Читать книгу Wicked Ambition - Victoria Fox, Victoria Fox - Страница 12

Kristin loved kissing her boyfriend. Scotty Valentine’s lips were pink as candyfloss and just as sweet, his tongue soft and hesitant as it explored her mouth. She could spend hours simply kissing, running her fingers through his caramel hair and staring into his Pacific Ocean eyes.

They were in her bedroom, making out to a Turquoise ballad. Kristin took Scotty’s hand and guided it to her breast—he never instigated it, he was too gentlemanly—and lifted to meet his touch. She peeled off her T-shirt and the lacy sweetheart bra beneath. Scotty had only seen her topless once before and looked as uncomfortable now as he had the first time.

‘It’s OK,’ she murmured, reaching into his jeans. ‘My mom’s out…’

Dutifully Scotty tended to her nipples, nuzzling and licking till she started to sigh, then he dropped a chain of kisses across her stomach and in doing so reversed his crotch out of reach. She drew his head back up to hers, looping one arm round his neck and the other between his legs. Nothing. That was why, then. She inhaled his scent. It didn’t matter.

‘Sorry,’ Scotty mumbled, sitting up. ‘Don’t know what’s wrong.’

‘It’s fine,’ said Kristin, covering herself because she still felt shy around him. She hoped it was fine. Last time Scotty had been unable to get a hard-on and while he assured her it had nothing to do with her and he thought she was gorgeous, it couldn’t help but sting.

‘Just tired,’ he informed her, zipping his flies.

‘We don’t have to have sex,’ she ventured. ‘I could, you know…’

‘What?’

‘Help you along?’ she muttered uncertainly. ‘And then…?’

He looked at her as if she’d just suggested defecating on the carpet.

‘I’ve got to go.’

‘Have I done something wrong?’ Awkwardly she fumbled into her T-shirt.

Scotty grimaced. ‘I feel like I’m being hassled all the damn time,’ he complained, ‘for sex. You want it every day! I’m not a machine, Kristin.’

She was confused. ‘But we haven’t even got that far…’

‘Don’t you think maybe if I could relax a little more I might find it easier?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she stumbled. ‘I thought you were relaxed.’

He pouted. ‘Having my nuts attacked every waking hour isn’t my idea of relaxation.’

She wondered if he found it weird, the whole ex-best-friends thing. She should try to be more sensitive. ‘OK. Let’s just chill, then. You don’t have to leave.’

‘I do,’ he said dejectedly, ‘I need some me time. Everyone wants a piece of Scotty Valentine, don’t they? Why can’t people just leave me alone?’

Kristin swallowed her dismay. It was the pressures of his work. Fraternity had been gigging flat out and Scotty was exhausted. So what if she was desperate to consummate their affair? Love was patience. Fifteen years they had known each other; what was a little longer?

‘D’you know what it’s like living my life?’ he bewailed. ‘All the expectation, it’s bringing me down. How am I supposed to meet it?’

‘You’re not.’ She touched his face, turning it towards her. He’d gone salmon-pink. Kristin understood he was ashamed and it was self-defence that made him lash out. When would he realise he didn’t need to pretend with her? She worshipped him no matter what; without the band, without the ten million Twitter followers, just Scotty, the boy she adored.

Tentatively she kissed him. Slowly but surely he started to return it, leaning her back on the bed with a refreshed energy. Abruptly he flipped her round so she was on her stomach, and fiercely tugged down her knickers. For several seconds Scotty kneaded her ass, the breath catching in his throat, before, with a blinding sense of relief, Kristin felt his erection charging against her, prodding for entry. She parted to receive him, telling herself to stop because he needed to use a condom, but before she could speak she realised he was going for something different. Too tight, too sore, giving way to a splinter of disabling pain. She gasped in shock.

‘Wait,’ she breathed, attempting to pull free and turn on her back. It was a tricky manoeuvre but with some fumbling she managed to hook her legs round his waist and guide him in…but the throb in his jeans had totally evaporated. Totally. Scotty collapsed on to her, deflated, and she stared at the ceiling, eyes wet with tears, tracing circles on his back.

‘I’ll call you later,’ he mumbled eventually, getting up and grabbing his things. Bewildered, Kristin hugged her knees to her chest.

‘Scott,’ she tried, ‘we can talk about this…’

But he was gone before she could say goodbye.

