Dare (The Dare Trilogy)

by Sara Frost

“You can find somebody else, if it’s that important.”

  Janey sighed. “Yeah, maybe. But there’s no-one here as good looking as him.”

  Dianne was feeling more and more disgruntled with every passing moment. Fishing her phone from her bag, she glanced at the time. “Come on,” she muttered. “The support band’ll be on in a moment. Let’s try and remember why we’re here.”

  “Why you’re here,” Janey reminded her. “Who are they?”

  “I dunno. Black Ark or something. Never heard of them before.”

  “Great. We could have been having the fuck of our lives and instead we’ve got to stand like bimbos and watch some crap support act no-one’s ever heard of.”

  Knots of people were moving onto the dance floor in front of the stage now, staring up in bored expectation at the speaker stacks and instruments on stage. If any of them were here to see Black Ark, they gave no sign of it on their faces and most of the audience was still at the bar, drinking the night away before Optima came on stage.

  After fifteen minutes or so, there was a rustling motion among some members of the crowd down at the front and a few seconds later four men walked onto the stage.

  “Fuck me,” whispered Janey and Dianne felt her own stomach churn as though she was going to be sick.

  He looked even taller on stage, clearly standing out against the other three men who formed Black Ark. Unlike Optima, who adopted something close to an emo—even glam-goth—asethetic, blue eyes and his companions were unassuming in their dress. And yet, despite lacking the theatrical trappings of the main act of the night, there was undoubtedly a presence to the lead man. Around her, Dianne could hear a number of women muttering appreciatively.

  “Thank you. We’re Black Ark!” Blue eyes evidently didn’t believe in prolonged introductions, which somewhat surprised Dianne considering the verbal display he had treated her to previously. Picking up a Fender Stratocaster, his tattoos clearly visible down his arms now, he slung the strap across his broad shoulders and deftly turned the volume and tone knobs before plugging in the jack and kicking some of the amp switches at his feet.

  Behind him, the bass player, the surliest looking out of the group, took up position in front of the keyboard player, a slender blond youth whose hair fell across his face in a kind of Sonic Youth, geek-punk fashion. The drummer, sitting down at his kit at the back of the stage, was shorter than the lead man but stockier, with powerful arms clearly able to pound skin all night long.

  Without much warning, Black Ark launched into their first number—a wave of sound that flooded the audience and took most of them by surprise. It was a harder, rawer sound than Dianne had been expecting—or indeed anyone else around them for that matter. Compared to the polished production values of Optima, this was closer to a garage band, but they were tight enough.

  As blue eyes moved his fingers up and down the frets, his other hand chopping his guitar as though it was an instrument of war, his body all coiled tension and his face fixed in concentration, Dianne allowed herself a reluctant nod. If he’d been implying he was better than Johnny Korpus, then he was an arrogant prick. He was good though. Her ears and her body didn’t allow her to deny that.

  She could hear plenty of influences. Here was a band that liked the Vines and the Raconteurs, but she could also hear the grungey pull of Nirvana and Soundgarden, as well as the earthier physical noise of the Stooges. Despite herself, her body began to move unconsciously, swaying slightly, and with a scowl she stopped herself. One thing she couldn’t stop was the sensation of opening up inside, her loins hungry for action.

  Intro out of the way, blue eyes began to sing. “Every day I’m searching for the one, the one I know who’s never gonna come.” His voice matched the music: the softness of his Scottish accent was more gravelly now, rougher, and though the lyrics were dumb Dianne found herself responding to them: that was the power of rock music—the less you had to think, the more your body acted.

  His voice was powerful, that was sure, the notes pretty clean despite the power Black Ark were pumping out. “Every day and every night, she’s the one who’s hiding from the light.” As he sang, blue eyes lifted his gaze, across the floor. Almost instinctively it was Dianne he looked at, and she felt her chest go tight with emotion as his eyes locked onto her.

  “I need her scent, I want her lust. I hear her voice, but life’s unjust. I see her standing—no feelings spared—I would take her if I dared!” His voice was rolling upwards, louder now, a bellow that still held the rhythm and harmony of the song as he raked down on the guitars, sawing it into a spiky crescendo as the drums crashed down like thunder behind him.

