Stryker's Desire

by Meg Ripley

  “So how did you end up the bass player for a huge band instead of becoming the next big cult artist?” I shrugged.

  “One of those choices you make,” I said. “I figured I’d try my hand at both, and whichever one showed more promise sooner I’d throw all my weight behind, and that was Molly Riot.” I drank down some water, and Drogon decided he was brave enough to venture out from behind the entertainment center. He mewed at Sophie pathetically and she walked over to him, scooping him up off of the floor.

  “I should probably get to sleep,” she said with a sigh, drinking down another gulp of water. “We’re doing a deep clean at Respects tomorrow.”

  “Yeah,” I said, setting my glass down on the coffee table—on one of the coasters I saw there.

  “There’s a charger station next to the TV—I think I’ve got just about every kind of cable,” Sophie told me. “Other than that, I guess if you’re up by the time I am, I’ll make breakfast.” I grinned.

  “For someone who didn’t even want me to stay the night, you’re being really kind.” Sophie rolled her eyes, smiling.

  “Once you walk in the front door, you are my guest and therefore I have to be a good hostess. Get some sleep.” She yawned and turned to the bedroom, and I started getting comfortable on the couch.

  The pillow smelled like Sophie—I hadn’t even realized that I’d picked up on the sweet-flowery smell that clung to her until I breathed in and caught the scent on the pillow. Whatever shampoo she used, it was awesome. I buried my face against the pillowcase and breathed in and out for a few moments before I realized what a freak that probably made me. I turned over on my side facing the back of the couch and tried to will myself to sleep. I was tired enough: the show had been intense, it was about three or maybe four in the morning, and I’d been in the studio from nine that morning until about two in the afternoon before we’d called it a day; but for the longest time I lie there wide awake, staring at the back of the couch, wondering about Sophie. It was stupid. It was beyond stupid. But I couldn’t help it.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I must have fallen asleep at some point; I woke up to the sound of meowing and the sliding glass door moving along its track. I turned over on the couch and nearly spilled off of it, opening my eyes just in time to catch sight of Sophie stepping through the open door and onto the patio, while Drogon darted out between her feet. Sophie must have heard me—or maybe seen me in the corner of her eye. She turned and smiled ruefully. “Sorry—I thought you were pretty deeply asleep,” she said.

  “Don’t sweat it,” I told her, scrambling around onto my feet. I’d woken up at some point and gotten my jeans off—they were just too uncomfortable—and I probably should have felt weirder about standing around in my tee shirt and boxers, but considering that I could make out the outline of Sophie’s nipples against the flimsy fabric of her pajama top, and barely—barely—see the bottom curve of her ass where her shorts ended, I didn’t think I was overstepping any big boundaries.

  I followed her out onto the patio, cigarette pack in hand, and slumped down into a chair. Drogon began scratching through his litter box and Sophie produced a fresh pack of cigarettes out of a pocket I hadn’t seen on her shorts. “So,” I said, lighting my own cig and taking a drag. “Why exactly did you let me stay the night?” Sophie shrugged.

  “You walked me home and didn’t try to make a pass,” Sophie said.

  “Was that some kind of test?” Sophie crinkled the foil and plastic from her pack of cigs into a little ball and stuffed it into the ashtray. She gave me that little smile again—that utterly confident, completely knowing smile that she’d flashed at the bar.

  “Not a test,” Sophie said. “But it did say a lot about who you are as a person.” She tugged a cigarette free of the pack and brought it to her lips to light it; I tried not to stare, especially at the bead of sweat that began to roll down from her neck past her collarbones, or at the way that her arms pressed her tits together. I decided to look away altogether. “You know, Mark gave me his number last night,” Sophie said, blowing smoke away from her face.

  “And you want to know if you should call him?” Tell her no. Tell her he’s a dog. The impulse jolted through my brain before I could stop it; but I managed to push it aside before I said anything.

  “Mostly just interested in your reaction to it,” Sophie said, half-smiling again.

  “Mark is into you,” I said with a shrug. “If you’re into him, you should call him.”

  “That’s a very careful non-answer,” Sophie said tartly.

