by Nico Rosso
Kneeling, she looked back at him. More priestess than sacrifice. He ran his hands over her smooth ass. She spread her legs a bit, opening herself to him. Standing behind her, he leaned so his hands gripped next to hers.
“Hold on.”
A toss of her head brushed the hair away from her neck. He kissed her there, bit the flesh. Her small moan of approval was inspiration enough. More energy flowed between them. Vague inspirations through the years were now real. Better than any dream, Misty was flesh and muscle and breath. Crouching a little lower, he brought his cock to her. Heat guided him. Then her wetness wrapped around his shaft and drew him inside.
Control slipped away. They shook the bed. He thrust in and out. She pushed back to meet him. The hunger rose all over again, driving him deeper. The only answer was there, beneath him, around him.
It was Misty. His Muse. Harder and harder. Sweat on their bodies. Their cries filling the room.
His climax built, then crashed into him. He shook, frozen deep inside her. Wave after wave racked his body as he spent. She stayed still, arms braced against the headboard, pushed against him.
“Yes, yes, yes...” spilled from her lips and danced into the room like stones from a broken necklace.
Energy pulsed from her body. The shining black veins in the light struck like electricity through his own blood. He fed on it, learning new hunger. New heights of power. He could shape mountains with his songs, carving valleys and forcing peaks into the air.
Hot heartbeats slowed, replaced by a deep glow. Slowly, he pulled out of her. He shucked the condom, throwing it on the floor. They curled down onto the scattered pillows. She lay on her side, him behind her.
They faced the window. The city still glittered. He’d watched its evolution, just like hundreds of other places across the globe. But in all that time, he hadn’t changed. Until this night. Because of this woman.
He kissed the back of her neck. She took a long breath, completely relaxed. His limbs were heavy too. The sex had thrown a thick blanket over both of them. But another energy burned in him. Inspiration. To learn more of Misty. And write her songs. Maybe to discover how the legend of the Muse was real when no one had seen it before.
Because it had to be real. If it wasn’t, and she could just slip out of his life, he would never find his voice again, withering to die.
* * *
The more she thought about it, the crazier the night seemed. No one would believe it. Kim would call bullshit if she tried to tell her she lay in a hotel bed with Trevor Sand high above Los Angeles. Misty could hardly wrap her mind around it. The more she tried to put all the pieces together, the more it all slipped from her fingers.
So she let her mind go, staying in her body. She’d never had sex so intense. Raw power. Total abandon. Was it because of trust? A real connection with the man who had once been just a rock star? Her breath had finally returned. The racing pulse had slowed. Each heartbeat pushed a satisfying throb in her pussy. How many orgasms? Math eluded her. All she knew was how calm her body sank into the pillows and twisted sheets.
With Trevor behind her, his arms surrounded her. Could she feel his tattoos? She ran her hand along his forearm, but couldn’t detect the shapes on the skin. It was too dark to see them. Night still covered the city outside. What the hell time was it, anyway? It had been at least two lifetimes since she last slept. The sun could rise any second for all she knew. And the spell would be broken, sending her back to the real world.
“Are you a priestess?” His voice rasped, hoarse from a night of performing and sex growls.
She laughed. “Just a girl from KC, came out to LA to work in Hollywood. Another ordinary tale of big dreams and disillusionment.”
His lips moved against her shoulder as he spoke. “Nothing ordinary about you, Misty.”
Maybe the spell was already breaking. If she could just stop thinking, she could hold on to the impossible night. But who was she to ever stop thinking? “I bet you tell—”
“Not any.”
Thankfully, he cut her off. She didn’t even want to say it. Not when she still glowed from the sex and wanted to hold on to the fantasy that something real had just happened.
He slipped his hand around hers, lacing their fingers. “You don’t have to worry about anything like that. Not anymore. This changes so much. Knowing you’re real...changes everything.”
“I’ve been real as long as I can remember.”
“But not for me.” His intensity grew. “Remember what you said earlier?”
“Don’t actually remember much talking.”
He laughed a little, then took a long breath.
“You were right, I have been writing songs about you.” He propped himself up on an elbow. “For longer than you know, Geen Eyes. Not that I knew you. It took years of fantasy, of waiting. You were on the way, though. And now you’re here.”
“How can you think and talk so much after...” What was the best way to describe it? “Fucking like a god.”
“I’m inspired.” He placed a kiss, then a bite on her neck. “By you.” The energy that had been growing in him suddenly stopped. His body was absolutely still. Grave and reverent, he confessed, “You’re my muse.”
A fantasy she wanted to believe. But she wasn’t so swept up by his passion and his sex that she’d be taken for a fool. “You already got me in bed, you don’t need a line.”
“I thought you understood. The legend. The fate.” He was no longer still, His breath came fast. Was he on something? His limbs nearly shook behind her. “You felt it. You had to.”
“I felt a lot of things. But I don’t know if it was the same—”
“Red and gold. And the black veins, like a leafless tree after a rain. But it’s not the wood that we know. It was blood. Ours.”
