Or maybe it was just her.
As “The Becoming” hit its peak, she came out to the spotlight with Simon as she’d done the night before. The first time she’d been in a trance. Simply existing in his sphere and following his cues.
Tonight she played up the push and pull game they’d played the first time. This time she slid behind him until they were shoulder-to-shoulder, her hips following his as the song got darker and sexier.
Deacon’s bass was her central line into the song. He was the constant, Simon was the wild card. The song ramped up, Nick’s guitars came to the forefront and then Gray’s blew them both out of the water.
She tried to melt back into the darkness. This song was going out into the internet ether with their rabid fans soaking up each chord. But Simon didn’t allow that.
He dragged her in front of him, and his hips never stopped the slow seduction against her. His arm banded across her midriff and they moved as one. The crowd below lost their collective minds.
Maybe she had as well.
She had no choice but to stay in the moment. Was entirely sure she couldn’t do anything else anyway. She felt the stiff length of him bumping against her and tried to resist his voice in her ear.
They created a darkly sensual dance between them, and her violin answered his words as if the conversation was on a different plane.
He swung her out as the song ended and then dragged her in tight until she had no choice but to let her violin dangle against her thigh.
As if in a distant time and place, the crowd screamed in reaction.
He palmed the back of her neck and dipped her. His nose and the barest hint of lips trailed up her neck before he put her back to rights and the heavy bass of “Jet City Woman” filled the room.
She escaped his touch, the madness that had bespelled them, and managed to play her part in the layers of the epic cover song. Simon prowled the stage and pulled the crowd in like a lover.
As easily as he’d dragged her under, he left women mesmerized in his wake. His old-style microphone became an extension of him. His lips caressed the guard, and his moans translated to screams from the crowd.
And as the song ended, he dropped to his knees and mimicked the pain of the narrator. It was his gift. Their songs were catalogued in a different part of performance for Simon. No less powerful, no less entrancing in their own right, but when he sang someone else’s song, he became a chameleon.
When he popped to his feet, the crowd swelled forward and women reached for him and men hollered out their battle cries. Women wanted to fuck him and men wanted to be him.
It was a heady experience to behold.
Simon clipped his microphone into the stand and swiped his hair back. “Good goddamn! This is why we do everything in L.A., man. This crowd. Fuck yeah!”
He put his hand up to his mouth. “Whoops. Sorry, iHeart. I got a little carried away. That six second rule always saves our asses, huh?”
Margo shook her head and tucked her violin under her arm.
“Thanks so much for peeking in on our release party.” He held his arm out to his right. “Nicky boy and Grayson, come take a bow.”
The two of them stepped into the spotlights and waved.
“Demon, get your Gigantor ass out of the shadows. Give my ridiculously tall friend a hand, huh?”
Deacon draped his arm around Simon’s neck.
“Think we should give them one more?” he asked Deacon.
Deacon leaned into the mic. “Not sure they can handle it.”
“What do you guys think?” The crowd blasted him with screams and Simon fake stumbled away from Deacon. “Holy shit. Maybe they can.” He stood on the drum riser. “Jazzercise, what do you think?”
“I think you should sing ‘Monster’.”
Simon looked over his shoulder. “Whadya think?”
The crowd screamed and he pointed at Margo. “Violin Girl, start us off.”
Startled, Margo lifted her bow and started off the song as they’d rehearsed.
Sometime toward the middle of the song, she noticed that the camera crew had lessened. It didn’t seem to matter that the cameras were off Simon. He poured everything into the show just the same.
A heavy sheen of sweat coated her arms by the end of the night. Her back ached from the heels, and her heart still raced in time with the last song.
When the house lights went down, it felt like they’d only just begun even as her body said otherwise.
A single violet-tinged light shot out of the night and the murmuring crowd settled as Simon held his hand up. “Thank you so much for making tonight amazing. We’ll be out to schmooze and booze with you momentarily, but we’ve got one more song tonight.” He slid his hand under the shirt that was molded to him with sweat. “This might give you a clue.”
Then the light went out and she cradled her violin against her chin for the opening chords of “Never Tear Us Apart”.
Simon sang the first verse in the complete dark. His voice morphed into a fair mimic of Michael Hutchence with his own spin.
The lights slowly lifted until they were all awash in a purple glow with a roving disco ball splash as Simon’s fluid performance entranced.
Though a jazzy saxophone had been part of the original version, they’d modified her strings to suit the melody. She came forward and her lights went pink with a heartbeat pulse around her.
The slow song built until there was nothing but guitars and drums pounding out around Simon as he got the crowd to sing with him. The iconic INXS song bled into the raunchy, gritty guitars of Guns n’ Roses.
Simon stripped off his shirt and raced to the edge of the stage, then dropped to his knees. He rolled onto his back and screamed out the lyrics with a raw edge that made Margo wince.
He wouldn’t be able to talk later.
But the crowd lapped it up. They moved as one and sang back at him for every line. Los Angeles anthem that it was, everyone knew the song.
