Dream Me Off My Feet (Sex, Love, And Rock & Roll)

by Kisner, Stevie

  Yesterday’s clothes lay puddled on the floor near the bed. She picked these up last, knowing they’d smell of stale cigarette smoke and beer and would certainly need laundering. As she tidied up, her mind started to drift. What she found kicked half-under the bed arrested her thoughts, but brought a wistful smile to her lips.

  It was JT’s t-shirt. The one he’d worn the night before.

  As she picked it up she remembered how he looked when he walked through her unlatched door. How he’d looked at her, banked flames in those captivating blue-on-green eyes. The shirt still faintly held his scent, smoke and spice. She dropped her head and drew it closer, breathing him in, and was suddenly awash in memories; remembrances not merely of the previous night, but of all their time together.

  She was a sensory addict; she suspected most writers were. To be able to describe a scene, she needed to catalogue each detail, every nuance. And recollection brought them all back as if she were reliving the moment.

  She inhaled again and the recent weeks poured through with exquisite intensity. The assessing curiosity on his face during their first conversation smoking cigarettes outside her former workplace. The immediate recognition in his eyes when he spoke to her from the stage before the Albuquerque concert.

  The surprise and shock when the beer washed the green chili burn through his mouth at the restaurant. The silky feel of his hair under her fingertips when she touched the bump on his head as if he were her child. The soft brush of his lips against the knot on her own head, and the way just one exhaled breath tickling over her ear charged a spark down to her toes.

  Their first kiss and how she’d almost kept it from happening at all. His lips, his hands, his thoughts. The anger in his eyes at her being on the catwalk and how quickly it melted to concern when he saw she was afraid. His gentleness, his teasing, his touch. The feel of him inside of her, filling both her body and her mind. How empty she felt when he was angry with her; and how safe she felt in his arms.

  The rainbow of emotion was overwhelming. She suddenly felt so incredibly tired. Packing could wait. Working could wait. She curled up on the bed, still clutching his shirt to her chest, and fell almost immediately asleep, his scent still lingering in her mind.

  ****

  She didn’t emerge for soundcheck; he didn’t really mind. She was still in her room at dinner; he was concerned, but not overly, as she rarely seemed to eat anyway. When she was nowhere to be seen shortly before they were to leave for the arena, he knocked on her door and loudly called her name. Then pounded, using the considerable strength of his voice to shout.

  As he raised his fist to bang again, the door opened, revealing a disheveled-looking Korina. He took in the gently delicious sight of her sleep-washed face. And his shirt held tightly in one fisted hand.

  “Must you always be so loud?” she mumbled, turning away from the door and stepping into her room. Taking the open door as a signal to enter, he did, heeling the door closed behind him.

  “Only when I have to wake the dead,” he chuckled, enjoying the view of her retreating backside. “It’s almost time to leave. Aren’t you coming tonight?” He watched her open her suitcase and drop his dirty shirt inside, but made no comment.

  “Mmm-hmm.” Her voice was still a drowsy mumble as she rummaged through her packed clothing. She pulled out a pair of faded jeans and a current tour tank top. “Just lemme get dressed and run a brush through this wreck on my head and I’ll be ready.” She stepped into the bathroom and began to close the door.

  “Suddenly shy, love? It’s not like I haven’t seen you without clothes before.”

  “Exactly. And what’s happened every time you have, you horny rock star? You said we have to leave soon,” she laughed as she clicked the door shut.

  Her teasing, accepting attitude was not something he’d seen in her before; he wasn’t sure where it came from but was afraid to question it, lest it leave as quickly as it had appeared. Instead, he chose to play along. “There’s enough time for a quickie.”

  She emerged from the bathroom wearing her tightest (and his personal favorite) pair of jeans. His eyes raked over her, a slow smile lighting his face.

  Kori cupped his face with one hand and kissed him softly. “I prefer the longies, JT. Never a quickie. With you.” She smiled at the look of surprise dancing over his face, slung her camera bag over one shoulder as she walked to the door, and said, “Coming?”

