Standing On Top

Chapter 4b

Jake did not feel she was taking advantage of him. He liked having her live there. The domestic cohabitation appealed to his sense of relationship and seemed to help keep his life in some sort of stable rhythm. He enjoyed having someone to talk to when he came home after a long day of recording. He liked having a companion to go out with to the movies, to social obligations, to the beach, or just to picnics up in Griffith Park. All of these were roles the groupies could not fill in his life, things that made him feel like an ordinary man instead of a celebrity.

For the most part Rachel filled this role well, without complaint, and without taking advantage of her position in his life. She doted on him at every opportunity, always making sure she was well dressed and well made up for him. She didn't abuse his hospitality in any way, had never gone on a spending spree with his credit card, had never tried to get more out of him than what he'd given her. And she absolutely loved sex, had, in fact, become almost obsessed with it since their first session after the pre-Grammy party.

"I never knew sex could be this good," she'd confessed to him one night after a particularly amorous session on the entertainment room couch. They had been drunk that night, having just returned from the housewarming party for Matt's new house in San Juan Capistrano.

"There is a lot to be said for sex," Jake had replied, his head resting on her stomach, the taste of her juices still strong in his mouth.

"I always thought it was overrated," she said. "I mean, I did it before I met you but I never thought it was anything to write home about. Not that I had a lot of experience or anything. My first time was when I was twenty."

"Twenty?" he asked, surprised.

She giggled. "Yeah. I was real good at putting my boyfriends off when I was in high school and my first year of college. I'd let them feel my tits, put their fingers in my panties, sometimes, when they got really desperate, I'd jack them off. I knew I was good looking and they all wanted to be with me so it was easy to get away with putting them off for months, you know what I mean?"

"Yeah," Jake said, remembering how long she'd made him wait. "You were a cock tease."

"Exactly," she said, laughing. "And I was good at it too. I escaped from high school with my cherry intact. It wasn't until I met Stan that I finally went all the way."

Stan was the history major she'd been dating — and quite obviously in love with — when he'd first started coming into the restaurant where she worked. "He was your first?"

"Yeah," she said, a hint of nostalgia in her voice. "I really liked Stan. After we dated about three months or so I gave it up to him one night." She giggled. "He shot off as soon as he touched my pussy with his dick. We tried again a little later and he actually got it inside that time but once he broke my cherry he shot off again before he could even start to move. That was pretty much it for that night, which was probably a good thing since I was really sore."

"Wow," Jake said, feeling pity for the poor bastard. "What about later? He got better, didn't he?"

"Well... he started lasting a little longer," she said. "I won't say it was better or anything. I mean... it felt okay but I never came with him. I never came with anyone before until you."

"Not even with the doc?" Jake asked, referring to her last boyfriend — the one Jake had basically stolen her from. "All that studying of anatomy and nerve paths didn't give him an edge?"

This produced another giggle. "I was the first live girl he'd ever gotten his hands on. He came in his pants the first time I let him touch my bare boobs. When we did start doing it he never lasted more than a minute."

"Not even after practice?" Jake asked.

"He didn't get a chance to practice very much. We only did it three times before I broke up with him."

"Three times?" Jake marveled, recalling that she and the doc had been together almost five months. Assuming she'd made him wait two months before giving it up the first time that meant they'd had sex about once a month. Once a month! This was inconceivable to Jake. It was also quite a contrast to the Rachel he knew. Rarely did a twenty-four hour period go by in which they weren't at each other at least once. Many times they did it twice, even three times a day. Rachel, who displayed a hunger for orgasms that seemed like an addiction at times, was the one who initiated most of these sessions. She had even learned to give a blowjob to completion without throwing up or even gagging, although it was obvious she still had no great love of this particular act.

There were a few sour spots to the relationship, however — things that Jake wasn't quite sure how to deal with or even if they were something he needed to deal with.

Rachel had dropped out of school in the middle of the last semester, abruptly abandoning twelve units of classes at one of the most prestigious public universities in the nation. Her reasoning for this was sound enough. It was no longer possible for her to walk the campus without being constantly accosted by reporters asking her about Jake and fellow students who wanted to either try to score free concert tickets, meet Jake and/or Matt, or who wanted to know how often Jake beat her and if she needed any help. Two of her instructors had actually given her cards for the local chapter of WEAVE — Women Escaping A Violent Environment. All of this attention made it impossible for her to learn anything and tended to distract both the students and staff in all of her classes. And so, she'd left. She hadn't talked to Jake about this beforehand, she just did it and explained herself later. Nor did she seem to have any regrets about it.

