by Desiree Holt, Lisabet Sarai, Lily Harlem, Elizabeth Coldwell, Wendi Zwaduk, Imari Jade
“Walk with me,” I chanted, Stefan joining me with the low harmony. “Walk with me through the garden.”
Jake hit a power chord, then charged into the solo. I’d heard it so many times over the years, but this was like the first time all over again. He wasn’t just copying what Mark did, he was adding a little flourish here, a run of notes there that stamped his own, fresh mark on what had come before.
When the last notes died away, Stefan gave a subtle nod to the rest of us to bring the song to an end. There wasn’t any question in my mind that we’d found our new member, and I was sure the others felt the same. Even Paul, who’d initially bristled at Jake’s brash American tones, was beaming with delight. Still, there were things we needed to discuss before we came to our final decision.
“Jake, could you step outside for a moment, please?” Stefan said.
“Sure.” Jake slung his jacket over his shoulder and left the room.
Once he’d gone, Stefan asked us, “So, what did everyone think?”
“Do you really need to ask?” Paul stepped out from behind his drum kit, linking his fingers together and stretching his arms till his knuckles cracked. “When was the last time we hit a groove like that?”
“Yeah, the kid’s got it,” Davey chipped in.
Stefan turned to me. “What about you, Aimee?”
I think he’s perfect, I wanted to say. Instead, I phrased my words more carefully. “He could be really good for us. He’s what, twenty-six? I know that’s quite a bit younger than us, but it could help expand our fan base.”
“Yeah.” Paul sounded enthusiastic. “Just think of it, loads of hot twenty-something girls getting into the band. Some of whom will be looking for an older, experienced man to show them the ropes…”
“And the nipple clamps and the riding crop, knowing you,” Davey commented.
Before the two could descend into one of their regular bouts of amiable bickering, Stefan silenced them by saying, “Okay, so if we’re all agreed, I’ll bring Jake back in here and let him know he’s the new guitarist.”
We nodded our general approval. A moment later, Jake was ushered back into the room, biting his lower lip in a nervous gesture.
“Well, thanks very much for coming today, Jake,” Stefan said, his demeanour making me think of Paul’s earlier reference to the TV talent show, where contestants were led to believe they’d be going home by the host, who strung out their agony before letting them know they’d made it to the next stage. “I have to let you know…you got the job!”
“Seriously?” It took a good thirty seconds for the news to sink in, then Jake was hugging each of us in turn, exclaiming, “Thanks, you guys, this is awesome!” over and again.
When he took me in his arms, it was as though I’d received a static shock. All the little hairs on my arms stood up, and the electric thrill was echoed by one deep between my legs. The look Jake gave me as we broke the embrace suggested he’d felt it, too.
It was a warning sign, and one I needed to heed. A one-sided crush I could deal with. One that was reciprocated was something altogether more dangerous.
* * * *
Things moved quickly once Jake came on board. A meeting had to be arranged with our management team, so he could sign the contract that would outline his role within the band, the share of the money he would make from the tour we were about to undertake and what he could expect in terms of writing and recording royalties for future albums. We had to think about new publicity shots featuring Jake, and get our official website updated with his photo and bio. Martine was, as Paul put it, “running round like a blue-arsed fly” getting the story about our new band mate out to the music press, radio stations and newspaper gossip columns. It left barely any time for the all-important rehearsals before we flew out to Chicago for the new first date on the tour.
Even in the limited time we had together, though, it was obvious Jake was a perfect fit for the band, in terms of vocal style and musical ability. More importantly, we all seemed to get on. When you’re spending months on the road, locked into a schedule that takes you from hotel room to arena to tour bus day after day, with very little time off, it can be very easy for people to get heartily sick of the sight of each other. Nothing in our initial contact with Jake suggested that might quickly become a possibility. He would never understand all the in-jokes that peppered Paul and Davey’s conversation—half of them continued to go over my head, even after all the years I’d known the two of them—but he was funny, good company, and he could fight his corner in any argument.