  That was the moment when Dianne had her orgasm.

  Chapter Two

  This was completely bloody stupid. Dianne had been waiting weeks—no, months!—to see Optima perform and now she was missing the first few songs of their performance. She heard the crowd roar out as Darius Optimus and the rest of the band had walked out on stage, but she was not there screaming her head off with the rest of them.

  Instead she was locked in a toilet cubicle, desperately trying to bring herself to a proper orgasm so that she’d have some chance of getting her head together for the rest of the night. Her jeans were half way down her legs, her knickers pushed down against them, and her hand was thrust between her legs. She was glad of the noise coming from the nightclub which covered her own grunting as she rubbed herself frantically, trying to make herself cum.

  This was a self-inflicted punishment fuck: it wasn’t normally the way she pleasured herself, but today she was annoyed and had no-one else to blame but herself for that annoyance. She realised that she had met the most amazing guy—not perfect, not her ideal, not even the kind of man she had been consciously looking for—but amazing nonetheless and she’d fucked it up. By putting on her usual sarcastic, queen bitch routine, she’d probably driven away one of the best prospects she’d encountered in years.

  She pressed down on her pubic bone with the heel of her palm, almost jabbing her fingers into her pussy. This was not the way she masturbated normally at all. She would have liked to have claimed that she didn’t need to bring herself off this way, but the truth was that Dianne had become all too familiar with her hand and other toys as the most convenient route to self pleasure.

  It wasn’t working. She was too angry with herself. She tried to stretch her legs further apart—her pussy was wet enough, but her jeans formed a bond across her calves and, in any case, the cubicle was too small. With her other hand, she yanked down the zip at the front of her top, reaching into her bra and scooping out one of her generous breasts. She’d been a stupid bitch, so now she was going to torture herself into an orgasm if it was the last thing she did.

  Squeezing her nipple, pulling and pinching it, she rubbed her clit and focussed not on her own failings but that face, those blue eyes watching her—just her, she knew it!—and the wall of music crashing about him.

  “Oh yes, oh yes!” That was doing it. “Oh fuck!”

  She clamped her thighs about her hand. Christ, her pussy was so wet. If she could have stretched her legs apart, she could have forced half her hand up there easily. She grunted, her eyes screwed shut and her lip hurting as she bit down on it. Flashes of light passed before the closed lids of her eyes and she bit down even harder on herself, trying not to cry out as she began to climax. It was no good though, and as she pumped her fingers into herself, pressing down on her clitoris with her thumb as her other hand punished her nipple, her lips opened.

  “Oh Christ! Oh, fuck! Oh fucking hell!” she groaned, her hips bucking and her legs completely compressed around her hand now.

  She didn’t know how long she sat on the loo after that, her legs skewed, jeans around her ankles, one breast hanging from her bra. She felt extremely light-headed, but that feeling of drunkenness soon passed and she was able to clean between her legs with some toilet paper from the holder. She could remember the days when the last thing she would have wante
d to do was touch anything in the loos of NightWorld, but at least they employed an attendant these days to make sure things were not so squalid...

  ...an attendant who stared at her with a smirk as she left the cubicle to wash her hands. Dianne gave her the cold shoulder then went out of the toilets into the nightclub.

  “I thought something happened to you,” Janey shouted above the blaring music of Optima, grabbing hold of her shoulder and pulling her close. Dianne offered some meaningless excuse but as Janey couldn’t hear it anyway both of them turned their attention back to the stage.

  “Come into the garden, all you little children,” Gary Johnson, aka Darius Optimus, was singing in his trademark baritone sneer. There was so much that was more than a little preposterous about Optima in so many ways—almost a throwback to prog-rock pomposity via a little Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie—but she was willing to forgive him anything for that voice and his musical talents. The man was pretty much a qualified genius and if his show sometimes went a little OTT, then so much the better.

