Apart from Murder City Ravens.
“What happened this weekend?” He leaned back, folded his arms over his paunch.
“Everything?” She sensed the change of power in the room. Jeff was a middle-aged man with a young family. She got the feeling he’d never been hip, trendy or in. Or even cool. He’d shy away from anything intimate that didn’t concern work. On personal hygiene and mental welfare of the people they cared for, nobody could be better, but not this.
“I’ve been corresponding with Zazz for a while now, but as James Asaro, Jimmy’s son. As you know, Jimmy’s a complicated case, not least because his son is traveling the world, so it’s hard to talk to him. James and I started to talk about other things, made friends. He was avoiding talking about his father and I wanted to keep up the dialogue.” She paused. “That was how it started anyway. When we met—” She shrugged.
Jeff shook his head. “The headlines are brutal. Be careful, that’s all I can say. I’m taking you off the case partly for your own protection, but partly for Jimmy’s. Is this affair likely to go on?”
She couldn’t think of that now. And in any case, she thought, brightening up, it helped her other request. “Probably not much longer. He’s going to the States soon, and I can’t—” And he hadn’t asked her. A pang filled her. Regret, mostly, but also fear for what she’d become after he left. Back to her old life. It had no attraction for her anymore, not without him.
How could she explain a feeling she barely recognized herself? This last weekend was like learning to fly. She’d slipped into the way he lived as if she belonged there, she’d found people who thought the way she did. As if slipping into a place she’d searched for all along. Best time to push her request. “The band’s manager and his assistant are working on limiting the damage. We never thought it would get this public, that people would behave this way. Or I didn’t. He tried to tell me, but I didn’t listen. Or I didn’t properly understand. Something like that. Anyway, with this fuss, I thought I might take a few days off. I have some holiday time due—”
“I think that’s a great idea. That way they can do their damage limitation.”
She didn’t like the way he’d jumped on the idea, but at least it meant she’d get her time off. “I’ll tidy everything today. I have a few notes to do.”
“You do that. Then take two weeks starting tomorrow. Or do you need more?”
If she hadn’t seen the relief in his eyes, she’d have thought he was the best of bosses. “Has the media contacted you?”
He sighed, heartfelt. “Yes, this morning. Or rather, the department. They’re not happy.”
And she’d bet they passed on the message for her to take holiday time. By the time she came back everything would have settled down.
Even the thought of returning to work turned her heart to lead.
*
Laura found herself in her own flat with a beautiful acoustic guitar balanced across her lap. His guitar, the one he’d composed some of his songs on. The songs she loved. The ones she’d poured out her adoration of in her emails to James Asaro. Oh fuck, she felt so stupid, so gauche. And she should never have let him come anywhere near her family. She’d inwardly winced the entire time, waiting for her father to say that she looked peaked, or why didn’t she wear prettier clothes, or work less, to give her time to find a husband and give them grandchildren before it was too late. Luckily they hadn’t, but they would when they saw her without Zazz.
“Breathe.” His voice, so soft, so calm, gave her pause. This wasn’t Zazz, it was James. As long as she held that in her mind, she could keep it together.
She played a few notes. They sounded good, much better than her crappy old instrument. Better than the one she used now, to be honest. A few chords. Getting the music in her heart, settling it there, she played one of her songs. It had a fairly long introduction, so she could recall the words and get into the mood.
By the time she started singing, she’d almost forgotten who she was singing to. This song lasted around four minutes, based on a traditional air about a soldier coming back from the war married to someone else. The song had originally been plaintive and the singer killed herself. Laura had turned it into a song about a woman who realized what a fool she’d been to believe him when he obviously hadn’t wanted her, and she vowed to make a life for herself.
The notes faded into the air, and Laura stared at the guitar, studying its shiny black surface. It was edged with a thin line of mother-of-pearl, the iridescence responding to the soft light of the lamps set on the tables by the sofa. She watched the colors ripple as it moved as she raised her head to meet his perceptive gaze.
He nodded. “I like it.”
Better than she’d hoped. She thought he might shower her with effusive praise and then never mention it again. Keep her happy. “I do it for me.”
He nodded. “Everybody does, at least at first. I get it.”
She’d been wrong. She wasn’t playing to James. This was Zazz the musician, the professional. His eyes held a cool calculation she’d rarely seen when he looked at her. He lounged back in his chair, his leg draped over one wooden arm, his mouth straight. “You definitely have something. You’re not going the same place we are, but you are heading somewhere. Play some more.” He waved, a negligent curl of his long fingers, but it didn’t look sensual.
Laura filled her lungs. Everyone had a few strokes of luck, if they worked hard enough. This might be hers.
This time she sang a plaintive song about a man going to war who didn’t want to. Only she made the he a she. She loved distorting and changing old folk songs for the modern age, something that spoke to people now. Without pause, at the end of the song she segued into one she’d written from scratch. She didn’t want him to think about it. She was playing a song of her own to one of the foremost songwriters around.
