Wild Thing

by Blair Babylon

  With her hips pushed back away from the wall, Xan slid his hand down around her waist and farther down, reaching deep into her and stroking the cotton of her panties. His fingertips grazed her clit, already swollen and sensitive, and he rubbed deep inside her folds.

  Georgie dropped her head back on his shoulder, groaning and gasping as he touched her.

  “You’re so hot,” he said. “Make that sound again.” His strong fingers shoved aside her underwear and pushed deeper into her delicate skin, his violin calluses rough inside her.

  Georgie spread her palms against the wall, digging her fingernails against the plaster.

  “Go ahead,” he hissed in her ear. “Tell me to stop.”

  “Don’t stop,” she gasped.

  He pulled his hand away and spun her halfway around. Her back slammed against the wall, and he dropped to his knees in front of her.

  “What?” She almost fell to her knees to kiss him, but he shoved her back against the wall with his forearm, dragged her thigh over his shoulder, and shoved her panties aside with his chin.

  His lips pressed inside her folds, and he worked his tongue deeper in her, licking and rubbing her slick skin with his rough, muscular tongue.

  People talked about Xan Valentine having an amazing throat, but his tongue was even better.

  Georgie arched her back, pushing her hips forward to open herself to him, and he licked harder, scrubbing across her clit. Every swipe rolled shockwaves through her.

  Through the haze of lust, Georgie grated her nails against the plaster behind her, but her balance was off and she hung onto Xan’s shoulder so she didn’t fall.

  As she wove her fingers into his long hair to hang on, Xan pulled away, and without his mouth holding her up, Georgie slid down the wall, her legs shaking and too weak to stand.

  He caught her with one arm around her waist, yanked his jeans open like he was strumming a chord on his guitar during a performance. Georgie could have sworn to God that he conjured a condom out of thin air but everything was blurry except his dark eyes, staring at her so intently, so hungrily.

  He pressed his cock to the bare skin of her stomach, sliding his hardness between their bodies. He didn’t look away when his voice rasped, deep in his throat, “I want you.”

  Georgie fought to breathe because his cock rubbed against her stomach, soft, dusky peach skin and quivering, hard flesh, leaking a bead of clear juice. She said, “Then take me.”

  Xan drove her back against the wall, kissing her again with her own tangy taste in his mouth, and he rolled it on and pushed his cock down between her legs.

  The bulbed head and hard ridge ground against her clit, slipping more with her slickness with every thrust between her folds.

  Xan turned his hips, angling up, and he thrust up and inside her.

  Georgie arched hard, pushing herself toward him and trying to take more of him. She was so close, almost there, as her muscles wrung her body trying to get closer to him.

  Xan grabbed her under her ass again, wrapped her legs around his waist, and lunged up inside her. Georgie slid down over his shaft, gasping as he buried himself hard and deep in her. He pushed up, his boots braced on the carpet, as he held her in his arms and stroked long, deep strokes into her body.

  Wildness built in Georgie, in her stomach and deep inside where Xan surged into her, clenching as he pumped against her, every deep thrust driving her closer. His body writhed against her, his hard muscles crushing her in his arms and against the wall. She was gasping, crying out, screaming for him to crash into her harder, and he did. He drove his body into her, pinning her against the wall, hips bucking, rubbing deeper inside her with each thrust. Georgie closed her eyes to feel the steel of his flesh and his cock in her, and the orgasm whipped around her. The fire drove up her spine, filling her head and whirling away all the fear, all the loss, everything expect the feel of Xan in her arms and inside her body.

  He lunged against her, grunting, and then he threw his head back and shouted a hoarse cry as he came, straining into her.

  The energy and fire dissipated, leaving Georgie limp, and Xan sank to his knees, still holding her against the wall and on him.

  “Oh, God,” she panted, holding around his neck, resting her forehead on his shoulder.

  Xan adjusted his arms around her, wrapping his arms around her back and holding the back of her head.

