by Shari Copell
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
EPILOGUE
SHARI COPELL HANGS OUT AT:
Wild Angel: A Rock’n Tapestries Novel
Copyright © 2014 by Shari Copell. All rights reserved.
Editor: Tara Chevrestt
Cover: Kerry Jesberger
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems, copied to any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the author. You must not circulate this book in any format.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the point of acquisition and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
In Loving Memory of
Victor C. Bish
May 2, 1943 - October 10, 2013
We miss you, dude.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First and foremost, this book is for those of you who shed tears while reading Rock’n Tapestries. I love a happy ending too. Wild Angel is my attempt to put the universe back into alignment.
My thanks to Kerry Jesberger, who designs the most awesomest covers ever.
And to my daughter Jaren Jesberger, who is a Punnett square genius.
My husband Gordon, who seems to have a data file in his head about everything guitars and music, right down to the type of wood used to make certain guitars. And he’s a damn fine beta-reader too.
My beta-readers Amy Tiracorda, Debbie Saraceni, Kathy Moore, Lisa Dale, Allison Vasquez, Lori Duval-Robertson, and LaDonna Pigg. You ladies are worth your weight in gold.
Dave Piccirillo, who patiently answered all my questions about Les Paul guitars.
Tara Chevrestt, my editor and head ass-kicker.
My humble thanks to Lydia Gavin, AKA Lyd Vicious, who is the real deal. Lydia was the guitarist/singer with Aroarah and First Class Citizen. She was kind enough to give me some insight into what it’s like to be a female rocker in a male-dominated profession.
CHAPTER ONE
Magic happened when Nicks Sorenson closed her eyes and stopped thinking. She fused with the Les Paul guitar as her fingers flew across the ebony fretboard. It was strangely intimate when she found her groove like that, as though the guitar were a lover.
She wore the Les Paul low, pressed against her thighs. Tipping her hips forward, she tried to catch the buzz from the chords she played, tried to get the solid guitar body to bang against her clit. The only person who knew she masturbated by guitar was Charm Newell, the bass player for her band Wild Angel. The willowy blonde was in her own zone as she plucked the strings of her black Fender jazz bass.
Shuddering through an orgasm, Nicks looked down at the crowd of men gathered at the foot of the stage at Tapestries, the bar her parents owned in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It was a heady thing to come in front of them, especially when they didn’t have a clue what she was doing.
Wild Angel played every Friday night at Tapestries if they wanted to. Though it was one of the perks of being the owners’ daughter, this group of women didn’t ride anyone’s coattails. They were good and they knew it, rocking as hard as any band in Pittsburgh. They hadn’t been playing that long, but they already had a small group of diehard fans, mostly men.
Nicks turned to their drummer Pip Del Torres. The girl was an amazing tattooed tornado, flawless as she laid down a beat for them. They were about to start into the guitar solo for their original song Shut Up and Bang Me. Her bandmates knew what to do.
With a quick nod at Charm, Nicks threw her shoulders back and shoved her guitar—and her pelvis by proxy—into the faces of the men standing in front of her. It was meant to intimidate, to get them all to blink and move back in the face of such awesome goddess power.
And all of them did, but one.
That asshole Stone Jensen, lead guitarist for Heavy Remedy, another Pittsburgh band and Wild Angel’s biggest rival. In fact, he took a step toward her.
There was no fucking way Nicks was going to let him get away with that. He was on her turf now. She walked to the corner of the stage and glared at him. His eyes smoldered in the shadows as his lips curved into a smirk.
Pea-brained, knuckle-dragging, arrogant, half-wit dickhead.
She trained pinpoint focus on the long, wavy black hair framing a sinfully angular face. It was safer that way. His dark eyes and full lips would be her undoing if she dared to look at them. As it was, she nearly forgot her place in the solo and had to reboot her brain.
She recovered, cocked a hip at him, and pushed the tobacco-sunburst Les Paul out in front of her. She was not going to be the first one to look away. “Suck it, Jensen!” she shouted over the music. It was the best she could do while she was playing. He was too far away to hit with anything.
The grin that crossed his face pissed her off even more. He licked his lips as those dark eyes burned a hole right through her. He didn’t have any right to be so goddamned sexy. She gripped the pick and swung at the strings in her anger, busting the crowd’s eardrums with the chord she’d just struck.
“Fuck you, douchebag!” She was just picking now, trying to get a reaction out of him. The crowd cheered her on. They knew who he was, knew of the rivalry between the two guitarists. She flipped him the middle finger and turned to the two women she loved most in this world.
