Wild Licks (3 page)

Perhaps they considered anyone who put artistic concerns in front of monetary ones “difficult.” If so, please, label me difficult. I wondered if Larkin Johns, the producer I'd thrown out of the recording studio, would dare show his face backstage tonight.

I was following Axel toward the noise of the party when my phone vibrated inside my jacket pocket. I let him get ahead of me as I paused to check it. A text had come through.

Mal, this is Layla, long time no see! I'm so sorry to bother you but I need your help.

I stared at the words. That was all she had written. No doubt expecting me to reply.
I'm so sorry to bother you.
I let out a bitter laugh.
So sorry to have had to ferret out your private mobile number in order to send this passive-aggressive message,
she meant. I had not seen her for years and she had been told not to contact me. Did she think anything had changed? I wondered how she had gotten my number and whether I was going to have to change it again.

Layla had once been a fan, a groupie, and then I had made the mistake of trying to make her into something more. The breakup had been ugly and damaging for both of us, but that was years ago. For a moment I considered replying to her for old time's sake. But no, what had she gone through to get this number? I added her number to my contacts list so if she called I would see her name and know not to answer. That was all I could do at that moment.

I caught our head of security in the hallway, heading toward the designated catering area. “What's up?” he asked the moment he saw me make eye contact.

“Nick. I just received a message from Layla. She shouldn't have this number.”

He dragged his hand through his shorn black hair. “You worried it could turn into a stalker situation again?”

“Hopefully not. I didn't reply. I don't even know where she is these days, but I thought I should inform you.”

“She was the blonde, right?” Nick had been working for us for a couple of years and had a very good memory.

“Yes.”

“I'll keep an eye out. Lotta people here tonight.” He glanced toward the catering area. “Bunch of fan club people, the folks from Basic, VIPs, everyone and their brother seems like. Speaking of fans, hope everything went all right?”

Nick was the man we'd put in charge of vetting groupies who wanted to have a much more up close and personal experience than a mere selfie and autograph. “Perfectly,” I said. So perfectly that I considered asking him to let me know if he saw that woman again. But no. It was better not to confuse the issue, and if anything I should have taken the text from Layla as a sign not to get involved. “Thank you.”

“Anytime,” he said with a little salute, and moved off to his next errand.

I continued on to the catering area that had been set up in one of the large sports team locker rooms. I waded through the mingling crowd and shook hands with a few people. Thanked the members of Breakwater for doing a good job as the opening band. Posed for a selfie or two with some of our superfans. Allowed one of the promoter's staff to prattle on at me for a while about something—I'm not sure what since I tuned out what he was saying. I let my eyes roam the room, desperate to find someone decent to talk to. After six weeks on the road, I had nothing left to say to anyone in the band or crew. Axel was with his girlfriend, the heiress Ricki Hamilton. They were more or less glued together, side by side, having not seen each other since we left. Ford, our bass player, was introducing his father to Killian, the lead singer of Breakwater. I wouldn't have minded talking to Mr. Cutler about his guitar collection, but I wasn't about to elbow my way across the room and interrupt them.

Sometimes in the middle of a crowd is when I feel the loneliest.

Christina, our manager and a whirling dervish of energy herself, cornered me when she saw I was at loose ends. “Mal, I have something serious to talk to you about.”

I braced myself for a talking-to about my insistence on a new producer when we next went into the studio. No one, including me, wanted a repeat of last time. “Of course you do.”

She surprised me, though. The next album wasn't the foremost thing on her mind: “With the tour over, we need to strategize some ways to keep the band high profile in the media.”

“I thought Capitol/Basic was going to release another single from the album and wanted us to make a video for it?”

“I mean besides that. You're going to be staying in LA for a while, right?”

“Yes, Christina.” In fact, I was looking forward to some downtime at my condo in Santa Monica.

“Good. I need you to seriously think about arm candy.”

