Chapter 1

Author’s Note: Over five books and more than one million words, we enter here into the sixth installment of Traffic Girl. I really never intended this to go beyond three books, but I feel like the story and characters have just grown and sustained the narrative. We enter the next phase here. I hope you enjoy – and please, as always, keep the feedback coming.

It was January 4. There were 100,000 fans screaming at the top of their lungs at the glorious, modern football stadium in Los Angeles. It was the last show of the four-night run that kicked off Riley and Henry’s co-headlining Stages Tour. The lights had gone off ten minutes earlier when Henry stepped off his stage in the north end zone. The fans knew that meant, any moment, Riley would appear on her stage in the south end zone. The concerts were a spectacle, a throwback to the huge 1970s stadium tours of the great rock bands. After an opening act, Riley and Henry each played sets that lasted more than two hours. They were epic, marathon shows that whipped the crowds into insatiable frenzies.

In short, it was a circus. And I couldn’t believe that I was standing backstage seeing it all.

“Hey, it’s time,” Katie said, looking up at me and then glancing sharply to her right.

“Get to it, baby,” I said and kissed her. “I’m proud of you.”

“Thanks, daddy,” Katie said and kissed me back.

She quickly walked off and disappeared behind a door that swiftly closed. I knew who was behind it with her. Riley, Henry, and Emily, the lead singer of the opening band named BowHaus. It was time for Riley’s pre-show liftoff, as she called it. She did two quick lines of cocaine and then exploded on stage to the driving bass of her classic hit song “Bringing it to You.”

Maybe a minute after Katie had walked away, she was by my side again, the familiar, wild look in her eyes. She had an electric grin on her face, the same as she had flashed before the first three concerts. She loved it. She loved the energy of the crowd. She loved being on stage. She loved singing. She was learning to love the attention that came simply by being a part of something so massive in pop culture. She also looked fantastic in the tight, short, sequin-laden go-go dress and knee-high fuck-me boots she wore when she performed.

“Break a leg, my love,” I said.

“I can’t wait to suck your dick,” she whispered to me just before she scrambled out on stage.

The band and backup performers took the stage a couple minutes before Riley. The crowd saw the flashlights that led them on stage, and their shrieks took on a fevered pitch when they realized how close they were to showtime. I mean, Henry was a big draw. But there was a different level of loyalty and obsession among Riley’s fans.

A shimmering sleeve brushed against my arm. I turned and saw Riley standing next to me.

“I bet this never gets old,” I said, relishing the fact that I knew why her eyes looked so excited.

“It never, ever does,” she said. “It’s the best fucking rush in the world.”

“Break a leg,” I said. “It’s been amazing every night.”

“Thanks,” she said and took strong, confident steps forward just as the first boom of the bass careened across the stadium from the stacks of speakers above the stage.

Just when you thought the audience couldn’t get any louder, but they did. The stage lights flashed on, and, like magic, Riley appeared at the center. And the concert was off to the races from that initial moment. I smiled as I scanned the crowd and saw the looks on people’s faces. It was like witnessing the rapture.

I felt body heat next to me again and turned to my right. It was Henry.

“Hey, bud,” I said and gave him a combination handshake/high-five. “Fucking awesome show.”

“Thanks, dude,” he said, flashing that famous, boyish smile.

“You must be ready for a night off,” I said.

“I feel good, man,” he said. “This has been next level. Crazy crowds. Amazing fans. And we get to dictate the schedule? It keeps you fresh. It’s nothing like the grind of doing like fifty shows in sixty days.”

“Well, you fucking earned the right to structure it that way,” I said.

For the Stages Tour, Riley and Henry had decided to play three or four shows each in twenty cities across the U.S. and Canada, a total of seventy-five gigs in all. The concerts would be centered around weekends, which gave them more down time and a less arduous calendar. They sincerely believed it allowed them to connect better with their fans by performing higher quality shows. Based on the crowd response and the critical reviews for the LA shows, they were right.

“You going to be ready for our little acoustic set interlude in about forty-five minutes?” Henry asked me.

“Are you kidding?” I said with a laugh. “That’s why I’m here.”