"I can always go back later when things mellow out," she said. And that had pretty much closed the subject.

Jake didn't really care whether or not she went to school. That was her decision to make. What bothered him was how easily she'd jumped off the track that led to her life's ambition — to teach — without so much as a backward glance. She had done this just so she could continue to date him. As a man who had once chosen his career over a woman he loved — who had never even considered doing otherwise — Rachel's quick decision disturbed him. Did she care about her ambitions so little? Or did she care about him so much? Either way he wasn't sure he liked the answer.

The depth of Rachel's feelings for him and the contrast of his feelings for her was another sour spot — one he'd spent a lot of time thinking about lately. About two months ago Rachel began tossing the L-word around. At first it was just casual use, a giggling 'I love you' during particularly good sex or while laughing together, something he barely even noticed. Gradually, however, both the frequency and the depth of this expression increased to the point she was saying it every time he kissed her goodbye or goodnight, every time they talked on the telephone, every time they finished having sex. She gazed into his eyes sometimes and proclaimed this love at the dinner table, or while they sat on the couch together, or while they sipped drinks in the back of a limo on the way somewhere.

Jake always felt awkward at these moments, unsure just what to say. He did not tell her he loved her in return because he knew it wasn't true. He liked her as a person, as a conversationalist. He lusted after her body in a sexual manner. He enjoyed her company, enjoyed having her live with him and be his girlfriend. But love? No, not even close.

Jake had been in romantic love with a woman two and a half times before in his life. The first had been Michelle Borrows, who had given him the ultimatum to either quit music and become a respectable member of society or lose her (and who had then gone on to write her journal of provocative falsehoods and half-truths years later). The second had been Angelina Hadley, the waitress he'd worked with in Hollywood while recording the first Intemperance album. He had last seen her as he'd stepped onto the bus for the first tour where he'd gotten lost in the haze of gross intoxication and an endless supply of groupies willing to do any kinky thing with him. He'd never found the courage to call her, write her, or talk to her again. The last he'd heard she had gotten into drugs and prostitution and was doing some time in the LA County jail. The half-love was Mindy Snow, the actress who had played the pious, churchgoing daughter on the long-running family television show The Slow Lane. He had been well on his way to falling in love with her when he discovered that she was only dating him to break out of the good-girl image she had been saddled with.

Jake knew what love felt like, knew that there was no mistaking the sensation for something else, knew that if you had to ask yourself if you were in love, the answer was generally 'no'. He did not love Rachel and was not going to say he loved her just to appease her. That path led to nothing but trouble.

They arrived downstairs for dinner exactly on time, just as Elsa finished putting everything on the table. Elsa served them each a plate with chicken Parmesan smothered in homemade pasta sauce and melted cheese with garlic bread and rigatoni on the side. In separate bowls she served her fresh salad with Italian dressing. She gave each of them a glass of chilled Chardonnay and left the opened bottle in the center of the table. Neither Jake nor Rachel asked Elsa to join them. They had long since learned that she absolutely refused to break bread with her employer or his guests.

"It's just not proper decorum," she'd declared on multiple occasions.

The food was as delicious as everything she cooked. Jake ate two helpings of everything and Rachel ate at least a helping and a half.

"That's at least another twenty minutes on the treadmill tomorrow," Rachel declared when she finally pushed her plate away.

While Elsa cleaned up dinner and did her final spot-check of the house for the evening, Jake and Rachel went out to the balcony outside the master suite. They polished off the second bottle of wine and enjoyed the warmth of the evening while looking out over the city lights of Los Angeles.

"You want to take a swim?" Rachel asked when the last of the wine was gone.

"Sure," Jake said, standing. "Let's do it."

They went back in the bedroom and quickly stripped naked. They put on robes and then went back out onto the balcony and down the stairs to the backyard. The security lights came on, flooding every inch of the backyard with bright, sterile light. Jake went to a control panel near the living room entrance, punched in a code, and deactivated everything except the swimming pool lights. By the time he finished this task Rachel was already in the pool, her smooth, naked form gliding just under the surface.

Jake dropped his robe on one of the redwood loungers and walked naked over to the diving board. He mounted it, took four steps and a jump, and launched himself into the air, flattening his body out and diving into the pool with hardly a splash. The water was eighty-one degrees, just a few degrees warmer than the air, and pleasantly refreshing. He swam along the bottom and surfaced at the shallow end, taking a few breaths.