  He whispered, “You were magnificent tonight.”

  TAGGED

  Georgie

  The next morning, the wan morning sun shone in the windows of the penthouse while Georgie played her piano, listening to the music through bouffant headphones. The piano keys gave way just right under her fingers, with weight like a real piano, not springy like Rade’s plastic wah-wah keyboard. Her phone was lying on the piano’s speaker, the screen occasionally glowing because it heard the music and thought she was talking to it. Dozens of phone messages still lurked there, but she steadfastly ignored them.

  She was pounding away on “I Would Slay Dragons For You,” a power ballad where perfect boyfriend Xan Valentine belted out his love to his millions of girlfriends through their earbuds and car stereos.

  Not that such a thing bothered her. Georgie would join the ranks of the millions of virtual girlfriends soon enough. It was kind of nice to know that she would be able to hear Xan’s voice any time she wanted to.

  The syncopated bridge section was tricky. Parts of it were far too good for popular music. She had survived playing it last night when the music under her fingers had vibrated with the thrill of Xan’s voice and the audience.

  She backed up a few bars and took another run at it.

  Last night, after they had showered and he had again bathed her body, Xan had smoothed and blurred away. Alex had played this song on the guitar for her, lying on his back on the bed with his guitar across his stomach and laughing as she tried to sing it. She had never studied voice, and she had hacked and shrieked her way through it from the sheet music, laughing, too.

  The phone screen lit up, and Georgie swiped at the screen in time to the music, pushing her headphones down to her neck. “Hello!”

  “Hello, Georgiana Oelrichs,” a woman’s voice said.

  Georgie didn’t even need to recognize the Russian accent, the rolling Rs and flat, short Os. She knew Tatiana Butorin’s voice.

  Hanging up would piss Tatiana off more, and she would just call back and then be more incensed if Georgie didn’t take the call.

  Georgie swallowed sour bile. “Hello, Ms. Butorin.”

  “You have been naughty girl,” Tatiana Butorin said.

  Georgie reached over with one finger and clicked off the piano. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You did not stay at college.”

  Lying to the head of a Russian mafia bratva was stupid. “No.”

  “You know, Georgiana, social media sites are miracle these days.”

  “I beg your pardon.” Frost misted Georgie’s back.

  “We had one picture of you from wedding in Paris, so we make you a profile. The social media sites want your whole life tied up with them, so they search for more pictures of you, of your face, using the computers. I don’t know how it works, I just know that computer tag you in several hundred pictures last night in Pennsylvania, playing with Alexandre Grimaldi’s band. You didn’t tell me that you are traveling with Alexandre Grimaldi.”

  The hotel swayed under her feet, like the room far up on the floors might crumble below her into a gaping hole reaching all the way to the cold earth below. She said, “Um, yeah.”

  “It’s convenient that you are much nearer to your mother in Connecticut, isn’t it? After we meet, we can just drive to see her and not have to worry about plane.” Tatiana Butorin said.

  “You’ve thought of everything, Ms. Butorin.”

  “One has to, as a woman in this business.” Her prim tone scared Georgie more. “You stay with him, so we know where to find you, yeah?”

  “All right.
” Georgie leaned back in the dining room chair and closed her eyes.

  “You need to contact your mother again, tell her to expect a visit from all of us soon if she doesn’t arrange payment.”

  “She didn’t listen to me last time. She hung up on me. I don’t have any reason to think it would be different this time.”

  “You should try again.”

  Georgie chewed on her lower lip. “Okay.”

  “You promise me that you will try again.”

  “I promise.” She bit her lip harder. Metallic blood oozed onto her tongue.

  “Good. We have understanding, then. It also convenient that Alexandre’s band website tells where you will be every day. I see you will be in New York soon. That is good. I see you there.”

  Madison Square Garden was in New York City. “Yes, Ms. Butorin.”

  “Stay safe, Georgiana.”

