Taste Me

by Tamara Hogan

  Sasha spared a moment’s pity for her brother, standing in such close proximity to Scarlett backstage. Had he seen the set list? Did he know what he was in for? She didn’t know what Scarlett was thinking, but she heartily approved.

  A werewolf howl split the air, louder than the music banging through the club. Things were getting raucous, and the show hadn’t even started yet. But so far, a fine tension was keeping everyone behaving in an evolutionary game of Rock, Paper, Scissors: the werewolves had immense physical strength for their size, second only to the valkyries, but both species were more susceptible to incubi and succubi pheromones than the vamps were. Vamps tended toward slender frames but possessed massive personal glamour—and having fangs didn’t hurt. Humans, physically the weakest—chum in the water, really—would actually have the clearest heads in the house, if they took their meds. She looked at Bailey, currently planting a string of tiny kisses along her jaw line.

  Some friend she was.

  For the next few hours, it would be the gentle sirens sitting at the top of the food chain. Scarlett, with her incomparable voice, was about to take them all on a journey of her choosing.

  Why couldn’t Lukas just strap in and enjoy the ride?

  ***

  A helpless shiver wracked Scarlett as Lukas’s body heat bled into hers from where he stood, not two feet behind her. Did he have to stand so close? Her sex clenched at his scent, a wild night forest.

  Whoa. Head rush. She stumbled backwards, and his massive hands steadied her.

  “Are you okay?”

  She shivered again as his humid breath puffed into the crook of her neck. His fingers momentarily flexed, gently biting into her hips as he steadied her. For a moment, just for a moment, she allowed herself to lean into his body. Into his heat. His… size.

  Her eyes widened slightly as she felt the unmistakable erection pressing against her back. If the only thing she had to go on was the expression on his face, she would think that he was contemplating cutting his toenails, or maybe having his taxes done, but his body told a different story completely.

  She stepped away. “Thank you.”

  “Have you eaten at all today?”

  “What?”

  “Won’t be much of a show if you drop from hypoglycemia.”

  “My blood sugar’s just fine,” she said crossly. “And if I drop, isn’t it your job to catch me?” She stared blindly at the set list duct-taped to the backstage wall. What the hell had she been thinking? Anticipation and dread swam in her stomach. Damn it, she hadn’t factored in her own reaction to the man when she’d crafted the set list. She wasn’t even singing yet, and it was all she could do not to lean toward him like a compass needle seeking true north.

  She jumped when a hand touched her shoulder. “Hey, sorry,” Dave Grohl said. He eyed Lukas, who didn’t show any sign of stepping back to give them a little room. Shrugging, Dave asked, “Has Stephen showed up yet?”

  “No,” Scarlett said. She pushed Dave’s long scraggly bangs out of his face so she could see his eyes. “But even if Stephen were to show up right now, you’re my guy for tonight. Are you okay with the set list?”

  He grinned around his ever-present gum. “I’ll muddle through. This place is gonna pop its fuckin’ cork.”

  “Excuse me,” Lukas said tightly. He moved a couple of body lengths away, though his eyes didn’t leave her. Scarlett watched his lips move as he talked. Anyone who hadn’t noticed the miniscule, flesh-toned earpiece he wore would probably think he was talking to himself.

  “Scarlett?”

  She turned back to Dave, whose grin had turned knowing. Her face flaming, she punched him on the shoulder. “What?”

  Dave backed away, hands jokingly raised. “Hey, I didn’t say anything but your name. Did I?” he said to Tansy, who’d joined them.

  “I have no clue what you’re talking about,” the bassist replied, taking Dave’s arm and leading him to where Michael stood near the curtain. When she heard them talking Dave through the timing of the band’s entry onto the stage, her stomach clutched. At least someone was thinking. Their opening number, “Desire (Come and Get It)” by Gene Loves Jezebel, had a precision unison start for the drummer and the lead guitar. There was no room for slop, no opportunity to drift in or catch up.

