Marked By Fire (Dragons Of The Darkblood Secret Society Book 2)

by Meg Ripley

  “I’ve been going for about two years--I started out taking gigs that paid as high as I could reasonably demand, any of them, and then started paring down to what I really liked to do.” I nodded.

  “I think all creative jobs are like that,” I said. “I mean, in Molly Riot we basically were in a position for a while there that if someone wanted us to play a show anywhere, we pretty much had to take it.”

  “The scene down there is so tough,” Allie pointed out.

  “No kidding,” I agreed. “It’s really hard to get shows together, and harder to get enough people to come to them to actually make decent money at it. Most of us had part-time jobs until the band really started taking off.”

  “You? In a part-time job?” I laughed at Allie’s shock.

  “I did lessons,” I explained. “I had like...eight students at one point. Good kids.” I accepted another shot from Nate, knocked it back and chased it with a gulp of beer. “Actually, fun fact: one of my students was a 70-year-old woman, at one point.”

  “Really?” Allie’s eyes widened. “She wanted to learn how to play drums?” I nodded.

  “She’d wanted to learn ever since she was five, and her parents and then her husband thought it wasn’t a good thing for girls or women or whatever, so she never did...until her husband passed away.” I grinned. “Great natural rhythm. Hell of a dancer, too.” Allie giggled.

  “I take it you know that from experience?” I nodded, still grinning.

  “She and her husband did ballroom dancing, and as sort of a ‘tip’ for my lessons, she taught me some steps.”

  “Sounds like she had a little crush on you,” Allie suggested. I rolled my eyes.

  “She was just a sweet, kickass lady.”

  “Did she stop taking lessons, or did you have to give up teaching because of the band’s success?”

  “The latter; once we started getting big, I just didn’t have the time. But she’s got backstage passes to any show she wants to come to. Agnes is awesome.”

  “We’re moving the party back to the hotel,” Nate told me. I hadn’t even realized that the festival had ended--but I realized that Allie and I had been talking for so long that, sure enough, the noise from the stage area was all but gone.

  “Where are you guys staying?” Allie started putting her things away in her bag, and I was doing the same.

  “We’re at the Tahitian Inn,” Brant said. “They’ve agreed to let us use the bar and pool as long as we bring our own and don’t break anything.”

  “That’s where I’m staying too,” Allie said. “Mind if I tag along?” Brant and Nate looked at each other, looked at Neely, and shrugged.

  “You seem pretty cool,” Nate said. “Come hang with us.”

  Since Allie wasn’t parked in the artists’ area--she wasn’t playing the show, after all--I walked her out to her car, which wasn’t that much farther away from the backstage complex. I hesitated as she looked for her keys in her bag; the guys in Bent Bridges had already headed out, and we were all but alone--apart from venue security--next to Allie’s old, beat up Honda. “Hey,” I said, licking my lips quickly.

  “Hm?” Allie turned around and looked up, and I took advantage of the opening to lean in and give her a quick kiss on the lips. Allie started, but she didn’t try and push me away, or protest. After a moment, she leaned into the kiss, putting her hands on my shoulders, barely brushing her chest against mine. I wrapped my arms around her and pressed her more firmly against me, loving the crush of her tits against my chest, the feeling of her lips, the heat of her body.

  I broke away from her after a few moments and smiled. “I’ve been wanting to do that for hours, just so you know,” I told her. Allie’s cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright, her lips just a little parted as she looked up at me in surprise.

  “I’m glad you did it then,” she said, smiling a little. I let my hands drift down to her hips, but I stopped there. Even if she had the nicest ass I’d seen in months, I wasn’t about to get ahead of myself.

  “Let’s pick this back up at the hotel, huh?” I kissed her forehead. “Not that I’m not more than ready to find a quiet spot backstage...but I’d rather make out with you somewhere a little cleaner.” Allie snickered and kissed a spot somewhere on my jaw.