  “He’s a drummer,” I explained.

  “Go on,” Sophie said. I shrugged again.

  “You were going on last night about how you don’t date guys in the scene because they want you to give them free drinks or whatever,” I pointed out. “Mark probably won’t ask you for free drinks, but you’d be breaking your self-imposed rule nonetheless.”

  “You’re into me too,” Sophie said. I raised an eyebrow. “Come on, Dan—you wouldn’t have walked me home and talked to me half the night if you weren’t into me.”

  “Maybe I’m just a good guy,” I countered.

  “Maybe,” Sophie said. She licked her lips and took another drag of her cigarette. “But I’m still going to go with the theory of you liking me.” I pressed my lips together, resisting the urge to smile.

  “And if I do? You don’t date local guys, remember?” Sophie held my gaze for a long moment and flicked the ash off the end of her cigarette.

  “Maybe I’m not that much of an absolutist,” Sophie said. She stubbed out her cigarette. “Maybe I’m open to changing my mind on that score.” She stood up and I caught the barest flash of her tit as her top shifted. It sent a jolt of heat through me, straight to my cock. Then, she turned around and went into the apartment, and I saw the bottom curve of her ass cheeks.

  Before I knew what I was doing, I had stood, and I followed her into the apartment. Sophie turned on her heel, only a few feet away from the kitchen, and my hands were already out. I reached for her shoulders, for her arms, and pulled her towards me. Acting completely on impulse, I ducked down and kissed her. I wrapped my arms around her waist, pressing her body against mine. Sophie tensed against me and then relaxed, and I heard her let out just the faintest moan.

  I broke away from her lips and looked down into her eyes. “Not an absolutist?” Sophie’s cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright, and I knew—I knew in my bones—that she was turned on.

  “Maybe not,” Sophie said breathlessly. She licked her lips and I smiled slowly. “But I am not going to have sex with you right now.”

  “You’re not?” Sophie shook her head, slipping free of my arms. “Why not?”

  “One—I need to run some errands before I’m due at Respects,” she said. “Two: I never put out before at least one date.” She stepped into the kitchen and started making coffee while I watched.

  I went back to the couch, trying to decide how to move forward; Sophie was obviously attracted to me, but after Benny’s remarks the night before I didn’t want to push her—especially since Mark had given her his number. Either she’s into him or not, I told myself. And if she isn’t, it’s not like there’s anything wrong with going after her myself. “So, since you need to go on a date with me, why don’t we check out the Norton next week?”

  Sophie emerged from the kitchen with two cups of coffee. “The Norton is free for the next year and a half—that’s not a date,” she said.

  “It is if we go out to dinner before or after,” I pointed out. Sophie handed me one of the cups and I drank down a gulp, keeping my gaze on her.

  “Deal,” she said, smiling.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I had just finished setting up for the day’s recordings when Jules, Nick, and Mark came into the live room, talking amongst themselves. “I’m telling you, we need to punch up the vocals on ‘Turnstile,’” Nick was saying to Jules. “But Alex won’t listen to me, and Jack’s taking his side.”

&nb
sp; “Jack’s on the side of the album,” Jules said, shaking his head. “If you want to suggest a change, make your case to him.”

  “Dan—what do you think?” Nick glanced at me as he bent over to pick up one of his guitars.

  “I think it’s worth looking at,” I replied. Mark stepped behind the drum kit. “Alex has been getting all ‘artistic integrity’ though.”

  “He’s on my ass about the drum sounds, too,” Mark said.

  “Well he should be—you were all sloppy on the fills yesterday,” I told him.

  “I wasn’t sloppy!” Mark scowled at me.

  “You kind of were,” Nick countered, grinning.

  “Ah—fuck you,” Mark said. Alex came into the room.

  “How are we doing today, gents?”

  “Got a date for Friday,” Mark said, throwing his hands up in the air.

  “With who?” Nick tried a chord on his Epiphone and nodded to himself, satisfied with the tone.

  “New bartender at Respects,” Mark replied. My hand slipped on the neck of my bass.

