by Sam Hall
Liam wasn’t like the Rejects’ singer. He eschewed the more theatrical antics many lead singers used. Instead, he just demanded people’s attention and invariably, he got it. Spotlights swivelled to focus on him, bathing him in a blast of light and bleaching that already pale hair to white, until he was just a drawing of a man, all black lines and negative space.
“Here,” Aen said, offering me my camera.
I turned to him and Jen, but she said, “It should be OK. Stop her from getting too high but don’t get in her way. Take enough now to satisfy yourselves, then keep an eye on her.”
The two of them clustered in as the beat thumped behind me, taking one hand.
“Little sting,” Circe murmured, and then I felt it.
It felt the way someone’s mouth would if it was sucking on your fingers or toes. It was a soft yet pulsing, muscular thing. It tugged at me, but I didn’t necessarily want it to stop. I swayed a bit at the sensation. It lulled me, turning my bones to rubber, my body to liquid. There was something kinda sexy about it, though it wasn’t sexual. Aen swooped in to hold me up, the two of them just stroking my palm.
“It’s a singular pleasure, dealing with a good feeder,” he said into my ear. “Having a cluster of them bleed power from you while you’re with a lover… Dangerous as hell, but such a feeling.”
His words painted vivid mental pictures, something I’d apparently gotten really good at. The merest suggestion of sex, and I had a paranormal PornHub channel playing in my mind.
“Aen…” I whimpered.
“I’m sorry, my flower. I shouldn’t tease. It makes you flare so much brighter. You’re entirely too responsive, and I find myself wanting to put aside the necessary steps towards courtship and just see how far I can push you.”
“You’re not helping,” Jen said with a frown. “Hurry it up.”
The siblings nodded and said, “A bit of a tug.”
The sensual pulling turned into something more forceful for a second, and my eyes widened as they curled their hands into my palms, then pulled free glittering diamond like stones. Their fingers tightened around them for a moment, their eyes flicking to each other, but at Aen’s growl, they relinquished them, placing them in my palm. They blinked, each one looking a little less gaunt than before.
“Here, love,” Aen said, holding out a velvet bag. I dropped the two stones in, and he shoved it into my pocket. I looked around, feeling clear-eyed and sharp by comparison.
“My camera?” I said, not looking when it was given to me. My eyes were on the stage, on the lines of Liam’s body as he belted out the song, a kind of infectious joy on his face. The song was about a good-natured slide into temptation, of abandoning any pretence at trying to do the right thing. Something I could relate to, as I pressed down the shutter release. This was it, this was me—my purpose now. I scanned the crowd and the band, analysing every element, my mind composing shots before they even presented themselves and taking them when they did.
It was around halfway through, when the audience was at its peak, that I began to see it. Maybe it would have just looked like a haze or glare from the light, but a misty kind of luminance filled the auditorium. In response, the great teardrop that hung above the band started to glow, the cheers from the crowd indicating that this was a normal thing, something they expected. The Changelings seemed to unwind at this, like that kind of coiled, lazy power before was just a pose they could throw off at will. I caught Jake, his laugh crazy, as he smashed out the frenetic opening beat to one of their more current songs. “Running From It” was an ode to commitment-phobes everywhere, about the weird kind of joy people felt doing their damnedest to escape romantic entanglement, while having the best time they could. Girls started throwing bras and underwear up on stage, Billy and Liam doing their best to catch them during the song and hang them from Liam’s mic stand.
And Johnno. All of that panty dampening rock god vibe he’d had before was doubled, trebled on stage. I caught with my lens the way the fans reached out for him, their eyes raking over his now shirtless form, looking at that big muscular body I’d been pressed against. He was tantalisingly out of reach, something they tried desperately to broach, and only the burly bouncers at the edges of the stage were enough to hold people back as the barricades groaned. Then, as if sensing my inspection, he turned towards me.