Henry laughed, clapped me on the back, and walked away. I felt a vibration in my pocket, which could have been the thumping of the music, but I pulled out my phone. I tapped on the notification for Rita’s text message.

“All set, babe, XOXO,” she wrote.

My fingers tingled when I read that. I smiled and typed a reply.

“I can’t believe this is happening,” I said. “Love you all, XOXO.”

This was going to be a huge night. After the first three shows, the after-party had been very low-key. Riley and Henry did some glad-handing with lucky fans. They had a couple drinks, but that was it before they retreated back to their house down the street from us. But after this, the fourth and final LA concert, we were finally going to catch a glimpse of the wild tour shenanigans that Riley and Henry had teased us with for months. They saved them for the final night in each city, when they’d have a few days off to recover. I admired that restraint, as well as the dedication to their craft and their fans that it showed. But I was craving the unknown debauchery that lay ahead in a night when they let their hair down. I was ready to rock and roll. We all were.

In the nearly three months since we had gotten married, Kat, Jess, Rita, Katie, and I had lived an idyllic life. While Juliet and Melanie had gone to Vancouver and Chicago to shoot Carly’s movie, we had largely focused on establishing a workable routine. We wanted to follow through on the endless promise of marriage, and it had worked out beautifully so far.

Jess had almost completely stepped back from Infinity, allowing Alix and Christy to take over day-to-day operations in LA. In Vegas, Nicole, Nicolitta, and former traffic girl Jen had the agency working as smoothly – and as profitably – as ever. For Daydream Productions, Kayla had become a de facto creative director and was cranking out popular scenes weekly and at least one well-regarded feature a month. For the Daydream Fantasy packages, however, Jess retained a particular interest in the day-to-day. But there was a reason for that.

That’s because she had become obsessed with putting together her new swingers club. It was coming together more quickly and earlier than she expected but that only happened after the perfect location for its activities became available. We lucked out with it, frankly. Along our street, there were five houses, each of them with sizable lots that were generously spaced out. Juliet lived at the far end, and we, of course, lived next to her. Two houses down from us, at the entrance to the cul-de-sac, Henry and Riley had purchased their first home together.

And then, out of the blue, the two houses between ours and the pop stars’ both went up for sale. Kat and Rita had gone for a walk when they noticed it, and they sprinted home to tell us. We poked around in the property records, only to find that they were both owned by the same LLC. We did a bit more digging thanks to a private investigator that Petey kept on retainer and found out both properties ultimately belonged to a shady financier who was liquidating some assets. He had never lived in either house, so I presumed they were purchased simply to launder money. And if he needed to get rid of them, then I wasn’t going to let the opportunity pass it by.

The challenge was that, combined, the list prices totaled nearly forty million dollars. I had had two years of incredible success and, on paper, I could totally afford to buy them both. But it would be a stress on our resources. I wasn’t sure if the risk was worth it at a time when we were focused on marriage and family and stability. If this went sideways, we could put ourselves in a bind, relatively speaking. In the back of my mind, however, I knew that Juliet had two movies coming out the following year. I knew one of them was a sure-fire blockbuster. The other, Carly’s directorial debut, could be a box office and critical darling. Hell, just as filming started there was Oscar buzz flying around the production. I had five points on the total box office of each movie, as well as generous back-end potential.

So I indulged my old love of gambling and called the seller’s broker. I asked if they would consider a package deal. All cash. No escrow. Payment due on demand. Within a day, the broker told me if I could wire thirty million within forty-eight hours, I had a deal. I decided it was a no-brainer. I had preemptively gotten an independent appraisal that valued one property at $22 million and the other at $19 million. So I took it to the girls, who agreed, and we pulled the trigger. All of the sudden, we had essentially secured the exclusive control of five houses in the Hollywood Hills, an entire block to ourselves. And smack dab in the middle of those five houses, two of them could safely serve as the site for Jess’s swingers club.

We started calling it Hollywood & Vine. Jess wanted Hollywood in the title, since that was her target audience for membership. And Kat had suggested “vine” because that’s what Tarzan swang from.

“And you want people who are going to be a little bit untamed when they come to a swingers club,” she had said.

