He glanced down. She still wore her panties, but the delicate gold thong wouldn’t prove much of a problem. He watched as the piece of fabric darkened and dampened with her arousal, and he growled. The primitive sound surprised him, but then he repeated it, decided he liked it, because he was sure as hell feeling primitive right now.
When he moved the thin strip of fabric aside, he revealed her glistening pussy, reddened with arousal, but not blushing red. Blatantly, invitingly red. Come-fuck-me red.
He introduced his cock to her pussy. They kissed, the gleaming tip with its bead of liquid meeting the hard, erect nub of her clit. Her gasp told him she was as aroused as he was. It was enough. He couldn’t tease or wait for her. She was ready and if he waited any longer, he’d be more than ready. He guided his cock farther down and she tilted back a little more, exposing that glorious aching void, waiting for him to fill it.
His cock sank home, hardly a tug of her muscles impeding its way, but that ever so slight resistance drove him crazy insane. With a yell, he took her. Dragged her to him, one hand around her slender waist, and fastened his mouth to hers as he powered in and out of her sweet depths.
Abandoning her balance, she gave it up to him. She flung her arms around his neck and thrust one hand into his hair, the other gripping him between his shoulder blades in the kind of death grip a wrestler would be proud of. Her little cries into his mouth urged him on. He powered harder, faster, fucking her with the frenzy of a man who hadn’t had sex for months, when in fact it had been hours. Hours could feel like months. He could attest to that.
The wet scent of their mutual arousal wreathed them in their own atmosphere, superseding anything else that might be around them. The wet, hard slap of bodies connecting was the most perfect music in the whole universe, echoing around the large room.
At the top of his peak, he knew he couldn’t hold back. He dragged his mouth from hers. “Come. Please come.”
Her mouth partly open, her eyes wild, she stared back. “I’m close.”
Grabbing the hand that gripped his shoulder blades, he guided it down and, watching her eyes the whole way, brought it to her clit. “Let me see. Do it.”
Her lips curved in a wicked smile. Pinching her clit between finger and thumb, she worked it as if it were a miniature penis. She stroked up and down, stimulating the little bud until she froze and he felt the deep pulses that signaled her orgasm.
The sight and the feel of her inner muscles clenching around his cock tipped him over the edge. He came in a blinding shower of sparks and lights.
Until he opened his eyes a few minutes later, he hadn’t realized that one of the light bulbs had blown. The light showers weren’t just in his head.
“The circuitry must be bad here.”
“What?” Opening her eyes, V met the glorious sight of the man she loved. His hair was wild, sticking up in spikes where she’d clutched it as she came, his eyes still dark, the pupils barely ringed by the irises. But she realized that she couldn’t see as clearly as before.
“All that vibration must have broken the connection.”
She blinked and glanced down the long row of sinks to the light at the end. It had gone out. “I’d like to think it was the intensity of the moment.”
He laughed and grabbed a few more paper towels from the pile that she’d been leaning against. “Hold still.” He held a towel under her bottom as he withdrew, releasing a gush of liquid, then he cleaned her with the other towels in a few efficient strokes. “I think your dress is finished.”
“Yes. I’ll have to go on in jeans.”
His eyes, previously sultry, widened. “You want to go on? I won’t force you to anything. Tell me what you want and I’ll make it happen.”
“If I can. If they haven’t done the number.” That sex had wiped out everything that had gone before and once again she was thinking clearly. The blind panic had left her, although adrenaline still spiked her mood.
“They could have left it for the encore.” He checked his watch. “They’ve been on half an hour. That might have felt like forever, but I think it’s our fastest fuck yet. Barely five minutes.”
She laughed and the sound cleared the final tension from her throat. She could play her instrument now. Back in control, and it felt good. “It worked.”
He touched his lips to her forehead. “That, darling, isn’t why I did it.”
“I know.” She really did. “Let’s get back to the dressing room. I can wear the outfit I brought to wear afterward. Jeans and a T-shirt. It’ll have to do.”
If she kept the impetus going, she could do this, she knew it.
After washing her hands in one of the sinks, she grabbed him and towed him out of the room, as eager to get onstage as she’d been reluctant less than an hour ago. She wouldn’t think about what happened, not wanting to trigger anything again. She wouldn’t let the band down any more than she had already.
No time to shower, only time for a few quick swipes with a damp cloth. Once back in her dressing room, she changed into the jeans and T-shirt, tossing the dress aside without a qualm. She could go shopping tomorrow for something else. A few strokes of eyeliner, a swift application of lipstick while Matt brushed her hair out with swift, efficient strokes and she was done.
“I definitely want to keep this.” His low growl turned her on all over again and he exchanged a smoldering look with her across the room. Matt carefully put the crumpled gold rag in her bag, tucking it out of sight. He added the panties, which she’d exchanged for a fresh pair, but she knew the scent of sex still hung faintly about her.
She wanted to do this fast, get on the stage before she had time to talk herself out of it.
A sharp rap on the door heralded the entrance of the band’s manager. “There you are.”
