Luthor nudged up her chin with a finger. Desire had turned the outer rim of his sea-green eye darker, while the centre was now flecked with topaz, giving him a somewhat feral appearance. In contrast, his hazel eye was full of warmth. Her nipples stiffened, and she felt another pulse deep in her pussy, followed by a gush of wet heat as her body softened beneath his touch.
She tried to look away, to focus her gaze on some indeterminate point over his left shoulder, but his thumb kept nudging at the side of her jaw so that he ended up right back in the centre of her field of vision.
‘It’s OK, Dani. The ground isn’t going to swallow you up, and Xane’s not going to be pissed off either.’
Perhaps not, but that didn’t change the fact that her insides were doing backflips.
‘Oh, God, Luthor.’
His lips met hers. She tasted him and then swallowed slower as pleasure rippled down through her breasts to the place between her thighs.
‘There now, not so horrid, is it?’
Anything but … The way he explored her mouth now bore no resemblance to the dry, almost insignificant grazing of their lips in the woods earlier that day. This kiss seemed to fuse their lips, and set off hot fountains of bliss inside her tensed body. It tossed her like a leaf in a storm and left her swaying drunkenly, so that she had no choice but to cling onto him for support.
She’d had no idea it would feel like that. None. But what did it mean for her from now on, and for her relationship with Xane?
Luthor might not intentionally have been doing so, but he was unravelling all her core beliefs. She’d been so sure that it was her destiny to love one person and one person only for her whole lifetime, but here he was gate-crashing her fairy-tale happily-ever-after with Xane and making her not really care in the slightest.
Fuck it! She did want to go to bed with him. Only, perhaps just not quite yet.
She pulled away, but he chased her for just a little more.
‘Shall we go back inside now?’
‘Luthor, I can’t go to bed with you.’
His eyebrows quirked up a fraction. ‘That’s not what I meant. It’s getting a little chilly, is all.’ He’d know, she guessed, since he lacked a T-shirt. ‘But if it was, I’d like you to know that I won’t force you to get undressed.’
‘What has Xane said?’ The remark took her so by surprise she couldn’t see why else he’d have brought it up.
‘Nothing. He hasn’t needed to. We might not have touched a whole lot, but we have made love twice now. Did you think I wouldn’t notice your reluctance to get undressed?’
Dani dug her teeth into her lower lip. She didn’t have a clue what to say to that. Luthor’s brows furrowed, mirroring her frown.
‘I’m not expecting an explanation, so don’t feel you have to concoct one. You can tell me or not as you choose.’
His display of understanding only served to make her lip quiver.
‘I assume there’s a reason.’
She nodded as a lone tear trickled down her cheek. ‘Can we not talk about it?’
‘Ah, darlin’. Don’t.’ Luthor chased away the tear with his thumb, but when a second fell he caught it with his lips.
He was so gentle, it made her sigh.
‘It’s fine. Forget I ever mentioned it.’
‘I don’t even know why I’m crying,’ she said and sniffed.
‘Because you’re overwrought, that’s why. You’ve been working yourself up into knots for days, probably weeks, and now a few of those buggers are unravelling. It’s relief.’
Was that what it was? She wasn’t entirely sure.
‘This doesn’t have to be painful, Dani. Contrary to what you think, we don’t have to rush anything. I just want us to be on roughly the same page. If that page is acknowledging there’s a spark between us, but deciding not to act on it, other than in the context of both loving Xane, that’s OK.’
‘Says the man who proposed tying a ribbon around his cock and wanted me to hand him over as a birthday gift.’
‘Actually, you were the one who mentioned the ribbon. I reckon he’ll just be thrilled to know we’re talking and getting along with one another. Oh, and that he can have both of us, if that’s what he wants. Or am I wrong about that?’
‘I’m not sure I could keep you apart, even if I tried,’ she remarked thoughtfully. ‘Where is he, anyway? How come it was you that came after me, and not him? Or did you draw lots?’
‘He went to talk to Ash. Ginny’s worried about him, and I think she thought Xane might have more chance of getting through. Do you want to go back inside and find him?’