To the audience, it would have looked like he was prowling across the stage, moving into his brother’s mic to sing backup. I knew differently, though, as the camera gave me the view so crisp and clear. Those golden eyes shone with an unearthly light as he stalked closer, his guitar slung low over his hips. His hands moved without a thought, those sharp sensual notes providing a solid background to Billy’s more acrobatic lead guitar. I went macro, forced to go to a super fast shutter speed to catch those long slender fingers, the veins standing out proud against the back of his hands. I took shot after shot, my camera stroking his body in the absence of my hands. Then they reached out.
An arm went around Johnno’s neck, drawing him closer as a hand touched mine. I glanced back to see Liam had the microphone in hand, ostensibly singing with his brother, but those blue eyes bore into my lens, looking straight into me. I forced my eyes away, unable to take that hot gaze anymore, to see Circe holding up a huge shining stone in her hand.
Jen looked at it, eyes wide, then snatched it away and shoved it into my palm, closing my fingers around it.
“You’re getting some dick tonight,” she said over the noise. Her smile was tremulous and hopeful.
“I need some. I’ve had sex once in the last year.”
“Jesus! That’s some kind of torture to someone newly transitioned. One orgasm!”
“Not one orgasm,” I replied, and her eyebrow shot up, then she laughed. “As long as they look after you. Though you might want to sidle off with one or more of that harem of yours before court. Bleed off some of that energy. Who are you going to choose?”
My eyes went automatically back to the band as Jen chuckled.
When they came running off the stage, thrumming with energy, I felt the same way. I was flicking through the shots on Marlow’s tablet, mentally sorting the good from the bad. That was plucked away and passed over as a hot sweaty body pressed against mine.
“Johnno,” I said before I’d even laid eyes on him. He was leaning over me, and I could feel his panting breath on my face as he smiled. He cloaked me in a sharp woody scent that seemed to pluck at me, at my attention, my nipples, my clit. Fuck, I wanted him.
It’d all come rushing in when I put the camera down, as whatever spell was on that glass dissipated when I replaced it in its bag. I had no buffer—their songs smashed into me, and I walked into each blow.
I’d physically started to do so, and only Aen’s arm snapping out stopped me from stepping out onto the stage in a trance. There was a magic to this primitive rite, something that transcended time, rational thought, and self-preservation. I was just like the crowd, bowing down before their fucking majesty, the sounds they were able to wring from the simple instruments capturing me in a spell that I couldn’t fight anymore. People were touching me, Aen a steady presence, the drainers doing their damnedest to stop the welling surge of power that just kept on building inside me. I felt like my skin was going to burst, and Jen shot me worried looks, snapping orders at the drainers to work faster, but they began to look harried under the onslaught.
“Here,” Marlow said, handing me the tablet, trying to steer me away from the stage. “Look at what you’ve made.” Like a child, my mind grabbed the latest shiny, flicking, flicking through the photos. But it was jerked back pretty damn quick. I could feel it—that selfsame energy pulsing in Johnno as he hung above me, so I reached up and licked the pulse point stuttering with that beat.
“We don’t have time—” Lucas said, shouldering forward.
“Shut up,” Liam said, holding out a hand, but I didn’t give a fuck about them. I slid my mine under Johnno’s, so he held them against the
wall, hearing the various mumbled responses from those around me as my back arched up, thrusting my breasts against Johnno’s chest.
“Kira…”
My name was a prayer and a plea, and right now, I couldn’t think of a reason not to answer it.
“C’mon,” I said, tangling my fingers in his and dragging him forward.
We moved with some kind of preternatural speed deeper into the backstage area, past groupies and hangers on, past techs and caterers, until we returned to that little room, where his practice amp and guitar were left, still humming.
“Kira, hang on…”
I pushed him against the wall, his smile broadening, then faltering as my hands went to his waistband.
“Hey, we should—”
I stopped him talking with my mouth, and somehow, I managed to kiss him with everything I had while freeing his hard cock. My lips paused against his when I felt it, long and throbbing in my hand. I needed it—I felt that deep inside me, twisting sharply the longer I waited.
“You don’t have to… Oh fuck!”