“Excuse me?” Christina grew up in the Philippines, I grew up in England, and though we both spoke English, I was sometimes entirely unsure I'd heard her correctly. “Did you say ‘arm candy'? Oh.” I figured out the expression then.

“Yes. Seriously. We need a woman for you to be photographed with at events. Look at this.”

By all the saints and sinners, the woman had spreadsheets on her phone identifying the frequency with which certain types of photos appeared in certain types of magazines and media.
Spreadsheets
.
She had it broken down into an analysis of whether the musician in question had hit the Top 40, what genre of music he played, and the hair color of the woman he was photographed with. I kid you not.

“For maximum publicity effect, we should find you a blonde.”

“Christina,” I said firmly, “data is all well and good, but you know I do not date, and I especially do not date blondes.”

“I know, I know. You're allergic to relationships. That's why this plan is perfect.”

“Wait, what?”

“It's not a real relationship. It's just for show.”

“That's not an improvement.” I pressed the heel of my hand to my forehead, as if that could forestall the headache. “I have standards. I have rules.”

Axel snuck up behind me. “Of course you do, Mal. What is it this time?”

“Explain to Christina why this plan of fixing me up with blond arm candy is not going to work.”

Axel shrugged. “I told you he wasn't going to like it. If only because of his blond exes.”

“Mal?” Our manager gave me her best questioning look.

I tried to keep it simple: “When I was growing up, my parents were forever attempting to match me with the so-called right sort of girls from the right sort of families.” In other words, girls who were filthy rich like we were and so very often blond, as my father tried to “erase” my mother's half-Spanish blood, hoping for grandchildren without the jet-black hair and tawny skin I'd inherited.

Apparently I could escape England and my father's archaic attitudes, but not the pervasive need to keep up appearances.

Christina kept on. “Don't get too stuck on the blond thing, okay? But you know this isn't a real
date
-date, right? We're not saying have a real relationship. This is purely for image.”

Before I could interject that doing it “purely for image” was in fact the basis of my original objection, more so than the “blond thing,” Axel piped up in a knowing voice. “I know who would be perfect.”

I growled disapprovingly. “Quit tag teaming me.”

Axel ignored my comment. “You know who would be perfect? Gwen Hamilton. We could double-date.”

“Your girlfriend's sister? Wouldn't that be a bit incestuous?” I asked.

He punched me in the arm. “I love you like a brother, Mal, but not like that.”

I rolled my eyes. The truth was that I liked Gwen Hamilton well enough, but she set off every one of my alarm bells. She was Hollywood royalty and happened to be blond, and how awkward would it be if I did get involved with her and then Axel and Ricki were to break up? I never wanted to have to choose sides between a lover and Axel or the band. That was a recipe for disaster. Besides, Gwen Hamilton was undoubtedly far too nice a girl to satisfy my darker urges.

I tried to put all these thoughts into a glare.

“He's not buying it,” Axel said to Christina.

“No, he's not,” Christina agreed. “Won't you at least think about it, Mal?”

“Think about what, conducting a charade of fake romantic hypersexuality in public for the sake of increased album sales?”

“Mal, don't be like that,” Axel wheedled. “It'll be
fun
.
We're going to have to go to movie premieres and awards shows and who knows what else. It'll look weird if I have a date and you don't.”

“It doesn't have to be Gwen,” Christina said. “We could just hire a model. Would that be simpler? Just pay someone. That wouldn't be as good as someone with name recognition, but—”

“I'll think about it,” I said, cutting her off and trying to close this tiresome subject as quickly as I could. “All right, Christina? I'll think about it.”

“Excellent! Gwen is supposed to be here tonight, isn't she, Axel?”

“I didn't mean—”

“Ricki said she would be. I haven't seen her yet, though…”

I closed my eyes and pressed my hand against my sinuses, thinking,
Angels and devils,
just get me through this night without having to fend off the fawning of some simpering innocent paragon of feminine virtue.

When I escaped being reintroduced to Gwen Hamilton for the rest of the night, I considered it a victory. Perhaps Christina and Axel would change their minds. I could only hope.

