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‘If you don’t get inside me soon, I’m going to knock you to the floor and jump you.’
‘You’re going to knock me over? Babe, I’m twice your height. I could probably bench-press you.’
‘I’ll have you know I’ve a black belt.’ He didn’t need to know that she only used it to hold her trousers up.
‘Yeah? Maybe you can show me some moves later. I like watching women exercise.’
He was so close to being inside her now, his nearness was driving her insane.
‘Do it, Ash.’ Fuck, it made her horny just saying his name.
‘Like this?’ He joined them together in one glorious push.
‘Oh, God!’ That felt good. She bit her lip, trying to steady herself, but failing. So, so good!
Ginny liked being ridden hard and she liked things frantic. What surprised her about Ash was that for all the crazy hard pounding he was doing, he wasn’t so lost in himself that he’d forgotten to make it good for her too. Almost the moment they were locked together he wrapped an arm around her and rested one hand against her lower belly. He curled his fingers, so that each thrust drove her swollen clit against them. The very merry buzz that created left her in no doubt that he’d get her off again – with luck, right around the time he came himself. She liked how he used her piercing to ramp things up. Most guys were afraid of touching it. Damn – he was everything she wanted in a lover, sexy, a little rough around the edges, daring and capable of making her so hot she feared she’d explode. Too bad he wasn’t for keeps. For him, she might consider waiving her no-commitment rule.
‘Oh, effin Christ!’
A glass splintered inside Ginny’s ears, wrecking the moment of bliss that was about to happen.
‘Ash, must you? Really?’
Ginny opened her eyes to find Black Halo’s diminutive keyboardist Elspeth Shriik standing in the open doorway, hands planted on her non-existent hips. She lambasted them with a gaze capable of lasering through steel. Holy shit! They were in for a serious rollicking.
Ginny almost caved before Elspeth said another word, but Ash had such a firm grip on her that it prevented any sort of escape.
He gave his band mate a two-fingered salute.
‘No one’s forcing you to watch. Piss off to the hotel and cosy up with your other half.’
‘Don’t you tell me to piss off, Ashley Gore.’
Ginny swore the big bouquet of lilies on the other sofa immediately wilted. The same couldn’t be said for Ash, who nuzzled against her neck as he continued to push inside her.
‘Considering the furore you’ve caused tonight, maybe I should tell you to piss off for good.’
Ginny bit her lips. Things were suddenly so tense, she wasn’t sure this was genuinely fun any more. ‘We could take it elsewhere, Ash.’
‘Yeah,’ Elspeth agreed, having overheard her whisper. ‘You’re not supposed to shag in the dressing room, Ash.’
‘So says the woman who’s screwed Xane so badly he’s walked out.’
OK, this was not good. It was time she staged a retreat. She did not want to be in the centre of an argument, no matter how much fun he was proving to be.
She wriggled, but he still didn’t budge.
‘Did you say he’s shagging?’ Another voice sounded from outside the room. ‘Where? Let me through.’
A kerfuffle involving a lot of shoving broke out in the corridor behind Elspeth. A second or two later, Spook Mortensen, Black Halo’s Swedish rhythm guitarist, appeared in the doorway. He negotiated his way around Elspeth, making minimal contact, then, on seeing Ginny and Ash, broke into an enormous grin. ‘I don’t mind him doing it here.’
‘Me neither.’ The band’s bassist joined him on the sofa.
‘Paul!’ Elspeth chirped, disgust creasing her fey features.
He raised his mile-wide shoulders and offered her an apologetic look. ‘What? I’m a very visual person, and I’ll take any sort of fun over the crap storm that’s going on outside. If we get out of here before midnight it’ll be a miracle.’
‘More like before tomorrow,’ Spook said.
Elspeth pulled at her blonde hair. ‘I still can’t believe you’re going to sit and watch him fuck some tart over a sofa back.’
‘Why not?’ Ash drawled, still holding Ginny close. ‘They normally do.’
‘Hey, less of the “tart”,’ Ginny complained. She might have slightly loose morals but that didn’t necessitate name-calling.
‘I like tarts.’ Ash ran his tongue across the back of her neck. ‘Strawberry, Apple, Raspberry. Treacle’s my favourite. Yummy.’ He smacked his lips together. ‘Just like you. Maybe I could order some and lick it off you.’
‘Sounds sticky.’ She laughed, forgiving him, given the ardour of his wet kisses.