  “I’ll meet you there,” she said.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The hotel had--in name at least--closed down the pool and tiki bar attached to it by the time I got there; but Brant, Nate, and Neely had managed to raid the green room for plenty of liquor, and while they hadn’t been able to bring themselves to smoke much pot backstage, they’d brought some with them, and the party was underway when I found my way back to the slightly creepy, lit-up area. Allie had gotten there maybe two minutes before me, to judge by the fact that Brant was only just pouring her a shot when I arrived.

  “What have we got going down in here?” I sat down in a lounge chair and Brant waved a bottle of tequila.

  “Shots, beer, and blender drinks courtesy of Nate,” Brant told me.

  “Where the fuck did we get the stuff to make blender drinks?” I shook my head.

  “Oh--they’re letting us use some of their mixers,” Neely informed me.

  “I am going to be so fucking trashed tomorrow,” I said.

  “We go on at seven on the side-stage,” Nate said with a grin.

  “Seven should be late enough to get it all out of my system,” I admitted. I hadn’t counted on playing for Bent Bridges again, but I was down--especially after how good I felt coming off the stage earlier that night. “But I can’t party like this tomorrow night--I’ve got to get straight back home.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Neely said, looking at his band mates. “Last thing we want is for Alex to accuse us of poaching you.” I snickered.

  “Why would you be poaching me? Poaching me would put you out of a job,” I pointed out.

  “I don’t know,” Nate said, his voice teasing. “There aren’t many acts out there with two drummers. We’d be pretty unique.”

  “There’s a reason there aren’t many acts with two drummers,” Neely countered. “Anyway, we get it; Molly Riot is priority one.”

  “For now at least,” I said, remembering the last time we’d been all in the studio together. Things were starting to get better in certain respects, but it was hard for me to say that I could really, truly see a future for the band beyond the upcoming album. We were all going in different directions, bickering about what the songs should sound like, whether we were all playing our parts the right way.

  “It’s one of those things,” Allie suggested. “There’s stress because you guys have come so far, but you have to sort of...push through the next wall.”

  “Listen to this expert,” Brant said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Hey, I might not be in a band, but I’ve watched a lot of bands interact,” Allie countered. “Besides, it’s like any other group of people working close together.” She shrugged. “But whatever. What do I know?”

  Nate began making drinks and distributing them; Neely couldn’t really partake without risking an OD, but the rest of us began to unwind, talking shop and discussing the next day’s set, chatting about local gossip. Allie lived out in Coral Springs, so she wasn’t quite as connected to the West Palm and Miami scenes, but she got around the state a good bit as part of her job, so she had some juicy information on other bands.

  One by one, the guys in Bent Bridges started to fade out; Neely of course went first, since he had the broken arm and all. Brant called it a night second, and for a while it was just me, Allie, and Nate talking about anything and everything--stupid shit like movies, high school, the stuff you talk about when it’s three in the morning. Finally, it was just Allie and me. We’d stopped drinking booze by four--partly from being out of drinks, partly because there was no real good reason to keep it up with only a few hours to go until dawn.

  “Tell me something about yourself,” I demanded. Somewhere along the line, we’d ended up on the s
ame lounge chair, lying back, looking up at the tiki hut lights above us.

  “I’ve told you like five hundred things about me,” Allie countered. I rolled my eyes and wrapped my arm around her, pulling her a bit closer to me.

  “Something secret,” I specified. “Something you wouldn’t just tell anyone.” Allie shifted against me on the lawn chair.

  “Hm,” she said, leaning her head on my chest. “I have hated asparagus for my entire life, but my parents think that I love it, because I didn’t want my mom to feel bad when she cooked it.” I chuckled.

  “I ask you for a secret and that’s what you give me?” I had to admit though that of the things she could have said, that was probably one of the cuter ones.

  “Well then, big shot--you tell me a secret, since you’re so much better at this than me.” I thought about it, pressing my lips together and staring at the faded wood of the tiki roof, the fringe of dried palm frond dangling off the side.

