Unchained Melody (30 page)

Calliope grinned; Ryan was incredible at this. Ryan was the best lover she’d ever had- but she was better, and now that she remembered, he was about to find out! She bent, forcing her hand between his fly and his supple, taut skin and gripping the base of him, sliding her hand firmly, dotingly up every delicious inch of what he owed her.

‘Mmm…’ She clenched around his fingers as she caressed him, knowing that he had a weakness for words, the kind of words that would play in his head forever, like lyrics. ‘You wanted to give me this as a virgin? God... you would have had to slip in inch, by inch…it would have taken days to break me in… would you have kept me in that shed for days Ryan? Working me over with this beautiful, dangerous...?’ Ryan stiffened, and when her palm slid over the head of his erection and formed a taut ring with her thumb and forefinger, she heard his teeth snap together as her hand filled with his warm, wet release. Then suddenly; Ryan was the one jerking, ramming himself into her hand. He shoved his face into the blanket beside her neck and bellowed his satisfaction while Callie grinned triumphantly into his shoulder.

And then he was in motion again. Ryan’s teeth clamped her nipple as his hand tore his velcro fly open. Callie hooked her finger through the tie above and yanked so that the weight of his still-hard cock fell from his pants and wetly onto her thigh. Then she scooped her hips to the side, flung one leg around the back of his ass and then tightened her calf muscle around him, jerking him up and into her.

Ryan let out a shout of utter elation and curled his spine like a scorpion, driving himself deep into the core of her. He pushed up on either side of her shoulders, locking himself in place, gaped at her like she was surreal, closed his eyes and then retreated only to plunge up and into her again.

‘Fuck!’ His face contorted like he was in agony and he rocked again, hard, vicious. Perfect. Callie felt the muscles deep inside her relax to accept his length and then clamp greedily around it, every nerve ending in her body throbbing with satisfaction. ‘Baby yes!’ He grunted and drove forward again. ‘Yes!’

His excitement was incinerating her. Callie moved her heel, using it to catch the shorts pooled around his upper thighs and shove them down to his ankles. Ryan shifted, kicking them off and then rammed into her again and Callie’s chest rose off the ground so that she was looking behind him into the blurry forest beyond. It was such a beautiful clear night and Ryan now clasped her tightly against him, keeping them pressed together, suspended while he rolled his length up and into her, panting hot breaths against her neck. She should have been freezing with her damp hair and bikini top still fastened around her ribs but his body kept hers feverishly warm.

And then he moved, pulling her knee up to her side and scooping his hips lower, forcing the friction back over the sweet spot inside her while his taut sac slapped against where they were joined. Callie moaned blissfully, curling around him, reaching between the back of his thighs and stretching until she was cupping his testicles in her hand before squeezing gently.

‘Oh God Callie…!’ Ryan’s tone was threatening, his expression stricken as they both realized he was going to come sooner than he thought again. She smiled wickedly at him, feeling resplendent, but as his thrusts became more demanding, so did Callie’s own need. She lifted her hips to meet his every thrust and when she felt the tension in her abdomen begin to melt again, she rolled Ryan’s balls in her palm and milked another sharp cry out of him, jerking up to not only to get herself to the summit of her pleasure but to muffle his ecstatic groan with her lips as his cock twitched and shot another hot stream inside her sex. His thrusts became mindless, relentless and Callie almost blacked out as her exhausted human body tried to sate the appetite of the Muse under the musician. But Ryan’s mouth, his warbling moans and his tongue stroking hers kept her alert enough to realize that Ryan had slipped out of her and was now flipping her onto her stomach.

‘I knew it,’ he panted, raising her to her knees. ‘I knew we’d fit together like this…’

Callie rose, wrapping her arms around the tree trunk and hugging it tightly when she felt Ryan’s hands shift to grasp her hips while his knee urged her legs apart. When he slid into her this time, his passage was slick and his reach even deeper. Callie’s body purred in response. ‘Ohhhh yes, Ry…’ she pushed back into him and felt him growing harder still, longer. ‘Harder! Deeper!’