At lunch, unable to ease her mind, Kristin took a swim in the mansion pool. Was it such a big deal? she wondered as she ploughed through her twentieth length. Scotty wanted to give it to her another way. That way had got him hard. Plenty of girls did it. Just because she hadn’t, it didn’t make it wrong. If that was Scotty’s thing then perhaps she should give it a go…

Lemon sun bounced off the patio, hot and sweet, blazing down from a flawless blue sky and reflecting off the glinting rock lagoon and sharp green lawns. When Kristin had started raking in the big bucks, her mother Ramona had wasted no time in securing them a prime piece of real estate. The imposing mansion (referred to as The White House) was enormous, comprising fifteen bedrooms, twelve of which were never used, a rooftop gym and home movie theatre. Out front, Corinthian pillars bragged the remarkable entrance. Inside, photographs of Ramona as a young fashion model adorned the walls.

Kristin was desperate to move out. She wanted to live with Scotty, like a proper couple, and get engaged and get married and have kids. But she had made a promise to herself that she would stay until her little sister turned sixteen. United, she and Bunny were an allied force against their mother. Bunny couldn’t do it on her own; she needed her: without Kristin she would get extinguished like a beetle beneath Ramona’s Louboutin.

The main door slammed, followed by a flutter of animated chatter. Kristin dried herself off, wrapped a towel around her waist and crossed to the house.

Bunny was galloping out to meet her, dressed head to toe in sequins and a wig better suited to a forty-year-old transvestite. At thirteen she wore full make-up, her nails painted and her eyelashes huge, and was struggling to balance on the four-inch stilettos that were preferred by the pageant organisers. She was small for her age: apparently her petite stature was a hit with the judges. Bunny White was a teen beauty queen, the best known in the state.

‘We won!’ she squealed. ‘I did my hula dance and then I had to catwalk and then they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up! I said a singer, like you. Then they asked me who I loved best in the world and I told them Joey from Fraternity because all the girls said Scotty and I wanted to be different, and I couldn’t say him because he’s your boyfriend.’

‘Hey, slow down!’ Kristin embraced her. ‘That’s amazing, I’m so proud.’

‘It was me and Tracy-Ann in the final,’ Bunny rattled on. She smelled of perfume and the drench of hairspray clamping her style into place, and her skin was clammy with Bronze Baby fake bake. ‘Mom thought it was over when my wig fell off and I cried but she made me go back on and then Tracy-Ann fell over and that’s when Mom said she knew we’d won!’

On cue Ramona White emerged from the mansion, consummate mother and manager, stepping into the sunlight in her sharply tailored suit and enormous Prada shades. Her silhouette was twig-thin and her hair was pulled back in a savagely tight chignon.

‘Congratulations,’ said Kristin flatly.

‘Shouldn’t you be writing?’

‘Day off.’

‘Is Scotty here?’

Bunny suffered a chronic blush and Kristin stifled a laugh. She found her sister’s infatuation funny. Scotty had been part of the family for years. Ever since The Happy Hippo Club days he’d come round for dinner when Ramona was out, making the sisters laugh over pasta with his goofy impressions, or ride his bike over on a Sunday to watch TV and eat popcorn, or bake cookies with Bunny at Thanksgiving, or pumpkin pie at Halloween. When he’d become Kristin’s boyfriend her sister had nearly fainted.

‘He left.’

‘Why?’ Ramona enquired. ‘Did you fight?’

‘No.’

‘You’ve got to keep a man happy, Kristin. Otherwise they’ll walk.’

Like Dad did?

‘Bunny, get upstairs,’ their mother directed, ‘and start scrubbing that make-up off.’

‘Can’t I wear it a bit longer?’

Ramona slid her daughter a look. Bunny retreated without another word.

‘She gets to take a break now, right?’ Kristin asked.

Her mother lit a cigarette, scissoring her way to a lounger, where she elegantly collapsed, drawing sharply on it. ‘Do you think I get a break?’ she retorted. Ramona’s cat Betsy, a white fluffball with one of those squidged-up expressions that looks like it’s been hit in the face by a sledgehammer, leapt on to her mistress’s lap and licked its lips.

‘HAIRS!’ Ramona cried, outraged. Immediately the cat was tossed to the ground. ‘Betsy needs a trip to the beautician; this moulting’s going to be the death of me!’

‘Bunny’s a kid,’ Kristin persisted, as the white fluffball shot through the patio doors.

‘And so were you when you started on your journey.’

Kristin disliked how Ramona made out as if it were her journey, as if Kristin hadn’t had it shoved on her as the only way of life available. Some days she grudgingly admired her mother’s resolve: yes, they’d come from little, and now, thanks to her child star exploding, had more wealth than they knew what to do with. Most, she hated how she had never been allowed to grow into her own person before being told who she was expected to be. Their mother’s ambition was ruthless. She would stop at nothing to see her two girls succeed.

