Come Together

by Madelynne Ellis

  ‘More like a few minutes around you, hot stuff.’ He winked flirtatiously at her, which made her laugh, though she still wasn’t done with this issue of her talking to Luthor.

  ‘Honestly, Xane, are you actually jealous of me talking to other men?’ She found the notion oddly reassuring. It made her feel less of a monster for being mistrustful herself, and she had to admit, if it’d been the other way around and Xane had been the one hanging around with a handsome roadie, she’d have been suspicious.

  ‘Should I be?’

  ‘No one makes me crazy like you do.’ She pushed her hands inside his clothing, hoping the skin-on-skin contact would reassure him. ‘I should be the one worried. You’re the one who’s going to have hundreds of crazy fans trying to rip your clothes off later this evening.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Well, they can have my clothes. Anyone wanting more than an autograph, cross my heart –’ he made the action with his finger ‘– I’m sending straight to Ash.’

  She was really starting to appreciate having Ash around.

  ‘What if there’s a real knockout among them?’

  ‘You’re a real knockout, and the only person whose hands I want on me. I was thinking, you could put one about here, and the other here.’ He positioned her hands, one over his fly and the other on his butt.

  ‘Stop it,’ she hissed. They were in full view of the band and crew down on the stage area below.

  Xane bent his head, so his brow rested against hers. He held her firmly within his arms. ‘No one is looking up. Maybe you could go down.’

  ‘Not one of your best lines.’ Also, although he was correct that nobody was paying them any attention at the moment, that didn’t mean it’d stay that way. She’d heard enough stories and had enough personal experience of the mores of the various band members to know that, if she and Xane were spotted in a compromising position, they wouldn’t turn a blind eye. Spook would have his camera out, and the rest of them, except Elspeth, would crack out the popcorn. Elspeth would probably crack out something else. A knife aimed straight at Dani’s heart, maybe. Only that would involve physical exertion, and Elspeth barely wafted about the place. No, Dani decided. Elspeth was more likely to poison her enemies or attempt to scare them off with hideous photographs.

  Not to be put off, Xane shifted his attention to Dani’s neck, teasing her with numerous flirtatious love-bites and knee-weakening kisses. He knew exactly where her weak points were and was exploiting the knowledge mercilessly. Dani clung to him, unwilling to pull away, but still very conscious of their public position.

  ‘Get a room,’ Rock Giant bellowed up at them from the stage. ‘It’s bad enough we have to listen to you fucking half the night, we don’t need a daylight peepshow too.’

  ‘Stop looking and wear earplugs,’ Xane advised.

  ‘If he did that, he wouldn’t have a soundtrack to wank to,’ Ash remarked.

  Now they were all looking up. Band, crew, site technicians and bar staff.

  Ash took a swig from the bottle he was carrying, then lifted it towards Rock Giant in a salute. ‘Sorry, man, but we’ve all heard you working it. It must be a real bummer for you being on the top bunk. You can’t see a goddamned thing from up there, not even the shadow play on the curtains. That’s when they remember to close them.’

  ‘We always close them,’ Dani hissed into Xane’s ear. Every night, she made sure the curtains were drawn, with no gaps, before she removed a single item of clothing.

  ‘Ash is just playing with him. Paul doesn’t know that.’

  ‘What don’t I know?’ Rock Giant asked, demonstrating that he had awfully good hearing.

  ‘How gorgeous Dani’s tits are.’ Xane turned her so that she was standing before him and cupped the swell of her breasts in his big hands. ‘And that’s ’cause they’re all mine.’

  ‘Fuck off. I can find bigger ones to grope. There’s a hell of a lot more pussy on offer post-show these days, since you got all domesticated. I can have three or four girls tonight all willing to service me, and all with bigger tits than Dani. No offence, Dani.’

  ‘None taken.’

  ‘I’m sure yours are lovely, but I like more than a handful.’

  Ash spluttered his drink across the stage and Spook had to slap him on the back.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Too much info, Paul,’ Elspeth said, glancing across at him from behind her keyboard.

  ‘I’m just saying I like big boobs.’