The name stuck.

Our two new house purchases needed a bit of work to make them suitable for our purposes. The girls jumped right on that. Juliet, chiming in from on-set, had recommended a handful of very skilled individuals who built out sets for one of the major studios. If we were willing to pay cash – and we were – we could get high-quality work done quickly.

To start, we knocked down the fence between the houses and secured the double perimeter with a ten-foot privacy wall. Inside each house, the first-floor plans were opened up. There were large bars, professional kitchens, and a series of thoughtful, surprise touches that represented our style – and vices – that would reveal themselves in time.

The renovations took two months. But the timing worked out perfectly. We planned to kick off Hollywood & Vine the night after Riley and Henry’s final concert in Los Angeles.

Outside of getting settled into married life and pushing ahead with the surprising and exciting advent of the swingers club, we still managed to find the time to have some fun. That was no surprise. Katie had been in rehearsals for the tour four days a week, which gave her three-day weekends. So we kept things chill Monday through Thursday, and Kat, Rita, and I focused on our social calendar.

We tried out different things. Of course, playing with our nascent swingers group was a priority, and a fun one at that. The core playmates who joined our wedding reception friends consisted of Ryan, Vic, and Cecily from the Hollywood crowd (along with Carly when she wasn’t on-location), and the Daydream crew. The reality was that a group that size – about two dozen people – didn’t work for frequent parties. It was too unwieldy.

So we experimented with targeted invitations, which initially worked out well given everyone’s busy schedules. The first party where we test drove this model was over Halloween weekend, and we allowed each of the five of us to invite one person. I had chosen Kayla. Kat, unsurprisingly, invited Ryan. Jess chose Patrick. Rita brought Stephanie. And Katie surprised us by inviting someone named Emily, who we had heard about but hadn’t met. Katie assured us she was cool and would be a perfect addition to the group. She was a rocker chick, the lead singer in a band called BowHaus that would be opening for Riley and Henry on their tour. She was tall, just short of six feet, with jet black hair, a series of psychedelic tattoos on her left arm, and mesmerizing, almost translucent pale blue eyes.

Of course, we also welcomed Jason, Crystal, and Bianka to the party, and it was a shame that Petey and Alix had decided to spend Halloween in Vegas because they missed out on a hell of a time. Kat and Jess held a deep-throating contest on Ryan and Patrick, which ultimately saw Kayla walk away with the title. Rita used her strap-on with Stephanie for the first time, and it was clear the sultry midwestern weather girl was coming deeply under her spell.

But the highlight of the night for me was realizing that Katie had brought Emily to me as an offering. The tall, slender rocker girl had taken Katie under her wing during rehearsals, and they made for a beautiful, contrasting pair given Katie’s short stature, petite frame, and outrageous curves. But they shared a passion for cocaine and music and, as it turned out, rough sex. My Halloween became overwhelmed by a threesome with Katie and her new friend, and it was an exceptional experience – one that made me absolutely giddy about the prospects for the upcoming tour.

So we had our swinger lifestyle rolling along, but we also had done a good job on two other priorities the girls had articulated a desire for during the wedding and honeymoon. First, we were having dinner together at least four nights a week. It gave us a cohesive, meaningful, and happy anchor to married life. We felt united as we moved through life. Second, I was taking the girls on dates regularly, although we were flexible in the definition of “date.” Sometimes it was one-on-one, whether for lunch or dinner or something else. Other times, it might be two of them. And sometimes the girls would do the same with each other. It proved to be a fantastic way to stoke our intimacy.

For the first three months of our forever life, as Rita liked to call it, had come together beautifully. We were full of energy and creativity, and we were hungry for more – which could have been a dangerous proposition because we had notoriously healthy appetites.

Riley plowed through a series of high-tempo hits that whipped the crowd into a frenzy. Or kept them in a frenzy. It was non-stop worship at the altar of Riley when she was on stage. I liked watching it, imagining what it would be like to have a hundred-thousand people going bonkers all at once just for something as simple as singing a three-minute song. After she finished the highly choreographed dance moves to the second single off her new album, “Told You So,” the lights dimmed to a single spotlight in the center of the stage. The band all piled off stage, including Katie and her two fellow backup singers, a voluptuous British girl named Kelly who had a background in opera and a fiery, pale redhead named Elizabeth. Riley began her acoustic set.

