by Kat Kinney
Okay, so they might.
“Leave me out of your boy band drama. If you want to talk to him—”
“Little hard to do that when he’s barely responding to any of our texts. Cal’s worried.”
I channeled my resting bitch face. Chuckling, West opened the paper sack. Reader, I blame what happened next entirely on Violet. And that fat chocolate-glazed sucking her in like half-priced boots at a Black Friday sale.
I threw a furtive glance over one shoulder. “Look, I’m not getting in the middle of this. After what happened Sunday—”
“He and Dallas have always had their issues. This is different.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
West abruptly straightened, backing out the door. I whirled to see Ethan leaning against the wall.
“We were just—”
“Uh huh. You? Not so much with the espionage.”
Flipping him off, I spun back to the machines and focused on my rage pours. Death cappuccinos. Bitter espressos. Lattes that looked like Violet mauled them. It was so brutal one little girl, no joke, asked if her pumpkin spice latte was supposed to be a Zombie Pumpkin.
“Scary,” Ethan murmured in my ear, pocketing his phone.
“Um, death wish?” Grabbing the whip, I held it out in front of me like a taser. “You are so not posting that.”
“Pretty sure we’ve got something in the employee manual about terroristic threats on the clock.”
“Call it in, coffee boy, and you can pipe out six dozen Cool Whip ghosts by yourself tonight after close.”
“Savage.”
I scowled. A second later, my phone buzzed.
Darth Roast: Adding to the menu. #ZombiePumpkin
Followed by a heart emoji, which was so un-Ethan-like that for a second, I chewed my lip, unsure how to react. Ever since the revelation Ben had forced him to form a dependence on silver, things between us had been… off. He’d spent the last few days keeping to himself, working extra shifts, trying and utterly failing to hide that something was eating away at him.
The clink of cups and gargle of the espresso machine screamed in my ears. I glanced over. Ethan had his back to me, busy frothing milk.
I pulled out my phone.
Me: I don’t want to get in the middle. So I’m just going to eat my chocolate doughnut and pass along the message that your brothers are worried.
A minute later, my phone buzzed.
Darth Roast: it’s nothing. Go back to desecrating our fall specials
Shoving my phone in my apron pocket, I stuck out my tongue at his back and grabbed the next order. Freaking. Zombie. Pumpkins.
* * *
Saturday night came in a blur of security sweeps, sound checks and last-minute changes to our set list. We had a packed house. My stalker hadn’t let up with the texts. We’d spent all week doubling down on promo for tonight’s gig, banking on the hope he’d want his creeper ass in on the action. And once he showed up at the club? We would finally end this.
With an unofficial slogan of Keep Austin Weird, people in the Live Music Capital of the World took their funky hipster vibe to the extreme. Socks and sandals were totally a thing. Food trucks and e-scooters had their own cult following. Most of downtown had more dogs than children. And wicked body art was a rite of passage.
Austin was a city that loved its food, football and most of all, music. Country. Tejano. Hip hop. Hard rock. No matter if your audience worshipped the vegetarian omelettes at Kerbey Lane or BBQ at Sam’s, or if they bled burnt orange, Aggie maroon, or Sooner red, folks in Austin were chill, and loved live music.
“You need anything?” Ethan leaned against a wall in the cramped backstage area. His dark hair was swept up and off to one side, a fitted Radiohead t-shirt hugging his pecs. Add in the hipster-artist-glasses thing? Totally hot enough to jump.
“You, gazing up at me on stage in ten minutes like a total fanboy.”
“That’s a given.” He trailed a single finger up my bare arm to the leather choker that covered my claiming mark, eyes lingering on my matching corset. “You look amazing.”
Leaning in, I bit his earlobe. “You can show me how amazing after the set.”
“Count on it.” Ethan tugged at the strap on his wrist cuff.
I lowered my voice. “Everything okay?"
“Fine.” He pushed away from the wall. “I’m going to go help Cal do another sweep of the floor.”