One musician to another. She tried to speak to him on that level, but knew better than to try her trickiest pieces, or something that required a fiendish amount of guitar work. She was good but not brilliant. Enough that she could sing and play the guitar at the same time. And, as it happened, operate a looping box if she wanted to, but she’d leave that for another time. If there was another time.
She stumbled on a series of notes and stopped. “Sorry.”
He shrugged. “It happens.” Then he cracked the first smile she’d seen since she started playing. “You’re good. Not brilliant, but I know what you need.”
“What?”
“Public performance. You need to play to other people, make mistakes and recover. I wouldn’t suggest that you plunge into the big time yet. Too many people do that and they crash and burn. You’re not ready.”
She laughed shakily. “Hey, I only do this as a hobby.”
He shook his head. “You should think about branching out. What you sang, those songs could help people.”
She frowned, not understanding what he meant. “I help more in my day job.”
“But do you help yourself?”
She wasn’t getting this. Or she didn’t want to. Familiar feelings rose to swamp her. “Yes, of course. I have a nice flat, and a good life. Even—” She was going to say, “When you’re gone” but she couldn’t. A wave of sorrow rose out of nowhere and she stopped, not wanting to reveal how deep in she’d grown.
When he left, she’d cry for a week, maybe two, then she’d go numb for a while. She’d seen it in others, in people who’d lost a partner. Grief, they called it. She’d call it a broken heart. Perhaps it amounted to the same thing. She’d find out soon enough.
“All nice, all good. How about brilliant? How about totally immersive? How do you feel when you write?”
“Happy, fulfilled, I suppose.” She’d never thought about it properly before. Just something she had to do. “Absorbed. Nothing exists except the song when I’m writing or singing.”
He nodded. “I know exactly what you mean because that’s what happens to me. Will you play for Chick?”
/> “What?” Startled, she stared at him, goggle-eyed.
“He knows the business like I don’t. If there’s a place for you, where you’d fit, all that kind of thing. Or if you’re better keeping it as a hobby.”
It, her music. The thing that had sustained her during the bad times, the boring times—fuck, all the times. If she took this step, her world might come crashing around her ears, the music with it. The music that spoke to her in a language all her own. He was asking her to share it. She’d thought about it once, but then changed her mind.
He sat, leaned forward, legs splayed wide, leaning on his thighs, his hands clasped loosely. “You think I don’t know? I did it once. I listened to my old man play. He could still play, not with his old brilliance, but you can’t unlearn technique and intelligent phrasing. I sat at his feet, asked him questions, listened to his stories. Started writing. My early stuff was nowhere near as good as yours—self-pitying and melancholy, and I wrote clever-clever crap. I had to kill all that before I could find what lay inside. It’s hard, Laura, but you know that, don’t you? You’re partway there. Why did you never tell me you played and sang?”
“I did, just now.”
“In the emails. You didn’t know I was Zazz then. I was one of the crew, not somebody who could help you. So why not?” He watched her, his eyes too perceptive, but he didn’t come closer. Just as well, because she might have backed off.
Vulnerability made her want to wrap her arms around herself and rock, the way she had as a child when distress had taken her out of the blue. She’d conquered her moods, and conquered her ambition, or so she’d thought as she firmly put her songwriting into the realms of the hobbyist. “I felt stupid and I didn’t want you, even when you were James, to think I wanted a favor. It was important to establish a relationship with you for your father’s sake.” She paused. “Then for mine.”
His expression softened, his mouth relaxed.
He carried on. “I was forced into it, the only way I had of making a living after I left home. You might not want to, especially with a job like yours.”
She almost laughed in his face. He had supreme talent. For all his shit about his early stuff not being good, she’d bet that was when he was seven.
But the thought of having a little success, maybe a few minor gigs, support act, made her pause. She could have a taste. “I’ll think about it,” she said.
“Good. Now let me show you what you did wrong just then.”
Oh great. He came to sit next to her, his proximity enticing, as always. But he didn’t kiss her or touch her, not in that way. Instead, he reached for the guitar. “You’re shaping that chord wrong. You’ve gotten into some bad habits. It won’t take you long to change, because it’s minor, but if you do it differently, you can do the change to different shapes a lot easier.”
He gave her the guitar back, settled it on her lap. “You try.”
She tried kissing him, but despite the glow of desire she saw in his eyes, he resisted her. “Later, and that’s a promise. Now try the chord.”
She had no choice. When she’d done it the way he wanted, he rewarded her with a kiss, but not the long, luscious one she craved. She needed something to reassure her, to pacify her after the ordeal at her parents’. Today she’d seen them through Zazz’s eyes. All the problems, all the years had come back in renewed vigor, coloring her mind and driving her frustration levels higher than they’d been in years. For the first time in ages she’d come close to yelling at her father. Not that it did any good, which was why she’d stopped. She only had to endure them once a week, and that kept her nicely simmering until the week after. Oh she loved them, but sometimes she didn’t like them.
Stumbling again, she let Zazz help her this time. When she did it right, he gave her another kiss, and stroked her breast, a gentle touch that she wanted him to continue. The next time, she got it wrong on purpose. Then he laughed and took the guitar away, set it aside and dived, sending her sprawling on her back on the sofa. Lying over her, arms propped on either side of her head, he paused. “So where’s Kelsie?”
