It hurt. A lot. Enough to jerk me out of my sound and light induced haze, so at least there was that. Stumbling back, my hands clapped to my face, I blinked the tears from my eyes to see Carter grinding against a leggy blonde, his head thrown back as he reveled in the beat. His eyes were closed. Sweat dripped from his forehead, and his hair hung in damp ringlets around his face. He looked like a boy in high school, even though he was just a year shy of my own age.

Reaching out, I put my hand on his bicep and squeezed. He didn't even respond. How drunk was he?

Sidling up as close as I could without endangering my nose again, I screamed at the top of my lungs.

"CARTER!"

Somehow he heard me over the pounding music, opened his eyes and turned around. At first he didn't seem to recognize me. Then his brows shot up into his hair.

"How the h.e.l.l did you find me here?" he hollered. "And how did you get in?"

I ignored that question. "Come on, Kent is going to rip you a new one if you don't come with me!"

To my shock, Carter made a face. "Then let him come find me! You can't boss me around, I'm paying you!"

Anger rose in me. "Kent is paying me to boss you around!" I yelled back. "If you don't care what he does to you, can't you do it so I don't get in trouble with Kent?"

That actually seemed to get through to him, and I saw hesitation in his face. He was on the verge of saving my bacon from the brother he thought of as an evil taskmaster when it all fell apart.

Harsh hands on my arm, pulling me away, and I turned to see a very beautiful and very cross girl scowling at me. The leggy blonde who'd no doubt been enjoying Carter's hard-on in her a.s.s crack a minute ago. I didn't blame her for looking so cross.

"Hands off," she yelled at me over the sound of the music. "I was here first!"

Desperately I looked around for Kent, but he was nowhere to be seen. What should I say? The girl staggered a bit on her gorgeous stripper heels and I realized she was drunk.

Of course she was drunk. Everyone was drunk. Perilously she teetered, but before I could do anything Carter reached out and caught her, laughing, and then he staggered, too.

In horror I watched as, almost in slow motion, they collided with a large man grinding against a very beautiful, lithe woman. The woman stumbled, her ankle giving way under her, and the man turned and shoved Carter hard in the chest.

Carter punched him in the face. Or he tried to. His swing was wild, sent him off balance, and he clipped the man in the ear. The man tumbled sideways into someone else, and then it was all over.

The lights and the music battered against me as a fight broke out. People shoved and panicked, like sheep, as fists began to fly.

Women shrieked and tried to get out of the way. Drinks sloshed, splashed across the ground and all over expensive club clothes, bodies banged and ricocheted around like pin b.a.l.l.s in a machine, and in the middle, Carter disappeared into a suddenly frothing fist fight.

The wave of people swept me back, away from him. I struggled against the tide, but it was futile. Carter popped out of the melee for a moment, and desperately I reached for him. My fingers caught his sleeve, but he tumbled away again, into the crowd. Something hit me across the back of my head, hard. The world swam, and I nearly fell- Then Kent was there. Tall, strong, implacable, but weirdly it was the glittering jewelry in his ears that stunned me. In the lights of the club, he sparkled. His arms were around me, keeping me from falling to the floor and being trampled to death. His hard body was a sudden, queer comfort, but I had no time to enjoy it. He set me on my feet, then, bobbing and weaving, dove into the brawl.

Only seconds later he emerged, his brother in hand. He didn't even glance my way as he propelled the drunk and hapless Carter across the dance floor, to the back of the club, and I sprinted after them. My heart roared in my ears, drowning out the music, and when we reached a door marked Employees Only Kent didn't hesitate to dive right through. I followed him, barely registering the back rooms before we were stumbling through the back door and into the alleyway.

"Hold him," Kent said, and practically threw Carter into my arms, then took off running down the alley.

Helplessly, I kept my arms locked around Carter, who'd gone limp like a cat that knows it's about to be tortured with doll clothes. The seconds ticked by and he got heavier and heavier, until the flash of headlights illuminated us from behind.

