The heat soared through my hips, surging straight to my balls and drawing them up inside me. I was almost there. My cock was twitching in my hand begging for more friction. The red tip glistened, encouraging me… and in one last moment of defiance, I allowed myself to breath his name.
“Jake,” I whispered into my shoulder, before gently biting the firm muscle to mask my moans. The feel of his name on my lips, the sound of it in my ears… it undid me completely and I came hard, a powerful jet of warmth shooting across my stomach.
I lay there for a moment, building up the energy I needed to clean myself up, and then it hit me. That was supposed to fix things. So why was I now imagining what Jake would look like if he released himself all over my stomach?
Shit.
Chapter Four
Straightening my tie, I sat back in my chair and addressed the rest of the team sitting around the solid walnut conference table.
“Have there been any more threats since we last spoke about them?” I was told about the death threats after I’d accepted my position and signed the various paperwork and non-disclosure agreements. Since then, I was left to tie up my loose ends in Sydney and we hadn’t had much contact again until my arrival yesterday.
“Just one. Hand delivered to the hotel the guys were staying at in New York.”
“I need to see that.”
“Of course,” Claire agreed. “We’ll meet back here after the shoot this afternoon and I’ll give it to you. Seems amateur to me – letters cut out of newspaper clippings. The only thing that’s concerning us is the fact they seem to have knowledge of our itinerary.”
“I’m not sure I feel comfortable lying to Sawyer about this,” a woman, sitting opposite me with her arms folded across chest said. She was younger than me, mid-twenties at the oldest. She wore her thick black hair loose down her back and she scowled at me when I questioned her response with a raise of my eyebrow.
“And you are?” I asked curtly. Out of everyone in the room, hers was the only unfamiliar face.
“Laurelin Beckett. Sawyer’s PA.”
PA – a fancy word for dogsbody.
“Well, Laurelin, you’re not lying to him. You are simply not alerting him to the problem. There’s no need to panic any of the guys until we know if this is a serious threat.” She shrugged at me and averted her gaze. That one move told me everything I needed to know about her. Immature. Naïve. Incapable and untrustworthy.
“Okay, I want to be first point of call if we receive any more. I also want the original copies of those previously sent, and a full list of anyone who has official knowledge of the band’s schedule.”
“”Don’t you think we’ve already looked into that?” Laurelin piped up. This chick was going to be a pain in my arse.
“But it hasn’t got us anywhere, has it?” Claire interrupted. “Jake is head of security now. He calls the shots regarding the boys’ safety.”
“Thank you, Claire. I’d briefly like to announce the changes I’m implementing now, and then we’ll go over them thoroughly when the guys arrive.” After removing the printouts from my briefcase, I passed them around the table. “These are just for reference. Claire is having new contracts drawn up as we speak,” I told my team while they looked down at the paper in their hands.
“I think it’s best to assign a guard to each member of the band, rather than whoever’s available. To be honest, considering Souls of the Knight are one of the biggest bands of this decade, I can’t actually believe this shit hasn’t been taken care of before. A good security team needs structure, consistency. There can’t ever be a moment where one of us doesn’t know what he’s supposed to be doing. This team has been running like a fucking playground and it ends, now.”
“Totally with you, boss,” Jim interjected. The other guys nodded their heads. “I lost count of the amount of times I said this shit to Billy. If it weren’t for the guys themselves, I would’ve jacked in this shit a long time ago.”
“Jim, I want you with Darren. Pete, you’re with Matt.”
“Lucky me,” Pete muttered under his breath. Part of me was looking forward to getting to know Matt for myself. He definitely had the worst reputation of all the guys. They can’t call him Matt the Twat for nothing.
“Dave, I’ve paired you with Isaac, and Sayid you’re with Gavin. Sawyer seems to be the target of these threats so for now, Neil, you shadow him along with me until I find a replacement for myself. I’d like two guys on him permanently and obviously one of those can’t be me. I’ll have other stuff to tend to as well. So I’d also like to arrange interviews for another seven men. It literally baffles me how a band of this stature hasn’t got enough men to offer complete twenty-four hour watch.”
“Someone is with them all the time,” Claire said, shrinking back in her chair a little. I scanned the rest of the eyes at the table and every set had grown slightly wider, like I’d offended them.
“But someone is not awake with them all the time. Sleeping on the same floor, on the same bus, on the same street, just isn’t good enough. Someone needs to be alert at all times, and not just because of these threats, because in all honesty they’re probably meaningless pieces of paper from a fan with an overactive imagination. I have never seen such a shoddily put together team. I’m not questioning your abilities here, I know you guys are good at your job otherwise you wouldn’t still be here. You’ve been poorly managed, so poorly in fact that if the press got wind of this, they would be all over it like flies on shit. I’ve been brought in here, no expense spared, to protect this band, so I hope you’ll all join me in this and respect that I know what I’m doing.”