Staged (Exodus End 3)

Don’t care. I’m not fit for company.

Except yours, he amended in a second message. Or he would be after he slept off a bit of the alcohol he’d consumed. Damn, his head was pounding, and the room was spinning. He doubted he could stand up at this point. Apparently taking a few weeks off drinking had lowered his tolerance of the stuff. He’d prefer to sleep his intoxication off with Roux in his arms, after he sweated some of the poison out during some hot and dirty sex. But he wasn’t even sure he could figure out where her vagina was located in this condition. Fuck, he was wasted. Couldn’t ever remember feeling so wasted.

He received another message from her a few minutes later. He blinked at it, trying to decipher words that blurred together and made little sense to him. This dinner is actually pretty funny. Kyle is fucking with them all so hard. You would be amused.

Kyle?

Iona’s boyfriend Kyle Schultz. The sexy British entertainment scout from American Voice. Surely you’ve heard of him.

Everyone had heard of him. He was notoriously tough on the show’s contestants. He made most of them cry. Especially the men.

Iona is dating him? How had she even met him? Wasn’t he like twenty years older than she was?

Yeah. I never mentioned that?

Nope.

Forbidden to. But if he’s here as her date, it’s sure to get out, am I right?

Is that why Iona has been so insistent that our relationship stay a secret? Because hers is?

That wasn’t really fair.

IDK. TTYL.

Due to his inebriated condition, he translated her abbreviations with some difficulty. I don’t know. Talk to you later.

Well, that sent a clear message. She must be getting herself into trouble and could no longer talk to him. So now he waited. He’d never been the kind of guy who waited around for a woman to get her priorities straight. If the roles had been reversed and he knew she was waiting around to see him, he would have made his excuses and left the dinner at once. But they were not at the same point in their careers. She wasn’t in a position to blow shit off when she felt like it. Still . . . he would have done it for her.

He stretched out across the bed, turned on the television, amused that even the commercials were British, and drifted off to sleep. Or more accurately, passed the fuck out.

He had no idea what time it was when she showed up, but he couldn’t even open his eyelids when she began to remove his jeans. It was weird. He could feel her hand and mouth on his cock, but it was like it was happening to someone else.

“R-r?” He tried to say her name, to open his eyes, to lift his head off the pillow, but he was too far gone. He couldn’t even keep his dick hard, but she was doing her damnedest to help him with that. He was scarcely aware of her bare breast in his hand, in his mouth. Why couldn’t he open his eyes? He’d gotten fucked up on some serious drugs before, but he never remembered feeling this wasted. What the fuck was wrong with him? When she kissed him, he tried to work his mouth to kiss her back, but it was useless. He was useless. And why was she so insistent on fucking him? Couldn’t she tell he wasn’t doing well here? He was starting to think he might need medical attention but felt so disconnected from his own body that he couldn’t ask for help.

Completely numb, he felt consciousness slip away just as she straddled his hips.

*~*~*

Something warm and wet bathed his face, his neck.

“Steve.” Roux’s voice. “Open your eyes, sweetheart. You’re scaring me. What did you take?”

“Nothing,” he said. Maybe. He tried to say the word but wasn’t sure if he spoke it or just thought it.

“How much did you drink?”

“Not as much as usual.” Hey, his mouth was working again! And so were all the pain receptors in his head. Fucking hell, his brain was going to explode.

“When I came in, I thought you were dead.” She dropped over his bare chest and hugged him tight. “I was so scared.”

“That didn’t stop you from trying to jump my bones.” He laughed, but nausea suddenly gripped him. He groaned and reached for a pillow to block out the glaring light.

“No idea what you’re talking about. That must have been some dream.”

Not a very good one. He hadn’t been the least bit aroused. More like repulsed.

“I feel like shit,” he said. “Maybe the booze over here is more potent or something.” But he’d never had that kind of reaction when he’d been in England before, and his brand of whiskey had been imported from the US.

“It’s probably a good thing that you threw up.”

He’d thrown up? He didn’t recall that. Yet now that his senses were coming back to him, he smelled the evidence.

“Promise me you won’t drink that much again. It’s dangerous.”

He never wanted to drink that much again—not if it made him feel that horrible in only a few hours—so he nodded his promise.

“Let’s get you cleaned up,” she said. “Can you stand?”

How utterly humiliating to have her discover him in such a state. Naked, unconscious, and covered in his own puke. Lovely. And on the same day he’d been such an ass to her band in front of all the musicians they’d want to respect them while they toured Europe. He was batting a big fat zero today.

“Do you need a new car?” he asked. “What kind do you like? Expensive ones, I hope. Didn’t you mention a Ferrari the day I gave you my number? A red one. I definitely think it should be a red one.”

She lifted a puzzled eyebrow as she helped him haul his unsteady body off the bed. “Could you think of a more useless vehicle?”

“Useless? You’d look hot in it. What kind of Ferrari do you want?”

“You are not buying me a Ferrari.”

“Something less flashy then. How about a Corvette?”

“No. No car. At all.”

“Please

let me. I messed up. I messed up bad.”

“Yes, you did.” She wrapped his arm around her shoulders and helped him hobble toward the bathroom. His legs were still a bit wobbly, and his head was still pounding, but he was upright. That was a marked improvement over ten minutes ago.

“I need to make this up to you,” he said, “and show you how sorry I am.”

“Not with a car.”

“A yacht?”

She chuckled. “The only way you can make this up to me is by taking better care of yourself so I don’t have to worry about you.”

Strange request. He was sure most women would rather have the car.

“I love you,” she said. “Your self-destructive behavior hurts me too.”

Self-destructive behavior? Was that what she thought this was? “I didn’t aim to get that drunk.”

She pursed her lips and made him sit on the toilet while she turned on the shower.

He caught her arm. “Under no circumstances will you clean up that mess I made in the bed.”

“It’s no big deal. I’d do it for anyone.”

He knew she would have. He didn’t know what he’d done to deserve such a selfless woman in his life, but he was determined to keep her in it. Not by coercion or force or guilt or bribery, but by making her as happy with him as he was with her.

“Call Butch and tell him you need a discreet cleanup in my room,” Steve said. “He’ll know what to do.”

“Butch?”

Steve smiled. “You didn’t think his only job was heading the security team, did you? He runs interference for us while we’re on tour.” And spent more than a fair share of time dealing with Steve’s mishaps. “Also, ask him for some painkillers. My head is fucking killing me.”

Steve hauled himself into the shower, leaning against the wall when he feared his legs wouldn’t support him. That had been some whiskey. Maybe his liver was starting to fail him. It would be best to lay off the booze entirely for a few days.