“I’m so sorry. I-I got a phone call and I couldn’t, I realized—”
He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “I’ve known worse. You got five minutes. They’re just doing one of those long electronic things and then you’re on. Last chance, V.”
She grabbed her instrument. “I’m coming.”
Murder City Ravens was packed with temperamental artists. They needed a man like this, who could take the unexpected in stride. She glanced back. Matt blew her a kiss. “Do you want me to watch?”
He could hear anyway, if he switched on the audio piped into every room backstage. She nodded, a sharp jerk of her head. Then turned and left.
The mosh pit was one heaving mass of humanity, swaying like a single entity.
She felt nervous, but only nervous. Nothing else. No panic seizing her stomach and turning her throat into something the size of a drinking straw. No sweats. Nothing taking her over, telling her to Run! Her fingers lay on her sax, steady and in the right places.
Nobody noticed her entrance much because the lights were temporarily off, so she had a few moments to herself as they drew the electronic track to a close. It was such a privilege to play with this band. Nobody was as inventive, and as insolent, ignoring the tenets of what made a hit, what bands “should” be doing.
At last there was a kind of intro to her piece. The run up the scales that started what would be the band’s first single from the new album.
“We’ve tried something new with this.” Jace glanced back in her direction and that must have been the cue, because her spots came on. Glad she’d brushed her hair, she could only hope her white T-shirt held out under the bright lights and didn’t turn transparent. Well, if it did, maybe the bra underneath wouldn’t. Even that thought didn’t faze her now.
The music started and she lifted her sax, the instrument gleaming under the lights.
Once she began, it was easy. She slid into the music like she always did, in her apartment, in Claud’s club, in the Lincoln Park house with her family. It happened and she gave herself to it. She half closed her eyes, did what she loved and when the band came in, they entered the flow with her.
They understood. She’d come in at the en
d of the process of forging the unit, not the start, and she’d seen them rehearse, imagined it happening, played with them informally. Now it was happening for real, and it felt better than anything else. Except making love with Matt.
That beat everything.
When she’d finished, she glanced at the running order with its crossed-out and replaced songs, and realized the guys often worked that way. They’d take what the audience was feeling and go with it, as much as they could. They’d destroy the running order they’d spent weeks agonizing over. And she saw how they did it. They had sections of music, sets that they could use or switch around. It was a technique unheard of in concerts, especially with the expense of the arena performance these days. The running order was set and then remained in concrete. Somebody coming to a concert in London could expect the same thing in New York, perhaps with a variation in one of the encores.
But Murder City Ravens switched. They used sound-sensitive lights and their lighting guy was considered a member of the band during the tours. He or she—there were two of them—knew the music in detail and could respond to what they wanted. She knew all this because she’d read it or learned it this last month, but knowing it and participating in it were two very different things.
She loved it. Loved the flexibility that had meant they could reschedule her number and its accompanying block to later in the set. It must drive the staff at these places crazy, but Murder City Ravens was up and coming, arriving and venues were eager to book them. How or why the buzz had started she didn’t know, but she’d have to be stupid not to notice the extra press attention, the way Chick had secured the concert here.
She played a small part in the next track too, which was delayed by the yells and the thunderous applause that followed the last notes of the single, and the one after that. Then she was out for a while. She drank some water and listened. It sounded so good from where she stood.
Then came the last block. She had a part in this one too. Jace would sample her notes and then he and Riku would take over on keyboards and kaoss pads. They wanted her to play something different every time, so the song would sound new. The band had the bare bones, the lyrics and the central melody. Everything else went with the flow.
It was rock jazz with folk, trance and anything the talented members of the band picked up and played with. Improv she knew all about, but not done like this.
She loved this too.
Belatedly she remembered her family was out there somewhere and she wondered if Uncle Claud liked it. Of course he would. He might be locked in the fifties, but some radical stuff came out in that era. She knew who to bless for her extensive education in twentieth-century popular music. It was like the best kind of learning—she hadn’t realized she was learning anything, only having fun.
In any case, it didn’t matter if they liked it, only that they saw her and at last got to experience what she was like in this part of her life. That mattered. As did her love for the music.
The band left the stage after the lights went down. V got a shock when she turned and saw the audience massed high on seats on either side of the stage at the back. At least the screen behind them meant people weren’t directly overlooking her, but the Garden was a bitch for that nearly theater-in-the-round thing. She hadn’t realized she could have turned around at any time and seen that sea of faces.
But she felt merely nervous, not that terrible seizing of her spirit by something that seemed almost outside her.
Matt waited for her. He swung her into his arms, sax and all, and placed a big, smacking kiss square on her mouth. “Extraordinary,” he said. “Fucking A.”
She thought so too.
Then they were back on. She wished she had a clean T-shirt to change into because she’d drenched this one, but she’d make sure she had something tomorrow. If they wanted her tomorrow after the fuck-up she made tonight. But she forgot all that when she started a long, low note that would be barely heard under the shriek of the guitars. But it was there all the same and it made a difference.
