Stryker's Desire (Dragons Of Sin City Book 1)

by Meg Ripley

  “I thought you said that Mark or whoever gave you shit about it? Wasn’t there a betting pool?”

  “Not like that,” I told her, shaking my head. “Like…no one is talking about the fact that the tabloids have practically guaranteed that you and I are going to make an album together in the next two years.”

  “They have?” Fran’s eyes widened and she stared at me in shock. “What the fuck? You’ve been reading the tabloid shit about us?”

  “Of course I have,” I said. “You haven’t?”

  “I’ve been fucking ignoring it because it’s bullshit,” Fran told me. She shook her head. “So, because some magazine or something says we’re going to put an album out together, you’re afraid the rest of the guys are going to think it’s true?”

  “I told you,” I said, picking up my beer again and taking another long pull from it. “I fucking told you, shit is weird in the band right now. I don’t want them to think that I’m going to jump ship or something.”

  “And working on one of my songs isn’t going to make them think that?” I shook my head.

  “Working on my own stuff with you—instead of on my own, or with them—or doing it professionally, that’s the shit that’s going to make people uneasy,” I said. “Working with you on something just looks like I’m doing my new girlfriend a favor.” Fran’s eyes widened again.

  “When did I become your girlfriend?” she crossed her arms over her chest, barely managing to avoid burning herself with the lit cigarette in her hand.

  “If you don’t want to be then just say so,” I told her. “I thought that’s what you were getting at all along—but if I was wrong, fucking tell me so.”

  “Right now, I don’t know what I want,” Fran said, shaking her head. “Especially since I’m apparently not good enough to help you work on a track and record it with a half way decent sound system.” I groaned.

  “You’re not—it’s not about not being good enough, it’s about being too good,” I said. “It’s about it looking like I’m taking it too seriously. If you were shit, then having you help me work on it wouldn’t make a bit of fucking difference.”

  “We need to be done for the day,” Fran said, shaking her head. She picked up her beer, drank down about half of it, and set it down once more. “I don’t know where the hell your head is at, but you need to get that shit straight or we’re never going to get through this goddamn EP, much less anything else.” She took another long drag of her cigarette and stubbed it out. “Tell Les that I’m gone for the night.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Alex came into the live room and threw himself down onto the couch. “All right, Jules: talk.”

  “About what?” I looked up from my phone and flicked the half-inch of ash off the end of my cigarette.

  “You know what the fuck I mean,” Alex said. “Talk about it.” I rolled my eyes.

  “The thing with Fran?” Alex nodded, fumbling with his pack of smokes before shaking one lose to light up.

  “It’s a thing,” I said with a shrug. “Maybe was a thing.”

  “Was?” Alex leaned forward and pulled the ashtray closer to him. “Fuck, man. Did you screw that shit up already?”

  “It’s my business,” I told Alex.

  “Fuck that noise,” Alex said, shaking his head. “You fucked her while we were on tour. You brought the band into it when you stuck your dick into the supporting act.”

  “Get the fuck out of here with that shit,” I said. “We had sex a bunch of times, we talked about shit. It’s what the fuck happens on tour. Nick fucked a journalist and you didn’t give him shit over it.”

  “He started up with her before the tour,” Alex pointed out. “It’s not like he screwed anything up in the process.”

  “I didn’t screw anything up! Besides, it’s fucking personal, man.” I stubbed out my cigarette and lit another one. My lungs were going to be wrecked at the rate I was going, but I didn’t care.

  “We’re a week into recording and you and Fran haven’t been in the same room alone in all that time,” Alex said. “You don’t even look at each other when you’re in the same room.”

  “We worked on one of her songs the first night,” I admitted. “She wanted to work on something I’d written, and I told her I didn’t want to make the rest of the guys think that I’m trying to go my own way.”

  “Fuck. Jules—you’ve been writing your own shit for years.” I rolled my eyes.

  “Not that you’d notice,” I muttered.

