Domination

by Lyra Byrnes

“Feisty little minx. What made you show up at my door like that? No one is supposed to know where my dressing room is.”

  “It was a mistake,” she admitted. “I was supposed to talk to your bassist, Jet, but I was running late and got the wrong door.”

  “Don’t mean to blow my own horn, lassie, but I’m the lead singer. Easy to pick out of a crowd, especially a crowd of four.”

  She blushed. “I missed the show.”

  “Terrible manners. If you were what I thought you were, I’d so enjoy punishing you for that.”

  “You mean a whore?”

  Bram unleashed his half-smirk again, an incredibly potent weapon. When he smiled, sardonic but amused, Josie felt as if he had never looked at anyone else. “Not a whore, just a sort of…specialized fan. Bucky chooses them. He’s very astute, for a heartless automaton.”

  “Do they all get on their knees for you?”

  “You did,” he pointed out. Yes she had and that had been a professional low point for sure.

  Bram’s piercing blue eyes narrowed. “You’re new to Domination, aren’t you?”

  Josie gulped before realizing he meant the name of the band. “Metal isn’t normally my thing.”

  “Too bad. Metal is magic—it has all kinds of properties, soft as gold or hard as iron, cold as steel or hot as molten lead. You just have to know how to wield it to get the desired result.”

  She had no idea what he was talking about but he had a poetic turn of phrase and his black-honey voice was hypnotic.

  “If we’re going to do an interview I’ll need a notebook and pen at least.”

  He shook his head slowly. “We are not. Here are the rules. You do your job, tell the world all Dom’s dirty little secrets, how Kraxis farts in his sleep and how Jet can’t hold his liquor, what a colossal shit Varian can be. The noise we make, the fights we have, the girls who come and go. But Bram Hunter’s off-limits, yeah? Everything I say to you is between us.”

  That was the damnedest thing she had ever heard. “Then why am I here?”

  “I’m not fond of journos, Josie. There’s a reason I play close to the vest. You got more out of me than a hundred seasoned men, and believe me, they’ve all tried. Let’s just say I wanted to keep you close.”

  And your enemies closer, she thought. They had talked only about music in that first interview, nothing revealing, but he didn’t trust her.

  “You’re still a mystery.”

  His smile was wolfish. “And who doesn’t love a mystery? See you after the show tonight. This time try to bother showing up.”

  Chapter Four

  If listening to Domination in her air-conditioned rental car was a powerful experience, seeing the band live was like being strapped to the outside hull of a space rocket. Bucky had planted her not backstage but in house seats, amid the electric frenzy of the crowd.

  Bram owned every inch of the stage and manipulated the audience like a magician. He stalked like a jungle cat but he could evoke screams of desire just by standing still for an extra beat. Every nod, every smile, every glower brought a fresh gout of screams. The guys banged their heads and shouted along with the lyrics, but the girls… The girls were almost universally pretty, young and shiny, all makeup, tiny belly-baring shirts and streaming hair. And they clearly all wanted only one thing—Bram Hunter on top of them. He handed the mike to a girl in the front row during Soulcrush and she shouted the chorus, caressing the mike with unmistakable intention. When Bram whipped his shirt off after the third number, a blonde in front of Josie turned to her friend and yelled, “I just came in my pants!”

  After the show Josie made her way to the bus, which, she found after circling the entire hotel, was parked in front of a garbage-smelly alley. A handful of groupies had found it anyway and lingered on the sidewalk, pouting and trying to see into the darkened windows. They looked so young, most of them, Josie thought. Sexy and nubile, yes, but like girls dressing up for Halloween. If the theme of the Halloween party was Goth Hooker, she added.

  Bucky, freshly be-suited and wearing the frown that seemed to be his customary expression, shooed them away to let Josie board. The groupies moved slowly, like cats disappointed their mouse had gone into its hole but not giving up too quickly.

  She stepped inside, feeling sweaty and worn out. Jet, the bassist with delicate features and ringlets of brown hair, was already on board, pouring straight vodka into a plastic cup.

