Bedroom Games

Bedroom Games

By

Jill Myles writing as Jessica Clare

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2013 by Jill Myles

All rights reserved. No part of this book may
be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any manner whatsoever
without written permission from the author.

Kandis Thornton isn’t afraid
to lie, scheme, and sneak her way to the grand prize money on the
Reality TV show,
House
Guests
. That prize money is the only thing
keeping her mother from losing her house (and thus moving in with
Kandis). She needs that money, and if she has to step on a few
people to do so? She’ll do it.
House
Guests
is a show all about outplaying your
house-mates, after all, and she’s not there to make
friends.

But Kandis didn’t count on the fact that
someone else was going to be playing just as hard as her. And she
didn’t plan on teaming up with her nemesis, or scheming their way
to the top.

Nor did she plan on sleeping with him.

But these things just happen when you’re
stuck in a ridiculous house with nothing but time on your hands and
a hot guy sharing your bedroom…

CHAPTER ONE

“
This time around, things
are going to be different.”

–
Brodie Short, Pre-Game
Interview,
House Guests

As soon as I stepped into the baggage claim at the
airport, I saw a bored-looking man holding a name placard with
CANDICE THORNTON scrawled across it.

That was clearly my ride, and he couldn’t
have looked less thrilled about the fact.

I swung by the baggage carousel and grabbed
my suitcase, and then approached him. “Hi. Are you with the
network?”

His attention focused on me. “You
Candice?”

“I’m Kandis. You spelled my name wrong, but
it’s pronounced the same.” I gave him an apologetic smile.

To my surprise, he rolled his eyes at me.
“Get over yourself. It’s you, right?”

“Uh, yeah.” What a dick.

“Then come on. We’re on a tight schedule.” He
tucked the name placard under his arm and texted something with one
fast-moving thumb as he headed out of the airport. He didn’t even
look to see if I was following him.

I glanced behind me at the crowded airport,
but followed him out. “Can I see some ID that you’re with the
network? I don’t want to follow a strange man to his car, you
know.”

He sighed and held out a badge for me to
read. JTV NETWORKS. JIMMY NELSON, ASSISTANT, HOUSE GUESTS. “Can we
go now? I need to have you out of the airport in the next five
minutes. The other contestants are scheduled to land thirty minutes
apart and your plane was late, so if we don’t get out of here,
you’re going to be disqualified.”

“Oh.” I shouldered my bag hurriedly. “No, I
want to be on the show. Let’s go.” And I sprinted ahead of him.

He took my bag as we got into the plain black
sedan waiting at the curb. There was a driver—how fancy! Jimmy got
into the front seat, which left me in the back by myself. I slid
in, shut the door, and we were off.

After a moment, Jimmy stopped texting and
glanced at me in the back seat. “So. Mactor?”

I frowned. “Excuse me?”

“You a mactor?”

“I…don’t know what that is.”

“We get three kinds of people on these shows.
Superfans, Mactors, and broke-ass bitches. Superfans are the people
that live and breathe the game and quote you trivia non-stop. The
fact that you’re not asking me if I’ve met Jordache from last year
tells me that you’re not a Superfan. So that either leaves you as a
Mactor or a broke-ass bitch who needs the money so bad you’re
willing to go on TV and make a fool of yourself.” He glanced over
the seat at me and his gaze rested on my breasts.

I crossed my arms over my chest, irritated at
his stare. I’d told myself that I was going to be ultra-flirty and
bubbly to get ahead in this game, but I was clearly starting off on
the wrong foot. It was a good thing that Jimmy was just an
assistant. “And a mactor is…”

“Model-slash-actor. We get a lot of those.
You know, whoring it out for your fifteen minutes and all.”

“I’m a Zumba instructor,” I told him.

Jimmy looked at the driver and nodded as if
he’d answered his own question. “Mactor.”

Definitely a good thing that Jimmy was just
an assistant. If he was going to be one of the houseguests on the
show, I’d have to kill him for being such a tool.

I stared out the window as we drove. The
Charlotte airport hadn’t been what I’d expected. Heck, I was
surprised we were flying into Charlotte in the first place, but
that was the ticket that they’d sent me. I’d thought the previous
editions of the show were filmed in Los Angeles. “So how come we’re
in North Carolina?” I asked, unable to help my curiosity.

“It’s a gimmick,” Jimmy said. “This season’s
on location. Producers are seeing if a different locale helps the
ratings slump.”

“Oh.” I didn’t know that
ratings were in a slump.
House
Guests
came on every summer like clockwork.
Everyone watched it. I wanted to ask Jimmy more, but he’d gone back
to paying attention to his phone, and things were a lot more
peaceful with his silence.

So I stared out the window and watched the
trees roll past the highway.

~~ * ~~

“We’re here,” Jimmy said, jolting me
awake.

I straightened, brushing a hand across my
mouth to check for drool. I’d been leaning against the window of
the car as it drove endlessly down the highway, and I must have
fallen asleep. “Thanks,” I murmured, stifling my yawn and grabbing
my bag as Jimmy got out of the car and opened my door.

“Follow me, Candy.”

“Kandis,” I corrected. “It’s spelled K A N D
I S.”

“Whatever,” Jimmy said. “Just come on.”

I followed him out of the car, and then my
steps slowed as I took in my surroundings.

We’d pulled onto a freshly-poured blacktop
parking lot in the middle of rolling green acreage. Tall trees
shaded us from the road, and around the parking lot, a row of
port-a-potties stood off to one side. On the other side were rows
of white tents that had been erected. People were everywhere, most
with headsets and either clipboards or iPads, hustling between one
tent and another. In the distance, I could see stadium seating and
a soundstage. That must have been where the exiting people would be
interviewed.