  “I noticed,” Alex told me sharply. “If you want to work on it with Fran, why the fuck should I care about that? Or Nick, or Dan, or Mark?”

  “You guys have certainly made it the fuck clear that you’ve got issues with me doing anything at all with Fran,” I told Alex. “So forgive me if I thought you’d get pissed if I did more than just fuck her and play the occasional game of fucking Scrabble.”

  “You’re being such a fucking baby, Jules,” Alex said, shaking his head. “What the hell do you even want with her? Do you know?” I closed my eyes and took a long drag from the cigarette in my fingers.

  “Fuck, man.” I shook my head, opening my eyes to look up at the ceiling of the live room. We were almost certainly not supposed to be smoking in there, but nobody gave enough of a fuck to enforce the rule; they’d just clean it after we left anyway. “I just want shit to stop being so complicated. If you’ve got an issue with me doing something with Fran, then fucking tell me. If Fran wants to be my girlfriend or just a steady lay, she should fucking tell me, too.”

  “You want her to be your girlfriend, don’t you?” I opened my eyes and looked at Alex. He was staring at me steadily, his lips twitching just a little bit with the start of a smile. “You always fuck shit up in your relationships. It’s no fucking wonder you ended up banging Fran; I think you actually want your relationships to crash and burn.”

  “Man, ever since you started dating Mary, you psychoanalyze fucking everything,” I told Alex, shaking my head again. “It’s not even important.”

  “She didn’t land a decent take all day today,” Alex told me matter-of-factly. “I want to get this EP done so we can move onto real shit. If she can’t pull out a performance, then we’re going to be here for another week. Which means it’s going to be another week before we can get to work on our own fucking album. It’s sure as shit important to me that we get this done.”

  “Fine,” I said, scratching at my face with my free hand. “What do you want me to do? Apologize?”

  “Apologize, or take her into the lounge and fuck her brains out and make it all okay, or do—something. Jesus, Jules.” Alex sighed. “Just fucking fix the situation, okay? Get your shit together and fix it.” He stubbed his cigarette out and looked at me for a long minute. “We’re on a break. Talk to her, do something to fix it. Everyone’s coming back around two.” He stood. “Fran’s in the lounge.” He turned and left and I watched him go.

  Shit. I closed my eyes and finished off my cigarette, barely caring if I stubbed the butt out on the ashtray or the arm of the chair I was sitting in. I knew Alex was right, but I didn’t want to do anything about it. I’d fucked things up with Fran—and it wasn’t just the situation with recording my stuff. It was about everything we’d been talking around but not about.

  I pulled my phone out again and found the files for some of the songs I’d recorded. If the band was on a break until two, that’d be enough time to at least lay down some basic stuff on a track. I stood up and left the live room for the control room, hoping that Les was still hanging out. He was. “Yo. Feel like laying a couple of parts down in a few?”

  “On one of your things? Sure.” Les nodded. “Shoot me the track and I’ll pull it up on the system.”

  “I’ll be right back.” I left the control room and headed down the hall to the lounge. I could only hope that Fran was still there, that she would hear me out. I shook my head, thinking to myself that I’d been an idiot more than once before—but I was definit
ely being an even bigger idiot now.

  “What do you want?” Fran had spotted me from the corner of the lounge where she sat as soon as I came in.

  “We’re up to record something,” I told her. Fran rolled her eyes; as usual—off stage, at least—she was in normal clothes, but her hair was brighter than usual.

  “Alex just came through to tell me you guys were on a break,” she said skeptically. “What are we up to record?”

  “One of my tracks,” I told her, smirking.

  “Seriously? You think that’s going to fix shit between us?” I took a deep breath and sighed.

  “I thought it would help,” I admitted. I came into the lounge further and sat down a few feet away from Fran. “I thought it might help more if I told you I’m an ass and should have made it clear that I actually want to date you.” Fran’s eyes widened and she stared at me for a long moment.