“She works at a cocktail bar twice a week.”
“Perfect.” He didn’t ask if Kelsie was seeing Riku later, which kind of confirmed what Laura already thought. So another problem surfaced—telling Kelsie she was going to London with Zazz later in the week. It would remind her of Riku and that Laura was wanted where she was not.
When Zazz pounced, he made a good job of it. This time his kiss held no restraint about it. He pressed his lips to hers like a desperate man, sliding his tongue into her mouth to taste and tease. “Shit, I needed that,” he said when he finally emerged. “Keeping my hands off you this afternoon nearly killed me.” With a gleam in his eyes, he bent to kiss her again. Laura curled her arm around his neck, pushing her fingers into the short, soft strands.
She kissed down her neck, unfastening the top two buttons of her shirt to get at the upper slopes of her breasts. “Beautiful,” he murmured. “Just perfect.” He glanced up at her face, a mischievous expression curling his lips. “Shall we christen the sofa?”
Regretfully she shook her head. “Someone’s done that first. Not me, but this came with the flat. I bet it’s seen action before.”
“Not from us.” He could undress her almost faster than she could do it herself. Her Sunday visit-the-parents clothes were soon in a pile on the floor, shortly joined by his.
Naked, they sprawled half-on, half-off the sofa, as Zazz traveled down her body, leaving no skin unkissed, no part of her uncaressed. She shivered under his attentions, every nerve in her body sensitized, every part of her poised, anticipating his entry into her wet pussy. She’d begun to open and relax for him while he’d sat next to her, making her practice, and by the time he got her knickers off, she was completely ready. But he seemed determined to reacquaint himself with all of her. He must have snagged a condom from his jeans—had he taken some to her parents? Of course he had, but the thought of a quickie in their pristine bathroom made her giggle.
“What?” He glanced down at his now-sheathed cock, frowning. “It does have its funny side, I admit, but I’ve never known it to make someone laugh all on its own.” He took his hard, red cock in hand and gave it a mock shake. “Learning tricks?”
That urged her to laugh more, as did his wince when it didn’t respond to his shake well. “No, it’s not that. It was the thought of fucking in the bathroom at my parents’ house.”
His attention went briefly to his jeans. “Ah, I see. Yes, I should have thought of that. It might have made the afternoon— None of that, now. I need you too much.”
She’d have thought he used rhetoric but she saw the desperation in his eyes and knew it was reflected in her own. This afternoon had made her hungry, starved for affection and human contact.
She reached for him at the same time he dragged her close. They came together in a maelstrom of necessity and desire. And she would only get this with him. “James,” she murmured before his lips met hers and his cock met her pussy, driving into both simultaneously, completing them.
He took her in hard, relentless strokes, urging her higher so her body responded without her even turning her mind that way. When he fucked her, she couldn’t think of anything else. Not that she’d tried, but it would be useless, and why bother when this was so much better than anything she could imagine?
He drove deep and they both groaned at the same time. Relief and satisfaction, although she was far from coming yet. She didn’t want to miss a minute of this. She lay back and let him take her, smooth, deep strokes urging her to a climax that seemed inevitable. She’d never come so much with anyone else before.
When he hit the right spot, she shrieked, only dimly hearing his chuckle and his, “I love a screamer.”
Panting, every part of her body responding to him, she nevertheless managed a response. “I never screamed before you.”
“Even better. You’re my screamer. Remember that. Mine.” He was gasping now an
d his body gleamed with sweat. He lifted his upper body away from hers, the better to reach her inside, his cock grazing her cervix with every stroke. He had her completely, could do whatever he wanted, and today he wanted to drill her hard, power her into coming helplessly around him.
She dissolved, but he didn’t stop, instead driving her into another shrieking climax before he finally erupted inside her.
“What’s so funny?”
She hadn’t even realized she was laughing but she opened her eyes and smiled at him. “Just this, us. I’d never have imagined this before I came to the concert. All this…”
“Me,” he said smugly.
“You. C’mon, I’ll show you where the shower is.” No sense getting too maudlin, he might realize how much he was coming to know her.
The more she got to know James, the more she could separate him from the sullen, introspective Zazz. Oh she didn’t doubt they were one and the same but Zazz was only part of the fuller, richer person that was James.
After showering, they went straight to bed, nakedness beginning to come as naturally to her as it did to Zazz. As did talking. He liked to talk. Probably good, considering the days of pregnant silences she’d endured as a child. Her parents rarely raised their voices, as she told him now. “They used to sulk me into doing what they wanted me to do.”
“Guilt-tripping.” He took a lock of her hair and twirled it. “People do that in different ways. That was one reason I left home. Dad was getting off on guilt-tripping me, getting me to stop him taking lethal doses of the drug of the month. If I did something he didn’t like, he’d get stoned. He was quite capable of ODing to have me rescue him. And I did. We were bad for each other at that stage. We both needed the break.” He refused to let her comment but went straight on with her problem. “Your parents do it differently, but it’s still guilt-tripping.”
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