Chapter 6: The R&B Diva's Audition
The city’s night pulse was a different rhythm here, backstage at The Velvet, where the air tasted of sweat, bourbon, and the fleeting magic of a finished performance. Marcus stood in the dim corridor, the thunderous applause from the hall still vibrating through the floor. Nia’s text had been characteristically precise:
Samantha Evans. Dressing Room 3. She’s expecting you. Be impressive.
The connection was a producer Nia owned, a string pulled in the background. Another asset to be evaluated.
He pushed the door open without knocking.
The room was a kaleidoscope of controlled chaos. A riot of roses in crystal vases competed with the sharp scent of her perfume—jasmine and something smoky. Sequined costumes lay draped over chairs like discarded skins. The central mirror, framed by blinding bulbs, reflected a woman seated on a velvet sofa, one long, caramel-colored leg crossed over the other.
Samantha.
She was still in her finale dress, a sheath of black sequins that seemed to drink the light only to spit it back in dazzling sparks. It clung to every curve, from the generous swell of her C-cup breasts down to the dramatic flare of her hips. Her hair fell in soft waves around shoulders that looked strong enough to carry the weight of the notes she’d just bent to her will. Up close, she was taller than he’d expected, her presence somehow both languid and intensely focused.
She took a slow sip from a flute of champagne, her brown eyes tracking him in the mirror’s reflection. She didn’t turn.
“Security’s getting sloppy recently,” she said, her voice a rich, melodic instrument even in speech, slightly frayed from the set.
“I am security tonight,” Marcus replied, closing the door. The lock clicked softly.
That made her turn. She looked him up and down, a slow, appraising sweep that missed nothing. “You’re Marcus, I presume. My manager said a ‘friend of a friend’ might stop by. He was nervous. He gets nervous when Nia’s name comes up.” A smirk played on her full, glossed lips. “I don’t.”
“Should you be?”
She shrugged, the sequins whispering. “I’ve had record execs, athletes, fucking royals from Europe try to get back here. They all want a piece of the show to take home. You…” She finally set the flute down and stood, unfolding to her full height. “…I hear you don’t collect pieces. You collect whole people.”
She took a step closer. The scent of her, jasmine and warm skin and sheer effort, enveloped him. “I’m not a collectible. I’m a corporation. I have trademarks, quarterly earnings, a brand to protect.”
“I know what you are, trust me.” Marcus said, his voice flat. “I read the prospectus Nia drafted. Your streaming numbers, your label’s profit share, the non-compete clause they’re using to keep you from writing your own material. You’re a revenue stream in a sequined dress.”
The smirk vanished. A flash of something raw—anger, recognition—crossed her face. It was the truth, and it cut through the stage glamour. She was quiet for a beat.
“And what are you?” she challenged, closing the final distance between them. “Another man with a plan to ‘manage’ me? To take a bigger cut of my check?”
"Ahaha. Nope." He said, smirking.
His hand came up, not to touch her face, but to the delicate zipper at the side of her dress. He tugged it down an inch. The sound was obscenely loud.
Her breath hitched. “Then what is it?"
He tugged it down another three inches, the fabric parting to reveal the smooth, caramel skin of her hip, the stark black line of a thong.
“This. This is the only one that matters. I don't want to manage you or take your money. I want YOU.”
He saw the conflict in her eyes—the diva who commanded thousands warring with the woman boxed in by contracts and expectations. The woman who was, despite everything, unbearably curious. The woman who was already wet between her legs; he could smell the faint, musky scent of her arousal cutting through the perfume.
With a sudden, fluid motion, he spun her around to face the mirror. His body pressed against her back, pinning her in place. Her wide eyes met his in the glass.
“You wanna know who and what I am, Samantha?” he murmured into her ear, his hands gripping her hips. “Look.”
He didn’t fumble. One hand pushed the bunched sequins of her dress up around her waist. The other slipped between her thighs, his fingers sliding beneath the thin strip of her thong. She was drenched, her slick heat an immediate, shocking contrast to the cool air on her skin.