She played three songs solo, with nothing but her guitar and a stool. It gave the band a much-needed break and was the subject of high praise from fans and critics. Riley didn’t take a break. She went hard, without a break, all night long. Anything for her fans.

While most of the dancers and band members grabbed drinks or a smoke backstage, Henry and I snuck off with Katie and Emily, the other two backup singers, Dave, the lead guitar player, and Ken, the drummer. We found ourselves in the same small holding room where Riley did her pre-concert cocaine. There were two dozen lines of coke neatly laid out on what was normally a makeup vanity. Henry led the way, and the cocaine disappeared in hierarchical order – Henry first, then Dave, Ken, the backup singers, Emily and me. I didn’t mind going last. It gave me an unobstructed view of the gap between her skinny, slightly knock-kneed legs and the underside curve of her ass in her dangerously short dress.

While Emily did her lines, the other three girls in the room got on their knees in front of one of the men. Katie was in front of Henry. Kelly knelt before Ken, the drummer, and Elizabeth before Dave, the guitar player. Along with the sound of Emily’s smooth inhalation, the room filled with the sounds of mouths greedily sucking cocks. Emily popped up and grinned at me. She rubbed her nose and looked at me with dancing, taunting eyes.

“Get on your knees, slut,” I told her coldly.

Her smile got broader. Emily liked playing games and pushing buttons. She obeyed my command, and I bent down and inhaled the final two lines of coke on the vanity. Emily pulled her hair back into a ponytail holder and propped herself up on her knees. She swallowed my cock, her nose tickling my short pubic hair.

This had been the pairing during the acoustic set each time for four nights now. Henry loved getting head while his girlfriend sang her heart out. I loved face-fucking Emily. She had no gag reflex and a long tongue, which let her take my whole cock down her throat while simultaneously licking my balls. I grabbed a fistful of her straight, black hair and rammed myself in and out of her mouth.

“Fuck yeah, buddy,” Henry said, glancing over at me. “Face fuck that slut!”

He gave me a high five, and it was interesting to see the pure joy in his face. It was the same expression he had shown the previous three concerts. I didn’t blame him because Katie was blowing him with equal enthusiasm. Within ten minutes, all four of us had finished in the girls’ mouths. They all swallowed. Henry and Emily did more cocaine before we filed out of the room. The on-stage performers lined up, ready to get back to it once Riley finished up her third acoustic song. Henry and Emily ambled off, deeper backstage, to grab some drinks. I planned to join them in a little bit, but I wanted to be with Katie for a few minutes first.

“Are you having fun, babe?” I said, sliding my arms around her waist from behind and whispering in her ear.

“So much fun, daddy,” she said. “I mean, I would have killed to be backstage once at a concert like this. To be a part of it? This is more than a fantasy. This is beyond my wildest dreams.”

“I bet if you had gotten backstage as a fan, Henry would have wanted you to do that regardless,” I said.

“He probably would have,” Katie said. “He loves groupies.”

“I sort of figured that,” I said with a laugh.

“I’m really curious what tonight will be like,” Katie confided. “Riley has hinted around at what they’re like on tour, but the thing is? Nobody knows. She acts like it’s going to be absolutely crazy.”

“Well, babe, if it is?” I said. “We’re going to be ready for it. Rita said the houses are ready to go.”

“Really?” Katie said. “Hollywood and Vine?”

“Hollywood and Vine,” I said.

“God, just thinking about this makes me so wet,” she said.

The final ninety minutes of the concert followed the same unbridled, almost cult-like euphoria for Riley’s talent. It wasn’t undeserved. She was a once-in-a-generation entertainer. That might have been selling her short. And by that fourth concert of the tour, I began to feel a certain wonderment about the intangible energy and charisma that surrounded these events. It made them unlike anything else I had ever experienced. One of the effects was that, regardless of whether the set list and the choreography and the outfits were the same every night, it felt fresh, new, and revolutionary.