‘Let’s sit on the swing for a bit.’
Luthor led the way back to the veranda, holding her hand the entire way. He settled himself at one end, but no sooner had he done so than he started rubbing his bare arms. ‘I might need to go and find a shirt.’
Dani grabbed the picnic blanket they’d made use of earlier and covered him with it. ‘That better?’
‘Much.’ He folded down one corner. ‘Tell you what’ll be even better. Come under here with me.’
She hesitated.
‘Come on. I don’t bite, except on request. And I’m not going to randomly grope you either. I got a kiss, I’m good with that.’
She gave a tentative nod, and then settled stiffly beside him. Luthor put his arm around her shoulders.
‘You marked Xane earlier. Why did you do that?’
‘Couldn’t resist staking my claim, especially considering how much he enjoys it. I reckon he’d be black and blue all over if he had his way.’
‘Actually, he mostly likes it around the neck. The collar he sometimes wears is purely to cover them up.’
He nodded. ‘That doesn’t surprise me. How about we give him one each side tomorrow, maybe even both at the same time?’
‘Maybe. Do you still not have a present to give him?’
‘Not as such.’
‘Present giving is entirely optional.’ Xane joined them on the veranda. He had in his hand what appeared to be a glass of water, but, judging by the way he was knocking it back, probably wasn’t.
‘That’s a heck of a lot of vodka,’ Dani remarked.
‘Yes.’ He settled on the other end of the swing, his back against the side so that he was facing them, but with one foot on the floor to still the rocking he’d inadvertently started.
‘Is Ash all right?’ she asked.
Xane pursed his lips. ‘I’m not really sure. I don’t know how much you caught about yesterday’s practice. He can’t play guitar at the minute. It could be months before he can, and, according to the consultant he saw today, there’s at least a five per cent chance he won’t ever get all of his fine motor functioning back.’
‘Oh, my God!’ She guessed that justified the drink. ‘Poor Ash. I’d like to take a frying pan to Iain Willows’s head.’
‘You’re not the only one. Ash is wishing pretty hard right now that he’d hit Willows a damned sight harder when he had the opportunity. But none of us could have predicted what he’d do.’
‘I’ve heard a rumour he’s going to make bail,’ Luthor remarked.
‘Seriously?’ Dani didn’t like the sound of that one bit. ‘But he tried to kill three of you. They can’t let him out. What if he tries to come after you again?’
She felt along the side of Luthor’s head. Yep, there was still a section of very short hair where he’d had to be stitched.
‘That’s what the goon squad in Mariefred are there for,’ Xane said. ‘Sally’s obviously heard the same rumours. Don’t worry. We’re well out of harm’s way here. In any case, if they let him out, we’ll make sure there’s a restraining order in place.’
She sighed and rubbed her tired eyes, but wasn’t entirely reassured. Trouble seemed to follow this band. No sooner had one drama passed than they were facing another. ‘How are you going to manage without Ash?’ she asked, returning to the earlier point.
‘Wait and hope. We can’t tour w
ithout him. We can record. It won’t be the same, but it’s not like we haven’t occasionally swapped instruments before.’
‘Since when?’ That was a revelation. ‘I’ve never noticed anything on the sleevenotes.’
Xane chuckled at her. ‘You’re such a goddamned fangirl.’
She pushed away from Luthor and stretched towards him. ‘You got a problem with that, Mr Geist?’
He shook his head. ‘I never have any problems with you.’ He tasted her lips.
‘Spill,’ she demanded.
‘It might be me playing rhythm on “In Love Enslaved”.’
Dani sat back on her heels to consider this fact. ‘Where was Spook?’
A huge yawn stretched her lover’s mouth, and that set both her and Luthor off too.
‘His sister’s wedding, I think, or it might have been a funeral, or maybe he was just skiving. He hates that track. Anyway, I stood in. We weren’t a big enough name in those days to have studios and producers bend over backwards to please us, so it was that or have one less track on the album.’