"Nice dive," Rachel said, paddling over to him.

"Yeah," Jake said. "I was almost on the Olympic diving team once but I decided to be a dirtbag musician instead."

"I think you chose wisely," she said, sliding her wet nakedness against him, her breasts rubbing against his chest.

He slid his hands up and down her back, relishing the sensation of her smooth skin beneath his fingertips. They kissed, gently at first but quickly heating up to long, luxuriant, open mouth kisses with lots of tongue. Her nipples hardened against his chest and his manhood hardened against her stomach. She reached down and began to caress it, her hand soft and gentle, bringing it up to its full potential.

"Fuck me, Jake," she whispered in his ear. "Fuck me right here in the pool." She squirmed her body upward, trying to line his erection up with her opening.

"Sit on the edge of the pool," Jake said, twisting his body away so she couldn't make the connection. "I'll eat you out."

"I don't want to be eaten right now," she said, nibbling on his ear, letting her tongue bath the lobe with saliva. "I want to be fucked. I want to be fucked hard."

"Let's go back upstairs then," he said.

"I want to do it here, Jake," she said, pleadingly. "Put it in me."

"I don't have a rubber on me," he said. "We need to go back upstairs if you want to fuck, or you'll have to wait until I run up there and come back down."

Her hands tightened on his back. Her face pulled back from him. Anger was in her eyes. "Why do you need a rubber every goddamn time we make love?" she asked. "I'm on the pill, Jake. I've told you that a thousand times!"

"And I've told you a thousand times, it's for your protection. I've been with a lot of women."

"You're lying to me," she said. "I've always been honest with you and you're lying to my face right now, Jake."

"What are you talking about?" he demanded, perhaps a little too strongly.

"We've been together more than six months now," she said. "You haven't been with any other women in all that time. You're safe and both of us know it."

"Rachel," he said, feeling his erection wilting as if it had been burned, "I think maybe you're..."

"You don't trust me, Jake," she said. "You think I'm trying to get pregnant, don't you?"

He was momentarily speechless. She had never really snapped at him like this before. The most serious argument they'd ever had had been over who got to eat the last piece of Elsa's filet mignon. And the fact that she'd hit the nail right on the head with her accusation didn't help his state of mind.

"You do think that, don't you?" she asked, hurt in her eyes. She let go of him and drifted a few feet backward in the pool.

"Rachel, hon," he said. "What's going on here? Why are you suddenly flipping out about this?"

"I just want to make love to you without those damn rubbers, Jake," she said, tears running from her eyes now. "I want to feel you inside of me, not a bunch of latex."

"You never complained about it before," he said. "I seem to recall making you scream out to Jesus a few times while I've been plowing you with a rubber on."

She sighed. "You don't understand, Jake, do you? I'm not saying you're bad in bed. You're very good in bed, the best I've ever had. But I want to feel it all! I want to feel you inside of me."

"Rachel, I told you..."

"I know," she said. "You're doing it for my protection. I've heard that bullshit ever since the first time. It's a lie, Jake. It's a goddamned lie and you know it. You think I'm trying to get pregnant. I've told you all this time I'm on the pill, you've even seen my pill case, you've seen me taking them every morning, and you still think I'm trying to trap you."

"I don't think that at all," he said, his eyes not meeting hers.

"Right," she said disgustedly. She paddled over to the edge of the pool and climbed out.

"Where are you going?" Jake asked her.

"I think I'll go sleep at home tonight," she said, grabbing her robe off the chair.

"At home?" he asked. "You mean... at home?"

"Yeah," she said. "You know? The apartment you won't let me give up? That home. I guess I see now why you keep paying for it for me."

She trudged up the stairs and went in through the bedroom balcony door. Jake didn't follow her. He swam around in the pool for a few minutes, his emotions in turmoil.

She was right about everything. He couldn't even begin to deny it to himself. He wasn't worried about giving her any sexually transmitted diseases, nor was he worried about catching any from her. He was worried that she would stop taking her pills or that she already had and that she would get pregnant. And he wasn't continuing to pay for her apartment because he was worried about the burden that would be placed on Maureen, her roommate. He was doing it so she could not claim official co-habitation when (if, his mind corrected) things went sour with her. He did these things as a matter of course, with the cynicism of a man who knew that almost everyone in the world wanted something from him. It had never occurred to him that Rachel wouldn't understand, that his actions would seem offensive to her. Didn't she know the position he was in? Couldn't she appreciate that?