  He cast her a wink. “Ah, the little bird, ’ere to chirp all our secrets to the world. Join me in a drink, love.”

  She accepted a glass of vodka with thanks. Surely they had mixers around somewhere. She spotted a bottle of orange juice wedged between seats and reached for it.

  “I wouldn’t, sunshine. Kraxis pisses in that when he gets lazy.”

  She snatched her fingers away as if they had been burned. “Down the hatch, then.” They toasted. Jet seemed kind, with eyes as soft and brown as his hair. “Bram says you can’t hold your liquor.”

  “Nor can I. This poison’s coming right up in an hour or two. But oh, what a time I’ll have first!”

  The bus was cramped and dirty, every surface covered in old plates of food, discarded bottles, ashtrays and stray pieces of paper. She turned her knees to make room for a roadie wrapping a cable around his elbow. “So what happens after a show?”

  “What are you in for, you mean?”

  She grinned. “All right, what am I in for?”

  “Decadence and debauchery, madness and mayhem, chords and chorus girls. Better hang on to the rails.” He drained his cup. “There’s a party in our suite. I imagine the girls are already there, drinking our liquor and sniffing our panties. Bucky will keep them in line until the headliners appear.”

  “Groupies?”

  “Groups and groups of them, each more ripe than the last, if you line them up that way.”

  She pictured girls like the ones at the show—they were probably many of the same girls, she realized—licking their lips and making eyes at Bram, willing to kneel before him, to be punished, to suck his cock and feel his whip.

  “Outta the way, ye mangy scalawags! Hoist the sails and raise the anchor!”

  Huge, hairy Kraxis shoved his way on board, his thick drummer’s arms like clubs. He swiped the bottle from Jet and glugged half of it.

  “This the reporter?”

  “Blogger. I’m Josie.”

  “Pretty little thing. Wanna ride in my lap?”

  “Leave it, Krax, you hairy fool,” Jet said. “V’s here. Let’s roll.”

  Icy and blond, Varian the guitarist almost touched the bus ceiling in his long black leather duster. He peered at Josie with distaste. “Thought I smelled fish.”

  What an asshole. Jet touched Josie lightly on the arm. “You’ll get used to us.”

  *

  Bram had not been on the bus, nor could Josie find him through the haze of cigarette and pot smoke in the band’s suite. Girls were everywhere, draped over couches, chairs and each other. They were all giggles and shiny hair but there was an air of expectancy in the room, as if the opening act were going on a little too long.

  Waiting for Bram, just as she was.

  Josie sloshed red wine into a cup and circulated, stepping over bodies and trying not to be the prig at a party always waving away smoke. A couple members of the crew were taking advantage of Bram’s absence to nab the more desperate girls. One was down to her underwear in the lap of a burly roadie, feeding him maraschino cherries from her mouth. A trio of girls hunched over a coffee table with Varian, snorting lines of white powder from its glass surface. The music they’d chosen to blare at deafening volume wasn’t their own but old-school punk—Black Flag, from the sound of it.

  Josie struggled through the crowd out to the balcony, where Kraxis was pawing the ass of a giggling blonde. She jotted some notes, looking up to scan the room. Still no Bram.

  Jet blundered outside, swaying. “Fuck, I’m wasted already. Pity, I wanted to go dancing. Hold my hair, dar
ling?”

  “Yeah, uh, maybe put that down.”

  “No! Mommy’s vodka!” He clutched the bottle to his thin chest. “It’s not—hic—done with me yet. I’m waiting for that click in my head that makes me feel peaceful.”

  That click in my head. She knew that quote. It was from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, spoken by tormented hunk Brick, who drinks himself insensate to hide who he really is. A surprisingly literate line for a bass player…and a telling one.

  “There are no boys here tonight.”

  He nodded sadly. “None I don’t have farting in my face on the bus all day. There never are, boys at the parties, I mean. It would ruin the illusion. I don’t want realism. I want magic!”

