by Meg Ripley
“Could be fun,” I said, nodding. “And I mean, Nick and Jules like the idea. Dan I’m sure probably thinks it’ll be cool.”
“But not Alex,” Allie said. I shrugged.
“Alex doesn’t like anyone who’s not Mary,” I joked. “Hell, I’m not even convinced he likes the rest of the band that much anymore.” Allie raised an eyebrow at that. “Kidding,” I added. “Kind of, anyway.”
“I thought you said the drama had come to an end,” Allie said, looking concerned.
“It has, more or less,” I said quickly. “But you know how it is when you get a room full of guys: testosterone everywhere.” I tried to smile, to reassure her. “Besides, there are some aspects of the drama that was going on before you came along that never really fully got resolved.” Allie sipped her beer and thought for a moment, and I tried again to push any thought of her being some kind of fucking Machiavelli of photographers out of my mind.
“I’ve watched a lot of bands interact,” Allie said finally. “I mean--obviously, I have. It’s sort of a big part of the job.” I nodded. “I feel like there’s something special with you and the other guys in Molly Riot, that vibe--no one really knows what to call it--that makes you good.”
“You’ve been watching us that closely?” I smirked at her. “You haven’t spent that much time with us.”
“Not as a full group, obviously,” Allie said, shrugging it off. “But I’ve seen you with Nick, and with Dan. And I did have that evening with the whole band, and obviously, I’ve seen you interacting in interviews and stuff.”
“Okay,” I said, holding her gaze for a moment. “Go on.”
“I’m just saying, from watching you guys interact, you have something,” Allie said. “Something that bands kill to have. You’re greater than the sum of your parts.”
“And you got this from watching interviews of us and a few dates?” I looked at Allie a little skeptically. “Just how many interviews did you watch?” Allie rolled her eyes.
“The important thing is that you and the rest of the band have something real,” she insisted. “I’m not going to say that you should dump me if Alex wants you to or anything, but maybe it would be worth talking to him one-on-one, making him understand--or at least trying.”
“We don’t really do that so much,” I said, making a face. “I mean, I do that with Dan--or I used to, at least, a lot more. I’m starting to be better friends with Nick. But as a rule, we don’t have these like, big, heartfelt chats about our feelings.” Allie snorted.
“You obviously talk about stuff,” she pointed out. “You guys were able to get enough in touch with your feelings to agree to send Alex to rehab, and you have to have been talking at least a little in dealing with this drama.”
“A lot of it has been shouting,” I countered. Allie snickered.
“What I mean is, don’t invite me into the studio to take pictures if you think Alex is going to be an asshole about it. I don’t want to be the elephant in the room.” I looked her up and down slowly.
“You could never be an elephant,” I told her, giving her a little grin.
“Talk to Alex,” Allie said firmly. “And if he Okays it, I’ll come in and take some shots, and we’ll see what we get from it.”
“I will talk to Alex,” I promised. “But for right now he is the last person on the planet I want to be thinking about.” Allie grinned slowly.
“Is that so?” She took the photo binder out of my lap and set it aside. “What would you rather be thinking about?”
“Oh, I’m already thinking about it,” I told her, letting my gaze linger on her tits for a moment before shifting down to her hips, her legs curled up underneath her, and what was in between. “I’m thinking I want to spend the rest of the day relaxing, maybe order in some Chinese later, and see if we can beat our personal best.”
“That actually sounds pretty good,” Allie said, stretching just enough for the hem of her tank top to ride up and reveal the tanned skin of her belly just above the waistband of her shorts. It was enough to make my mouth water; even if I wasn’t entirely sure that Alex’s stupid comments about Allie only hooking up with me for the purposes of working with the band were false, I couldn’t deny that I was into her. I took the beer bottle away from Allie and set it aside, leaning in to kiss her on the lips.
