“We have to get that shoulder looked at before you go anywhere.”
He was neat, with very short, wiry brown hair, twinkling blue eyes and an amiable look on his strong features. I said,
“They‘re coming down after me from upstairs, and I don’t want to be here.”
He said,
“Don’t worry about that. Make yourself comfortable in the second bedroom for just a minute or two. Then we’ll get you all fixed up, OK?” his voice was so able, so calm and so completely assured that I trusted him. I did as he said and I went where he guided me. As I closed the bedroom door, I saw him open the door from the suite to the hallway and then carry an open book back to a sofa.
The ‘ping’ of the elevator along the hallway was followed by a bursting rush of boots and male voices outside. As they approached, I heard the pad of bare feet in the room beyond, crossing the thick carpet to the door. Then Blaze’s voice,
“Hey, we just lost a girl, and I think she may have come through your window,”
Then, the smooth, easy tone of the occupant,
“Yeah, I don’t usually expect guests that way. Anyway, she seemed in a hurry. You just missed her, she headed out towards the stairs, thataway. Looked like she was in a hurry.”
Some uncertain grunting followed, and some boots in a couple of directions and considerable rush. The sound faced as the door to the suite closed, and I just heard the pad of bare feet on carpet to the door I was pressed against. And his calm, strong voice,
“They’re gone for now,” and he waited until I turned the doorknob to let him in.
“We certainly have time to fix your shoulder,” he took my arm in one hand and put the other on my shoulder. As well as hurting like hell, it felt completely alien and all wrong. He said,
“This is going to hurt, a lot,” his blue eyes had an easy confidence that I felt reflected in me. OK, it was going to hurt a lot. But that would be alright. Before I had time to think or say anything, he yanked my arm and pressed on my shoulder, and he proved as good as his word. It hurt. A lot. I didn’t make a sound, though, and he gave me a big easy smile for that. I felt safe as he stroked my cheek.
“You’re a smart girl.” he said, “And tough with it.” I said,
“Are you a doctor? How do you know how to do that?”
He smiled as he said,
“Marines get to learn all kinds of good tricks.”
He asked if I was hurting anywhere else and I said,
“Nowhere that matters.”
From outside, I heard the rumble of a pack of big bikes. I recognized the sound of one of them.
My marine said,
“Could be an idea if we get you somewhere else now.”
That would be the first of many somewhere else’s.
Chapter Twenty-Four
BY THE TIME THE summer break was over, I thought it would be safe to go back to Lovage. I didn’t think he would come looking for me there. Maybe I didn’t care if he did. Deep down, maybe I still hoped that he would.
The producer called me and said I should record an album. I said, “Yeah?” I didn’t care.
I wrote new songs. There were only three from the time I was with Blaze. Those were the songs he wanted. Making an album was just a way to get those songs out. I knew that. The new songs weren’t anything compared to them. The songs I wrote when I was with Blaze, they were fire.
We made the recordings in a big studio in Los Angeles, but I only went on the weekends and in break times. I had gone back to teaching in Lovage. Only a few people there had made the connection, but when the album came out, who knew what would happen?
The only songs with any power or meaning for me were the ones I wrote when I was with Blaze. All the power they had was the connection that they made between Blaze and me, and the link from the empty present to those electric days. And nights. It had only been a month or so, but it seemed like another world. Another dimension. Like my soul was trapped on the far side of a chasm and I was here in a meaningless world of plastic.
The new songs that I wrote, I didn’t even know what they were about, or if they were about anything at all. They were just words that rhymed over some beats that hurt. Notes and nothingness.
When I said that to the producer, he said it was wonderful. “You should call the album that. ‘Notes and nothingness,’ really. It’s great.”
“Sure.”
I didn’t care.
“Will we put it out under your name?”
I said, “Who’s going to buy that?”
“You’ve got to be called something.”
“Call it, Lucy and the Harms.”
I was confused that he thought I should decide things like that. As far as I was concerned, the songs, the album, all of it came out of the time I had with Blaze. It was about me and him, and if he didn’t decide things like the title, what did they matter?
Chapter Twenty-Five
ZELDA CALLED. “YOU HAVE to move on, Lucy. You’re okay. But he tried to kill you.”
