All Fired Up (16 page)

They’d cracked it, and were finally playing as a band at their level ought.

The key definitely seemed to have been scratching ‘Fatal Error’ from the set and replacing it with a less driving but equally intense number that relied more on Rock Giant’s bass wizardry than on Iain for the underlying beat.

When a couple of bulbs popped overhead and plunged the centre of the stage into semi-darkness, Ash only registered the blip on the periphery of his vision, but the shadow that dropped a few moments later caught his attention immediately. ‘Xane, look out.’ He hadn’t time to even jerk forward before the object landed in an explosion of discordant notes. Fragments blasted upwards and outwards, peppering the stage with splintered glass.

‘Missed me,’ Xane quipped, to a thunderous roar of approval. Complete badass that he was, he made the moment feel natural, as if it was part of the set, and not something that still had the rest of them half out of their skins with shock.

Ash wiped the sweat from his face with his sleeve. All the guys were looking shaken except Iain, sitting way back behind a wall of drums. He merely looked as if someone had stroked his fur the wrong way, which was pretty much how he’d been since the tour began.

‘How are you all hanging tonight, Roskilde?’ Xane breathed into the mic.

The reply was an incomprehensible wall of sound made by hands and feet and voices.

‘Hope you don’t find the poltergeist upsetting.’ He threw a dark glance up to the rafters, as he crunched across the splintered glass heading towards Spook. ‘Say hello to the filthy beasts out there, Mr Mortensen.’

Spook played a few riffs and bade the crowd good evening in his native tongue, after which Xane winked and put together his hands and clapped. He got their audience high-clapping too.

Next, he came prowling over to Ash, allowing the roadies to run on and clear up some of the mess.

‘Hi, Ash,’ Xane purred, in a way that sent chills across Ash’s body. Xane smiled in that salacious way that just edged up the corner of his mouth. ‘Don’t you think he’s looking pretty hot tonight, ladies? It’s the hair, right?’

Ash gave it a flick.

‘What’s that, you love his sexy body?’

More roars of affirmation greeted them.

‘That shirt needs to come off.’

‘What are you up to?’ Ash mouthed, trying not to look too concerned about the blood running down Zane’s cheek that definitely wasn’t fake.

‘Distraction,’ he mouthed back. He prowled behind Ash and threw an arm around his waist. ‘Oh, by the way.’ He sounded breathy and ludicrously sexy. ‘Did I mention that I’m fucking horny?’

Screams drowned out everything, as thirty thousand women simultaneously volunteered to help him out, along with another three thousand men.

Xane fingered the top button of Ash’s fly, which started a full-on riot in the stalls. Then ring and baby fingers slipped beneath the top of Ash’s leathers and stroked. His response, instant fucking hard-on, was picked up and beamed onto the giant screens at the sides of the arena, magnified a thousand times. Ash thrummed his guitar again to disguise the shiver that ran up his spine. He hated the fact that Xane could get to him, even when he had zero interest in shagging him.

‘I’d do him.’ Xane flashed a backwards glance at Ash, already moving away. ‘He’s a sucker for stockings, by the way, and itty bitty panties.’ Several pairs instantly sailed towards the stage. Xane scooped up one set and held them so the audience could see. ‘Do you ladies really fit into these things?’ He pinged them at Rock Giant.

And like that the shattered light was forgotten, swept away by a team of stagehands while the audience looked the other way.

Xane headed back towards the new spotlight at the centre of the stage and announced the next song – ‘Hemlock’ – as all the light beams focused on him.

* * *

‘Xane, are you all right?’ Dani let go of Ginny’s hand and flung herself at her lover the moment he walked off stage, which at least freed Ginny to wrap herself around her own gorgeous rock star. She’d been hanging on to Dani to stop her sprinting out onto the stage ever since that light had come down. It didn’t seem to matter to her that Xane was clearly fine and dandy, judging from the way he was psyching up the crowd. She needed to confirm for herself that he hadn’t been injured.

The rest of the band and several members of the crew huddled around the four of them. There was a long scratch across Xane’s left cheek and several other nicks on his neck and across his left bicep and shoulder. What was difficult to tell was how much of the blood was his, given he was sporting several realistic-looking puncture wounds on his neck and torso as if he’d been a vampire snack prior to turning himself and having a full-on feast.