And that didn’t even factor in that Henry was no slouch himself. He had a dedicated, if perhaps not as rabid, following and was an exceptional talent in his own right. The cumulative result of all this – the size of the concerts, the energy, the unique nature of having two stars of such a magnitude – created a synergy of permissiveness that made me extremely curious. Because there was also an undercurrent of seriousness, of obligation to the fans each night to put on the best show possible. So this wasn’t like a Led Zeppelin tour, where every night was an unbridled bacchanalia. Riley and Henry kept a lid on it until the final show of the weekend wrapped, and the lights in the stadium went off. I wondered how much pressure would have built up over the course of an exhilarating series of shows – and what it would look like when that pressure was let loose.

The scene that Monday night unfolded the same as it had after the previous three performances. After Riley wrapped her final encore, she hustled off stage, with the band, dancers, and backup singers right behind her. She and Henry would embrace briefly, and then they would be whisked away with their entourage. That entourage included Katie and me, along with Emily, Ken, Dave, Kelly, Elizabeth, and another half-dozen trusted band members and dancers. We piled into four large, black SUVs and exited the stadium via the underground performers’ entrance. It was a trip, being whisked past throngs of delirious, still-cheering fans who belatedly realized it was their favorite star speeding past.

It was late enough that we were able to make the trip up to the Hollywood Hills in thirty minutes. Katie and I rode with Riley and Henry in their SUV, the stars in the captain’s chairs in the back and Katie and me in the third row. Before we had even hit the 405 to head north, Riley had buried a scoop of cocaine in her nose that Henry passed her from the vial in his hand.

“Wooo!” Riley shouted after she took the bump, giving the scoop back to Henry. “What a night!”

“Incredible show!” I said. “Incredible!”

“So much fun! Oh my god!” Katie exclaimed.

Henry gave Riley the scoop, reloaded, and she pushed a bump up her other nostril.

“Fuck, I am so ready to party tonight,” Riley said, rubbing her nose. “That was such a rush. Did I sound okay? It felt fucking amazing.”

“You were unbelievable, babe,” Henry said, accepting the scoop back from his girlfriend and passing the vial to Katie. “Ladies first.”

“You were amazing, too, babe,” Riley said, her smile lighting up the dark interior of the car. “We seriously are unstoppable.”

Katie took a couple bumps of coke, passed the vial to me for mine, and it made its way back to Henry. My heart was racing, and it wasn’t just the drugs. We had gotten to know Riley and Henry very well since Jess and I had bumped into them in Cabo. We had played with them. We had partied with them. But their on-tour “whatever happens, happens” attitude had remained shrouded in mystery. They had only teased what that meant. Of course, after seeing how Henry enjoyed himself during Riley’s sets the past few nights, I was eager to see just how much of the “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll” cliché would blossom before our eyes.

“I can’t believe I’m a part of this,” Katie said.

“You were awesome, girl!” Riley said, turning around in her seat.

Even after having performed all-out for more than two hours, she looked perfectly put together and bubbling with effusive energy. This was definitely a different version of her. She was powerful, confident. Not that she wasn’t normally, but on an ordinary day, she was extremely laid back. Right now, it was apparent she was a force of nature. That was my first inkling that something would be completely different that night.

The vial of coke made it around the SUV twice more during the ride up to our new houses. As we made our way, Riley and Henry let slip a couple details about what might be in store for us that night, and we also gleaned a few more based on what we heard them talk about.

“How many did you pull?” Riley asked at one point.

“Six,” Henry said.

“Leaving one empty spot, huh?” she said.

Henry turned around and explained what that meant.

“Riley and I pick out seven people from the crowd to come party,” he said. “Like, we each fill up one Suburban.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t try to find skinny girls and pack nine of them in,” Riley teased.

“How many did you pick?” Henry asked.

“Seven, babe,” Riley said. “I could have pulled ten.”

Katie and I glanced at each other, and our eyes got wide.

“How’s that work?” I asked.

“We each have a roadie who’s been with us for a long time,” Henry said. “You have to use someone you know well and can totally trust. I scope some out during my set but then make the official pick while Riley’s on. And vice versa.”

