Temptation Island

Actually, Aurora was fifteen, but she was old for her age. She knew loads of girls who said that, but in her case it was actually true. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d slept with someone older than her dad. Mink wanted her; she could tell it a mile off.

Settling on the couch, she tucked her knees up under her chin. Mink was getting an eyeful. Around her neck was a silver locket, from which she produced a vial of white powder. She tipped a small mound on to her little finger and expertly sniffed it up each nostril.

‘Hey, let me in on summa that.’ Mink swaggered over, glass in hand. He wore a lot of chunky rings with skulls and panthers on them and things like that, and his nails looked grubby. There was paint on his knuckles.

Aurora obliged and they both sat back. Whoa, that was good. She felt Mink’s hand on her leg, creeping higher.

‘I don’t fuck kids your age,’ he pronounced.

‘I don’t fuck men your age,’ she countered.

He regarded her out of the corner of his eye, the way her chest was rising and falling as she breathed, the peaks of her tits coming closer and then receding, tempting him, teasing the growing bulge in his pants. When was the last time that had happened? These days it took more than a nice rack to get him hard. This girl was hot, real hot.

‘Guess that makes us as bad as each other.’ Desire curdled his voice.

Aurora smiled. The light in the room was purplish, and she could see tiny dust motes floating close to the floor. ‘My parents wouldn’t approve,’ she said innocently, gazing up at him through pale lashes. She could see Mink struggle with the turn-on of her virgin-daddy’s-girl protest and the undeniable truth of it.

Aurora Nash was the daughter of Tom Nash and Sherilyn Rose, mega-selling country rock legends and all-round respectable American couple. Initially they’d had separate careers—Sherilyn the sweetheart of the country and western scene; Tom regarded far more seriously than Billy Ray Cyrus but still attracting the comparison, one that pissed him off no end—but when album sales tailed off in the nineties they had joined forces and become a formidable duo, singing songs about the great and good of America, the land of opportunity, all that stuff Aurora privately thought was horse shit. It sold, though—boy, did it sell. They’d made millions.

As her parents’ only daughter, Aurora had never wanted for anything. Every whim was indulged, every desire satisfied. The word ‘no’ didn’t feature in her vocabulary. She liked her life, it was fun—and it was fulfilling, even if recently she’d been jumping from project to project without feeling much about any of them. Everything got handed to her on a plate, and it wasn’t like she was complaining about it, it was just that she never, ever had to try. Then again, who wanted to try? Trying was boring. Succeeding was what it was about. In the last year alone Aurora had released her own teen-queen album, collaborated on a fashion range with a music icon, and launched a perfume called, fittingly, ‘All Mine’. And she wasn’t even sixteen yet.

‘Who says your old man has to know?’ Mink took her hand, guiding her towards the protuberance jutting tent-like from his pelvis.

He unzipped his fly and whipped his dick out. It was gigantic.

Aurora felt like laughing. But Mink was dead serious. ‘You gonna suck my cock like a good little girl?’ he breathed, the words catching at the back of his throat. One hand was absent-mindedly caressing the shaft, the other applying pressure to the back of Aurora’s head. She resisted against it and Mink pushed harder.

‘Wait your turn,’ she told him, manoeuvring her body round. She lay flat on her back and parted her legs. Mink’s mouth fell open, which was a good start. ‘Girls go first.’

3 Stevie

There was a certain romance to exiting a New York yellow cab. As Stephanie Speller slammed the door and hauled her bag out of the trunk, watching as the vehicle rejoined a blaring stream of downtown traffic, she gazed up at the surrounding skyscrapers and believed, for the first time in a while, she had arrived.

It was like stepping on to a movie set. Drivers hollered from car windows. Commuters rushed past brandishing steaming coffee, bursts of animated conversation reaching her from every angle in layers of astounding clarity and detail. The aroma of something sweet from busily toiling street vendors, pretzels or doughnuts, masked the sourer odour of trash sweating it out in the summer heat. Stevie had to put her head right back, looking up and up and up till her neck hurt, trying to see the tops of the buildings, and even then—

Someone slammed into her, the force of impact nearly sending her flying.

‘Hey, lady, get outta the street!’

‘Sorry,’ she mumbled, blinking behind her glasses. She’d developed the habit a lot of English people have where they say sorry for something when it’s not really their fault.