One of the roadies handed him some gauze and a bottle of water, in order to clean himself up. Dani claimed them and started administering first aid. ‘Give us some space,’ she insisted, flapping her arms and shooing them back. None of the nicks looked serious, but Xane sat and let her fuss over him. Ginny thought he was actually enjoying it.

‘Are you all right?’ Ginny asked Ash, as he put his arm around her shoulder. He looked more shaken than Xane, and she could feel the tension in his limbs, making him quiver.

‘Just need to find a shirt. It’s hot under the lights, but bloody freezing back here.’

‘It’s not a shirt you need but a hot woman,’ she said, wrapping herself around him tight, so she was squashed against his bare chest.

‘Hm. It might not be very practical to wear you, even though you fit like a glove.’

Another of the roadies appeared at his shoulder and handed over a plain black T-shirt. Ash tugged it on. It fit almost as snugly as his favourite cartoon-hero shirt, leaving zip to the imagination.

‘Hey, Tony, who was responsible for those lights?’ Rock Giant asked the same roadie as he handed over his bass guitar.

‘I’m not sure. It’s most likely one of the site crew. We don’t mess with that sort of stuff when there are this many bands taking the stage, unless we desperately need something adding because our setup won’t work with what’s already there.’

‘Just shitty luck then?’

‘Yeah, man. You’re not thinking it was deliberate?’

Ginny noticed Ash and Rock Giant exchange wary glances. ‘Of course not,’ both guys agreed. ‘Why on earth would you think that?’

‘The other crap that’s been happening: weird notes, crazy bitches, missing equipment, shall I go on?’

Obviously things had been happening while she’d been away.

‘What was that about?’ Ginny hissed at Ash, once the other two men had left. It sounded serious.

Ash shrugged. ‘There’ve been a few weird incidents is all. Stuff going missing, crazy-ass accusations, and someone gave your friend Dani a scare while we were in Amsterdam. I’m sure I told you about it.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I think you did.’ She did recall some vague mumblings about creepy messages, but since all their phone conversations inevitably led in the same direction, she couldn’t recall many of the details. Having her mind blown tended to fry any short-term memory of stuff that didn’t seem important, though she was pretty sure he couldn’t have told her it was Dani who’d received the messages or she’d have paid more attention. She did her very best to look out for that girl. Actually, it was kind of odd that Dani hadn’t mentioned it herself, given how often they’d spoken on the phone. Ginny shot her friend a look and discovered that the cleaning of Xane’s war wounds had changed into a make-out session.

She curled her fingers into her lover’s cheeks, eager to be doing the same.

‘Hey,’ he protested, clamping a hand across hers. ‘I’ll have no workplace harassment from you, Miss Walters.’

‘I thought you’d clocked off.’

Ash tugged out his earpiece. ‘Now I’m clocked off.’ He scooped her up and held her against one of the huge marquee posts so that he could steal lingering kisses. One hand also found its way beneath her skirt to squeeze the cheeks of her naked rear. He’d insisted on reclaiming his CKs.

‘What’s the plan, guys?’ Rock Giant stomped past her and Ash, only to almost collide with Xane and Dani, who’d progressed to necking. ‘Tell me we’re going to do something.’

‘Kick back, enjoy some pussy,’ Ash replied.

Rock Giant threw him a jealous stare. ‘What are you going to do, Elspeth?’

‘Pour alcohol down my throat until I can’t remember my own name. Anyone know where I can find some around here? And don’t say the bar.’ Iain seemed about to speak but she cut him off with a glare. ‘You don’t say anything at all.’

‘The guys I’m camping with have a barrel of homebrew with them,’ Ginny said.

‘Oh, really.’ Elspeth gave her a thorough once-over, and, while she didn’t exactly smile, she didn’t sneer either. ‘Is your memory going, Ash? I’ve seen you with this one before. I thought you didn’t do repeat performances.’

‘We’re dating, actually.’ He gave Ginny’s hand a squeeze and got a goofy grin on his face. ‘Ginny, this is Elspeth. I don’t think you met properly before.’

‘Hey,’ she said, giving a little wave.

Elspeth’s perfectly arched eyebrows curved some more. ‘Formal introductions? It must be serious.’ She gave Ginny another assessing glance. ‘So, these friends of yours … are you going to lead the way or not?’

‘Ash?’ she enquired.

‘Isn’t the Dome of Delectable Delights in that direction anyway? Codename: your tent,’ he hissed, presumably in case she hadn’t figured it out.