  “You’re serious about that?” I nodded.

  “I fuck things up in relationships,” I told her. “I guess I figured the longer we weren’t in an actual relationship, the longer it would be before I fucked it up—and as a result I fucked it up anyway.” I laughed. “I’m an advanced student of fucking up.”

  “I do the same thing,” Fran said, smiling wryly. “Okay so what are we going to do about this? And about the tabloids and all that other shit?” I shrugged.

  “We’re going to ride it out, as far as I’m concerned. People will get bored of it soon enough, right?”

  “What are you going to do when Molly Riot and Juniper Woolf are recording separate albums?”

  “Record an album with my band, and see you in my off hours, if you’ll let me,” I replied, smiling a bit again. “This doesn’t have to be complicated.”

  “It already is,” Fran told me. “You’ve made it complicated and so have I and so has the fucking industry—everyone’s goddamn guilty of it.” She sighed. “So, what are we going to do?” I pressed my lips together.

  “Right now, if you’re willing to do it,” I said slowly, “we’re going to work on a song together. If that goes well, we’ll work on more.” I held my hands up, to try and keep Fran from saying anything else for a minute. “Alex…” I shrugged. “He doesn’t care if I work on my own material. Maybe the label will want to release it; maybe they won’t. But we can work on it, and see where that goes.”

  “And we’re going to work on your stuff as well as my stuff?” Fran raised an eyebrow.

  “Until we run out of each other’s stuff to work on and start working on stuff together,” I suggested. Fran smiled slowly.

  “Are you going to leave Palmela for me?” I snorted, rolling my eyes.

  “Sorry, babe, but Palmela is with me always. I won’t ask you to leave Angelo in the dust, if it makes you feel any better. Besides, we both have tours in the future.”

  “We’re really going to do this, then?” I thought about it for a second and then nodded.

  “I sure as hell at least want to try. Now come on and get into the fucking studio with me.”

  “I’ve been doing shit takes all day,” Fran said, standing. “Don’t be shocked if I suck on this one, too.”

  “I will be shocked,” I told her playfully. “Just play along with the fucking song and we’ll record it and work it out, okay?” I stopped her, putting my hands on her shoulders. “And if you want something from me—to talk, or to like, be committed or something—just fucking tell me. Don’t keep putting it off.”

  “Take your own advice, asshole,” Fran said, before leaning up onto the balls of her feet to kiss me on the lips for just a second. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “You’re up, kid,” Les told me. It was after hours again; it was actually almost nine at night, after everyone had gone to wherever they were going to camp out to celebrate finishing up the EP. I’d somehow managed to talk Les into staying late for the rest of the recording sessions, so Fran and I could work out the material we wanted to do together.

  I’d also talked to Ron about the possibility of releasing it. “I don’t want it to be some bullshit thing of me going solo—that’s not what this is about,” I’d told him. “But it could be marketable, especially after the EP.” He’d said he’d look into it with the label once Fran and I had something to show for our after-hours sessions.

  I’ve never thought of myself as much of a vocalist; Alex had joined the band so early on when we’d formed that there hadn’t been a point in even trying, apart from the occasional backing track for a song here and there. But Fran and I had been working on material together, and she’d insisted that for the song we’d started out with, she absolutely wanted me to contribute more than guitar. She wanted me to sing it with her.

  I stood up and went into the vocal booth, right next to the control room. Fran had been working on vocals to one of my songs—a ballad, unlike anything I’d done with Molly Riot before—so she was still in place, headphones on, right in front of the mic. I took another quick breath and grabbed the extra set of headphones in the booth, putting them over my ears. “Let me see the lyric sheet again,” I told Fran. I still wasn’t sure what she had in mind was a good idea; but I was willing to go along with it. Fran had spent the day working on vocal tracks; she and Alex had done the last of them a couple of hours before, including a schlocky, gimmicky duet that we had decided on for the EP: it had involved all the members of both Juniper Woolf and Molly Riot, and it actually—at least in the rough—sounded good, in spite of the fact that we’d all been hamming it up.