  Almost, love. JT had sprouted a raging erection at her unsubtle, sexy openness, and wondered how he would make it through the show tonight.

  ****

  JT’s performance was more blatant than usual, almost downright risqué. Even the band noticed. The fans ate it up, most of them not aware that the rest of their Rated X tour had really been anything but. Both Paul and Rafe suspected the reason for his behavior, and noticed that said reason was nowhere to be seen during the show.

  At first, when he didn’t see her, JT was worried she might be on the catwalk again. He hadn’t seen her since just before they took the stage; he’d found her in a secluded hallway and had immediately taken her hand, leading her further into the dimness and away from curious eyes.

  He’d backed her to the wall, pressing his body against her yielding curves. All thoughts of the lighted stage and the waiting audience careened from his mind as her softness enveloped his spiraling awareness. Nerve synapses sang out sweet songs of seduction and promise as he crushed himself deeper into her. His hands skimmed her sides to span her waist with deceptive gentleness; every fiber aching to pull and squeeze, to drive himself into her inviting warmth. She lifted her face, offering him the soft fullness of her mouth, her low whimper begging for his passion. He slanted his head to meet her lush lips, dipping in for just a taste.

  With that light brush, her knees liquefied and her spine turned to jelly. She wound her arms round his neck, fisting her hands in his hair and hanging on for dear life as searing desire swept the deliberately light kiss into the darker place where volatile hunger and need lurked. In the tight space between the wall and his muscled body, she rolled her hips forward to nestle against his rapidly bulging arousal. An overheated groan rumbled deep in his chest.

  He dragged his mouth from hers. “Oh, no, sweetheart,” he rasped. “We can’t do this. I have to go on any minute.” Fuck, what she does to any semblance of my self-control.

  She looked down, struggling to regain control of her breathing. “Then you’d better walk away, because I want that again.”

  He stepped away from her drugging contours, not daring to look at her. He feared that if she even glanced back at his eyes, his feet wouldn’t take another step away. He’d have her right here in this dingy hallway and the band would take the stage late for the first time in their more than twenty-year history.

  Instead he turned away, head low, watching his feet take step after step away from his heart. As the ambient light surrounding him brightened, he ventured a look upward and found he was a mere few steps away from the remaining members of the band. He paused for a final calming breath before rejoining his mates.

  Now antsy to take the stage to exorcise the energy she set coursing through him, JT waited with the rest of the band in the wings while the last song on their preshow tracklist wound down. When JT chanced a glance over his shoulder to where she’d been standing, he found she was no longer there. He wondered if it had anything to do with those tshirts…

  Shortly after they arrived, she’d bounced off from the backstage area, claiming to need a new tour shirt. The latest shipment contained the most popular t-shirt on this tour, the one she hadn’t been able to snag for herself yet. On a black background lay a white letter X that stretched from sleeve to sleeve and shoulder to hem. The single letter was stylized in an old-fashioned newspaper font, with the word rated stamped across the X using the band’s familiar logo letters. The back bore replicas of the bandmembers’ signatures. The shirt venders couldn’t restock them fast enough.

  Instead of returning w
ith just one shirt, Kori brought back a dozen. She went to each Knox and requested he sign on the X with the black marker she carried in one hand. Each one chose a corner or a leg of the X to sign, leaving the center for another bandmember. JT autographed the apex; he didn’t have a choice. She approached him last and there was no other place left to sign.

  Not one of them asked her what the shirts were for, thinking either JT or Stuart had some plan for them. As he signed the last shirt, JT asked, “What are these for, anyway?”

  “Door prizes,” she responded with a raised brow and a smile. She turned and flitted off before he could question her further.

  She set off through the crowd as the house lights cut and the band thundered onstage. Through the floor seats, the lower deck, even up into the nosebleed sections she went, freezing moments of time with the snap of her shutter.

  Just a month ago, this would have been me; I was one of the nameless group called ‘fans.’ Not that I’m not one. But it’s different; my perspective changed when I was issued a permanent crew pass. I’m not on the receiving end, and not really on the giving end, either.