We must have had sex a hundred times already in the month since we started seeing each other, but every time I swear to god was better than the last. I pinned Allie down onto the couch and covered her body with mine, kissing her deeper, starting to touch her all over. I wanted to feel her skin against mine, I wanted to get my hands on her tits, I wanted to feel her pussy wrapped around my cock. I slipped my hands up under her tank top; Allie wasn’t wearing anything underneath, so in an instant I was cupping her full, firm tits, teasing her nipples with my thumbs, rubbing them as we started to move together. At first it was just making out, like horny teenagers going at it for the first time, not in a real hurry to get to the main event but heating up every moment our bodies were pressed together.
Little by little, the clothes started to come off; I got tired of feeling Allie up under her shirt and broke away from her lips just long enough to pull it over her head, and she hauled my tee shirt up around my shoulders, pausing for a second until we could get untangled enough for her to take it off of me. It took a little longer for us to get to each other’s bottoms--my jeans and Allie’s shorts--but not that much longer. In minutes that felt like they might have been hours, we were both almost naked, touching each other everywhere, rubbing against each other like cats in heat.
I could feel how wet Allie already was through the lacy fabric of her panties as I rubbed along her labia, stroking her. She moaned out, pushing her hips down, trying to get better contact with my fingers even as she started to rub my throbbing, aching cock through my boxers. “Fuck, sweetie,” I murmured against her neck, nibbling at the sensitive skin there. “I can already feel how hot you are.”
“Stop wasting time, then,” Allie suggested, her voice breathless in my ears. “You can tell I want you.”
“I want to make it last,” I told her. “If I--fuck--if I get inside you right now I’m going to lose it in minutes.” I hooked my fingers in the waistband of her panties and tugged them down over her hips. I wanted her--that much I was sure of--but I needed to take my time. I moved down over her body slowly, kissing and nibbling and licking and sucking. I stayed at her boobs for a while, worshipping her with my mouth, giving her a taste of what I was working towards. I looked up at her face as I moved down towards her hips; she was flushed, her eyes closed, her lips red and parted--she looked so fucking hot. I pulled her panties the rest of the way down and spread her legs wide, and breathed in the smell of her: just a little sweet under that sharp, clean, ocean scent.
I buried my face against her pussy and fought the urge to grin to myself as Allie moaned out in reaction, pushing her hips down for better contact. I sucked and licked, nuzzling against her soaking wet folds, finding her clit with the tip of my tongue and barely missing it on purpose. I tried a trick Nick had mentioned once: I began forming the letters of the alphabet with my tongue, swiping the tip against her soaking wet skin in an A, a B, a C, all the way through until I got to S. Allie cried out, her hips bucking under me, and I felt her fingers tangling in my hair, her hands tugging at me.
I kept it up, teasing her relentlessly, even as my cock throbbed against the couch cushions. I brought Allie to the edge of climax, over and over again for as long as I could stand it, reading the cues in the way her body tensed up, the sound of her moans and little cries of pleasure. I was so turned on by the smell, the taste, the feeling, the sound of her that after a while I actually thought I might die if I didn’t feel her wrapped around my cock; I thought if I didn’t get off, my balls might explode.
I pulled back and at first Allie protested, opening her eyes and looking at me with disappointment. I chuckled and slithered up her body, claiming her mouth with min
e, moving against her, shifting down between her hips. She caught on in a heartbeat and wrapped her legs around my waist, rubbing her soaking wet folds against my aching cock. It took everything I had not to come right then and there, but I held back, reaching down to guide myself up against her. I took a deep breath and thrust into her all at once, clamping down on how turned on I was, riding through the first wave of sensation as her muscles rippled around me, squeezing me like her body itself didn’t want to let me go.
I started moving inside of her as soon as I could, rocking my hips, pulling out an inch--or two inches--and then pushing deeper and deeper inside of her. Allie fell into my rhythm right away, moving in perfect counterpoint to my beat, her hips twisting against mine and her pussy tightening around me as she came closer and closer to orgasm. I kept thrusting, kept the beat going for as long as I could, holding out for the huge climax I knew would hit me if I let it wait long enough.
