by Teagan Kade
I look around. “Clearly you’re not here for the overpriced beverages, so, what brings you out?”
His eyes narrow, flick towards the stage. “Mason’s influence extends to the stage. You’ve still got it. That’s why you’re going to follow me over to the corner.”
“You know I don’t swing that way,” I jest.
“Just damn well follow me, will you?”
I follow Dom to the corner of the Bellhopper where the shadows have been hiding a large, built individual—shaved head, epic beard, inked-up arms. He could be a bouncer, a hipster—It’s getting awfully hard to tell in this town.
Dom stands between us. “Mat, I want you to meet Arthur King.”
The stranger stands to greet me.
I shake his hand. “Pleased to meet you.”
Dom takes Arthur’s shoulder. “He might look like he just escaped from a detention center, but Arthur here runs the Magma Festival. You heard of it?”
Who hasn’t? It’s one of the biggest festivals on the east coast, an up-and-comer with enough star power to give Coachella a run for its money.
Arthur joins in. “I’ve been in here a lot over the last few weeks watching you play.”
The guy must be a fucking ninja for me not to notice.
“I was a huge fan of your dad’s music, kid,” he continues. “I actually lost my virginity to Supercharger.”
Too. Much. Information. “You wouldn’t believe the amount of people who tell me that.”
Arthur grins, golden teeth lighting up his mouth like small torches. “Like I said, I love his music, and yours. You’ve got talent.”
I look to Dom, who’s smiling enthusiastically. I clue in. “You want me to join the festival?”
Arthur nods, crossing his arms. “You were great on Delaney. Your profile’s up, so yeah, I think it would work. I’m not talking main stage, but if you want to continue your father’s work, I’ll back you. No offense, but I think it beats working in a bar. What do you say?”
I take his hand again. It’s a solid win. Maybe Dom hasn’t been resting on his laurels after all. “Thanks, man. I appreciate this, but I can only say yes on one condition.”
I see Dom tighten. “I want to invite another artist up to sing with me.”
Arthur looks to Dom. “And who would that be?”
I pretend to zip my lips. “I can’t say, but you won’t be disappointed.”
Arthur laughs. “Okay. Sure. I like a mystery as much as the next guy, but if fucking Iggy Pop waltzes onto that stage, you’re out. We’re all about new talent at Magma.”
“That won’t be a problem.”
We shake on it.
Arthur eyeballs Dom again. “Happy to have your boy on board, Dom. Call me for the deets Monday. I’ve got to head off. I’ve got to pick up my daughter from ballet.”
This guy’s getting more interesting by the second.
We say our goodbyes. When the coast is clear, Dom stands in front of me Cheshire smug. “Well?”
“You did good, super-agent. You did good.”
*
I come home with cheeseburgers from Bill’s, Sel’s fave, pumped about the news. Things have certainly taken a turn for the better. It’s about fucking time.
I’m keen to tell Selena the news, but when I find her in the den she looks far from her usual lively self. I set down the takeaway and sit beside her on the couch. I take her hand. “Everything okay?”
“Not really.”
I slap my chest. “Hit me. Come on. Whatever it is, we can fix it.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know, Mat. This is big.” She pauses. “I terminated my contract. Rick’s no longer my agent.”
“Your royalties?”
“I called the association. They had their lawyer look over the contract. It’s all his, Mat, everything I made. He screwed me over big-time.”
Shit. “Your parents’ house?”
She exhales. “Thankfully, that was paid off. Mom’s fine, but what am I going to do? I’ll have to start all over again.”
I pull her close, stroke her hair. “Hey, hey, that’s not true. I bet agents will be knocking down your door before morning. Wait and see.”
“Rick has influence in the industry, Mat—serious influence.”
I can’t quite wrap my head around it. Rick was always so shy and quiet growing up. “How the fuck did that happen?”