He climbed out of the pool after about fifteen minutes, put on his robe, reactivated the security lights, and then went up the stairs to the balcony. When he entered the bedroom Rachel was not in there. Nor was she anywhere else in the house. She really had gone home.

When he returned from the recording studio the next evening she was there waiting for him, once again dressed in a fashionable and sexy outfit, once again with a drink in her hand. She apologized for being such a bitch to him, blaming it on her approaching period, and promised she would try not to ever do such a thing again. He accepted her apology a little guiltily but offered none of his own.

The sex they had that night was among the best they'd ever shared. Jake wore a condom during it and Rachel did not complain about it.

The routine went on. Six days a week Jake went to the recording studio and continued the process of mixing and overdubbing the eleven tracks that would appear on It's In The Book. Disagreements between Jake, Matt, and Nerdly continued to erupt on pretty much every track they put together, usually falling along the same battle lines that had already been drawn — Matt the traditionalist, Nerdly the progressive, Jake somewhere in between. Sometimes he came down on Matt's side of the argument and sometimes he came down on Nerdly's. Sometimes both Nerdly and Matt got mad at him for trying to find a middle ground.

When he came home each night Rachel would always have a drink waiting for him and Elsa would always have dinner waiting. On Saturday nights Jake would usually take Rachel out to a nice restaurant and then to a club for dancing. On Sundays they would got to the beach or up to Griffith Park or on a shopping excursion to Beverly Hills. They had sex at night, sometimes in the morning, and at least twice a day on Sundays. She never tried to get him to go bareback anymore, never even made any snide remarks if he had to interrupt a spontaneous session in order to go retrieve a condom from his nearest convenient stash of them. She continued to tell Jake she loved him on a regular basis and he continued to not return the sentiment because it continued to not be true. Things seemed the same as they had always been but at the same time it seemed some fundamental change had taken place in their relationship, something he couldn't quite put his finger on. Whenever he started to worry too much about this a couple of drinks would usually squash the worry flat and drive it back into the corner of his brain somewhere where he didn't have to think about it.

On August 16, 1987, the recording process finally came to a merciful end. All eleven tracks were now mixed, overdubbed, processed, and on a master recording ready to be put into mass production whenever National Records deemed it the right time for the album to be released. They had no plans to do this for at least another month, maybe longer. Although their previous album, Balance Of Power, had fallen from the number one position some weeks before it was still sitting firmly in the top ten and radio stations all over the country were still playing the hell out of the songs on it. The album had now gone four times platinum, the best selling of all the Intemperance albums so far.

What this all meant was that until it was time to start putting the tour together the band had absolutely nothing to do and no obligations to fulfill.

"Vacation time," Matt said as they left the recording studio for the last time. "You still up for Cabo with me, Jake?"

"Hell yeah," Jake said. "I'm ready to try out this whole fishing thing." Jake had been promising Matt ever since the end of the last tour that he would go to Cabo San Lucas with him in order to sample the lifestyle there and to engage in what was reputedly the best sport fishing in the free world.

"That's my bitch," Matt said. "I'll start making the arrangements tonight. You up for private?"

"It's the only way to fly," Jake said. "Just tell me what I owe you and I'm in."

Matt called him that night while he and Rachel were sitting out in the hot tub, soaking and enjoying a bottle of Cabernet. Elsa brought him the cordless phone, not so much as batting an eye at their nudity.

Rachel watched his conversation, quickly gathering that he was talking about going on a trip somewhere.

"August 25 through the September 3?" Jake asked. "Sounds good to me. Are we leaving from Van Nuys?" A pause. "Bitchin. So I need to be there at nine o'clock in the morning at General Aviation? I can do that. Where we staying?" Another pause. "No shit? They got all the comforts of home there? Good. So what are the damages gonna be?" Another pause. "Eighteen grand? Sounds doable. Just have your guy get an exact amount for me and I'll have Jill wire it into your account." They passed a few more pleasantries with each other and then, in the way of men the world over, ended the conversation now that the information required had been passed. Jake clicked the off button on the phone and tossed it over onto the table next to the spa.

Rachel looked at him for a moment and then said softly, "Going on a trip?"

"Yeah," he said. "I'm finally going fishing with Matt in Cabo San Lucas. He's been trying to get me there ever since Sammy Hagar first told him about the place."

"I see," she said, expressionless. "And... uh... am I staying here?"