Turning, I saw Kent's sleek black car pull through the alleyway before stopping abruptly in front of us. I loaded Carter into the back, hopped shotgun, and away we sped.

I barely registered the completely ordinary ranch-style house where Carter lived, I was so exhausted from the rush and drop of adrenaline. Carter had sat in the back seat the whole way home, drunk and complaining that Kent was harshing his buzz. I wanted to turn around and slap him on the cheek that didn't have a faint bruise, but I didn't. Honestly, I was just too tired.

Kent pulled his slick car into the garage and closed the large door before turning to where his brother sat moaning. "We're home, man," he said. "Let's make Rebecca welcome."

Carter looked at me, but it was a bit of a cross-eyed gaze. "Welcome, Mrs. Girlfriend," he said sourly. "Thanks for the c.o.c.kblock."

Ugh, I thought. But all I said was, "You need to sober up."

"I'll be sober in the morning," he told me.

No you won't, I thought. You may just not be drunk any more. With a sigh I opened the door and got out of the car.

"You get your things, I'll handle this guy," Kent told me, popping the trunk, and I nodded at him gratefully. He was better equipped to drag Carter's drunk a.s.s into the house anyway, so I retrieved my things and followed them.

Carter was still protesting as Kent led him into the bathroom, ordered him to wash his face, drink some water, and go to bed. I stood in the small living room, feeling awkward. The house was just like any other house-pretty messy, but nothing like the disaster I'd imagined after the horror of the rehearsal loft-and I had to remind myself that the Lonely Kings were still on their way up. Their names may be everywhere on everyone's lips, but they were still new. Whatever money they were making was only just now starting to trickle in as everyone took their cut off the top. Still, the house was pretty big for Cali. Real estate was still grossly expensive here as opposed to where I grew up.

Reasoning that the house was now, for all intents and purposes, my home for the time being, I set my things down and collapsed on the couch. I closed my eyes for a moment.

Kent's hand on my shoulder, shaking me gently woke me, and I jerked out of a shallow slumber to see him standing over me, giving me a tired smile.

"Thought you might like to use the bedroom instead since you've been sleeping on a couch for a week," he said.

"It was a lot longer than a week," I said. "It just wasn't the same couch the whole time."

"Surfing," he said, nodding sagely. "Well, come on. The guest room is yours now."

He picked up one trash bag and I hefted the other, following him down the hallway to the last room at the end. Together we heaved my bags in through the door, and I walked in, surveying the place.

A nice bed, covered in the ugliest orange and lime comforter I'd ever seen, stood against one wall. An easy chair and a dresser with a TV on it also decorated the room. It smelled a little musty and disused, but I didn't mind. It was clean, and a bedroom, and I could finally, finally sleep.

"Yeah," I said. "This is nice. Thank you."

Behind me, Kent cleared his throat. Then, abruptly, he said: "Rebecca. We can't touch each other again. Now that you're here, you have to be focused on Carter completely."

I almost protested that it wasn't me that was doing all the handsy s.h.i.t, but when I whirled around to confront him I stopped.

He actually looked sad. Contrite. His shoulders, normally so hard and set, drooped slightly. A heavy weight, I thought, not for the first time. He had heavy weights to bear, and now I did, too. He'd hired me to help him, not go crazy all over his c.o.c.k. I had a feeling he was telling himself as much as me that we needed to concentrate on Carter.

After a moment, I nodded. "Okay."

If anything, his shoulders drooped further. "Can you get yourself settled?" he asked.

I gave him a little smile. "I'm a big girl. When I have to be."

He nodded. "Good. You'll have to be." He turned to go, then paused and looked back at me. "Rebecca?"

I raised my brows, telling him to go on.

He hesitated. "Thank you," he finally said. Then he turned and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

I stripped down in silence, turned out the light, and got into bed, suddenly too tired to even look for my pajamas. I crawled between the sheets and was asleep in seconds.