  She closed her eyes and let the fans’ energy wash through her. They gave and gave. And it was almost a tangible thing, a swirling kinetic frenzy that reached all the way up to the rafters. Her skin prickled as she moved through it.

  It wasn’t really hers to take, this electric emotion. It was being sent to those five men on the stage who gave it back with every fiber of their being while they were under those shining spotlights and colored gels. Yet she now worked for them, was part of the ragtag family, and could share a little pride in how greatly her employers were received.

  She sampled a tiny taste of that group energy, then opened herself up to drink it in.

  Exhilarating. There was nothing on earth to rival this. Nothing but pure love and excitement radiated from these people. She grasped how easily fans and fame could become addictive; this energy was better than any drug.

  And the band thrived on it. Pulled it in with every breath to sing it right back to the audience. It vibrated through every movement of their hands on their instruments. They waded hip-deep with each step.

  She’d almost forgotten why she came out into the audience, so caught up in feeding from them she was. She gave herself a mental shake. This is not for me, although I can surely use the boost; tomorrow I have to confront Mark. For tonight though, just forget everything else and concentrate on the job at hand.

  As she focused and snapped her camera, she let down her guard just a bit, opening herself to read the color of the feelings around her. From most of the fans, she saw nothing but the sunshine yellow of elation and happiness. Most of the women’s were shot through with a chromy hot pink lightning bolt of lust.

  She kept walking and shooting, looking for something more…there would always be a few in every crowd. She found it; the green haze of someone who, despite the setting, was hurting somewhere deep inside. Someone who, like herself this night, needed an extra touch, something more special than just an intangible memory. She sought the source of the deep-seated melancholy.

  There. Two rows up was a woman whose upturned smile and downturned eyes were warring for control of her face. She so openly radiated her emotions that, had Kori dared to lower her guard just a tad more, she could have easily seen the reason for her underlying sorrow.

  Kori excuse-me’d her way to the woman, leaned in close as she pressed the shirt into her hands, and shouted to be heard above the din. “This is for you. You need it.”

  Kori smiled to herself as she squeezed through the crush to the aisle; she didn’t need to look back to see who just emitted the excited squeal. The shift in color told her everything. The green was still visible, but now only wisps floated mistily here and there.

  She worked her way through the sections, up and down, secretly giving out the autographed shirts to those who ached on some deep level. She’d covered most of the venue, and had one lonely shirt left in her hand when she felt it. The blackness of decay, the blue peacefulness of understanding. There was someone not far away who was terminally ill, knew it, and accepted it. She again sought out the source.

  A young man, painfully thin, stood hunched but proud in the last row of the floor seats. Round eyes that seemed too big for his face stood out from skin as gray as a burgeoning winter sky. He, too, radiated the yellows of joy, but they were mere streaks in his bruised energy. Korina walked a direct line toward him; as she neared, he turned his masklike face to her and beamed an incongruously angelic skeletal smile. A welcoming smile, as if he’d been expecting her. And on some deep unseen level, perhaps he had.

  Korina couldn’t stay near him for long; he jolted her resolve to not think about her husband and the long overdue talk they were to have tomorrow afternoon. She extended her arm toward him, and he raised his bony hand to take the shirt.

  “This last one’s yours,” she said loudly, needing nothing more in that moment than to turn and flee. It wasn’t his fault, this poor dying young man, and she knew it, but was unable to quell the urge. She almost didn’t hear his thanks as she spun away, but he had a strong voice, a strange parity with his dilapidated body. But cancer’s an odd thing, she thought, what it takes and what it leaves behind….

  She chanced a look backward over her shoulder and found he had pulled the shirt on over his head. It was too long, and flapped hugely around his scant body. But he filled it with happiness; he almost glowed yellow from within. And that, folks, is why I did what I did. She hoped she wouldn’t have to explain it to anyone, she didn’t think she properly could, nor would they understand. It just seemed so… necessary… to give back on this evening.

  With a deep sigh, she raised her guard again, and the surreal colors of the world snapped themselves gone, leaving behind only the colors her eyes could see. She skirted Paul’s side of the stage and headed to the back rooms.

