All Night Long

by Madelynne Ellis

  ‘Brilliant!’ Rock Giant shot upright. A manic grin stretched across his rock-hewn features. ‘Bagsy I’m driving.’

  ‘If you must.’

  ‘Yes!’ Rock Giant punched the air. ‘I get to drive the va-an … I get to drive the va-an.’ He clasped an invisible steering wheel and proceeded to zoom around the room. ‘OK, everyone, get your shit together. We’re doing this. Fall in. Fall in.’

  Not quite sure if she was included in this escape plan, Ginny watched the guys collect assorted jackets and trinkets from around the room.

  ‘If we end up in A and E I’m holding you personally responsible,’ Spook muttered to Ash, as he fell into line behind Rock Giant. ‘Last time he drove the bus, we ended up doing a three-sixty-degree roll down an embankment, and I swore I was never getting into another moving vehicle if he was controlling it.’

  ‘Well, if you’d prefer to drive?’

  Abject horror filled Spook’s handsome face. He shook his head. ‘No way. You lot drive on the wrong side of the road.’

  ‘The left is the right side of the road,’ Rock Giant griped.

  ‘Yeah, how’d you figure that out? It doesn’t even make sense.’

  Rock Giant proceeded to careen around the furniture, over-egging his performance with brake-screeching sound effects. ‘I’ll go get the van keys off Ulf.’

  ‘Dear God,’ Spook sighed with his head down.

  ‘It’s OK, baby, I’ll protect you.’ Ash draped an arm around his shoulder and squeezed.

  Spook shook him off. ‘Lay off the soppy stuff. I’m not here to provide you with post-coital cuddles. You’re supposed to do that with the girl.’ He headed towards the exit with his long white-blond hair falling around his shoulders and his purple guitar slung across his back. ‘I am so glad I insured my fingers. At least I can live off the proceeds after he mangles us.’

  ‘Is Rock Giant’s driving really that bad?’ Ginny asked, forcing Ash to remember her presence.

  ‘It’s atrocious. Let’s pray there aren’t any corners between here and the hotel.’ He extended his hand towards her. ‘Are you prepared to chance it?’

  Ginny stared at his hand a moment, not sure how to respond. He was fun, but he’d definitely been odd with her the last few minutes. Then again, maybe he was irked over the fact he hadn’t come. ‘If you still want me?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I?’ His brow creased into a frown, which also turned the edges of his mouth down. He clasped her hand and pulled her into his embrace. ‘You promised me a whole night of fun, lady. The night’s barely begun.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She traced her palms across the surface of his washboard abs. ‘But I wouldn’t want to take up your time if I’m not pleasing you.’ She looked up into his blue-grey eyes fearing the truth she’d see, but there was no hint of disappointment.

  ‘I’ve no complaints.’

  Ginny drew her touch downward, so that her palm skated over the hummock distorting his fly. ‘Sure about that?’

  ‘Absolutely. Besides, I need to smother you in treacle yet and lick it all off.’ He held her head still as he leaned in to kiss her lips. It wasn’t a frantic sparring of tongues like the previous kisses had been, but more tender, gentler. ‘I’m fine, sugar plum. You don’t need to worry about a thing.’

  Ginny wasn’t entirely convinced, but let it ride. His façade of easy charm didn’t entirely mask the sliver of pain in his eyes.

  ‘Guys.’ Rock Giant’s bellow echoed down the narrow corridor to reach them in the dressing room. ‘We’re set. Hurry it up.’

  Ash grabbed her hand. ‘Let’s go.’ He dragged her along the corridor as though a horde of fans were on their tail and he was the security guy detailed to protect her.

  Chapter Three

  With Rock Giant behind the wheel, they left tyre tracks on the road as they sped out of the building towards the stadium exit. He seemed to have forgotten the fact that he was driving a van loaded with several grand’s worth of the band’s equipment and three passengers.

  ‘He’s a maniac,’ Ginny bleated to Ash. She thanked God that all the fans were at the front of the building or there might have been a few fatalities as a result of their exit. On the up side, she got to cling onto Ash, whose plan did appear to be working. As they tore across the car park, she caught intermittent glimpses of the two Black Halo limousines. They were completely surrounded by fans who had crossed the security lines and were making movement nearly impossible. A couple of fans had even climbed onto the roof of the front vehicle.

