humour rising. “I’m getting fucked over by a… Benji? Jesus. With a voice like that, I would have thought you’d at least be a Vincent, a Barry or, I dunno, a fucking Maverick—SHIT!” I cried as another hit came in the form of his gun striking the side of my head.
“Benji!” Candy cried as I stumbled to the side, clutching my pounding head.
Blood.
>
That shit was quickly coating my hand and invading my right eye.
“Fucking Benji,” I found myself laughing sadistically anyway, despite the pain. “Here, Benji, Benji,” I chuckled. “Man, you sound like a damn cocker spaniel—”
Another blow came, and that one forced Candy’s voice to rise.
Fuck them. Fuck these jokers. Fuck Benji. Fuck anyone who’d ever taken a strike at me.
I’d rather go out in a ball of broken flesh than give this fake pair of tits and her Barry White wannabe a dime of my money.
“Benji, stop it! You’re ruining everything This isn’t meant to happen yet!” Candy cried, but Benji’s cool was gone, and when I rolled to the ground in pain, I blinked up at him through narrowed eyes only to see a blurry giant in a dark suit towering over me. He looked big enough to eat me up in one gulp, and at that moment, Rhett Ryan the superstar couldn’t do anything for me.
Rhett Ryan, the boy who’d survived returned.
He came to the forefront of my mind, and he forced me to raise my legs and arms over my body to protect myself… right before the boot connected with my ribs and the onslaught began.
Unfortunately for me, that boy didn’t fight. He didn’t answer back.
The only thing he knew how to do was hold his breath, put up the walls around him, and wait for things to get dark.
They did.
Pretty quickly, too.
Chapter Five
“Rhett? Shit!”
I groaned, trying to blink away the dark, distorted shadows in front of me.
My knees scraped against the concrete pathways, and blood dripped from the corner of my mouth when I rose on all fours and felt Finn’s hand on my back.
“Fuck, careful,” I hissed, some kind of wound beneath his rough palm grating me.
Candy and her brute had fled only moments before, leaving me to pick up my own arse that was now covered in bruises.
“What the hell happened?”
I closed my eyes and dragged in a breath through flared nostrils. “I got fucked up.”
“By choice?”
Angling my head his way, I cracked an eye open. “Yeah, dipshit. I chose to come out here and get my fucking skull kicked in.”
“Oh, Jesus.” Finn dropped down to the ground with a thud, his arse planted in place as he pushed the heels of his hands against his forehead. “I thought you meant you got high. Your face is… shit, Rhett. You’re—”
“A mess?” I offered, collecting more blood-tainted spit and tossing it out of my mouth with a flurry. “You just gonna sit there like a useless lump, or you gonna help me up? My ribs fucking—” I didn’t get to finish before I hissed, my face scrunching up.
“Am I going to lose my job? I have a kid, man.”
“I don’t give a shit if you own a zoo filled with endangered animals. Could you please get off your arse and help me the fuck up?”
“Right. Yeah. Sorry.”
I couldn’t argue with the way he picked me up with ease, moving me carefully until I was standing. I fell back against the nearest wall with a thud, my head cracking against the brick, but I was hurting in too many other places to care about more pain.
“We shouldn’t have come here,” Finn said after a minute of silence.
“No shit,” I huffed out, laughing.
“Where do you want me to take you? The hotel, or the nearest hospital?”
“First rule about celeb club: you don’t walk into public spaces with a bust-up face from a stripper-fuck gone wrong when you’re in celeb club.”
“Hotel, then?” he offered tightly.
“Think you can carry me?”
Finn’s smirk was slow to grow. “I’ve had bigger shits than you, Rhett. Let’s go.”
* * *
People always think that it takes a hard man to fight. I didn’t believe that. Men fought because they were scared. They hurt others to stop themselves being hurt.
Then there were guys like me who weren’t afraid to take a beating. There was no fun in pain, that much was true, but somewhere in the back of our sick minds, we liked the test of it all. How much could we take before we broke? How much could we block out before we snapped and fought back?
Those tests helped me figure out what I was made of when I had no way of knowing for sure.
We made it back onto the floor of our hotel suites, and the corridor looked clear for approximately four-point-seven seconds before Julia’s head shot out from behind a door, and her face fell as she took me in.
“Great,” I groaned under my breath.
She was wearing a pair of light jeans that hugged her arse, and a mustard-colour T-shirt that made her tits seem bigger than I ever remembered them being.
That was all the analysis I could make, given the fact that I could barely see for shit.