Actually, she’d got it right away. Delectable was certainly one way of describing the delights she’d experienced there earlier and hoped to be enjoying again soon.

A
s luck would have it, Ginny’s new mates from Deanna Rädsla were home, catching up with their former drummer turned Black Halo roadie, when Black Halo and entourage crashed their pitch en masse. After some moments of bafflement and some rather high-pitched shrieking when Lykke got a smile out of Spook Mortensen, homebrew was served and there was soon a party atmosphere. The guys were talking guitars and the ladies about the annual nude run the festival held every year, and getting mud in one’s sensitive places, when someone knocked over a couple of empties and set a bottle spinning on the table top. Ginny immediately leaped on it. Spin the Bottle, she demanded. She loved that game, and she was sure these guys would deliver the goods. It was also the perfect way to get to know them a little better, not so much discovering deep dark secrets, more observing the way they interacted. Apart from the night she’d spent with Ash, Spook and Rock Giant in a teeny hotel room, she hadn’t really had an opportunity to unpick the people from their stage personas, and if she and Ash were serious about the future then the Black Halo guys were going to be her family.

‘I haven’t played that in years,’ Rock Giant commented, when she thought they might all ignore her.

Ash mumbled something about there being a reason for that, and this being a bad idea, but didn’t veto the suggestion outright. She did notice that most of the roadies, except for the newbie, Luthor, took it as a cue to claim urgent business elsewhere and slope off.

The strained look on Elspeth’s face made Ginny assume she’d cry off too, but instead she snuggled into a chair beside Rock Giant. ‘Pens and paper,’ she demanded of their hosts. Perhaps her glassy eyes were only a result of one too many drinks. She certainly didn’t seem to be quite the banshee Dani had painted her as.

Hanne dished out torn slips of paper. Pens were in shorter supply and took longer to travel round the group. As there wasn’t space for them all to sit in a circle inside the camper van, they tumbled out under the awning instead, where they found crates and deckchairs to sit on, and an assortment of blow-up furniture and tree stumps.

‘I’m not sure I want to play,’ Dani said into Ginny’s ear as she stretched her hand over the bowl in which the forfeits were being collected but held back from dropping her neatly folded paper inside.

‘It’s a bit of fun. What’s the worst that could happen?’

Her friend’s head turned to take in the various leather-clad figures, lingering the longest on her own boyfriend. ‘Plenty. You don’t know what these guys are like, Ginny. I’ve been living with them. They’re –’

‘– crude, lewd and competitive,’ Ginny finished for her. ‘That’s what’ll make it so much fun.’ She might not have been riding on the tour bus, but she knew a darn sight more about men than Dani did. She’d been to more than a few college parties, and rock stars were like college boys, just with more cash in their pockets. ‘Relax, Saint. I’m sure Xane will help bail you out of any awkward situations. That’s assuming the bottle even stops on you.’

It did. First spin, to Dani’s utter horror. She was visibly shaking as she drew out the first forfeit.

‘Who would you go down on?’ Dani read aloud, relief evident in her voice.

‘Like we need that answering,’ Elspeth groaned. Everyone was already looking at Xane. ‘That’s so lame. Who wrote that?’ Unsurprisingly, no one owned up.

Ginny suspected it might have been Lykke. It might also have been an interesting question if someone other than Dani had drawn it.

Paul, aka Rock Giant, was up next. He dipped his hand into the bowl with a look of resignation on his face. ‘And for the record,’ he said as he was unfolding his forfeit, ‘I wouldn’t suck any of you fuckers off, none of you wash your dicks often enough.’ He grimaced as he read the note. ‘Why do I always get these ones? Ouch,’ he complained in advance.

Elspeth snatched it from him. ‘Pluck out a single pubic hair.’ She laughed, sparking other scattered giggles.

‘That’s gonna hurt,’ Ash remarked. He gave Ginny’s waist a squeeze and dropped a kiss upon her nose. Having decided it was all right to be couply in front of his mates, he seemed eager to touch her as much as possible.

Trooper that he was, Rock Giant inched down the top of his leathers. They were already snug about his hips so it didn’t take much to reveal a few tufts of black hair. He pinched a strand, teeth gritted, but then wimped out and shook his head. ‘It’s a killer enough when they get trapped in a zip.’

‘I’ll help.’ Spook leaned across and pulled, before Rock Giant had the presence of mind to object. He yowled in response, while Spook held up the evidence.