She took refuge in a café with an Italian name, all red leather booths and an overhead ceiling fan, tickets being shouted for lattes and Americanos, and bustling, harassed baristas. After putting in her order and grabbing a folded copy of the New York Times, Stevie slid into one of the booths and took her phone out of her bag. She pushed the bridge of her glasses up on her nose, a nervous tendency she indulged in even when she wasn’t wearing them.

As often they were, her phone proved to be a useful distraction. A guy sitting in the adjacent booth was eyeing her keenly. She was surprised at his unabashed scrutiny: she’d never before considered that looking someone up and down actually meant looking someone up and down. He was wearing a suit—it being a little past seven a.m.—and, judging by the laptop and stack of paperwork in front of him, ought to be focusing on something other than her. He was short, at least his top half was, and bald, with a muscular neck and shoulders. Parts of his body appeared inflated, as if someone had put a bicycle pump up a vital orifice and filled him with air.

Stevie glanced away. Even if she had found the man attractive, and even if she had become accustomed to picking up strangers in cafés within hours of arriving in a new city, the attention made her uncomfortable. What gave him the right? Was it the suit, the expensive shoes, the bulging wallet? It was the last thing she needed or wanted. It was the reason she’d come here in the first place, why she’d boarded a plane back in London and vowed never to look back.

Her drink arrived and she thanked the waitress, her English accent piquing the guy’s interest. She focused on her phone, scrolling down the accommodation sites she’d had a brief trawl through before arriving. Any of her friends would have laughed at the idea that sensible Stevie would just turn up somewhere without a place to stay, but the decision had been so immediate that there’d been little opportunity for preparation. And anyway, they didn’t know the context. She’d spent her whole life planning and arranging and playing by the rules, and look where that had got her: to a reflection in the mirror she barely recognised.

At twenty-seven, towards the elder end of six siblings, Stevie had always been described as the quiet, studious one. With that big a family it was easy to blend into the background and be tagged with a character, as much a means of identification as anything else. But it wasn’t always possible to be how everyone else expected you to be, and, in any case, nobody was that clear-cut: nobody was immune to stepping out of themselves if the circumstances were right. Her behaviour over the past few months would stun them all.

She was tired after the flight and put more sugar than usual in her coffee. As she did so she made the mistake of briefly meeting her admirer’s eye. She imagined how he saw her. Shy, probably. Nervous. Maybe a bit geeky, certainly she had been at school, when she’d worn braces and been timid with boys and hadn’t grown into her face yet.

Stevie was petite, with dark, serious features and a precise, angular, pale-skinned beauty that had been described in the past as both ‘classical’ and ‘timeless’. She was never sure how to take this: it made her think of the marble busts at the British Museum with their Roman noses and blank, staring eyes like peeled boiled eggs. Her hair was very dark red like the skin on a cherry, and she wore it back, in a neat ponytail. She used mascara but no other make-up—one of the preferences she’d recently reclaimed, because he’d liked a woman to look a certain way, and that had meant shadows and powders and waxy lipsticks. Stevie didn’t need any of this. She was beautiful, in the way only someone without a scrap of vanity can be.

‘Excuse me?’

Would it be rude to ignore him? Yes.

Reluctantly, she looked up. The man had packed his stuff away and appeared to be heading out.

‘I couldn’t help overhearing you,’ he said. ‘Are you from London?’ Up close he had crescents of sweat under each eye. She didn’t think she’d ever seen someone sweat there before.

‘Yes,’ she replied, with a smile that was neither encouraging nor dismissive.

‘Great city,’ he enthused. ‘Is it your first time in New York?’

She nodded.

‘Need someone to show you around?’

Stevie thought how to articulate her response: he seemed friendly enough, but she had no intention of getting attached to someone this quickly. Besides, while she hadn’t been to New York before, she felt as if she knew it, however wrongly or remotely, from films she’d seen and friends who’d visited, and was confident she’d find her feet soon enough.

‘Thanks.’ She lifted her mobile to indicate she already had a network, and with it came the inspiration of a lie. ‘I’ve got family here.’

‘Sure, sure.’ He grinned. ‘But if you change your mind …?’ From his pocket he removed a business card and slid it on to the table. His hands were soft, the nails clean. She sensed he had a lot of money.