His hands went to my hair as I dropped to my knees, taking him in my mouth as far as that fat shaft would go.
“Don’t fight this, brother. This was always on the cards.”
I heard the rustle of many bodies behind me, coming closer and closer as I slid my mouth slowly, from as far down as I could, then a slow, steady suction to the head. I could feel the heat from their bodies as I worked him, feel him harden impossibly further with each stroke.
“No…I…”
His voice came in tight little bursts, coming out when I pulled off the crown of his dick, only to engulf him with my mouth again seconds later.
“You can’t plan this shit, Johnno,” another voice said. “You’ve got all the time in the world to plan moonlit dinners and picnic dates. Come down the pretty girl’s throat. Give her what she wants.”
“So, we’re really doing this?”
“Fuck yeah, we are. She’s not a butterfly. Our girl’s a whole motherfucking world, and I wanna get lost in her. Fuck, Johnno, you’ve got nerves of fucking steel. I’d be coming after the first stroke and then staying hard so I could come again.”
“Sounds like a promise for court, Jakey.”
“Damn right it is.”
The hum of the amp, the thrashing coil deep inside me, rose as I got faster, and something else answered its discordant call.
“Grab each other’s hands. This is gonna be a cunt to ground.”
“Fuck! She’s—”
“Everything I knew she was and more. Hold on, this is about to get hairy.”
My sense of self was lost in the swirl of sensation. I was something massive, rising from the depths, I was the slip of wet skin on wet skin. I was the ache in Johnno’s balls, drawing up tight, the shake in his forearms as he held himself back from forcing his cock down my throat. I was the regular rocking, sucking, pulling suction of my mouth, the stark corrugations of the veins standing out along his shaft. And I was the ache.
I may have been on my knees, but I controlled all of them. My clit throbbed in time with Johnno, a pleasure of frightening proportions spreading through my veins like a landslide. It swept me, him, the band, everyone connected to me in some way or another, pulling them along as I did Johnno, making them ache like we did, making them want to hurtle down that point of no return along with us.
And then it happened.
The power pulled from me always came away pure and clear and shining with a startling clarity, and that was what this felt like. His cock thrust forward, his fingers cruel against my skin as he jerked spasmodically, blasting cum down my throat in long ropes. But it was so much more than just a simple physiological reflex in response to stimulus—what we’d summoned blasted out in waves.
“Hold it!”
“Oh fuck…! Oh fuck…!” came the breathy, exhilarated moan.
A completely animalistic roar filled the room in answer.
“Do. Not. Let. Go.”
“No! You can’t fucking…!”
I stroked my hand down Johnno’s hip, then got to my feet, feeling like a motherfucking queen. I pulled the near delirious Johnno to me and placed a gentle kiss on his lips, just so he could feel the bruised puff of mine.
“You’re mine now,” I said.
“Yes…yes…” he sobbed, trying to pull me closer, unable to tolerate the small distance between us.
“Skin to skin,” Aen said, having appeared beside me. “He’ll be fragile for some time.” He drew me down onto the bench, taking Johnno with me. I wrapped him in my arms and looked over at the band, as they were suddenly something I was aware of. I stared over Johnno’s shoulder like a lioness with her prey, willing to fight all of them for him.
I needn’t have worried. Jake shook his head and then laughed, a sound of pure joy, then threw himself down at my feet, wrapping his arms around my legs.
“Mmm…” he purred. “You’re tasty.”
Billy was destroyed, staring down at the two of us as he wavered on his feet. If I’d hit him, I would have gotten less of a response from him. Lucas looked away as soon as my eyes trailed to him, but I saw the answering glow in his skin, in his eyes. And Liam. If I’d thought I was a lioness…well, he was the lion, sitting on top of his rock, surveying his pride and liking what he saw.
“Welcome to Hartley, Kira,” he said with a slight bow.
Was that what had happened? I felt the connection to them, to many people buzzing at the base of my scalp, and not just members of Hartley. As if summoned by that thought, Marlow arrived at the open door of the rehearsal room.
