by Jo Raven
He nodded. “It was actually a good place to grow up. I was never lonely, not even a little. I could organize a soccer game with two full teams any time I wanted to. Once I hit about ten, I liked playing with the toddlers. I taught dozens of kids to throw a ball, and I played the piano for them a lot. I’d have a dozen little babies sitting around me and clapping while I practiced in the afternoon.”
He smiled at the memory.
Elfie tried to imagine the hardcore rocker—earrings jangling from his lobes, tattoos embellishing his arms, the drunk she poured into bed at night and roused from his hangover in the morning,—playing the piano for a dozen tiny kids.
She failed. It was too weird.
“Some of my sisters were really nice,” he continued. “They took care of me a lot because, after we moved there, my real mom was always pregnant with another baby. I tend to respond to women like they’re my sisters because I had so damn many of them.”
“So why aren’t you living in a big house with ten wives right now?” A thought jumped into her head: dozens of babies and toddlers, all gorgeous with Tryp’s dark, curly hair and huge, almond-shaped, dark eyes. The future would have been a hunkier place.
He said, “If each elder gets a dozen or more wives, but babies are born in the usual ratio, you can see what the problem is.”
Her heart lurched. “Didn’t you have brothers?”
“I had some brothers, little brothers, but it didn’t occur to me to ask why there weren’t any boys older than about thirteen around.”
Elfie had grown up in Texas, where the desert was shorthand for the desolation where bodies were dumped. “What happened to the little boys?”
“When they started getting old enough to notice girls, when they started getting defiant, their mothers drove them ten miles out of town to the highway and set them on the road. They hitchhiked to Las Vegas, L.A., or Phoenix. Most ended up working construction because they hadn’t gone to school except for some home school, and most of them could barely read. I had learned to read in public school before we moved there, and with no TV, I read a lot of books, everything I could find. I made it to fourteen because, in the land with no television or internet, the kid who can play the piano is a valuable commodity, almost as valuable as a virgin bride.”
Her stomach clenched. “Your song, the one about being set on the road.”
He looked away from her, over to their suitcases. “Yeah.”
“Your mother?”
“Yeah.”
“I can’t imagine anyone’s mother choosing—” but she could imagine, actually. She wound her body around his, clinging to him. “I’m so sorry, Tryfon. I’m so sorry.”
She fell asleep holding him, and he didn’t let go of her.
Morning
Elfie’s phone tweeted in her purse at its usual time, which was just a few hours after she had gone to sleep. She grabbed it and squeezed it all over to silence the stupid thing. She glanced behind her in the bed, but Tryp was still sleeping hard, his arms and legs flung all over the sheets. His bare chest rose and fell softly, the ink on his skin moving like illustrations. A fine sheen of black hair velveted his chest and down his abs, and a thin happy trail started below his navel.
He must, ahem, manscape.
All those tattoos had cost a lot of money, probably tens of thousands of dollars, so it made sense. You wouldn’t drive a Porsche through town with the dust cover on it.
She held her hand above his chest, wanting to touch that fuzz, and kind of wished he was dead drunk so she could explore him a little, but that was creepy, right?
Yeah. It was. She still kind of wanted to, just because she hadn’t ever really seen so much gorgeous man up close.
But Tryp had had enough hangovers. She didn’t want to see him hurt anymore.
Elfie crept out of the bed, sliding off the mattress so she wouldn’t wake him up, and went to shower. Afterward, she pulled on her crew tee shirt and cargo jeans and knotted her hair out of the way. She patted her pockets, counting the pyro effects she had in there. Three. She might want to stick in a couple more. An even dozen sounded right.
When she came out, Tryp was just waking up. His fingers curled on the sheets, and he looked at her outfit. “Where did Elfie go?”
She glanced down at herself. Yep, work clothes, just like she always wore. “I have no idea what you mean.”
“The baggy pants, the oversized shirt, your hair yanked back like that. You look like a guy.”