  Elspeth was completely flat-chested. ‘I know,’ she said, the ice in her voice freezing the smiles off the rest of the band’s faces. ‘But stop before you start getting into exact measurements. You know what happened the last time you started talking in inches.’

  Spook stopped thumping Ash on the back and leaned into him instead, hiding a new smile. Dani noticed Xane smirking anew too. ‘What happened?’ she asked.

  Xane made a rising motion with his arm. ‘He got himself a nickname.’

  ‘Hey, Willows,’ Rock Giant called, seeing Iain coming in the door. ‘What size bust on a woman do you prefer?’

  ‘Any. I’m more of a leg man.’

  Ash coughed loudly into his fist. ‘That’s right. As long as they’re willing to spread them, he’s hot to go.’

  ‘Cheap shot, Mr Gore,’ Spook remarked, nonetheless raising his fist so they could bash knuckles. He then looked around at the stage set-up. ‘Hey guys, where’s my guitar?’

  ‘Maybe they haven’t brought it in yet,’ Rock Giant suggested.

  Liam and Tony, who were lurking by the bar, shook their heads. ‘Everything is inside. But I’ll go and check.’

  He returned a few minutes later and confirmed the guitar wasn’t in the truck or on the tour bus. Also, Sally had phoned the previous venue in Belgium and confirmed they hadn’t accidentally left it behind. Spook scowled. ‘Find it,’ he demanded. He spent the rest of the day mumbling to himself in Swedish.

  Chapter 23

  Xane came off stage that night smouldering and immediately swept Dani up into his arms. Two gigs in the same place meant they didn’t need to spend the night on the bus. They could find themselves a bit of privacy, and he wanted that, or rather he wanted to be somewhere Luthor wasn’t. Bad enough that he couldn’t escape the thoughts of their one night together, but on top of that Luthor insisted on hanging around Dani. Even having Sally adjust the work rotas hadn’t kept him away completely.

  ‘Want to get a room?’ he asked.

  She immediately grinned in response. ‘With a Jacuzzi?’

  ‘Babe, if you want to make wild in a hot tub, I’m not going to be the one to say no.’ He doubted he could say no to anything she suggested. He didn’t remember a time in his life when he’d felt this secure, but then he’d never been this special to anyone. That was the good thing about being with Dani. She loved him back with equal intensity. He just wished he felt confident enough to be truly honest with her. ‘You do realise you have to get naked, right?’

  ‘When am I not naked, when I’m with you?’ she mock sighed, but he knew she was putting a brave face on it. Those scars of hers would always bother her. It still troubled him how she’d come by them.

  ‘Do I have time to collect some things?’

  He couldn’t imagine what she’d need to climb into a bath with him but, hey, whatever. ‘Sure. You get what you need, and I’ll find Graham and let him know we’re heading off.’ He supposed it was only fair to keep their manager abreast of his plans. He’d mention it to the guys too if he happened upon them. No point stirring things up by making them think he’d bailed on them again, not when they all seemed to be finally getting on.

  ‘Give me fifteen minutes.’

  Fifteen minutes was fourteen minutes longer than his libido wanted to wait, but he smiled and agreed.

  Xane found Graham Callahan keeping an eye on his bandmates from a respectable distance. It didn’t look good imagewise for people to think a bunch of metal heads needed babysitting, even if they did. Ash, Spook, Rock
Giant and Iain were seated together on a C-shaped booth with several women and a glass mountain of drinks. However, contrary to normal, Ash wasn’t the one with a girl on either side of him and another on his lap. Instead, Rock Giant was revelling in attention. One lady from the next table was leaning over the divide between the seats stroking the spikes of his hair, while on either side of him were two extremely busty women. One had her hand in his shirt and was murmuring sweet incentives to encourage him to show her his tattoos, while the other seemed to have a zip fetish, given how much attention she was paying Paul’s fly.

  She released it even as Xane watched and started moving her hand about inside. ‘Wow, you really are as big as everyone claims.’

  One day, groupies would learn some new lines.

  ‘You set him up,’ he mouthed at Ash, who raised his hands in a ‘who, me?’ gesture. ‘That’s very magnanimous of you.’

  ‘I like to share the love around. You could always join us and share some of yours.’

