Hung (2 page)

T
he moment I saw her
, I knew I was going to fuck her.

I just didn't know she was going to change my life.

I flashed her a huge smile, the same smile that had gotten me into dozens of women's pants in a heartbeat, but the reaction I got wasn't exactly what I was expecting.

She stared back at me with a vicious anger in her gaze, her eyebrow half cocked as though in an unconscious challenge. I needed to know who she was, because the stunning cocoa temptress had my cock stiffening like no woman had managed in the last decade.

Suddenly, that little strawberry kiss I took on vacation seemed like a pale imitation of a woman. In my mind, she suddenly tasted like cardboard, not chocolate cake.

And right now, chocolate cake was all I wanted.

The challenge inherent in the girl's stare got me excited, even if I didn't know why she was having such a visceral reaction against me.

It didn't bother me. It had been too long since any woman had put up a barrier between me and her bed. Usually, they threw themselves at me, and for me, most of the attraction was the thrill of the chase.

I needed to show that I was unruffled, even though I was pretty sure the outline of my huge cock was showing through the denim of my jeans, so I took a hefty gulp of my whiskey. Fuck, I liked it when it burned, and the amber liquid burned all the way down to my stomach.

I didn't need the liquid courage; I had enough of that already, but the warmth now spreading through my stomach wasn't unappealing, and I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I turned to face the crowd, all of them holding up smart phones and snapping pictures. I knew that my manager would kill me for this; the last thing he would want in the middle of his negotiation was pictures of me all over Instagram. But with me, what you see is what you get.

"Let's make a deal," I said, my voice full of authority and barely wavering – a miracle, given that I'd sank at least a dozen beers tonight.

The crowd looked at me quizzically, but – typically – not a single one had the balls to open their mouth and ask me what I meant.

"I know I've got no way of checking," I said, "but all I'm looking for is a good night."

Judging by the curious looks on their faces, the line didn't do much to clear up what I meant.

"So how about we put down the phones, huh?" That little comment was greeted with an audible hiss of disappointment.

Fucking hell, what a generation. Can't any of these idiots have a good night without posting pictures and messaging their friends all night?

Don't they realize they have an opportunity to party with me – Clay goddamn Hunt?

Don't they know they'll have the best night of their lives?

I powered on regardless. I’d never made it my business to care much about what the little people thought. "When did anyone ever have a good night behind a glowing screen? Do you guys wanna party?"

That seemed to break through their sad little attachments to their handheld devices, and a half-hearted murmur of approval rippled through the crowd.

"I said," I repeated, "is there anyone here who wants to party with Clay Hunt?"

The mere mention of my name got them going. It was like giving a line of coke to a lab rat; they sent themselves wild. Some wit in the corner started clapping and chanting my name, but I found it kind of lame so I shot him a dirty look – that killed it pretty quick.

"Tell you what," I said, doing my best to maintain eye contact with as many of the people in the room as I could. "Let's make a deal. I want everyone to put their phones away, I don't want to see another one for the rest of the night…"

A groan of disappointment rang around the room.
Tragic.

I held up my hand and hushed them. "But here's what I'll do in return…"

I paused for a second to let the anticipation build. No one could ever say that Clay Hunt's wasn’t the consummate showman.

"Drinks are on me, all night," I said, using my singing voice to project myself across the room. Every single one of them was spellbound, hanging on my every word. It was just like a concert – I felt powerful. I knew that every guy in the room wanted to be me, and I knew that every girl wanted to fuck me.

Well, almost every girl, anyway…

"If I see another phone tonight, I'm going to cut you off. Don't be that guy who ruins it for everyone. But right now, I want to see champagne. I want to see bottles of vodka, Patron. I wanna see the goddamn tequila flowing, you hear me?"

The roar that greeted me in reply was almost better than sex. Better than sex with most girls, anyway. But not, I imagined, better than sex with the sultry cocoa temptress still sitting, clutching her guitar, on the stage.

I pulled an expensive leather wallet out of my jeans, flicked my AMEX Black Card out, and tossed it behind the bar. I didn't look to see whether the bartender caught it. I didn't care.

And then the party went
off
!