At the top of a green,
grassy hill and at the center of all this chaos was a house. It was
a ghastly monstrosity, the exterior weathered and gray, as if it
were a hundred years old and completely and utterly abandoned. That
couldn’t be the case, though, since we’d be filming
House Guests
here. It had
to be for show.

Didn’t it?

“Is that the house?” I asked Jimmy, staring
at it with horror.

“Uh huh,” he said, bored.

“It’s not a very…sexy
location.” Wasn’t
House Guests
all about people spending the summer flirting and
competing while lounging around the pool in bikinis? This didn’t
look like the right place.

“Like I said, we have a gimmick this
summer.”

What is the gimmick?
I wondered. Goth mania? I stared at the
rotted-looking Victorian. It was huge. I counted three floors with
an octagonal room in one corner of the house that served as a
turret of kinds. Each of the windows was shuttered tight. There was
a large porch on the second floor veranda, but it was covered in
cameras and equipment. It clearly wasn’t for living. In fact, other
than the facade of the house, the rest of it was covered in wiring.
I knew that the house would be full of cameras. That was part of
the show.

Jimmy headed to a table and picked up a
clipboard as I trailed behind him, wary. “Just to give you a quick
run-down, you’re entering the house tonight. First, we’ve got to
check your luggage, make sure you’re not hiding any
contraband.”

“Contraband?”

“Cell phones, food, drug
paraphernalia,” he said in a bored tone. At some point, he’d gotten
some gum and was chewing it loudly. “Contraband. Once we’ve
established that you’re clean, you’re gonna go in for your
physical.” He pointed at one of the tents further down the
sprawling lawn. “Once the docs say you’re okay, we send you through
the pre-show interviews. Then, when you’ve gone through everything,
we put you in an isolation booth. You’ll come out of isolation when
you enter the house. Until then, you’re my charge.” He held out a
wide-brimmed straw hat and a bandana that had the
House Guests
logo written
across it. “And you have to wear this bandana unless I tell you
it’s safe to take it off.”

“I wear this so I don’t see the other house
guests until we go inside?”

“No,” he said sarcastically. “So we can play
Blind Man’s Bluff.”

I snatched the blindfold out of his hand.
“You’re not very nice.”

“I see people like you all the time, baby
doll. And they don’t pay me to be nice to the Mactors.”

What a jerk.

“Here’s your disclaimers. I’m going to need
you to complete these. Once we’re done with that, we’ll head on to
the physical. You got any questions?”

“Not really,” I said, taking the clipboard he
passed to me. There was a thick packet of paper attached to it, and
I wanted to sit down and read all the pages.

I knew how
House Guests
worked. I’d
watched every season. Twelve people entered the house at the
beginning of the summer and competed in challenges. You nominated
people for eviction and eventually whittled down the group until
there were only two remaining. Then, the jury (comprised of the
last five previously voted off cast members) decided who they
wanted to win the million-dollar prize.

And I needed that million.

~~ * ~~

“Hi Kandis,” the two-way mirror said to me.
“This is your first interview for the show, so we’d like for you to
introduce yourself. You’re not live, so don’t be nervous. Just
relax and tell our viewers what you’d like for them to know about
you.”

I stared at my reflection in the mirror. It
was going to be disconcerting talking to myself. At least my hair
and makeup looked good despite the stress test they’d put me
through. At this point, I was exhausted yet strangely wired. I’d
gone through medical tests, more paperwork than I’d need for a
mortgage, sound checks, a psychological evaluation, and finally
hair and makeup. They’d picked an outfit from the bag that I’d
brought for my ‘intro shots.’ The hair and makeup team had put
entirely too much makeup on me, teased my long brown hair into
fluffy, curling layers, and even plucked my eyebrows. I wore a
tight yellow sleeveless bodycon dress that had been provided for
me, since the dress I’d chosen had been declared ‘too busy’ for
network television. My cast photos had been taken, and now I was
here at the pre-interview, trussed up and ready to play.

One step closer to being in the house, and
one step closer to a million dollars.

So I smiled brilliantly at the camera. “My
name is Kandis Thornton. I’m twenty-three years old, and I’m a
Zumba instructor. A lot of people don’t know what that is, but it’s
a fun dancing workout set to music. Doing six or seven classes a
day keeps me really fit, so I’m probably just going to tell the
others that I’m a student so they don’t see me coming in the
challenges.” I couldn’t stop the sly grin that crossed my face.
“I’m actually planning on lying a lot in this game. I know some
people come here because they want to be famous or because they
just want everyone in the world to like them. Screw that. I want
the money.”

I paused, waiting for some sort of reaction,
but there was nothing but silence on the other end. That was
unnerving. I rubbed my arm, thinking of what else to say. “I know
it feels a little mercenary coming in here and saying I’m going
straight for the money, but it’s true. My mother…” I sighed
heavily, wondering how much to confess. This was all going on TV,
after all. “My mother has a bit of a gambling problem, and I found
out a few weeks ago that she’s taken out a second mortgage on her
house. Not only that, but she’s behind on both. So if we don’t find
some money from somewhere, she’s going to lose her house. And since
I’m her only family, that would mean she would move in with me.” I
gave the camera a tight smile. “I love my mom, but I am not about
to take her on as a roommate. And Zumba instructors don’t make much
money, so there’s no way I’d be able to catch her up.”