‘I thought you told me you liked getting sticky.’ He sucked over her pulse point, sending a lovely shiver rolling through her body that temporarily made her forget about Elspeth and the two guitarists.
‘Do that again,’ Rock Giant insisted. ‘I think she likes it.’
Heat swept across Ginny’s cheeks. Actually, he was both wrong and right. It wasn’t purely what Ash was doing with his mouth that had her gasping, but the other actions he was performing too. Like how he was working his fingers in a brisk, delightful motion over her excited nub, while he continued to fuck her in a steady rhythm.
‘You don’t mind if they watch, do you?’
Ginny wasn’t particularly shy, nor did she specifically get off on being watched. That wasn’t to say this was a unique experience. She’d been to parties. Sex happened, and sometimes it happened in spaces that weren’t entirely private. Also, enjoying sex as much as she did, she wasn’t entirely a stranger to the idea of enjoying more than one partner, which kind of inevitably led to a certain amount of natural exhibitionism and voyeurism. Having Spook Mortensen and Rock Giant Reed watching her have sex with their band mate was altogether different, though, but not in way that made her consider stopping. Yeah, so her cheeks were flaming, but the attention sure made her feel sexy.
It helped that the two of them were fantastically hot.
Rock Giant got her on a visceral level. It was the pure physicality of the guy – the corded steel of his musculature, coupled with his impressive height. Spook was different again, lithe and efficient, with eyes so blue you could discover whole ocean worlds in their depths. He looked as if he’d stepped straight out of her favourite fantasy novel at the close of an epic battle.
‘You’re disgusting,’ Elspeth huffed at the lack of response, then she turned on her spiked heels and left, slamming the door behind her.
‘Good riddance,’ Ash said.
Ginny breathed a sigh of relief. Not that she realised she’d been holding her breath until the inward rush of oxygen filled her chest.
Ash raised another finger at Elspeth as a farewell. ‘Now, where were we?’
As if he could possibly have forgotten. He’d never stopped doing what they were doing, only slowed down a bit.
‘You really don’t mind these two perverts being here, do you? Because I can turf them out.’
‘They’re just watching?’
‘Guys?’
‘I’m good,’ Rock Giant mumbled, raising a hand.
Spook nodded. ‘Me too.’
‘Guess you’re all mine. Suits me.’ He held on tight, while giving a theatrical cackle of glee.
Ginny was relieved to find that Ash didn’t try to stage any more of a performance. He didn’t hurry, or attempt to stretch things out, now they had an audience. In fact, he barely seemed to notice his band mates. For her part, she couldn’t quite ignore them. Knowing they were within arm’s reach set her senses alight. That, coupled with the press of Ash’s fingertips and the rock of his slim hips, meant she hit climax super-fast. He hardly needed to do anything at all and her body was clenching hold of him, while she squeezed out staccato breaths.
Once again, Ash rode the tide with her until she was entirely spent. Ginny flopped forward against the sofa so that her flaming cheek pressed against the cool leather. She stayed there panting for a moment or two. Only when Ash withdrew did she venture a glance at the other two Black Halo guitarists. Rock Giant looked slightly cooked. He picked up the vase of lilies and held them on his lap. ‘Nice one,’ he remarked, giving her thumbs up.
Spook meanwhile wasn’t even looking at her. He appeared to be reviewing something on the screen of his digital camera. ‘Uh,’ Ginny moaned, as realisation hit. ‘Did you just film us?’
‘It’s just a few snapshots. You don’t mind, do you?’ he said, rounding his eyes in an attempt to look innocent.
‘Um.’
Ash didn’t make a remark, which suggested he knew they were recording their antics and didn’t disapprove. When she turned in order to refasten her bra, she found him in the process of disposing of the condom in the waste bin in the corner.
‘OK?’ He zipped up, but not before she’d seen enough to confirm an already nagging suspicion.
‘You didn’t come,’ she whispered, not wanting the other guys to hear.
Ash shrugged, as if that were no big deal. Well, it was to her. She’d never been with a guy who packed up and moved on before he was done, regardless of whether she was satisfied. In other circumstances she’d have offered to go down on him, but he raised his hand towards Spook in a beckoning motion. ‘Show.’
Spook bounded across the room and thrust the camera between them.
‘Not bad,’ Ash commented. ‘Better than the last few.’