In the early morning hours I awoke, terrified.

Panic reigned, and for a long moment I forgot where I was. I was no stranger to waking up in strange places, so that part didn't bother me. It had all been a part of my life with Jason, whenever we ran out of money. Some nights I even slept at the bar. There was a cot in the back for drunks too wasted to go home, but me-I usually didn't have a home. Sometimes I was in a strange bed, or sleeping on a strange floor, or in the back seat of a car or on a couch in a house I didn't recognize. I'd woken many places before, so that did not scare me.

No, the terrifying thing was the sudden fear that I was back there, back in time, dating a washed-up wannabe rocker, treading water, sc.r.a.ping for the next rent check and failing and moving on.

What scared me was not waking up in a strange place; what scared me was the thought that I was not done waking up in strange places.

I sat straight up in the bed, panting, my eyes darting wildly about the room.

There was a figure in the doorway, and for a second my heart leaped straight into my throat.

Good thing, too, because it blocked the scream that threatened to break free there.

"It's me."

Kent. The band, the contract, the new house.

And of course it was Kent. Who else would be so audacious as to sneak into my new room right after he told me we needed to keep our hands off each other?

I remembered I was naked and s.n.a.t.c.hed the sheet to my chest.

"What are you doing in here?" I hissed. "Didn't you just tell me we had to stop touching each other?" I couldn't see his face. In the darkness of the room he was a hole cut in the world.

He shook his head. "I didn't come here for that."

I stared at him, not buying it, and he appeared to have a brief attack of conscience. "Well," he amended, "not entirely."

"Then what are you doing in here?" I demanded.

He spread his hands. "You were crying," he said simply.

My mouth dropped. "Crying?" I said. "I wasn't crying."

"Our rooms are very close," he replied. "The head of your bed meets mine. I thought I heard you weeping..."

The revelation that he had set me up in a room literally next to his freaked me out, but not enough to override his insistence that I had been crying of all things. I'd been dreaming, but I couldn't remember what it had been about. Surely not something so bad it made me cry.

I brought a hand to my face, just to rea.s.sure myself, and I was startled when my hand came away wet.

"Oh," I said after a moment. "I guess I was crying."

"May I come in?" he asked. His voice was gentle, nothing like the hard-a.s.s business man that I'd first met, nothing like the pushy, s.e.xual rock G.o.d who loved to eat p.u.s.s.y and wanted nothing more than to f.u.c.k me until I screamed his name. This Kent was... sweet. This must be the caretaker Kent, I realized, the one that's worrying himself into his grave over his baby brother.

"Um," I said. "Yeah. Sure."

He walked further into the room, his steps slow and sure. A small easy chair sat in the corner next to the window, and when he reached it the small glow coming from the streetlamps down the street lit his face very softly through the curtains. Sitting down, he stretched out lazily. He wore only a sleeveless undershirt and a pair of pajama bottoms. "Rebecca," he said.

I swallowed and waited. I loved the sound of my name on his lips. It sounded like something he wanted to eat, a delicate dish he was ordering at a restaurant.

"Rebecca, I'm sorry."

I blinked. "I'd never expected him to say that. "What do you mean?" I asked him.

The thin line of light falling against his cheek and jaw bent supply, a sign of his teeth clenching. "I mean," he said, "that I've been taking advantage of you. s.e.xually."

A tiny snort escaped me, and he shifted. "What's so funny?"

I shook my head. "Nothing," I said. "I mean, I guess you could say you've been doing that. But it's not like I'm not a willing partic.i.p.ant."

His sharp intake of breath told me that he hadn't been quite sure, and I realized that while he had been preoccupied with keeping his hands off of me, there had been a fear in the back of his mind that I may have been under duress. I needed a job, after all, and he was in a position of power over me.