Honestly, for me, this wasn't much more than a quiet Friday night – but for some of the frat boys packing this bar to the rafters, this was the kind of night they were going to tell their kids about. Hell, this was the kind of night they were going to tell their
grandkids
about!

All around me, there were sorority girls doing shots. One of them was lying on the bar, her tits just held together by a bra that looked two sizes too small, giggling while letting frat boys suck tequila off her flat stomach.

None of that mattered to me. I only had eyes for one girl in the place, no matter that dozens of them were throwing themselves at me.

"Hey, Clay," one of them whinnied into my ear, a New England horserider by the sound of her, "wanna take me home?"

She leaned into my ear, raking her hand down my jeans and grabbing my ass for good measure. "You can do anything to me…"

I brushed her off like I was raking leaves off my lawn. Compared to the black Lamborghini sitting on stage, she was just a rusty old Ford, and I didn't have any time for messing around with a jalopy. Judging by the astonished, pouting look on her face, she'd never had a man refuse her before, but then again – she'd never met Clay Hunt. In this town, she was the pick of the bunch, or at least she thought she was.

But the only woman I wanted to fuck was sitting twenty yards away from me, and if I couldn't have her, then I didn't want any of them.

But obviously, I was going to have her. The thought didn't even cross my mind that she might turn me down, because women just didn't turn Clay Hunt down. I couldn't remember the last time it happened – probably a couple of years before my first album went platinum.

I knocked the whiskey back, more because I wanted to get rid of it than because I needed the Dutch courage, handed it to some chick and walked towards my target. Not that target was the right word for this ebony seductress – no, for this woman, it was far too demeaning.

I almost wanted to say
crush
, but Clay Hunt didn't
crush
on women – it happened the other way around.

She was still sitting on stage forlornly when I reached her, and I effortlessly hopped up onto it. I saw a couple of jealous looks from chicks in the crowd as they realized their chances of catching me were diminishing with every step I took, but I paid them no mind.

"Hey, girl."

She turned her head and shot me a cold, chilling stare that almost knocked me back on my haunches.

"Hey," I smiled, holding my hands up above my head disarmingly for good measure, "someone get up on the wrong side of the bed today?"

It didn't seem to go down nearly as charmingly as I had intended.

"Oh, hell no," she said with what sounded a whole lot like astonishment in her voice. "Listen, boy, if you think you've got a chance of getting into my pants, you better get walking." She paused and stared me up and down. "Fast."

Boy?

"Hey now, that wasn't very nice," I said, doing my best to cover up my surprise at her reaction. "What did I ever do to you?"

"What did you ever do to me?" she parodied. "Are you being serious?"

Okay, this wasn't going anywhere near as well as I'd anticipated when I walked over. I thought she was just going to play hard to get – but now I saw that if I was
ever
going to get anywhere with her, I was going to have to get to the bottom of why she'd taken such a dislike to me.

"Um, I guess not?"

"Do you even understand why I'm pissed?"

Suddenly I was on the defensive, and I didn't even know why, or what I'd done. "Not really…" I sputtered, not used to someone chatting back to me like she was.

"Well, cowboy," she said contemptuously, "have a think about it. Have a think why a nice girl like me would be sitting up on stage – pissed – while you run the crowd like it's one of your own damn concerts…"

"Oh," I said, suddenly uncomfortably aware of why she was so annoyed, and uncomfortably – and unusually – aware that it was my fault.

"Oh."

"Listen," I offered, "I didn't mean to come in here and step on your toes. I was just in the area—"

She cut me off. "Yeah, you were just in the area. And your petty little fight might just have cost me my chance of making it in the city, you know that? You know how hard a woman like me," her eyes quickly, almost imperceptibly quickly, flicked down to her skin, "has to work to make it in this business?"

I didn't, but I could guess. Suddenly, I felt sick to my stomach. I didn’t know what it was about this woman but she was rocking me to my core, and there was nothing I could do about it. I had no defenses against her – and apparently, she didn't have any against me. Although for her, it was in a very different way.

“Aw shit," I said lamely. "I get it."

She didn't bother replying; she just stood up, making as though to leave, and I felt a sudden, desperate urge to stop her. It was like I was in love with her or something. I'd never felt like this before, and I knew I had to stop her from leaving or I'd regret it for the rest of my life.