“He throws money around, parties, girls. He’s made a lot of friends in high places. If he wants to burn me, I’m burned. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
“There’s nothing you can do about it, but there’s nothing stop me breaking every bone in his body.”
“And what would that achieve?”
“Nothing, but it would sure as fuck make me feel better.”
She puts her hand on my thigh. “I appreciate the offer, tempting as it is, but I’ve got to be smart now. We both do.”
I run my hand up her side. “Which is why you’re going to love the news I just received.”
“News?”
I can barely contain myself. “I’m playing at the Magma Festival… and you’re going to sing with me.”
She slaps me across the chest. “Don’t.”
“I’m serious. Dom knows the guy who runs the festival. I met him down at the bar just now. It’s on.”
I see the realization wash over Sel’s face, watch it start to morph into something approaching happiness.
“The guy said he saw us on Delaney,” I continue. “He’s been coming to the bar watching me play, thinks my star is rising or some shit, but it’s a done deal. Dom’s going to sort the details this week.”
“Magma’s a big festival.”
“The Peppers, Flume, Lana Del, Pearl Jam, fucking Radiohead… Yeah, it’s big alright.”
“Where are we going to be playing?”
We. So she’s in.
I throw my hands up. “Who cares? I’ll sing on a tabletop if I have to.”
Sel pouts, sitting up straight. “Tabletops aren’t really my style, you know.”
I pull her in, place my lips against her ear. “No? Because I bet you do a great striptease.”
“Wouldn’t you like to find out?” she whispers back.
“I would.” I pull the lobe of her ear into my mouth, suck on it lightly until she pushes me away. “Easy now, cowboy. What’s the catch?”
Ah, yes. The catch. “It sounds like we might have to play a few of Dad’s songs, but that’s no biggie. I’ve been thinking about fresh ways to cover them anyhow, bring them into the new century.”
“We can do that,” Sel replies.
“So you’re with me?”
“Wouldn’t be anywhere else.”
Caught in the elation, we kiss, clothes shed like autumn leaves on the floor of the den, lips pressing and releasing, tongues weaving and hands moving.
Rick, Alice, the drama with the trust fund—it slips away and there is only Sel, my savior.
*
The cheeseburgers have long turned cold before we get to them.
Before long it’s night. I want to take Sel out, keep her spirits high.
I’m fresh from the shower when I get a text from an old friend. It’s perfect timing.
“Where’d you go?” calls Sel from the shower. “You forgot to soap me up.”
I drop my cell back onto the bed and slip back into the shower, run my hands up Sel’s sides until my thumbs are poised just below her nipples, rosy and pink and fucking perfect under the water. “How do you feel about a little mystery excursion tonight?”
She reaches down and takes hold of my cock. “Sounds good.”
*
I’ve still got my hands over Sel’s eyes as we enter the venue. I nod to the security guard. He winks back, one of Dad’s old roadies. He was happy to slip us in tonight when he found out I was back in town.
Sel hears the music, the droning bass vibrating the floorboards. We stand up the back. “We’re not going to see the Dodg
ers, are we? Sel asks.
My ruse is up. “No, I’m afraid not.” I take my hands away.
My timing is bang on, the band’s walking out onto the stage to a raucous reception. I look around. The crowd’s an odd slice of Gen X jackets and post-punk hipsters—not what I expected at all.
Sel looks closer. “Holy shit. Is that who I think it is?”
I wrap my arms around her waist. “Sinful Serenade, your favorite band, right?”
“When I was sixteen.”
My heart drops until she turns and kisses me on the cheek. “I’m joking. This is great.”
We watch the first half from the back, the crowd a little too animated up front.
I can tell Sel’s loving every minute of it. She grinds up against me, my cock a steel bar in my pants even after being sucked dry less than an hour ago. More than once I offer to get us out here, maybe put on our own show back home, but she’s deep into the music.
When I introduce her to the band backstage during the halftime break, she loses her mind, reverting to a full-on rock geek.
