Wicked Ambition (43 page)

‘Huh.’ He folded his arms.

‘If they all got annihilated, just vanished one day.’ She let him picture it. ‘The fans are such losers they’d probably kill themselves. It’s not like they’ve got lives of their own.’

Nicki respected her attitude. ‘You working that night?’

‘Wouldn’t miss it.’

He tilted his head, regarding her anew. ‘What did you say your name was?’

‘Ivy.’

A smirk. ‘Like the poison?’

Her lips twisted into a smile—for once, it was genuine.

Supervisor Graham was ogling her from the burger stand, a glint of possessive jealousy in his eye. She still had the afternoon shift to get through.

‘Nice talking to you, Nicki.’

She knew he’d remember her when it counted.

56

‘U
nbelievable!’ Jax spat, chucking back the last of his Powerade. ‘What a load of frickin’
horse
shit.’ He wiped his mouth, crunched the plastic in an angry fist and tossed it with force into the trashcan. ‘What’s a guy gotta do to get a bit of peace in this goddamn town?’

Cindy Shepard, PA extraordinaire, came to her boss and ran her hands across his muscular shoulders. Jax had recently had another tattoo done, a self-designed gold-tipped bullet at the nape of his neck, and the skin there was raised and sore.

‘Let them speculate,’ she offered, rubbing down his tensions. Jax’s Lamborghini had conked out on the drive back to Pacific Heights and a rampant army of questioning fans had set upon him. Was it true that a fight had broken out in Colorado? Was his Fastest Man title under threat? Could Leon Sway have what it took to beat The Bullet?

‘There’s no way Sway can outrun you.’ She kissed the tattoo. ‘You know that…’

‘Do I?’ Jax rounded on her, scowling. ‘Maybe you’re as full of BS as the rest.’

Cindy arranged her features into a sympathetic expression. It was challenging when faced with over six feet of delicious dark muscle and the hard outline of an extremely handsome cock. ‘You wanna show me what you’re really made of, stud?’

‘I’m not in the mood,’ he lambasted, batting her away. ‘I say when I want you and that’s when I take you. Understood?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Jax stalked out to the patio, pausing to take a salty breath. He allowed the sea air to tease his open shirt and ripple over his broad chest, down past his shorts and over his bare legs, as he reflected not for the first time on the phenomenon of his own body.

Was it enough? It had to be. Leon seemed to be grasping the reins at every damn public event they were invited to.
Friday Later
had been a shambles, not to mention the altercation at van der Meyde’s Celestial Centre, after which Jax had fired his manager for no particular reason and kicked over a thousand-dollar camera tripod that had swiftly been added to his list of incurred expenses. It was all Leon’s fault for pushing him out of shot.

There was only one way to claw his reputation back.

The Championships. He had to retain his gold medal.

Nobody can beat me!
Jax assured himself.
I’m the fastest in the world! I’m a machine. I’m a legend. I’m Jax Jackson. I’m going down in the fucking history books
.

Sway would have to step over his stinking corpse to reach the finish first.

‘I know just what’s gonna relax you,’ said Cindy, joining him. She looped her arms round his waist and lowered her hands to the main attraction, which despite Jax’s anger began to swell. He ought to resist it: the less sex he had, the more fury he’d pour into his run…

‘You wanna get the timer out?’ she purred, trailing over his hard-on.

‘To hell with that,’ he growled. Cindy’s lips were sweet and he attacked them so zealously that their teeth knocked together. His erection was about to pop. ‘I wanna get hot.’

‘You are hot.’ She peeled off his shirt and ran her fingers across his pecs.

‘I wanna get sweaty.’

She wanted to say ‘You are sweaty’ but that didn’t sound right.

Instead she breathed, ‘Lead the way, baby.’

Jax moved towards the basement sauna he’d had installed a month ago, kissing his PA as they descended the stairs, his tongue forced deep into her mouth. Cindy responded by unbuttoning her shirt, wondering if she would ever be able to come to work and actually get anything productive done, and freeing the nipple-less bra she had going on beneath. As they fell through the sauna door Jax swooped for her breasts like an eagle on its prey, his tongue switching and flicking, bringing his lover closer and closer to rapture.

