The Prince of Punk Rock (36 page)

“I love you honey,” he whispered, and then he kissed her.

“I love you too, baby.”

“Can I get some of that?” Angel was lying next to them, with his head
propped up on his hand.

Tommy rolled into his arms and they shared a long kiss.

Jessi stared up at the ceiling and put her hands through her wet,
tangled hair. “You guys are going to kill me tonight.”
 
And it would have been the perfect way to
die.
 
Out of all the different sexual encounters
she and Tommy shared in the past, tonight was by far the best, and she knew it
had everything to do with Angel.

Jessi sat up on the bed.
 
She was beaming.
 
She always knew that one day she would sleep
with Angel, but she never expected him to be the one to suggest it.
 
She was on an erotic high.
 
Her head was still up in the clouds and her
endorphins were still running wild.
 
“So?
 
How was it?”

Angel gave her half a smile and shrugged one shoulder.
 
“It was OK.”

OK?
 
Just OK?
 
The high that she thought she would never come down from disappeared
into oblivion with the mere shrug of a shoulder.
 
It was the second best sexual experiences of
her life, surpassed only by the first time she slept with Tommy, and Angel
thought it was
just OK
.
 
She was
crushed.

“It was special, sweetheart, and I’m glad it was with you.”
 
He winked at her.
 
“I lost my gold star status.
 
Thank you.”

He thanked her for having sex with him.
 
It wasn’t a pity fuck.
 
She
started to tear up, so she looked away.
 
She was glad Tommy was already dozing off, so he missed the rejection
she felt, and the sadness it brought.
 
She snuggled up against him and hid her face into his shoulder.

“Good night, sweetheart.” Angel was waiting for a goodnight kiss.

She gave him a quick peck, but averted her watery eyes.
 
She burrowed her head into the pillow, and
regulated her breath to feign sleep.
 
She
was upset that he was indifferent to their intimacy.
 
A small part of her wished that he would have
enjoyed it and wanted to do it again.
 
She was disappointed and disillusioned, and the hollowed-out hole inside
her chest made her realize that she was a fool.

She listened to the slow, deep breaths of Tommy sleeping.
 
She smoothed his hair back and kissed his
cheek.
 
She touched the bruise on his
chest again.
 
It still disturbed
her.
 
She put her lips to it. “I love
you, baby.”
 
She sat up so she could see
Angel.
 
She watched him and listened to
his breathing to make sure he was asleep.
 
She caressed Angel’s cheek with the back of her hand, to see if he would
respond, but he remained still.
 
She
waited another few seconds, just to make sure he was really asleep.
 
She let out a distressed sighed. “I love you,
Angel,” and wiped a tear from the corner of her eye, before she put her head
back down on the pillow and dozed off with thoughts of Angel in her head.

Chapter Thirty-One

Tommy loved the rush of adrenaline
that flowed through his veins in the minutes before he was about to go on
stage.
 
He waited on the side of the
platform, Les Paul in hand, and slipped the studded Immortal Angel strap around
his neck.
 
The instant the lights dimmed,
their cue that their set was about to start, he rattled off a quick riff on the
guitar, and ran on stage.

Without You
was their
opening song, and The Quadrangle was the perfect place for its debut.
 
The slow ballad Tommy strummed for Angel in
their living room a week ago, transformed into a full blown punk rock
frenzy.
 
He was proud of the work the
band put into the song, musically, and he was proud of the lyrics he penned.
 
It was sophisticated and complex, better than
anything they played before.

The audience wasn’t expecting new
music and a small buzz of excited chatter traveled around the room as soon as
they heard an unfamiliar melody.
 
By the
time they hit the chorus, a slew of loud cheers were shouted into the air.
 
It was a hit.

Angel’s provocative performance
always enticed the boisterous crowd.
 
He
was at the front of the stage, leaning back and thrusting his hips way out into
the crowd.
 
The large bulge in his crotch
was practically asking to be touched.
 
Tommy saw Audra and Kira, Angel’s two groupies, elbow their way directly
in front of him.
 
There was no way they
were going to miss a bird’s eye view of Angel’s crotch.

The girls reached up and began to
paw at Angel’s thighs.
 
Normally, Angel
backed up when people got that close to his privates, but he was so engrossed
in the performance that he didn’t notice that Audra and Kira were only about an
inch away from nirvana.
 
