Chapter 4

Author’s Note: For the second time already in this book, I decided to split up chapters. This was originally supposed to have an additional vignette in it at the end. But I felt like that needed to be separated out. So this is a touch on the shorter side (for recent installments), but I want to keep the focus on what’s important, and this is a good, standalone chapter to catch up with Katie. Don’t worry, though, Stephanie is not going in the background. Wait until Chapter 5.

Katie’s music career could be summed up in one word: Hot. Besides Riley, there really was no other competition among female pop stars for her after only one album and her first U.S. tour. Maybe because she had gotten off to such a scorching start, we snuck away to Aspen for our private getaway. She wanted to cool off. She wanted to feel isolated and maybe even get a sense of invisibility.

Kat, Jess, and Rita couldn’t have picked a better spot for us to achieve that. We were whisked away to Aspen and a luxurious, far too large residential suite at the Hotel Jerome. Snow had been pouring down at an astonishing rate almost as soon as we landed. By the time we were comfortable in our suite, four inches had fallen. The conditions were a full-on blizzard.

“It’s okay, daddy,” Katie said about the weather. “The only skiing I’m interested in doing takes place inside.”

Katie needed a prolonged period to slow down. The long tour with Riley, followed by a whirlwind recording session for her first album, and then another tour put her at risk of burnout. At the same time, she was extremely prolific in her song writing. She didn’t want to stop, but I pushed her to pull back the reins a bit so she could enjoy life. She kept writing every day, and she would even record here and there for a second album, but I tried to convey that the quality of her work would be better if she allowed herself time to recover. The industry was a constant grind. On top of the demands of recording and touring, the internet age gave rise to a constant need for new content. That meant social media, press, and seemingly all-access availability. All the time. If you were out of the cycle, you were out of mind.

Not that all of it wasn’t fun or that we didn’t tackle it with the utmost luxury, but the demands of live performances and the predilection to party hard took an inevitable toll.

“I’m so glad we get to do this, Katie,” I said, putting my arms around her waist.

“Me, too, daddy,” she said and kissed me softly on the lips.

She wrapped her arms around my neck and gazed up at me, her pupils blown up wide from the coke we’d done on our flight over. She wore a long, thick sweater with arms too long for her, so they covered her hands in the warm cashmere. I reached my hands underneath and felt her firm breasts swinging freely, braless underneath.

“Daddy!” she screamed. “Your hands are so cold!”

“Sorry, baby,” I said and nuzzled my lips into her neck.

“Let’s take a bath,” Katie suggested. “To warm up.”

Our suite had a massive four-poster bed, glorious views of Aspen Mountain, and a deep, sexy claw-foot tub. I turned the water on hot and let it fill, while Katie chopped up some party favors on the granite top of the double vanity. I went into the suite’s spacious living room – which, despite being large, was divided into four separate, intimate seating areas – and pulled a bottle of red wine from the beverage chiller. I pulled the cork and poured two glasses. I brought them into the bathroom with me, where Katie was brushing her hair.

“You waited for me,” I said, smiling at her in the mirror. She had stripped naked while I poured the wine, and I drank in her round breasts and the swell of her hips. I loved the outrageous curves she packed into a petite frame.

“I’ve got to make sure my hair isn’t tangled before it gets wet,” she said. “Otherwise I’ll never get it straight.”

Thin wisps of steam rose from the bathtub, and Katie’s long, dirty blonde hair draped over her shoulders to beautifully frame her breasts. They shook gently as she brushed her hair, and I drank her in for a couple moments. Her eyes were tired. The nonstop schedule of touring, writing, and recording had kept her on a breakneck pace for more than a year.

“You’re beautiful,” I said, putting down the glasses on the vanity next to the waiting lines of coke.

“I’m tired,” she said, as if reading my mind.

“You’ve been burning the candle at both ends,” I said, putting my arms around her waist from behind.

“I can’t stop,” she said and smiled weakly. “Riley says – and I know she’s right – that you’ve got to keep up with the momentum of fame, otherwise it’ll leave you behind.”

She slipped out of my embrace, her hand grasping mine lovingly before she sauntered over to the marble vanity. She picked up a glass straw and tapped it briefly against the countertop.

“Thank god for cocaine, right?” she said with a delirious smile after she snorted two generous lines.