“It’s comfortable, and I need lots of big pockets for my explosives.” She patted her thighs, showing him where she carried bombs and tubes that emitted ten foot-long plumes of blue fire.
“‘My explosives.’ You scare me sometimes,” he said, grinning.
“Yeah. You like that.” Wow. She was all flirty today. Better tone that down before she got to work. There, she only spoke the language of fire.
He grinned. “You bet I do. Come over here.”
“Tryp, honey, I feel like I need to make a disclaimer or give you an escape clause. Last night was—” words failed her, “—incredible. Amazing.”
His smile turned sultry, and he leaned back against the headboard, his rippled abs crunching together. “This morning can be, too.”
“But you’re a rock star.”
“That’s such a weird term, rock star.”
“And I’m not a rock star, and I’m not a waify model, and I’m not an award-winning actress, and I’m not anybody. You’re not going to be interested in me for very long. We’ve gotten to be pretty good friends. Let’s stay friends, okay?”
Tryp picked up his drumsticks from the nightstand and twirled them around his fingers. “Ride on the tour bus with me tonight.”
If she ditched work and spent the five-hour overnight trip to L.A. on the band’s bus with him, everyone would know, and it would prolong this weird affair-thing and might hurt them both. “Oh, Tryfon. I can’t. I have to work.”
“I’ll clear it with Jonas.”
She sat on the bed beside him. “I like my work. I want to go to college and be an engineer. Then I’ll get to blow big things up.”
He chuckled. “College, huh?”
“Yeah. Did you have time to go to college at all?” She was still trying to put together the timeline of his life.
“I went to the Colburn School music conservatory for a semester, but then some mutual friends introduced me to Xan and Cadell, and they convinced me that I wanted to be a real musician instead.”
“I imagine Xan can be persuasive.”
“Very, but I wasn’t going to do it. When Xan went to take a whizz, Cadell told me that he’d dropped out of Juilliard for Xan, and I was all, whoa. He said that Xan was a fucking genius and he was going to drag a band to be bigger than Bon Jovi and U2 and The Beatles and anybody else I could name all put together, if he could find the right musicians, and if they could survive what Xan was going to put them through. It sounded like a challenge.” His devilish grin almost made her laugh. “It sounded like marching off to war, but with groupies.”
“So you never went back to college.”
“Theoretically, I’m on sabbatical, but I can’t go back. It is a war, and I’ve seen the fight. It’s too much. It demands too much of you. When I walk away from Killer Valentine, I’m going to get a motorcycle and ride it until I collapse or live in a cave.”
“You could probably buy a cave on a private island.”
“Maybe I’ll just drink myself into an early grave.”
“Come on. I wouldn’t let you do that.”
“Everybody else would.”
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself. You’re a rock star who fucks a different woman every night and has all the drugs and booze you want. You work three hours a day and have room service deliver your food and the concierge do your laundry, when you do laundry.”
He reached out and took her hand. “Every single person I have ever loved has walked out of my life or died.”
Elfie fli
pped her hand over and held his fingers. “I won’t let you drink yourself to death, and I won’t let you die in your sleep.”
“Tonight, ride down to L.A. on the bus with me.”
“I can’t. The load-out tonight is a bear. This show isn’t an easy one to strike in most theaters, but the loading docks here are weird. The L.A. theater is worse. We have to disassemble most of the lighting battens, and those as such a pain in the ass to reassemble. I have to be there to help. I’ll see you in L.A.”
“At least we’ll be in L.A. for a few days. We’ve done twenty-seven single-night shows in a row. That’s batfuck insane.”
“Besides, where would I sleep on that bus?”
“In my bunk.”
She mentally calculated his shoulder-width and the span of his long, long legs. “Dude, I don’t think you have room in that single-wide for a teddy bear.”
“You’d be surprised how many people can fit into one of those bunks.”
She clapped her hands over her ears. “I don’t want to hear. I don’t want to know. I’ll just concede the point. But I need to work tonight. I’ll see you tomorrow in L.A.”
