Loverman Read online

  Loverman

  Sydney Stories Book 1

  BD Roca

  Loverman

  Copyright © 2020 BD Roca

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  Beta reading: Megan Dischinger, Kirk Waite, and Amy Pittel, LesCourt Author Services

  Editing and proofreading: One Love Editing

  Formatting: Leslie Copeland

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  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organisations, places, events and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  * * *

  Please be aware this book contains references to off-page sexual abuse, violence and suicide.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Thank you!

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  From across the buzzing, grimy space of the old warehouse, Kemp watched as his lover, Charles Durant, lifted his Nikon and focused it on Kemp’s bandmates. They huddled over in a corner. The stop-start pace of the video shoot held no interest. One of them, drowsing in the heat, sat clutching a silent guitar.

  Dusty sunlight tangling in his blond hair, Charles had a face so stunning it should have put him in front of that camera, not behind it. Kemp’s breathing thickened. The idle, seated sprawl of his body tightened. He ignored the prickling under his skin.

  Charles was documenting every moment that caught his eye.

  Click. Click click.

  Kemp had heard that rapid-fire click around Charles often enough. He didn’t need to hear it again to imagine it. At times that camera seemed like an extension of his arm. The guy was a workaholic.

  Not that Kemp wasn’t work obsessed. Lead singer of the lean, dark, and dirty indie band Isto, he’d forgotten what a break was. Isto was the sole reason this derelict, briefly repurposed warehouse was resurrected, alive with activity: grips, camera operators, assistants, and set builders, all of them frantic on this, the shoot’s last day.

  And Kemp’s genius auteur sister, Viva, was the director.

  She’d just left behind a discussion with the lighting director and with a nod, moved on to the next item on her list. Easy to guess what that was.

  Kemp forced himself to relax back into the makeup artist’s chair, lazily watch as she stalked across the dirty boards of the buzzing space towards Charles. Focused, he took a step back up onto the platform behind him. Got a different angle.

  Next to Kemp, Ruby, the makeup artist, followed his eyes and chuckled.

  “Those two.” She tilted his jaw up with the end of a brush. “Both too clever for their own bloody good, right?”

  Huh. He’d known Ruby for years. It seemed she understood his family dynamics too damned well. Or more likely, the dislike between Charles and Viva was just too damned obvious.

  He grunted. “Just make me look pretty, Ruby.”

  She winked and swiped the brush across his skin.

  Outside, it was a hot Sydney summer’s day. Inside, it was a sauna. He was bare-chested, remaining clothing clammy, sweat-damp, against his skin. Portable air-conditioning units were doing fuck all to put a dent into the Sydney heat, when that heat was amped up by a corrugated iron roof, broken skylights, and additional set lighting blazing fiercely.

  Ruby had her work cut out. So did the stylist. Cleaning him up for the cameras—let alone shining up his bandmates—was no easy task.

  At least his skull wasn’t pounding. The day before the shoot began, Kemp had played out the knowledge he was going to have company, particular company, throughout the filming, and that had made him hit the vodka. Hard.

  Charles had flown in for this specially.

  Sought out for cutting-edge commercial and editorial work, Charles had scored a major magazine commission about the shoot using his contacts. Kemp hadn’t guessed he’d even find it a worthy subject. Against all evidence, Kemp had hoped he’d scarcely bother to do more than the minimum required once his point had been made.

  The guy had demanded to be there when he hadn’t been welcome. He’d told Viva—not asked—that he’d be photographing the shoot for an article on the video’s making.

  Ignoring the ego boost and free publicity and prestige that any article Charles shot would bring, Viva had told him to fuck off. The last thing she’d wanted had been his presence. Put the two together and they always fought like a pair of cats dumped in a tub of water.

  But Charles had his way. His will, his claim staked.

  He’d completed an assignment in London before deadline and back-to-backed it to Sydney for this. The guy was a master of the timetable. To outsiders, a gruelling return trip just to document this slice of his lover’s career probably sounded romantic. It wasn’t. Their relationship was about mutual convenience and edgy sex. Just fucking. Not hearts and flowers.

  Either way, the press loved them. To the outside world, theirs was a hot romance.

  Charles, son of the deceased Richard Durant, legendary mining magnate and billionaire, and Kemp Lansey, rock star. For a fistful of years back in their teens, Charles and Kemp had also been stepbrothers. That had been an explosive bonus.

  Fucking spectacular in fact, when the headlines had hit eighteen months back. They’d had too few days before the news had leaked. Right at this moment, Kemp preferred not to recall the swerve from reconnecting privately with Charles during Isto’s last European tour to complete fucking media insanity.

  “Shit.” Ruby narrowed her eyes, dabbing at the sweat suddenly beading on his face, messing with the concealer she’d applied.

  Across the warehouse, Viva had been delayed by one of the techs.