All at once, the tension deep down in my hips shattered, and wave after wave of pleasure washed through me, lighting up my nervous system. I felt the little twitches of Allie’s muscles spasm around my cock as she came too, moaning out; her fingernails digging into my back as I tried to keep it up as long as I possibly could.
We both collapsed against the couch, panting and gasping, drenched in sweat when we finished, and I was already mentally ready for more by the time Allie’s breathing began to slow down. “Remember to talk to Alex,” she told me. I laughed and shook my head.
“If you tell me that was on your mind while I was fucking you, I’m going to dump you right now,” I told her, kissing her on her lips so she wouldn’t--couldn’t--answer. It was a joke, but it was also the truth; I didn’t want to admit to myself how much truth was in it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
A day or so later, I was in the studio again. According to Jules, Alex had stayed late the last time, listening to the tracks with Jack, going over everything. It was actually starting to look like we might have a real album to put out--and it was coming together before the label could think to ditch us, to pay us off and let us go.
“Yo,” Nick said, coming into the live room where I was checking on my kit.
“Think we’ll actually get anything done today?” I tightened one of the wingnuts on a cymbal. “Or do you think Alex is going to fuck around with vocals on that pet song of his?”
“Ron’s come down on him pretty hard,” Nick pointed out. “More than the rest of us--more than you, and you’re the big reason we initially had such a fucking delay.” He grinned to show me he didn’t actually mean it--or at least, that if he meant it, he wasn’t taking the delay as a serious issue anymore. “So I think he’s doing all that fuckery after hours now.”
“Good for him,” I said. I sat back and surveyed my kit. It hadn’t felt quite exactly right ever since I’d played the festival gig with Bent Bridges; it was familiar, and everything was the way I’d set it up, the way I’d always set it up, but I had the feeling like I was missing something. “Mary can’t be too pleased with that.”
“I hear they’re fighting,” Nick said. He pressed his lips together and raised his eyebrows. “By which I mean, Mary’s been bitching to Liv about it, and Liv’s been pointing out that Mary owes Alex some space after last month’s debacle at the treatment center.” For a while, Mary had had a job as Alex’s life coach, keeping him sober--or at least off of hard drugs, even if he still occasionally drank--on the label’s payroll. But she’d gotten tired of only having one client, and had managed to use her connections to get a new job at a mental health facility once again.
“Yeah, but that wasn’t her fault,” I pointed out to Nick. “She didn’t ask to be trapped in a week-long lockdown.”
“Still,” Nick said with a shrug. “Whatever it is. Alex’s boxers are fucking bunching in his crack.” I rolled my eyes. That would make Allie’s suggestion that I talk to our lead singer one-on-one a little harder to follow through on.
“Allie wants me to talk to Alex,” I told Nick. “She’s still spooked at Alex’s insistence that she only hooked up with me to get access to the band and pad her career.” Nick snorted and rolled his eyes.
“You know, for a guy who doesn’t smoke weed anymore, he sure is fucking paranoid,” Nick said. He lit a cigarette and walked over to his gear, looking at it with almost the same amount of affection as I’d seen on his face when he looked at his girlfriend. “Liv is setting up to work with your girl, by the way--she’s keen to get started on the project. Maybe you can dodge both bullets and Allie will be too busy to even think about doing studio pics.”
“Maybe,” I said, hoping against hope that that would be the case. It would sure as hell make my life that little bit easier.
“You know, maybe you should talk to Lex,” Nick said after a moment of making sure that his guitars had come to no harm while he’d been away.
“What do you mean?” I started checking to make sure I had enough fresh drumsticks to last through the session.
“I mean, he’s being an asshole, but it’s kind of understandable,” Nick said. “You said it yourself months ago: everything is changing to fucking fast, none of us is really in control anymore. That bugs the shit out of Alex more than anything else in the world could.”