  Another Tennessee Williams line. If the whole room didn’t know Jet was gay they weren’t paying attention. “Okay, Blanche DuBois. Maybe you’d better lie down.” But he weaved away and melted into the crowd.

  A gay member of the band with the biggest reputation for cocksmanship in all of rock and roll. Would it be indiscreet—or worse, actionable—to include that in her blog?

  She’d seen enough. The party was just atmosphere anyway. She wouldn’t get any useful information by talking to people and she’d had her fill of observing. The thing threatened to burst into a full-blown orgy and it was hard enough to watch two girls crawling over Varian as he lay on the floor, still in his duster.

  She tucked her notebook in her purse and made for the door but it swung open and there he stood, glowering.

  Bram. It seems every door that opens in my face has him on the other side of it.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Here. I’m on assignment.”

  “I told you I’d see you after the show. Learn to follow orders.”

  “I don’t take orders from you,” she retorted.

  “Don’t you? Come with me.”

  Chapter Five

  He sat on the couch and nodded to the empty space next to him. Josie sank onto the velvet.

  “Why aren’t you with one of your Bucky specials?”

  He ignored this and swigged from the Jack Daniels bottle then offered it to her.

  Drinking JD from the same bottle as Bram Hunter, she thought. The girls in the next suite would chew their own arms off for the chance. She took a sip and gagged.

  “This isn’t whiskey.”

  “Cold peppermint tea. Liquor is bad for the throat.”

  “This is what you’re drinking onstage?”

  “There’s your headline—Rock’s Wild Child Eschews Booze, Sips Tea. Why didn’t you come tonight?”

  “I told you. I’m working. A party like that is gold—so much atmosphere and detail. It will give the readers a sense of what goes on on a real international rock tour. I’ll leave out the drugs of course.”

  “You are working by being on tour with Domination. With me. Everything you see, everything you hear, everything you do will be because I allow it or I request it.”

  Her mouth dropped open. “You can’t control my experience!”

  “Love, controlling someone’s experience is what I do.”

  Bram swaying to the crowd and the crowd swaying back. Bram whipping off his shirt while a palpable wave of erotic desire swept over the audience. “I noticed. You had every one of them eating out of your hand. If you’d told them all to cluck like chickens or stab their mothers, they would have done it.”

  He snorted. “So you liked the show.”

  “It was…interesting.”

  “It’s a great sense of power, guiding someone through a journey. Even without drink or drugs you can reach a sort of transcendence.”

  “You mean like with those girls? Like you were going to do with…with me.” The memory hardened her nipples, although with him so close she could smell mint and leather and the warm salt of his sweat, it didn’t seem like a memory at all. It felt all too real.

  “Yes, Josie, like that. That’s why I wanted to become a rock star and that’s why I brought you on tour. I saw something in you that ached for transcendence.”

  She stood, suddenly tense. But also excited. What did he mean by transcendence and more importantly, was that what she was searching for? No. No, she wanted to work hard, prove herself, get ahead, have a byline that meant something. Be a good girl, be responsible, pay her bills…

  “I need a real drink.” She splashed some wine into a glass and gulped it down, pacing. “You don’t understand. I had a tidy life. I had a job I loved, an apartment I could afford, no pets or kids or strings. I worked like the devil to gain respect in my field. Everything was in place. Everything!”

  Even to her own ears it sounded as if she was talking herself into something. Or out of it. She refilled the glass, shaking her head.

  “This isn’t about you or your band. This is about my life. Any fool with fingers can blog. I need to be good—I need to be great. This is my last chance to hang on to the shreds of my life. If I don’t do this right, the rest will be just…just firebombed.”

  “It already was,” he said, watching her through narrowed eyes, his head tipped back.

  She halted in her pacing. “What?”

  “It’s already firebombed, yeah? So you don’t even know it yet but you’re on that strange journey right now, the one that scared you so much.” He smiled, a real one this time, not the sexy smirk he had given her before. “And you’re doing fine.”

  “Well, I guess. I’m not technically on fire. I haven’t had my arm trapped by a boulder.”

  “There you go. Now that we’re being honest, you can admit you came back to see me again.”