  ‘I hope you’re stuck there for hours,’ Ash hollered at the front car, which Ginny assumed was carrying Elspeth along with the band’s drummer, Steve Matlock.

  ‘Oi! Less of that,’ Rock Giant chastened him.

  ‘Is it normally like this?’ Ginny asked. She knew Black Halo were huge. They were major international stars, but the mayhem outside resembled Beatlemania at its height, not the aftermath of a present-day rock concert. In her experience, and she’d been to several big gigs, people didn’t get this riled up about catching a glimpse of their favourite star, not when they could spend hours at home stalking them on the Internet, and particularly not en masse like this. Sure there were exceptions, but that only accounted for the compulsory bunch of shivering groupies, not this.

  Ash was contemplating the outside world with a measure of uncertainty too. ‘It’s often crazy,’ he muttered. ‘But not typically this deranged. Mind you, we do normally stick it out until the end of the show, instead of calling it quits a couple of tracks in.’

  He lowered the window and leaned out. ‘Bye, Elspeth.’ He waved at the stranded limo. ‘Stupid bitch.’

  Rock Giant slammed on the brakes, bringing the van to a screeching halt just short of a lamppost. He turned to glare at Ash, who ducked back into the vehicle, looking significantly paler.

  ‘Knock it off with the name-calling or I’ll go park us up beside them.’

  Ash shook himself and seemed to settle comfortably inside his own skin again. ‘Oh, come off it,’ he protested, not appearing remotely contrite. ‘She’s properly screwed us over tonight. She deserves a few names hurled at her. Even you have to accept that.’

  ‘Elspeth isn’t the one who screwed us. Xane’s the one who walked off stage. I can’t believe you’re defending him.’

  Xane had walked off stage! Somehow, by hanging around in their dressing room instead of watching the show, she appeared to have missed something major.

  ‘I’m not defending him. I think he’s a prize dick. I’m just pointing out that Elspeth’s the root cause of this. I know you and her are besties, but even you have to admit she’s a cow on occasion.’

  ‘That is such shit, Ash.’

  ‘Uh, drive!’ Spook demanded. He reached across from the passenger seat and put the van into first. ‘Seriously, this is not fucking funny. If we sit here like lemons, they’re going to be all over us.’ A highly likely prospect, since Ash’s yelling had attracted a certain amount of attention.

  With a discontented snort, Rock Giant slammed down the accelerator pedal again, causing them to shoot off. As far as Ginny could tell, he favoured an all-or-nothing approach to motion. No pootling allowed. Things weren’t helped by the fact that he ramped the volume on the onboard stereo up to ear-splitting levels, and hammered out the drum rhythm against the wheel. She couldn’t understand the lyrics; they appeared to be in a foreign language, although the vocalist’s death growl made it difficult to say for certain. She thought it might be a song about trolls. Hell, she felt as though she was currently hanging with a bunch of them.

  Spook dug a beanie out of the footwell and pulled it down over his ears.

  Their escape apparently guaranteed, Ginny settled back against Ash’s side to endure the rest of the ride. Unfortunately, their triumph at escaping the arena proved extremely short-lived. Even Rock Giant’s expert slaloming skills couldn’t get them past the gridlocked lanes of traffic blocking the route to the hotel.

  ‘All this because Xan
e has a strop,’ Rock Giant bellowed over the music. He slapped the steering wheel in annoyance. ‘Much as I like driving the van, we should have stayed put. We’re not getting anywhere near the hotel without flying.’ They could see the upper storeys and the lights of the hotel signage up ahead, perhaps three minutes’ walk in a straight line. ‘I wouldn’t mind so much, but I really need to piss and take a shower.’

  ‘Don’t we know it,’ Ash groaned. ‘I can smell your filthy armpits from here.’

  ‘You don’t smell so hot yourself, lover boy.’

  Ginny disagreed. Ash smelled pretty divine to her, all hot and musky with a hint of something woodsy mixed in. She guessed the latter was the remains of whatever cologne he’d spritzed on before he went on stage. Unless, of course, what she could smell was sex. She had creamed all over him, and neither of them had properly had the opportunity to clean up.

