Riding for a Fall (Get Your Rocks Off Book 2)

by Sam Hall

  Click, click, click.

  I caught the primary irritation in response to my question—his gaze sliding away and down, him hissing in frustration, his fingers tightening around the lacquered wood. Then the secondary wave coming as I persisted in photographing him, rising and shown in the flash of his eyes—that crackle of lightning I’d seen before, appearing and disappearing. The viewer of this shot would pass it off as lens flare or some other photographic bullshit, but I knew it for what it was now—evidence of what he was. I caught the clench of his jaw, that wild tumble of honey blond hair as it trailed down his back, the flex of those mighty arms, right up until the point he reached out and blocked my view with his hand. I put the camera down, not wanting his bloody fingerprints on the lens, and had to jerk it back from his grip. I took a quick look at the glass and saw it’d been saved from smears by the hood.

  “Well?” I said. If I wasn’t going to be able to take shots, I may as well get answers. His eyes jerked up to meet mine, and they hardened exponentially.

  “We don’t need you,” he replied.

  “Maybe not, but that doesn’t explain the hostility.”

  “We don’t want you here.”

  “Ah, now that’s patently untrue,” I said, leaving the camera on the bench and getting to my feet. He watched me with hot eyes as I moved towards Billy and planted a hand on the wall beside him. He lifted his head like a flower does to the sun, those dark eyes sparking with amusement. He played all the while as I leant down, the tempo picking up the pace as I got closer and closer, my eyes sliding over to where Lucas sat, simmering.

  Fuck, Billy was quick. Striking like a snake, the guitar was sidelined and I was yanked down on his lap, my focus entirely on him now that my back was to Lucas.

  “Playing games?” he said, his arm like iron, holding me still when I struggled to get up. “I’m probably not the best one for that. I don’t have the…requisite make up. Stop struggling, it just makes me harder.”

  I froze at the velvety menace in his voice. I wasn’t sure if he was going to fuck me or kill me, and it was difficult to care either way. He stared at me, and I was powerless to do anything else but stare back.

  “You filled me up before, something I haven’t felt since I was a kid, so I’ll be gentle. I’m not a pawn or a tool you might use. You can’t play with me. Or rather, if you do, you’ll find yourself strung up and strung out in the most pleasant of ways.”

  “Let me go,” I said between gritted teeth.

  “Make me.”

  People had been talking about my power since I’d transitioned, how apparently, I stank of this strength. Billy seemed to find my pathetic struggles completely hysterical, particularly when they grew more and more frenzied.

  “Someone’s preceptor needs to do more than teach you how to handle multiple cocks. Fight me, little butterfly. Show me your teeth.”

  If he’d hope to stir me to greater heights, that fell flat. That cold, hard, hungry part of him I’d spied during the interview stirred behind his eyes, fixing me in their gaze, keeping me as quiet and compliant as a mouse before a snake. He shifted underneath me, making sure I knew just how turned on this made him, while all I felt was fear.

  He’d be able to do anything he liked to me right now, I realised, and felt only colder for the thought. He’d be able to contort my body, push whatever he wanted wherever he wanted, and while I’d be screaming inside, I’d let him. He nodded slowly, as if I’d shown my true worth. That all these little delusions I had about building a career, finding my place, becoming something more than just fragile Kira kept in her very lovely cage for her own benefit, were all just dust in my mind. His gaze started to roam now, as if now that he’d caught me, it was time to inspect just what he had. A pleased little smile played on his lips as he reached out with a free hand, a slender finger outstretched to make contact with my hardened nipple.

  I thought of my father, the contract, the Rutherglen, and his railroading of me to just where he wanted me. Of people fussing and helping and boxing me in, too afraid to let me be for even a minute. Even Liam’s highhanded bullshit. I was halfway tempted to climb on the idiot when we got back to the bus tonight and just rut him into leaving me the fuck alone. All this emotion started grey and dreary, like the ruffling of ashes by a slight breeze, but that quickly passed. As if summoned, a flame roared inside me, filling me with a harsh golden light, a light that crackled at the end of my fingers. Billy’s grin didn’t change when I broke his hold with an effortless twist, grabbing his wrists and shoving them up against the wall.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I said.