  There were hundreds of stories about Optima, and Darius in particular, that he conducted black masses and brought cats and puppies onto stage to sacrifice as part of his act. It was all the same tabloid-hyped nonsense and Dianne had little time for it—not least of which because she’d like to see any artist getting such an act past the RSPCA these days. The club—driven on by half the right-on audience at least—would have closed down that performance before it had chance to get started.

  In any case, all Dianne cared about was the music, listening in a kind of ecstasy as Darius leaned against his lead guitarist, Johnny Korpus, his pale face, slender figure and long, jet black hair contrasting with Johnny’s beefier, more powerful physique. Behind them were arranged bass, keyboard and drums—so close to the setup of Black Ark but a world away in terms of their sound and quality. Darius had been classically trained and his range of styles and abilities was much wider than the general public were led to believe.

  Dianne’s little excursion to the ladies room had calmed her down, and now the music drove out any recollection of blue eyes and his garage band for a while. Yeah, he may have touched her for a moment, but it was now with Optima on stage that she experienced another kind of ecstasy that trumped all others.

  “They’re good, aren’t they?” She simply nodded at first to the sound of the voice behind her, but then that Scottish lilt—louder now because he was shouting—filtered through her consciousness. In front of them Optima was performing one of its classics, Reaver, and she turned to glance backwards only for a second at blue eyes. She had been watching the stage, but she gathered he had been watching her. A thrill ran up her spine when she saw again just how tall he was, towering over her, but she wanted to play it cool, turning her attention back to the band after giving him a nod.

  “And when I call they’ll all come running!” Darius’s voice was a deep growl above the drums and Johnny’s guitar. “Why try to escape your certain future!”

  Watching Optima as they built up to the climax of the song, she folded her arms across her chest in a pose of assured self-control. She wondered if blue eyes was close enough to her to realise that she was trembling, and she hoped that if he was he considered it her excited reaction to the music.

  Darius was half mounted now by Johnny, a faux homoerotic pose as the guitarist thrashed his axe in a frenzy—and indeed Dianne was trembling to the music now, leaping up and down like so many in the crowd next to her as she yelled her appreciation.

  The climax of Reaver was somewhat overblown, as Optima’s music always was, but she threw herself into the spirit of the moment with gusto. When she turned to face blue eyes, who was staring at her with a half smile on his face, she could feel her cheeks hot and flushed. Heaven alone knew what the next few moments would bring, and she also felt herself past caring: her heart was racing, and blood was pumping through her veins as the main set cleared the stage.

  “If you’d have told me you were supporting Optima, we’d have got on better much more quickly.”

  Blue eyes raised one eyebrow at this. “Well, I recognised you as a person who liked to be judged on your own terms. Maybe I’m the same. I prefer to be taken on my own merits, rather than riding someone else’s coat tails.”

  “Even if those tails belong to Darius Optimus.”

  “Even him.” Blue eyes looked past her now towards the stage and Dianne caught something strange reflected in his expression.

  “Oh, but come on,” she said. “It must be exciting to be supporting Optima!”

  “Sure it is.” He shrugged. “Want to come back stage? There’s usually... a party afterwards.”

  “Oh my God!” Dianne’s jaw dropped and, instinctively, she grabbed hold of her as yet nameless companion’s arms. “Are you serious?”

  “No, I’ve changed my mind. Of course I’m serious! If you still want to be associated with me, that is. You seemed pretty cool towards me earlier when we were talking.”

  Suddenly Dianne remembered the kinds of things this handsome stranger had been saying to her before, as well as her reaction when Black Ark had played her first song. Despite all her attempts to retain that cool demeanour, she now blushed and dipped her eyes away from his.

  “Sure,” she replied, trying to present herself as more self-controlled than she really felt. “I didn’t know you, that’s all.” She frowned. “I still don’t know your name, as it happens.”

  “Just as I don’t know yours.” Blue eyes smiled at this. “Why don’t we try and keep the mystery going just a little bit longer, eh?”

  She pulled in her chin at this, staring up at him quizzically. “A little bit longer? Do you really think I’m that easy?” She snorted in disgust at this.