"Well... yeah, it's kind of a guy's trip, you know," he told her. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about it earlier. We've just been so busy trying to finish up the album these past few weeks and all. It slipped my mind."

"That's okay," she said, taking a large sip of her wine. "I'm sure I'll find something to do while you're gone."

"Look, babe," he said, "I'm really sorry I didn't tell you about it and I'm sorry you can't go. I'd take you if I thought you'd have a good time but we're just going to be fishing out on a boat the whole week."

"I understand."

"I have an idea," he said, suddenly struck by inspiration. "Why don't we take a little trip of our own before I leave? I'm on vacation now. You don't have anything else to do. Where do you want to go? I'll take you anywhere in the world."

"Really?" she asked.

"Really," he told her. "You name the place and I'll make it happen. We'll leave tomorrow morning."

This had the effect he'd intended on her. She was overwhelmed and quickly forgot about the trip to Cabo without her. Or at least it seemed that way. "I've uh... never been to Yellowstone Park before," she said meekly. "I've always wanted to see the bears and the geysers."

He smiled at her. "Camping or deluxe accommodations?" he asked.

"We could go camping if you want," she said doubtfully, "but I've never been camping before."

"Screw camping then," he said. He leaned forward and kissed her. "I promise you that tomorrow night you'll be sleeping in deluxe accommodations in or around Yellowstone National Park."

It was a promise he was easily able to keep. Twenty minutes on the phone with a luxury travel agent he'd done business with in the past and he had a complete week's vacation booked, including airfare, hotel rooms, and vehicle rental. The next morning they boarded a chartered twin-prop aircraft from Van Nuys and flew to Cody, Wyoming. The spent the next three days exploring Yellowstone National Park in a rented Jeep. They then boarded another chartered aircraft and flew to Kalispell, Montana and spent another three days exploring Glacier National Park in another Jeep.

They had a very good time, not arguing or bickering even once. They ran into no paparazzi or other forms of media hound. Only a dozen or so people even recognized the two of them and approached Jake for an autograph. They flew home on August 24. The next day Jake boarded a private Leer with Matt and they took off for Cabo San Lucas on the tip of Mexico's Baja Peninsula.

Jake liked Cabo, but not as much as Matt and Sammy Hagar. It was a starkly beautiful place, one of the few places on Earth where the desert met the open ocean. The rock formations at Land's End on the very tip of the peninsula were a true testament to the beauty of nature. However, for all of Cabo's splendor, it was a desert and it was hotter than hell the entire time they were there. The temperature tended to hover around the mid-nineties during the day and only dipped six or seven degrees when they went out on the ocean.

Jake also liked the deep-sea fishing they did five of the seven days they were there. Again, however, he didn't like it quite as much as Matt. It was fun to reel in a marlin that weighed eighty or ninety pounds, but it was exhausting work, the sort of thing Jake preferred to do a couple of times a year instead of at every available opportunity like Matt.

What Jake did love about the trip was the sea. He fell in love with the ocean on the trip and the idea of going out on the open ocean in a boat, out beyond the sight of any land, was something he knew by the end of the first day that he wanted to pursue as a hobby in some way. The boat that Matt had chartered for them was a fifty footer with twin diesel engines. It was crewed by three Mexican men — a captain, a first mate, and a fishing assistant — all of whom had at least ten years of experience with open ocean vessels and navigation. All three spoke flawless English and Jake spent a good portion of each trip on the bridge, plying the captain for every bit of information he could get out of him about how the boat worked, what kind of horsepower it generated, how the navigation and radio equipment worked. The captain, delighted that Jake was showing an interest (Matt had never given a rat's ass about the hows and whys of the boat), gave Jake a crash course in small vessel operation and navigation, even showing him his charts and explaining the various features on them.

The hotel they stayed in was the best available on the peninsula. They each had a private suite at the very top, complete with in-room hot tubs, wet bars, sitting rooms, and luxury bedrooms with butler service. Every night after coming in from their fishing trips, showering, and napping away the ten to fifteen beers they'd consumed on the boat, they hit the bars of Cabo, hopping from one to the other, getting outrageously drunk.

Most of the tourists in Cabo — which had yet to be fully discovered as a popular tourist destination at this point in its history — were men and women in their late forties to early seventies, golfers and sport fishermen from the western United States for the most part. Very few people recognized the shaggy-haired youngsters in their midst as famous rock stars. That was just fine with Jake, who relished namelessness like other men relished power or money. Matt, on the other hand, always managed to find some young girl somewhere who knew who he was and hook up with her for the evening.