  I read over the lyrics again one last time, focusing on the parts that Fran had highlighted for me. “You’re sure you want to do this?” Fran had laid down a backing vocal a few days before, a guiding track that she was going to sing around while I did my parts. I thought it sounded perfectly fine that way—but she had her own vision of the song. I have to respect that, I guess, I thought wryly. If I expected her to pay attention to what I wanted for the songs I’d written, I could only go along with her on her stuff.

  “Put up the playback, Les,” Fran said into the microphone. I grinned as she lit a cigarette quickly. She’d cut back during the week, to try and keep her voice as sharp and clear as possible, but we were just about done with all of the recording we were going to do for a while. I heard the count-in and then the melodic guitar-and-piano opening of the song, and finally the guiding vocal that Fran had laid down. She blew a plume of smoke away from the microphone and began to do her part around the original, adding a few flourishes here and there.

  I came in on my first cue, in spite of the fact that I was pretty sure I was going to sound like a fucking toad. I plowed through it anyway, glancing at the lyric sheet every so often and then looking at Fran. She seemed pleased—but I thought mostly it was due to the fact of having actually made me do the vocal, rather than my performance itself. We switched off, me singing my part and her singing her bits, and by the time we came to the end of the track, I was actually starting to feel comfortable with the idea of singing.

  “Running it again,” Les said through the headphones, and before I could do more than get my own cigarette lit and take a breath, I heard the intro to the song again. Once again, Fran took up her part and I did mine, a little more confidently the second time; at least I didn’t have to look at the lyrics sheet as many times.

  We came to the end of the track and I stood there for a moment just staring at Fran, wondering what she thought. “It’s a fucking hit,” she said, half into the microphone and half to me. “Les, can you play it back for us?”

  “Come in here and listen to it on the system,” Les suggested. I shrugged and took the headphones off; I still didn’t quite believe it was any good, but I wasn’t going to rain on Fran’s parade. She grabbed at my hand as we left the vocal booth, and I grinned at her.

  “You’re really into this idea, aren’t you?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be? It was my idea in the first place,” Fran told me tartly. “You’re not allowed to say you d
on’t want your vocals on the track until twenty-four hours from now, by the way. I want you to sleep on it.”

  “You’re going to wait until it’s been twenty-two hours and then you’re going to have sex with me and make me think it’s awesome, aren’t you?” Fran snorted.

  “I’m an open book to you, apparently.”

  We went into the control room and sat down while Les finished calling up the track we’d just worked on. Even if it’s shit, don’t react until you see what she thinks. I knew that Fran’s part would be fine—but I was seriously doubtful at my own ability to hold up against her.

  I heard the count in and sat back in my chair, determined to listen as objectively as possible. As the intro came up, I felt my muscles tensing, waiting for the sound of my own voice. But when I came in on cue, it actually fit the song. I stared at Fran in shock. We actually sounded good together—her soprano and my baritone worked. I shook my head as the song went on, not able to completely believe it, but not able to discredit it either.

  “I told you,” she said, sticking her tongue out and reaching over me to grab a half-finished beer that she’d left behind to work on another vocal, “it’s a fucking hit.”

  “I can send this off to Alex, to Ron, and to the label,” Les suggested. I shrugged.

  “Let’s hold off on that, I think,” I said, glancing at Fran. “The EP has the priority right now.”

  “It could go on the EP as a bonus,” Fran suggested.

  “Let’s give it a day,” I insisted. But in spite of how cautious I was being—and the fact that I still doubted that the rest of the band would take me working with Fran the way that Alex had—I had to admit that I was actually excited about how good we sounded together. Ideas started to form in my head, and I pushed them aside. “Come on,” I told Fran, reaching for her hand. “We’re done for the night—right Les?”

  “If you say so,” he said with a shrug. “Who am I to argue?”