Now he sounded crazy. The lush afterglow of the sex turned bitter. The connection she’d felt with Trevor, starting with the song, thinned to brittle plastic. She didn’t want to feel cheap. Was it fake? Was she just part of the show? The realness of everything she’d experienced started to slip through her fingers. Shame and anger began to burn.
“Maybe you could write that into your next song.” She tried to keep her voice even, counterpoint to his building energy. “But we could just lie here and you could talk to me normally.”
“Normal? We’ve lost normal now.” He tightened his hand around hers. “You, you’re not human anymore. The elements are in you. Like me. I can feel it. You have to feel it.”
There was nothing to salvage. It had all rusted away. Maybe she could hide in her old life and forget this happened. It didn’t seem possible. But she couldn’t stay here after it had shattered. She moved out of his fingers, slid out from his arms and off the bed. Dammit, she had to take off her shoes before she could get her pants back on. She struggled with the buckles as she collected her clothes. Trevor sat up on the bed, watching her with shock.
“You really didn’t know?” he demanded.
“I know that I’m just going to edit this part out.” Shoes off, she got her jeans on. The panties were too bunched to be comfortable, so they went in the back pocket. “We’ll roll credits while we’re still in bed, but before the talking.” Bra and top fell into place. The fabric was cold and stale. Shoes back on. A return to the real world. Far too real.
“Misty, you have to listen to me.”
After this, she wondered if she could ever listen to his music again. He was crazy, or drugged. Or he thought her so feeble minded that he could use his bizarre poetry to keep her in bed. Either way, the betrayal was a cold slap. Getting out of this room was one thing, it wasn’t feeling safe. But it broke her heart that from now on his music would take her right back to this moment.
He continued. “I’m not what you think I am. Few know. I’m only telling you because you changed everything.�
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“For a guy who’s so good with poetry, you’re laying it on a little thick.” Fuck, things had fallen apart fast. She wanted to cry. Or punch him. Just a shower and her own apartment would be some kind of sanity. “Save it for your groupies.” Saying the word covered her in a cheap sweat. “Because I’m not a damn groupie. I’m... This was...”
“All that doesn’t matter. We’re way beyond that. Just listen.” He paused, gathering his thoughts. “I’ve been alive for thousands of years.” He stood on the bed, naked, completely exposed. “I make music and the energy of the audience keeps me alive.” His words were crazy but there was no madness in his eyes. “The Vandals I knew weren’t the kids who throw bottles off freeway overpasses. The Goths I’ve seen didn’t brood in black lace, they made war. And I’ve played for all of them. I’m a demon, born of the elements.”
She backed to the door, then twisted to find the handle.
“Misty, look at me.”
The handle turned in her hand. One last look. She had to. Maybe it could end whatever relationship she’d had with him and his music. A clean break might not hurt so much. But she knew that wasn’t possible. The pain sank deep, pushed by betrayal. So just look at him, she told herself. See that he’s a just a man. Then she could start trying to forget any of this happened.
Trevor still stood on the bed. But he was only half-man. The other half was beast. His legs were covered with thick hair, and he had cloven hooves for feet. The same dark fur that covered his legs was also thick on his forearms. The muscles of his chest were the same. And his eyes still reflected his energy and intensity. Above them, short horns curled from his forehead.
He reached a hand out for her.
She threw the door open and ran.
Chapter Five
The music in the hotel suite screamed at her as she hurried through. Wolfgang and his girls were a tangled mess on the floor. Lee still sat in the chair, his woman curled on his lap. They were all motionless. They could be dead. At least they were human.
Fucking high-heeled shoes slowed her down. She slammed out the front door and skittered to the elevator. It opened right away. She kept punching the lobby button until the doors closed again.
What the hell was in that room? Her drink had been spiked. She was tripping. But she had cracked the seal on the bottle herself. There were still ways to drug her. That was the only explanation. Everything else looked normal. The elevator was still too damn slow.
And when the doors opened, Misty anticipated the inferno. Cauldrons of hot oil, boiling the flesh off sinners. The devil with Trevor’s eyes. Tempting her to destruction.
He had been talking crazy. Now she felt like the one going mad. It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. Monsters like that didn’t exist. Man/beasts belonged in fables and myths, or painted on ancient urns.
The elevator finally creaked to a stop. She bolted out the doors before they were completely open. The old woman behind the main desk only shook her head sadly as Misty hurried across the lobby.
At least it wasn’t a blazing ring of hell. And no monster’s hooves thundered after her. Yet. She shook the thought out of her head. It was a hallucination. Some kind of drug and hot sex and the fantasy that she had some kind of real connection with a rock star brought it all on.
Night air blasted coldly through the open front door. She was back to reality, running down the street in ridiculous heels. She half expected to be joined by a hundred other women in impractical shoes trying to put distance between themselves and bad Hollywood dates. The nightly walk of shame. Counting herself among that stereotype pushed a blush of anger into her cheeks. But this was so much more than a busted one-night stand. Which made the fall to the reality that much more painful. She’d been so free with him. And with herself. It really did seem like something had changed in her.
