by Cecilia Tan
“Great idea!” she chirped. “They can do that with liquid latex, you know? But it takes a long time to apply and to dry. Not practical for a show like this.”
She never gets my jokes.
“Well? Do I pass muster?”
She tapped her lips with a manicured nail. “It’s still missing something.”
Mal came and looked over her shoulder. “What’s he missing?”
“Something. I don’t know.”
“Don’t worry about him, Chris. You know he always turns it on when the lights come up,” Mal told her.
It was true. People often said I seemed like I took it to a whole different level on stage. Wilder, sexier, on top of the world. That’s the real me, I wanted to tell them. That’s who I’ve always been waiting to be. But it took work to remember sometimes that I wasn’t the shy outcast I’d looked like when Mal and I had started writing songs together as kids.
“I know what the outfit needs,” I said.
“What?” Christina insisted.
“Go check on Ford and Sam and I’ll show you when you get back.”
She grudgingly went to see if the others were ready while I closed my eyes and imagined heiress Ricki Hamilton was wearing no underwear under her designer gown. I slipped a hand under my waistband and heard Mal chuckle while I “adjusted” myself.
When Christina came back she looked me up and down. “Now you look good! On fire! What’s diff—? Oh.” She noticed the outline. “Good God, Axel, I didn’t know you were circumcised!”
Yeah, that’s how tight that costume was.
“Perfect!” she enthused. “You know the camera at the foot of the stage will be right there!”
Yes, I did. We’d already had a whole argument about how the producers didn’t want me playing rhythm guitar like I usually did on this song when we played live. They wanted more “dynamism,” more “mobility” from me. We’d even rehearsed it once with a headset mic, but with no mic and no guitar I felt like I didn’t know what to do with my hands. So they gave me a cordless handheld mic. At least they weren’t making me lip sync.
A tablet-wielding PA led us to our places. The band was on one part of the stage and I was on another, hidden from the audience by a set backdrop that would lift up while the daises we were on would glide forward. The stages were made of clear Lucite with tiny lights embedded inside. It was like standing on top of a giant cubic zirconia gem.
There’s a moment before every performance where a bubble of nervousness expands in my throat, threatening to choke me. Like this time it’s going to be too much. This time I’m going to fail. This time I’m going to fall. This time it’s going to turn out that I really am just that nerdy, lonely outcast nobody liked and not the man who can set the whole world on fire with my voice and my moves.
But then the lights come up, the drums kick in, and that bubble bursts. And I explode like the firecracker that the band needs me to be.
This time was no different. I heard the hostess give the intro. “And now, performing their number one hit ‘Kidnap My Heart,’ here’s The Rough!” The backdrop went up like it had in dress rehearsal, and I hit that opening note clear and true.
I stumbled a little, though, as the stage section I was on ground to a sudden stop far short of where it was supposed to go. Well. The directors had said they wanted me to have “mobility,” right? Sometimes you have to improvise. I leaped off the dais and ran to the front of the stage, hitting and holding a high note with my free hand high in the air. The red light on the camera at my feet glowed and I hoped they got the crotch shot that Christina wanted. Nothing like making love to millions of Americans right through their televisions, right?
A hit song is usually three to four minutes long. Those could have been the longest four minutes of my life, given what I was planning. But they weren’t. They went by in a blur. The backup dancers the producers had added to the number kept to the script: they were stuck partway back on the stalled stage section. That would only make my plan easier to implement. I ignored the choreography and worked the lip of the stage like this was Madison Square Garden and the seats were full of screaming teenagers, not politely nodding entertainment industry people. Actually, a lot of them looked like they were really getting into it.
See, I had plotted a little surprise for the end of the song that not even my bandmates knew about.
As the climax of the song approached, I leaped off the stage into the aisle. I gestured for people around me to jump up and clap. Amazingly, they did. Of course they did—they’re showbiz, they’re Hollywood, they thought this was supposed to happen and they would go along with the show. I danced my way up the aisle, looking for that face, that bare shoulder …
There she was.