A hand lightly slapped her backside. ‘That’s right, Ryan.’ He eased in to her again and then Callie felt a familiar sensation, as a hat was tugged snugly onto her head. Not as she usually wore it, but backwards. Her heart skipped a guilty beat when she realized Ryan’s game but his heartless lust, his need to mark her as his own was so similar to her own desire to possess him entirely that she could not protest- she owed him one true victory. One moment he could reflect back on and tell himself: ‘She loved me,’ even though she would never get to say it to him. ‘You’re not my groupie, Cal. And you’re not just my best friend,’ her hair was pulled back over her shoulder and Ryan used it to pull her up and back. ‘You’re my soul mate.’ He whispered. ‘And this is where you belong.’

His words made her tremble with need and then stiffen in fear as her heart took too long to beat its next. She felt so guilty, on Ardos’s behalf, who actually owned that title, on Ryan’s, who had no comprehension of what the term actually entailed, and for Hunter, who would weep to know what she was doing and feeling with Ryan in the foliage right under his nose. Because what she was feeling was-

‘Callie, I-’

Afraid that a declaration of love from him again, now while she was so vulnerable to his every touch, his every move would break her, Callie eased off him and spun, knocking Ryan back to the ground, clamping a hand over his mouth as she eased him backwards, straddled his hips and impaled herself on him. His eyes bugged and her heart found its beat again, making her forget that the forest was silent, without song, and yet she was happy as she could ever remember being. And she was trying not to think about what that meant.

‘I belong on top for a while…’ she whispered silkily, delighting in the way his eyes rolled back into his head as she sank to his hilt. ‘And in about two minutes…’ she circled her hips, grinding onto him, and then rolled sharply, once, twice, thrice until he was grunting against her hand wildly. ‘You’re going to belong inside my mouth.’

Ryan’s gripped her hips and forced her to repeat the motion, his head flinging back, the muscles in his body tensing, flexing in the dappled shadows of the frigid night. ‘Callie I’m going to die if you do that to me! I can’t even think about that while you’re-’

‘Then don’t think.’ Callie leaned forward and swept her lips across his. ‘Just exist in this moment with me Ry and never forget it.’ She rested her head on his chest, listened to his heartbeat and let a solitary tear fall down her cheekbone as she curled their bodies together again. She’d never abuse her powers again. She’d never cross another line. As carried away as she knew she could get, as much as she knew the music could sweep her up and throw her to the wind, Calliope knew that she’d sooner part with it, then risk someone taking her memory of this moment again for the triumph of another.

And please God, she added silently. Don’t forget me.

*

Ryan awoke from the sweetest dream, where he was holding Callie’s hand, and she was brushing kisses all over his face. He could feel her eyelashes brush his skin, hear her angelic hum in his ear. He could see their future roll out before them on a cloudless sky. Callie in a wedding dress, something light and ethereal, Callie singing along while he strummed out a happy song, their dark-haired, rosy cheeked children basking in the harmony their union created. Callie older, but still so beautiful, her raven hair streaked with grey, her wrinkled hand still in his, her papery voice folding lyrics like origami and making him feel as young as the day he’d first lain eyes on her, as buoyant, as he circled her around some Bingo hall to one of Hunter’s hit songs. The music was on a record, and Ryan joined in, content to be in chorus, not having for one moment regretted the trade he had made- the microphone for the girl.

He shifted on the dew-dampened rug, the memory of her warm body still flushing his skin. But when he moved her arm to nestle her against him, to whisper how deeply he loved her, how much he would give just to stay in this moment forever, his hand landed on crackling leaves and damp soil.

Ryan’s eyes opened to the sight of grey light peeking through a million leaves of the canopy above him, and knew that his world had just rotated off its axis, at least for him. Because although half of the blanket had been folded over him protectively, and though the beanie was back on his head, and though his shorts had been pulled back up onto hips- he was colder than he’d ever been in his life.

Because he was alone.

Ryan curled, dragged one cold hand over his eyes and sobbed.

29.

When Hunter had finished tuning his guitar, he put it down gingerly and jumped up, bouncing nervously on the balls of his feet, needing to wear in his cool new jeans, which were perfectly frayed and ripped but still a little constrictive from their ‘newness.’