Two encores later, they were done and left the stage for the last time. Matt guided her with the rest of the band to a big, brightly lit area with a long table at one end. The press was waiting. Expecting to watch this part of the evening, she stopped when Matt urged her toward the stage. “They still want you there,” he murmured in her ear. “Just shame them and tell the truth.” His breath heated her ear when he laughed. “Okay, maybe not everything.”
Warmed by the reminder of what they’d done earlier, she stepped forward with more confidence than she’d have had a moment earlier and took her place at the table. Next to Jace, with Zazz on his other side. Matt stepped back, but didn’t evade all the attention. A few people snapped his picture.
He drew out a pair of sunglasses and put them on, warning them away. When Jace beckoned to him, he stepped forward reluctantly, but V thought they’d made the right decision. Show him with the band, kill the rumors about the acrimonious split. A few of the specialist papers knew Matt was working with them. They’d comprised the mob outside the TV studios mostly, but this was the press in force, baying for blood.
This wouldn’t be easy.
Then it started. She shouldn’t have underestimated the band’s prowess with the press. Matt’s advice came back as she began to see what they meant. Tell the truth, just not all of it. Leave some out, hide in the shadows. So when they asked about Matt’s meltdown, he slid off his glasses to show them his eyes were clear, gave them a charming smile and answered them with the truth. “I had a bad time. I knew I’d need extensive rehab and it would take time, years, maybe. So when it came down to a choice between Murder City Ravens and my life, I chose life.”
“Where did you go?”
“A rehabilitation center. You know which one. Some of you were waiting for me when I got out. And yes, I’m doing okay, thanks for asking.”
“Do you go to twelve-step meetings?”
“It wasn’t that kind of rehab, but for the record, I think they do a great job, and if I needed them, I’d go.” Unlike the rest of the band, he stood behind them, close enough to V to make her feel more secure. And being more secure, she could be more daring, if she wanted to. Not that she would.
“Where do you come from, V?”
Disingenuous. They knew that already. “Chicago.”
“Where Matt has his new studio?”
“Yes. I did some session work for him.” She bit her lip when they sniggered. “He said the band was looking for a saxophonist and introduced me.”
“So are you going to be a new member of Murder City Ravens?”
Jace took part in the conversation. “That’s up to her.”
That reply rocked her world. Did he mean it, or was that for the press? They’d said it was a possibility at the airport, and they worked democratically. She recalled seeing Riku glance at Jace and nod, but she’d thought that was something else.
The press tried to make Matt suffer, and then her when someone asked her about the running order changing so drastically. Before Jace could say they did it regularly, she admitted her problem. “I get stage fright,” she said. “Real bad sometimes. But I won’t take drugs, I need to face it head-on. The band was great.”
“Besides,” Jace drawled as if he were bored with the subject, “we never give the same performance twice. We like to move things around a bit, find out what the audience wants and give it to them. No two audiences are the same, so why should our performance be?” That distracted the press, especially the music press, and they went into more musical matters.
When the conference finally finished and they could go into a private room and get some refreshments, it turned out that the band meant what Jace had so casually said to the media.
“Fastest vote we ever took,” he said with a grin. “Think about it. We’ll send you the business details and the offer. Sorry, but we have to get that kind of thing sorted out fast too. The point is, V, we want you to be a part of the next album from t
he start and we’ll start the process on the road. Your creative input is really good. Seriously good.” He shot Matt an apologetic look. “Sorry, man. I know it won’t help to have her half a world away, but this is band business. Not personal.”
She had a clear choice here. Matt couldn’t leave Chicago while his studio was doing so well. And if she joined the band, she’d be part of the tour. The year-long, worldwide tour.
Part of her rejoiced, glorying in the fulfillment of everything she’d ever wanted in the part of her soul she’d tried to ignore for so long.
But it would mean giving up Matt. And that could destroy her.
Chapter Nine
He couldn’t let her give this opportunity up. He had to find a way to make her go. It might mean breaking up with her. No, it would.
Matt wasn’t surprised when, during the next day’s sound check, Mr. Hamid and Claud sought him out. He was sitting in V’s dressing room with his tablet computer, trying to catch up on his emails. He put it aside when they knocked and came in.
After seating them and making sure they had something to drink, he straddled his chair and leaned his arms on the back. “You heard, then.”
“What?” Matt could tell by the determined expression on Claud’s face that he wasn’t planning to make this easy. He’d have to spell it out.
“The band has offered V a trial as a full member. If she accepts, she’ll go on this world tour and collaborate on the next album. Which I’ll be producing.”
“Will you go on tour with them?” Mr. Hamid asked.
Matt shook his head. “Can’t. I have a deal with a new star and several other projects lined up. I can’t let them down.”
“Can’t?”
“Won’t.”
Hamid nodded. “Good. At least that shows you’re accepting your responsibilities. You know what she needs, don’t you?”
Matt blinked. He must have a lash caught in his eye because it was watering. “Yes. She needs to do it free. For me to let her go.”
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