The stage door clanged shut. I sank back against the wall just as someone banged out the bassline to Birdland on the exterior door. Propping it open, I let Daisy Addiction’s drummer, Eun-ji, and bassist, Shondra, back in. There was barely time for me to question the serious WTF face Shondra was throwing my way before an arm shot out over mine, jamming open the door. I rolled my eyes.
Our booking agent, Jake Vandegrift, was thirty-something and good looking if you happened to go for that frat boy, whoring his way through Daddy’s money look. Spoiler alert: I didn’t. His father owned nearly twenty properties in the downtown district, providing his son the means to drive a BMW and party away every weekend out at the clubs.
“Wow, Hailey.” He sniffed, eyelashes doing this rapid-fire thing like a moth about to meet its destiny with a porch light. As if we all couldn’t tell he’d been doing way more than shots tonight. “You look hot.”
Because, ugh. Brain bleach. Behind him, Eun-ji pantomimed sticking a finger down her throat while Shondra none-to-subtly rolled her eyes and pulled out her phone. Agent Cokehead collapsed onto a stool, too high to notice.
Shondra shot him the side eye. “Heard The Scream got in at Hole in the Wall last week.”
“Something opened up off the books. I’ve got other clients expecting me to pull strings for them, too. You girls understand how this business works.”
Subtle. And ugh. I wished I could say he was our first sleazy agent or manager. Clearly it was time to look for a new one. I exchanged a look with my bandmates just as a stagehand poked his head around the corner.
“Daisies, you’re on.”
Grabbing my guitar, I shoved past Jake to the stage.
The crowd roared, the lights momentarily blinding. Despite all the stress of the last few weeks, the hair rose at the back of my neck. Performing was a double-edged sword, the worst kind of high, one most of us in this business never stopped chasing. Daisy Addiction had built our following from nothing, from ugly nights opening for bigger bands where we finished out our set list while dodging beer thrown at the stage. I took nothing for granted. Not the fans. Not the hours of practice. Not my amazingly talented bandmates. And not the element of luck, so many other deserving groups never getting the break we had. I knew how fortunate we were to get to do something that we loved.
Tightening my high ponytail, I plugged in, and did a third recheck of my tuning. Layla hummed beneath my fingertips, her cold metal strings familiar to me as breath. Tucked below her neck, my cobalt-blue daisy tattoo swirled under the lights. I traced each petal, then raised my wrist to my lips for luck.
The floor was dark but I found Cal down near the front, phone out, recording. Ethan stared up at me, expression unreadable. I scanned the rest of the crowd, searching the sea of faces for anyone who stuck out. A girl with pink hair and a joker tattoo shouted to her girlfriend. Was she the blogger who’d interviewed Shondra? I was sure I’d seen them at two of our shows in the past six months. Did it mean anything? Stage left, a paunchy middle-aged dude with long, greasy hair met my eye and grabbed his junk. Asshole. I bared my teeth.
“Hayden—” Shondra hissed. “What’s the deal?”
I gripped the mic. “Hey, y’all. We’re Daisy Addiction. Thanks for coming out tonight. This is Don’t Call Me Pretty.”
I counted off and we dove into the intro. Pretty was a fast number I wrote last summer. Old-school bass. Killer guitar part, where Shondra sang back-up for me on vocals. In soundchecks we’d debated moving it later in the set, but with music order, you either went all in or went home.
Michelangelo saw angels trapped in blocks of marble. His calling was to carve until he set them free. Everywhere I went, lyrics clawed at the inside of my skull like bits of cut glass. Echoes of melodies. Jagged broken riffs. Fragments begging to be formed into a whole.
Gripping the mic, I closed my eyes and began to sing.
Pink prom dress,
White sneakers,
You know I’m not that girl.
I paint my nails black,
Rock like Joan Jett,
You think I want your world?
I kill all my own dragons,
So put away that sword,
And…
I held out the mic. The audience shouted in time with the lead-in to the chorus:
“Don’t… Call… Me… Pretty.”
The lights stuttered as I stepped back from the mic, launching into my guitar solo. My ears rang, the buzz from the crowd lighting me up. Standing up onstage performing music you wrote was pretty much like posting a naked selfie on social media and asking for feedback.