  She put the wineglass down. “In part.”

  “‘In part.’ Not good enough but that’s all I’m going to get from you right now. Curvy brunettes are the mules of the female world. Come here.”

  Josie walked to where he sat. God, he was spectacular.

  He took her hands in his. “You’re going places you’ve never gone. It didn’t start when you came to the hotel. It started with me in a shabby little dressing room in the City of Angels Arena.”

  “I told you, I didn’t come for that.”

  “No, but it’s what you left with.”

  Stop lying. For once in your life admit the truth to someone who already knows it. Admit the truth to yourself. “Yes.”

  “Do you want to continue?”

  “Yes.” Her voice was spider-web thin, not even a whisper.

  “Take that off,” he said, gesturing at her tank top. “Go slow and maintain eye contact.”

  She pushed up the hem of her shirt, lifting her breasts. Bram was already hard, his bulging erection making the stretched leather shine. She toyed with her top some more, twisting the fabric and rolling her shoulders to loosen the straps. Teasing a man was new to her but she liked the feeling. It was almost as if she was the one with the power. She pulled the top off and dropped it to the floor, wishing she had big enough boobs for a bra.

  “That’s nice,” he breathed. “You’re a natural. Pants.”

  He unlaced the leather cords at his crotch while he watched her slide off the jeans. She stumbled a little trying to toe them over her boots and leaned down.

  “Eye contact. Look at me.”

  She took a deep breath. Getting her balance was easy but maintaining it while wrestling with jeans was trickier. She almost fell over when Bram’s cock emerged, as thick and hard as a weapon, pointing at her like an accusation.

  Josie took a step toward him.

  “Naughty girl.” He smirked, stroking himself. “You know what’s next.”

  Damn. She couldn’t help it. There was something magnetic about him that literally drew her to him. And being mere inches away from that cock, well, that was good too.

  “Punishment.”

  “Later, yes. You’re allowed one lapse and that was it. Come closer.”

  He took her waist in his hands, running them down her legs, over her ass and up her back. They were firm and warm and Josie’s skin tingled everywhere
he touched her.

  “Skin like thick cream, delicious. Do you ever see the sun?”

  “Not really.” Melanie called her a vampire because of the hours she kept and her horror at the thought of her skin freckling.

  Mel would kill to be in my place right now. But I can never tell her about this. Or anyone.

  “Up with me, hands against the wall.”

  She climbed onto the couch, sitting straight up with her knees on either side of his hips. His cock was a tantalizing mere inches away, pointing angrily at its target.

  Bram squeezed both cheeks of her ass and pulled her toward his face. She could hear him breathe deeply then let out a small moan. He flicked his tongue experimentally against her clit. The jolt zapped through her, breaking her hold against the wall.

  “Brace yourself, Josie,” he murmured. Again he applied his tongue to her pussy, rubbing it through every crevice, pausing only to invade her with a warm, wet probing. Juice ran down her thighs as he nibbled and licked. She began to squirm.

  “Oh fuck. Oh god…”

  Bram pulled away. “Not yet. You’re not ready to come.”

  But she was, more than ready. Her clit throbbed but he teased her, moving his tongue to a new fold when her thighs began to vibrate. She tried to clench up and stop the orgasm that was rolling up inside her, inexorably as a tidal wave.

  “Good girl. You’re learning. It’s time for your punishment.” He punctuated this with a brutal squeeze on her ass cheek and pushed her off.

  “Have you ever been spanked?”

  “N-no.”

  “High time then. Right, on all fours.”

  Josie clambered down, one part of her feeling as if she was drowning in a vat of bubbling blood, taking her career with it. But the other part shut that up, the one that wanted—craved—Bram’s punishment and whatever else he deigned to give her.

  “Aye, a lovely sight, that. You’ve got a nice round ass for such a little thing. Ready?”

  Before she could answer the smack came, hard and sharp.

  “Ow!” She looked over her shoulder accusingly. Bram was naked now, stroking his cock with one hand, the other upraised to strike.