“They get an NDA and instructions – like their cell phone has to go in a bag and they get it back whenever they want to leave the party,” Riley added. “And if they agree? Then they get to come.”

Riley was still in her last concert outfit, another shiny and short dress. She tugged off the high-heeled boots that went with them and rolled down the shimmering stockings she wore. I noticed that the shorts she wore under the dress were tossed to the floor, too.

“Damn,” Katie said. “That’s insane.”

“It’s actually kind of crazy how structured it is,” Henry said. “But you have to be serious about the public image. They won’t arrive at the party until at least thirty minutes after us. We work really hard to cover our tracks.”

“What could be so bad that you need to cover your tracks that much?” I said, adding an exaggerated laugh.

Riley and Henry shared a knowing glance and smile.

“You’ll see,” Riley said, her tongue darting across her bottom lip quickly.

Katie grabbed my hand and made eyes at me. I could feel what she was thinking. She was dying to know, just as much as I was.

The SUVs containing us and Henry and Riley’s entourage pulled through the large mechanical gates we had installed at the Hollywood & Vine houses. We had reconfigured the entryway so that there was a large driveway between the two houses, which provided a good amount of parking. The driveway came to a dead end at a substantial outdoor pavilion, which served as a kind of check-in point, almost like a small welcome center. Outdoor furniture dotted the walkways to the two houses, each of which also had a generous pool area and guest house. Combined among all the structures, there were fifteen bedrooms available. A couple hundred people could party comfortably there.

We piled out of the Suburban via the driver’s side, and Katie and I led the way toward the house on the left, which had an extra bedroom and was the slightly larger of the two. It was where Kat, Jess, and Rita waited for us. As soon as everyone had exited their vehicles, the SUVs pulled away, and the gates closed, sealing us in privacy.

The first interesting thing I noticed was that the entourage knew the score. They all kind of peeled off, wandered around, and did their own exploring initially. I heard the occasional flick of a lighter and soon after the acrid, distinctive smell of marijuana. Riley and Henry followed us into the house, as did Emily and her band’s lead guitar player, a tall, muscular, bald-headed Australian named Jake.

“Knock, knock!” I announced as we walked inside.

“Baby!” Rita’s voice cried out from across the wide open main room.

She stood by the long, curved bar we had installed between the living area and the kitchen. There was a small army of Champagne bottles, sweating and cold, lined up on it, with glasses next to them. Then there was a substantial expanse of the bar top that was flat, except for being dotted with a few bowls and other smaller containers. It was where we had inlaid an antique mirror into the bar’s surface. There were a handful of carve-outs inset around the mirror. And that’s where the girls had laid out more than a hundred lines of cocaine. There was a bowl full of pillowy powder next to the line-covered surface, which looked like the most enticing mogul course you had ever seen. In the other bowls were an array of pills – xanax, molly, hash, various strains of weed, dabs, and Special K. We had dubbed it the Hollywood & Vine buffet. The only rule on consumption was no heroin and no opioids. That hit too close to dark times and memories.

Kat, Jess, and Rita flew across the room to us, greeting us with a warm series of hugs and kisses. We made introductions of our new friends, Emily and Jake.

“So I hear you’ve been sucking off our husband every night!” Rita said, with dead-pan seriousness.

The girls had met Emily during our Halloween party, but it had been a while, and they hadn’t had much contact with her that night.

“I, um,” Emily stammered, surprised at being so disarmed.

“And I hear you’re really, really good at it,” Kat said with a laugh.

“Maybe you can give us deep throat lessons,” Jess said.

“Like you need it!” Rita teased.

Emily finally exhaled and laughed.

“Come on, guys!” Kat said. “This is a party, isn’t it? Help yourselves. We’ve got beer in the fridge. More wine in the chillers. Champagne, obviously. Help yourself to the buffet. Let me know if you need me to identify anything, but I’m guessing you probably know what’s what. And if you need anything, just ask!”

Jake had wandered over to the bar, and in his deep, Australian accent exclaimed, “Holy fuck! There’s enough coke here to make you hop like a kangaroo!”