When the man had gone, she returned to the flat-sharing site. Nothing new had come up since she’d last checked, and tapping in revised criteria didn’t help.

The necessities of a flat and a job were about as far ahead as she could consider. When she’d made that snap decision only a few days ago, waking up one morning too many with the familiar hollow sickness, America had been the obvious place to go. Her father had originally been from Boston—he’d left when Stevie was a teenager, into the arms of another woman, and she had neither seen nor heard from him since: a while ago news came he’d died of a heart attack while skiing in Austria—and her American passport gave her a window to find work here and ascertain where she was heading … whether this really was a bolt hole or something more permanent. The way she felt right now, she never wanted to see London again.

She’d check into a hotel, at least for tonight. Tomorrow, she’d start her search in earnest.

Gathering up her things, save for the business card, Stevie downed the last of her coffee and rooted for some coins for a tip. She wasn’t sure it was the done thing, but following a gruesome waitressing stint in her teens she’d been a strict twelve-per-center.

It was only as she was leaving that she noticed the bit of paper stuck to the café window. There were other notes, too, pasted over each other, photos and contact details and petitions—for lost dogs, nanny work, Pilates classes—but it was this one that jumped out at her. She crossed to look at it. The advertisement was scrawled erratically in red pen, an address and a number and a lot of exclamation marks, concluding with: AND I PROMISE WE’LL HAVE AN ADVENTURE!!!!

Stevie tapped the digits into her phone. Without thinking too much about it, she stepped out on to the street and pressed the green call button. She held it to her ear and waited.

And that was how she found Bibi Reiner.

4 Lori

Enrique Marquez worked the boats at the harbour at San Pedro. Lori spotted him straight away, bent over the rigs on one of the bigger pleasure cruisers, his jet tattoo creeping like oil from where it began at his collarbone and travelled down one arm. He was bare-chested, his black hair tied in a short high ponytail, strands escaping. His jeans were low-slung on his waist and a white rag, covered in some kind of grease, was thrown over one shoulder.

‘Hello, stranger.’

He turned at the sound of her voice, a smile breaking out across his boyish face.

‘I nearly forgot how gorgeous you are,’ he said.

Lori waved away his compliment, but the fact of their time apart rang true. They hadn’t been able to see each other for days—it was hard to escape her responsibilities at Tres Hermanas and, once she got home, forget it. Her father would explode if he suspected she was seeing a Mexican boy. Worse, one from the notorious Marquez family.

‘Come here.’ Rico held out his hand.

Lori stepped off the pier and on to the yacht. The LA sun bounced off the sleek white surfaces and crisp flat sails. Rico’s strong grip encircled her waist and he drew her into a kiss. When the kiss became more fevered, Lori pulled away.

‘This one’s beautiful,’ she commented, scoping the length of the boat. ‘Whose is it?’

Rico shrugged broad shoulders. ‘Beats me,’ he said, ‘I’m just paid to make sure it goes.’ He grinned, showing his dimples. ‘Someday I’ll be the guy some kid’s sweating his balls off for. I’ll be the owner of a piece like this, you’ll see.’

‘And would you sail me a long way away?’

‘Wherever you wanted to go.’ He kissed her again, his hands running down her short dress and over her luscious hips. She felt him harden, his tongue slip into her mouth.

‘Not getting distracted, I hope?’ a voice admonished from behind. Lori turned her head to see a rotund man removing his shades and rubbing them on his shirt.

‘Almost done here, boss,’ said Rico, holding Lori firmly to him.

Rico’s supervisor frowned. He scanned Lori’s body, from her mane of wild hair to her bronzed calves and scuffed sneakers. ‘You know I don’t let girlfriends on the boats, Marquez.’

‘It won’t happen again.’ But still he didn’t release her.

The man watched them uncertainly before moving off down the boardwalk.

‘Can you let me go now?’ Lori teased.

‘Can we wait till I’m in a position to move?’ Rico laughed.

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah, oh. You know what you do to me.’

Lori glanced away. It was unfair of her to hold out on Rico—she liked him; he was good, he was kind and he treated her right. Yet instinct kept telling her she wasn’t ready. She wasn’t sure what she was waiting for: marriage, soul mates, a new life.? People talked about meeting The One, that single person you wait and hold out for because you love them more than anything else in the world and you’ll always be together, always always no matter what. but that was fantasy, a plot from one of her books. Stories, only stories. Real life didn’t work out that way.