Night or Something
The show in Monterey was as perfect as could reasonably be expected, tech-wise. Sound check went fine, and Mitch seemed satisfied that the venue’s acoustics didn’t suck too badly. Elfie’s pyros all blew up at the right time and place, lighting the crowd with fire and sparks but not killing any of the musos.
She broke her promise to herself and set her headphones so that she could hear Tryp singing to her, remembering his voice in the dim morning light. Romances with rock stars never lasted, but she could enjoy listening to him as close as if he were wrapped around her. Christine Daae left Erik, the Phantom of the Opera, the technician who had given up everything for her, for some lordling with money, essentially a celebrity. Elfie didn’t want her heart broken.
The load-out took most of the dark hours, and Elfie packed her pyrotechnics and helped unbolt and carry the delicate but huge theatrical lamps through the night to the two semi tractor-trailers that transported the tour’s equipment. Near dawn, when Elfie was sweaty, grease-stained, and exhausted, she tumbled onto the technicians’ bus and curled up in a ball in the recliner-like seat to sleep away the whole trip. The five-hour drive to L.A. jostled her while she dozed.
The bus pulled into the hotel at ten o’clock, just in time for the restaurants to stop serving breakfast, and Elfie got her keycard from Rock, who had collected them from Jonas, who looked freshly showered and well-rested from his bus with a bed, the wuss.
She dragged herself up to her one-queen room near the back with its garbage-bin view and was just about to fall headlong on the bed for a couple hours before she had to roust Tryp out of his bed that he had been sleeping in all night, probably, when she noticed something was missing.
The dresser was bare. Her suitcase wasn’t in the damn room, even though their personal stuff was supposed to be on the first bus.
Shit.
Mishaps happened on tours. Luggage got mislaid. She had essentials in her backpack.
Damn it. She wanted her stuff.
She was just hauling her butt out her hotel room door to go see if Rock had any leftover luggage, when her sleep-deprived brain dipped down and remembered that her suitcase had been in Tryp’s room, and it had probably been tagged to go with the musos’ stuff and ended back in Tryp’s room this morning.
She called Tryp on her phone, although in her fatigue, it took two tries.
He answered, his voice in her ear like he was behind her and about to run his hands over her body again, “Hello?”
With that one word, she could tell that he was drunk. “Tryp? Are you in your room?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you in bed?”
Some fumbling. “I think I’m on the floor.”
She didn’t really want to ask this question. “Are you alone?”
“Yeah. Jonas put Rade and Grayson in some other room.”
She was stupidly joyous for absolutely no damned reason. “What room are you in?”
“I don’t know.”
“Look at the door.”
More fumbling, and he said, “Eight-oh-two.”
The eighth floor was the top floor, and surely they had security up there, at least a key necessary to make the elevator go that far up. “I’ll be right there.”
She hung up and called Jonas, asking him to come get her because she was worried about Tryp. A few minutes later, he was wearing gym shorts when he whistled to her from the elevator.
When they rode up, Jonas dug around in his pocket and handed her an elevator key and a keycard. “For your side job.”
“Thanks.”
“How’s that going?”
“Fine, but it sounds like he’s going to have a rough day today.”
Jonas sighed. “Do your best.”
Jonas pointed her down the hall toward Tryp’s room and went back into his own dark room. Her work boots sank into the blue carpeting up here in the rarified air of the penthouse. The hallway outside her own room’s door had flat, stained carpet.
She knocked first but didn’t hear anything, so she used the keycard.
Tryp was sprawled on the couch of the living room, holding his head in his hands. “You okay, Tryp?”
He looked up at her, his dark eyes foggy. “Elfie?”
“Yeah. Have you slept?”
“I haven’t had enough of this yet.” He tipped over an empty vodka bottle on the coffee table. It rolled and fell to the thick carpet.
“Come on, Tryp.” She held out a hand to him. “You’ve got a few hours that you can sleep before your radio interview this afternoon.”