"I suppose that is true," he said after a moment. "It's still inappropriate. I was attracted to you the first moment I saw you. I thought the airplane could scratch the itch, and, if you were the right candidate for the job, then there would be no further trouble..." He cleared his throat. "That's obviously not the case."

My heart was beating faster and faster, adrenaline spiking in my veins. My core was wet and my b.r.e.a.s.t.s suddenly felt heavy, anchors weighing me down. The need to touch myself, to touch him, was almost shocking. I clenched my hands tight. "So?" I said.

He sighed. "So now you're an employee. I decided that I would make you Carter's girlfriend because it solved a number of problems for him, and for me. For him, it would give him someone who could look after him, keep him in line while I try to help him launch his career in film. Keep him in line before he falls off the deep end... And I told the rest of the band you were his real girlfriend because it was the perfect incentive to stay away from you. After all, if everyone thinks it's real... and anyone got wind that I was hung up on my brother's girl... that would be disastrous."

"Would it?" I asked him. "Would it really? The publicity would be great."

In the dim light, I saw him shake his head. "No. That's just it. The Lonely Kings are always in the news, always on the blogs. We're wild children. That image isn't bad for rock stars, but Carter... he needs something to challenge him. He's never been challenged by his guitar, or by his songs and writing ability. I thought if I could get him an acting gig he might stabilize. But the sorts of roles he's up for, in teen flicks with vampires and fairies and werewolves and things, he needs to be healthier. More wholesome. No one is going to want to let their teenage girl go to a movie starring Carter Hudson, the Red Carpet s.h.i.tter."

I gasped. "Did he?" I'd seen the p.i.s.s photos and Kent was right. Carter needed to shape up his image if he wanted to get into the kinds of films that would make him a star.

Kent shook his head. "No," he said, sounding almost rueful, "but the fact that you just had to ask me that shows how far I have to go to rehabilitate him."

This was tough and I wasn't quite sure how to put it delicately. "Does... does Carter want to be rehabilitated?" I asked.

He was silent for a long moment. "I don't know," he said finally. "I know he's having problems. I can't get him to tell me about them, though. And he drinks and parties to make those problems go away, but they keep getting worse and worse and worse..."

Kent trailed off. In the dimness, I could see his whole body tensing up, curling in on itself. It had been a long night, and it was going to be a long day tomorrow. He was tired. Any idiot could see that. He'd been dragging the band into stardom with his own two hands for years now, and he was probably ready to drop.

Weirdly, I felt sorry for him. Not for the riches or the fame or any of that other stuff, but for the poverty of his life away from it. He was a workaholic, and his work included trying to wrangle three unruly children who had the freedom of adults. He was strong. I'd seen his will at work. I'd seen how good he was at not giving a f.u.c.k to get a job done. But that sort of thing can take a toll on a man. No wonder he gravitated to me. I didn't know why he thought I was attractive, but attraction is a weird thing. If he got his tension out with s.e.x, then he was probably working his way through a couple of years of backlog.

I dropped the sheet.

Immediately Kent stiffened in his seat. "We shouldn't..." he said.

I shook my head. "We don't have to touch to have a nice time," I told him. "The more the merrier, right?"

I saw his eyes glitter in the light of the streetlamp. "Maybe."

My hands trembled. I'd never been so audacious before, but Kent got under my skin. Slowly I peeled the sheets away from my naked body and heard his sharp intake of breath in the stillness. Licking my lips, I parted my legs and let my shaking hands wander down my body, over my belly, through the soft thatch of pubic hair on my mound, and down into my core lips.

I was wet, slick and hot, like a jungle. Kent's breath picked up as I slowly dragged moisture over my hard little c.l.i.t, my other hand wandering up to play with one nipple. I gave it a pinch and I squeaked, my hips twisting and jerking at the sensation, and then I began to play with myself in earnest.

"Christ," Kent muttered, and from the corner of my eye I saw him move. I turned to see him reaching into the slit at the front of his pj bottoms, and in the dark of the room he pulled out his enormous c.o.c.k.