Sidney Sheldon's Mistress of the Game by Sidney Sheldon, Tilly Bagshawe Page B

accusingly. In the palm of her hand she cradled his limp penis, like a useless lump of Silly Putty.
    “Are you queer or something? You’re not even hard.”
    “Of course I’m not queer.” Robbie found his voice at last. “I…I just…I think I took a bad pill, you know? I don’t feel so good.”
    Talk about an understatement. The whole evening had been a nightmare, a fitting end to one of the worst days of his life. Maureen’s so-called friend turned out to be a small-time drug dealer and wannabe mafioso called Gianni Sperotto, a rat-faced Italian kid with an acne-scarred face, a nose that streamed like a faucet, and breath so putrid you could practically see it. Gianni’s “apartment” was the top floor of a condemned warehouse. In a year or two, no doubt, some hotshot real-estate whiz would have developed the place into a chrome-walled bachelor pad and sold it for Park Avenue prices. Not even a shit hole like Yonkers had been immune from the development fever that had swept America in the past decade. Overnight, it seemed, an entire generation had become millionaires by the simple expedient of knocking out a few walls and rechristening crumbling industrial relics as “loft-style penthouses.”
    But not Gianni Sperotto. Gianni Sperotto was too busy shoveling coke up his nose to see the fortune right under it. His “party” consisted of a bunch of half-dead hookers and junkies shooting up on one of the scores of fetid mattresses littering the floor. The bed where Maureen had dragged Robbie was Gianni’s own sleeping area, cordoned off from the rest of the room by a cardboard screen, over which their host had thrown a pair of psychedelic velour curtains, a lone shot of color in the otherwise bleak and desperate squat.
    There was no music, no dancing, no other even vaguely attractive male to distract Maureen from her prey. Robbie figured his only hope was to get her so looped that she forgot about him. It was a great plan,apart from one tiny snag. In order to get Maureen high, he’d had to get high himself. Robbie got hazy after one strong joint. Maureen Swanson, by contrast, appeared to have the constitution of an ox. No, make that a team of oxen. The girl popped X like they were M&M’s and vacuumed up the coke like a pig rooting for truffles. The drugs had done nothing at all to dampen her ardor.
    “A bad pill, huh? We’ll see about that. Lay back and close your eyes.”
    Too disorientated to resist, Robbie did as she asked. The next thing he felt was Maureen’s warm, wet tongue between his legs. Apparently, she saw his flaccid state as some sort of challenge.
    If only I could rise to it!
    When the curtain was yanked aside and the men burst in, Robbie’s first emotion was pure relief.
    His second was panic.
    “Police!” Robbie felt a rough, male hand on his arm. “Party’s over, kids. Get up, stand against that wall, and put your hands on your heads. Now!”
    Robbie’s mind was racing. Years of Sunday nights religiously spent watching T.J. Hooker on TV told him that this must be a drug bust. His pants were in a heap at the foot of the bed, with three ecstasy pills tucked into the back pocket—Gianni Sperotto’s version of a party favor.
    Bright side: I’m a minor. The worst they can give me is juvenile detention.
    Not-so-bright side: They can give me juvenile detention!
    For all his bravado in his dad’s office, Robbie Templeton was terrified of the thought of prison. To him it seemed far worse than suicide. Death meant peace. It meant being with his mother. But prison, even juvie, for a pretty boy like him? They’d eat him alive. And that was before they found out he was a Blackwell and one of the richest kids in the country.
    Spread-eagled half naked against the wall, he tried to concentrate. It wasn’t easy with Maureen Swanson screaming and cursing next to him like a banshee.
    “You assholes lay one finger on me, and I swear to God my dad will personally slice off your balls!”
    The