I still didn’t want to admit to myself quite how handsome I found him, or examine too closely the feeling that he was equally as attracted to me. After leaving Mark for Stefan, I’d sworn never to get involved with anyone else. I loved Stefan too much to cheat on him, and I still regretted treating Mark so badly. Jake had been moved to become a musician by the songs on Same Destination. He couldn’t have known then how those songs had been based on all the intrigue of the tangled relationship between Mark, Stefan and myself, or that he would one day find himself in a rehearsal studio in West London, preparing to perform those songs in front of a sell-out crowd of eighteen thousand in less than a week’s time.
He couldn’t know, either, that I was already scribbling lyrics in the notebook I carried everywhere, inspired by my initial reaction to him.
“First sight is insight,
Telling me when something’s right,
Won’t sleep alone tonight…”
I’d always found that when my muse came out to play, as it had with a vengeance since Jake’s arrival, I felt more horny than usual. Though I ached for Stefan to fuck me, we were working stupidly long hours in rehearsal, and when we got home, we were too exhausted to do anything more than flop on to the bed and fall asleep within minutes.
Working late into the night, we started kicking around ideas for the surprise cover version we always slotted into our encore. We always left this till right at the end of the rehearsal process, once we were happy we had a tight, professional set of tunes and could start to relax and have fun. Jake, noodling on his guitar, picked out the riff to the Don Nix classic, Goin’ Down, and within moments the boys were playing around with it. I loved the song, but it was much better suited to Stefan’s deeper vocal range than my own.
Spotting the opportunity to grab a relatively early night for once, I caught Stefan’s eye and mouthed, “I’m off home, if you don’t need me?”
He took his fingers from the frets of his bass long enough to blow me a little kiss. I slipped silently out of the room, leaving them to their jamming.
An unpleasant drizzle was falling as I emerged on to the deserted streets of Westbourne Grove. Fortune was smiling on me, as a black cab turned the corner, its yellow light shining to indicate it was available. Once I’d hailed it to the kerb, I gave the driver our address in Holland Park. At this time of night, I knew I’d be home in less than ten minutes.
The cabbie, middle-aged and bull-necked, glanced at me in his rear-view mirror. “’Ere, has anyone ever told you you look like the bird in that band? What do they call them…?” He racked his brain, searching for the name.
“Sweet Lies?” I smiled. “Yeah, I get that all the time.”
When he dropped me off at the house, I was looking forward to making myself a warming mug of hot chocolate and curling up in front of the TV to wait for Stefan’s return, even though I knew I’d be asleep when he finally made it home.
But while searching through my bedside drawer, looking for the soothing overnight foot treatment I liked to slather on when I’d been on my feet all day, my fingers instead curled round one of my favourite sex toys. Discreet yet powerful, it was shaped at the tip to resemble a dolphin. I’d picked it up on a tour to Japan back in the days when all you could find in London sex shops were vibrators made from six inches of boring beige plastic, and it was still going strong. Stefan might not be around to pleasure me tonight, but the daring dolphin would make a mor
e than adequate substitute in his absence.
All thoughts of a hot drink and the late-night film forgotten, I climbed on to the bed. Where there was a vibrator, there was lube, and I doused the toy generously with the sticky stuff. Even before I switched it on, I knew the fantasy I would use to help me come.
In my mind, I was backstage in a club in New York’s Alphabet City, a venue we’d played on our first American tour, when we were still trying to establish ourselves. The place had been a real dive, with carpets so sodden with beer your shoes stuck to them as you walked, and huge, scuttling cockroaches in the bathrooms. But something about its sleazy ambience made it perfect for the fantasy.
The green room had a rickety table where the bands’ rider was left—in those days, the record company had splashed out on nothing more fancy than a crate of beer and a couple of plates of chicken wings—but in the fantasy, the room was deserted and the only thing on the table was me. A shirtless man came to join me, his bare chest gleaming with sweat.