“Oh, god…” The words escaped her in a shaky sigh, her head falling back against his shoulder.
“Eyes open,” he commanded. “Watch.”
She forced her gaze back to the mirror. He watched her watch as he pushed two thick fingers deep inside her pussy, a slow, merciless invasion. Her mouth fell open in a silent gasp. He curled his fingers, finding a rhythm that was less about pleasure and more about possession, scissoring and stretching her.
“You perform for them,” he said, his voice low and relentless as his hand worked. “You hit the notes, you sell the fantasy for them. This…” He pressed deeper, making her jump. “…this is what’s real. This wet pussy, this dirty truth. This is for me.”
He fucked her with his fingers, the obscene, slick sounds filling the quiet room. Her composure shattered. She moaned, a low, throaty sound that was nothing like her singing voice. It was raw and desperate. Her hands, adorned with delicate rings, scrabbled against the makeup-strewn table for purchase.
“Please…” she whimpered, her hips starting to grind against his hand.
“‘Please’ what?”
“I don’t… fuck… I don’t know.”
He withdrew his glistening fingers. He unzipped his pants, freeing his aching cock. He used her own slickness to stroke himself once, then twice with his eyes locked on hers in the mirror. He saw the hunger there, the surrender, the fierce need to be overtaken by something stronger than a clause in a contract.
He pushed her thong aside, not bothering to remove it. He placed the broad head of his cock at her soaked entrance and pushed forward, not in a single thrust, but with a slow, inexorable pressure that made her cry out.
“Look,” he growled again. "Look at this."
She watched, transfixed, as he disappeared inside her, inch by torturous inch, stretching her wide. Her sequined dress glittered absurdly around her waist. Her perfect makeup was smudging. When he was fully seated, buried to the hilt, they both froze for a second, a tableau of absolute conquest in the blinding glass.
Then he moved.
He pulled back and slammed home, setting a punishing pace from the first stroke. It was a fuck of pure dominance, each drive of his hips knocking a sharp gasp from her lungs. The makeup table rattled; a tube of red lipstick rolled off and clattered to the floor.
“You belong to the label?” he grunted, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise. “You belong to the fans? Fuck that. You belong to me and this damn dick. Right now. Say it.”
“Yes!” she cried, the word torn from her. “God, yes!”
He hammered into her, the angle allowing him to reach depths that had her seeing stars. Her moans became screams, muffled only by her own arm as she bit down on the sequined sleeve of her dress. Her body began to clench around him, the first tremors of an orgasm building like a seismic wave.
“Come,” he ordered. “Come for the crowd that isn’t here. Come for me. For daddy.”
It broke over her like a tsunami. Her back arched violently, a shattered scream ripping from her throat as her pussy convulsed around his shaft in pulsing, milking waves. She shook, her legs nearly giving way, held up only by his relentless thrusts and his iron grip.
He fucked her through it, prolonging her climax until her cries turned to sobs. Only when the last spasm faded did he allow his own control to snap. With a final, brutal drive, he pulled out and his release erupted across the small of her back and the perfect, trembling curves of her ass, hot and thick, marking her glittering skin. He spanked her one last time before dropping in fatigue.
They slumped together against the table, their heavy breaths fogging the mirror. The reflection was a mess of smeared makeup, ruffled sequins, and spent lust. Slowly, he helped her stand. Her legs were unsteady.
She turned to face him, her dress still hiked, his cum cooling on her skin. She didn’t try to cover herself. She just looked at him, the new respect in her eyes deep and undeniable. She reached for a nearby towel, not to wipe herself clean, but to gently clean him.
“I have a video shoot in Miami next week,” she said, her voice husky. “Three days. My manager… my old manager… will have the itinerary sent to Nia.”
She finally met his gaze, all pretense gone.
“I’m in.”
He nodded, tucking himself away. As he turned to leave, her voice stopped him at the door.
“Marcus?”
He looked back.
A ghost of her stage smile returned, but it was different now. Softer. Truer.
“My next single… it’s called ‘Masterpiece.’ You just gave me a whole new arrangement for the bridge.”