The plan was, of course, to “kidnap” Sakura. I was supposed to grab her and carry her out of the auditorium. The publicity stunt would help her establish some celebrity for herself, and more notoriety for me; we’d be the talk of the town and we’d be able to skip out of the rest of the award ceremony before I gave myself an ulcer. I didn’t want to be there to face the record company when we didn’t win.
But that isn’t what I did. I didn’t stick to the plan at all. I got my arm around the waist of Ricki Hamilton, danced her into the aisle, and then swept her off her feet and ran away with her.
Sakura was going to kill me. Later.
CHAPTER THREE
IF THIS CAR’S ROCKIN’ (DON’T COME KNOCKIN’)
RICKI
When Axel Hawke dove into the back of a limo with me and we sped off, I was light-headed from being unable to breathe. The moment he had picked me up I had started to laugh, and then partway up the aisle he’d switched to carrying me over his shoulder like a pirate making off with a wench. His shoulder dug into my stomach, which made me laugh harder but also made it even harder to breathe.
Maybe it wasn’t the way he was carrying me that made me so breathless. My mind was awhirl—the tabloids! They were going to have a field day! But part of me didn’t care. My fantasies of him carrying me away came roaring back, and the giddy feeling only intensified as I realized that any of the blame for this stunt was going to fall squarely on Axel Hawke, not me. I was merely the innocent bystander dragged along for the ride. Literally.
I realized I still had my arms around his neck while I fought to catch my breath. We were halfway lying down where we had landed in the spacious interior of the car. It was one of those ridiculous tourist limos, suitable for bachelorette parties and the like¸ the interior lights cycling through a series of colors and a miniature disco ball throwing sparkles of light everywhere. Given that he had just taken off without getting any directions, this limo driver had to have been hired by Axel in advance.
Where are we going? I wanted to ask, but I made the mistake of looking into those intense eyes of his. For a moment he looked as if he might say something.
Instead, we kissed. One moment we were staring into each other’s eyes; the next moment our lips were sealed together.
And I’d thought I was breathless before. Axel Hawke could kiss. His mouth was sure and firm, never still. He coaxed mine open, and the more we kissed, the more I wanted to kiss. He varied the pressure, never letting me take the lead but not overwhelming me, either. His tongue teased and I felt the kiss all the way down under my gown.
This was everything I wanted, but nothing that I expected. This wasn’t anything I could have imagined actually happening, and with every cell in my body focused on him, on where we touched, on the way he moved, there wasn’t any brainpower left to think about anything else.
As the kiss went on, the tingle between my legs grew to a warm center of pleasure and then to an outright ache of need. When was the last time I’d actually wanted like this? When was the last time I had let myself want anything like this?
Then I was gasping for breath and trying to understand the words that were pouring hotly into my ear.
“Should I stop?”
No, no, don’t yo
u dare stop, I thought, but I couldn’t let myself say that. “You … You should … but …” I said weakly, regretfully.
“I’ll stop when you say the word ‘no,’ then,” he murmured. He sounded a little drunk. Intoxicated by lust? Probably his performance high. Dad used to call it the strongest drug known to man. Which was pretty funny coming from an alcoholic, but that was my father for you.
“Where are we going?” I asked, thinking I’d distract Axel.
“Sakura’s,” he answered, and began kissing me again.
And I was kissing him back. It was simply too good to stop. He flattened me under him, a hand on either side of my head, while his tongue did its wicked work, inflaming me. Lying like that, the hardness of him was excruciatingly close to that place where I ached. I wriggled under him, telling myself I was trying to wriggle away, but I was actually trying to move the hottest part of me against him in just the right way …
Then came a moment when my writhing almost dislodged him and he shifted his weight to pin me completely. To see what would happen, I tried to actually wriggle free and found his arms and legs moved to keep me in place. Being pinned like that sent my desire surging! It was like a tide that had been coming in gradually suddenly hit a wall and waves of need leaped up, splashing, swamping me.