By the time it was over, the party had started.
And same as last night, Simon jumped into the crowd and led the charge to the bar. He slapped the countertop and a line of shot glasses flamed to life.
Gray and Nick played the hell out of the guitar solos, each of them dueling over the riff-heavy song as the crowd went wild.
Simon blew out his shot and tossed back two of them before running back to the stage to finish the song. The fans and radio people, the famous and pseudo-famous all joined in for the last chorus.
Margo got pulled forward with the band as the song closed out. Deacon scooped her up and dropped her next to Simon as they waved and bowed.
Somehow her arm ended up around Simon’s back. He was slick with sweat and vibrating with excitement. He looked down at her, but the smile she was expecting was missing.
His eyes burned with a flame similar to the shot glasses making the rounds at the bar. She shivered and pulled away as the band dispersed.
Jazz jumped and hugged everyone, including her. There was nothing but the high of the show, the crowd, and a night of success.
Why did she want to escape?
True, it wasn’t her success, but she’d enjoyed the way that the band had allowed her into the inner circle. The interaction of the fans was a high she couldn’t deny.
She should allow herself to be pulled in, but she only wanted escape. Her heart rate was hummingbird-fast as she climbed the hidden stairs to the quiet corner she’d found after rehearsal.
The stairs to the catwalk over the bar. Now that the show was over, the lights had been brought down and shadows and strobe lights bounced around the room in a heady pulse that echoed the excitement of the night.
People were talking over one another and Oblivion songs were piped in with a current radio hit in between each song. She curled her fingers around the textured paint that splattered the iron bars and rivets.
No one knew she was up there. She wasn’t altogether sure that anyone cared. Her purpose had been fulfilled fo
r this part of their promotional tour.
She wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
She’d gotten exactly what she wanted. The exposure had garnered interest and her email was peppered with new offers that her agent was getting for her and studio work. Her untimely dismissal from the Boston Philharmonic might be just what she needed for a different career.
She had Oblivion to thank for that. “The Becoming” had ruined her for the staid and true songs that had molded her childhood, but in the end, that song had given her so much more.
“Hiding?”
Margo shivered at his voice. “Watching.”
“Is that what you like to do?”
She closed her eyes against the throb of reaction that flared to life again. Escape had been too much to ask for. Not when Simon was in the picture.
“Sometimes.”
He came up behind her, curling his fingers around the bar on either side of her hands. “Is it the people below that you like or the dancers in the cages?” He tucked his chin over her shoulder and steered her gaze to the far side of the room.
Under the throbbing bass of the song, she noticed two women bookending the second bar with a little extra entertainment. All the lights and the crowd’s focus centered on the two dark-haired women with thigh high boots and leather bikinis who gyrated with the songs.
“A little obvious, don’t you think?”
“We are in L.A.,” he said with a purr.
“The home of excess?”
“That might be Vegas.”
“That’s greed.”
“And the looks on their faces below don’t include greed?”
“I’d say the greed would be the executives under Donovan Lewis. Here, the commodity is lust and excess.”
Simon laughed. “Is that why you’re up here? Too good for those emotions, Violin Girl?”
No.
No, she definitely wasn’t.
She’d been living with the lust part for weeks now. It was inconvenient and messy and she hoped to hell that she could leave it behind with the experience, but she was beginning to wonder.
“I saw the need in your eyes tonight.” He slid one arm around her and tucked her back against his hips. “Felt it in the way we moved together on the stage.”
She let out a shaky breath. “A moment of madness.”
“Is that all we’ll ever be?”
I don’t know.
He moved his hips in time to the syrupy tempo of the song piping out into the crowd. Conversation and milling bodies, laughter and shouts, light and shadow—all of it fed into the insanity that made her move against him.
He hissed out a breath and his arm tightened across her hips until they moved as one. “Is this what you want?” His hand slid lower as he skimmed his fingers along the hem of her skirt.
She let out a shuddering breath.
“Under the cover of shadows, with the crowd right there.” He tucked his fingers into the band of her thigh-high and scraped short nails over the skin until he reached the line of her panties. “Are you wet?”
She nodded.
“Are you wet because of me?”
The moan that tripped out of her chest couldn’t be hers. It wasn’t her. It was her when she was with him.
A new kind of Margo.
He nosed his way along the line of her neck, behind her ear. “Tell me you want this.” He pushed the front of her panties to the side and sneaked under the elastic. His grumbling voice thickened when he pushed the pads of his fingers under the swollen flesh that hid her clit. “I need to hear it, Margo.”
Her knuckles went white with her grip on the iron support bar. “Yes. God, yes.”
He flicked his tongue over the lobe of her ear and drew it into his mouth as he sunk two fingers into her. “All those people under us. All they need to do is look up and they’d see me finger-fucking you.”
She let out a breath and undulated against his hardness from behind and his invading fingers from the front. “Let them.”