“Good God, what in the hell happened?” she gasped, charging forward.
“I, uh, fell over.”
Finn’s hand tightened on my arm, and I practically snarled up at him to tell him to ease up on the pressure.
“You fell over?” Julia repeated.
I came to a stand in front of her, my body hunched and throat tight. All I saw staring back at me was concern. Well, that and anger. Damn that anger. She wore it like a sparkly jewel I couldn’t look away from. Not because I admired it—more because I wondered what it was going to fucking cost me.
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat and waved a weak hand behind me. “Big… rock. Caught me off guard.”
Shrugging Finn off, I shuffled as best I could, clutching the lump around my rib without freaking out. I had no idea why it was so swollen. All I knew was that it felt about as natural as having a jagged dildo planted up my arse.
I closed my eyes and started to walk past Jules, completely ignoring whatever she was saying as she asked Finn question after question, only for him to answer in that low-as-shit voice of his. I couldn’t stand an interrogation. The only things I needed were a whiskey and my bed.
I made my way to my room, fortunate enough not to bump into any of the others from the band. I thought I’d escaped the wrath of Julia Speed once I’d crossed the threshold, too. I was about to shut the door behind me until there was resistance from the other side.
“For fuck’s sake,” I sighed, stepping back as Julia stepped inside, closing the door behind her. “Tonight clearly isn’t my night.”
Her brown eyes scanned my face with concern. “We need to talk about this.”
“Nope. Don’t do that, Jules.”
“Do what? Worry? Care?”
“Look at me like I’m a piece of shit.”
“I never do that.” She leaned to one side to study the bad eye that now felt like it had its own heartbeat.
I frowned, watching her cautiously as she took a full inventory of my body.
“You’re stupid,” she whispered, almost to herself. “The most stupid man-boy I’ve ever known.”
“Well… thanks.”
“Take your jacket off.”
“If you’re looking for my dick, it’s a little farther south.”
“Jacket, Rhett.”
I groaned, the exhaustion of the moment taking over. Slipping the dark denim from my arms as carefully as I could, I let it slide to the floor with a thud, never taking my eyes from Julia.
“Now, your shirt.”
I tried to smirk in response, but my face wasn’t cooperating, and Jules stared at me as though she was looking right through me. No smartass comebacks were going to get me out of this. My dear publicist was turning into our manager. I already had Dicky on my case twenty-four-seven. I didn’t need another version of him with tits and a vagina in my life. Still, I found myself doing whatever she told me to do because that’s the kind of power she had over me.
Which was… weird.
Removing my shirt, I let it slide to the floor until I was standing there staring at her, wearing nothing but the wounds on my skin, and my dark jeans and boots.
Julia’s
attention raked over every inch of me. She saw the wreckage before I did. Feeling it was enough for me, but from the way her eyes bulged, and those valleys of worry between her brows deepened, it was obviously bad.
“We need to get you some medical attention,” she said, her voice a sweet whisper while my head pounded with angry injustice. “And no, Rhett, I don’t mean I’m going to suck your dick. Or that I’m going to grab a woman from the foyer downstairs and ask her to suck your dick either,” she clarified, looking up at me through long lashes and with an unamused glare.
“Always the party pooper.”
She reached up, the tips of her fingers grazing the edge of my rib. I hissed and pulled in on myself, my face scrunching up tightly.
“Want to tell me what happened?”
“Not really.
“That bad?”
“No, but everyone wants your story until you tell it and they realise they don’t like the way it goes.”
“I don’t have to like it to want to fix it.”
“You going to rescue me, princess?”
“Unfortunately, I can’t save someone who seems determined to run themselves over with their own ego.” Julia’s fingertips rose up my chest, across my tattooed left pec where I’d also been kicked, before drifting up to my shoulder. When I glanced up at her, she was focused, her attention following the tender touches she was leaving on my marred skin. “Let me guess. You fucked someone you shouldn’t. Their boyfriend found out. He didn’t know who you were, and he proceeded to use you as a chew toy.”
“You have an exceptionally low opinion of me.”
“Yet, you haven’t corrected me.”
“What’s the point? People will think what they want to think.”
“Rhett…”
“Fine,” I sighed. “I convinced Finn to take me to a strip club. A woman danced for me. She seemed interested. I liked it. My ego was stroked. She asked to meet me outside. I went. She came—not in the good way. I was getting to that. The next thing I knew, some prick has got a gun pressed to my head. They’re asking me how much money I have. A camera is flashing. And then I find out this dude threatening to kill me is called Benji. Fucking Benji, Jules—”