  “Waking you up. You’re not a butterfly. I had a taste of you, and there’s something a whole lot more inside you that those decorous little Hartley boys don’t want to deal with. Something hard and wild and vicious. And you’ll need to be at court tonight. Ask me to be your minder.”

  “What?”

  “Ask me.”

  “Be my minder tonight?”

  “Yes, I will, and I’ll give you something else, something I’ve never given anyone.” He grabbed my hand, gently now, and slid it against the warm skin over his heart. “You can ask me for anything, and if it’s within my power, I’ll give it to you. Remember that, because I won’t say it again, and I won’t remind you.”

  “Why would you—”

  “Because you took the ache away. Lucas.”

  I was spun around, still sitting on the hard lump in Billy’s lap but facing the bassist.

  “What now?” he snapped in response.

  “Liam is right. This is the way. The sooner you work that out, the better.”

  The man just shook his head and then stormed out of the room.

  “I’m going to unlock every damn bit of that power of yours,” Billy whispered into my neck, sending shivers down my spine that just made him groan. “I’m going to make you a fucking goddess.”

  I had no idea what the fuck any of this was. Billy was mercurial, I got that, but there was something more. Some kind of otherness going on, on top of our already strangeness. A million questions hovered on my lips, but an ebullient Jake appeared at the door.

  “Time to get ready, mothafuckas!” he said, yanking his kilt up and showing both of us that he was dressing the Scottish way.

  “Jake, put your cock away. You’ll be our proxy tonight.”

  “Yeah?” Something sweet and somewhat boyish spread across the drummer’s face. “You haven’t let me do that in ages.”

  “Well, don’t fuck it up. Be here at the end of the performance. No side trips.”

  “Yeah, yeah, of course.” It took a second, but he recovered himself, that manic grin restored. “Let’s fucking go!”

  He rushed off as I was deposited on my feet, my hair swept to one side, his fingers roaming as he spoke to my skin.

  “Watch us tonight. See, understand.”

  And with that, I was left in the room, alone but for the buzzing of the still running amp. What the actual fuck?

  5

  I don’t know what I intended to do when I stumbled out of the room. There was less scurrying, more focussed work going on now. The rigging of the stage had been complete before I came here, and I dimly saw them working through the lighting sequence before staggering past.

  The feeling of falling down the hole was back. I was still Alice, not a Wonderlandian, and the inscrutable, yet helluva lot sexier characters were starting to fuck with my head. Why? What had really happened? Admittedly, my experience at bartering for what I wanted using vaginal fluids was limited, but while it was kinda kinky, it wasn’t really that big a deal. I saw a bunch of performers parading past in garish costumes, looking like clown strippers from hell. No, it was this, I realised as I watched them lounge against the walls in their masks and makeup. The rules, the rituals I had grown up with had no meaning here. This was an alternate world with a whole different set of expectations, behaviour, and ways of communicating. I could still feel Billy’s li
ps on my skin, something that made me want to rake my nails across it and never wash my neck again. I glanced over at Marlow, running through the schedule with the clown strippers. He was so much easier than The Changelings. The idea of going to Rutherglen, letting Jen and him protect me from Dave, and living a gilded little existence in one of their other estates seemed totally seductive right now—up until I had to ‘pay rent’ on my place within the court. It was trading one cage for another. I sighed and brushed my hand over my face when my phone rang.

  I fished it out with a frown on my face, just staring at the screen. It was as if I’d forgotten what it was or how to use it as it buzzed and buzzed in my hand. ‘Parentals’ the caller ID said. I’d inputted it a millennium ago, when I was something, someone else. If you’d asked me if I’d consider declining the call of my parents a week ago, I’d have laughed at you, but now…

  What… I thought. Why? What on earth will I have to say to you? But my thumb tapped the accept call button, and I lifted it to my ear.