He reached up, and it looked like he was going to take her offered hand, but he locked his rough fingers around her hand and tugged her down on top of him.
“You can’t fool me,” he said, tugging the bobbie pins out of her hair and combing it out with his fingers. “I know how beautiful you are now. You can’t hide it from me.”
Her hair tumbled around them. “You’re drunk.”
“Not so drunk. Not drunk enough.”
“Not drunk enough for what?” Nerves jittered in her stomach.
“To sleep. To not think. To not rage at it all.” His voice didn’t sound raging. It sounded like he was enjoying looking at the wan sun shining on her hair.
“I don’t think you’re the raging type.” The funny type, sure. The sweet kind. The strong and tall and muscular type that made her mouth wet because she could feel his hard, thick muscles underneath her.
“You have no idea,” he said. His fingers tightened in her hair, and he pushed her down to his mouth. He tasted like alcohol and something sweet, maybe juice or soda, and he ran his tongue over hers. He reached around her waist and squeezed her against him.
His hand slid under her shirt in the back and skittered over her sweaty skin. He rubbed, pushing her into him, and held her by her hair, kissing her. He used his fist in her hair to stretch her neck, chewing down her skin. “God, you smell good.”
“No, I don’t. I’m sweaty, and I’ve been working all night.”
“I think you smell great.” He inhaled all the way down her neck and raked his teeth over her shoulder.
“You’re really drunk, Tryfon.”
“Lead me to the bed and find out.”
“Deal.” She had seen him toasted enough times to know that he was going to collapse on it.
Tryp let her slide off him, and this time, she helped him to his feet. He wove for a second, then yanked her arm to pull her against himself, all six feet-plus of hard muscle.
He wasn’t nearly as unsteady on his feet as she had thought he would be.
His dark eyes sharpened, and for a minute, Tryp didn’t look drunk at all. He looked very interested when he ran his hand down her body, over her slight curves. “So you were going to lead me to the bed.”
So, if a guy is inebriated and making b
ad decisions, the opposite decisions of those he had made when he was sober, or closer to sober, Elfie couldn’t decide just how much responsibility she had to fight him off when she wanted to crawl in bed with him, pin his arms down, and figure out how to do it because she had a technical knowledge of the act but really hadn’t figured out the practical applications.
She did, however, know what to do first.
Elfie held his hand and led him to the bedroom.
Her suitcase was indeed sitting on his dresser.
All her stuff was here. She had a key to his room, too. Had she accidentally shacked up with him?
It’s hard to tell on a rock concert tour. Sometimes these things happen.
The door slammed behind her, and Elfie was just turning around to see if the air conditioner had blown it shut when Tryp stepped in front of her, grabbed her, and shoved her up against the wall, pressing her between it and his hard body. His mouth came down on hers, and he kissed her hard and deep.
To hell with responsibility.
Elfie grabbed his neck and hopped, wrapping her legs around his waist. He straightened and pressed her against the wall harder, lifting her under her butt and sucking on her tongue. She locked her ankles behind his back, and he pressed himself between her legs, and he rubbed her with his body.
Elfie gasped and arched, trying to find that spot down there.
He groaned and went for her throat, biting and sucking her skin wherever he could reach. He slid his hands under her arms, and when he stepped backward, he held her to his chest while he walked over to the bed. He held her in his arms, stroking her tongue with his, before he laid her down on the soft mattress.
He stripped her clothes and his shirt off, and she was naked and so vulnerable on his bed with morning sunlight leaking through the curtains. She almost flipped the bedspread over herself and claimed being cold, but she held her arms up for him, and he fell on her body, sucking on her breasts and scraping the skin of her stomach with his teeth. His big hands wrapped her hips, her thighs, held her wrists, everywhere on her. He was breathing hard, and his black curls brushed her belly, his breath cooled her moist skin, and sparks of delicious hurt, almost like pain, radiated where he bit her.