His laugh was low and harsh in her ear. “My naughty Violin Girl likes that idea.”
“Harder.”
He drew his other arm around her and gripped her breast through the silk camisole. He tucked his chin onto her shoulder and tugged at the strapless bra she wore until the tip of her nipple peeked over the top.
“Watch,” he said.
“Watch what?”
“The people.”
She tried to turn her attention to the people below, but her gaze kept straying to her breast. He plucked at the distended flesh, gently at first then twisted tighter as she fed him with moans and groans in approval.
“Not me, watch the crowd below.”
Margo cried out as his other hand opened her lips and strummed a nail over her clit. He didn’t quite stroke her as she needed him to.
No, he left that to his never ending tug on her nipple through silk, first one then the other as his breathing increased against her ear. He let out a growl as her flesh dampened even more.
“I’m not even inside you and you’re soaking my hand.”
“Simon.”
“Again.” He coasted two fingers around her clit.
She pressed her head against his shoulder. “I need...”
“You need to say my name again.”
“Simon.” She bucked against his hand. “Simon, I need...”
“Need what?”
“Need you.” Her blood boiled under the surface and her skin was an electric conduit that jumped with each touch.
“Need me to do what? Give you an orgasm? All it would take was a few more of these.” He tugged at her nipples roughly and she blew out a breath. “Or maybe here? Is this what you want?” He dipped his fingers inside of her and caught her clit between them.
The friction made black spots haze over her vision. “Oh, yes.”
“Is that what you want?”
“More,” she said brokenly. “You. You, I need you, not your fingers.”
He groaned. “I didn’t come prepared for this kind of party.”
“My pocket.”
“There’s a pocket in this tiny thing?”
She ground back against him. “Yes.” His fingers slid away from her and she groaned in relief and distress as he dug into her pocket.
“Were you holding this the entire night?”
She nodded.
“You wanted this?”
She always wanted this.
Wanted him.
He speared his fingers into her hair and pushed her head down to look at the floor of people. “Did you come up here for this?”
“No.” She’d needed to get away from Simon, but now all she wanted was the feel of him filling her again.
“But you want it now?”
“So much.”
He dug into her pocket and the crinkle of plastic then the unnaturally loud echo of his zipper made her sag against the bar.
He kicked out her feet and jerked up her skirt. “Are you sure this is what you want?”
She heard the anger there. She wasn’t sure just why it was there, but she was too far gone to puzzle it out. She reached between her legs to his fingers, pushing them away from his cock. “Yes.”
She lifted onto her toes on her already high heels. He pulled her panties to the side and thrust inside of her.
She bit back a scream and returned her hands to the bar.
“Is this what you need?” His voice was lower, his tone darker.
“Yes.”
He snapped his hips forward and lifted her even higher onto her toes. He gripped the bar in front of her, placing both hands between hers for leverage. And fucked her.
There was no other word for it.
This wasn’t lovemaking. This wasn’t even a hook-up. This was raw and real and dirty. His breath was harsh against her neck, then came the leading edge of pain as he scraped his teeth down her nape to the high collar of her camisole.
He skipped over the material to get to her s
houlder as he ground his pelvis against her backside. His length and the broad head of his cock hit all the places she remembered and some that she’d never known could come alive inside of her.
He brought one hand up the front of her from clit to belly then to breast. His touch rough, his calloused fingertips warring with his softer palm until he left behind his own branding.
She pushed back against him. So close. Her body fairly vibrated with the jarring thrusts as the head of his cock kept battering her from the inside out.
He slid his hand higher and his fingers curled around her throat as he held her still, his mouth at her ear. “I know what you need. This, between us, it’s always what you’ve needed.”
He dipped his fingers of his other hand under her skirt and found her clit.
The barest hint of a grip on her throat, combined with his busy fingers, and she was lost. She prayed that she didn’t scream his name.
Though no one would be able to hear it over the drowning beat of the music, though they were hidden in the rafters of shadow and red light and no one could see, he would know.
If she let that scream of surrender out, Simon would know.
And that terrified her even as she chased it.
9
Simon dragged in a breath and tried to hold onto sanity. Suspended over a crowd of people with cameras as he sank inside Margo’s fisting pussy was not the way to hold onto sanity, but he’d been lying to himself since he’d climbed up here. What was one more?
He felt her swallow under his fingers, vibrated with her keening moan as her pussy spasmed around his cock. He thrust into her again and again until his thighs burned, until his spine flamed, until his balls drew up tight with the need to come.
He tried to hold out.
Knew that as soon as he came it would be over. She felt too good and he’d wanted her for too damn long. The guttural groan he unleashed as he let go was too honest, too raw.
She sagged against the bars of the catwalk and still he had the unyielding urge to drive into her again. To imprint himself all over her body.
And he hated it.
He wanted to pull back, wanted to keep the pleasure from her. Hated to give her this power when this had been her plan all along.
Destroyed (Lost in Oblivion #3) Page 11