  “I nearly destroyed my band over a girl,” I told her.

  “Seriously?” I shrugged.

  “Yes and no,” I admitted. “The guy I’m closest with in Molly Riot--Dan--took a fancy to this bartender at Respectables. And so did I.” I sighed. “She told both of us she’d go out with us, I guess because she sort of felt trapped or whatever.” I never had really been able to get a straight answer to the question of why Sophie had even said yes to me if she’d already accepted a date from Dan. “It just…” I shrugged. “Things were already tense in the band, but something about how that all shook out just temporarily drove me out of my mind I guess. I refused to go into the studio with them, and didn’t talk to Dan anymore for like a month and a half, and very nearly fucked everything up. All because I couldn’t get over the fact that some girl wanted to date my friend and not me.” Allie went silent for a moment and I wondered if I’d said exactly the wrong thing.

  “It sounds like it was probably more complicated than that,” she said finally. “I mean, she’d said yes to you--whatever her reason. And you probably felt like Dan was betraying you or something, right?” I considered that and nodded; that was exactly how I’d felt at the time. I didn’t feel that way anymore--at least not specifically about Sophie.

  “I guess I feel weird, being the only single guy in the band,” I told her. “Like the whole dynamic, the energy has shifted.”

  “That makes sense,” Allie said, nodding against my chest. “You feel like everyone’s doing other stuff, like the band isn’t what it used to be.”

  “It isn’t,” I insisted. “I mean, the guys are still the guys, but no one just...hangs out anymore, the way that they used to. Like it’s not as if no one ever dated anybody before, but everyone’s in these super fucking serious relationships, and I’m like…” I shook my head. “I feel like any day now I’m going to find out someone knocked their girl up, or someone is getting married.”

  “Do you think they’re somehow...more mature?” Allie turned her head and I looked down as she looked up. “I’m not saying they are--I’m asking if you feel like that’s the case.”

  “No, I get what you’re saying,” I assured her. “I guess it just sort of feels like…” I tried to think of the words to describe the weird situation. “It feels like they’re moving on in a way. Going ahead of me. I just never expected it to happen, you know?”

  “That makes sense,” Allie said. “I mean, they’re doing all these other things, and for the moment at least--I guess until tonight--your life was basically the band. It probably feels a lot like…” she paused. “Not betrayal, but sort of…”

  “Yeah,” I said, when she couldn’t find the word she wanted. “I don’t know if there’s even a word for it, but you know what I mean.”

  “So, tell me something else,” Allie said, turning onto her side and draping her arm over my waist.

  “You have to go first,” I told her. Allie pressed her lips together and I was tempted to kiss her again--the temptation had been at the front of my mind ever since I’d kissed her before leaving the venue--but I didn’t do it; it would just throw off the conversation we were having.

  “Part of the reason I took your picture earlier was that I knew who you were,” Allie said, looking away.

  “Okay…” I turned her face so that she had to look at me. “So what?”

  “I thought it would probably be weird to admit it,” she said. I could see her blushing in the weird orangey light. “Like...I didn’t expect to see you there at the festival at all. I didn’t even have any thought about it. Molly Riot wasn’t on the lineup, so it never even entered my head. But I was leaving one of the green rooms and saw you walking around.”

  “Still not getting how it’s awkward,” I told her.

  “You did look perfect in the shot I took,” Allie explained. “But it was also...I wanted to meet you.” She smiled weakly. “I wanted an excuse to introduce myself.”

  “So you took a picture to get my attention?” Allie shrugged.

  “Part that, part not being able to let a chance like that snap pass me by,” she said. She shook her head. “Your turn.”

  “I was the last member of my band to lose my virginity,” I told Allie.

  “Seriously?” Allie sat up and looked me up and down. I laughed.

  “Seriously,” I said. “Nick lost his at fifteen, Alex at sixteen, Jules and Dan at seventeen, and I didn’t lose mine until I was almost nineteen.”