It made Tommy
wonder how many times Angel actually got molested on stage without being aware
of it.

It was the last verse of the song
and Angel vamped all over the stage.
 
He
strutted his way over to Tommy and touched himself.

Tommy faced Angel and waited.
 
He was ready.
 
The crowd was hollering, taunting them. They had waited for this moment
almost as long as he did.

Angel sang the last lyric of the
song and threw the microphone down on the floor in a spectacular show of
defiance.
 
He grabbed Tommy by the face
with both his hands and laid a savage kiss on his mouth.

Tommy slung his guitar to the back
and out of his way.
 
He grabbed Angel by
the buttocks and pulled him close.
 
They
grinded their bodies into each other in a display of homoerotic passion that
almost drove the crowd into a giant orgy.
 
Tommy could hear screams from the audience asking for explicit sex acts
to be performed on stage.
 
He began to
think that maybe they went too far.
 
Maybe they should stop, but Angel wasn’t letting him go.
 
Angel was rubbing against him so hard, that
Tommy thought he might actually climax on stage in front of everyone.
 
That would have been one hell of a way to
come out to the world, but sadly, it wasn’t the case.
 
Angel released his hold and stepped back,
several moments too soon.

After the show, the three of them
sat at the bar with a new found freedom.
 
Even though Tommy was the one who had been liberated, Angel was finally
free to be candid about their relationship.
 
He took full advantage of it, and spent most of the night with his
tongue in Tommy’s mouth, and sometimes Jessi’s.
 
He wanted it clear that she was part of the relationship.
 
He didn’t want any nasty rumors circulating
that he was breaking up their marriage.

Someone behind him yelled at the
bartender for a drink, and Angel cringed.
 
There was no mistaking
Kendall
’s
drunken slur.
 
He knew she was trying to
get his attention, but he ignored her and refused to turn around.
 
He made eye contact with Jessi.
 
She recognized his plea for help and leaned
over to talk to him, so it looked like he was engaged in conversation.

When he continued to ignore
Kendall
, she let her fingers walk up his back and tickled
his neck.
 
He had no choice but to turn
around.
 
He smiled politely, even though
he was annoyed by her presence, said hello, and pretended that he just noticed
she was standing behind him.

“Well hello . . . lover.”
 
Kendall
paused to glare at Jessi.
 
“I don’t mean
to interrupt your ménage à trois, but I hear we’re going to be up against each
other at the
Battle
of the Bands.”

Angel wondered who the hell she
slept with in order to make it into the competition.
 
Her band wasn’t half bad, but she could
barely make it through a song in the right key.
 
It was a shame, because when
Kendall
was younger, she had a decent voice.
  
She could have become something better than the manipulative alcoholic
she turned into.
 
Still, he couldn’t be
rude to her.
 
“There’s a lot of tough
competition out there.
 
If you practice,
I’m sure you’ll do well.
 
Best of luck.”

“Luck?
 
I got a lot of things riding on this win, but
luck isn’t one of them.”

Angel felt like a brick just hit
him in his stomach.
 
She had a plan in
place.
 
Maybe she really was sleeping
with someone for the win, or maybe she was bribing one of the managers in
charge of the contest.
 
The winner of the
Battle
of the
Bands was granted a huge opportunity at the America Rocks Festival. It wasn’t
fair.
 
The win shouldn’t be bought.
 
He remained calm on the outside, but on the
inside he was fuming.
 
He realized there
was a lull in the conversation while he was putting his anger in check.
 
When he snapped back to attention,
Kendall
was ogling Tommy with a perverse smile.
 
Tommy met her stare with indifference, but
Jessi looked like a lion ready to pounce. Her eyes were narrowed into thin
slits and her lips were firmly pressed together.

“I can see why you picked Tommy as
your new lead guitar player.”
Kendall
took a
step to the side so she could get a clearer view of Tommy. “I don’t usually get
this close to him. He’s
very
handsome.
 
That hair is gorgeous.”

She looked like she was about to
touch Tommy’s hair.
 
That wouldn’t go
down well with Jessi, and Angel quickly tried to distract her.
 
“How many songs are you preparing to sing at
the
Battle
of
the Bands?
 
I think we’re supposed to
sing between three and five.”