The Brand (13 page)

Knowing that money is power, Raizer T
had
swallowed his pride
and honored the requirements of the contract held between his Ryze
Entertainment and one Joelyn Smith. The record label released her
debut album,
Jo S – The Introduction
, to a worldwide audience in the last week of January. The
album sold a respectable 200,000 units in its first week of release
and peaked at № 1 on the Billboard Pop Album chart. Two singles off
the album had reached the number one spot on the Billboard Singles
chart too.

The first part of the year was generally a
good t
ime for Joelyn
Smith. She was a rare commodity in the sense that she had a
successful film career running parallel with a successful music
career – and she was fully aware of it. Endorsement deals came in
abundance from the world’s biggest brands. A fashion house entered
into a business partnership with her and created her women’s
fashion line,
Jo S
.
Jo S
merchandise included underwear,
sunglasses, jeans, shirts, sneakers, sweat pants and sweatshirts,
shoes, handbags and other accessories. Not to be left out,
L’Oréal
, the French cosmetics
giant, paid her millions to be its newest face on its beauty
products. Both the Coca Cola Company and Pepsi-Co entered into a
bidding war for Joelyn’s services, until her people decided to go
with Pepsi and thus she featured worldwide in adverts for the
company’s sugar-free drink.

Certainly, Joelyn was now an established
brand with a claim to a large section of the world’s market.
Naturally, she was increasingly surrounded by people dedicated to
maintaining the life of Brand Joelyn and growing it to more
strength. Joelyn could have sat back and enjoyed a moment of
relaxation, but she charged forward, determined to conquer higher
achievements than those she had already attained. Somewhere along
the line, politeness and humility disappeared from the constitution
of her character. Her volatile temper and arrogance surfaced. The
people around her tolerated her abuse and risked permanent
psychological damage only because they benefitted handsomely for
being under the employ of Joelyn Smith, Hollywood star and music
superstar.

Success had come rapidly to Joelyn, and it
had quickly eroded her respect for other people. She carried
herself like she owned the world, and to an extent she did, because
she had fans who would die for her. The bitter side of success was
that she was under such severe microscopic scrutiny that it was
difficult for her to have a casual fling with a man and leave it at
that. The people around her understood that her mood swings were
attributable to sexual deprivation, for, all these successful
women, the high flyers who walk around as if they are infallible,
at night they go to sleep cold and alone with no one to hold them
because they’ve alienated all potential suitors. Her people,
without her knowledge, devised a secret ploy to find a man for her,
but she beat them to it by finding him by herself.

At a party to celebrate the release of her
debut album, organized by Ryze Entertainment at the end of January
in New York, Joelyn Smith met with Jason Kane, a player for the New
York-based Yankees baseball team. He was a tall, very dark African
American with a big body made of nothing but muscle. He was the
most handsome Black man she had ever seen, though he had the sort
of eyes that said he had been around the block a few times and seen
all of the good, the bad and the ugly – in no particular order. For
Joelyn, it was love at first sight. For Jason, it was an
irresistible temptation. She was beautiful, she was White, and she
had a round ass like a Black girl. She was also filthy rich, which
eliminated the gold-digging factor.

The chemical reactions in Joelyn’s body
keeled over when he made love to her. He was big, in every sense of
the word. His head was big, his arms, his chest, his hands, his
thighs, his feet, his buttocks, all were rippling with muscle,
including the appendage between his legs. It was such a delicious
source of pleasure she found herself becoming moist when, days
after their first sexual encounter, she thought about it and what
it had done to her body. Jason Kane was tall, big and strong. He
made love to her like no man she had ever known. He had the ability
to use his mouth and hands on her vital organs and make her orgasm
even before he entered any of the penetrable orifices of her
body.

Jason Kane…His cock…Hm.