The next morning I felt wonderful and terrible at the same time. On the one hand, I'd slept amazingly well, all the tension from my back and neck had disappeared, and deep in my bones it felt like an itch was gone. On the other hand, I had teeth marks on one boob, a couple of bruises, and I felt like I'd had sex with a fire hydrant, not a…

Oh. I'd really done that. I would never be able to look at a bottle of beer without blushing again.

And of course today would be the day Ricki and I were supposed to discuss the upcoming dungeon party. After lunch, I gathered up my catalogs and information and we got together in the kitchen where I could spread them out on the table.

Ricki looked perkier than I'd seen her in weeks. She'd been working super hard on launching a new media start-up company, but I had a feeling the glimmer in her eye today had mostly to do with seeing Axel last night for the first time in almost two months.

“What do you think of this?” she asked, glancing at some of the tastefully photographed sex toys in the glossy catalogs. “What if we had a theme?”

“What kind of theme?” I was surprised. When we'd first learned that to keep our inheritance we needed to keep throwing play parties in the secret dungeon in the family mansion's basement, Ricki had been less than thrilled. Then she met Axel, who had apparently introduced her to the pleasures of kink, and her attitude had changed considerably. He was a dom; she was his sub. Anyone who attended our parties knew that now. I was, frankly, a bit envious that she'd found a dom so quickly—and she hadn't even been looking for one. I'd wanted to find someone like that for a long time, so it seemed a tad unfair she got there first.

I let out a breath slowly as a memory of Mal commanding me to serve him echoed in my ears.

Ricki's voice was drawing me back to the present, though. “I was thinking we could make a couple parties a year themed. You know, like do Mardi Gras in February.”

I tried to focus but I wasn't really able to keep my attention on the details, as Ricki hashed out some ideas for party themes and how to spread the word among our super-secret membership without leaving a trail of incriminating e-mails. Telling people at the August party was really the only way. “We've got…four new members now?”

“Yeah. Sakura, Diff, Dara, and Paul.” She chuckled to herself about the assistant she'd inherited from our grandfather. “I can't believe Grandpa Cy didn't let Paul come to the parties.”

“Maybe he was maintaining boundaries for his employees?”

“Oh, I'm sure he was, but still, poor Paul! To be the one person who knew all about these parties going on but not be allowed to attend?” She shook her head. “I mean, it would be one thing if he wasn't interested, but you should have seen him light up when I broached the subject. He's been pretending to be vanilla all along.”

“Paul's a sweetie pie.” He really was. I never would have guessed he was into kink if Ricki hadn't told me. Then again, most people wouldn't have guessed about me either. We spent the next half hour or so planning out what to buy and how to decorate. I enjoyed running the club, honestly. Sex should be good clean fun and not something people had to hide, but I understood why we had to hide it.

Oh God. Good clean fun.
Is that what you call what you did last night?

I tried to put last night out of my mind.
That wasn't me,
I thought to myself. That was all an extreme experiment in Method acting. And it had worked. No regrets. Time to move on.

Right?

Ricki was saying something about the film premiere she was going to tonight. “Gwen, are you even listening to me?”

“Yep. Yep. Right here.” I felt bad for spacing out on her so tried to be enthusiastic and interested to make up for it. “What film?”

“I don't even know. Some pseudo-indie thing that Brad Pitt executive produced. The party needs another girl to round it out. Want to go? I'd love it if you would.”

I love my big sister and I like making her happy. Now wasn't the moment to repeat why I wanted to stay out of the spotlight until it was shining on me because of my acting talent and not the family name. “Will it be fancy-fancy?”

“Not like Oscar night but party-fancy, sure. Oooh, hey, you could wear that sunset-red dress that was the wrong color for me. I've still got it.”

See,
I told myself,
not Oscar night, just an indie film, so every media outlet in the world won't be there.
“The Vera Wang? Let me try it on. And I better make sure all the temporary red is washed out of my hair or it could clash.”

