Come Together

by Madelynne Ellis

  The attraction existed between them. It did. It was a fact, but he also loved Dani, and how could he hope to win her back if he allowed himself to do the very thing she’d left him over?

  She believed that he was fucking Luthor, that he was a liar and a cheat. Hell, maybe he was, but if he was lying to anyone, it was to himself as much as her. Luthor was right. Xane did want what he was offering. He just didn’t see a route to it ever happening. There wasn’t a way for the three of them to be together. Was there?

  Dani would never agree to it. And maybe … maybe he had to accept that and realise that, though she seemed so very right for him, in fact they were wholly wrong for one another.

  The realisation peeled the last vestige of civility from him. Fuck it, said his brain. Animal instincts took over. He was wounded and comfort was right here on offer, if he would only reach out and take it.

  He leaned into Luthor, trapping him against the side of the bus.

  Xane drove his mouth down hard over Luthor’s, shocking the other man. Yeah – so there was a bite to his kisses. So sue him. Savage was all that was left of him.

  He had Luthor’s shirt off in seconds. His belt followed. Fly next. At which point Luthor’s ridiculously overloaded cargo pants damn near slid off his hips of their own accord. Xane gave them a little help before working the heel of his hand over the thickening swell he unveiled.

  Luthor’s unsuppressed groan of excitement spurred him on. Yet, as he wrapped his arms around the other man and drove his tongue into Luthor’s mouth, his brain filled with images of Dani.

  Luthor was hard where Dani was soft and yielding.

  ‘Really?’ Luthor gasped, his face full of astonishment. ‘Why?’

  ‘Why question it? You’ve chased, and now you’re getting what you want.’

  ‘Am I? I don’t know what you’re trying to prove, but this isn’t about what either of us wants.’

  Xane grabbed his arse and squeezed.

  ‘Stop it.’ Luthor tried to throw him off, but Xane refused to be budged.

  ‘If you say you don’t want it, you’re a goddamn liar.’

  ‘I want you, but what is this going to fix? Think about it.’

  ‘Fuck thinking!’ Thinking made his head hurt, and he really didn’t need to add to the chest pains he was already experiencing – some of them so sharp he was sure he must have a dagger embedded in his heart. ‘Let’s just fuck.’

  * * *

  Xane’s mouth met Luthor’s, crushing his lips. It wasn’t nice. It was savage. Luthor knew he ought to fight this, but part of him couldn’t help reacting. He’d wanted Xane for so long. His touch set him alight. Still, he knew this was about desperation, not desire. Xane had hit self-destruct.

  Luthor didn’t feel good about having pushed him to that point. He hadn’t meant to destroy Xane and Dani’s relationship, only to reshape it so that it included him.

  ‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ he said in response to Xane’s demand.

  It might not be a good idea, but apparently he was putty. The minute Xane’s hand closed around his cock, pleasure streaked through his abdomen and made him forget everything. His protests died.

  God … holy … yes! This was absolutely what he wanted.

  His erection swelled as Xane expertly stroked him.

  The first time they’d been together, Xane had gone down on him. This time, he seemed intent on lifting him into space.

  Luthor didn’t resist when Xane pushed on his shoulders. He faced the bus and didn’t mind the bite of the cold metal against his cheek when Xane pushed him hard against the bodywork. Having Xane fingering his arse more than made up for that minor discomfort. He had a couple of fingers inside him now, and was working him open.

  When Luthor’s phone started bleating, he grabbed it to stop the noise drawing attention to them. He didn’t mean to read the message, but it opened automatically when he slid his finger across the touch screen.

  Setting up ready to rock Halmstad. Thought you might like to see what your absence has reduced us to.

  The text was accompanied by a photograph showing the stage and a box labelled ‘Luthor’, which Luthor took to be Denna Rädsla’s new drum machine. It wasn’t the drum machine that made him feel hollow inside, though.

  Hanne and Lykke were pictured sitting on the edge of the stage, and sandwiched between them was Dani. Holy shit! Why hadn’t any of them made the connection before? Where else would she be, when she was hurting, but with her best friend? Who just happened to be travelling with his old group.