I freed my mouth to take a deeper breath and his mouth moved down to my neck. How he knew where the spot was that was like a direct line to my clit, I don’t know—maybe he found it by luck, but once he did, he didn’t let up. The zone was just below the array of diamonds of my choker and his tongue worked it softly but relentlessly. I moaned. Why was I trying to push him away? My hands were pushing at him but he was not letting me deter him from his goal, which seemed to be licking my neck like his life depended on it. He had a bit of stubble on his chin but instead of giving me rug burn it was only making my skin tingle even more.
I was trying to push him away because it was too much, too ticklish, too stimulating, and yet it wasn’t, because when I didn’t succeed in dislodging him I didn’t shatter into a million pieces: I melted even more.
And so the game went. He didn’t let up pleasuring that spot on my neck with his mouth, and every time it got too intense for me, I’d try to wrestle him off and he wouldn’t let me. Each time I tried to fight him off and he didn’t let me win, I fell deeper and deeper into his control. I could say “no”; wasn’t that what he’d said? But I wanted to try to push him off, to see if I could, or to see what he’d do, where his limit was.
But I wasn’t close to Axel Hawke’s limit. He was single-minded in his goal to make me writhe. One of his hands strayed to the nipple that was pushing at the fabric of my gown and his thumb brushed it, teasingly light in contrast to the never-ending motion of his tongue and mouth. I felt my clit twitch with that touch.
It almost felt like he could make me come like that, without ever getting into my panties. Amazing. I had never felt a touch like that.
I tried one more time to get free. He was simply too good, too balanced, too determined … I was along for the ride, I realized. Just like with being carried from the auditorium, this was completely on Axel. It was as if my body finally caught up to what my brain had been trying to tell it and I stopped fighting him entirely. I surrendered to the incredible gift of the sensation building in my nerve endings. Instead of trying to push him away now, I was grinding against him, pulling him closer, harder, needing … something.
“I … I …” I gasped. “I’m going to come.”
“Yes you are,” he murmured against my neck and shifted position ever so slightly, letting me wrap my leg around him.
I’d never come with all my clothes on before. I’d never come in a limousine before. I’d never come in a one-of-a-kind Chanel dress before. And I sure as diamonds had never come rubbing myself off on the boner of a rock star of questionable sanity.
You can ask me later whose sanity was more questionable. I was too busy screaming because I was coming so desperately, so hungrily—it wasn’t enough and yet it was too much at the same time. If he hadn’t been so firmly planted between my thighs I would have been tempted to jam my hand down there myself. But he was there: I was entirely in his control.
My spasms peaked and then subsided suddenly, like they often do, leaving me gasping and limp as if I’d been beached by a wave.
When I opened my eyes, Axel Hawke was propped on one elbow, looking down into my face with mild concern. The disco ball’s sparkles twinkled across his face and were reflected in his eyes.
Orgasm had shut off my filters. “Sakura was right. This is like the prom night that never was.”
“Prom night?” An amused half-smile dimpled his cheek. “Are you okay?”
I tried to answer the question with actual information, but that took some thinking. “Did you mean to do that?”
“Make you come, you mean? Or kidnapping you in the first place?” He sounded much calmer than I expected him to be. After all, I could feel his erection between my legs, throbbing. Maybe he knew he didn’t have to hurry because he knew I was under his spell. The thought made my insides clench hungrily, even though I’d just come.
“How about both,” I said, trying to re-engage my logical mind.
“Well, they were both spur of the moment decisions, but, once I decided, then yes, I meant to do that.” His tongue slowly swept the edge of his lip. “I hope that was all right with you.”
I must’ve been full of sex hormones at that moment because his dimple was the cutest thing I had ever seen and his eyes—which had already been captivating—I was staring at them like a thief at the crown jewels. All I could manage to say was, “Okay.”