  “How the hell does that happen?” I shrugged.

  “Well Nick would probably have lost his at fourteen if he could have,” I said, snickering. “But that would’ve been a huge fucking mess. Alex had some weird kind of pact where he was determined to lose his before he turned seventeen, and Jules and Dan just hooked up with random girls after a show one night.”

  “So was there a particular reason you didn’t lose it earlier, or just lack of opportunity?” I shrugged and lit a cigarette.

  “I mostly didn’t date in high school, so that definitely made it harder to find the chance,” I told her. “Then on top of that I was all about the drums and hanging out with the guys and playing PlayStation, so between those things, even when I had a girlfriend for a few months, I wasn’t really all that serious about it.” I offered Allie a smoke and she took it from me, let me light it. “It just wasn’t a huge priority. I figured: there’s porn and lotion. How could sex be better than getting myself off?” Allie giggled and buried her face against my chest, barely keeping her lit cigarette from burning me.

  “How did you even end up losing it, then?”

  “Actually, there was a girl,” I told her. Allie began giggling again. “Hey! I’m not going to tell you if you’re not going to take this seriously. This is an important story of my life, Allie.”

  “Sorry--sorry, it’s so late, and the idea of you watching porn and masturbating and thinking…” she convulsed in giggles again and I waited for her to calm down. “I’ll be serious now.”

  “She actually had a bet with some of her friends that she could get me in bed,” I told Allie. “She had no idea--no one did--that I’d never been with anyone and I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell her.”

  “Did she figure it out?” I smirked.

  “Nope,” I said. “I managed to get it up, and keep it up, and I’d heard enough from the other guys in the band to know how to sort of keep things going, so she never had a clue.”

  “That is definitely a promising start to your sexual career,” Allie told me. I looked around as I stubbed my cigarette out and realized that it was actually starting to get light outside--it was dawn.

  “Fuck,” I said. “It’s got to be at least what--six, seven in the morning?”

  “Shit,” Allie said, shaking her head. “I need to get back to my room.”

  “Mind if I crash there?” I thought about the guys in Bent Bridges; Neely for one would not appreciate me coming in and waking him up. “Just crashing, I swear.”

  “Just crashing for sure,” Allie said, raising an eyebrow.
“I need to sleep or I’ll be useless when I go back to the festival later.”

  “Same for me. Come on. Show me your pad, pretty lady.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep, but my phone was ringing from across the room. “Fuck.” I turned over in bed and felt Allie starting to wake up as well. I stumbled out from between the sheets and hit the floor, before getting up and grabbing my phone from where I’d left it plugged in. It was Nate. I tapped ‘Accept’. “What’s up, man?”

  “Thought you’d want a wake-up call with enough time to actually wake up before you need to be here.” I scrubbed at my face while my hungover, sleep-deprived brain processed that, and then I smiled.

  “Thanks, man,” I said. “How much time until I need to go?” I looked at my phone to check the time. It was one.

  “Get over here by say five? So we can get ready and chat about the set list.”

  “Will do,” I told him. “See you then.” I ended the call and looked over at the bed. Allie was sitting up; we’d been too exhausted by the time we’d gotten to her room that morning to do more than take off our clothes and get between the sheets and go to sleep. “I have about four hours until I need to be over at the festival,” I told Allie.

  “I should probably be there right now,” Allie said, stretching. My eyes went directly to her tits, showing just above the blankets. I’d caught a glimpse of them the night before, but I’d been too tired to do anything about it. I was still tired--but not too tired to do anything about a naked woman in a bed I’d just left.

  “Too late to be there right now,” I pointed out, walking towards the bed. “A couple of hours isn’t going to make that much of a difference, you know.” Allie looked me up and down slowly and smiled.

  “A couple of hours?” she leaned back in the bed, elbows on the pillows, and I took in the sight of everything above her hips: tanned skin, paleness where her bathing suit top covered her tits--just barely--when she wore it however long ago, the curve of her waist.