“He was trying to kill the demon, Zelda. Not me.”
“But he couldn’t tell which was which. You can’t take a risk like that.”
“There have been other girls, right? I’m not the first.”
“For your own sake, Lucy, I want to tell you, ‘yes. You were just another girl.’ That’s probably the best way for you to look at it.”
“It’s not true?”
“There was nobody, Lucy. Not anything like you. Nobody at all.”
I hung up. I felt like I was nowhere. Nowhere at all. Drifting. Empty.
Chapter Twenty-Six
THAT WEEKEND I WENT to L.A. I thought it would be the last time. I kind of hoped it would. I’d lost the only part of that lie that I cared about. I had no need of the rest. I went to put down the last vocal tracks for the album and didn’t expect to ever be there again.
When we got the last track done, I was just going to get on a plane and go back to Lovage. The producer talked to me over my headphones from the control room, “Don’t you even want to stay for the mix?”
“You can put it on a cloud for me or something, right? Or email it.”
There was a pause. He said, “Wait up. One second.” then, “Can you see a tambourine in the percussion box out there?”
“Sure.”
“Would you give me a slow beat, just like a click. This speed,” and he snapped his fingers. I got goosebumps right there. I thought I knew where this was going.
I asked him, “You want to mic up the tambourine?”
“No, it sounds great just leaking from the vocal mic.”
“Okay.”
“Red light’s on.”
I started the beat. I knew what was coming. When I heard the big chord on the keyboard, I almost wept. but I held on to the feeling all the way through as I sang Demon. The song burst into life inside me. It wasn’t like I was singing it, I felt as though the song used me as a vehicle, as a way to escape. It ripped through me, spread me wide and split me open. It pumped and pulsed in my guts and my throat. It roared and howled.
At the end there was silence. I was drained. Exhausted. I hadn’t felt that much energy in the whole of the sessions.
I said into the mic, “Was that okay?”
“That was epic, Lucy. Mythical.”
And when he said that, a new song, a complete set of verses burst into my head immediately. It fell into me like a shower of rain. I saw a dark figure in the back of the control room but I was too preoccupied to care. I dropped the headphones and I found a pencil and paper. A tune, a beat came into my head along with the words, but I didn’t dare to make a sound until I had written it down.
There were five verses. Two choruses, but they were different, reflections of each other. A way in and a way out.
And that was the title. I grabbed a guitar. Only because it was the nearest instrument. I couldn’t play a guitar or anything else. Nothing but a tambourine.
Damnit!
I wrote
‘Nothing but a Tambourine’ on another pice of paper. I had to find this melody first. Someone had stepped out of the control room, into the recording area. I held up a hand before they could speak. I didn’t look up. I turned my back. Plucking clumsily on one string, I got the rhythm easily enough. The melody, I had no skills for that but as I plucked notes at random, I felt a melody come live inside of me.
“Lucy,” I heard the voice but I shook my head. I stretched out my hand, palm outward. Quickly I grabbed the headphones and I said into the mic. “I want to do a take. I have to get this down.”
“Can we just–”
“Now. I need to do it now.”
“Okay. Red light’s on.” I did’t even take the time to put down the guitar and pick up the tambourine. I banged my fist on the side of the guitar. Echoing guitar strings gave the beat a haunted sound. Words came out of me in a flow like the breaking of a dam.
Next thing I knew, I was singing, hitting the beat with the heel of my hand, feeling the song rise like a tsunami inside me.
And I wasn’t alone. Someone had come into the booth. I realized I was singing the words into the face of the man that the song was about.
Blaze had changed. His eyes looked like he’d been to a war and back. His clothes were different. Earthier.
To finish singing the song, I felt like I was holding a cork in the top of a volcano inside of me. In the last chorus, the reversed way out, my voice exploded like I was howling, singing, crying and laughing all at the same time. And I howled it into his face.
At the end there was silence in the control room. And I didn’t move or say anything. Neither did he.
Looking into his eyes, him looking into mine, it seemed like we had a history as old as the stars, as long as time, and as complex as the universe. We exchanged something in that long look. Something that was even more than we’d ever exchanged making love.