For the worst. She’d made up emotions where there were none. What appeared to be a real connection turned out to be the trick of a madman. Then she hallucinated the typical rock star as some kind of satyr. But if the monster wasn’t real, why was she still running?
The terror that had first hit her when she saw him still cut sharp through her spine. Her heart pounded and her hands tingled with adrenaline. Fear wouldn’t let her stop running. Let it be irrational. Just get home safe.
Her heels tapped a steady quick beat down the alley where she’d first met Trevor face-to-face. The strange connection she’d first felt in the club continued in that fog. He was a hell of a performer, making her think it was all real. Even the kiss. All through the sex.
“Fucker,” she spat out under her breath. Rounding the front of the club, she kept hurrying to the parking lot where her car waited to take her back to the normal world. Why the fuck did he have to pretend there was something more? She might’ve slept with him anyway, shaken hands at the end of it all, and they could be on their way. Instead he built up a fantasy. And she helped reinforce it. Then he turned it into a nightmare.
She was on the sidewalk, almost at the parking lot, when a laughing voice barked out at her. “Walk of shame?”
An idiot guy and his buddy were on the other side of the desolate street. They used the parking meters as crutches for their drunk legs. The guy laughed again and waved her toward them.
“If you’d spent the night with me, you wouldn’t have to run home. I make a great breakfast.”
His friend chuckled, fumbling with his phone. Ordinary bullshit from asshole men. It happened every night. But what she’d just gone through was far from ordinary. Usually she ignored the idiots, just kept moving. Tonight was different.
“Fuck you.” Her keys were spikes between her fingers. She didn’t wait to see his reaction, but kept walking for the parking lot.
His voice chased her. “What? What the hell...?” Footsteps off the sidewalk.
The buddy moved with him. “Chill, bro.”
A glance over her shoulder showed the two of them standing, unstable, in the middle of the street. She continued quickly into the parking lot. Nighttime wasn’t safe. It never was, but the shadows now hid greater threats. Anything could descend from the darkness. Like angry satyrs. Impossible.
Her car was nearly the last one in the lot. The sketchy attendant with a choppy Mohawk sat in his kiosk, watching her fumble out her keys. His face was ghoulishly green in the bare fluorescent light. But he was still human. The only thing she’d seen change was Trevor.
With the car door open, she half sat in the driver’s seat and changed into her trail runners. Just a little more armor. Once they were laced tight, she slammed the door, locked it and started the engine.
Trevor’s voice sang at her. Cold sweat ran across her back as she punched at the CD player on the dash. The music stopped abruptly. Could she just stop the memories of this night, too?
The parking lot attendant didn’t even wave as she tore out the driveway into the street. And screeched to a stop in the middle of the street. The idiot and his bro were still there. Just a few yards away. Sneering hate distorted the guy’s face as he pointed at her.
“You can’t tell me to fuck off—”
“I can do whatever the hell I want.” She lurched the car forward and the guy scrambled to get out of the way. He knocked into his friend and the two of them tangled in an awkward dance to the curb. Her tires spun on the pavement for a second before catching and bolting her car forward. That threat was behind her, soon to be forgotten like all the other dicks who thought they owned the street because they were men. But the car couldn’t go fast enough, or far enough, for her to erase the memory of what happened with Trevor.
She thought about calling Kim to tell her everything, but tossed the thought out the window with the other trash on Hollywood Boulevard. Misty wasn’t even ready to admit to herself what went down tonight, let alone her good friend. Tomorrow, in the light of day, she might
tell Kim. Once all the fantasies, good and bad, were dead.
A mass of taillights ahead slowed her. Goddamn street construction. They did it late at night, which meant no matter what time you were on the road, there was traffic. Slowly inching away from what she saw in that hotel room wasn’t an option, so she turned off onto a residential side street.
Only a couple of other cars had the same idea, so the pace was faster. The area was unfamiliar, though, and she quickly lost her bearings. The other cars were gone, leaving her without any movement to follow.
Two right turns should’ve taken her back to Hollywood Boulevard. But she felt like she was still heading south. It might get her home eventually, if that really was the right direction. A few more intersections and random decisions didn’t clear things up. Before the frustration grew too high, she pulled out her cell phone and skimmed for the map app.
The car lurched to a stop. The phone flew out of her hand. One brief second her eyes weren’t on the road and she hit something. Or someone hit her. The car was still settling from the impact. She turned off the engine, set the break and struggled out of the locked seatbelt. She took a quick breath to make sure she wasn’t hurt, then threw open the door.
Where was the other car?
“Shit.” She hurried out and around her car, terrified she’d hit a person. There was no pedestrian or animal or fallen tree wedged under the front wheel. “What the hell did that?” The wheel was snapped at the axle at a grotesque angle.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!” she shouted, too rattled to care if she woke anyone. “What kind of car just fucking breaks?” As if the night wasn’t bad enough.
She started to reach inside her car for her phone, but the automobile lurched again. Jumping back, she saw the wheel fall off. The hood crumpled under an unseen weight. Jagged cracks raced like lightning over the windshield, and then the glass shattered.