On the way out she tugs at my arm, literally skipping her way across the street. “I can’t believe you know those guys.”
“We bumped into each other at a go-go bar in the Philippines. Lots of beer. Long story.”
“Isn’t any story when a Barton is involved?”
“You remember how the old man used to go on and on and on with his infamous tales. I don’t want to bore you to death yet.”
“Yet?” Sel questions.
“We are just getting started, aren’t we?”
She smiles hard. “Yes. Yes, we are. Now get me home before I jump you right here in the street.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SELENA
We don’t make it upstairs. We barely make it to the den.
I’m still high from the show.
Mat strokes my cheek on the couch, our clothes long gone. His nude, muscular frame puts my body into shadow. It presses against me. His masculine musk fills the sliver of space between us. He leans down closer to me, to my lips. They part in wait, his hot breath upon them and my legs splaying open.
His fingers knit themselves in my hair, my heart racing against his ribs. Our gaze locks and finally he presses his lips to mine in a firm kiss that fast develops into a frenzy of flesh and tongue.
I let my tongue slide into his mouth. My mind flutters. Everything divides up until I am no longer able to put articulate thoughts. My body stirs in response, the need growing and the iron rod of his cock jumping against my belly.
Mat becomes ravenous, pinning me down, his manhood throbbing against my skin with a life of its own. My sex splits open, its hot center growing slick and wet.
He slides his hand down to my hip while his head drops to the nape of my neck. There he nips and sucks at my flesh, lips feverish against my bare skin.
“I need to be inside you,” he whispers into the shell of my ear. The more he kisses and teases me, the more I submit.
His hand slides back down to the underside of my thigh. He lifts it up, hooking my ankle against the shallow depression at the base of his spine and in the process, exposes my heated pussy to the air. He shifts downwards, the head of his cock starting to nudge at my sex. It parts my outer lips while he calls my name, caught in his own world of pleasure.
My desire grows, arousal running out from my slit and trickling down, our lips smacking together wetly and my hips beginning to rock and shift, begging him to fill me.
Thick digits close over my breast before pulling the nipple into a stiff point of sensitivity. His head drops and he takes it in his mouth, suckling until I’m whimpering, soaking, begging him to take me.
But even I know the best songs don’t start at eleven.
I tremble, lightly quivering waiting for his bulging cock to take me.
And take me it does.
*
Over the coming week we can’t seem to keep our hands off one another. We clear out Mason’s studio, AKA the old pool house, and set about making it our own space. We find a bunch of equipment up in the attic, quality gear that remarkably still works after bathing in dust for so long.
There, in our own personal cocoon, we rehearse like mad. Well, rehearse, have sex, rehearse a little more, sex it up again, and again, and again—rinse and repeat. Stamina must be another Barton trait.
Day turns to night outside and we barely even notice. We sing and work through it. Some nights we don’t sleep at all, our excitement at the reworked songs carrying us on. And it is exciting. What we’re doing is fresh and new, sounds I know Mason would be proud of. This is what we were born to do, our destiny, and nothing is going to stop us. The derision and lows I felt just a short time ago are gone. There’s hope now, wonder at what we’re creating. I cannot wait to share it, to share Mat and his many talents with the world. Well, maybe not all his talents…
We wrap up our duet of The Reaping. I fall against the wall, feedback coming from the mic until Mat cuts it off from the mixer. “That was the best yet.”
Mat unslings a 1958 Gibson Explorer — Lucille — he’s become quite fond of and walks to me, hands snaking around my waist, his cock hardening against me. “I won’t argue. The two of us, here in this Aladdin’s cave? If I had of known about this magic sooner I never would have left home.”
It’s on and I can’t stop it. I make the move, kissing his neck and breathing him in, the low buzz of electricity sounding out around us, LEDs and lights turn our makeshift studio into a deconstructed Christmas tree.