“I'll get the dress and meet you at your room.”

It's handy to have a sister who is almost the exact same size as you, even if she is two years older. As I gathered up the catalogs, I heard her make a phone call, telling someone I was coming along tonight.

In short order she was laying the dress across the chaise longue in my “dressing room,” the room with the floor-to-ceiling mirror and my light-up makeup table. “I'm glad you're coming out with us tonight,” she said, “since I didn't get to see you last night. Was the audition that bad?”

Acting, acting, acting,
I thought as I tried to act casual. “Oh, it was such a pain,” I said as I held the dress up to my chest, then began working it off the hanger. “They kept us there forever and then in the end announced they'd filled the role without even looking at most of us. I never even got to read.”

“Seriously, Gwen, cattle calls aren't the way to do it. Maybe at this thing tonight you'll meet someone—”

Here we go again.
“No, Ricki, don't. I don't want some director casting me because we met at a cocktail party or because he thinks he'll get the family money backing his project. I want to prove I'm a good actor.” I slipped out of my clothes while facing away from her so she wouldn't see the teeth marks on my breast and stepped carefully into the dress, which left my shoulders bare but covered the marks handily. Phew. “Otherwise, what's the point?”

“There are tons of great actors who don't get parts.” Ricki helped to zip the dress up. “You have to have connections, too.”

“I suppose. Am I wrong to want to make it on my own?”

“No, of course not, but…This'll be good for you. Go out, be seen, get some fresh Google hits on your name.” She flattened the zipper against my spine. “You know, WOMedia's launching that app in a couple of weeks and we want to shoot a promo video for it. You could totally do the part of the woman using the app for the first time.”

“I suppose…”

She stepped back to look at me. “I didn't even get to see you with the red coloring in your hair. I can't tell it was there at all. Jamison said he didn't even recognize you yesterday.”

“I know. He almost called security when he saw me walking through the house.” I looked in the mirror now, though, and saw perky, friendly Gwen Hamilton all dressed up. The knee-length dress was just on the orange side of red—blood orange, maybe—and the hint of yellow in the undertone had made Ricki's complexion look sallow. On me, though, my skin glowed healthy and golden. “How long will the promo video be?”

“Probably two minutes? I don't know if there'll be any speaking in it, mostly just footage of a happy woman or women gazing lovingly at their phones. You'd be perfect. And it'd be a line on your résumé.” She watched as I turned to check the back of the dress in the mirror. “It would also help me out because then I won't have to do a talent search.”

“Oh, all right. If you really need my help, Ricki, all you have to do is ask.”

“You'll be perfect.” She smiled.

I pulled at the limp strands of my hair. “Do you have a stylist coming? Or are you going to do your own hair and makeup tonight?”

“I was planning to do my own.”

“Let's do each other's,” I said with a grin. “Like we used to when we were teenagers.”

“But no braids, beads, or French twists.”

“Deal.”

I'd had about enough of Axel and Christina chirping at me by the time Tashonda was finished with my hair. She was just giving it one last spritz of something before pushing me out of the chair when I said, “Enough! Let me get one thing clear. I am attending this function tonight because you insist that being seen with Gwen Hamilton on my arm is a good career move. It's work. Fine. I'll work. But don't expect me to
enjoy
it.”

Christina was satisfied with that and left me alone. But Axel wouldn't give up entirely.

“You have the weirdest hang-ups, Mal.” Axel knew me better than anyone else on Earth. Axel had been there the night I lost my virginity, the weekend we'd snuck away from my parents and took the train to London…

I didn't know
that
girl's name any more than I knew the name of the mystery woman with the labia tattoos. I wrote a lot of songs with women's names for their titles. Was that why?

That one at the Forum. She had to be from Los Angeles, hadn't she? Was there a chance I might run into her again?

I wanted to, rules or no.