‘Spook hates “In Love Enslaved”?’ she blurted incredulously. ‘What could he possibly find to hate about it? That’s one of your massive hits. And isn’t he credited as the main lyricist?’
‘You weren’t joking about her being a crazy fangirl,’ Luthor remarked.
Dani poked him, then rested back against his shoulder with her arms crossed. ‘Why does he hate it? It doesn’t make sense.’
‘For the same sort of reason you get twitchy over my sexual fluidity. It makes him uncomfortable and strikes too close to home,’ Xane answered.
‘But he wrote it.’
‘Yes, but not with the intention of sharing it with the world.’
Dani considered this, while silently replaying the song in her head.
A capricious girl’s lies …
Played me …
Teased me …
Broke me …
Released me …
She suspected that she was going to have to go and put her earbuds in and listen to it on repeat a dozen or so times to figure out what was so objectionable and personal that he might not want the world to hear it. ‘Do you two mind if I go to bed?’
Xane gulped a couple of mouthfuls of his drink. ‘You’re going to leave us alone together, are we expected to behave?’
‘You were probably about twelve the last time you managed to behave.’
‘Nah, I was a little bit older than that when I first started smexying things.’
Dani rose from the swing, gave Xane a kiss goodnight, walked away a pace, then thought about it, came back, pressed a goodnight kiss to Luthor’s brow, gave Xane a sloppy lip kiss, then waved them goodnight. ‘Please come to bed when you’re finished with him.’
There, she was being brave.
‘But don’t bring him with me, eh?’
She gave Xane her best attempt at eyebrowing, which simply made him laugh.
‘I tried,’ she heard him say to Luthor as she went inside.
‘I consider it a breakthrough she’s even prepared to leave us together in the same place.’
‘Yeah, well, if I’d known all it’d take was a bit of a Black Halo mystery to investigate, I’d have mentioned that titbit way before now.’
Chapter 18
After Dani left, Xane wasted no time in draining his glass and moving in on Luthor. It was quiet, everyone else had retired to their rooms, and he’d just had a fucking bitch of a time trying to get through to Ash and make him see the universe wasn’t about to implode. Stupid bugger was being a stubborn ass. He got that Ash had just had his life ripped away from him, but getting pissy over doing a few exercises and taking some pills that might help you get back what you’d lost was plain stupid.
Xane had downed four or five vodka shots before he’d even come outside. Unfortunately, the burn in his veins hadn’t lessened his irritation. He needed something far more distracting to chase away his anger, and he had decided Black Halo’s lean and lovely new drummer was it.
On his knees, he stretched over Luthor’s semi-prone body and dislodged the blanket. The heat he planned to generate with their bodies would more than make up for its loss. ‘I reckon I owe you something.’ He stole a kiss from the guy’s lips. ‘What the hell did you say to Dani to persuade her that leaving us alone together was OK?’
‘Oh, probably nothing you’d approve of.’
Xane pushed Luthor’s hair away from his face, so that he could better judge the other man’s expression. ‘Like what?’ He pressed when Luthor didn’t immediately volunteer an answer. ‘Like what?’
‘I shook her up a bit.’
‘In a physical or literal sense?’
‘In a way that worked.’ The pride in Luthor’s voice was unmissable. Still, he shook his head, so that his hair fell back over his face again, providing a curtain to hide behind.
Xane uncovered him again.
‘A bit of both, I guess.’
‘Meaning?’
‘I picked her up, spun her about and then gave her a demo kiss.’
Xane’s eyes narrowed to squints. ‘You’re telling me you made a move on my girlfriend.’
Luthor wriggled uncomfortably beneath him, and moistened his lips. ‘I think we both know I’d like to do more than just snog her.’
That they did. ‘Hm.’ Xane inhaled the scent of arousal and fear coming off Luthor. Noted the guy’s nipples were contracted into super-tight points, and the muscles over his stomach were tensed. ‘Got some pretty ideas about sticking her with this, have you?’ He grabbed hold of Luthor’s package, and gave it a squeeze. The man responded both instantly and predictably, his cock thickening while he made a stuttering sort of hiss through his teeth that was part squirm and part ‘hell, yeah’. ‘I don’t remember giving you permission to hit on her.’