My cell starts to buzz in my pocket. I ignore it and slide my hands down Mat’s pants, finding his cock hot and hard, but still the cell rings on. Again, I ignore it. A second later, Mat’s starts.
He pulls it free. “Seriously?”
“Who is it?” I ask, fingers pulling lightly on his shaft.
His eyebrows knit. “Dom. Should I answer?”
I nod.
“Dom,” Mat says, cell to his ear.
The two talk, Mat’s eyes cutting back to me. I know Mat well enough to know this isn’t good news.
“I appreciate the heads up,” Mat says. “Yeah, will do.”
He hangs up and looks to me. Reluctantly, I pull my hand from his pants. “What is it?”
My phone beeps with a text message.
“See for yourself.”
It’s a series of web links from Dom. I pull them up one by one, my disbelief growing by the second.
I’ve been thrown under the bus. Each article is more damning than the next, gossip websites claiming I’m off the rails, that my split with Rick was all down to sleeping around. I have no idea where it’s all come from, or why it’s coming out now, but the entire world is turning against me. It has to be Rick’s doing.
Mat watches on carefully. He doesn’t speak, letting me absorb it.
The more I read through the articles, the crazier the claims become. One website says I don’t even have American citizenship, another that I’m hooked on party drugs and painkillers. The hardest drug I’ve done in my life was a month-old joint we found lying around the den one day.
It’s ridiculous, but people are going to believe it. My career’s been largely dirt free, but I knew this would come eventually. I told myself back then I wouldn’t buy into it, simply let it go, and that’s exactly what I have to do now if I want to keep my sanity intact.
It figures, really. Neither Rick or I gave an official statement to the media about our split, so they’re making it up. The problem is that Rick is being painted as the wronged party here. And me? A spoiled diva too big for her boots.
I’m wondering when Rick will break his silence when Dom answers the question for me. A message he sent to both Mat and I leads to a prominent industry website where Rick has just announced he’s signing a new star—Alice Garcia.
I almost break at the sight of them together in the photo that follows, Rick with his arm around her waist, Alice all smiles and shark teeth. I cannot believe a man
I had feelings for would do this to me, especially after what he did—what they did.
I toss my cell onto the desk. It goes off. Another message from Dom probably telling me to calm down or not to worry, but how can I let this go, the two people who were so important in my life suddenly backstabbing me? It hurts. It really fucking hurts.
“Sel?”
I ignore Mat.
I don’t know why, but swipe my cell back up and continue reading through the article.
It gets worse.
Rick’s claiming unfinished songs of mine as Alice’s. He has the nerve to call them hers. My world’s crumbling around me and there’s nothing I can do about it. I was going to sing those songs with Mat at Magma. We’ve been rehearsing day and night for it, but now what? We’re three or four songs down already. It’s useless.
Strange thoughts run through my head. Maybe I should have slept with Rick sooner, avoided this whole mess. Would that have been easier than starting my career all over again? Is this what Rick wanted from the very start? I don’t even know how long those two were screwing behind my back. Maybe they’ve been doing it for years, laughing at me.
Or maybe you drove him to it.
“Don’t buy into it, Sel,” warns Mat. “We can get through this.”
This time I’m not so sure, but I am not going to let Rick get away with this.
Mat sees me heading for the door. He tries to stop me, but I push past him already texting Ari to pick me up out front. I had to let him go a week ago, but he said if there was anything I needed to call. I know he’ll come.
“Where are you going?” Mat calls.
I turn. “To handle this.”
“Do you want me to come?”
I shake my head. “No. This is something I have to handle myself. Ari’s picking me up.”
I know Mat wants to talk me out of it, but he nods. “Okay. I’ll be here if you need me.”
Ari’s there in minutes. I climb into the back of the SUV.
“Ms. Torres,” he says, looking into the rear-view. “It’s good to see you.”
“And you, Ari. You’ve heard what they’re saying about me, I presume?”
“I have.”
“None of its true.”