  “Hey.”

  “Kira? Is that you?”

  It was my mum.

  “Um…yeah, of course it is. Who’d you expect?”

  “Oh, yes, well, how are you, darling? How was your flight?”

  We talked with the stilted weirdness of two people who have known each other well but don’t now. She seemed stiffly surprised that I’d gotten on a plane without saying goodbye, which was reasonable, I guessed. I’d lived under their thumb for my entire existence. It was understandable that she would miss me. But I didn’t.

  I was the true changeling, lurking in the form of their defective child. Growing up twisted by pain and disease, costing them money and time and energy, only to become something altogether alien. I wondered how Mum coped now, having one less person to care for. Did my parents reach for each other, now I was gone? Did they have time for whatever it was they did to connect? Or was Nan their remaining surrogate child? I knew I should feel guilty, homesick, something, but my eyes just kept jerking around the room, helplessly fascinated by everything that was going on, rather than focussing on the call.

  “Kira?”

  “I’m sorry, Mum, I’ve got to go.”

  “Oh, well—”

  And there it was. All that awkward emotion, just radiating down the phone line. I was being a bitch, and I knew that. She had no idea what I’d gone through, and I couldn’t tell her. She’d given me life, did her best to raise me right. But that knowledge sat side by side with what I now knew—I wasn’t her daughter. I looked around me, at this confusing bloody world, and knew no matter what, I was going to find my place in it.

  “This must be costing you a bomb. We’ll have to Skype or something next time.”

  “Yes, of course, dear.”

  “I love you.” Tears pricked my eyes as I said the words. I couldn’t have felt further away from her than I did now, but it was still somehow true.

  “I love you too, sweetheart.”

  I shoved the phone in my pocket after I’d ended the call and then turned around. Chase the story, Marlow had said. It was as good advice for an Alice as any. I raised my camera and went chasing.

  I’d walked up to the clown strippers, camera held high and found straight away they opened up to me. Eyes focussed on the lens, lips pouted slightly, eyes wide, until the collective of men and women standing there had a bizarre carnivalesque sexiness going on.

  “What are you guys doing in the show?” I’d asked as I took their photos.

  “The Rutherglen hired us for the opening sequence,” one woman said after there was a bit of side eye going on. “The band’s not too happy about it, but there’ll be some of us at the start of every performance for each of the bands, to tie the tours together.”

  They were fantastic to photograph. The insane costumes, kinda harlequin with lots of patterns and skin tight lycra, strategic cut outs to reveal taut flesh, those perfect faerie faces painted into elaborate masks. Two girls instinctively moved closer, entangling their slender arms, pressing their full pouts against the other’s.

  “The real draw is the after party,” a gloriously pretty man said, shouldering forward. He got a whole bunch of stink eye from the other dancers, but he didn’t seem to care. He crossed his arms over a well-muscled chest and smirked when he saw me take a look before shooting him with a wide aperture, his fellow performers relegated to a colourful blur behind him. “A meeting of several full courts, every night? I’m gonna get my dick fucked raw.”

  I caught that cocky smile just before he stepped back into line, the others giving him space reluctantly.

  “That’s if we get to go,” another man said. “Hartley already thinks we’re some kind of Rutherglen plant. I’m not even aligned to a court.”

  This was met with a lot of agreement and nodding.

  “So what are you hoping for by being part of this tour?” I said.

  “To find where I’m supposed to be,” a fabulous looking drag queen said. She had that unearthly quality only a man with the right bone structure and a deep understanding of makeup can achieve. “I’m sick of hustling on the edges and being anyone’s meat. It was bad enough dealing with homophobic dickheads with a hard on for queens sucking their dicks, but when I transitioned…” Her eyes went wide and empty, as if she could see it all too clearly. “They pick you off, like lions do gazelles. They swoop in, all beautiful smiles and even more beautiful bodies, and you’re thinking they’re angels or something.” Her focus sharpened abruptly. “Then all of a sudden, you’re in a cage in a fae bar, getting all the cum and power drained out of you until there’s barely a husk left. I want to know that won’t happen again. I want to wake up feeling safe, just for one damn day. But you’re powerful. Maybe you can put in a good word for me?”

