“Come on, Spook. If I can handle two lovers, I’m sure you can manage one.”
“It’s complicated, you know that,” he said through gritted teeth. “It’s not that I don’t want her —”
“She wants you. You want her. What’s so fucking complicated about that?” Xane raised his arms in frustration. When Spook shook his head, Xane slumped into the armchair. “This is fucking stupid.” He rested his elbows on his knees and leant forward with his head in his hands. “You’re a stubborn bastard, did I ever mention that?”
Spook turned away from him. He crossed to the bed and got under the duvet. He was not about to walk along the corridor and subject himself to another session of having his nerves flayed. Masochistic he wasn’t. Better he just slept and tried to figure out a solution in the morning. Maybe he could find a way to not be in her presence while they were recording, or at least, only in her presence in the company of others. It’d still leave him a raving screw-up, but…
Xane climbed onto the bed beside him and stretched out full length.
“What are you doing?”
“Going back to my room’s not really an option. I’m not about to spend the night with a single woman, Dani is still tense enough about Luthor.”
Riled, Spook sat up abruptly. He needed space, not someone breathing in his ear. “You’re not going to leave me alone, are you?”
Lips pursed, Xane gave his head a shake. “You can’t walk away from this one Spook. It’s time to trade in your ‘totally unavailable’ card for a ‘sexy shag-monster’ upgrade.”
Xane shoved him out of the bed. “Go, do her. Do her again. Do her until you can no longer stand up straight. Twenty paces down the corridor, she’s waiting for you.”
“A sex marathon isn’t going to solve anything.”
“Sex solves everything,” Xane remarked glibly.
Spook knew he didn’t believe that was the truth, even if he did resort to that method more often than not.
Xane rolled his eyes in dismay. “Fine, be dull. Don’t shag her. Talk to her. It’s not actually compulsory to dive in. I’m told it’s fine to dip your toes in first.”
Nice sentiment, but getting his libido to take note of that while he was within forty feet of Alle was another matter. He might arrive with the intention of having a quiet chat, but he wasn’t fool enough to believe they wouldn’t end up getting physical instead. And anyway, chatting had never been his forte. The guys conveniently liked to forget that English wasn’t his first language, even if his fluency level did rival some of the natives.
“I’m going to hurt you if you stand there prevaricating much longer,” Xane remarked. He remained sprawled upon the bed, with his hands clasped behind his head. He might resemble a lion at rest, but Spook knew from experience how fast the bugger could move. Xane was often described as a panther by the press, and he certainly had that sort of grace about his movement — as well as a deadly pounce.
“I’m counting,” Xane warned, though he appeared to be doing the reckoning in his head.
“Goddammit, Xane.”
“Five.”
“Shit!” Spook searched around for a T-shirt, and failed to spot one before Xane reached three. Blasted wanker wasn’t going to let him duck out of this one. Maybe that was a good thing. He didn’t know. He wanted Alle, but he still questioned the sense of it. Any replaying of his past would kill him. He’d barely survived first time around.
“Two.”
“OK, I’ll go.”
Xane nodded. He reached down into his pocket and offered the retrieved item. “Take it.”
“I don’t need —”
“Take it anyway. Better to be prepared.” Xane pressed the condom into his palm, and then rested a key card on top of it. “Remember, if you need a breather, just step back for a minute, but no running. Running isn’t going to solve anything. You want this lady, Spook. She’s a potential keeper, and god knows, you need one of those.”
Spook stared at the items in his palm as Xane encouraged him to curl his fingers around them. Maybe it’d all work out, but he was half tempted to climb back into the bed with Xane. At least Xane was predictable.
“You’re not a coward, Spook, and I’m not an easy option. For fuck’s sake, man, after all this time — move on!”
TEN
Spook didn’t linger in the hallway. If he stopped outside the door and thought too hard for even a moment, he knew he’d flee into the night. Some decisions were tough, but maybe, if he went ahead and made this one, the outcome wouldn’t be as bad as he feared. Perhaps he’d discover all the stress was for nothing, and the ache in his pants could be pleasantly relieved without the sky falling down.