He was no one I knew, just a face in the crowd. Someone I’d picked out for a brief, anonymous fuck that would be forgotten when I moved on to another city, another lover. He gazed at me. I gazed at him. There was no need for words. Lying there, sprawled on the table waiting for him, what else could I possibly want?
Closing my eyes, losing myself further in the fantasy, I let the straps of my black silk nightdress slither off my shoulders, freeing my breasts. In turn, I ran the vibrator over each nipple, feeling them crinkle into tight peaks as they responded to the insistent stimulation. Slowly, I moved the toy lower, slipping it under the hem of the nightdress and applying it to the insides of my thighs. Soon, I would need more, but for now I put off the moment when the vibrator would make contact with my clit.
In my mind’s eye, my mystery man watched as I cupped my tits through my top, teasing myself for his benefit. He pulled his cock out of his fly, stroking it as he stared down at my brazen display of lust. It was long and veiny, so thick my fingers would struggle to close round its girth. I knew it would stretch my pussy like it had never been stretched before, but I was ready for him.
I was still dressed in the outfit I’d worn on stage, an oversized white T-shirt over denim shorts. My lover reached for the neck of the T-shirt, wrenching till it ripped in two. It had been too hot in the club to wear anything beneath it, and my full breasts were revealed to him as he stripped the ruined garment off me, my nipples poking up towards his greedy gaze. He yanked open the fly of my shorts, pulling them and my panties down in one swift movement, exposing me completely.
He straddled me, not bothering to remove his jeans the whole way. That seemed so much ruder than if he was naked, just the tops of his arse cheeks bare for me to touch. With a hard thrust, he lodged the fat crown of his cock between my soft, wet pussy lips, making me cry out as he filled me so completely. Eyes locked on mine, he started to fuck me, pushing me along the torn baize covering of the table with every thrust.
My fingernails raked down his back as my passion grew, my body writhing beneath his delicious onslaught. Grunting and gasping, he rammed into me without finesse, his rough, untutored technique just what I needed to push me to a squealing climax.
I couldn’t stand it anymore. The vibrator circled over and around my clit, nectar trickling down my thighs to mingle with the lube already coating them. In the moments just before my delightfully dirty fantasy and the buzzing toy combined to bring me to my peak, I would always imagine that a figure stood in the green room doorway. Stefan, watching with a look of approval on his face and his rigid cock in his fist. As ever, the thought that at any moment he would stride over and put that gorgeous, big thing to my lips, making me suck it while another man continued to plunder the depths of my cunt, never failed to send me spiralling into orgasm. But tonight, I almost seemed compelled to look away from him and back to my lover, realising I was no longer being fucked by an imaginary stranger.
Instead, the man whose shaft was buried so deeply in me at the moment when I yelled out and came…was Jake.
Chapter Three
Whether or not fate had contrived, as Jake claimed, to bring him to the band, it certainly seemed to be doing its best to push the two of us closer together. Martine arranged a photo shoot the day before we left for the States, sending us to the Soho studio of Gregg Parker, one of the best respected photographers in the business and a man who’d snapped everyone from the Rolling Stones to Lady Gaga. His concept for the shoot saw the five of us arranged on a king-sized bed with rumpled white silk covers, Stefan lying on my right, Jake on my left.
Without too much persuasion from Gregg and the watching Martine, Jake removed his shirt for the final few shots. I couldn’t help but think back to my fantasy of being fucked by a semi-clad hunk, and it was all I could do to stop myself from stroking his naked chest when the camera wasn’t clicking away.
Afterwards, as I changed out of the exquisite floor-length black lace gown I’d worn for the shoot, Martine joined me.
“Well, that was an unexpected treat,” she murmured, fluffing out her newly-dyed aubergine locks in front of the mirror. “Young Jake dresses very nicely. Or should that be undresses?”
“Martine Ashworth, you’re a happily married woman,” I reminded her.
“Doesn’t mean I can’t do a little window shopping.” She helped me place the dress back on its hanger. “And don’t tell me you didn’t enjoy the view, too.”