Ginny turned away from the crude, if fetching, image of herself and covered her burning cheeks with her hands, not so much out of shame or ordinary embarrassment as at the way she’d been labelled as part of a collection. A collection Ash clearly didn’t hold in any great regard. Not that she’d been under any illusions about what he was like before she’d got into this. The members of Black Halo all had reputations, and even among them Ash was notorious. The guy might as well have had ‘player’ stamped across his forehead in indelible ink. The thing was, that slow-as-molasses dirty smile of his screamed, ‘I know what you want and I know how to give it.’ And she was a sucker for guys like that.
Actually, to hell with it, it wasn’t the slutty label that was bugging her. It was the fact she’d failed him. She hadn’t done enough and he hadn’t got off. She, who prided herself on always giving her partner a good time, even if they were crap in bed – and he wasn’t – had left her rock-star fantasy unsatisfied. She watched him tuck his still raging hard-on back inside his tight pants. What’s more, unless she wanted to make another spectacle of herself, of both of them, there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it. Not a single damn thing.
‘I think we should at least attempt to get to the hotel,’ Ash remarked. ‘I sure as hell don’t want to spend the night in here.’ He crossed the room and snatched the lilies from the vase strategically positioned on Rock Giant’s lap and shoved them into the waste bin. ‘These things stink.’
‘Reckon?’ Rock Giant asked, still clinging to the vase. ‘I mean about leaving. Aren’t we better off holding tight until the crowd thins?’
‘If the crowd thins,’ Spook muttered. He turned off his camera and put it away in its leather case. ‘It’s not like this is a regular gig we’re escaping from. Those beasts are going to camp out there for as long as they think we’re still in the building. In fact, the longer we sit here the bigger the crowd is likely to get.’
Rock Giant looked slightly dubious, but as there were no external windows in the room there was no way of telling what the situation was currently like outside.
‘So we need an escape plan. Anyone have any suggestions?’ Ash collected his jacket off a chair back and shrugged it on.
‘Phone for booze and pizza,’ Rock Giant suggested.
‘Camp out in here and wait for the police to intervene,’ Spook said.
Ash dismissed both ideas with a slash of his head. ‘Stuff that. I’m not sitting around. With a bit of luck Elspeth and Steve have taken the first limo out by now.’
Both Spook and Rock Giant exchanged nonplussed glances, clearly not following Ash’s chain of logic.
Ginny didn’t follow either, but she took the moment of confusion to straighten herself out.
‘This means they’re probably stuck, and the attention of the crowd is on the front of the building.’
‘Yeah? And?’
‘And –’ Ash slapped his forehead. ‘We use the distraction to escape. If we send Ulf and the crew in the second limo, then we can slip away in the roadies’ van.’
‘Brilliant!’ Rock Giant shot upright. A manic grin stretched across his rock-hewn features. ‘Bagsy I’m driving.’
‘If you must.’
‘Yes!’ Rock Giant punched the air. ‘I get to drive the va-an … I get to drive the va-an.’ He clasped an invisible steering wheel and proceeded to zoom around the room. ‘OK, everyone, get your shit together. We’re doing this. Fall in. Fall in.’
Not quite sure if she was included in this escape plan, Ginny watched the guys collect assorted jackets and trinkets from around the room.
‘If we end up in A and E I’m holding you personally responsible,’ Spook muttered to Ash, as he fell into line behind Rock Giant. ‘Last time he drove the bus, we ended up doing a three-sixty-degree roll down an embankment, and I swore I was never getting into another moving vehicle if he was controlling it.’
‘Well, if you’d prefer to drive?’
Abject horror filled Spook’s handsome face. He shook his head. ‘No way. You lot drive on the wrong side of the road.’
‘The left is the right side of the road,’ Rock Giant griped.
‘Yeah, how’d you figure that out? It doesn’t even make sense.’
Rock Giant proceeded to careen around the furniture, over-egging his performance with brake-screeching sound effects. ‘I’ll go get the van keys off Ulf.’
‘Dear God,’ Spook sighed with his head down.
‘It’s OK, baby, I’ll protect you.’ Ash draped an arm around his shoulder and squeezed.
Spook shook him off. ‘Lay off the soppy stuff. I’m not here to provide you with post-coital cuddles. You’re supposed to do that with the girl.’ He headed towards the exit with his long white-blond hair falling around his shoulders and his purple guitar slung across his back. ‘I am so glad I insured my fingers. At least I can live off the proceeds after he mangles us.’
‘Is Rock Giant’s driving really that bad?’ Ginny asked, forcing Ash to remember her presence.
‘It’s atrocious. Let’s pray there aren’t any corners between here and the hotel.’ He extended his hand towards her. ‘Are you prepared to chance it?’
