Temptation Island

‘I’m done,’ she said now, shoving the mop back in its corner. Anita’s horrified expression appeared in one of the salon mirrors.

‘Don’t you dare think about it!’ she crowed.

‘I’m not thinking about it.’ Lori grabbed her bag. She changed from the uncomfortable plastic heels made obligatory by Angélica into her favourite worn Converse. ‘I’m doing it.’

‘You can’t leave,’ Rosa bitched, jabbing a pair of styling scissors in Lori’s face. ‘You’ve got another hour and you’re workin’ every second of it!’

‘Or what?’ She scooped up a stack of battered paperbacks from under the counter.

‘You’d better not be meetin’ Rico!’ one of them screeched, but she couldn’t tell which. ‘You won’t get away with it!’

Lori pulled open the door, hearing the familiar, hated metallic buzz that announced her departure. She held the books tightly to her, remembering the worlds they kept inside: other worlds she dreamed of when she lay in bed staring into darkness, imagining what opportunity, what possibility, tasted like. Sweet, she decided, like honey.

Things would be different. It was only a matter of time.

I will get out of here, Lori Garcia vowed. One day. One day I’m going to be free.

2 Aurora

‘So, do you want to fuck?’

Mink Ray, sixty-something rock star fresh from a comeback tour with The Bad Brothers, put down his brush and gazed, stoned, at the canvas he’d been working on.

‘Looks like shit,’ he complained.

Aurora Nash ground out her half-smoked joint and sat up. She was naked. ‘I’m offended.’

‘I doubt it.’

‘Let’s see.’ She peeled herself off the couch, one of several sunken offerings in Mink’s Hollywood apartment. Aurora was tall, about five-nine, with short ice-blonde hair and glacial blue-grey eyes. Her tits were small and high on her chest, the nipples dark and stiff. She hooked an arm round Mink’s waist. He was wearing his customary leather jacket and it felt weird, quite horny, against her skin. ‘It’s not that bad,’ she pouted, secretly thinking it was dire. She couldn’t work out if it was meant to be abstract or if Mink was just a crap artist.

‘What’s that?’ She pointed at a jagged torpedo thing in the middle of the picture.

‘Your tit,’ he commented lazily, sparking up a cigarette and ambling to the bar, where he poured them both drinks.

‘You promised me it would be tasteful,’ Aurora teased, not minding at all. How tasteful was it ever going to be? She was posing nude for her friend’s dad, rock star legend and now, apparently, frustrated artist.

‘It is,’ Mink said, chucking back the dark liquid and immediately filling another. ‘You couldn’t tell what it was, could you?’

Aurora faced him, unabashed. She put a hand on her hip and felt Mink’s gaze rake over her young body. Her skin was smooth, flawless, smelled fine … and she knew it. ‘My turn.’ She arched an eyebrow at his leather-clad crotch. ‘Let me draw you.’

Mink snorted by way of reply. He fingered the blinds on the window, allowing a sliver of mid-afternoon light to stream in. It illuminated the crags on his face, features addled by years of alcohol and drug abuse and who knew what else. Aurora found it sexy. When he let go, the apartment returned to its den-like state. Aurora joined him at the bar and slipped on to a stool, crossing her long legs and in doing so folding away the light triangle of butter-coloured hair between them. She caught Mink watching.

‘Wanna get bombed?’ he asked, squinting as she took a slug of her drink.

‘What are you offering?’ She trailed her pinkie around the rim of the glass.

Mink knew he should suggest she wear a robe. He didn’t.

‘How old are you anyway?’ he growled.

‘Old enough to fuck.’

‘Yeah, right, missy.’

‘I’ll be nineteen next year.’ Aurora was guessing this was an acceptable number to him. Mink must’ve done all sorts in his day.

He narrowed his eyes. ‘More like eighteen.’

‘Whatever.’ Finishing the drink, she pushed her glass out for a refill. Mink obliged. As she padded back to the couch she could feel Mink’s gaze fixed on her ass.