The lights on the door lock mocked him as he swiped Xane’s key card. Three fucking attempts — seriously, did everything about this have to be difficult?
Alle opened the door from the inside. She had on one of Xane’s silk shirts. The black fabric barely reached her thighs, and unless his memory was faulty, she wasn’t wearing panties beneath. Seeing her like that, in another man’s clothing, winded him like a sucker punch to the guts. It ought to be his clothes she was wearing, not Xane’s. He didn’t want to find traces of his friend’s cologne on her skin — didn’t want to smell anything but her when they cuddled up close.
“Hey,” she said, staring at him as if she couldn’t quite believe he was facing her.
“Can I come in?”
“Sure, it’s not my room.” She led the way into the dimly lit interior. Only a single corner lamp spilled any light into the environment. It made ripples in the silk shirt as she moved and gave her skin a bronze glow. Alle settled on the sofa, her legs tucked beneath her, while Spook headed for the bottle of vodka Xane had left on the coffee table. A nice stiff drink was what he’d needed for most of the night. Spook unscrewed the cap, and briefly contemplated just upending the bottle and tipping the lot down his throat. If he was comatose, he wouldn’t have to deal with anything. Only, now that he was here, maybe he did actually want to fix this.
She wanted him, even after he’d been cruel, and the God’s honest truth was — he wanted her too.
He settled for a triple measure.
“I thought Xane would be with you,” Alle remarked.
Spook turned to her, holding his drink to his lips. “Did you want him to be here?”
“Not particularly.” She shook her head, making the long curls bounce. The light played within the strands, illuminating various shades of copper. “I just thought, since this is his room…”
“He’s using mine, and probably making a horrid mess of it by having extreme phone sex with his girlfriend.” He cocked his head. “Or boyfriend. It could be either. Maybe both of them, I don’t know.” With Xane, you could never be sure.
Alle’s brows neatly furrowed, forming a V at the centre of her forehead. “I thought he was joking about having two lovers. Does he fuck them both together too?”
Spook shrugged. “I’m not sure. It’s probably on his agenda, if he hasn’t done it already.” Why did it feel as if she’d asked that question just so that she could pronounce fuck in a particularly evocative and emphatic manner?
“I guess he’s been taking on your share of things. You know — the whole sex, drugs and rock and roll lifestyle. Is it true Black Halo are currently based in Sweden because Ash is undergoing a major drugs detox?”
“Yes, but not because he’s a druggie. He was poisoned.” Why were they talking about this stuff — things that were of no consequence to their relationship?
Because, he realised, seeing her lips set into a contemplative pout, she was trying to set him at ease in order to avoid a repeat of what had happened downstairs.
Spook took a seat on the floor, rather than beside her. It was easier to relax if he wasn’t looking directly at her. He rested his back against the sofa, bent his legs, and rested the vodka glass against one knee.
Xane had bought the good stuff, aged in the traditional Swedish way. The liqui
d hit his tongue, waking his taste buds. It left him pleasantly tingly all the way down to his toes, which curled against the carpet.
Alle touched his shoulder. “Want me to dry your hair?” she asked. The strands still lay damp against his bare shoulders.
“No. It’s fine as is. It just goes fluffy if you blow dry it.”
She sat forward with her hands clasped over her knees. “Why are you here, Spook? If it’s just because Xane forced you…”
From the corner of his eye he saw her worry her lip. The poor thing had been bitten to death tonight.
“Where do I stand, Spook? What I mean is — if you still feel the way you did earlier, then do we really have anything to talk about?”
They did, but it wasn’t an easy conversation to have. He was beginning to see the appeal of Xane’s ‘sex is always the solution’ response to relationship dilemmas. Sex didn’t have to involve words that could be misinterpreted. It didn’t involve complicated explanations of past events he didn’t want to revisit. It concentrated on the here and now. On pleasure and possession and most importantly, giving someone you loved a good time.