He stepped out into the cool hallway, the door clicking shut behind him, sealing her inside with the roses and the ruin. His phone buzzed. A message from Sasha.
Valerie’s paperwork is signed. She wants a task. She’s asking about the guy who’s been sniffing around the twins’ old apartment. The one who won’t take a hint.
He typed a reply as he walked, the sounds of the city reclaiming him.
Give her the address. And the green light.
The puzzle expanded. The singer was woven into the tapestry. The weapon was now unsheathed. The empire, quiet and hungry, continued to turn in the dark.
Its gears meshed silently. In her condo, Nia reviewed Samantha’s standard rider, redlining clauses with a satisfied smirk. At the gym, Sasha pushed a twitching, exhausted Demi through another set of squats, her voice a flat, relentless command. The twins, Donna and Demi, slept tangled together in their new apartment, the ghost of his scent on their skin a fading anchor.
And in the shadowed parking lot of a condemned apartment building in a neighborhood that forgot to care, Valerie waited.
She leaned against her unmarked black sedan, a silhouette cut from the night. She wore dark, functional clothes—nothing that would restrict movement. The address Sasha provided was a third-floor unit where the twins had lived before Marcus. A man named Eric, Donna’s hopeful ex who couldn’t parse a clean break, had been spotted watching the building for three nights running. He’d asked questions at the store across the street. He’d left pleading voicemails that Donna deleted, her hands shaking.
Valerie’s task was not to deliver a message. It was to become the message.
Headlights sliced the gloom. An older, beat-up gray Honda Civic coughed to a halt near the building’s entrance. A man in his late twenties, skinny in a worn leather jacket, stepped out. He lit a cigarette, the flare illuminating a face etched with stubborn longing and a touch of panic. Eric. He stared up at the dark windows of 3B.
Valerie pushed off the car and moved without sound. Her boots made no scrape on the asphalt. He didn’t hear her until she was a yard away, her presence a sudden chill in the night air.
He jumped, the cigarette tumbling from his lips.
“Holy shit! Who the hell are you?”
“A friend of a friend,” Valerie said, her gravel voice neutral. “You’re making the girls nervous, Eric. Don't you think you need to stop? Take a hint."
His fear curdled into defiance. These were his streets.
“The girls? Donna and Demi? They’re not ‘girls,’ they’re… they’re my friends. Or they were. Before that rich motherfucker brainwashed them. I just wanna talk to Donna.”
“Talking time is over.” Valerie took a step closer. “Get in your car. Drive home. Never come back here.”
“Or what?” he sneered, puffing his chest in a sad imitation of toughness. “You gonna beat me up?”
The change in her was instantaneous and terrifying. All lazy menace solidified into focused potential. Her fist, knuckles wrapped discreetly in tape, shot out—not to his face, but to a precise point just below his sternum. The air exploded from his lungs in a pained whoosh. He doubled over, gagging.
She didn’t let him drop. She grabbed the back of his jacket and his belt, leveraged his weight, and marched him stumbling toward the building’s dank, unlit foyer. She kicked the Honda’s door shut.
“We’re gonna have a little discussion...” she said, her tone conversational as she half-dragged him up the urine-scented stairs. “Just not the way you wanted.”
She used a key Sasha had provided. The apartment was empty, a skeleton of the twins’ former life: dust bunnies, a single forgotten hair tie on the linoleum, the faint, ghostly smell of Demi’s vanilla lotion. She shoved him inside. He stumbled, crashing to his knees, still wheezing.
“What do you want?” he rasped, fear finally overwhelming bravado.
“Information,” Valerie said, closing the door. The only light came from a streetlamp filtering through dirty blinds, painting the room in stripes of jaundiced yellow. “Who else have you talked to? What exactly did you think you’d accomplish here?”
“I love her!” he shouted, the sound pathetic in the hollow space.
Valerie sighed, a sound of profound boredom. She approached him. He scrambled back until his hit the wall. She knelt, her face inches from his.