Then why did it scare her that she didn’t feel those things with Rico? If they didn’t exist, why should it count?

But, it did. Somehow, it did.

They rode the freeway on Rico’s bike. Lori loved the feel of the wind in her hair, the way it whipped round her legs and filled her lungs with air. For those moments she could forget. She could be a new woman, whoever she wanted.

Rico lived in a beat-up apartment with his mother but she was out of it on drugs and didn’t hear them come in. His father wasn’t around, and his brother Diego, chief of El Peligro, the most feared gang in Santa Ana, hadn’t been home in a week. No one asked why.

‘We should leave,’ said Lori when they were in his room. ‘Just go.’

Rico put music on. ‘Where?’ He lit a cigarette.

Lori sat cross-legged on his bed. It was a mess, strewn with unwashed clothes, and Rico hauled his T-shirt over his head with one hand and tossed it on to the crumpled mound. She knew he had it worse than she did. Her family was poor, the women were unkind, but at least she knew when she got in at night that she wouldn’t find her father overdosed in a chair, vomit down his front and his tongue bit in half. The first time Rico had found his mom, he’d been only ten.

‘Anywhere,’ she said. ‘Anywhere’s better than here. I’m tired of LA.’

Rico inhaled smoke. ‘You’re tired of your end of it.’ He opened the window and leaned out. A group of boys were fighting in the dusty street and the sound of it washed in, a dry shower of curses and the exploratory flare of violence. ‘We just got the bad deal, didn’t we? Everything you dream about is right here, Lori, just around the corner. You’re on top of it. It’s that close.’

‘Hollywood?’

Rico lifted his shoulders. ‘Something like it. You’re pretty enough. Damn it, you’re beautiful.’ He set his jaw. ‘You can do anything you want.’

‘That’s not what they say.’

‘What do you care what your family thinks?’ Rico’s voice tightened. He knew the Garcias looked down on him. They and their stupid Spanish friends treated him like shit because he was poor, from a bad lot, and his parents had been first-generations. Hadn’t they all started out in the same place? Hadn’t they all crossed a border at some point? Just because the Garcias had been in this city longer they felt able to spit on him, judge him, dismiss him.

‘Move in with me,’ he said bitterly. ‘Forget them.’

‘You know it’s not that easy.’

Rico tossed his smoke out of the window and joined her on the bed. ‘I wish you knew how special you are,’ he said, gathering her into his arms. Perhaps Lori was right—they should pack up and leave, go somewhere no one could find them. But his mother needed him. He wasn’t going to quit on her as his father had.

Lori breathed in her boyfriend’s scent: salt and sweetness, heat and hard work. Was this love? It must be. She didn’t want to lose Rico; he was all she had. And yet, as she felt his hands begin to roam, she was already preparing how to turn him away. Was there something wrong with her? None of the girls she knew had a problem with sex.

‘You drive me crazy,’ murmured Rico. He trailed his fingers down the front of her dress and over her curves. Man, she was hot. He didn’t know how much longer he could wait. It would be her first time and she wanted it to be right, he got that, but this was sending him wild. He was far from inexperienced himself, but recently he’d forgotten what sex felt like.

Lori let herself be kissed and reclined uncomfortably, putting her head back when Rico buried his face in her neck. Every so often she experienced a brief, sharp dart of desire, but it fizzed and died like a match in water. Maybe she was incapable of it—some people were. Other girls talked about getting so turned on by their boyfriends they were prepared to do anything, anywhere, but, as always, the moment Rico’s attentions became too fervent, a sense of claustrophobia overcame her and she had to get away.

‘Rico, don’t …’

He was moving down her body now, his hands on her breasts, attempting to free them as he kissed and bit her skin.

She didn’t want to offend him, knew she kept leading him on only to let him down. What was he doing with her? ‘No, Rico.’

‘Relax,’ he responded, just a muffle, ‘I promise I won’t hurt you.’ She felt his touch trail the inside of her thigh and hook the elastic of her knickers.

Roughly she pushed at him. ‘I told you, I’m not ready.’ She sat up, pulling down the hem of her dress, her face flushed.