Yes, he was old fashioned like that. He believed in love being an important factor, even if it was the sort of love that only lasted a few minutes.
“Come down here.” He reached over and enfolded the back of her hand in his, then drew it, and her towards him. Alle shimmied off the sofa to land beside him, but he urged her forward a little and gave himself a quarter turn so they were facing. “Xane hasn’t forced me to do anything. He just presented the options, and in the grand scheme of things, I’d rather spend the night with you than him. He’s a total duvet hog.”
Alle peeped up at him, lips tightly pursed, but a glimmer of hope shone in her eyes.
“I still don’t know that I’m the right man for you, Alle. I’m a mess. I’m not going to pretend otherwise. Nor have I been terribly honest with you.”
“About it all being about the pain? It’s OK to like inflicting it, Spook. I like you dishing it out.”
He lifted his glass, held it between them a moment, before taking another sip. “It’s more that I’ve deliberately mislead you over what I meant. Yes, I get a kick out of inflicting pain in a sexual sense, but there’s stuff in my past that… Well, it did a lot of damage, and it’s not going away.”
“Stuff that’s tied up with sex?”
He nodded tersely, bracing himself for questions about his past. The knots in his guts gradually unravelled when she didn’t demand to know the whole story. Xane had been right on that score. They didn’t need to explore the blackest, most hurt-ridden corners of his soul tonight. All they needed to do was accept that the attraction between them was real and agree to explore it a little. However, he did catch her looking at the scars that ran the lengths of both of his fore-arms.
Spook turned his arms upwards so that she could see them properly.
Alle drew a finger along one of the silvery lines. “What happened?”
“I didn’t cut deep enough,” he said, trying to avoid lacing the words with too much emotion.
“Did you really want to die?”
He resorted to the vodka again to fill the moment of awkwardness. “Yeah,” he agreed, once he’d swallowed another slug of fire. “But I don’t any more. It was a long time ago, before Black Halo even existed.”
She nodded, accepting his words as truth, then curled her fingers around his to extract the glass from his grip. She set it aside on the floor. “Will you kiss me?” she asked.
Spook shook his head, choosing to speak only when a veil of sadness slipped over her face. “Not yet. You smell of Xane. You’re in his clothing.” He eyed the black shirt vexatiously, eyes narrowed. “Take it off.”
“Then you’ll kiss me?”
“I’ll do something.”
Her mouth formed a smirk. “How good a something?”
A smile stretched across his lips too. “Depends how good the view is.”
“Cheeky,” she slapped his knee. Then bit her lip and looking sorry.
Spook spread his legs, so there was space for her to slide into. “Come here,” he beckoned.
Alle shuffled into the space on her knees. Her gaze fastened upon his fingers as he unfastened each of the tiny buttons at the front of the shirt. After the first five, it was loose enough to fall from her shoulders, revealing soft, milky skin, dappled by pale freckles. The black fabric pooled in the creases of her arms. Spook stuck to the task of unfastening every button, only allowing himself to feast on the sight of her once the shirt lay in a heap on the far side of the room.
The lady was gorgeous. He thought so, and his cock definitely agreed. It was good to know they were of one mind. Spook drew her forward, curving his hand around the back of her neck as he delivered on his promise. He didn’t kiss her exactly, at least, not in the way she so clearly wanted him to. Rather, he brushed the two surfaces together, keeping the caresses whisper light, and refusing to be drawn into anything deeper and steamier. At the same time, he explored her shoulders with a feathery touch, and then swept lower until the centres of his palms circled over her nipples. She shivered, and he pinched; claiming the steepled points between thumbs and fore-fingers.
“Ah!” She breathed hard into his mouth as a little explosion of pain also caused her to shiver.
Spook tangled his fingers in her hair and pulled, making her arch her back, and offer her breasts up to him. He claimed them with his mouth, and then alternated been sucking hard and pinching harder, while her sighs goaded him into greater effort. Yes, he did want this. She’d set him alight the moment he first set eyes on her, and that desire had never faded. Maybe they could make it work, and have something good together. He just couldn’t quite eradicate all his doubts.