  I just stared, the mental imagery she’d provided clouding my brain as several sets of eyes swung my way.

  “I wish I was. Seriously, I’m no more sure of things than you are. I transitioned days ago. I just talked to my mum, and it was like talking to a stranger on a bus or something. We made small talk, but I felt no real emotional connection. I’ve got no freaking clue what the deal with the guys is. Johnno’s been nice so far, but I…I don’t know if that’s because he wants to bone me or what.”

  It felt good to say the words out loud, to admit my fears, if even for a second, but it didn’t earn me any love.

  “Well, you’re in a whole lot better position than us,” one said. My fingers tightened around the camera as a dozen eyes looked me over flatly.

  They were right, I realised. I had landed in a pretty sweet situation, all because of how I smelled. There was something disorientating about that. Like who I was and what I’d done didn’t matter, I just had a quality that was in hot demand and here I was. And where was here?

  “So what are you hoping for?” I asked, clicking away as that made the increasingly frosty looks easier to bear.

  “What they have,” one of the women jerked her thumb at the workers around her. “They get to travel the world, get the protection of the whole court behind them. Up until you came along, I wanted to join the Concubines. The Hartleys are hot, and it’d be no chore servicing them. Now? I’d settle for something in wardrobe or catering.”

  “Not me,” the gorgeous looking guy I’d spoken to previously said. “You might be all that, but you don’t have what I got, and I heard they like a bit of dick on the down low.”

  “So you gonna help us or what?”

  How? I felt the weight of their collective gaze, their expectations, the prompt to fill the gap in conversation, but I had nothing useful to tell them. I mumbled something about mentioning it to the Hartleys, but I found it difficult to work out what I would say. What bargaining piece did I have to bring to the table?

  You know, a little voice said inside me, quickly followed by a kaleidoscope of images of me naked and entwined with the various members of the band. I shivered at that. From fear or anticipation, I was yet to work out. And I needed to wo
rk it out, all of it. I was adrift now, something that wasn’t an entirely comfortable process, so I turned a clear eye on the little world humming around me. If this was to be mine now, I wanted to get to know it a whole lot better.

  I walked into rooms and through doors, capturing what I saw. Eyes jerked up as they heard the shutter click, eyes followed me as I went, but few were friendly, that I realised. They just watched me pass with undue attention.

  Finally, I wandered out to what looked like a back dock, where several big burly guys stood around, having a smoke. They seemed to be waiting for something, because the truck in front of them had its back doors open and the cargo bay was empty and they weren’t moving.

  “Please, sir.”

  My camera was to my eye the minute I heard the pleading voice. It took me a little while to see where it came from, the slender form of the girl approaching slowly up the dock steps.

  “Form a line,” one man said, tossing his smoke away.

  He was a big guy, bigger even than Lucas, which was truly impressive. He had a long mane of thick brown hair, wore a black T-shirt stretched tight over a broad chest and a well broken-in pair of jeans hugged his hips. Jeans he was about to open. I quickly switched my camera over to silent shutter mode and then focussed the shot.

  There was something almost feral about the girl. Her hair shone gold in the low light, yet had a rumpled appearance that spoke of living rough, not deliberately tousled. She wore a ragged looking t-shirt and an old pair of black jeans, the dark colour hiding the dirt better.

  “Court convenes tonight after the show,” the roadie said as he drew a fucking massive dick out of his pants and gave the half hard length a few strokes. “You want to be a part of that? Looking to find a place? Show us what you’ve got.”

  The girl fell to her knees, looking up at the man, the camera catching the brief flash of resentment in her eyes before she reached out and took his cock in hand. His smile was slow, cocky as she licked the bulbous head, finding her slow, measured pace as she coated it with her saliva, then swallowed him down.