Wicked Ambition

A vague sort of dread clutched Kristin’s heart.

‘I think I’ll call him,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’

Inside, she closed the door to Ramona’s office and dialled Scotty. It rang and rang but there was no answer. She tried again, then once more. Nothing.

Kristin tapped the phone against her jaw. Scotty had said he’d be here, and he’d never let her or Bunny down. Something must have come up and he had forgotten to let her know, that was all, nothing to get alarmed over, just as Joey had said. And yet…

Emerging into the hall, she heard a ripple of giggles coming from the kitchen and instinctively backed up. Moments later, Luke came into frame and swaggered out on to the swarming patio, bottle of beer in hand, his hair dishevelled at the back. Kristin went to follow him out and almost ran straight into her mother.

‘Mom?’

Ramona’s lipstick was smudged. The top buttons of her silk blouse had been done up incorrectly. It took less than a second to work out what was going on.

‘Are you insane?’ Kristin cried, outraged. ‘He’s twenty!’

Ramona smirked. ‘So?’

‘He’s Scotty’s friend! He’s my friend!’

Ramona patted her chignon. ‘Well, then I suppose I’m his friend now, too.’

‘How long?’ Kristin whispered.

Her mother smiled coyly. Drunkenly she arched an eyebrow. ‘Long enough,’ she growled, and she actually put her tongue in her cheek. Ew! It was beyond gruesome!

‘I meant how long has it been going on?’

Ramona sighed with exasperation. ‘Oh, darling, relax!’ she sang, wafting out to play the hostess. ‘I am a hot-blooded woman, you know. What does it matter?’

Kristin was rigid with fury. It mattered a lot. Not because her mom was old and Luke was barely clear of being a teenager, not because her dislike for her mom sometimes bordered on hatred, but because Luke and Fraternity were her thing. She’d been made to share it all with her mother; from the earliest point, nothing had been hers, every move had been down to Ramona. Except for this. The boys were hers. How dare she steal this, as well?

‘I’m leaving.’ Kristin had to get away. She couldn’t stand this house any more. She couldn’t bear to look her mother in the eye. ‘Tell Bunny I’ll be back later.’

‘Where are you going?’ Ramona commanded. ‘We need you for the ETV shoot!’

‘Fuck the shoot.’ She hauled open the door. ‘Bunny doesn’t want to do it anyway.’

‘Kristin! You come back here this instant!’

The door slammed behind her. There was only one place she wanted to be, only one person who could make her feel better.

If Scotty wouldn’t come to her then she would go to him.

16

Scotty Valentine rolled over, straight into the loving arms of his manager, Fenton Fear. Fenton’s chest hair nuzzled his cheek and gently he kissed the older man’s collarbone.

Bliss. It was heaven to have Fenton in his apartment, his home…his bed. It had never happened before, Fenton was always terrified they would be seen, but on this occasion temptation had found a way. He’d only meant to drop by Scotty’s to discuss a forthcoming timetable, and within minutes the men were making up for the lost weeks since Tokyo.

‘You’re such a handsome boy.’ Fenton kissed his hair over and over. Scotty thought he would drown in happiness. ‘I’ve missed you more than you know.’

‘I do know,’ Scotty said as he sighed, ‘because I’ve felt the same.’ He reached under the covers for the other man’s hand, holding it tight. ‘Fenton, I have to tell you…’

He stalled, frightened that the words wouldn’t come back to him; that they’d just hang there, embarrassed in their solitude, and his declaration would ruin every thing.

‘Shh.’ Tenderly Fenton stroked his back. ‘You don’t need to.’

Scotty could hear his manager’s heartbeat beneath his cheek. When he was with Fenton it was as if the rest of the world didn’t exist. They could be anywhere so long as they were together; it was cliché, but true. In Fenton’s arms he was no longer Scotty Valentine, poster boy for teenage dreams and squeaky-clean advocate of healthy whole-bran pop; he was simply Scott, the man behind the media machine. He could let his guard down, be adored for the person he was, not the person he was imagined to be.

From beneath a heap of clothes on the floor, his cell buzzed for the eighth time that evening. It would be Kristin. He had promised her he would make Bunny’s party but it was almost ten and things would be wrapping up by now. He’d made all her other ones over the years: he deserved a break, didn’t he? Shit. Who’d have a girlfriend? Fenton never put demands on him—at least not any he wasn’t happy to meet…

‘Shouldn’t you get that?’ Fenton murmured. ‘It might be important.’

Scotty tilted his head to kiss him. ‘Let’s pretend a little while longer.’

‘Is it Kristin?’

‘Probably.’

Fenton winced. No matter how many times Scotty reassured him that he felt nothing for his girlfriend, her name still twisted like barb between them.

‘I don’t desire her,’ comforted Scotty. ‘You know that.’

‘How can you want me,’ Fenton replied. It wasn’t a question, merely an expression of how he felt. He wasn’t after reassurance because no matter how much of that Scotty gave him, he never took it in. Scotty’s affection for him was a miracle he couldn’t understand.

‘I’m old,’ he went on. ‘And I drink too much.’ Fenton motioned down to his belly, covered in a downy fuzz of hairs. ‘Then there’s you. Exquisite. Radiant. Adonis.’

‘Come here,’ Scotty choked, overawed with love. Why wouldn’t Fenton believe him?

The men lay together, bodies entwined, every so often sharing a sweet, fragile kiss, until Fenton’s attentions grew fiercer and his mouth moved lower. Scotty hardened, stiffer and stiffer till he thought he would burst. Fenton’s moustache grazed his balls, his tongue wrapped around Scotty’s length, teasing the tip of his erection and using his hands in a rhythm of almost unbearable intensity that sent ripple after ripple of unfettered pleasure chasing up Scotty’s spine. Delirious with yearning, Scotty groaned as his dick slid into paradise. His ardour, as always, was tinged with envy. How many other men had Fenton done this to? At his age he must have had countless boyfriends, and it tore Scotty apart to picture him for one second with anyone else. Fenton was the only man he’d been with.

‘I have to be inside you,’ croaked Scotty, extricating himself. Obligingly Fenton turned and Scotty set to work, dipping his fingers into his own mouth before using them on Fenton, and then, with a single, hard thrust, he entered, both of them crying out and plunging forward on the sweat-bathed sheets. Scotty gripped Fenton’s buttock with one hand, snaking the other round to grasp his manager’s hard-on, working it up and down as he built a rhythm, feeling his abdomen contract and the pleasure rushing through him like liquid flames…

He didn’t hear the door open.

But he saw. As Fenton bucked to ejaculation beneath him he saw the shape in the entrance. It was Kristin, a sharp blank look of shock slapped across her stricken face.

‘Fuck!’ Fenton cried in orgasmic frenzy.

‘Fuck,’ Scotty replied, frozen with horror. The blood drained entirely from his face and in that second he knew it was over. Everything. Over.

17

Turquoise regularly took on ten-thousand-strong audiences and thought nothing of it. She made TV appearances in front of millions and didn’t bat an eye. She’d addressed royalty, politicians and the world’s elite, holding her own against the most powerful on the planet.

But sitting through lunch with Cosmo Angel was a summit she could not climb.

‘I’m not feeling great,’ she told Donna Cameron that morning. ‘Can we postpone?’