Ginny stared at his hand a moment, not sure how to respond. He was fun, but he’d definitely been odd with her the last few minutes. Then again, maybe he was irked over the fact he hadn’t come. ‘If you still want me?’
‘Why wouldn’t I?’ His brow creased into a frown, which also turned the edges of his mouth down. He clasped her hand and pulled her into his embrace. ‘You promised me a whole night of fun, lady. The night’s barely begun.’
‘Yeah.’ She traced her palms across the surface of his washboard abs. ‘But I wouldn’t want to take up your time if I’m not pleasing you.’ She looked up into his blue-grey eyes fearing the truth she’d see, but there was no hint of disappointment.
‘I’ve no complaints.’
Ginny drew her touch downward, so that her palm skated over the hummock distorting his fly. ‘Sure about that?’
‘Absolutely. Besides, I need to smother you in treacle yet and lick it all off.’ He held her head still as he leaned in to kiss her lips. It wasn’t a frantic sparring of tongues like the previous kisses had been, but more tender, gentler. ‘I’m fine, sugar plum. You don’t need to worry about a thing.’
Ginny wasn’t entirely convinced, but let it ride. His façade of easy charm didn’t entirely mask the sliver of pain in his eyes.
‘Guys.’ Rock Giant’s bellow echoed down the narrow corridor to reach them in the dressing room. ‘We’re set. Hurry it up.’
Ash grabbed her hand. ‘Let’s go.’ He dragged her along the corridor as though a horde of fans were on their tail and he was the security guy detailed to protect her.
Chapter Three
With Rock Giant behind the wheel, they left tyre tracks on the road as they sped out of the building towards the stadium exit. He seemed to have forgotten the fact that he was driving a van loaded with several grand’s worth of the band’s equipment and three passengers.
‘He’s a maniac,’ Ginny bleated to Ash. She thanked God that all the fans were at the front of the building or there might have been a few fatalities as a result of their exit. On the up side, she got to cling onto Ash, whose plan did appear to be working. As they tore across the car park, she caught intermittent glimpses of the two Black Halo limousines. They were completely surrounded by fans who had crossed the security lines and were making movement nearly impossible. A couple of fans had even climbed onto the roof of the front vehicle.
‘I hope you’re stuck there for hours,’ Ash hollered at the front car, which Ginny assumed was carrying Elspeth along with the band’s drummer, Steve Matlock.
‘Oi! Less of that,’ Rock Giant chastened him.
‘Is it normally like this?’ Ginny asked. She knew Black Halo were huge. They were major international stars, but the mayhem outside resembled Beatlemania at its height, not the aftermath of a present-day rock concert. In her experience, and she’d been to several big gigs, people didn’t get this riled up about catching a glimpse of their favourite star, not when they could spend hours at home stalking them on the Internet, and particularly not en masse like this. Sure there were exceptions, but that only accounted for the compulsory bunch of shivering groupies, not this.
Ash was contemplating the outside world with a measure of uncertainty too. ‘It’s often crazy,’ he muttered. ‘But not typically this deranged. Mind you, we do normally stick it out until the end of the show, instead of calling it quits a couple of tracks in.’
He lowered the window and leaned out. ‘Bye, Elspeth.’ He waved at the stranded limo. ‘Stupid bitch.’
Rock Giant slammed on the brakes, bringing the van to a screeching halt just short of a lamppost. He turned to glare at Ash, who ducked back into the vehicle, looking significantly paler.
‘Knock it off with the name-calling or I’ll go park us up beside them.’
Ash shook himself and seemed to settle comfortably inside his own skin again. ‘Oh, come off it,’ he protested, not appearing remotely contrite. ‘She’s properly screwed us over tonight. She deserves a few names hurled at her. Even you have to accept that.’
‘Elspeth isn’t the one who screwed us. Xane’s the one who walked off stage. I can’t believe you’re defending him.’
Xane had walked off stage! Somehow, by hanging around in their dressing room instead of watching the show, she appeared to have missed something major.
‘I’m not defending him. I think he’s a prize dick. I’m just pointing out that Elspeth’s the root cause of this. I know you and her are besties, but even you have to admit she’s a cow on occasion.’
‘That is such shit, Ash.’
‘Uh, drive!’ Spook demanded. He reached across from the passenger seat and put the van into first. ‘Seriously, this is not fucking funny. If we sit here like lemons, they’re going to be all over us.’ A highly likely prospect, since Ash’s yelling had attracted a certain amount of attention.