  Xane shook his head, already aware of a cluster of people gathering behind him ready to pounce. ‘I love you, Ash, but you don’t do it for me the way Dani does.’

  ‘I’ll do you.’ A blonde in a skinny-fit vest made herself a perch on Ash’s lap. She snaked her arms around his neck and bent her head towards him expectantly, only for Ash to magically disentangle himself and pass her along to Iain.

  Iain leaned in to claim the kiss she’d been offering Ash, but she turned her head so that he only got to peck her cheek instead of devour her lips. ‘Aw,’ he grumbled. ‘Come on, honey. You’re not going to be a tease, are you? I can offer you everything Ash can. Maybe a bit more. He’s suffering from limp-dick-itis at the moment. That’s right, isn’t it, buddy?’ He slapped a hand on Ash’s thigh.

  ‘Totally.’

  Unconvinced, and still obviously with her sights on Black Halo’s lead guitarist, she strained back towards Ash. ‘It happens that I know a cure for that.’

  Ash shook his head. ‘He’s being polite, sweetheart. I have warts. Wouldn’t want to pass them on.’ She recoiled from him immediately.

  Xane hid his chuckle behind his hand. He hoped there wasn’t any truth in that statement, and Ash was simply being selective for a change.

  ‘My dick isn’t infected,’ Iain said, wrapping his arms around the woman’s waist.

  ‘I’m not interested in your dick. You’re not Ash Gore. You’re not even a proper member of the band.’

  Iain’s expression immediately soured. Xane decided this was a good point to make an exit. Last thing he wanted was to be drawn into a discussion about whether Iain was a genuine band member or not. Bust noses were likely to result, since he’d be siding with the girl on this one and saying a very loud ‘not’. Steve was still their drummer, even if he couldn’t be here any more.

  Shit – his mood sank. Definitely time to go find Dani and get back to making sweet music together.

  Spook followed him out into the hall, looking pretty darn miserable too. ‘Guitar still not turned up?’ Xane asked, to which his bandmate shook his head in response. It’d been a present or something from one of his family.

  ‘If this is someone’s idea of a joke, I promise they won’t be laughing when I find out, I’ll fucking skin them.’

  ‘That’ll certainly give the papers something to print,’ Xane responded. They’d been catching some pretty colourful headlines since the tour started, most of it bollocks, of course, but some of the stories were seeded with just enough facts to make them plausible. It made him wonder if they had a leak, and, if that were the case, there were only three possibilities – Dani, Iain and Luthor. Dani he trusted implicitly. Iain was a jerk, but leaking stories wouldn’t benefit him in the slightest. Luthor, on the other hand, had motive, sort of. Xane probably ought to have been more specific about how far he expected Luthor to keep his mouth closed. It wasn’t only Dani he didn’t want him speaking to. He didn’t want evidence or rumours of that night they’d spent together slipping out in any way.

  He probably ought to talk to him again.

  He spotted Luthor heading across the foyer and decided now was as good a time as any.

  ‘I’m sure your guitar will turn up soon.’ It’d been odd seeing Spook on stage tonight without his purple Washburn. Even some of the audience had noticed its absence. ‘I’ll catch you later.’

  ‘Sure.’

  Xane dashed across the hall and followed Luthor into the men’s toilets, before it dawned on him that it probably wasn’t one of his smartest moves. Following a hot guy into the toilets at a rock venue … make that a hot man you’d already fucked and who still made your insides heat no matter how hard you tried to deny it, and there was only one conclusion anyone would reach if they were seen: that they were about to fuck one another senseless, just as at least a dozen people had already done in here tonight. The place smelled of booze and sex and, well, other bodily fluids, mixed with a sharp dash of citrus pine.

  To make things worse, there was no one else in here, just him and Luthor and an open cubicle. That emptiness robbed him of any means of wriggling out of his mistake. He couldn’t pretend it was a coincidence that he’d followed the other man in here, or that he’d only come in here to pee, because no way was he unzipping his fly. Not when he was still buzzing from having been on stage and excited by the prospect of introducing Dani to Jacuzzi sex.

  Luthor stood waiting on the far side of the room. He met Xane’s gaze with both his eyebrows raised.

  ‘It’s not what you think,’ Xane insisted. The best option seemed to be to plough ahead with this and hope for a decent outcome. ‘We need to talk.’