Jake stayed away from the women, mostly because he was currently spoken for but also because there were very few to choose from. On their fifth day, a day when they had no fishing planned, he and Matt caught a water taxi out to one of the beaches at Land's End. The beach was unique in that it had water on both the east and the west side. On the east side was the placid water of the Sea of Cortez where a few dozen tourists were swimming, snorkeling, or just wading in the warm water. On the west side was the turbulent Pacific Ocean where breakers that had rolled all the way from New Zealand smashed against the rocks with a furious violence that made swimming or wading a lethal activity.

Jake and Matt set up their loungers facing the swimmers on the east side and commenced drinking margaritas that were sold for fifty cents apiece by roving cocktail servers. Within an hour they were quite drunk and Jake's better judgment was hiding in its hole. Soon after that, Matt disappeared for a bit and returned with two bikini-clad young women in tow.

"Jake!" he said, plopping down in his lounger. "This is Rose and Miranda. I met 'em by the shitter over there. They're cousins and they were both just dying to meet us."

"Hi, Rose and Miranda," Jake said dutifully, raising his drink to them. Rose was a bleach blonde with large breasts wearing a bikini that stretched even the liberal standards of Cabo. Miranda was a freckled redhead with medium breasts. Her bikini was a bit more conservative. Both looked at the two rock stars as if they were gods right down from the heavens. "It's nice to meet you."

"He wasn't just messin' with us," Rose said to her cousin. "He really is Matt Tisdale. And this really is Jake Kingsley."

"Yeah," said Miranda, starting to actually tremble a little now. "This is, like, so cool!"

"Hey, Taco!" Matt yelled to the nearest waiter (whose name was not Taco). "Grab a couple of them fuckin' chairs for these chicks here and then bring us another round of drinks!"

The waiter who was not Taco did as he was told (and hopefully, Jake thought, did not secrete any bodily substances into their drinks) and the two girls sat down next to them. They went through the predicable period of oh-my-gods and it's-really-yous before settling down enough to hold a semi-coherent conversation. The girls told them that they were from Tucson, Arizona, had grown up together, and were currently attending the University of Arizona together. Their respective parents (Miranda's mom and Rose's dad were brother and sister) were semi-wealthy Arizonians who were treating their B-student children to a Mexican Riviera vacation for the end of the summer. It was their last day here and the parents in question were out on a golf course somewhere.

"So you two are pretty close then, huh?" Jake asked, finding himself intrigued by the fact that they were nineteen-year-old cousins.

"We're almost like sisters!" Rose proclaimed.

"That's fuckin' hot," Matt said. "You guys ever dyke out together?"

"Jesus Christ," Jake chuckled, lighting a cigarette. He took another drink of his margarita and wondered if he should be feeling guilty about this.

"Well... no, we never did that," Miranda giggled. "We've been on a lot of double dates to frat parties though."

"Oh yes," Rose said. "We're very popular on Friday nights."

"You're our kind of sluts," Matt said, putting his arm around Rose, who was sitting next to him. "Let's have another drink."

Rose rubbed her shoulder suggestively against him. "Let's do it," she said.

They had a few more drinks and soon Miranda had scooted her lounger next to Jake's. She was playing with the hairs on his arm and flirting quite brazenly. Jake knew that this was not a real good idea but the alcohol in his bloodstream kept him from putting a stop to it. He had always had a special place in the part of his brain that controlled lust that was a sucker for natural redheads. He found himself wondering if her pubic hair was that natural red color too. Thoughts of Rachel were spinning around in his head but he found himself ignoring them. After all, has in a different country, wasn't he? And it had been a long time since he'd allowed flirtation from a groupie to progress to this point. And besides, it had been almost six days since he'd last been laid. He hadn't even whacked off since leaving Los Angeles. No one would ever know, would they?

Before long he and Miranda were chest deep in the Sea of Cortez, splashing and wrestling with each other. Her bikini-clad breasts bounced before his eyes and her smooth, nineteen-year-old skin rubbed against his in a most pleasant manner. Soon they were kissing each other, their tongues probing in and out of each other's mouths. Miranda's hands dropped down and began feeling Jake's erection, first from the outside of his shorts and then from the inside. His finger worked its way beneath the crotch of her bikini bottoms and he brought her to a quick, sharp orgasm right there twenty yards from the beach.