She dreamt about him and fell deeper in love
with the very essence of the man. The Jason Kane cock…She termed it
“JK” and fell very much in love with it. It was a monster of a
thing, a thick tube of black flesh, bigger than any penis she had
ever made contact with, and presently lashing about fiercely and
hungrily at his crotch. She took it in her mouth and enjoyed it as
she would a deliciously succulent banana…He dug his hands into her
underarms and lifted her high up into the air. She encircled her
legs around his torso as he lowered her down to his majestic penis.
He entered inside her flooding vagina and filled it with his
massive hose. She erupted in a rapture of delight and bit hard at
his neck.

He threw her onto the couch and she turned
around and backed her buttocks to him. He parted her ample buttocks
and stroked her anus with his tongue. He applied some lubricant
onto it and then slid his massive erection into it. Her anus was
accustomed to his now, and he slipped in effortlessly. He pushed
his whole length into her and pushed her intestines back flat
against her thorax. She panted for breath and cried. ‘Oh God! Fuck
you! Son of a bitch! Yeah! I love it! Yeah, give it to me baby! Oh
shit!’

Afterwards, she lay in his arms and
affectionately stroked the curly hairs of his chest. ‘I love you so
much I can’t explain it,’ she said seriously. ‘It is criminal to
have these feelings for somebody.’

He kissed her lips and looked into her eyes.
He gave her a smile that told her how much she meant to him. ‘I
love you, baby.’

‘Do you mean that?’ she asked in a tiny
voice. ‘I mean…do you really, really love me the way I love you,
Jay?’

‘I do,’ he said, stroking her long blonde
hair. ‘I love you, baby. I want to be with you. There’s nobody else
for me in this life.’

Joelyn lay back down on the couch and stroked
his stomach muscles. She was content to be just there with him, in
a world of their own.

He sat at the edge of the bed and watched her
sleeping peacefully.

Sleeping beauty. He had known Joseph
Vermuelen while the man was alive. In fact, they had been involved
in business together once. While Joseph Vermuelen had had the kind
of face to make even the most courageous baby burst out in cries of
protest, he had somehow performed a miracle by producing an
extremely gorgeous child indeed. Jansen Vermuelen was a wondrous
gem, possessing the kind of facial beauty that did not need
artificial enhancements. Her body was lean, firm; an athlete’s
body. He watched her sleeping face and thoroughly enjoyed the
feeling that washed over him.

Jansen. Beautiful Jansen. She was his. No,
not yet. She had given herself to him but it was a superficial
offering, just a remedy to stem the sudden rush of blood in their
bodies. She was not yet his, of that he was certain. He wanted her
to be his. His and only his. He wanted to possess her and make her
his own.

She stirred and awakened. He smiled and
stroked her left cheek. She gave him a wan smile.

‘I want to marry you,’ he said, looking deep
into her eyes.

‘Wrong choice of words,’ Jansen said to the
prince’s son, looking at his dark, exotic eyes and marveling at his
permanent tan. ‘I can’t marry you. You’re forty-two. I’m
twenty-one. It just won’t work.’

He was hurt, but he fought hard not to betray
that emotion. ‘You don’t love me?’

‘No,’ she said and sat up. It was true. She
did not love him. The romance with him was driven in a large part
by her sexual longing, and she had also been intrigued by the Arab
prince and his exotic world. Although she had offered her body
fully and freely to him for his pleasure, she had not opened her
heart to him. Ever since she had been betrayed by Byron Taylor,
Jansen was very cautious about exposing her heart to people. At
times it was difficult to control the power of love, but with the
prince’s son in particular, she found it easy to be emotionally
detached.

At one time, when she found some time off her
busy schedule, the Saudi prince’s son had flown with her in his
Gulfstream G650 luxury private jet to the Gulf, where he took her
on a tour of the family palace. They watched a display of the
palace kestrels. They rode on camel backs across a short strip of
the desert and drank from an oasis said to have healing powers. He
took her around town to meet his extended family, and by the time
introductions were over her head was reeling with all the names
told to her. There were several sisters, brothers, nephews, nieces,
aunts, uncles, children…and all their names sounded the same! There
was a special feast prepared in her honor at the family palace on
the eve of their departure for the US. The people gathered there,
all of them related to the prince’s son in some way or another,
were so plenty that five professional chefs had been imported from
France to prepare food for everyone.