  Kemp stirred in his chair, eyes to his sister, his face otherwise still. “You’re washed-out,” Ruby was saying, with the blunt attack of an old friend, oblivious to the war about to break out. “Get outside, goddammit. I’d get more sun myself, but I’ve got enough bloody freckles.”

  Kemp forced his attention away. Never let it be said that he couldn’t multitask, and Ruby didn’t need his angst. He drawled, “Yeah, I remember. I’m guessing they’re still great for playing join-the-dots with.”

  “You’re an evil bastard.”

  Her grin told him she hadn’t forgotten.

  He’d once used a fine-tipped magic marker for just that purpose: to join the very cute freckles scattered across her redhead’s skin. It had taken her days to get the spiking starbursts of constellations drawn across her arse scrubbed off. Crazy, dirty games, but all that was ancient history now. All the wild guys, the bold women, the no-stress hook-ups, all of them, in all possible numerical combinations, had ended the minute that tall, blue-eyed drink of trouble had hit his bed.

  Finished, Ruby smoothed a palm over Kemp’s cheek before giving it a slap that stung a degree. “Yeah, you were fun… and the fucking got kind of addictive, too,” she added conspiratorially, and burst out laughing as the amusement smoothed
out from his eyes and mouth, leaving them neutral. “Mmm, sharp, gorgeous, and cool as all fuck. No wonder I played.”

  “Now I feel used.”

  “Yeah, you should, you trophy fuck.”

  Kemp burst out laughing.

  She grinned and Kemp was grinning too and leaning back out of range of her hands as she reached to playfully muss up the work she’d done on his hair. Movement caught the corner of his eye.

  Ruby followed his vision.

  Kemp’s fists clenched on the shabby arms of the chair.

  Charles was lifting his camera up to his face. Kemp watched as he pointed the Nikon right at Viva. It was sheer provocation.

  Fuck, the little shit, and yes, predictably, Viva’s dancer’s frame stiffened.

  She walked away from the tech. Pushed emerald-nailed fingers into her thick, dark hair, twined up in a rough twist and pinned on top of her head. The gesture told Kemp Viva was about two seconds from exploding—

  Jesus.

  “I’m done,” he said quickly, not bothering to glance in the mirror. “Thanks, Ruby. You’re a champion.”

  Ruby arched a brow as he got to his feet, her eyes sliding from his bare chest and on to his other main attraction. Black trousers hung low on his hips, clung to the famous curve of his butt, and he was barefoot, indifferent to whatever filth littered the floor. She arched a brow.

  “Give me five more minutes and I’ll even make you look pretty.”

  The mirror gave him back long dark hair, a freshened face. Almost human. All thanks to her.

  He caught hold of her hand, brushed the knuckles with a quick kiss, and didn’t give a shit who was watching.

  “Miss Ruby.”

  “Don’t play dumb,” she taunted. “You know what you’ve got. And you know how to use it.”

  Kemp shook his head, but Ruby knew him. He deliberately played with sexual ambiguity, not out of some marketing plan but because he enjoyed it, the provocation of it. Onstage, his five ten and change was ordinary. He’d begun as a whip-lean singer and guitarist, more interested in the songs than anything else. He still was. It had taken Ruby, playing around with eyeliner and dark eye makeup on him one slow Sunday afternoon, for it to become something edgier.

  He played those mind-fuck games because he loved sticking two fingers up at convention, and some of his heroes as a kid—Bowie and Cobain, Iggy Pop—had gone way more extreme than any would now.

  A pity, because there were few things better than screwing with the rules. With expectations.

  But right now his own expectations of a shit of a day were being met. World War Three was about to erupt.

  He nodded to the set designer as he strode past her. Earlier, Kemp had laughed outright at her glee. She was loving just how revolted some of the squeamish amongst the grips and other crew were.

  She’d created an oily, sinister set that might have originally belonged in the home of a Victorian eccentric, retro junk breeding in corners. Flies were buzzing everywhere. Everything in the damned place was rotting. Even the rusted, broken pipes running up the walls.

  And right now, the stench of a beef carcass that no one wanted to go near was adding to the thick air. Draped over an antique, broken-legged chaise longue over on the platform, it had been bought cheap, Viva had told him cheerfully as it was unloaded, because it was already rotting. Even one day of this heat, and some of the crew were damned near puking.

  What it looked like up close was indescribable. The grimy sheet of clear plastic thrown over it hid nothing.

  Walking in to this a few days back, it had struck him that the women who’d had the vision to put this together had gone darker, dirtier, uglier than any of the guys he’d worked with previously on the band’s videos.

  Kemp’s pride in his fierce, outrageously talented, take-no-prisoners sister had only deepened.

  This incredible shoot was a reflection of the way in which she’d always backed him up. Always fought his corner.

  The way that he’d always fought hers, except for his involvement with Charles.

  A memory hit. One over a decade old.

  You don’t belong here, teenage Charles had spat at Viva, at fifteen, two years his senior, back in the fortress of the Durant Palm Beach compound. You and your brother are the trash. You need to get out. Charles had turned that wintry stare on Kemp next. Trash doesn’t fit in here. We throw it out.