  ‘Talk!’ A wide, incredulous grin spread open Luthor’s glorious mouth. ‘Do you often “talk” to people in public bathrooms?’ He ventured closer to Xane, until they were only a step apart. ‘If you only wanted to talk to me, you could do that any time. We’re within about a hundred feet of one another, pretty much twenty-four-seven. Pursuing me into the men’s was hardly a necessity.’

  ‘I wanted to speak to you alone, and where we weren’t likely to be overheard.’

  Luthor turned his head, making a show of confirming they were indeed the only ones here. ‘Well, you’ve got me. What is it? Are you about to make your girlfriend sad?’

  ‘No,’ he retaliated. This wasn’t going the way it was meant to. ‘I need to know if you’ve said something to her, or to anyone else.’

  ‘I said I wouldn’t and I haven’t.’

  ‘Then why are you constantly around her?’

  Luthor had the gall to laugh. ‘Because I like her, that’s why. We’re friends.’

  ‘Are you making a move on her? Are you planning something in order to get to me?’ He couldn’t believe this guy, hitting on the girlfriend of the man who rejected him. Was that intended to be some sort of twisted revenge? Xane was tempted to throw a punch and be done with it. He needed an outlet for some of the crazed energy being in this guy’s vicinity seemed to generate. Instead, he gripped Luthor’s shoulder and shoved him back against a cubicle door. ‘If you so much as touch her, let alone try anything on. Just stay away from her, for fuck’s sake.’

  ‘Or what?’ Luthor bounced back and was in Xane’s face again. ‘Will you fire me? That’d only give me a reason to crap all over you. It’s why you didn’t dismiss me immediately when you first recognised me. I’m not stupid, Xane.’

  ‘I just don’t want you screwing things up for me and her. You don’t understand how she is …’

  ‘I understand perfectly well how things are.’

  The door to the bathroom opened, ahead of someone coming in. Luthor reacted fast. He grabbed hold of Xane and dragged him into the cubicle.

  Xane’s heart hammered, imagining Luthor’s next move would be to slam him up against the wall and then kiss him senseless. Instead, he simply put his back to the door, and his finger to his lips. Whoever it was did their business and left. They both sighed when the bathroom door hinges creaked.


  ‘This is a damn stupid place for a heart-to-heart,’ Luthor observed.

  Xane reached for the lock, but Luthor remained in the way. ‘No. Let’s get this over with. I haven’t said anything to anybody. I’m not going to. I’m not blackmailing you, despite what you seem to think. Xane, I never have been. What good would it do me? I’m hardly going to ingratiate myself by pissing you off.’

  ‘You don’t need to ingratiate yourself.’

  ‘Sure I do. You’re my boss, and I’d like to fuck you silly.’ He reached out but stopped short of running his hand through the long strands of Xane’s hair. ‘And I know at least part of you wants me too, but I’m going to be the better man here and not jump your bones, even though you deserve it for following me in here.’ His gaze swept their tacky surroundings. ‘Know why? Because I don’t want to hurt Dani, that’s why.’ Much of his anger melted from his voice as he spoke her name. ‘And I sort of promised her I wouldn’t too.’

  ‘You said you hadn’t told her.’

  Luthor reached up and dragged back the curtain of hair that normally covered his face. He looked straight into Xane’s heart with his mismatched eyes. ‘I haven’t spilled any of your dirty secrets, but she knows I fancy you, and that makes her prickly enough. I’ve never known anyone quite so petrified of the idea that her boyfriend might be seduced by and run off with another man. Why is that? Have you done it before? Did she see you with Steve Matlock?’

  Xane shook his head. His heart still leapt into his throat every time someone mentioned Steve. Only on stage when addressing an audience did he manage to talk about his former lover without tearing up. ‘Her dad left her mum for a guy. It pretty much ruined her childhood.’

  Luthor sucked his upper lip. ‘And she expects you to do the same. How the hell did you end up together if she thinks like that?’

  ‘She didn’t realise I was bisexual.’

  ‘No way.’ And another snort of laughter erupted from Luthor’s mouth. ‘Because it isn’t blatantly obvious, is it?’