  “Really?” I hadn’t mentioned my upcoming date with Sophie to Mark—I figured he didn’t need to know until after I found out if there was anything to it.

  “That Sophie chick?” Nick raised an eyebrow and looked at me. I’d told him about going home with Sophie, and that we’d made a date.

  “Yeah,” Mark said. “I gave her my number the other night and we’ve been texting back and forth a bit. I’m taking her to the De Sade show.” Nick looked at me again, and I shrugged—hopefully not enough that Mark could see.

  “Five minutes, guys,” Jack said from the control room. “Let’s get this show rolling, shall we?”

  We started in on the first track, and I tried to focus on the task at hand, but the fact that Mark had a date with Sophie stuck in the back of my mind. Mark didn’t know that I had a date with Sophie; so there was no reason for me to be mad at him—but I was. I was mad at Sophie too, probably with more reason. After all, she had made a date with me, and then turned around and made one with Mark as well. You did tell her to text him if she was interested, I reminded myself, but even then it didn’t seem like any kind of excuse. She knew that Mark and I were in a band together—and she should have been able to figure out that it would put a strain on things between us to both go after the same woman.

  “We’re getting ragged in the rhythm section,” Jack said from the control room after we went through one of the new songs for the third time.

  “What’s up?” Jules looked from Mark to me and back again. “You two are never sloppy like this.”

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “Just tired.”

  “Take a break,” Alex suggested. He turned to the control room. “We’re going to take five, Jack—I think we’re overthinking this whole thing.”

  “Make it ten, get a cigarette and come back,” Jack suggested. I checked my pockets, found my phone and cigarettes, and put my bass down. I had to get out of the room—and I definitely needed to confront Sophie about what I’d found out. If she was going to play Mark and I off against each other, I’d cancel the damn date; I didn’t need that kind of drama in my life. Fuming, I left the studio and headed outside, blinking against the bright, mid-afternoon sun.

  I sank down onto the grass, took my phone out of my pocket, lighting a cigarette and found Sophie’s number in my contact list. She’d given it to me before I’d left her apartment a few days before, and I’d texted her once or twice since then—mostly just how-are-you, checking in-type messages. I’d been totally clueless to the fact that she’d even followed up with Mark. Hey, I wrote. Just heard some interesting news. I tapped send and set my phone down on my knee while I smoked, trying to keep my anger in proportion.

  A moment later, my phone vibrated and I looked at it. What news would that be? Something up with the album? I pressed my lips together until my throat tickled from the smoke hanging in it. I exhaled the smoke and coughed.

  Actually, I heard that you have a date with Mark, I wrote back. I wasn’t about to sugarcoat anything. Anything to say about that? I checked the time; I had another couple of minutes before we had to go back into the studio and get back to work.

  He asked me out, I said yes. You told me to text him if I was interested. I stubbed out my cigarette and shook my head to myself.

  I also asked you out, and you said yes. I took a deep breath. And you said yes to me first. What’s the deal there? I slipped my phone into my pocket and stood up. I wasn’t sure there was even anything that Sophie could say that would matter to me at that point; the fact that she hadn’t apologized or offered any kind of justification, any kind of reasoning behind accepting dates from two guys at the same time, pissed me off.

  Before I could walk back inside the complex, though, Nick appeared. “I talked Jack into a longer break,” he said, looking me up and down. “We going to have drama between you and Mark now?”

  “Mark didn’t know I’d asked her out,” I pointed out.

  “But she knew—at least I assume you asked her out first,” Nick said. He took his cigs out and gestured for me to sit down.

  “Am I about to get a pep talk from you? Because I gotta say, the idea of getting relationship advice from a guy who until—what—a year ago was fucking everything with two legs and a vagina…”

  “The two legs thing wasn’t a prerequisite,” Nick said with a little smirk. I rolled my eyes.

  “Anyway: say whatever the fuck you came to say.”

  “You’re pissed off,” Nick said, lighting up. “I get it.”

  “You say that like most people wouldn’t get me being pissed over my best friend going on a date with a girl I’m into,” I countered.

  “How many times have you and Mark ended up fucking the same girl? At least five, right?”