"How about we sing together?" I suggested, clutching on to what sounded like a brilliant idea in my head. In hindsight, I could see why she didn't take it quite as well as I had intended.

"Why the hell would I want to do that? Are you just playing games with me?"

"No," I said, genuinely surprised that she had taken what in my head had been an entirely innocuous suggestion so badly, "why do you say that?"

"You really are dense, aren't you?" she said angrily. "Are you seriously asking me why I might have a problem with getting on stage with you when you've ruined my night?"

"Ah, yeah. I get what you mean," I muttered shamefacedly. I just didn't know how I could get this girl to understand that I hadn't meant to hurt her, or get in her way. I wanted to say that it had just been an accident, but had a funny feeling that would go down pretty badly as well…

She began walking off stage, and my hand automatically lunged out to stop her, taking ahold of her arm in desperation.

"What do you think you're doing?" she asked with a curled lip.

"Listen, I can't take what I did back," I said, my mouth stumbling over the words in my urgency, "but I can try and make it better. I know you think I just want to get up on stage and show off, but think about it – I can do that any night."

After the look she gave me, I realized once again that I'd have to choose my words better around this girl, but she was a sharp cookie – or I was just tongue tied around her beauty.

"I didn't mean it like that, believe me. I'm not trying to show off, I'm trying to help you. Think about it, I've set this place off – they aren't going to stop for pretty much anything…"

"I know that," she replied. "That's why I'm packing up to leave."

I dangled the hook. "There's one thing that might calm this place down and get them listening again."

She turned and faced me, unable to hide the signs of interest on her face. I could tell she was desperate, wanted this more than anything. It reminded me of an old me, a self that I thought I'd left behind years ago.

"What is it?"

"Me."

"Hell no."

"Are you willing to give up on your dreams that easily?" I asked, delivering a low blow in a desperate attempt stop her from walking out. I knew in my heart that if she left now, I'd never have another chance with her. I was being entirely selfish, I knew that, but I comforted myself with the thought that if I convinced her, it might help her, too.

She stopped, her face contorting with anger. "You fucked up my dream. This one is on you."

I raised my palms up peacefully. "So let me fix it," I said, letting that one last sentence hang in the air between us.

I could tell that she wanted to do nothing more than leave, but I could equally see the battle that was being played out inside her written in the emotions that were scrunching up her face. She bit down on her gorgeous pink lip, and I felt an unbelievable urge to jump up there and press my lips against her cocoa skin, but restrained myself.

"Fine," she said after a long, long pause. "We'll do it your way, but if you think you're getting anywhere with me, you've got another thing coming. The day you get your hands on me is the day I turn in my grave, got that, pretty boy?"

"Oh, believe me," I said, biting down on my lip to conceal my joy, "I get it."

"So what do you suggest?"

I looked at her, staring her directly in the eyes, trying to hide the fact that all I wanted to do was get her into bed, see her ebony skin contrasted against my soft, white Egyptian sheets, but I could tell she knew what I wanted to do and I could tell that she was willing to ignore it in the hope of salvaging her dreams of a career in the music business.

"How about a duet?"

T
he first words
I heard the next morning were: "Jesus, Clay – you look like shit."

I groaned, clapping my hands against my head in a desperate, unsuccessful bid to stave off the inevitable hangover. I flung my arm out to my left, eyes still closed, arm searching the bed in the desperate hope that I'd somehow brought back that ebony temptress last night.

The search only served to remind me of what I already knew. The girl, whoever she was, was nowhere to be found.

Fuck
!

I couldn't remember the last time my balls felt like this after a big night – certainly not any time in the last five years, at any rate. I’d had a different girl to warm my bed night after night for years, but after last night, I knew there was no way I could go back to being that guy. It was unbelievable, almost unexplainable, but I felt as though tectonic plates had shifted directly underneath me, changing everything.

It wasn’t her looks, though I definitely couldn’t get that glowing chocolate face out of my mind, it was how she’d made me feel. I suddenly saw a path back to joy in my music, and redemption for my career.

All of a sudden, there was only one girl I wanted, and I didn't even know her name.

"What the hell are you doing here, Mike?" I asked gruffly, my throat dry and my head pounding. Mike Riley, my manager, was the best in the business – but he was nothing if not unsympathetic.