  “Yes, Ms. Butorin.”

  A click echoed through the line like a gun being cocked.

  Georgia set the silent phone down on the piano speaker.

  A headache formed a ring around her temples and squeezed. Sweat trickled between her shoulder blades. The back of her mouth tasted like acid coffee vomit.

  She didn’t really have many options. She could stay in the circle of Alex’s security, where she might be safe for a while, or she could bolt, and she might be able to lose the Butorins.

  For a while.

  The only no-risk option was the one she hated the most, but she had to try.

  Georgie dialed a number into her phone and suffered through the rings.

  When the voicemail told her to leave a message, she said, “Mother? It’s me, Georgiana, again.”

  She sighed, and her own voice droned, a pathetic monotone. “I talked to Tatiana Butorin again. She said that they’re going to take me next week if you don’t start paying them. She said that they’ll bring me to see you, which I assume means that they will be in a car outside the gates with a gun to my head, and if you don’t let them in, they’ll kill me on the street outside the house. Luckily, the Cohens’ house is a half-mile away so they won’t see or hear that nonsense, huh?”

  Her lungs were fluttering, and she hiccuped.

  Georgie spread her fingers over the piano keyboard, watching them shiver over the black and white keys. “I don’t even know why I called. You won’t listen to this message. And I don’t know why I’m still talking because if you accidentally did start listening to this, you probably hit delete as soon as I said my name. This is useless. This is a waste of breath.”

  Her breath. Her breath that restlessly whooshed through her lungs.

  Georgie pressed piano keys, a diminished sixth, which would have been a sad, lonely chord except that the piano was off. The speakers were silent, though the keys thunked on the bottom of the piano.

  If no one heard it, it wasn’t music.

  “Anyway, if they catch me, they’ll probably kill me in front of the house next week. The security guys won’t let you see the video footage, so you probably won’t ever see me as I am now. I grew a little after I ran away from home. Not much. Maybe almost an inch. I’m five-eight now. My hair is still long. And I’ve kept up with the piano, mostly in the mornings before class. I played a set with a band called Killer Valentine last night. It’s ensemble, and it’s popular music, but maybe you can hear me playing if you look for it on the internet. It’s nothing special, not like Chopin or Rachmaninoff, or any kind of solo, but you could hear me play.”

  She trailed her fingers down the silent keys.

  “Goodbye, Mother.”

  Georgie tapped the phone screen, and it went dead.

  Alex’s security guys needed to know that people were gunning for her, not for him, so they could plan.

  She was endangering Alex, and Jonas, and Tryp, and all the people here.

  She should slip away, soon.

  THE BUTORINS AND MONEY

  Georgie

  Xan’s days were scheduled to the minute with no tolerance for heart-to-heart talks or admissions of fear.

  Georgie watched the muttering crowds around herself as the security guys, Adrien and Paul, hustled them through crystal-strewn lobbies and into cars, but the blue-eyed Slavic man didn’t step out and try to grab her.

  She didn’t expect the Butorins to move on her quite yet. The tour wouldn’t be in New York for a while.

  At night, the appearances at the music-blasted clubs ran late, and most of the time Georgie and Alex crawled into bed, stinking of smoke, shoving their shoes off their feet in the dark, and falling asleep before hearing the thumps on the floor.

  Mornings were practice for Georgie and appearances for Xan, then meetings, stolen moments to work on songs, then speeding to the sound check and performances.

  Rade and Grayson had either been chastised by their failure to perform or else their new, paramilitary minders did their jobs because The Terror Twins arrived for every show sober and stayed sober until the end. They played their parts flawlessly during the concert, and afterward, their minders called Yvonne to report on their shenanigans while Georgie and Xan were being chauffeured to more appearances.

  Georgie was waiting offstage at a small arena in upstate New York, the crowd clamoring in the dark for the show to begin, when Rade flung his arms around her for a second and whispered, “I’m going to snort coke off a stripper’s ass tonight.”