"I've never been this hot before, Jake," Miranda told him, kissing his cheeks, his ears, his lips. "Can you show me your hotel room?"

"Yeah," he said, biting at her ear lobe. "I think that's a real good idea."

They caught a water taxi back to the town and walked three blocks to the hotel. They went up the elevator and within seconds of going through the door to Jake's suite, his shorts were down and his rigid penis was in Miranda's sucking mouth.

"Yeah," he said, running his fingers through her still-damp red hair. "Now that's a fuckin' blowjob."

She sucked him until he shot off in her mouth, swallowing every drop and then licking him clean. He then laid her down on the bed and stripped her, admiring the nest of copper colored hair between her legs and the sparse array of freckles on her breasts. He licked and suckled her breasts, tonguing her nipples until she was moaning in pleasure. He then kissed his way across her freckled stomach, eventually making his way to her swollen vaginal lips. He dove into her, licking and slurping at her, his only thought of Rachel being that Miranda tasted different, a little saltier.

Miranda came once, twice, and then three times under the assault of his tongue. While she was still panting out the effects of number three he quickly retrieved his wallet and pulled out one of the condoms he always kept in there. He sheathed his weapon and then climbed on the bed, pushing Miranda's legs as far back as they could go and then lining up with his target.

"Yeah, Jake," she panted, her hands running up and down his back. "Do it to me. Fuck me!"

He fucked her, sinking into her body in one fluid stroke. He felt guilty as he drove himself home, knowing that he was cheating on Rachel, but the guilt only served to enhance the situation, to make it seem more powerful and pleasurable then it actually was.

What Jake didn't know about his encounter with Miranda was that it wasn't as secret as he thought and that being in a different country didn't really matter. When Matt had booked the trip with his travel agency one of the clerks in there had made note of the fact that Jake Kingsley appeared on the reservations but that Rachel Madison — who she knew from the entertainment magazines was currently dating the singer — did not.

This particular travel agency was one that often booked high-priced vacations for famous people. This particular clerk had earned more than one envelope full of money in her career by tipping off certain photographers and entertainment reporters when someone famous was taking a trip. Recognizing potentially juicy gossip when she saw it, she phoned her favorite contact, who just happened to work for the American Watcher tabloid. She gave the names, dates, accommodations, and anything else her contact wanted to know about the upcoming trip. She was thanked for her service and promised two hundred dollars for the information. Within an hour Paul Peterson — the independent celebrity photographer who had taken the now-infamous shots of Jake and Mindy Snow naked on a boat — got a call and was offered an all-expenses paid trip to Cabo San Lucas with premium payment if he got pictures of Jake Kingsley in a compromising position. Peterson took the job.

When Jake and Matt landed in the airport on their first day, Peterson was already there, waiting for him. He staked out the two musicians relentlessly, going everywhere they went except for onto the deep sea fishing boat. He got plenty of shots of Matt with a variety of women but nobody gave a shit about those. He was dismayed and a little frustrated when Jake stayed away from women for the first four days of the trip. He had gone out to bars and clubs, had even been down on the beach on the first day, but the only women who he got anywhere near were those few and far betweens who asked him for his autograph.

Patience and diligence paid off, however. On day five he hit his gold mine. While Jake was cavorting on the sand and in the beach with the redheaded slut, Paul was nearby with his ultra-zoom telephoto lens, shooting rolls and rolls of film of everything that transpired.

Nobody warned Jake. Pauline tried. She had been contacted by an American Watcher reporter asking for 'Mr. Kingsley's comments on the matter' while Jake was flying home but she was unable to get hold of him before it was too late.

A limo dropped him off in front of his house at 3:00 PM on the afternoon of September 3. He walked in the house and found Rachel sitting at the dining room table, her eyes swollen, her mascara smeared, and numb fury in her eyes. Jake immediately knew something bad had happened.

"What's the matter, babe?" he asked her gently, already starting to fear the worst.

"I ran into a reporter," she said. "Someone who works for American Watcher."

"Oh?" Jake said, his fear starting to ratchet up a few notches.

"I went out to go shopping," she said. "I was going to find something nice to wear for you when you came home. Apparently he'd followed me and came up to me as I was getting out of my car."

"What... uh... did he want?" Jake asked. "The usual stuff?"

"No," she said. "Not the usual stuff." She picked up a brown, legal-sized envelope that was sitting on the table before her. "He showed me these," she said, "and he wanted to know what my reaction to them was."