  She kept the thought to herself. It’s was kind of fun watching and listening to the guys interact. She reckoned she’d learned more about them in the last five minutes than even their most diehard fans would glean from a thousand interviews. They were close but fractious, and, yeah, there were egos aplenty in play. Oh, and they all had issues, some of them better disguised than others. She’d seen the scars on Spook’s inner arms as he’d held the camera between her and Ash. Rock Giant’s driving was enough to tell her he needed help, and as for Ash … well, she was still working on figuring him out.

  ‘Where’d Melodrama Boy trot off to anyway?’ Rock Giant yelled over the music.

  ‘He left with some girl,’ Ash replied, sitting forward in order to make himself heard. ‘I don’t know who she was. I’d never seen her before. Cute though. Nowt like Elspeth.’

  ‘You mean she had tits,’ said Spook.

  ‘I wasn’t being that crude.’

  Rock Giant grunted. ‘He sounds really fucking heartbroken.’

  ‘I said we’d talk things over tomorrow.’ Ash sat back again.

  ‘Is that Xane you’re talking about?’ Ginny asked. ‘I did wonder where he was. I take it he left the building ahead of us, since none of you mentioned him in the escape plans.’

  The three guys exchanged wary looks. Rock Giant hit the kill switch on the stereo, flooding the interior with deadly silence. ‘He walked out on us, honey. So don’t get your hopes up about meeting him. Fuck knows where he is, but if he’s at the hotel I’m personally going to skewer him, so he’ll not be up for socialising.’ He jabbed the heel of his hand into the car horn, and in return received a two-fingered salute from the driver of the car in front.

  ‘Xane and Elspeth split,’ Ash explained. He massaged his brow, but failed to remove the frown lines that had formed there. ‘He walked off, having just announced to the stadium that we’re done.’

  ‘What?’ Ginny folded her arms tight. ‘You’re serious?’ It seemed almost but not quite too far-fetched to believe. Either Ash had an unbelievable poker face or he was telling the truth. ‘So what does that mean? Are you saying you’ve split up? Aren’t you mid-tour right now?’

  ‘One more gig,’ they sighed in unison.

  Ash snuggled up and rested his head against her shoulder. ‘You see why I need company. According to Xane, we all need to start looking for new jobs.’

  ‘That’s such bollocks,’ Rock Giant groaned. ‘There’s no way on earth Xane was serious about us actually splitting. He wouldn’t know what the hell to do with himself without us.’

  ‘Uh, guys,’ Spook piped up. ‘We might want to get out of here.’ He ducked as what looked like a ladies bra hit the windscreen. It caught on the wiper blade and swished across the front of the van a few times before flying loose again. ‘Turn us around.’

  ‘Yeah, there’s lots of space for that.’

  ‘Now, Paul. You drive like a fucking demon so make like one.’

  Ginny peered out of the side-window, and saw that a group of girls had peeled off from the main crowd and were now jogging towards them. Their movement had in turn attracted the attention of other sections of the mob, causing them to surge forward in order to find out what the excitement was.

  Rock Giant attempted to smooth down his spiky hair, but to no avail. He’d already been recognised, and now fingers were pointing and a scream of ‘Rock Giant … Spook’ rolled towards them.

  ‘Get us out of here now.’ Spook took refuge in the footwell as numerous items of underwear pelted the front of the vehicle, supplemented by an empty drinks can or two.

  ‘To where?’

  ‘Who gives a fuck? Anywhere. Just drive.’

  ‘I’ve got a room,’ Ginny piped up as Rock Giant spun the steering wheel through two full turns and mounted the central reservation in order to perform a U-turn. Well, she did. Admittedly, it wasn’t a great room, but that didn’t seem important right now in comparison to having somewhere to hide.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Left,’ she urged.

  Ash slammed against her side as Rock Giant swerved to avoid a group of pedestrians and then hurled them along a narrow side street. The sick scream of grating metal alerted them to the fact that he’d taken part of the adjacent building’s brickwork with them.

  Behind them, the crowd swarmed into the space they’d recently vacated. ‘Take another left at the end, and get us onto the main road out of town,’ Ginny yelled. Her heart thumped hard within her chest, making her feel as if she were fleeing on foot. A second sharp turn toppled her over, flat on her back against the seat, with Ash on top.

  ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, clinging to the upholstery. ‘You don’t mind if I just hang out here a moment.’

  ‘Be my guest.’ Considering the van’s current speed and the hairpin road they appeared to be taking, staying horizontal seemed like the safest option. At least down here she didn’t have to see what was ahead, and, if she was about to die, then lying in Ash Gore’s arms seemed a better place than most to croak.

  ‘Told you he was a maniac,’ he whispered close to her ear.

  ‘I think you missed a few eff words off that label.’

  ‘Are you scared?’

  Scared didn’t quite cover it. It was like being on the devil’s own rollercoaster –enthralling, exhilarating and likely to result in lasting trauma. ‘Fucking terrified. If you were a gentleman, you’d help take my mind off it.’

  ‘I’m only a gentleman on my days off,’ he replied, giving her a broad grin. ‘The rest of the time, I’m an absolute fiend.’ He kissed the side of her neck, just below her ear, and sucked gently, which sent tingles through her body. Ginny groaned involuntarily. ‘Luckily for you, my fiendish self likes nothing better than to entertain pretty ladies.’ He sucked a little harder, escalating the effect on her body.

  Fiendish worked for her. His kisses were certainly distracting. Ginny hooked a leg around one of his.

  ‘Hm, baby,’ he sighed. ‘Does that mean you’re ready for round two?’

  If she’d been in a position to do so, she’d have jabbed him hard. As it was, he shifted so that not only was his weight above her but he’d somehow managed to claim one of her wrists too.

  ‘Are you desperate for more of me?’

  ‘Not if it involves my arse being violated,’ she retorted. She tested his grip, but there was no give.

  Ash gave a theatrical moan of disappointment. ‘Damn. Guess that means I’m going to have to let Paul down again, and he’s been on at me for ever about having a threesome. I hope he’s not just looking to suck my dick.’

  Paul? Who was Paul? And when had she said no to a threesome? It took a moment to realise he meant Rock Giant, and even then she struggled to think of him by a name that was so average, so pedestrian. It didn’t seem to fit a guy with gravity-defying spiked hair, tattoos galore and a major speed complex. Then again, she wasn’t sure any name besides the one she knew him by would adequately cover it. Rock Giant just seemed to fit him so well.

  ‘Why does one have any bearing on the other?’

  ‘Oh, you know …’ Ash turned
his attention to her earlobe, gently teasing it with his lips and teeth. ‘I suppose it doesn’t. Only some girls like the whole two-for-one experience.’

  ‘Is that what you’re into?’ She found it scarily ease to imagine him getting it on with other members of the band. Even thought it might be quite hot to watch. ‘Do you ever skip the girl and just do one another?’

  ‘Urgh!’ He pushed up so that he could look at her. ‘What, do you suddenly think I’m gay?’ He pouted, but failed to convince her that he was genuinely offended.

  ‘I was thinking –’

  ‘Easy,’ Spook and Rock Giant chipped in.

  ‘Oi!’ Ash protested.

  ‘– bi-curious actually. Aren’t all rock stars?’ She flashed him an extra-large grin, amused that she’d managed to needle him so easily. ‘I bet you’ve kissed a guy or two.’

  ‘Might have done,’ he said snootily. ‘But I never kiss and tell.’

  That she did believe. ‘I’ll settle for just the kiss.’

  ‘Will you now?’ He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Like this.’ He pressed a chaste peck to her cheek. ‘Or maybe like this?’ He pressed another sweet peck against the edge of her smile.

  Ginny shook her head.

  ‘I know. Like this, right?’ The third kiss he pressed against the upper curve of her breast, which made her nipples peak in anticipation of him drawing them into his hot, sexy mouth.

  ‘Yeah, that’s more or less it.’ She shook free of his hold upon her wrist so that she could tug down the neckline of her top, thus exposing her breast to him. Ginny accepted that she wasn’t overly well endowed, leastways not compared to her buxom roomie, and that this position rendered her somewhat flat-chested, but her nipples were stiff and Ash didn’t seem to mind that she only had bee-stings. He sucked her and caressed her as good as if she’d been bountifully blessed.

  From the footwell, Spook crouched watching them with his bright-blue eyes. Slowly, now the speed and direction of the van seemed to have steadied, he dragged his gaze away and returned to his seat.