  As Tansy explained the countdown to Dave, Scarlett examined the set list once again, shoving down a growing panic. Her body was throbbing already; she was halfway to an orgasm and he’d barely touched her. Where was Sigmund? Who had a pen?

  It was too late for second thoughts. For better or for worse, she’d do her best to bring things to a head tonight, using the most ruthless tool she had at her disposal.

  It would help if she could tear her eyes away from the bulge at his crotch.

  Then again, why be coy? She was done walking on eggshells. The goose bumps surged once again, each hair standing straight away from her body. This time she let the shiver wrack through her, watched him watch it happen.

  His golden brown eyes missed nothing.

  She remembered just how much painstaking attention he paid to the details of a woman’s body, how he’d known just how much pressure it took to bring her to that perfect knife edge of pain and pleasure that she now recognized she craved, and had not been able to recapture since. She’d never had a lover to match him, and it was entirely his fault.

  When a girl’s first lover’s a sex demon, it’s all downhill from there.

  His eyes locked onto hers, his nostrils flaring. She acknowledged it with a quirk of her lips that said, “So? What are you going to do about it?” She mapped his body with her eyes, taking in his big, Frankenstein work boots, the jeans he’d had on earlier in the day, with the same brass button that had pressed into her stomach when he’d backed her against the wall in the hallway, with the same faithful cupping of the bulge at his crotch. The sweater he wore looked expensive, soft, but slightly too small for his linebacker shoulders. It clearly wasn’t his. She moved up to his face—to the firm jaw line, the crooked nose, the fine lines that time and responsibility had creased into the corners of his eyes and mouth. The sharp planes were stubbled by a beard, and his heavy eyebrows were furrowed with annoyance. Other than the borrowed sweater, the only soft thing on the man was his tabby cat hair.

  He may have thought the wardrobe helped him blend into the background, but if he did, he was delusional. He was too big, too much a force of nature, and as usual, she couldn’t manage to drag her eyes away from the son of a bitch when she should be getting ready for what suddenly felt like the most important show of her life.

  She interpreted emotions with her voice, so… she’d interpret. She would throw down the gauntlet in a way he couldn’t possibly ignore.

  ***

  Red, orange, and yellow lights exploded against the huge digital screens covering the back and side walls of the stage as the band opened the show, hitting the first note crisply. The cheering crescendoed as recognition of who was sitting at the drum kit rippled through the crowd. When Scarlett sauntered onto the stage, they positively roared, nearly drowning out the sound of the band. Over his headset, Lukas heard Sasha order, “Levels!”

  Before she could finish the sentence, Randy rapped out, “I’m on it.”

  The sound ratchetted up, a match held to a powder keg. The metal sculpture surrounding the stage seemed to undulate as Scarlett waved to the crowd, called out a quick “hello!” and made her way to the spotlight at center stage. There was no posing, no rock star preening. Instead, she quickly got to business, planting her feet with one foot slightly in front of the other like she was bracing herself against the firestorm that swirled around her. The music thrummed and pulsed, and the crowd swayed and reached for her before she even opened her mouth.

  And the first words she crooned wrapped around his dick like a prehensile tongue. Fifteen seconds into the show and he was already locking his knees.

  Lukas gritted his teeth as the yearning wave of energy pulsed through him, mut
ing outgoing communications on his headset so everyone on the security channel wasn’t treated to his increasingly loud and labored breathing. Blood rushed to his face and he could feel each individual heartbeat pound into his groin. Even the tug of his hand through his own hair felt hypercharged against the nerve endings in his scalp. His stomach sank as he skimmed the set list taped to the wall: “Do Ya Wanna Touch Me.” “Maneater.” “I Touch Myself.” “Too Drunk to Fuck.” “Stripped.” “Erotic City.”

  Scarlett had sex on the brain.

  Concentrate. The minute he allowed himself to enjoy the forbidden feelings raging through him, the second he actually entertained following up on them, he wasn’t doing his job. Thankfully, Jack was doing his. His partner’s bright blonde head was in position in the pit at Scarlett’s feet. Sasha stood immediately to Jack’s right. Nearly a dozen undercover Sebastiani Security workers stood near them in the jostling crowd.