"No girl last night, Clay?" he said cheerfully, completely ignoring me. "You sick or something?"

"Don't remind me," I said grumpily, burying my head under a pillow. "Can you at least make yourself useful and get me some Tylenol or something?"

Something clinked against my glass bedside table, and I heard two tiny little patters as he dropped a couple of tablets onto the surface. "Way ahead of you, buddy."

I reached over, eyes still firmly screwed shut, and felt my way up the table leg with my right hand, greedily grabbed the pills and shoved them in my mouth before tipping my head back and swallowing the entire glass of cold water in one gulp.

"Thanks."

"No problem. With the money you pay me, it's the least I could do."

"Don't remind me," I said. "You might give me an excuse to take a look at your contract again…"

"Trust me, Clay, with the amount of trouble you cause, I'd be cheap at twice the price."

"What are you doing here, Mike?" I asked again. "I was sound asleep until you turned up, and now I feel like shit." I rolled over but still didn't bother to open my eyes.

"Holy shit, Clay, you promised me you were going to stay out of fights for a while," I heard Mike say with barely concealed irritation in his voice. "You know how close we are to the label dropping us because of your antics, don't you?"

I murmured something that might or might not have been an affirmative. It was all Mike was going to get; I knew he was right.

"You've got a show later," Mike continued. "How are we going to cover up that split lip?"

"Don't get your panties in a bunch, Mike," I replied, keeping my voice low so as to avoid antagonizing my hangover any more than necessary. "It'll be fine under a bit of makeup."

"No, it won't," he replied sharply. "You know as well as I do that some nerd behind a computer screen is going to zoom in on the first photo of you that hits the web, and there'll be a dozen articles about you fighting again in the media inside of an hour!"

"Who cares," I barked gruffly, pissed off that Mike wouldn't shut up and let me deal with my hangover on my own terms, "what some nerds on the Internet think? I'm the biggest damn star this side of the Atlantic. There's no way the label will drop me."

"You think?" Mike said, changing his tone. "Because I don't. They are
this
close, Clay," he said, and I could just imagine him holding up his fingers in a pinching motion as he always did, "to dropping you. And let's be honest, you haven't had a number one for over a year."

That
made me shoot upright, so only my legs remained in bed, and I shot him a furious glare.

"Jesus, Clay, put your cock away. I'm not one of your groupies; I don't need to see that monstrosity."

Normally, I would have made some kind of joke about my cock because I was damn proud of it – rightly – but I wasn't in the mood. Still, I didn't bother tucking it away. I had nothing to be ashamed of.

"What the hell did you say about me?" I spat back at my manager furiously. "You're supposed to be on my side!"

He raised his voice, too. "Hell, Clay – we're supposed to be a team. All I asked is that you didn't get into a fight for a few weeks, and what did you do? The very next day, you found someone to pummel. For your sake, and mine, you better hope that nobody caught it on camera…"

"They won't post it," I said confidently. "I gave them a damn good night."

Mike sighed. "Clay, when are you going to learn that trick doesn't work? I bet you a hundred bucks that video will be up on YouTube by the end of the day."

I'd take the bet; of course I would. There were a few things I liked doing – fighting, fucking and gambling were all pretty high on the list.

"What's this about you putting me down, anyway?" I asked, still angry at what Mike had just said.

"I'm not going to lie to you, Clay," Mike said with the kind of tone of voice that suggested he'd been holding his opinion back for quite some time, "and tell you you're still at the top. Because the cold hard truth is,
you're not
."

He didn't say a word after that, just let the statement hang in the air, and for once, his words hit home.

He was right. I'd spent so much time at number one – five fucking years, when every single I released would zoom straight up the charts – that it got boring. And then the women, the fighting, the gambling – that all became the bit I enjoyed.

But now, my latest album was tanking.

Mike was right, and I hated it.

I bit down on the furious response my mind was formulating and breathed out angrily. I was too hungover to deal with this right now and I slumped back, sighing.

Mike's phone
buzzed. A second later, so did mine.

And then again.

And then they both buzzed at the same time.

"What is it?" I asked, my head giving me too much pain for me to have much incentive to reach over and grab my phone.

"It's a YouTube video," he replied distractedly. "It's going viral."