Rico bit back his frustration. Instead he put his arms around her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have …’ The early evening sun spilled in and drowned his golden chest with light, the pool of ink there blacker, more absolute, because of it. ‘You know I’ll wait however long it takes. I’d never force you. I promise.’

Lori felt guilty. She was being unfair. What was she holding out for? She had to do it eventually—and it might as well be with a man she knew adored her.

‘Do you trust me?’ Rico asked.

‘Of course.’

He nodded. ‘I love you.’

She met his eyes. ‘I love you, too,’ she said, but she didn’t know what the words meant.

5 Aurora

Aurora gunned the engine of her cherry-red Ferrari Spider. It purred beneath her as she waited at the lights. The sky was apricot and the air smelled sugary, the sun a melting orb that dipped hot below the horizon.

She and her girlfriends were on their way to Basement, their favourite Hollywood hangout. It was Friday night, which meant all the names that meant anything would be out and ready to party. Kids of famous parents, heiresses and socialites, child stars, models, they’d all be there: wholesome favourites with secret coke addictions, virgin starlets who’d spend the night promising a blow job to their managers, alpha-male young actors with an eye for the boys as well as the girls … Inside the car, a bottle of vodka was being passed round. Joints were being rolled. Lines being cut. They were totally baked and the night hadn’t even begun.

At a red light, Aurora caught sight of a super-hot Latino guy on a bike next to her. He had more than a passing resemblance to Rafael Nadal, who she had a major thing for. A pretty girl was clinging to his waist—she looked like a gypsy, with masses of black hair and long, tanned legs. For a fleeting moment Aurora imagined being in bed with both of them at the same time. Maybe she was a fucking nympho—the thought had occurred to her before.

The lights changed and the boy sped off. In his place, an open-top Jeep packed with surfers on their way back from the beach. They were shirtless, still wet, whooping at the girls to get their attention, their piercings glinting in the fading light. One of them made an obscene gesture at Aurora.

‘You strapped in?’ she asked the others. Farrah Michaels, her best friend and daughter of the head of a mega Hollywood production studio, sniffed and coughed. Her eyes were glassy.

‘Your dad’s gonna freak if you waste the car.’

Aurora revved the engine. Someone beeped. The driver of the Jeep winked. One of the guys stood up, pulled down his shorts and slapped his bare ass. The girls squealed. Jenna Reynolds, in the back, lifted her top and jiggled two enormous breasts in response.

‘Jerk-offs.’ Aurora floored it and the Ferrari roared to life, nought to sixty in a matter of seconds. The other car didn’t stand a chance. In the rear-view mirror Aurora saw the Jeep recede to a pinpoint before vanishing completely.

Jenna was thrown back against the seat. She struggled to get her top down. ‘Ow!’ she complained. ‘Fucking hell.’ Farrah was laughing.

Aurora took another swig from the bottle. She turned on to Sunset at speed. The Ferrari’s tyres squealed.

‘Uh, hello?’ complained Farrah, grappling to retrieve her smoking paraphernalia. ‘Some of us are trying to get high?’

Moments later they pulled up outside Basement. Aurora was striking in a clinging white minidress, killer heels and statement arm jewellery. Her pale blonde crop looked incredible against her bronzed skin. Her blue eyes were lined with kohl. The other girls, though each attractive in her own right, paled in comparison.

The paparazzi were out in force. They clamoured for Aurora the instant she exited the vehicle. ‘Aurora! This way! Look this way, Aurora! Aurora, over here!’

She chucked her keys at a waiting valet. He fumbled the catch and dived to the floor to retrieve them. Aurora led the way inside.

The club was pounding. She headed for the VIP area and proceeded to order them all shots. Farrah, a pretty redhead, scoped the place for the member of a teen boy-band sensation she’d heard would be making an appearance. To the public the band were all good innocent Christians, but rumour said different of at least one. Apparently he was into dildos.

Aurora was used to the looks she got. Everyone in this town knew who she was and who her parents were. A British DJ had remixed one of Sherilyn Rose’s songs and it was currently storming the download charts. No doubt they’d play it tonight in her honour. Secretly she found it embarrassing. She was tight with her dad but her mom was another matter. Maybe it was the same with all moms: they were a reminder of what you could look like in fifty years or whatever. OK, not fifty, but close. She shuddered.