“Yeah, I’ll admit he’s cute, but I’m really not interested in anyone but Stefan.”
Martine rummaged in her bag for her lip gloss. “Okay, well, when you’ve been cooped up with that gorgeous piece of Californian man-totty on the tour bus, come back to your Aunty Martine and tell her that’s still the case. But I don’t think she’ll believe you.”
* * * *
I was still mulling over our conversation when I walked into the cafe near the rehearsal studios to pick up coffee and croissants for Stefan and myself, craving carbs after a morning spent running through the finalised set list. My own voice soared out from the grease-spattered transistor radio on a shelf above the till.
“We’re walking different roads
To get to the same destination…”
It was no surprise to hear the song—our first worldwide number one single, it was always playing on some oldies station or other—but the coincidence still freaked me out. I’d written that song in the first, heady flush of my affair with Stefan. Unlike the almost instantaneous attraction I’d felt for Mark, my desire for Stefan had been a slow burn. We’d known each other for almost three years, sharing an easy friendship, until the morning I’d awakened and realised the face I wanted to see on the pillow next to mine was his. All the songs I’d contributed to the Same Destination album had been about the thrill of new love, the mystery of how friendship could turn to something deeper and so much more passionate. Mark, meanwhile, had been writing songs that were heartbreakingly beautiful and bitter in equal measure. That complicated, compelling mixture—one reviewer had described us as “teetering on a see-saw of emotions”—had sent the album to the top of the charts, where it stayed for nearly a year.
“I’m walking away from what I knew,
But the long, hard road is leading me to you…”
I paid and dashed out of the cafe, knowing Stefan was waiting for his late breakfast. In a couple of days time, I’d be standing on stage in Chicago, making those lyrics sound fresh even though I’d sung them thousands of times before. Though part of me couldn’t wait for that first gig, I was still thinking about Martine’s words. Out on the road, travelling in a little isolated bubble, the rules of everyday life no longer applied. Though I told myself I was going to behave, that what I had with Stefan wasn’t worth risking, if temptation was placed in my path, would I be able to resist?
* * * *
From the moment the plane touched down at O’Hare airport, it became obvious that this tour was going to be the craziest we’d ever embarked on, both in
terms of the schedule and in the reaction of both press and fans. Jake, already wide-eyed at the novelty of turning to the left upon boarding and experiencing the luxury of travelling first class, was even more astonished to see the paparazzi out in force as we headed for passport control.
“Oh, man, is it always like this?” he asked as yet another camera was thrust under his nose, flashbulbs popping all around us.
“Get used to it,” Davey told him. “For this week at least, you’re big news. All you have to do is make sure you don’t get caught sneaking groupies into your hotel room, and they’ll leave you alone soon enough.”
“And the best way to do that,” Paul added, “is to sneak them into ours…”
Only once we’d all piled into the limo waiting to take us to our hotel did we feel as though we could start to relax. Tonight, we’d stay up late and try to get ourselves accustomed to the six-hour time difference between London and Chicago. Tomorrow, we’d take to the stage for the first date on the tour. That’s when we would really know if Jake was the right choice for the band, and if the fans reacted to him as positively as we did.
* * * *
In the backstage gloom, Stefan held up a hand and curled his fingers into his palm, one by one, in a slow countdown. That was our signal to stroll back out on stage for the final encore of the night. The auditorium rang to impatient cries of, “More!” and a low, steady chant of, “Sweet Lies! Sweet Lies!” All bands teased their audiences this way, making them wait till they reappeared to play the songs the fans had been waiting for all evening.
Beside me, Jake clutched the neck of his precious Strat, wide-eyed as a kid at the wild clamour.
“You okay?” I asked.
He nodded. “It still kinda feels like a dream, though. You know, being here with you…”
Something in his words gave me the impression he was talking about me alone, rather than the band as a whole, but I didn’t have time to analyse them. Paul was heading for his drum kit, the crowd whooping and yelling at his reappearance, and I knew I had to follow.