  ‘Xane,’ he croaked. ‘Stop.’

  ‘I thought you were done protesting.’

  ‘It’s not that.’ Luthor swallowed hard. Xane was rubbing his cock against him, and he wanted it. He wanted him inside him so very badly. His skin prickled with excitement as Xane pushed closer, but he couldn’t let it happen. Not if he wanted to be able to look at himself in the mirror tomorrow morning.

  He’d helped break them apart. He ought to be the one who helped fix things.

  ‘I know where she is,’ he said. His voice was barely a whisper. ‘Xane, I know where Dani is.’

  * * *

  At the mention of her name, Xane instantly recoiled.

  ‘Where?’ he demanded. He clenched and opened his fists, no longer sure what to do with his hands – hands that only moments before he’d been using to bring Luthor off.

  Luthor showed him the photograph on his phone.

  ‘I don’t understand. Are you saying she’s with your band?’

  ‘With my old band, yes. They’re playing to the university crowd in Halmstad tonight. This was taken a few minutes ago. We’ve played that club dozens of times.’

  ‘How far away is Halmstad?’

  Without waiting for an answer, Xane started moving along the side of the bus towards the equipment van. He ought to have realised it earlier. Of course Dani was with Luthor’s band. Her best friend had been travelling with them. The two women were probably commiserating with each other.

  ‘How long’s the set?’ he asked Luthor when the other man caught up with him a few seconds later. He was zipped up and straightened out, except that he was still sporting a huge woody. Then again, so was Xane, and he was still flashing his. His butter fingers refused to work to do anything about that.

  ‘An hour, but they don’t go on until midnight.’ Luthor helped him out.

  ‘So, if we leave now, we should have no trouble making it in time for the close.’ He reached up to open the van door, but it was locked. ‘Do you have the keys?’

  ‘No, Ulf does, and in any case, you’re in no fit state to drive.’

  That was right. He had to be at least ten times over the limit. On the other hand, he had to get to Dani.

  ‘You can drive, can’t you?’

  Luthor tugged at his hair in exasperation. ‘I’ve been drinking too. I’ve a better idea.’ He reclaimed his phone from Xane’s grip and jabbed his finger against the screen a few times before clamping it against his ear and babbling something in Swedish. ‘There’s a taxi on its way. It’ll be five minutes. You ought to tell the guys where you’re going.’

  ‘You do it.’

  A grim smile stretched across Luthor’s face. ‘Oh, no.’ He grabbed hold of Xane’s arm. ‘I’m coming with you. You’ll need me to get you into this place. It’s a members-only club, and besides, I think we’d better get our stories straight, don’t you? Or have you forgotten you were about to fuck me?’

  Chapter 39

  Ulf was wrong. Denna Rädsla weren’t awful, they were rather good, and substantially better than the two acts who had performed before them. Dani sat well back from the stage, in the darkest corner she could find that wasn’t occupied by snogging couples. Ginny had talked herself out, having called Ash every cussword in the English language, plus a few she’d invented just for him. Ginny had no idea what she’d done. Her memory was still missing. Right now, she was working off her frustration, moshing with a group of Swe
dish metal heads by the front of the stage. The four guys seemed to be taking turns to put their hands all over her. Dani envied her friend’s ability to switch off like that. She couldn’t get Xane out of her thoughts, not for a minute. Sad, really, but he’d become her whole world.

  A couple of times she’d gone out into the corridor, where there was a payphone, and almost dialled Xane’s number, but really, what was there to say? Hey, you fucked up. You screwed someone else, but I miss you so much, and I don’t want it to be over.

  Seriously, was that what she wanted to admit? That, although he’d hurt her and betrayed her trust, she still wanted him?

  She did still want him.

  We warned you. We said you’d live to regret it. The devil doesn’t keep promises. He takes what he wants and discards you when he’s done. Stupid whore. Why are you so surprised he’s moved on?

  Moved on to be with a man.

  Abomination!

  No – she shut down the voices in her head, refusing to let the sisterhood of St Agatha’s in again. They’d screwed with her mind throughout her teenage years; she didn’t need their poison feeding her pain now.