  He stared at the proximity of Scarlett’s open lips to the microphone she clasped with such authority. The feeble, phallic symbolism was inescapable. Look away. But damn, there was no safe place to rest his eyes. How could a man be expected to do his job when everywhere he looked was terrain straight out of his Top 10 fantasies list? Those leather boots climbing her taut thighs. The vulnerable slice of moon-pale skin above the boots. The soft T-shirt fabric clinging to her ass. The leather belt, slung twice around her hips, hanging on for dear life. The scissor-slashed neck of the T-shirt dress, exposing her collarbone and shoulder, threatening to drift south. Her nipples, crested proudly against the fine fabric.

  Her champagne mandarin arousal, blooming on his tongue.

  Stalking the stage like a huntress, she already had the people in the crowd bouncing in unison, reaching blindly toward her. As she leaned over the lip of the stage, she extended her free arm above the writhing crowd. She was used to the love and adulation of thousands. How could one man ever be enough for her? How could—

  Shit, someone had her hand.

  “Jack?” he snapped. But before he could clear the curtain, she’d already released herself—which was good, because his freakin’ audio was off. Screw Claudette’s request; he should have assigned someone else to this job—he wasn’t objective enough. It was never a good idea to guard someone you were invol—

  They weren’t involved except in his imagination. He looked down to his unruly dick, which didn’t care about such foolish distinctions. He’d always thought he was a practical man, but in his imagination—in his dreams and fantasies—he and Scarlett were involved all right, involved for hours on end, cycling through every position in the Kama Sutra, and some that simply hadn’t been documented yet.

  “Hey,” Garrett said, joining him. “She’s whipping ’em up fast tonight. I’m glad you’re here. Any sign of Stephen?”

  “Negative.” Where was the guy? Despite Scarlett’s blithe response earlier, he knew just how worried she was. “We’re keeping our eyes peeled.”

  His staff was executing cleanly, doing the job, and despite the volume of blood flowing south, he’d better find a way to do his.

  And his responsibility was to watch Scarlett, all night long. As if he could help it.

  ***

  Standing under the blazing lights a half hour later, sweat dripping down her backbone, dampening her dress, Scarlett leaned over the lip of the stage again, barely out of range of the bouncing heads and waving arms, and yowled the angry, sex-charged words of Orgy’s “Blue Monday.”

  Things were going well. Other than some initial problems with the levels, quickly resolved, the band was performing like a well-oiled machine, despite Stephen’s absence. They were tight, everyone at the top of their game. Indeed, having Dave sitting at the kit had introduced a spark of spontaneity which had been lacking as they slogged wearily toward the end of the tour.

  A hand grasped her ankle through the fine leather of her boots. Her toes curled and shrank in reaction, but she stood her ground and kept singing. She’d give Jack and the security staff about ten seconds to get the guy back, get him off of her, before stomping on his fingers.

  In her peripheral vision, she saw Lukas’s eyes narrow. He shifted his weight to the balls of his feet, relaxing slightly as the guy let her go. She was far too attuned to him. When she performed, she wanted each person in the audience to feel like she was singing to each of them individually, but tonight they were being cheated. Reality was that her words were challenges, being flung with force at the feet of a single person: the massive lump of testosterone who hadn’t moved out of her line of sight all night long.

  Not that it was working, she thought grumpily as the band tore into the end of the song. No, he simply stood there, his expression carved in stone. Every now and again she caught a whiff of his wild, dark pheromones, and yes, he had a hard-on that wouldn’t quit, but so did every other man in the place. No, he simply stood sentinel, her plan to make him miserable clearly a stellar failure. If anything, her plan had boomeranged back on her times three, as the childhood faerie tales had portended. Watching the minute movements of his tongue shifting and swirling in his mouth distracted her to no end. Just looking at him made goose bumps ripple, her nipples tighten, and her sex pulse and clench on… emptiness.