The sauna was raging hot and ripe with the aroma of scented pine. Jax steered her backwards on to one of the smooth wooden benches, where he sank to his knees to taste the moisture between her legs. Cindy’s breath was shallow and frantic as she struggled to take in the heat, close as a wall, but her ecstasy was such that she couldn’t bear to stop,
locking her ankles around Jax’s neck and pushing herself against him so that his tongue went deep. It was rare for Jax to go down on a woman and he quickly lost interest, rising majestically to his feet and removing the last of his clothes. Cindy gasped at the glory of his glossy, perspiring chest and the iron-solid dick rising proud from a bush of black hair.

Jax mounted her, the gold chain around his neck trickling and twinkling between Cindy’s gasping lips as he made her beg for it.

‘I want your cock,’ she moaned, clasping his ass and bringing him closer, though he pulled away, taunting her, forcing her into desperation. ‘Now!’ she howled.

Bodies slick, their skin soldered with suction, Cindy’s hands crossed her boss’s belly, finding the coarse trail that ran from his navel to his groin and then to the head of his penis. She wrapped her fingers round its width and drew from them both a groan of desire, using her wrist to bring him off. Finally she raised her knees and pulled him inside, driving him in and out, back and forth, locked with him at their most essential point, the burn of the room almost unbearable as the parched air scorched her throat and she began to feel light-headed, delirious and dehydrated but totally ready to come.

‘Oh, yeah, big boy!’ she cried, thinking she had never been so wet inside and out, dripping and sodden and slipping around on the bench so that if it weren’t for Jax’s weight pinning her down she’d have slid on her back right across the floor. Treating her lover to his favourite bonus, though he never admitted it after the fact, she clasped him to her and slipped her index finger inside his asshole. With a guttural,
repressed cry, Jax tensed around her and bucked to ejaculation, squeezing and grinding through her till he was spent.

‘Jesus fuck,’ he mumbled, rolling off her. Cindy let the spasms rock through her, one after the other, and reached to touch him but he sprang to his feet.

‘I need a drink.’

Jax tugged on the door—and again, and again. It didn’t budge.

‘What the…?’ Using his whole weight, he dragged again. Something was stuck.

‘What’s the matter?’ Cindy whined.

He grunted, giving it a haul.

‘Jax, Mr Jackson, sir…?’

‘What d’you think’s the damn matter?’ There was a reedy edge to Jax’s voice, a shade close to panic. ‘Freakin’ door’s got jammed.’

Cindy rose to his aid but he threw her off. The oxygen burned in her lungs.

‘I’m roasting to death in here,’ she wigged. ‘Do something!’

‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ he lashed, jerking the sauna door, and, when it failed to give, slamming his bulk against it repeatedly. ‘We’re trapped!’

Cindy whimpered. ‘Oh my God.’ Frantically she doused the coals in water, sending a puff of searing mist rising into the chamber.

‘What the hell are we gonna drink now?’ Jax spluttered, drips flying off his lip. ‘You just made the place three times hotter, you dumb cunt!’

‘Oh God,’ Cindy said again, hunched over the benches,
wheezing for breath. ‘We’re going to die. We’re going to roast in our own skins!’

‘Quit freaking, that’s what panic buttons are for.’ Jax punched the red panel with an open palm, blinking beads off his eyelids. The coals hissed and steamed.

‘Who’s going to hear it?’ Cindy was gasping, dread stealing what air she was able to take in. ‘We’re in your basement, Mr Jax Jackson, Jax, sir! We’re the only ones here!’

Jax watched the blinking light. A muscle clenched in his jaw.

‘Shit.’

‘What do you mean,
shit
?’ she shrieked. ‘Come up with something!’

‘Shut your pie-hole, bitch!’ Jax warned. He slumped down, his back against the wall. ‘I’m gonna sue whatever sons of whores installed this joke.’

‘If we ever get out!’

‘Save your breath,’ he huffed, ‘you’re gonna need it.’ But they were both still panting from having screwed so hard and his words fell on deaf ears.

‘Nobody knows we’re here,’ Cindy squeaked. ‘How long can we survive?’

Jax suppressed a flourish of fear, stamping it out before it caught hold. He was a champion, a superhero, and not being able to open a bastard door wouldn’t be the end! Imagine! What a way for the titan to go, locked naked in his own goddamn sauna with his own goddamn secretary. How would the world recover? It was unthinkable. He pictured the paramedics recovering his slack-skinned body, flaccid as an over-boiled ham.