“We’ve got a bit of a problem. Massive power stones erupted on stage when you connected. Luckily, the house lights were down, otherwise the crowd would have seen the lot. I’ve got the crew doing clean up duty—”
“No! No one touches those stones except those I approve,” Liam said. “I’m sorry, Mar, but this is important.”
“OK,” my lover said, tapping the blue tooth headset he wore and relaying the orders. “Who do you want on this?”
Liam gave him a list of names, and Marlow relayed that to whoever was on the other end of the line.
“You also need to do an encore. The crowd’s getting restless.”
“Not with Jonathon,” Aen said. “He’s in no state to stir that kind of energy, and gods know what he’ll summon if he does. He needs to stay close to Kira until the bond settles.”
Marlow’s eyes went wide, but he quickly mastered himself, a look of concern on his face.
“That true?” Liam asked him.
“It’s intense,” was all he would say.
“He’s mine,” I growled when I watched him question what was said. “You can’t have him.”
“Fuck it, acoustic set,” Liam said. “Let’s do it.”
“Not me,” Billy said, shaking his head and not stopping. “Get those fucking drainers in here. I’m too fucking full for the second time today.” His fingers scratched great red tracks down his arms. “We’ve got to find a way… We have to stop…”
“No, we don’t. You just need to adjust. We’ll start tapering the power transfer in the bus during the day. Alright, Lucas, you’re on guitar, I’ll play rhythm, Jakey can give us a beat on bongos or something.”
“Mmm…” The red haired man gave a disgruntled grumble, squeezing my knee before getting to his feet. “My lady, I am your knight, your paladin, your lowly pawn. I would be happy to do any and all things you want for another taste of that.”
“You’ll be my proxy tonight,” I said, not knowing exactly what that meant, but somewhere deep in my subconscious, I did. “Show me the lengths you’re prepared to go then.”
“Oh, I’m looking forward to it with every damn breath. C’mon, let’s go before I rub a quick one out here and collapse in a heap.”
I watched them go, snuggling down lower in the puppy pile I had going right now. Marlow approached slowly, carefully, and I held out a hand when he got cl
ose enough. A lost little feeling of discomfort settled when he did so, a sigh escaping me as he joined us. I closed my eyes and summoned that living, humming thing inside me and surrendered to it.
7
“No.”
“You say that word an awful lot now. I’m not sure it’s an improvement,” Marlow said as we sat on the orgy bed in the back of The Changelings’ bus. He had yet another bloody outfit held out for me to look at. It was a gorgeous dress. Long, slinky, and black, it was red carpet ready, but I wasn’t going anywhere near somewhere like that tonight. Despite what they had told me, it sounded a whole lot more like a battlefield than an A-list event, and I wanted to be suitably armoured.
“Pfft… Give it to Aen. She would rock that dress. All that pale skin and bright red hair…”
“You’d like that, would you, flower?”
He smiled down at me, brushing my hair away from my forehead, then shifted into female form, wearing exactly that dress as Marlow looked blankly at his now empty hands.
“Give us a twirl,” I said, and she appeared in the doorway, striking a dramatic pose. “See? Damn girl, you’ll be fighting them off tonight.” The dress hugged her curves like a lover, the halter neck plunging to reveal acres of creamy flesh. Not quite as blessed as me, she’d be able to wear it without fashion tape, but people would be peering down at her décolletage all night. Her hair was like a river of flame against all that black and white, her eyes glittering and now sporting the most perfect winged eyeliner. Damn, she could do mine if she was that good at it.
I moved to roll up and maybe blot her lipstick with my lips or something, but Johnno’s arms snapped around me.
“No,” he said, his voice still raw, tugging me back down beside him.
“It’s OK,” I said, the singularly strange experience of reassuring someone only minutes ago I’d cast as complete rock god sitting comfortably on me somehow. I had spent my life as a mouse, but I was one who roared now. I wasn’t exactly sure what had happened, but I knew Johnno really needed me right now, and I wanted to keep him happy.