  She was empty. She wanted to be filled, and Dave’s heavy hand at the drums didn’t help. The vibrations pushed at her from the back, and buzzed up her legs from the wooden stage floor. Her body pulsing with each note, she surfed the wave of anger and frustration, nearly head-banging as the band finished out the song. When it ended, she stood in the blinding hot light and acknowledged the cheering and clapping. “Thank you!” she called.

  While the applause eddied around her, she looked down at the set list taped to the floor at her feet. If the next three songs didn’t chip away at Lukas Sebastiani’s marble façade, nothing would.

  “Are we having any fun yet?” she asked the crowd, giving the band a chance to swig from bottles and towel off some sweat. “Stephen couldn’t be with us tonight, but what a treat to have Dave sit in. Dave Grohl, everybody!” Scarlett indicated Dave with a wave of her hand, and started the clapping herself. Dave acknowledged the applause by lifting his bottle of beer with a toasting gesture and slinging his sweaty hair out of his face.

  “Are you ready?” she called out to the crowd, her eyes shooting a challenge at Lukas as Dave tore into the opening tom-toms of Joan Jett’s “Do You Wanna Touch Me?” She extended her arms over her head, clapping on the two and four beats. Before long, most of the crowd had joined her. The song banged and throbbed, the band crisp and steady as a metronome behind her, Tansy and Dave laying down the beat like they’d been playing together for years rather than minutes.

  Holding Lukas’s gaze, she spread her legs, planted them, and swayed her hips back and forth in time to the music. The crowd pulsed in time with her, swaying back and forth like a single organism. She saw Lukas swallow, his nostrils flare, but his eyes didn’t leave hers. No. They blazed with heat, with intent. Of what, she didn’t know, but a shudder tore through her body nonetheless. She was a hair’s breadth away from coming, and he hadn’t touched her with anything other than his eyes.

  She tore her gaze away from his and strutted back to center stage, focusing on what she could see of the people in the crowd. After the first couple of rows closest to the stage, individual faces blurred. The pheromone level had noticeably spiked, and the crowd surged toward the stage, trying to get closer. Almost before she saw Jack’s lips move, a perimeter formed to hold back the crowd. Lukas was ready to step out from behind the curtain. To do… what? Snatch her out from beneath the ravening horde? Rescue her like a damsel in distress?

  And then what?

  His hands clenched, then released. Ahhh, finally. The first crack. She felt his eyes travel her body from head to toe and back again. His tongue moved subtly in his closed mouth.

  What did she taste like to him?

  Time to raise the stakes. She found a familiar face in the second row. Croo
king a grin at Chadden, she reached her hand into the crowd to pull him onstage. She wrapped her arm around his waist and held the microphone up to their mouths. He easily picked up her rhythm, singing the “yeahs” in the call-and-response section of the song.

  She knew if she gave Chad an inch he’d take a mile, so… she gave it to him. It wasn’t long before his cheerful, talented hand drifted from her waist to her hip, then slipped along her ass. The crowd laughed as she moved his hand, and finally the song ended. Chad being Chad, the vamp turned her “thank you” peck into a silky French kiss. Scarlett sank into his touch—very smooth, very nice—but it wasn’t the rough, scrappy kiss she knew would satisfy her.

  She backed away from Chadden just as Lukas stepped out from behind the curtain. Chad didn’t deserve to get the shit kicked out of him because she wanted to make Lukas react.

  As Chad jumped off the stage, Lukas stepped back, but not without glowering at her first. She raised a brow in response. He replied by crossing his arms and widening his stance.

  Her gaze drifted south. She’d gotten a reaction, all right.

  ***

  This was absolute torture. Frank sexual energy crackled in the air, and the place was saturated with pheromones. If he had been alone, there was no doubt in his mind that his dick would be in his hand. It was all he could do to keep his arms crossed at his chest.

  To stop himself from throttling her.

  Scarlett had been building the vibe all night, stoking it like a bonfire. He estimated that they were about three-fourths of the way through the show. The crowd no longer even pretended to dance, instead swaying and grinding against each other, a frank group frottage.