  Blue eyes shrugged. “Well, I guess I better be on my way.” A tic in his cheek, however, indicated that he was playing things as cool as she was. She placed a hand on his arm, and felt a thrill down below as her fingers touched his muscular flesh.

  “That’s... that’s not what I meant. I better find my friend and tell her where I’m going.”

  His smile was warmer this time and, leaving her hand on his arm he used the other to point further away in the crowd. “I think she’s already got herself an invite.”

  Looking up, Dianne saw Janey sandwiched between the keyboard player and drummer of Black Ark, letting her body shimmy up and down as they pressed into her, the synth player kissing her blonde hair while the drummer ground his hips against hers.

  “Oh, God,” Dianne groaned. “She’s never been one to be backward in coming forward.” She lifted a hand across her face in embarrassment.

  “I gathered as much when we first met,” blue eyes replied with a smirk. “I realised that I’d better invite you to the back stage party or you’d be getting a taxi ride home on your own.”

  Dianne was slightly annoyed at the stranger’s somewhat smug assessment of Janey, for all that it was true, but she allowed herself to be led by the hand as the tall man took her through the crowd, pushing a way through the morass of people. If anyone had recognised him as the singer and lead guitarist of Black Ark, such recognition had been seared away by Optima’s performance. Realising this, Dianne suddenly felt her heart go out to blue eyes as he led her towards security.

  “It’s okay, she’s with me,” he told the beefy guards who, barely giving him a glance, allowed him to push through to the darkened corridor beyond.

  “So, how long have you been supporting Optima?” she asked, her hand firmly in his as he turned left and right through a narrow corridor.

  “Just the past couple of weeks. This is the UK leg of a European tour. We’re off to Paris the day after tomorrow.”

  “Not a bad gig. How’d you get it?”

  Blue eyes flashed her a smile. “I’m friends with the guitarist.”

  “What, you and Johnny Korpus know each other?”

  “We went to school together, though he was John McIntyre in those days. Small world isn’t it
, to be so close now to the best living guitarist in the world. Johnny’s not bad, either.”

  She snorted at this, a mixture of scorn and genuine humour, but blue eyes affected not to notice. “Ah,” he said instead as they came to a door. “Here we are. I hope you’re ready.”

  “More than you can possibly imagine,” she answered eagerly. His own expression was a strange one, impossible to read as he opened the door and gestured for her to go through.

  Moving from the darkness into the brightly lit dressing room, Dianne was blinded for a few seconds. As such, she did not immediately comprehend that the shape in front of her was a woman on her knees, her black-haired head bobbing up and down in front of Darius’s crotch. The singer had one hand on the woman’s locks, gripping her firmly so that she wouldn’t have been able to move had she desired to.

  Despite this demand on his attention, Darius still managed to stare directly at Dianne as she half stumbled into the room.

  “Nice fucking rack,” he said. “Fucking great ass as well.” Suddenly deciding that he’d had enough of the girl who was kneeling in front of him, he shoved her head aside brusquely. As Dianne’s eyes came into focus, she had the embarrassment to be staring at the erection of the Optima singer swaying from one side to another as he walked across towards her.

  Just before he reached her, however, he must have realised who was behind her and his swaggering confidence faltered slightly as his eyes rose up a notch (matched, Dianne noted, by a faltering of his cock down below).

  “Oh, Cam,” he said. “It’s you.” Suddenly his hand dropped to his crotch and he popped his wilting penis back into his trousers. His face, covered in white makeup, looked as deflated as his cock but he forced a smile, addressing blue eyes behind her rather than Dianne. “So, is this pretty little thing your present for me?”

  “I don’t know,” Dianne heard the soft Scottish voice behind her. “You’d have to ask her about that.”

  Dianne, despite all her intentions to the contrary, found herself unable to speak like some dumb school girl, a mixture of being star struck and also slightly confounded by the compromising position in which she had encountered the lead singer. She also had a suspicion that had it not been for the presence of her companion (now suddenly not so nameless), Darius wouldn’t have cared in the slightest as to how she had seen him.