“The publicity stunt part was planned, but I was supposed to make off with Sakura in this limo. She’s going to kill me.”
“She’ll forgive you,” I babbled. “You’re very convincing.”
“Good.” He nuzzled behind my ear. “Now let me convince you to let me under that dress, Ms. Hamilton.”
“I don’t date bad boys,” I heard myself saying, though at that moment all the reasons not to seemed very far in the back of my mind.
“I’m not asking you for a date. I’m asking you to let me under your dress.”
That sounded so reasonable. Didn’t it? “You’re not going to give me some groupie’s STDs, are you?”
He chuckled. “No. I’m clean. Are you?”
I almost told him how long it had been since I’d actually bothered to let anyone touch me below the waist. I decided he didn’t need to know that. I kept my answer to “Yes.”
“Good.” He brushed his lips over the spot on my neck where he had been licking and suckling so intensely before. The light touch made goose bumps spring up on that half of my body. “Because I hate to break it to you, but your body is mine now.”
“Oh, is it?” He’s fun, I thought.
“Mm-hm,” he said, in mock seriousness. “This spot right here is an on-off switch.” He dragged his finger over the place on my neck. “Only I can turn it on and off, though.”
“Really.”
“Yep. Some doms make their subs wear a collar to keep that spot hidden. But I don’t have to.” He warmed my neck with his breath and my entire body felt like deliciously hot massage oil was pouring over it. “Now, are you going to take your gown off, or am I going to cut it off you?”
I remembered what Sakura had said about how she suspected he was dominant and I wondered if she was more certain than she’d acted. I also really wondered what he’d do if I said he should cut my dress off. But I didn’t want to ruin the gown, even if I never wore it again. “I’ll … I’ll take it off.” I was surprised to hear my voice shook, like an actress unsure of her lines.
He lay back then and gestured at me to do so. He was the picture of insouciant self-possession, his ankles crossed, his legs outstretched in their spandex, his hands folded on his flat stomach, his hair clinging sexily to his neck and his cheek. He had some kind of a curvy black tattoo on his upper
arm and part of his chest but I couldn’t get a good look at it in the disco-ball light.
I knelt on the floor, adrenaline pumping through me like it did when I was on stage or in a spotlight. I’d never liked this feeling when I did theater productions, which was why I wasn’t an aspiring actress like Gwen. I was too afraid of messing up in front of everyone.
But here I had an audience of one. One person whose opinion mattered.
I couldn’t remember where the zipper was.
“Here. I’ll start,” Axel said. He stripped off his own top in one smooth motion and then lay back down as if he were posing for a portrait entitled Royal Pasha in Repose. He gestured again to spur me.
Right. There was a tiny clasp hidden at one hip, and then the zipper ran up one side. I undid the zipper and peeled the gown down like white magnolia petals all around me.
“Pretty,” he said, the tip of his tongue exploring his upper lip.
My nipples tightened as if that tongue were touching them.
“Pretty breasts,” he added, as if he noticed. Of course he noticed. “How sensitive are they?”
“I don’t really have a point of comparison.”
“Show me, then. Run your fingers over them lightly, not the nipple, just the skin.”
My cheeks flushed so suddenly it felt almost like sunburn. I’d never performed for a guy before. My fingers were trembling slightly with excitement as I made light circles with my middle fingers around the outside of my breasts. Was this what he wanted me to do?
“Look down,” he said. “Watch your nipples.”
I saw they were crinkling up and standing out like buttons.
“Keep circling, don’t touch them yet.”
“Yes, sir,” I whispered.
“Mm, ‘sir.’ That has a nice sound to it.” He sat up. “Because of the sweet way you said the word.”
I blushed harder. “Sir” had been a guess on my part. This was getting more and more like an improv scene all the time. “Do you like it when I call you ‘sir’?”