  Xane was no demon, only a man: a man who loved other men.

  Denna Rädsla stopped playing to perform some sort of switch-over. Dani clapped, but briefly and out of politeness. Around her the crowd kept dancing to the tracks laid on by the in-house DJ. But then the music faded out, and she became aware that astonished whispers were sweeping through the audience about what was happening on stage.

  A bright spotlight lit a single tall, black-clad figure.

  ‘This is a song for someone who means the world to me –’

  She recognised his voice before the whisperers echoed his name from one wall of the club to the other. ‘Xane … Xane … Oh, my God, Xane Geist is here …’

  ‘– for a person I hurt beyond measure, and to whom I owe the hugest apology.’

  Xane was here. In the flesh. In Halmstad. Entrancing the audience of a tiny student club. Speaking to her, while a hundred people listened in. Her heart galloped at the sight of him. She couldn’t help it. He looked magical, unearthly, a lone figure, spotlit, with dry ice curling around his feet.

  ‘Dani, I’m a fool. I don’t expect your forgiveness, or for you to even listen to my version of events, but this song is for you. This is me without you in my life. Dani Fosbrook, I love you, and I am so, so sorry. Please give me a second chance.’

  Her strength deserted her as the opening words of Black Halo’s most famous power ballad, ‘Torn Into’, slipped from his throat and he made love to her with his words, while Denna Rädsla played backing band.

  Dani blinked back tears as she mouthed the words along with him. She knew every line of this track, which was raw and brutal and beautiful and described everything she felt inside.

  At some point during the performance, Ginny moved to join her. Her gaze moved uneasily between Xane and Dani. ‘He came back for you,’ she murmured, as the single light blinked out, leaving Xane and the rest of the room in shadows. The crowd around them went wild. People rushed the stage, which was only a little platform, barely big enough to hold a band and their equipment. With no barriers to hold people back, and no security, he was swamped immediately.

  ‘Dani,’ he yelled above a sea of heads.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ Dani admitted.

  ‘Talk to him.’ Ginny squeezed her fingers. ‘He came back for you.’ She looked around, searching the crowd, but there was no Ash Gore out there, come to find and apologise to her. Wan sorrow drained the light from her eyes, but she urged Dani out of her seat. ‘By all means give him hell, he deserves that, but at least hear him out. I know you want him, Dani, and if you want him badly enough you’ll find a way to forgive him.’

  ‘Forgiving him wasn’t really the issue. It was believing he would do it again, and again.’

  Xane plunged into the sea of bodies and started forcing a path through them.

  She couldn’t do this here, in front of a crowd of people. This required privacy.

  Tears blinding her still, Dani headed into the corridor at the back of the room that led to the toilets and the door onto the yard where August had parked the camper van.

  Xane relinquished his jacket and shirt to his bid to catch up with her. He burst into the yard upon her heels and slammed the door in the face of their pursuers, then dragged a bin of empty bottles in front of it.

  A chill breeze ran through the yard, which was littered with weeds and broken glass and vile, even if you were being poetic. A waxing moon peeped from behind a cloud, and the few brave stars that lit the heavens seemed very far away. Cold crawled along her nerve endings, making her shiver.

  ‘Dani.’

  Her tongue was thick and her mouth so dry she could only croak, ‘Why are you here?’

  He was bared to the waist, the black of his tattoos seeming to soak up the pale moonlight. The base of his throat was ringed by bruises, love bites she’d made only that morning. It seemed aeons ago. He was lathered in sweat, and his long hair fell around his shoulders damp from exertion and the heat off the lights, as it so often did when he came off stage. Looking at him, so magnificent, so perfect, revived the pain.

  ‘I need you. I can’t be apart from you.’

  ‘No,’ she whispered, denying his claim. If he needed her that badly, he wouldn’t have cheated.

  ‘I wanted to come back for you right away. I wanted to explain. At first I didn’t realise you were gone. I thought you were in the van with Ulf.’

  Looking deeper, he didn’t appear quite so perfect. He was grey around the eyes and there was a strong scent of alcohol on his breath.