‘This is good for Bunny,’ pronounced Ramona in her don’t-you-dare-argue-with-me tone. ‘It’s character building. She’s got to get used to the pace.’

‘What if she doesn’t want to?’

The shades came down a fraction. A pair of glinting grey eyes narrowed over the top.

‘Why wouldn’t she?’

‘I don’t know. She might want to try something else? Being a teacher, say, or a vet?’

Ramona snorted, as though those professions were so far beneath her that she could scarcely deign to look; professions that actually mattered, because while Kristin’s music was enjoyed by many it didn’t contribute to the world, not in any practical way.

‘What my daughter wants is to be famous.’ Ramona slipped the shades back into place. ‘You heard her. She wants to be exactly like you.’

‘Wrong. That’s what you want.’

‘You’re giving me a migraine, Kristin. Haven’t you got an album to write?’

She didn’t need to be told twice. Storming indoors, Kristin struggled to control her temper. No one made her angry like her mom did.

She flipped open her cell. She longed to call Scotty; he’d make her feel better. But something told her no. After today, if Scotty needed space then that was what she would give him. She would give him anything, because without him she was lost.

Bunny White’s bedroom walls were plastered with posters of Fraternity.

Her infatuation covered every scrap. Fraternity pouting sincerely to camera; Fraternity leaping into the air, their matching grins sparkling like islands in the sun; Fraternity with their arms slung round each other’s shoulders; Fraternity in black and white with their tops off. Like every girl Bunny’s age the five-piece was the apex of teenage idolatry. They were cute, they were funny; they sang about love and cuddling and kittens and birthdays. Bunny adored them with every ounce of devotion her little heart could carry.

Scotty Valentine was her favourite. She could never tell Kristin how much it stung when she saw them together, and though she had tried not to care—really she had—she just couldn’t help it. Naively she had imagined that Scotty would one day turn into her boyfriend. He might have started out like a big brother but over the years her hazy worship had blossomed into a killer crush that was picking her apart day by day. Age gaps didn’t matter so much the older you got, and in a few years he might have started seeing her in a new way.

All her life Scotty had been there, perpetually out of reach, exotic and elusive, the boy against which all others were measured and could never hope to compare.

She pretended that Joey was her number one. Joey was the cute, mischievous member of the group, and she would say yes if Joey asked her on a date, like, obviously she would. But Scotty, with his perfect smile and dreamy eyes, was her ultimate. When she was alone she fantasised about Kristin being out when he came to the mansion, like he had in the olden days, and how they might hang like they’d used to, and he would remember what a cool girl she was and how grown-up she was now and then maybe when he left he’d lean in and…

Bunny had never kissed a boy before. The very thought of touching Scotty was enough to drive her crazy with cloudy, indistinct longing. It made her blood race and her head feel like it was about to explode. Would she ever experience it for herself?

She settled at her Pretty Princess table and began removing the grips that held her wig in place. Her mom had secured them viciously, jamming each one into her hairline till it made her scalp throb. Before long, if she kept on winning trophies, she would be just as rich and pretty as her sister and boys like Scotty would start to notice.

Her best picture of Scotty was a close-up headshot. It wasn’t very big and she kept it in her coral beauty drawer, right at the back where no one would see it. Bunny reached in now and extracted it, tracing her finger around his jaw and pressing the image to her face so she could kiss it. Scotty smiled back at her, a glint of promise in his twinkling blue eyes. He was at the beach in the photo and you could tell he was shirtless, even though it was severed at the neck. His collarbone was deeply tanned with the lightest smattering of freckles.

Bunny kissed the image one more time before replacing it. She could hear her mom and sister arguing downstairs and wished Scotty would come and take her away. Humming Fraternity’s number one smash ‘I Dig U’, she imagined him scooping her up in his strong arms and driving her off into the sunset. Maybe he’d come on a horse and where they would end up or what they would do she wasn’t entirely sure. All she knew was that she wanted Scotty Valentine. She wanted him so badly it hurt.

Soon she’d be vying for the coveted title of Mini Miss Marvellous. It was an international competition for which she and her mom had been preparing for months. Ramona promised it would be her launch, and the battle that propelled her to stardom.

Then, she’d be a woman. Fraternity—and Scotty, always Scotty, despite everything that told her it was impossible—would finally be within reach.