“Here we go, my awesome pussies!” She ended the song with a leap into the air and a soul-shattering E-chord.
“If that didn’t leave you boys spurtin’, you ain’t got a cock,” Nicks said into the mic. “Go clean the jizz out of your shorts and get yourselves a fucking drink. Wild Angel will be back in a few.”
Stone Jensen was glad he’d worn his loose Levi’s tonight. Watching Nicks Sorenson on stage made his cock so hard it hurt. She was close enough that he could see sweat beading on her forehead. The delicious curve of her bottom lip made him dizzy. Her guitar strap occasionally brushed over one nipple, yet both of them were hard, visible beneath her black spandex tank top. His fingertips itched to coax them even higher and tighter than they were.
Fuck.
Nicks Sorenson. He’d never heard of her, scoffed when others told him she was a genius on guitar. Wild Angel had apparently been honing their skills in her parents’ garage, hidden away from all eyes until that day they’d exploded into his consciousness with all the subtlety of dynamite. He’d first seen them at a small festival in downtown Pittsburgh the previous summer. All of them were seventeen then, a gorgeous noisy trio of girls playing at being rock stars. Or so he’d thought.
He was surprised when they turned out to be excellent musicians. They soon had a crowd of slack-jawed men standing at the base of the stage platform that day, including him. He’d been unable to tear his eyes away from their lead guitarist. Nicks. What the hell is there about her? he’d thought as he watched her play. Jealousy and admiration had oozed up inside him. She was a natural, one of those lucky people who made it look easy. And he resented her for it.
It was jealousy, pure and simple. She was a better guitarist than he was. He’d had the Pittsburgh spotlight to himself for several years. Everyone said he was the master of his craft and he believed them. At the age of twenty-four, he stood in on occasion for the bigger acts when they played at the Consol Energy Center. Stone Jensen had even been mentioned in Rolling Stone magazine once or twice. Then Nicks happened, and his life hadn’t been the same since.
He’d done then what any respectable guitar god would’ve done. He denigrated her by calling attention to her gender. “A guitar-playing pussy,” he’d told anyone who’d listen. “She should be sucking my dick instead of assaulting our ears.”
Unfortunately, the musicians in Pittsburgh were a tight group. The things he’d said had gotten back to her as soon as they’d left his mouth. The few times they’d been in the same space hadn’t been friendly. In fact, she nearly nutted him with a tuner in the Guitar Center on Park Manor Boulevard once. It’d taken three store employees to hold her back.
He took another drink and nodded to himself. She was fucking magnificent. He really wished he’d gotten the chance to meet her properly.
All he could do now was watch her from afar, and watch her he did. He got an eyeful of lovely round breasts held tight by the racer-back tank top. If she were over five feet tall, it was only by an inch or two. Long honey-brown hair swirled around her as though it had a life of its own. Her eyes reminded him of a tiger-eye gemstone when the PAR can lights hit them. His brains fell out when she smiled. He’d get on his knees and beg if he could get her alone for five minutes, just to talk.
Jesus Christ. It wasn’t just her physical form that drove him apeshit, it was the way she played that damned axe. How the hell did she make it sound sexual like that?
The primal noises she coaxed from her guitar made him ache to put both hands on the blades of her naked hipbones and slam her with solid thrusts. He wanted to claim this pint-sized prodigy as his own. He wanted to drive the breath from her body with hot kisses. Wanted it so bad he could taste it. He hated that this talented woman made him want to beg for one kind word.
It’s your own damned fault, Stoney. You are one stupid fuck.
He tipped the beer bottle up to his lips as he watched Nicks make slobbering monkeys out of the men standing in front of the stage. That sexy shit was well aware of the effect she had on men. He tried not to smile as she teased them mercilessly with every curve of that luscious body. Every dick up there was hard as a rock, but it didn’t cause him any jealousy. They would never be enough for her.
She needed someone to play her the way she played that goddamned Les Paul. Hard and fast, with expert fingers. And he knew without doubt he was that man. He needed to get close to her, just once, to convince her. He promised himself the first thing out of his mouth would be an apology for insulting her.
You don’t know it yet, but you and I are gonna be a thing. A big thing.
He nearly stopped breathing when she moved to his end of the stage and looked right at him. He’d thought he was invisible in the crowd. She played to him, taunting him. He loved every minute of it.
“Suck it, Jensen!” she’d shouted.
He would’ve traded three years of his life to do just that. To hold her against him and run his tongue up and down her sweet slit.
Anytime, baby doll.