His voice sounded like rust. It scraped when he said eventually, “That’s beautiful, Lucy.”
“That’s us, Blaze.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
HE CAME BACK TO Lovage with me.
I got an email a week later. I told Blaze, “The producer wants me to tour to promote the album.” I saw sparks in Blaze’s eyes. I lifted my hand to stop him, “I won’t do it. Not now. I’ll do a couple of TV slots or whatever, but I’m staying here. You should, too.”
He looked like he was going to argue. I didn’t give him time. “You can write songs. Play acoustic guitar in a local bar or restaurant if you want, hot rock and soul if you want, but not with the rock and roll life. Not if you want to be with me.”
“I do, Lucy. That”’s all I want. When I thought I’d lost you, I couldn’t go on. I couldn’t see anything but darkness. If you’ll be willing to take me back, it will be on your terms.”
I told him, “People say they go places to find themselves. That’s what you need to do.”
“Well, I’m not in Lovage, Lucy.”
“No, Blaze,” I put my hand on his chest. His heart beat under my hand. “You’re in here. You can’t find yourself when you’re in all the noise.”
“What if I find myself and I hate myself?”
“Parts of yourself will be hard to come to terms with, I know that. But they’re all you. They all brought you to be who you are. They all brought you to be here. Now. With me.”
“Even the part that tried to kill you?”
“You were trying to kill the demon, Blaze. Not me. And it’s not in me. It’s in you.”
“So I need to kill myself.” I thought he was half joking. Only half, though.
“No. You need to get to know yourself. The good parts and the other parts. And you will. I’ll see to it.”
“How did I live this long without you, Lucy? I never want to have to spend another day without you. I love you so much.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I KEPT THE TEACHING job because I’d come to love it. Now it was me who had the big hit album, but it didn’t make too much difference. I had Blaze. That was what mattered.
When we made love in my little apartment, it wasn’t like it had been before. There wasn’t the danger, there was something else. Something bigger.
Blaze was happy to stay home and write. His songs now were on a whole new level. Deep, transforming, healing music that thrilled from the inside.
On the weekends, we traveled into the hills and the lakes. We could go anywhere now, and we loved being right where we were.
I didn’t have to wonder anymore about the chemistry between us. It was like a fire that never went out. A fire that would burst into a blazing inferno when he held me and he told me, “I love you, Lucy.” When he took me in his arms and said, “I’m so lucky. I can’t believe that you understood. That you took me back.” But how could I not? We were meant to be together. We completed each other.
Never more than when he peeled me out of my clothes. When he licked me from head to foot. When he awoke me with his fingers, and his tongue and then he drilled me, filled me in every direction, rammed me until I burst on his fat, throbbing python of a cock. He rose up inside me and I trembled from one peak to the next. I shook and burst and I held onto him.
My own hero.
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PIERCE
PERFECTLY BAD
A MAFIA BAD BOY ROMANCE
~~ EXCERPT ~~
Alice May Ball
The wet eyes of Adelina Bontempi, the stunning young woman and wife of his business partner, blazed up at Pierce Agostini. Seeing her in public, you’d think she was a fashion model, probably a little aloof, well-behaved and most likely quite prim and proper.
Well, the first part would be right. Adelina Kean had been a model and she still made appearances as a brand ambassador and at charity functions. She didn’t seem too aloof, though, on her knees in the back of Pierce’s Bentley.
While he had her by the hair, she showed no sign of being unwilling to do what he wanted, and it was hardly what a well-behaved girl would do, much less someone else’s prim and proper wife.
She knew that Pierce wanted a copy of a document on her husband’s computer. She told him that she knew how to get it. Oh, but wasn’t there something that he could do for her?
Didn’t matter how beautiful she was, how many fashion magazine covers those full, wet lips had pouted on or how many double-page spreads her long legs had sprawled over, all of that cooing and simpering grated on his ear.
He could respect a woman who would just tell him straight, ‘I want your hard cock to fill my mouth and stretch the length of my throat, to rev up the soft heat between my tits. Then I want you to spread my thighs and split me wide, prise me open and pound me over the edge of endurance.’
Dirty Rocker Page 8