Jake licked his lips and took the envelope from her. He opened it. Inside were more than a dozen 4x6 glossy pictures that featured he and Miranda on the beach. Two of them were of them lying next to each other in the loungers, smiling. The rest were of the two of them cavorting in the water, including several shots where Jake's tongue was firmly in Miranda's mouth.

"Oh my God," Jake said, feeling adrenaline go shooting through his body. He was busted. Totally and completely busted. It was a new experience for him. He had never been caught cheating before — at least not in such a manner as this. He didn't know what to say, what to do. He blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "This isn't what it looks like."

"It isn't?" she said, staring at him. "It looks like you've got your tongue in some other woman's mouth, that you're feeling her tits, that you're groping her under the water. Are you saying that's not what happened?"

Okay, his mind said, that was a pretty lame thing to say. "Look, hon," he said. "I was drunk on the beach and Matt dragged these two women over. We flirted a little bit and things went kind of far."

"Kind of far?" she asked. "The reporter told me that you and that bitch went back to your hotel room together and that she didn't come back out for three hours. Is that what you call a little far?"

Deeper and deeper, his mind informed him. "Okay," he said. "I guess it was a lot far. I screwed up, Rachel. I was drunk and I did something I shouldn't have done. I'm sorry."

She was shaking her head, her eyes continuing to glare at him. "Did you ever once think of me while you were doing that?" she asked.

"Hon, I had too much to drink that day. I hardly even remember what happened."

She sighed, leaning back in her chair for a moment. A few tears ran down her face. "So you didn't think of me," she said. "I don't know what would be worse, knowing that you didn't give me a thought while you were fucking some other woman or knowing that you did give me a thought and did it anyway. Why did you do it, Jake? Haven't I been keeping you satisfied?"

"Yes, Rachel," he said. "You keep me very satisfied. That girl didn't mean anything to me. I just... gave into temptation. I was wrong and I've been feeling guilty ever since."

She sat back up again. "And just like that, you think I should get over it?"

"Uh... no, I didn't say that. I'm just trying to explain what my state of mind was."

"I know what your state of mind was," she said. "You didn't give a shit about me. You didn't care enough to invite me along on your trip and once you were there you didn't give enough of a shit to give me the common courtesy of not fucking some slutty bitch!"

"Rachel, it's not like that!" he said.

"It is like that, Jake. Don't even try to deny it. You know, I might've been able to forgive this eventually if I was a real girlfriend, if I thought this relationship was something other than a convenience to you."

"What are you talking about?"

"Are you saying you don't know?" she asked. "You're a rich rock star who has money falling out of your ass and you just hire someone when you need a service performed. You need help managing your money and your finances so you hire an accountant. You need help around you new house so you hire Elsa to take care of it for you. You pay well and you treat your help nice and you expect you can get away with anything because of that."

"What do Elsa and Jill have to do with this?" Jake asked.

"You needed a girlfriend," she said. "You told me a hundred times you like being in a relationship with a woman, that you don't like a bunch of meaningless sluts you only see for an hour and whose names you don't even remember you fuck them."

"That's all true," Jake said. "That girl meant nothing to me."

"I'm sure she didn't," Rachel said. "But you're missing my point. You needed a girlfriend so you did the same thing you did when you needed and accountant or housekeeper. You hired me for the job."

"Hired you?" he asked. "That's insane!"

"Is it? You give me a credit card and tell me to go charge to my heart's content. You take me on trips and let me live in your house and eat your food. All I have to do in return is be nice to you and cuddle with you and fuck you and serve you drinks when you get home. I'm sure a lot of women would kill for the job but I'm not one of them. I loved you, Jake, and you've been treating me like one of your servants. You treat me well, there's no denying that, but you won't make love to me without a condom, you won't let me give up my apartment, you won't take me with you on your trip to Mexico, and you don't even care enough about me to resist other women when you're gone for a week."

She stood up and reached into her jeans pocket. She pulled out the credit card he'd given her and threw it on the table. "I quit, Jake. Consider this my resignation."

"Rachel..." he started, but was unable to think of anything else to say.

"I've already packed up my stuff and put it in my car. Everything I've bought using that card is still upstairs. Have a good life, Jake."

"Rachel..." he said again, but she was already walking out. With tears streaming down her face she went out the door and walked purposefully to the garage. Jake didn't go after her. A moment later her Cabriolet backed out and went down the driveway to the street, disappearing from sight.