Power Games (6 page)

He was never setting foot on an airplane ever again.

But even as Kevin thought it, he knew it was an absurd notion. International commitments meant he got thrown about the globe like a coin in a pinball machine.

What choice did he have? What choice did he have about anything?

The phone rang. It was Sketch.

‘Ride’s outside, buddy.’ His manager’s voice was drizzled thinly over a nub of hysteria. ‘You’re behind time. Again.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Everything OK?’

Shit. Kevin checked the time. Double shit. He had a show at the TD Garden in an hour. These days his power naps were turning into induced fucking comas.

‘Be right down,’ he snapped, hanging up.

A freezing cold shower slapped him to his senses. Afterwards, in the foggy mirror, Kevin grimaced at his reflection.

Come
on.
Why did he look so goddamn
young
?

Miserably he plucked at a single chest hair straining from his diaphragm. It was like a blade of grass in the middle of a barren desert. What the
fuck
? Where was his chest rug? Couldn’t he sprout just a few more?

He was nineteen, for crissakes, and yet he had the torso of a ten year old.

The grimace deepened. That wasn’t even the worst part.

Glancing down, Kevin loosened the towel around his
waist. He assessed the feathery covering of pubic hair scarcely concealing his miniature prick, and howled.

It was a worm dangling between two berries.
Shrivelled
berries. The whole thing was shrivelled. Why wouldn’t it fucking well
grow
?

Was he balding? But how could he be balding if he’d never had hair there in the first place? Kevin howled some more, and the phone resumed its grisly summons.

Despite turning up ninety minutes late to the arena and enduring a cacophony of boos, the gig went down OK. Kevin knew how to charm his Little Chasers. Normally he refused to venture into the crowd—he didn’t want their sticky fingers pawing all over his designer outfits—but to appease the irate parents, and on Sketch’s counsel, tonight he made an exception. At one point, during a rendition of ‘Fast Girl’, he thought he was about to get torn limb from limb, his white suit strained into a crucifix by a pie-faced chick pulling him one way and a blubbing pre-teen the other.

The noise was thunderous—’
Kevin! Kevin! Kevin!
’—and the venue alight with the glitter of camera phones. When he crooned his mega hit ‘Adore You’, the sparkle swayed back and forth, arms in the air, kids at the front crying into their Kevin Chase T-shirts and gripping, white-knuckled, crudely assembled banners that bore confessions of their undying affection: KEVIN CHASE PLEASE BE MINE; SARA & KEVIN 4 EVER; I LOVE YOU KEVIN; I’M YOUR NO. 1 LITTLE CHASER …

After a hundred-minute set and two encores, he was beat.

Backstage, Sketch congratulated him with the unwelcome announcement that they were expected at a children’s charity gala downtown—there was a galaxy of names attending and it was a wise gig at which to be seen. Kevin wanted badly to
creep into bed and had to suppress the familiar flare of upset at this fresh injustice.

He wished he had someone he could call, a buddy, a friend, anyone who’d listen and tell him it was OK, just to keep at it, all this was bullshit anyway and it didn’t really matter. He wished someone out there thought that
he
mattered—not his records or his hairstyle or the new mansion he was bought to live in like a fucking Ken Doll—just him, the real Kevin, the regular kid. But Kevin saw now that he would never be a regular kid, and he’d never have regular friends. What even
was
a regular friend? He’d watched movies about them, read about them as if they were exotic, elusive creatures prowling a distant landscape, but he’d never had one of his own. Kevin had the starring role in the movie of his life, and everyone was an actor.

In the beginning, it had been fun. Signing the contract in Sketch’s old office on Santa Monica, then in the weeks that followed, a storm of crazy parties, premieres and photo shoots—but nobody had told him then what was being sacrificed. No one had said, OK, Kevin, it’s this or it’s this: which life do you want?

He didn’t want this one.

‘They’re loving you on Twitter,’ reassured Sketch as Kevin changed out of his clothes. Sketch omitted to mention the burst of hostility that had accompanied the star’s fifth late arrival this season, trending worldwide as #KevinsLosingIt. Not ideal.