“So, what is me talking to him supposed to accomplish?” I lit a cigarette of my own. Nick flicked ash off the tip of his into an ashtray and shrugged.
“It’ll give him the illusion that something is under his control again,” Nick said. “That people care about his opinions beyond just going with them to stroke his ego because it’s easiest that way.” I laughed. It was true and not true; we had a kind of democracy in the band--we never made a move that we didn’t all agree on--once upon a time. But as things had changed, from Alex going to rehab, to Jules starting a solo project with his girlfriend, and then the massive shit show that the current album had started out being, we’d lost sight of that. Nobody had single veto power on anything anymore. Alex’s opinion was still important, but we’d all kind of grown more independent in certain ways.
“His poor fucking ego,” I muttered.
“It’s served us well before,” Nick countered, smirking. “Anyway, I think it’ll help things if you make him think his opinion about your love life matters.”
“What do you think?” Of the members of the band, the only two whose opinions I really cared about--at the end of the day--were Nick’s and Dan’s. So far, I thought they seemed pretty on board with me dating Allie, but some little voice in the back of my head insisted that they were just going along with it because it made things more pleasant.
“I think she’s a talented photographer, and a fun person to be around,” Nick said with a shrug. “I think she’s good for you.” He looked at me and stubbed his cigarette out, blowing a plume of smoke out through his lips. “I also think that if she is just using you to get ahead, we can easily destroy her career in a week.”
“You think it’s possible?” I stared at Nick. He shrugged again.
“Anything is possible,” he pointed out. “It’s possible that the only reason Fran hooked up with Jules was to further her chances of a solo career.” He paused and strummed a quick chord. “I don’t think it’s that likely. If Allie was just interested in getting access to the band for career purposes, she wouldn’t be hanging around for what--a month or more?” Nick paused. “Unless she’s super patient, she’d have dashed as soon as it became clear that wasn’t going to work out quickly for her.”
“What if she is super patient, though?” Jules had come into the room without either of us hearing him.
“Then Mark gets some grade-A ass for a while and when she makes her intentions clear we destroy her in the industry,” Nick replied matter-of-factly. I looked at my bandmates, a little shocked.
“Destroy her?” Jules smirked.
“If she’d been just using you to get access to the band, would it really bother you to ruin her livelihood for a while?” I thought about that--I couldn
’t help it--for a few moments.
“If she were just using me, then I guess…” I sighed. “If she’s just using me then she’s putting on an excellent fucking front.”
“I don’t think she’s using you,” Jules said, sitting down next to one of the monitors. “But like Nick said, it’s a possibility. You can’t ignore it.”
“I’ve been trying to,” I told him. “Because if I treat it like it’s a thing then everything she does is suspicious as hell.”
“That’s a good point,” Nick said. “Are we getting started soon, or what?”
“Alex is on the phone with Ron,” Jules told us. “I figure another fifteen minutes or so before he gets his ass in here. Dan’s grabbing a beer in the break room. Jack is setting something up in the control room.”
“Feel like jamming for a few minutes while we wait?” I looked at Jules and Nick. They shrugged and picked up their instruments, made sure they were plugged in properly to the monitors.
We started out playing an old Strokes song, loose-goose, just following the movements, and after we’d gone through it, Nick took the base note of the melodic line and started into a new groove, and I followed him for a few bars until Jules came in. It felt good--it felt almost like playing with Bent Bridges had: fun, low-stakes, and spontaneous. I thought to myself a big part of the problem with Molly Riot, why we didn’t seem to be gelling as much as we used to, at least at the beginning of the recording process, was that we just didn’t do shit like this anymore. We went into rehearsal spaces to work. We went into the studio to work. We got down to business and stayed on task--which was what the label tended to want. There wasn’t any of this fooling around, no playing with melodies.
Dan came in, and then finally Alex, and I felt the tightening in my gut that told me that playtime was over; it was time to get to work. “What are we working on today?”
