Chapter 2: RUDE AWAKENING

"For the mother of God, wake up. Rick!" Going from being sound asleep one minute and shaken awake like there was a fire, gave my heart the fright of its life. Hearing the agitated, hoarse Boston accent of Paul, my PR/PA guy freaked me the fuck out. Although startled my body had still felt limp and I cracked one eye open to stare blearily into his beady brown eyes.

I vaguely remembered Jed, my guard talking to me at one point already that morning, I had thought it was a dream until I registered Paul standing over me and realized Jed's efforts to wake me obviously hadn't worked. This had led Paul to stage his own intervention to get me out of bed.

His harsh rowdy bark was not my ideal way to start the day, and this hadn't been the first time I'd been on the receiving end of his less than gentle wake-up calls either. I wondered each time he'd done this, if he'd ever experienced what it was like to go from sound asleep to being screamed at, because he'd never shown any consideration for what it felt like for me? What the hell happened to a gentle tap on the hand or squeezing a fucking toe or something?

Wasn't it reasonable to expect that from the motherfucker who stared back at me with pursed lips and a pissed-off expression on his face? The insensitive asshole who'd disrupted my sleep wouldn't have cared if he gave me a heart attack from fright.

I tried to move from under the tangle of the hot sweaty legs of the girls in my bed, as my mind flitted back to a hazy memory of how they'd behaved - or rather, deliciously misbehaved - for most of the night. My bones ached, my brain felt tired and my flesh felt delicately weak.

A screaming headache had pounded in my frontal lobe when I had first opened my eyes, the light searing into my pupils without the filter of my shades to protect them. Paul looked fucking ridiculous standing there in the sweltering one hundred degrees heat of Miami wearing a 5K suit, a shirt, and a tie.

"You gotta get the fuck up. We're already running forty-five minutes late," he ordered. Still squinting through one eye, I struggled to remember what was so urgent I had to get up for, but nothing came to mind. My temper began to flare because I was sick and tired of him and other fuckers invading my private space all the time, usually to drag me out of my bed long before I was ready to get up.

"Nothing's that important that I can't sleep off my hangover. Tell whoever the fuck it is I'm sick or whatever. I'm going back to sleep. Now get the fuck out of my bedroom. How many times do I have to tell you to stop doing this? It's unacceptable, dude." I barked, totally furious with him.

Feeling stiff all over, I rolled slowly from my back onto my side, turning away from him. Still the girls' tangled lower limbs shuffled and slid around mine then settled again, but neither of them woke up. A fleeting image of a sexual position we'd all been in during the night brought a small wicked smile to my lips before I remembered how pissed I was.

"Rick, there's no dodging this one." The pressing, officious tone of Paul became more insistent which brought my thoughts back on track.

"You still here? I'm gonna boot your ass hard if I get out of this bed," I muttered, punching my pillow and adjusting my head to get comfortable.

"As one of the joint organizers and the headliner for the Winds of Change Festival this weekend you're needed at the press conference this morning. There is no way around this, Rick. You have got to show up."

I cussed under my breath because no matter how hard I'd been arguing - he was right. I had to haul ass and make an appearance. This one was on me. I lay for a second and the reason for the gig flitted through my mind.

Winds of Change was a joint idea Alfie Black from the band, Crakt Soundzz; his wife, Lily, from another band, XrAid; Gibson Barclay, lead singer of M3rCy; and I had cooked up for a hurricane relief fundraiser after narrowly escaping the devastation of Hurricane Katrina a few years before.

One of the guys in a band - that had worked with all of us at one time or another - had spoken of his family's devastating loss of their home, and the constant struggle they'd had to rebuild ever since. HR told us he'd lost two family members during the storm, and that even after all the years that had since passed, they still hadn't recovered themselves to their former standard of living.

His conversation pricked Alfie Black's and my conscience to the point where we felt compelled to do something to help. I spoke to my PR team, did some digging around, and found many of the victims of the hurricane had been forgotten and lots more had been left destitute due to having the wrong home insurance, or they hadn't been able to afford to insure themselves in the first place.

Alfie reached out to another friend of ours, Gibson Barclay, because he knew Gibson did a lot of charitable and humanitarian work abroad and from the moment they spoke, the idea for a one-off festival to raise relief funds to aid those forgotten people affected gathered momentum.

"Alright. You won," I said in resignation. "Get these chicks the fuck out and turn on the shower. I'll be there." Stretching my legs out straight, I gently shoved one of the women away from me and shook her awake. "Morning, baby. You need to grab your shit and leave. I got work to do today and I got to go out, sweetheart." I said in a tone that made it clear we were done.

Slowly, she dragged her weary body up to a sitting position and took her weight on one arm, her other hand nursing her head as if it were too heavy to stay up on its own.

"Wow. I'm really sore," she groaned moving her neck at a snail's pace.

"You're welcome. Now, hurry the fuck up and get dressed like a good girl. I got places to be." I hated being so harsh with the women I'd had sex with, but I'd learned long ago never to show them any concern because it only made it harder on them when it was time for them to leave. Chicks got clingy in a heartbeat.

Neither moved out of the bed so I slung back the sheet and stood up by the side of it. Stretching my arms in the air reminded me how bone tired I was after our marathon sex session.

My morning wood stood proud, but the tip of my cock felt bruised and tender. When the skinny one eyed it and licked her lips, I knew I had to make tracks or I'd be balls deep in her mouth if I didn't draw a line right then.

Without looking back, I dropped my arms to my sides and strode into the waiting shower leaving Paul to evict the wrecked looking women from my bed. I wondered briefly what their recreational drug of choice was because the second was very difficult to rouse.