Outside, bodyguard Rusty was waiting with a yapping, wet-nosed Trey, cradling him because Kevin didn’t like Trey to have to sit on the ground. The dachshund was clad in a blazer, baseball cap and sneakers to match his owner’s—they’d had a whole wardrobe tailored bespoke. Snatching the pooch, Kevin was swallowed up by the car’s
interior. He felt like a vampire, if not confined to the night then confined to the
inside
, skulking around behind closed blinds, hiding beyond a tinted window or crawling about in the endless dark. He held Trey’s fur to his mouth and quietly kissed his neck.
You’re the only one who understands.

Kevin demanded to drive the Audi R8 and Sketch hadn’t the strength to refuse—after all, the kid had his licence, even if he did kangaroo-hop the vehicle into gear, the exhaust exploding behind them.

‘You take your vitamins today?’ asked Sketch as they whizzed through the city. He caught Rusty’s eye in the rearview mirror.

‘For fuck’s sake, course I did,’ Kevin lashed. ‘Don’t you trust me?’

They approached a red light and the brakes shrieked.

‘Sure I do, kiddo.’

‘I want a lion,’ said Kevin, out of nowhere.

‘What?’

‘Like that one we saw at the zoo. Get me one.’

Sketch chuckled. ‘It ain’t that easy, pal …’

‘I’m Kevin Chase, course it’s that fucking easy.’

‘Why a lion?’

‘Why not? They’re cool, aren’t they?’

‘They’re dangerous.’

‘Yeah, but they’re cool.’

‘You won’t be able to go anywhere near it.’

Kevin swigged from a can of energy drink. ‘Sure I will, if it’s tame.’

Sketch bit his tongue. What on earth was his client
talking
about?

‘Rusty,’ Kevin nodded into the back, ‘what do you think?’

‘Whatever you want, boss.’

The Audi took a corner at speed. ‘It’s king of the jungle,
y’know?’ said Kevin. ‘Manly. Like, the ultimate manly animal. And hairy. Really hairy.’

‘You want a hairy animal I’ll get you a guinea pig.’

‘Now you’re taking the fucking piss.’

‘I’m trying to be practical.’

‘Well, don’t. There’s no point doing what I do unless I get what I want, got it? You’re supposed to be my manager—so manage stuff, dickwad.’

Sketch gritted his teeth. There was no point arguing. It was Joan’s fault. Anything Kevin wanted, Kevin got. Anything Kevin demanded was produced. Any word Kevin spoke was law. By the time Sketch had discovered him, at the tender age of twelve, Kevin had already been nurturing an impressive Napoleon Complex.

You haven’t helped. You’ve made him into the monster he is.

It was a relief when Kevin brought the car to a screeching halt outside the Guild Theatre. The entrance was a quarry of press. Stars drifted down the carpet, stopping to chat to camera, smiling and posing as they went. Hollywood king Noah Lawson, a coup for the event, was signing merch amid an adoring mass of women.

A band of Little Chasers had been tipped off about Kevin’s arrival and, as the teen heartthrob emerged, their squeals reached blistering crescendo.

‘Kevin! OhmygodKevin! Kevin, I love you! Keviiiiiiiin!’

Kevin waved, flashing his pristine teeth and criminally cute dimples. Sketch had to admit that despite Kevin’s disastrous moods and fatal tendency to strop, when it came to putting on a game face he was up there with the best. The kid was a pro.

Kevin, meanwhile, was hitting his stride.

It was a dream
, he reassured himself as a sea of hands
reached out to skim just a fibre on his blazer,
only a dream.
Nothing like that was ever going to happen. Plane crashes were the fate of old people, poor people, people who travelled on low-cost airlines in dirty foreign countries. No, a more likely end to Kevin Chase was total burnout, nervous breakdown: a meltdown to end all meltdowns …

Imagine if he did it now! Just stripped naked and barrelled up to the gleaming gala entrance, blathering and drooling, maybe he could even deliver a steaming turd to the carpet to make absolutely sure? Instead he twirled for the crowd, performing one of his hallmark 360-degree dance moves, a splash of MJ mixed with Ne-Yo polished off with Usher, shooting one arm in the air as he sprung up on his ankles and released a high-pitched cry. Across the gangway he met Sketch’s approving gaze.

Good little monkey,
Kevin thought bitterly.
Monkey did good.

At the end of the carpet, billionaire entrepreneur Jacob Lyle, one of the cooler guys on the scene, was draped around a gorgeous six-foot brunette.