"Of me?" I asked, somewhat pleased. No such thing as bad publicity, right? Mike didn't see it that way, but I never minded my – very attractive – face being plastered across the Internet.

"Yeah," he said. "Clay – if this is that fight video, then I think this is it. Atlantic Records will drop you faster than you can blink."

My stomach did a backflip. I'd never heard Mike speak like this. "You can't be serious?" I sat up, looking worriedly at the screen of Mike's phone as he navigated to the YouTube app and furiously punched in my name. This time, I had the good grace to cover up the huge cock flopping in my lap.

He took a second's break to stare me directly in my eyes. "Oh, I'm deadly serious, Clay. How many times have I told you to tone it down a bit? The bad boy stuff was supposed to be an act. You are never supposed to actually go off the rails like this."

"What do you mean,
go off the rails
?" I repeated. "So I like to fuck, smoke and fight – is that so bad? So does half of America. The good half, anyway."

"Yeah, Clay," Mike spat angrily, "but when half your audience is made up of tweens, the labels want edgy, not full on nut job." He broke away from his rant, attention taken up by something else. "It's loaded."

With those two words, my attention snapped straight back to the little phone screen in his hands. It was kind of ironic, I thought, that I'd spent so long railing against people spending their lives addicted to smart phones last night, when right now I had my eyes peeled to one to find out if my fate was about to be sealed by a stupid, pointless little fight.

If only I had met that cocoa goddess a few minutes before I'd encountered that drunk thug, I thought, I'd never have gotten myself into this mess. Whoever she was, wherever she was from, she was the kind of girl that made bad guys good.

The video started playing, and I looked at the little icon in the corner, which read 1:59 and was slowly ticking down. It started surreptitiously, and for the first few seconds was mainly video of someone's pocket.

"Is that it?" I scoffed.

Mike didn't reply, just kept his eyes glued to the phone.

When the scene revealed itself, my heart did a backflip – this time in celebration. It wasn't shot outside the bar,
it was shot inside it!
It couldn't be the fight, after all. But if not that, then what?

"I told those bastards not to film," I said bitterly. "Those two-faced bastards! God knows what my credit card bill's going to be after last night, and it was all for nothing."

A haunting, beautiful voice echoed out of the tinny phone speaker, so vibrant and so clear that the inadequacy of the sound quality barely seemed to matter. It was my ebony goddess, my crush – and she sounded every bit as good, no,
better
than she had in my memory. And if she sounded better, then she looked extraordinary. I was glad I'd covered up my cock, because I felt it beginning to stir just at the blurry camcorder sight of her. Lord knows what I'd be like if she was actually lying naked in front of me.

I banished the thought from my mind, guiltily looking back at the screen and resting my hand on the sheet above my package, doing my best to hide the growing bulge.

And then I began to sing. I could barely hear the words above the noise of the crowd, but I looked at the emotion on my face, the effort I was putting into it, my soul something that I barely recognized – a man who was enjoying his craft. I looked like a man staring into a black beauty's eyes and singing his heart out – not just for her, but for himself.

I barely remembered it; after the amount of drinks I'd had last night it was surprising I had any memory at all, but I remembered
her
.

We were singing a duet, and the sound was haunting, beautiful, natural. It just sounded
right
. It was the kind of ballad that you could slap up on the Internet and have at the top of the charts by the end of the week. I hadn't sung like this in years.

The video drew to a close with the girl – I cursed that I didn't even know her name – staring radiantly into the crowd, arm outstretched and singing one final, haunting bar. The entire joint was silent, rapt with attention. It was astonishing, like nothing I'd ever seen.

Neither of us spoke for a few seconds, but Mike was the first to break the silence. "Christ, Clay – I haven't heard you sing like that in years."

Neither had I but I didn't want to admit it.

"Who was that girl?"

"I don't know, but you've got to find her," I said hoarsely. "Mike – I think I'm in love…"

"Oh, believe me when I tell you I'll find her," Mike said with a wicked smile on his face, "but I gotta tell you one thing."

He paused, as though whatever he was about to say, he was going to enjoy telling me.

Unwilling to be part of his game, I decided to prompt him. "What?"

"You can't sleep with this girl, Clay. She's going to save your career."