Dani had, however, given him permission to torture the hell out of Luthor.
‘I’ve been hitting on her since the day I met her,’ Luthor confessed, while trying to suppress his response to Xane’s exploration of his body. ‘Ask her, I’m sure she’ll tell you I’m an outrageous flirt. The only thing that’s changed is her response, and I’ve you to thank for that. Making her look at me this afternoon. It forged a connection.’
‘I fucking well hope so.’ The effort he’d put in to making things work merited some reward. ‘The only way this thing between the three of us is going to work is if we’re all in it together.’ He slow-kissed Luthor’s slack mouth. ‘This is not to say that I’m handing you a licence to fuck her behind my back. The first time between you two, I expect to be there to witness it.’ Hell, he expected to be part of it. It’d be better for his sanity that way round. Xane wasn’t without jealousy. He’d been hurt too much and too recently to be entirely relaxed about expanding his relationship with Dani into a proper threesome, but he wasn’t going to demand access to Luthor’s body and not be willing to give Dani the same.
‘Are we talking actual penetration, or do fingers and tongues also count?’
Xane smirked at Luthor’s cheek. He was going to make this boy suffer, work him up to fever pitch and keep him hanging there, if he kept pushing his luck. ‘Let’s say it depends where you’re planning on putting them, and that the lines are blurry. However, given we’re currently stuck on a tiny rock in the middle of a lake with fuck-all to do, I’m not envisaging you having a problem with locating me fast if the need arises. Just holler and I’ll hear you.’
‘If I tickle the right spot, I won’t need to shout – Dani will be making plenty of noise already. She’s not exactly good at holding it in, if what I overheard of you and her getting off on board the tour bus is anything to go by.’
‘Yeah, well, she takes public services very seriously. I know the guys enjoy a bit of live wank fodder to get them through the slog of being on the road. And I’m sure today wasn’t the first time you jerked off to the sound of us.’
‘First time with live visuals,’ Luthor confessed.
His breath caught again, as Xane explored the hollow of his armpit with his tongue. ‘That’s if you don’t count the video of the pair of you on the train to Penzance.’
‘How many times?’ Xane asked, now multi-tasking with his tongue and his hand. With tantalising slowness he traced his tongue-tip around the circumference of Luthor’s areola. The nipple puckered even harder in response and stood proud. He blew across it and sucked hard. Luthor’s hips punched upwards off the cushioned seat, pushing his now steely erection into Xane’s waiting hand. Xane curled his fingers but did no more, just let Luthor rub up against him.
‘Haven’t counted.’
‘Estimate.’
‘A few.’
Xane raised his hand a fraction, forcing Luthor to strain upwards to reach him. It pulled all the muscles in his torso and arse tight. Xane licked his way down Luthor’s stomach to his navel and explored the sensitive little indent.
‘Touch me,’ Luthor begged.
‘I’m waiting for a number.’
‘Xane, it’s over three years since that first time. At least once a week ever since then.’
‘So, well into three figures? You must really want me.’
‘You have no fucking idea.’ Luthor laced his fingers into Xane’s hair and tried to nudge him closer to his almost certainly weeping cock. ‘It got to the stage where I didn’t know which was worse, having had you once and the possibility that nothing was ever going to come close to that moment, or facing the prospect of never getting that close to you again.’
Actually, while Xane wasn’t going to pretend for a moment that he’d felt the same way – he’d remembered Luthor, and the fact he’d been a shit-hot lay – he did understand where he was coming from. He knew all about unrequited love, and having to watch someone from a distance. He’d mooned over Steve for long enough. And even though they’d been lovers for over eighteen months, he’d always been acutely aware that Steve didn’t desire him in anything like the same way. For Steve, it had always been a case of them being two mates who were fooling around with the same girl, and, if stuff happened between them, it was mostly because Elspeth seriously got off on watching it.
Come Alive Page 17