What did it take to bag a woman like that? Kevin wondered sadly, absorbing her hip-hugging floor-length gown and the tight swathe of pastel-pink that barely covered her tits and ass. He imagined burying his head in those tits, plunging into her, making her moan, hearing he was the best she’d ever had, and having her admire the broad, muscled shoulders he yearned for so badly, working till he puked at the gym.

As if that was going to happen.
What was wrong with him?

Every time Kevin got to second base his cock fizzled and died. No wonder Sandi had run for the hills: she was probably screwing her way across LA this very minute, spreading her damning word as fast as she spread her legs. Kevin’s erections lasted mere seconds before they flaked, and even when
his dick did get hard it barely amounted to more than a pickled gherkin. When he thought about screwing Jacob Lyle’s Amazonian angel, the only image that sprang to mind was one of a naked child scrambling over a climbing frame. Even jerking off was like flogging a paper bag.

Jacob Lyle, on the other hand, had it down.

Jacob was a pussy magnet. Whatever
it
was, Jacob had it in spades.

Kevin wanted it too.

As he was ushered inside, his PR fending off the last of the requests, he resolved that a meeting with the entrepreneur was drastically in order. Maybe if he started affiliating with guys like Jacob, his luck might start to change.

Something had to—fast.

7

Los Angeles

I
n the back seat of a limo cruising down Sunset Boulevard, Jacob Lyle grabbed his girlfriend’s hips and pulled her down onto his throbbing cock.

She was wet as fuck for him.

‘Jake, oh, screw me, Jake, you feel so good!’

He knew he did. All the girls said it.

Jacob flipped her round so her palms struck the partition glass, soundproofed but who cared if they were heard; it only added to the thrill. In the tinted reflection it occurred to him how easily one hot cunt could be traded for another hot cunt. Creamy ass riding his dick like a jockey, swathe of glossy hair cascading down her back (he supposed the colour was a variant), the moans of ecstasy he could pretty much script by the book … ‘Make me come,’ she gasped, ‘don’t you dare stop till I’ve come …’

Once more, Jacob lifted her waist, supporting her so her drenched pussy was teasing the tip of his cock. He was making her wait, resisting her as she fought to plunge onto his length. Expertly he reached round and located her clit, deciding she was so wet she could put out a burning building, and proceeded to polish the silky bud like a button. Wetter
and wetter she became, her moans reaching a mad cry as she bucked and thrashed on the head of his penis. Before he allowed her release, he reclaimed his finger and sucked it, tasting her, salty and sweet. She was wide on top of him now, open to his will, senseless in her desire, and with a growled, ‘You ready, baby?’ he pushed his finger hard into her asshole at the same time as leaning her forward and allowing the entirety of his cock to be consumed by her warmth.

Instantly she pulsed and shuddered on top of him, screaming like an animal. On and on she came, and again when he brought both hands up to clasp her tits, pulling the nipples sharply and whispering in her ear what a dirty sexy bitch she was.

It was the nipples that got him: he fucking loved girls’ nipples. In a blinding burst Jacob ejaculated, slicing through her while he stretched the nipples flat, distending them to the point at which she shrieked in delighted pain, toying the hard plugs between his fingers as he crested the mount and the last waves ebbed into calm.

‘Oh, my God.’ Lilly-Sue, a wide-eyed wannabe actress he had been dating a month, dismounted. She was shaking. ‘You just blew my mind.’

Jacob smirked. He was darkly sexual: dark hair, dark eyes, with the suggestion that he harboured dark intentions. Machiavellian in his appearance, he possessed pale, severe cheekbones and a cruel, yet handsome, line to his mouth. Women found him irresistible. He was the bastard they had been told to avoid.

‘Your turn then,’ he answered. ‘Wanna blow my cock?’

Jacob Lyle was widely regarded as the savviest businessman of his generation. He had embarked on his first transaction aged twelve, when he had uncovered the clever knack of
emptying his father’s Lucky Strike filters and re-rolling the tobacco in cheap cigarette papers, bought for a dollar and sold on in the schoolyard for several times that amount. His dad never missed a pack or two, and one Strike stretched up to three smokes if he was careful—most of his buyers didn’t know the difference anyhow. He remembered looking at the Strikes and thinking:
I could shift these at mark-up as they are, or I could make more by trebling my profit.
So Jacob did more, and the more Jacob pocketed, the more Jacob sold. At a young age he grasped that the world turned on the clean and straightforward principle that money, when channelled to effect, could make a shitload
more
money. It was simple when you looked at it right.