  JT’s heart caught when he glimpsed her going by. Not doing something stupidly unsafe, and not lost. Good. Simply wonderful. He thought of how she’d acted earlier, and of what he wanted to do to her later, and stiffened at the images in his mind. Only halfway through the show. Damn. He focused on the beauty in the front row and took his frustrations out on her. She didn’t seem to mind.

  ****

  “No, JT, don’t.” She pushed away his persistent hands. “Please.”

  “Aw, c’mon, sweetheart. It’s our last night alone for who-knows-how-long.” He felt too much like an overwrought horny boy around her, but could do nothing to change it.

  “I know. And that’s just it. Tomorrow I see Mark.” Her voice dropped to just a shade above a whisper. “And confront him about the truth.”

  Once again JT was taken aback by his own selfishness and kicked himself. Patience, JT. But what happened to change the sexually charged woman she was before he took the stage?

  She sat propped against the headboard of his bed, arms wrapped around her knees. JT watched her stare at the ugly pattern of the bedspread for a long moment. His arms ached to hold her, to protect her from tomorrow. He knew that would be impossible. Those ugly demons demanded to be confronted and she was growing more nervous as tomorrow drew closer, minute by ticking minute.

  He couldn’t protect her, but maybe he could distract her for a while. “What became of those tshirts? I see you don’t have them anymore.” He noticed her arms tighten around her legs, pulling them even closer. Uh-oh, wrong subject?

  “I gave them away.” She didn’t break her fixed stare at the dreadful duvet.

  This is going well. “I kind of guessed that, love.”

  She dropped her chin to rest on her knees, making her quiet tone even more mumbled and difficult to understand. “I gave them to people. Some of them seemed sort of green, and needed a lift. So I gave them a special souvenir.”

  Green? He leaned forward to peer more closely at her downturned face. “Green as in ill?”

  She sighed, not really wanting to explain, but knowing sh
e had to. “No, green as in one of those weird things I do. I can pick up colors from people. If I try. Sometimes, if it’s really strong, I don’t even have to try. The color just pops into my head.” She glanced at him and registered his puzzled look. “Some people call them ‘auras,’ I guess. But I don’t so much see them as sense them,” she elaborated. “Happy, positive feelings are sunshiny lemon yellow. Passion is a vibrant crayon red. Sexual passion is darker, more like a crimson. Like you, right now. But then, you’re always somewhere in the reds. Green is disquiet, ungrounded…um, disharmony. Not negative, necessarily, but still some sort of imbalance. Not content, maybe, is a good phrase.”

  “Wait wait wait,” JT said. “Back up just a bit. What do you mean, like me right now? You asked me to stop, and I did. How could you be seeing that right now?”

  She gave him a slight smile. “I see the energy, the feelings, JT, not the actions. You’re keeping your hands to yourself, but you really don’t want to. You’ve always got some shade of red somewhere. You’re just a very passionate man. About a lot of things. Sometimes it’s streaky and sometimes you practically glow.” She took a deep breath, held it briefly, then released it very slowly. “But it’s very tiring to consciously look for it. I can’t maintain it for very long. Unless I’ve had a lot of sugar.” She flashed a grin that didn’t quite reach her eyes, then let it slide off her face again.

  “That last shirt, I gave it to a young man….hardly more than a boy, really. He’s in bad shape, JT. And he knows it. I saw that, too. He’s got cancer, and it’s killing him. That one hurt, it truly hurt, to see. All I could think about after that was, Is this how Mark will look tomorrow? Will he be black and blue, too?”

  “Does black mean death?” JT asked quietly, still watching her pensive face.

  “Usually. When it’s solid, like his was, yeah. When it’s just wispy, or streaky lines, it can be illness, or that the person is experiencing a life-altering change. But his had blue shot all through it. That’s how I knew he was at peace with it.” Her arms slid up her legs to wrap a cocoon around her head, and her next words were barely audible. “I need to see him, but I don’t know if I can stand it, JT. We have to talk about it, but God! I don’t want to. And how do you start a conversation like that? Gee, Mark, how long have you known you were dying? And when were you planning on telling me?”