  ‘You told me last night that your relationship with Luthor was in the past, but he had his hand on your cock this morning.’

  ‘I know what it must have looked like –’

  ‘Like you were cheating.’ She slapped him with the accusation.

  Xane rocked backwards on his heels.

  ‘You weren’t fighting him off.’

  ‘No,’ he admitted. Anxiously, he turned his lip piercing. ‘I wasn’t. I let him take advantage, but I swear we didn’t have sex.’

  ‘I’m not sure that makes a difference, Xane.’

  ‘Dani.’ He stretched his hands towards her. ‘Please. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Don’t.’ She fought off his attempt to hold her. ‘You lied, Xane. You lied. You promised me I’d be the only one and you lied. What else have you kept from me? Have there been other people, other times?’ She drummed her fists against his chest, until he caught her hands.

  ‘Listen to me. It’s you I love. Not Luthor or anyone else. You. Do you hear me, Dani? Do you?’ He drove his mouth against hers, stopping her denial and making them both groan. She kissed him back, equally hard, bruising him, tearing at him. It reminded her of the first kiss they’d ever shared, only with all the restraints removed. Peppermint and fire. Alcohol and sin. She pushed her tongue into his mouth, refusing to let him take charge. He might be a foot taller and older and stronger, but she wasn’t a doormat. She wasn’t his plaything, available when he needed her and easily overlooked when he had a different toy within his sights.

  ‘Did he bring you off?’ she demanded, tugging his hair to make him look at her. His eyes were slate-grey and ringed with lilac. ‘Did you fuck his mouth? Fill his arse with your dick?’

  He shook his head, denying both, but unable to say it aloud as she savaged his mouth. His hands fisted around her dress, dragging it and her up into his arms. Dani hung onto him, legs wrapped around his waist, her heels drumming against his butt as he turned them about and staggered the few paces to the yard wall.

  Dani clawed at him, wanting him to feel the same pain she felt inside. How desperately she wanted him, and how desperately she hated him for what he’d done. He’d become everything she most feared.

  Yet somehow he was here, claiming he was still hers with his words and his actions and clingin
g to her every bit as hard as she was clinging to him.

  ‘Can’t live without you,’ he moaned. ‘Can’t deny he turns me on, but you’re the one who makes me feel whole.’

  She reached for his fly, but he was ahead of her, his zip already down. His erection nudged at her thighs, wetting her skin with precome. He pulled her panties to one side and pushed. The feel of him going deep kicked her heart-rate up another notch and made her dizzy. Even being this close wasn’t enough. She needed more, to be right under his skin, so much a part of him that they were one and the same, separation entirely impossible.

  This wasn’t about finesse. It was about fury and anxiety and possession. Their bodies slapped together. Xane’s hands on her butt, hers on his shoulders, while they gasped and bit one another’s lips.

  ‘Deeper.’

  Hell, yes!

  Tension built inside her like a mailed fist being clasped. It knotted her muscles and made her teeth ache. The rough stone at her back snagged at her dress, pulling it higher, so that the brickwork made cold contact with her arse. It all added to the sense of striving, of desperation.

  ‘Gonna come,’ he gasped, his body working despite a visible effort to pull back and hang onto some control.

  ‘Don’t you dare. Don’t you fucking well dare.’

  It wasn’t right for her. It was all too much and not enough.

  Xane let her sink lower on his hips, altering the angle of their union so that she felt his thrusts through her clit. The pressure inside her increased immediately and drove her over the edge. Suddenly, all the hurt was gone, blown out of her as she came. She clung to him, her fingernails bloody from where she’d torn at his skin, while she shuddered and screamed his name.

  The moment of pure bliss was fleeting. Dani crashed back to earth, her body reddened by his grip and stiff and cold, as he finished inside her.

  ‘Put me down,’ she demanded. She tugged her dress straight, covering up the evidence of her lack of self-respect. How stupid to fall straight back into his arms, and to go bare with him too, when she’d no idea where he’d been. Adrenalin depleted, her legs trembled, barely holding her weight as cruel reality came crashing into focus again.