“Love is a luxury. You can’t afford it. Now answer the question. Names.”
He spat in her face.
The wetness trickled down her cheekbone. She didn’t flinch. She didn’t wipe it away. Her grey eyes, in that dim light, looked like chips of flint. A slow, terrifying smile spread across her features.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Hard way it is.”
Her hands were brutally efficient. She ripped his jacket open, buttons pinging across the floor. She tore his t-shirt at the collar. He fought, but it was like fighting a machine—every wild swing was caught, parried, transformed into a twist that made his joints shriek. She pinned him flat on his back, a knee on his bicep, her other leg straddling his chest.
“You like to watch? Huh?” she asked, her voice low. She unbuttoned her own pants, shoving them down just enough. She wasn’t wearing underwear. The streetlight caught the neat strip of dark hair between her muscular thighs. She was already glistening. “You watched their window. You watched them from afar. Now watch this.”
With her free hand, she reached down and spread her lips apart, offering him a crude, explicit view of her wetness. His confusion was absolute. He stared, paralyzed by terror and a sick, unwelcome arousal.
“This is what you’re not getting, Eric,” she said, her fingers sliding through her own slick folds. “This is the currency now. You have none. You're broke now and you can't stand it. You’re just a problem that needs to be resolved.”
She shifted her weight. Before he could process it, she lowered herself onto him. Not onto his cock—he was soft, terrified—but she guided him inside her with a ruthless, downward grind. He was small, limp, but she forced him in, her body stretching to accommodate the involuntary intrusion. It was a violation in reverse, a cold, clinical demonstration of absolute control.
“Fuck… stop…” he whimpered, trying to buck her off.
She clenched her internal muscles, a vicious, practiced squeeze that made him cry out in confused pain-pleasure. She began to ride him, a slow, relentless rhythm that had nothing to do with pleasure and everything to do with degradation. Her hips rolled, taking him deeper into a heat that felt like a mockery.
“You’re nothing,” she breathed, her voice steady, her face a mask of detached concentration. “Absolutely nothing. A stain. You come here with your 'love', and I fuck you in their empty apartment on this dirty floor to show you how little your love is worth. You feel that? That’s you. Inside me. Meaningless.”
Tears streamed down his face. He was hard now, a traitorous, shameful response to the overwhelming physical stimulus and psychological annihilation. His hips began to stutter upwards, meeting her thrusts.
“There it is,” she sneered. “The truth. It’s not love. No. It’s just a needy little dick. A little disked broke ass loser. That’s all you ever were to them.” Her pace quickened, becoming punishing. The wet, slapping sounds of their joining echoed in the barren room. “You wanna come? Go ahead. Come for me. Show me how much you love being my puto.”
A broken sob wrenched from his throat. His body arched, and he spilled into her with a shudder that was pure anguish. She milked him through it, not stopping until he was completely spent, lying limp and weeping beneath her.
She rose, peeling herself off him with a look of distilled contempt. He curled onto his side, seminally slick and shaking. She pulled her pants up, then tossed a small packet of wet wipes onto his chest.
“Clean yourself up,” she said, her voice back to its raspy normalcy. “The man you’re so curious about, Marcus? He owns the air you’re crying into right now. I’m just the tool he used to carve that fact into your spine.” She knelt again, pulling his head up by the hair to make sure he heard her final words. “If your name, your face, or your scent comes anywhere near his world again, I won’t fuck you. I’ll take you apart. Joint by joint. Piece by piece. Entiendes? Do you understand?”
He nodded mutely, a frantic, jerking motion.
“Good boy.”
She stood and walked to the door. She paused, not looking back. “The guy at the store you talked to? He works for us too. Everyone works for us. You just didn't know it.”
She left him there in the dark, the smell of sex and despair settling over him like a shroud. Outside, the cool night air felt clean. She got into her car and sent a single text.
Task complete. Asset neutralized. No further leaks.
She started the engine. The city’s grid of lights spread out before her, a circuit board of possibilities. She had been a weapon in a cage. Now she was a weapon with a purpose. A target. It felt like coming home.