I wanted to because even though she'd left me sexually sated, a gnawing feeling inside me flared up whenever I thought of her. I called this feeling
the Need
, a term I'd borrowed from the fantasy novels of Ariadne Wood. I wanted to do depraved things to this woman. To her and with her. My “rule” was that I never did a groupie twice because I didn't want them getting attached or obsessed the way Layla had, but honestly most of them didn't come back for more.

But it's not your run-of-the-mill sex kitten who has the words
Love Pain
tattooed on her inner thigh where only a very intimate partner would ever see it. I still wanted to ask her about that. When a woman doesn't tell you her name, should one take it as a sign she isn't interested in another go or merely that she has secrets of her own?

“Mal, you're not even listening to me.”

“Sorry, what?”

“Never mind. Here, put your jacket on.” Axel handed me a black jacket that I shrugged on easily. It was cut like a dinner jacket but with leather lapels embossed with a dragon design. I had a black dress shirt partly unbuttoned, black pants, and black leather boots. I was never seen wearing another color in public except as an accent to the black, fully conscious of its weight as the color of both mourning and villains.

Axel, on the other hand, had pumped up his blond highlights so much one could be forgiven for forgetting that his natural hair was actually light brown, and he had opted for a jacket that appeared to be light blue with green imitation snakeskin. At least I'm fairly sure it was imitation.

“Come on, Mal,” he said, poking the corners of my mouth as if trying to get me to smile. “Bask in the attention a little, will you?”

Basking in the attention is your job,
I wanted to say to him.
That's why you are the lead singer and I am not.
But I didn't have the energy to argue. “I'll try,” I said, without specifying what I was trying. “Now, let's go.”

One of the things about my sister is that she's sneaky in an understated way. She simply doesn't tell you things that she thinks might change your mind. But I should have known. When she said they needed “a girl to round out the party,” I should have known what she meant was “a double date with my boyfriend, Axel, and his best friend, Mal.”

Why wasn't that obvious to me? Maybe because I thought Ricki would have come out and
said
that. But no. Why make it obvious that she was trying to fix me up with her boyfriend's friend? She was obviously hoping something might work out and didn't want to jinx it, I guess.

She also had no way of knowing I was kind of hoping something might work out myself, although I was worried he'd flip if he realized I was the same girl. I had to remind myself that Ricki didn't know about last night. No one did.

No one, not even Mal. As he took a seat next to me in the limo, there wasn't any recognition in his eyes beyond the slight flicker that we had met in passing before. He did bow his head in a gentlemanly way and kiss my hand as we were reintroduced, and he was quite a gentleman in other ways, too. I certainly hadn't expected that after yesterday's raunch-fest, but there he was, doing things like offering me a handkerchief after I sneezed. I suppose the years of finishing school came out in situations like this. It certainly did for me, as I pretended that kiss on my hand didn't start a chain reaction of sense-memories of his lips touching me all over. His hair was tamed back and his suit was impeccable, but the scent of his skin seemed to tempt me like the warm familiarity of a favorite candle.

When we reached the theater, the limo came to a stop and he exited first, then offered his hand to help me step out of the car. My hand in his reminded me of how he'd held it to steady me as I'd stepped over the coffee table—and what I'd stepped over the coffee table for.

A flurry of flashes and shutter clicks showered us and he extended his elbow so I could take his arm. He placed his hand atop mine, almost protectively I thought—or maybe wished—as we made our way along a barrier crowded with people. He had to let go of me to sign a few autographs and I felt the absence of his touch keenly.

A large blond girl with blue streaks in her hair was waving a photo frantically as he drew closer. “Mal, Mal! This is the photo we took last night! I got it printed!”

He smiled graciously and looked at the glossy picture. “Our selfie. Well, now we have to take a selfie while holding it up, don't we?”

“Here, I'll take it,” I said, and she handed me her phone. The two of them squished close together and held the photo under their chins. Mal had the same smoldering, serious look in both photos, the girl the same elated grin. An innocent grin, I thought.