The expression on her face as he returned her stare was one part anger, one part confusion. Clarity tickled the underside of his scrotum. She doesn’t hate me as much as she thinks.
Nicks tore her gaze away from his and finished the song with an athletic leap. After exchanging pleasantries with a couple of guys near the stage, she took her guitar off and carefully leaned it into its stand.
He couldn’t help but notice the faint outline of her pussy in tight jeans when she turned around. Thought swirled down the drain as his mouth went dry.
She stepped off the stage and headed in his direction. His heart picked up the pace. Please, please. Let her be coming to talk to me.
He couldn’t have been more wrong. She slammed hard into his shoulder, nearly making him drop his beer. She turned at the same time he did and...
Man, if looks could kill! It only fueled the fire centered between his legs.
Stone Jensen turned around and set his jaw, staring at the silent guitar onstage. He could have his pick of any woman in Pittsburgh, but no other woman would do. He wanted—and would have—Nicks Sorenson.
CHAPTER TWO
You’ll hear it for sure if your husband sees you laughing. Chelsea Sorenson bit her lip and made a hasty retreat to the back room when Wild Angel took a break.
“I see that smile, and I know why it’s there.” Tage’s hands on her shoulders caused her to jump. “I don’t think you should let Nicks see it though. It’ll only encourage her.”
She turned and stepped into his embrace. “Laughing at the things Nicks says makes me the worst mother ever, doesn’t it? I can’t help it. The guys follow her around like puppies, and she couldn’t care less.”
“You wouldn’t let any of the other kids get away with language like that. Just sayin’.”
“You see things that aren’t there.”
“If only that were true, Chels.” There was an edge to Tage’s tone. There was always an edge whenever they spoke of Nicks.
He was irritating, but she knew he was right. She probably wouldn’t let any of her and Tage’s other four children get away with that. But this was... Well, this was Nicks they were talking about.
She tried not to treat her eldest daughter any differently than she did her four children with Tage—Reese, Lindsay, Aimee, and T.J.—but it didn’t always work. She was aware on a subconscious level that Nicks’s genes were straight from the rock-and-roll jungle. She pushed and prodded, encouraging her beautiful daughter to be a rock star like Asher Pratt, her biological father, had been in his heyday. It wasn’t something she felt compelled to apologize for. Asher had not gotten the chance to take his talent to the next level. Chelsea was going to do everything in her power to see that his daughter got the opportunity he’d missed. She kept those thoughts to herself though.
Nicks was dying to take Wild Angel on tour up and down the east coast. It was unfortunate that she was nearly nineteen and starting her senior year of high school. The girl had struggled academically right from the start. Her teachers said she seemed distracted, overly excited, and had a short attention span.
The decision to make her repeat second grade broke Chelsea’s heart and only seemed to make things worse. Not only did she continue to flounder in school, Nicks developed a stutter. A bad one.
The same classmates that used to invite her to birthday parties turned on her then, bullying her to the point that the girl could barely sleep. Chelsea used to rock the sobbing chi
ld against her, night after night, her own heart shattering into a million pieces at the cruelty.
And of course, the teachers and specialists at the school had their expert opinions.
Special Education classes! ADHD! Get her on medication immediately!
Chelsea pursed her lips, feeling the agony all over again as she leaned against Tage. Her daughter’s teachers had been blind assholes back then. She was glad she’d ignored them. Nicks was “getting it”, just not in the way anyone imagined.
Desperate didn’t even begin to describe how Chelsea felt as she watched her delicate child withdraw into herself. On a whim and running out of options, she’d shown her daughter Asher’s black Fender Stratocaster the summer before she entered fourth grade. She would never forget how Nicks reached out to run her fingers over the strings, tentatively at first, then with purpose when she heard the magic noise it made. She’d looked up, mouth open in astonishment, lips finally curving into a smile of wonder.
She sat up straight, a fire in her eyes, quivering with excitement as her hands wandered over the strings. The Strat was too big for her but Chelsea let her have it whenever she wanted it. The girl learned to focus. The guitar helped her wild angel settle down.
Nicks picked up some things on her own with the instrument, but when she started taking guitar and singing lessons, Chelsea knew there was such a thing as rock-and-roll DNA. Her daughter had it in spades, a final gift from her father. The stutter all but disappeared when Nicks sang. It finally went away altogether.
Tage’s disapproval was limited to scowls as the girl excelled at the guitar, singing, and her grades improved. She was smiling more, talking so much she sounded like an auctioneer. Nicks began to interact with her young siblings. What could he say to that? Their daughter had discovered the one thing that kept her from stumbling in front of everyone.