  “That’s different,” I insisted. “Those weren’t…they were just chicks on the road.”

  “Still, you put your dick somewhere Mark did. And vice versa. Hell, you’ve fucked girls who fell out of Alex’s bunk too.” Nick shrugged. “We all have. What’s the issue now?”

  “So, you’re saying that I shouldn’t be upset about it because Mark and I have fucked the same groupies before,” I said. I lit another cigarette; Nick shrugged and took another drag of smoke.

  “You’re pissed because you’re actually into her,” Nick said matter-of-factly. “But are you pissed at him, or are you pissed at her?” I considered the question.

  “It’s alternating,” I admitted. “Even though I know I don’t really have a reason to be pissed at Mark—it’s not like he knows anything.”

  “So talk to him about it,” Nick suggested. “See what he does. If he backs off—then just be mad at her.”

  “And if he doesn’t back off?” Nick looked at his cig for a moment or two.

  “Then figure out whether you really want to have shit with him,” Nick said. “We’ve got work to do, man. We can’t get this album done right if you and Mark are having drama and trying to point fingers at who’s being sloppy in the studio when you’re actually both out of sync because you’re not listening to each other.” Nick stood on his long, skinny legs and stubbed his cigarette out against the wall. “Finish that and come back in. We’ll get through it.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I thought about what Nick had said the entire time we were in the studio that day. I knew I didn’t have any right to be pissed at Mark until after I confronted him about what had happened; but I didn’t know if—technically—I even would have a right to be pissed at him even then. Mark had acted in his own interest, just like I had. Sophie was a separate issue—at least that’s what I thought at first. She had gone from not dating anyone in the local scene to dating two guys in the local scene at the same time, and both of them members of the same band. Benny’s sure as hell going to be pissed off about it, I thought wryly.

  I knew I should talk to Mark about the situation, but there wasn’t an opportunity for the rest of the day. The five of us
went through one song after another, recording, stopping, talking, recording again, tweaking this, changing that, talking some more. We mostly worked on the songs that Alex and Nick had written together, and in some respects, it was exactly the way that it always had been—wrangling out details, talking about changes, reworking this or that or the other thing.

  But it was obvious to me at least that things weren’t exactly the same way as they’d always been. Jules was more aggressive with his suggestions. Mark wasn’t as patient with working out what exactly Alex wanted from the drums. I wasn’t gelling with the beat the way that I normally did.

  “What the hell was that?” Alex turned to look at me when we came to the end of a song—his song—that we’d already played through about half a dozen times and recorded three of those times.

  “What do you mean, what was it?” I looked from Alex to Jules to Nick, to see if either of them had a similar issue with my playing.

  “You totally dropped the beat in the second verse, and what the fuck was that bit in the chorus?” Alex shook his head.

  “You’re the one that keeps changing it,” Jules pointed out. “Hell, it’s a wonder I even knew what you wanted to play.”

  “But you did,” Alex insisted. “What’s going on, Dan?” I shrugged.

  “Nothing,” I said. It was a lie of course, but I wasn’t about to drag my issues with Mark out into the studio live room.

  “Let’s go through it one more time, recording off, and see if we can’t get it right,” Nick suggested. “And this time let’s stick with the original. I’m not solid on that riff in the third verse anyway.”

  “Think you’re up for it, Dan?” Alex gave me a sharp, almost a mocking look.

  “Sure,” I said, smiling in spite of how irritated I felt. “Let’s go over it again. But none of that new shit you’re wanting in it—just the normal fucking song, okay?”

  “Mark, count in.” I felt my heart beating faster as Mark hit his sticks together to count the beat off, but I pushed the feeling aside. I was in the studio to work; I’d get a chance to talk to Mark after we finished for the day. Nick came in, and then Jules, and then I started playing the bass line, listening to Mark’s beat and trying to separate him from the beat I had to follow. I closed my eyes and just listened to the music swirling around me, fitting the notes I played into the fabric of the song itself, following along as mindlessly as possible. I could play the original version of this song—the way Alex had first presented it to us—in my sleep. I didn’t even listen to Alex singing; all I did was go along with the rhythm and melody without thinking.