  His minders must be more lenient after the show. “Won’t you lose half of it in her butt crack?”

  “I’m very good at it. I don’t waste a flake.”

  She turned and looked him straight in his brilliantly blue eyes. “Why do you do this stuff?”

  He bowed his head near hers, whispering, “Because no one asks if you’re a Godforsaken faggot when you’re snorting cocaine off a stripper’s ass.”

  “No one would say such a thing!” She paused. “Would they?”

  He shrugged. “No one here,” he whispered. “Probably. But they won’t even think it, either.”

  He turned to go, but she grabbed his arm. “You know that you’re wasting your time with Grayson, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do. He’s not gay.”

  “Of course he’s not gay.”

  “And you’re wasting your time with him.”

  He sighed. “The time is not wasted.”

  “Has he ever said anything to make you think that he is?”

  “Of course not.”

  She dropped her head close to his, and the purple tips tickled her shoulder. “Why don’t you spend your time with someone who will love you back?”

  “I could ask you the same thing.” Rade yanked his arm out of her hand.

  The stage lights blazed, and Rade jogged onto the stage to his place in the keyboard cockpit, leaving Georgie biting her lip and shaking.

  Practice in the morning.

  Songwriting in the afternoons.

  Concerts at night.

  Clubs past midnight until dawn.

  Music saturated Georgie’s life.

  She found herself hungering for the stage, for the audience, to stand up there with Xan and drown in it again, but she stayed in the wings of the stages, mesmerized by the swirling lights and vibrant music.

  She was safe there in the dark wings.

  The tour rolled on, closer every day to the crowning glory, the concert at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

  Closer every day.

  Somewhere in New Jersey, Georgie collapsed on the bed without stripping off her sweaty dress again, and Alex rolled onto the other side of the bed.

  “Are you asleep?” she asked the dark air.

  “Not quite,” he mumbled, his voice grating in his throat. “Why?”

  She rolled over and felt in the dark for his chest, finding the buttons on his shirt. Warmth filtered through his clothes to her hand. “You know those guys who were chasing me at The Devilhouse?”

  “Oui.”
>
  “They know where I am.”

  “Did you see one of them?” he asked.

  “No. They called me.”

  “If they called your mobile, it doesn’t mean that they know where you are. It just means that they know your cell phone number.”

  “They know I’m with you.”

  “How the hell do they know that?”

  “It doesn’t matter. They know.”

  “I’ll put all the security on you.”

  “I just need to disappear. This might be my last chance to dodge them. The lawyers said that the paperwork is done. I’ve got a new name, Liliana Bordeaux.”

  “Not Georgiana this time?” His sad tone filled the darkness.

  “Too risky, they said. I’ll learn to answer to it.”

  Warmth seeped through the sides of Georgie’s dress, Alex’s hands on her sides. “Is tonight our last night?”

  “Tomorrow’s show is in Newark. I’ll leave the next morning.”

  “So you can’t stay to see us at Madison Square Garden.”

  “She said that they were going to meet me in New York, which means they’re going to kidnap me there.”

  “She? Who is she?” Alex asked.

  Georgie admitted, “My dad swindled a lot of people out of a lot of money.”

  “I know.”

  “You do?” She had been so careful not to slip around him. Shame flamed her face.

  “There are measures in place to look into anyone who attaches themselves to me. There have to be. When one has access to certain resources, everyone wants something from you.”

  His British accent had risen, becoming very arch, becoming the refined way that he had spoken when they met in Paris.

  So he was Alex de Valentinois now.

  She said, “So you know it all.”

  “I know what is publicly available.”

  “I don’t want anything from you,” she said.

  “I know. I told them so.”

  “That’s a terrible way to live.”

  His body shrugged under her hand. “You probably didn’t notice it when you were a child, but you would have been subject to it when you got older, had circumstances not changed.”