Still, he could try. She was here — definitely willing, and definitely eager. The scent and taste of her skin intoxicated him.
The tips of her nipples were soon red, and her breath began to catch along with every slow pull. Still, he knew how important it was to keep things properly mixed up, sharp in one moment, and feather light the next. Too much pain and she’d hit sensory overload, but nor did he want to keep the gas turned down too low.
He blew on the reddened peaks in order to cool their fever.
Alle’s head hit the floor. Her shoulders followed. Spook covered her with his body, so their hips aligned. Finally, he gave in and kissed her poor worried lips until they were red from something other than her own teeth marks. Their tongues danced to the same rhythm as their hips. It wasn’t enough to merely be close; they were sharing one breath, while desperately clinging on to one another, trying to find some way to get closer.
It was only when Alle shoved her hands inside his lounge pants that Spook decided that lingering too long in one place might not be such a good idea, because the lady was more sensation junkie than any sort of submissive. Her teeth scraped the curve of his chin as he lifted his head. Then she licked a line down his throat, over his Adam’s apple.
“I want to touch you. I want to explore every damned inch of you.” She dug her nails into the cheeks of his arse.
Spook captured her hands and decided maybe she was simply set on provoking him, because aside from a little token protest, she didn’t fight over him dictating terms. “My turn first. Your turn is only when I say it is.”
She pouted and attempted to plant a kiss mid-way down his chest. “That hardly seems fair. I think I should be allowed to massage all my most favourite bits.”
If she did, he’d climax in seconds, and probably so hard there’d be no chance of a reprise until a week on Thursday.
Instead, Spook chose to move himself out of reach. He reclaimed the glass of vodka she’d taken from him earlier. This time he didn’t raise it to his lips, but dribbled the cold liquid into her navel.
Alle squeaked in surprise as the alcohol hit her. Spook leaned in and supped it from the indent of her belly button. She squirmed at the tickle of his tongue, but not so
much that she set rivulets rolling across her belly. Spook refilled the well a few times, before drawing patterns on her abdomen with his tongue, and winding a sensual pathway down to her pussy.
Funny, time could dull so much, but he knew how to do this as if he were still well practised.
The first taste of her was definitely the sweetest. Leastways, he believed that until he took another taste, and another. It took far too much effort to pull himself away from her. He’d forgotten how addictive the taste of a woman could be. No wonder the guys were forever buried between various ladies’ thighs.
“Turn over, Alle. Get on your knees.” She was less likely to cause trouble on all fours, where her limbs were needed for balancing. That, and he admitted to a certain fascination with her arse. Its soft and peachy curves cried out for a nice scarlet blush.
Impishly, she waved her naked rear. Taunting him as if to say, go on then. I dare you. No, I double… triple… quadruple dare you.
“Goading people isn’t a very pretty behaviour,” he remarked.
She clucked her tongue. “I’m not goading people, only you.” She wriggled her arse a little more, but when that failed to get a response, she inched backwards until she collided with his loins.
A long expressive curse left Spook’s lips in advance of him even processing the notion of retreat. And then all rational thought migrated to his toes as she started a raw bump and grind against his cock that left him so heated, he was sure certain bits of him were genuinely on fire.
Damn her. “St-stop it,” he croaked, trying to still her by grasping her hips. Only that didn’t quite work out how he’d anticipated because all the moving about on his knees somehow caused his lounge pants to snag and drag the elastic down his hips. His cock took no time at all to rear above the waistband and find itself a nice cosy resting place between the plump cheeks of her arse.
“Mmmm,” she crooned. “Mmmnn… Are you bare? Christ, you are, you’re bare. Oh, that’s so good. Closer, Spook, I want to feel your dick. I want you inside of me, fucking me hard.” She flicked her hair backwards, so the red curls rested upon her back.
BANGED: Rock Stars, Bad Boys & Dirty Deeds Page 91