With a discontented snort, Rock Giant slammed down the accelerator pedal again, causing them to shoot off. As far as Ginny could tell, he favoured an all-or-nothing approach to motion. No pootling allowed. Things weren’t helped by the fact that he ramped the volume on the onboard stereo up to ear-splitting levels, and hammered out the drum rhythm against the wheel. She couldn’t understand the lyrics; they appeared to be in a foreign language, although the vocalist’s death growl made it difficult to say for certain. She thought it might be a song about trolls. Hell, she felt as though she was currently hanging with a bunch of them.
Spook dug a beanie out of the footwell and pulled it down over his ears.
Their escape apparently guaranteed, Ginny settled back against Ash’s side to endure the rest of the ride. Unfortunately, their triumph at escaping the arena proved extremely short-lived. Even Rock Giant’s expert slaloming skills couldn’t get them past the gridlocked lanes of traffic blocking the route to the hotel.
‘All this because Xane has a strop,’ Rock Giant bellowed over the music. He slapped the steering wheel in annoyance. ‘Much as I like driving the van, we should have stayed put. We’re not getting anywhere near the hotel without flying.’ They could see the upper storeys and the lights of the hotel signage up ahead, perhaps three minutes’ walk in a straight line. ‘I wouldn’t mind so much, but I really need to piss and take a shower.’
‘Don’t we know it,’ Ash groaned. ‘I can smell your filthy armpits from here.’
‘You don’t smell so hot yourself, lover boy.’
Ginny disagreed. Ash smelled pretty divine to her, all hot and musky with a hint of something woodsy mixed in. She guessed the latter was the remains of whatever cologne he’d spritzed on before he went on stage. Unless, of course, what she could smell was sex. She had creamed all over him, and neither of them had properly had the opportunity to clean up.
She kept the thought to herself. It’s was kind of fun watching and listening to the guys interact. She reckoned she’d learned more about them in the last five minutes than even their most diehard fans would glean from a thousand interviews. They were close but fractious, and, yeah, there were egos aplenty in play. Oh, and they all had issues, some of them better disguised than others. She’d seen the scars on Spook’s inner arms as he’d held the camera between her and Ash. Rock Giant’s driving was enough to tell her he needed help, and as for Ash … well, she was still working on figuring him out.
‘Where’d Melodrama Boy trot off to anyway?’ Rock Giant yelled over the music.
‘He left with some girl,’ Ash replied, sitting forward in order to make himself heard. ‘I don’t know who she was. I’d never seen her before. Cute though. Nowt like Elspeth.’
‘You mean she had tits,’ said Spook.
‘I wasn’t being that crude.’
Rock Giant grunted. ‘He sounds really fucking heartbroken.’
‘I said we’d talk things over tomorrow.’ Ash sat back again.
‘Is that Xane you’re talking about?’ Ginny asked. ‘I did wonder where he was. I take it he left the building ahead of us, since none of you mentioned him in the escape plans.’
The three guys exchanged wary looks. Rock Giant hit the kill switch on the stereo, flooding the interior with deadly silence. ‘He walked out on us, honey. So don’t get your hopes up about meeting him. Fuck knows where he is, but if he’s at the hotel I’m personally going to skewer him, so he’ll not be up for socialising.’ He jabbed the heel of his hand into the car horn, and in return received a two-fingered salute from the driver of the car in front.
‘Xane and Elspeth split,’ Ash explained. He massaged his brow, but failed to remove the frown lines that had formed there. ‘He walked off, having just announced to the stadium that we’re done.’
‘What?’ Ginny folded her arms tight. ‘You’re serious?’ It seemed almost but not quite too far-fetched to believe. Either Ash had an unbelievable poker face or he was telling the truth. ‘So what does that mean? Are you saying you’ve split up? Aren’t you mid-tour right now?’
‘One more gig,’ they sighed in unison.
Ash snuggled up and rested his head against her shoulder. ‘You see why I need company. According to Xane, we all need to start looking for new jobs.’
‘That’s such bollocks,’ Rock Giant groaned. ‘There’s no way on earth Xane was serious about us actually splitting. He wouldn’t know what the hell to do with himself without us.’
‘Uh, guys,’ Spook piped up. ‘We might want to get out of here.’ He ducked as what looked like a ladies bra hit the windscreen. It caught on the wiper blade and swished across the front of the van a few times before flying loose again. ‘Turn us around.’