“I never get tired of it,” I said and grinned at her.

“Watching? Or doing?” Katie said and walked toward me again, her hips swaying lusciously.

“Both,” I said.

Our hands touched briefly as I took my turn at the vanity, snorting two lines, and then picking up the two glasses of wine. I watched Katie test the water in the tub with her toe. It felt right, so she slipped into the deep basin. Her breasts hung deliciously. The curve of her ass created a silhouette that made my cock stir. And I loved how long her hair had gotten, draped down her back.

“Here you go, my love,” I said, handing her a glass of wine.

“God, this feels so good,” Katie said.

I lowered myself into the tub across from her, careful to keep my glass away from the water cascading out of the faucet. It took a little maneuvering for us to get comfortable, and we rearranged ourselves so our legs were intertwined, and we each sat at opposite ends. I turned off the water once it had covered us to our chests, and we reached forward to clink glasses.

“I needed this,” Katie said, taking a long drink and then closing her eyes and letting the deliciously warm water soak her.

“You deserve this, too,” I said.

Our feet teased one another as we allowed the water to work its way over our muscles, warming us. There was something deeply soothing about a bath and satisfying about the warmth after being in the cold.

“I feel like this is the first time things haven’t been a whirlwind in like a year,” Katie said. “Like, I mean, at this moment the world actually feels like it’s slowed down.”

“Good,” I said. “I think that’s the point of this trip.”

Katie looked like she wanted to say something, but she didn’t. She just stopped and let her eyes lock on mine. We took each other in and didn’t say anything. Five minutes passed, and she finally spoke up.

“Is that the only point?” Katie asked, arching her eyebrows and moving one of her petite feet to my crotch, rubbing my cock with the sole.

“Of course not,” I said. “But I do want you to unwind.”

“You know what helps me unwind?” Katie asked rhetorically.

“A couple lines of coke and a cock up your ass?” I said with a laugh.

She smiled at me, and the tired lines on her face became suddenly more pronounced.

“I think I’m almost done writing for the next album,” she said and then flashed a satisfied smile.

I could see her relish the look of pleased surprise on my face.

“Are you serious?” I said with a wry grin, evoking our long-time favorite line used by Crystal.

“Riley said she thinks it’s amazing,” she said, beaming.

“Wow,” I said, “you really have been busy.”

“What, you think when we’re working it’s all coke and fucking?” Katie asked with a laugh.

“Do you want to tell me about it? Or are you not ready to share?” I asked.

“I’m glad you asked that,” Katie said. “I actually have put a lot of thought into this, from a musical perspective but also from the point of view of where I see myself in the market.”

“Interesting,” I said, unable to hide that I was impressed by her depth of thought.

“So, daddy, I actually have so much to tell you about this,” she said. “I want to get your honest reaction to it.”

“Lay it on me, Katie,” I said.

“Riley and I have been talking about how we can best leverage our friendship,” Katie began. “Like, how do we position ourselves so that our fans feel like I’m not just some derivative of her, you know?”

“That makes sense,” I said. “And I assume Riley isn’t looking to shift her brand, as it were.”

“Definitely not,” Katie said and took a sip of wine. “She’s pretty well-established, to say the least.”

We both laughed. Riley was the undisputed global force in pop music.

“But you know how Riley is this all-American girl next door?” Katie said, and I nodded. “Well, for a few reasons we feel like it would be really good to position me as a kind of naughtier version of that.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“So, like, if Riley is always poised and composed and holds things close to the vest so that you can kind of paint your own picture of her?” Katie continued. “I would be like ... almost an alter-ego to her that’s super slutty in my music.”

“Okay...” I muttered, letting that sink in. Katie filled the space occupied by my silence.

“And I would couple that lyrical sluttiness, as I’ve kind of started to think of it,” she said, “with being a huge tease. On stage. In publicity, like in interviews and stuff. I would be highly sexual but make it clear that I’m a tease. The thought is it would drive people into a frenzy, good and bad, which is exactly what you want.”

It started to make sense to me.

“I get it,” I said and met her eyes. It was impossible not to see the excitement on her face. This persona was the perfect fit for Katie on an intellectual and sexual level. A public-facing image like that would make it very easy to deny as creative license any wild rumors that might stem from her private life, no matter how true they were.