  Only they’d stayed. Their mother, Maxine, had no intention of giving up the platinum prize of the Durant lifestyle once she’d finally attained it.

  First meeting, first impression. It had been a doozy.

  It should have rendered adult Charles unfuckable. It hadn’t.

  Didn’t matter. Charles just had to turn those blue, blue eyes on him, waters of a tropical sea, lie back, bared wrists crossed so beautifully over his head, golden thighs spread, and Kemp was done. The things he wanted to do to him. The things he had done.

  Truth was, they had a near bloodletting ability to ring each other’s bells.

  And right now, his blond Viking beauty had paused by that pile of beef. Pristine even amongst this filth in loose khakis, a white T-shirt moulding the broad, elegant muscle of his shoulders and back, Charles was staring, narrow-eyed, past the rancid meat.

  Right back into Viva’s implacable, hostile silver gaze.

  She’d paused by the camera operator as he made some last-minute adjustments, her hands on her hips as she glared at Charles. Her mouth, bare of lipstick but still full, voracious, an even more lush version of Kemp’s, was hard.

  “Get the fuck away from here,” she snapped, and stepped up on to the shallow wooden stage. She prowled over to him. “We need this area clear. Right now. I told everyone that.”

  Charles’ jaw lifted a degree. He glanced indifferently past her, to the band members.

  Off to one side and looking awkward stood the sound operator on the crew. He was also currently house-sitting Charles’ empty place.

  Charles’ impervious gaze flicked about their audience and back to Viva’s hard stare. “It’s a good angle. And you won’t be doing anything for ten minutes.”

  “I told you to move.”

  “And I’m telling you I’ll move when I’ve taken my photographs.”

  Viva’s eyes narrowed.

  Jesus Christ. No way did he—they, any of them, need this. Kemp took the shallow jump up onto the platform. He came between them and put a hand on both their shoulders. Both sets of eyes cut to his.

  Just for an instant, he felt like that carcass of beef over there, ready to be butchered, divided up. Fought over.

  His fingers tightened on Charles’ shoulder, thumb probing muscle he found unexpectedly tense. He said flatly, “You’re being a ratbag, Charles. Stop stirring. Because if Viva doesn’t throw you out, I will. Got it?”

  Charles’ face was unreadable.

  Then a small smile caught at his mouth. “I’ve never been thrown out of anywhere before. It might be an interesting experience.” Charles held his free hand up. “I’ll be a total gentleman. I’ll finish taking the photographs, and they’ll be incredible.”

  Viva gave a snort of disgust.

  Kemp leaned in closer. In an undertone, he murmured in Charles’ ear, “Brilliant or not, I don’t give a fuck. You’re being an arsehole. Push it any further and I’ll ban you myself.”

  Charles turned his face a degree in toward Kemp’s. “Really?” he drawled, a soft edge of enquiry to that level, patrician voice. “Then should I push you harder? Would you like that?”

  Kemp’s eyes met his. “Try me.”

  A long blink of the dark golden lashes. The flicker of a pause.

  “I’m almost tempted.”

  And Kemp could read that he was. For a moment he did not look away. A beat of blood flushed his own throat, hit his cock. He shifted, fighting against that reaction. Viva surveyed them both sourly.

  “You’re trying to wind me up, Durant, and it’s working.” At near Kemp’s height, she was still inc
hes shorter than him, and Charles glanced over at her, the strong, clean line of his jaw still lifted. Kemp scoped some of the crew, moving about the huge space like bees in a hive, pause a degree, just enough to catch what they could.

  She said, “You shouldn’t be here in any case. I told you that when you turned up here the other day, you little shit. So you—”

  “Yes, I know,” Charles drawled, gaze shifting over her lean frame, dressed in a working uniform appropriate to the heat. A black tank top, jeans cropped at midthigh, and heavy lace-up boots, protection against the mess on the floors her brother was ignoring. “You’re the captain of this ship, you give the orders, and it’s no Titanic, right?”

  “Fuck you,” Viva hissed.

  “Since I’d never use that kind of language in front of you, I can scarcely return the favour and say fuck you, Viva. That would simply be crude.”

  It was astonishing, the provocative, cool control that laced every word.

  Jesus—

  But everything about Charles was controlled. Except when he got behind—hell, not even a bedroom door.

  No, Charles didn’t need doors, four walls, privacy.

  “Okay, Charles,” Kemp gritted. His fingers tightened. He pressed his lips close to Charles’ ear. “You want me to shred you? Sure, I’ll shred you. Later.”

  But for now, behave.

  His eyes gave Charles that wordless message. Charles returned it with one of his own: Yes. Later.

  Fuck, he should never have allowed this to start up. At all.

  Eighteen months ago, when the band’s insane drive to the top was truly paying off, Charles had come back into Kemp’s life.