But in those moments your lyrics connected, watching a crowd gyrate in the background while you freed your notes to the world?
Like. Freaking. Sex.
I tore through the end of my guitar solo and stepped back up to the mic. The crowd went insane. Raw, wild energy roared through me like wildfire. I chanced a look down. Cal wore a shit-eating grin. Beside him, Ethan had his fists clenched at his sides, practically hyperventilating, like it was all he could do not to come up onstage and eat me alive.
The rest of the set passed in a blur. Backstage, Ethan and Cal helped pack up my gear.
“Could be your garden-variety creeper.” Cal rubbed his faux hawk. “But if one of your regular fans is a fang-head—”
“We need to know.” I ran a hand over my ponytail.
“I’ll check it out.” Cal pocketed his phone. “You two going out there?”
“Yeah.” Ethan laced his fingers through mine. “If this guy is gonna make a move, it’ll be now.”
Strobe lights illuminated a crush of dancers as I followed Ethan out onto the club floor. Bodies closed in around us as his thumbs circled my hips, pulling me into him so my back was flush with his front. Pressing a kiss to the nape of my neck, he slid a hand up, fingers splaying out across my stomach.
The electric pump of the music pulsed in my blood. His lips traced my throat, breath feathering across my skin at the edge of the leather choker. His hips began to roll in time with the beat, mine chasing his rhythm as I felt him thicken behind me.
“That set was wild.” Ethan bit my ear. “You completely killed it onstage.”
I tipped my head back, pressing a hot kiss to the column of his throat. “Yeah?”
“Hell yeah.”
His middle finger slowly circled the bare inch of skin between my corset and skirt. I arched my back, pressing into his touch. His hips rolled into mine, his scent surrounding me like a drug.
“I’m spreading you out on my bed the moment we walk through the door. Just you, that ponytail, those boots, and this.” His lips found the edge of the choker, tracing the half-moon crescent that claimed me as his.
“And if I can’t wait?”
I lifted my arms. Ethan’s hands skimmed the side of my breast, grazed the bare inch of skin above my hipbone, our bodies moving in time.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been so turned on. Seeing you control that stage, seduce the audience. You’re a complete badass when you sing. It’s freaking hot.”
The breath caught in my throat. I bent my lips to the scar just above his cuff, feeling him sway in place as our pulses synced.
And then he gripped the back of my neck, holding me in place as his tongue slid into my mouth. I shivered, tingling from my nipples to the tips of my toes, the hot pulse between my legs swollen and aching from the need for release.
“Hayden,” he growled, hands skimming up my sides. “I need to be inside you.”
My lips found his pulse point, the building pressure so intense I could barely stand it. I needed Ethan. Needed to feel his touch. Needed to feel him unleashed.
We stumbled into a dimly lit hall behind the bar. Ethan shouldered open a door marked Private, then bolted it behind us. Pinning me back against the wall next to the condom dispenser, he gripped my waist.
“This,” he trailed a finger down the front of my leather corset, “has been driving me insane for the past two hours.”
Biting his bottom lip, I tugged at the top of the bodice until the tips of my breasts spilled out over the cups. Pulling me to him by the waist, Ethan bent to take my exposed nipple into his mouth.
“God, yes.” My fingers threaded into his hair, nails scoring his back, dragging up his shirt. “Yes.”
Ethan slammed me back into the wall and I moaned, feeling each pull of his lips all the way down to my core.
“Door?” he mumbled, fumbling with his belt.
“Counter.” I bit his neck, wrapping my legs around his waist as he carried me over to the sink.
My hands slid beneath the hem of his shirt. Ethan growled at the loss of contact, eyes flaring wolf gold. I claimed his mouth in a savage kiss. His hand gripped the back of my neck, teeth finding the base of my throat as I opened the button fly of his jeans. His cock sprang free, thick and ready.
Hands braced at the hard muscles of his abs, I bit his pec. Ethan groaned, head falling back. I took the ring pierced through his right nipple in my teeth and tugged.
“Hell, Daisy,” he breathed, teeth gritted.