Actually, Aurora was fifteen, but she was old for her age. She knew loads of girls who said that, but in her case it was actually true. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d slept with someone older than her dad. Mink wanted her; she could tell it a mile off.

Settling on the couch, she tucked her knees up under her chin. Mink was getting an eyeful. Around her neck was a silver locket, from which she produced a vial of white powder. She tipped a small mound on to her little finger and expertly sniffed it up each nostril.

‘Hey, let me in on summa that.’ Mink swaggered over, glass in hand. He wore a lot of chunky rings with skulls and panthers on them and things like that, and his nails looked grubby. There was paint on his knuckles.

Aurora obliged and they both sat back. Whoa, that was good. She felt Mink’s hand on her leg, creeping higher.

‘I don’t fuck kids your age,’ he pronounced.

‘I don’t fuck men your age,’ she countered.

He regarded her out of the corner of his eye, the way her chest was rising and falling as she breathed, the peaks of her tits coming closer and then receding, tempting him, teasing the growing bulge in his pants. When was the last time that had happened? These days it took more than a nice rack to get him hard. This girl was hot, real hot.

‘Guess that makes us as bad as each other.’ Desire curdled his voice.

Aurora smiled. The light in the room was purplish, and she could see tiny dust motes floating close to the floor. ‘My parents wouldn’t approve,’ she said innocently, gazing up at him through pale lashes. She could see Mink struggle with the turn-on of her virgin-daddy’s-girl protest and the undeniable truth of it.

Aurora Nash was the daughter of Tom Nash and Sherilyn Rose, mega-selling country rock legends and all-round respectable American couple. Initially they’d had separate careers—Sherilyn the sweetheart of the country and western scene; Tom regarded far more seriously than Billy Ray Cyrus but still attracting the comparison, one that pissed him off no end—but when album sales tailed off in the nineties they had joined forces and become a formidable duo, singing songs about the great and good of America, the land of opportunity, all that stuff Aurora privately thought was horse shit. It sold, though—boy, did it sell. They’d made millions.

As her parents’ only daughter, Aurora had never wanted for anything. Every whim was indulged, every desire satisfied. The word ‘no’ didn’t feature in her vocabulary. She liked her life, it was fun—and it was fulfilling, even if recently she’d been jumping from project to project without feeling much about any of them. Everything got handed to her on a plate, and it wasn’t like she was complaining about it, it was just that she never, ever had to try. Then again, who wanted to try? Trying was boring. Succeeding was what it was about. In the last year alone Aurora had released her own teen-queen album, collaborated on a fashion range with a music icon, and launched a perfume called, fittingly, ‘All Mine’. And she wasn’t even sixteen yet.

‘Who says your old man has to know?’ Mink took her hand, guiding her towards the protuberance jutting tent-like from his pelvis.

He unzipped his fly and whipped his dick out. It was gigantic.

Aurora felt like laughing. But Mink was dead serious. ‘You gonna suck my cock like a good little girl?’ he breathed, the words catching at the back of his throat. One hand was absent-mindedly caressing the shaft, the other applying pressure to the back of Aurora’s head. She resisted against it and Mink pushed harder.

‘Wait your turn,’ she told him, manoeuvring her body round. She lay flat on her back and parted her legs. Mink’s mouth fell open, which was a good start. ‘Girls go first.’

3 Stevie

There was a certain romance to exiting a New York yellow cab. As Stephanie Speller slammed the door and hauled her bag out of the trunk, watching as the vehicle rejoined a blaring stream of downtown traffic, she gazed up at the surrounding skyscrapers and believed, for the first time in a while, she had arrived.

It was like stepping on to a movie set. Drivers hollered from car windows. Commuters rushed past brandishing steaming coffee, bursts of animated conversation reaching her from every angle in layers of astounding clarity and detail. The aroma of something sweet from busily toiling street vendors, pretzels or doughnuts, masked the sourer odour of trash sweating it out in the summer heat. Stevie had to put her head right back, looking up and up and up till her neck hurt, trying to see the tops of the buildings, and even then—

Someone slammed into her, the force of impact nearly sending her flying.