‘Don’t move,’ advised Jax, standing and inflating his
chest, ‘conserve energy. Stay low, heat rises. I’m gonna get us out of here.’

Cindy started crying. She lifted the empty jug and sucked desperately at the dregs of water before collapsing on the floor. ‘I’m going to be sick.’

The thought of slipping about in baked vomit galvanised Jax into a second bout of action. ‘Come on!’ he roared, smashing against the door and wrenching the handle with all his might. ‘Come on, you fuck!’ He punched the wall, cracking his knuckles.
‘Damn!’

‘Isn’t there an axe or something?’

‘An axe?’

‘We’ll have to smash through. Why isn’t there an emergency axe?’

‘I’m gonna smash you through if you don’t shut your cake-hole; you’re trippin’ me out, girl, chill the hell down.’

‘Chill? I wish! We’re cooking!’ Cindy surrendered to full-blown panic. ‘We’re going to die, don’t you get it?
We’re going to die!
’

‘Wait.’ Jax lifted his head. ‘I hear somethin’.’

Silence—then, yes, distant voices, female voices, coming closer…

‘HELP!’ Cindy shouted, leaping up. ‘HELP US!’ She battered the door with her fists, so that when it suddenly opened she went hurtling, naked, through, sprawled and weeping.

‘Oh,’ said one of their visitors, ‘it’s you again.’

Jax squinted. ‘What…?’ he spluttered through his sweat and relief.
‘Kristin?’

What was she doing here?

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Interrupting, by the looks of things.’ Kristin was carefree
and casual in a white tee and denim shorts, her blonde hair in a topknot and her limbs long and tanned. Immediately Jax forgot all about his brush with death and returned his attention to his dick.

‘You just saved our lives.’ Cindy was scrabbling up, gasping her appreciation and clamping her hands ineffectively across her modesty.

‘That’s lucky,’ said a new voice.

To Jax’s considerable alarm Turquoise da Luca stepped into view. She looked like a goddess, all dark green eyes and ebony hair, her tits beautifully round in a peach silk vest.

‘What’s going on?’ he demanded, feeling faintly worried.

‘You’re going to do me a favour, Jax,’ said Turquoise. ‘And I’d say you owe me right about now, wouldn’t you?’

57

S
cotty Valentine’s first public appearance since his sexuality exploded stole the headline slot on a late-night news show. Speaking out about the scandal was deemed by management to be the only way forward: with luck they could spin it towards a generation of young fans who were carving their own identities and would welcome a positive, unafraid role model. In an ideal world they would sever ties to Fenton Fear and play Scotty as the victim, but since the label had as much to lose through Fenton’s conviction as they did through the expiration of their number-one boy band, there wasn’t a great deal of choice.

Millions would be tuning in to see the biggest heartthrob of twenty-first-century music account for the deception. Some believed Scotty had tricked their youngsters in an unforgivable way; others questioned whether that wasn’t the nature of fantasy, gay or straight, and pitied the poor boy who was compelled to toss his private life to the lions.

Right now the poor boy was bolted to the make-up chair,
his knuckles white as they gripped the armrests. Given that Scotty hadn’t left his apartment in weeks, not only did he have to contend with the horror and humiliation of laying his intimate secrets bare (he’d been briefed in every feasible question and had prepared his responses, each as evasive as the last), but he was also wrestling with agoraphobia. Every so often the ropes he had shackled it with sprang free and he thought he was going to faint.

‘You feeling OK?’ asked the make-up girl as she slathered foundation around his sunken eyes. ‘It’ll go great, Scott,’ she said kindly. ‘You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.’

He gulped. ‘I look like death.’

‘Not once I’ve finished with you.’ Though he noticed she didn’t dispute it.

It was agony waiting in the green room for the other panellists to speak. One was a politician and the other a comedian, the idea being to capture a cross section of society that would give fair representation to whatever debate had been sparked that week. But Scotty understood he was no sideline commentator, he was at the centre of this examination and the audience and the nation were only killing time before the main event.

He wasn’t even used to making these appearances all by himself. He’d always had Fraternity to bounce off, five of them together, and he endured a searing bolt of loneliness.

Live TV…Was there anything more petrifying?

‘Now our next guest has been at the centre of a storm of controversy,’ their chair announced, seamlessly changing into a lower, graver gear. Scotty consulted the time and saw that there was still an hour remaining: clearly this would be no surface-skimming interview.