In New York, the prince’s son lived in an
expensive apartment in the Chelsea area of Manhattan. It was a
top-floor condominium with breathtaking views of the city. It was
decorated in an Arabian style interspersed with Oriental themes.
Jansen fell hopelessly in love with the exotic décor and enjoyed
spending some of her nights there with her Arab prince. She was
sitting on a large bed inside that apartment now, breaking the
heart of her Arab prince.

The prince’s son was wealthy. His family
controlled the oil riches of Saudi Arabia. In his country, he could
have had any woman he wanted, but he preferred Western women. He
had been with supermodels, American actresses, Hollywood starlets,
and influential politicians’ daughters. All of them had been wild
fun, but none of them had stirred him enough – either emotionally
or intellectually – to think seriously about marriage. In fact, it
was now a quietly accepted conclusion in Saudi Arabia that the
42-year-old heir would never marry. Within his immediate family,
however, there was increasing pressure for the patriarch’s heir to
find a wife and give her children to perpetuate the family
dynasty.

For the first time in the later part of his
life, the prince’s heir-apparent thought that he had found the
perfect wife to produce beautiful children with. And here she was,
rejecting his marriage proposal. The prince’s son was so used to
having his way with people it was actually a shock to be refused by
Jansen. He asked her why she did not love him and she provided him
with an answer he could not fully comprehend. It was a lucid enough
explanation by Jansen, but his numbed brain fuddled up the
information and processed it inadequately.

Shock was a natural reaction for a man who,
apart for a few instances, had never been rejected by a woman. He
had gone through his life breaking women’s hearts. Now that the
tables were turned, he found the pain and humiliation unbearable,
more so because he had fallen hopelessly in love with Jansen. The
heart always yearns for that which it cannot possess.

He sighed deeply and stared at her. His
heart skipped a beat with the realization of how truly beautiful
she was. Those blue eyes…that perfect nose…those sensuous full
lips…And she did not belong to him…He choked back tears, and when
he spoke, it was in the voice of a wounded man. ‘Why don’t you love
me, Jansen? I’m ready to give my heart to you, my life…everything.
I will be your servant. I am completely possessed by you. I don’t
care if you don’t love me. Just marry me,
please
.’

‘I repeat,’ said Jansen in a calm but firm
voice. ‘My hand has healed. I’ve decided it’s time for me to pick
up my racket and go back to playing tennis. It’s the only thing
I’ve ever known. And frankly, I don’t want to get married to
everyone. I’ve some personal scores to settle with the game and I
don’t want to be distracted by family issues.’

AMERICA

After a whirlwind romance whose duration
was limited to precisely two weeks, Joelyn Smith, Hollywood star,
and Jason Kane, multi-millionaire professional baseball player,
decided they loved each other enough to certify the existence of
their love by obtaining a legal document to confirm this. They got
married on the 14
^th
of
February under a very thick shroud of secrecy so spectacular the
media only learned of it when the couple was already in Greece for
their two-day honeymoon. While they were there, in America a
bidding war by multi-national publishing companies raged over the
rights to publish the Jo S – JK wedding pictures. The two stars’
respective agents could give no conclusive response to the magazine
companies as the two stars-of-the-moment had switched off the
phones. However, when they returned, they gave the rights to
publish their wedding photos to
Vogue
magazine for an undisclosed sum, but it was rumored to be
in the region of $3,5 million, which they both, by mutual
agreement, donated to a charity organization of Joelyn’s
choice.

When the night of the Academy Awards ceremony
for 2012 arrived, Joelyn – affectionately known by the nickname Jo
S – stepped onto the red carpet dressed in a flowing light-blue
gown made by Oscar de la Renta. The fans, standing behind the
security barriers, screamed, “Jo S! Jo S! Jo S!”