I worked my way lower. His eyes tracked me like prey. I outlined the tattoo below his left pec with my tongue—a black crescent moon with a dagger plunging vertically through its center. He growled. Lower. I stared up at him through my lashes, biting each taut ripple in his six-pack.
“Don’t know how much more of that I can stand.”
Here’s the thing. I wasn’t above throwing down a Tweetstorm or verbal dick-punch on the first guy who tried to jump in with the mansplaining. And just try to tell me I had to stop drinking Mexican Cokes because high-fructose corn syrup was one of the seven million things on this planet we now knew would eventually kill you. If I was into a guy, I wasn’t going to play coy about showing it.
I stroked his shaft, watching his eyes glaze. “Shut up.”
The music from outside pulsed and swelled. I lost myself in the stutter of Ethan’s breath, in the musky scent of his skin, and the pull of his fingers tangling in my hair.
By the time I finished, and he was bending me over the counter, both of us were way ready for round two. Our eyes locked in the cracked mirror as he tore open a foil packet.
“You ready?”
I felt him at my entrance and my pulse picked up. “Don’t hold back.”
He didn’t. Gasping when he entered me, I caught the edge of the sink. Ethan braced his arms on either side of mine, hot, hard muscle taut against my back, caging me in. Heavy-lidded, his irises blazed gold. He nuzzled my ponytail to one side, lips descending to suck hot kisses across my bare shoulders as I rose up on my toes.
I bit my lip, head falling forward, and received a nip to the base of the throat. My back arched, a flutter of pleasure snaking down my spine. He kissed the curve of my throat and I watched the tips of my breasts flush dark as rosebuds in the mirror.
I angled my head back, nuzzling his throat right where his scruff tasted like espresso and aftershave. Ethan caught my lips in a kiss, tongue sweeping through my mouth. The mirror provided a wide-angle view as he bit my neck and shoulders, palming me through the open top of my corset, each tug at my nipples twisting pulses of need down to my core. I could feel the
wolf rising in his blood, his dominance burning hot and feral as he thrust into me from behind. I exhaled, keening from the intensity.
I stared back at my reflection. Flushed cheeks. Dilated pupils. My ponytail trailed back and forth over the counter, slashing jaggedly in time with our joined bodies. Ethan hovered over me, the broad expanse of his shoulders dwarfing mine as his lips memorized the tempo of my pulse, counted every freckle across the span of my back and sucked kisses down the length of my spine. Possessing me. Surrounding me. Claiming me in every way.
“You’re mine, Hayden. You always have been.”
“Just. Like. That.” I braced myself against the wall. “Don’t stop.”
The beat from the club shifted to something darker, a hard, sadistic tempo that raised goosebumps across my bare back. Ethan gripped my wrists, holding my eyes in the glass. Hot tendrils of pleasure washed through my hips. I cried out. His arms tightened, locking us together. With a shudder, I fell.
When I came back to myself, music was pumping outside in the club. I blinked, seeing Ethan’s phone lit up on the counter next to the sink. It went silent. Started to buzz a second time.
“Ethan,” I slurred.
He straightened. “What—"
“Something’s wrong.” Shoving his phone at him, I disappeared into one of the stalls.
When I came out less than a minute later, he was scrolling through his messages, brow furrowed. Seeing me, he cursed. A glance in the mirror revealed why. Red marks covered my neck and shoulders.
“No time. We gotta go.”
My heart kicked in my chest. “What is it?”
“Your trailer’s on fire.”
Then
Ethan
I BEGAN TO RETHINK MY PLAN of walking the twenty miles to the hospital in Burnet sometime around the fourth hour. My head ached from colliding with the window frame. The glass working its way out of my fur had begun to itch like the devil. Most of the dirt had washed off in the first creek. But I was willing to bet they didn’t let kids in shredded, bloody Batman pajamas into the ER. Not the visitor’s entrance, anyway.
A truck approached. Slinking deeper into the grass, I shifted back to human. The eastern sky out towards Llano had lightened to a soft nectarine-orange. Using a sliver of pink granite, I scraped the latest round of glass shards from my arms and legs.