‘Man you do not even want to see how packed it is out there!’ Nick came in, looking awfully cool for someone who usually went out of their way to look awful and called it art. ‘Guy at the gate reckons almost two and a half thousand tickets sold and that’s almost capacity. I mean… can we just take a moment and bask?’

Hunter grinned, but his facial features felt like they’d been screwed on too tight to let the worth of the smile he felt like smiling shape his face. He was somewhere on the nervous scale between hysterical laughter and terrified sobbing. His fingers were tapping a million chords that did not go together on his upper thigh, and he didn’t know how he was supposed to get some good support breaths going when his belly had been invaded by the sissiest, most fluttering pink butterflies he’d ever had the pleasure of swallowing.

‘I know it’s… this is an epic moment.’ He paced the small backstage room, which was actually a locker room. The stadium only had one ‘real’ dressing room space and TFITR were up there, not pacing or bouncing, not stressing or farting pink butterflies but probably playing poker as they had been all afternoon and knocking back their free liquor carelessly, knowing they’d rock more for caring less.

Then again, TFITR had done this a million times by then. Hell, they’d done it in the U. K, the U. S, Japan, Canada and and New Zealand, where they’d hit number one in every chart. And once this album was released after their tour ended, they’d probably go on to other countries, never remembering a single name of one of their opening acts, and not being expected to.

Some day, Hunter vowed that when he was big enough to have some pitiful little local band open for him, he’d go down and shake their hands, ask their names, lock them in the room with their agent for an hour or so. The fact that TFITR had not so much as waved or belched in their direction when they’d met earlier that day was adding to Hunter’s fear that people just didn’t care about Lonesome October and might never come to.

But then Hunter swallowed, and he gazed past the row of lockers towards the door Nick had shut behind him. There would be one face in the audience that cared. One face that would hear every note he played, every word he sang, and every thing he fucked up. She wouldn’t care that he fucked up for her sake, but she’d hurt for him. It didn’t matter if Callie had once again disappeared without a trace the night before, seemingly soaked up into the rainforest like some woodland nymph, he knew she would come. He hoped she would be front row. And given the way she’d used and discarded Ryan, Hunter was hoping that the next time he came backstage, she’d be waiting for him without being asked first. That she’d come to her senses.

Guilt and regret and pain burned through Hunter’s stomach, killing the butterflies. When Callie and Ryan had first disappeared into the darkness and not returned, he’d know damn well why and the grief had made him curl up near the rapids like an immovable gargoyle, waiting for the moment they emerged hand in hand and shattered him for good. He’d kept the music off and when hours had lapsed and they still had not returned and the others were fed up trying to get him to shake it off or leave with them, Hunter had died a little more.

Then the sun had begun to rise, tinting the leaves of the trees a dark lilac, and Ryan had emerged from the shadows alone, looking every bit as shattered as Hunter felt; he’d had bruised and swollen lips, fingernail marks staining his olive flesh with red streaks in uncountable places and leaf-litter embedded in his hair. Ryan had been exhausted, spent, devastated and utterly fucked. And when his eyes met Hunter’s across the gorge, his face had collapsed, and he’d caught himself on a rock while ankle-deep in icy water and cried: ‘She left me! I fell asleep in her arms and when I woke-’ and then he’d said no more because he’d sagged into the rapids, balled up, pressed his head between his knees and sobbed.

Hunter had wanted to know exactly what they’d done to pass eight hours in the rainforest alone, and he’d wanted to pick Ryan up by the scruff of his neck and punch him in the guts until he knew Hunter’s pain, but there was no point because they were both going to lose her forever anyway. Hunter had toyed with the idea of telling Ryan about Callie’s prognosis, but he didn’t- because not only had he promised to keep Callie’s secret, but because letting Ryan feel rage for a while was preferable to fast-tracking him to feeling desolate, as Hunter did knowing that Callie was not running away but slipping away. And Hunter suspected that Callie had treated Ryan so harshly for that exact reason: to cure him of his dream before reality could serve it cold.

As it had to Hunter.

In the locker room, Hunter’s gaze searched until he located Ryan. His best mate was exactly as he’d been all day- his long arms folded around his long legs, his long face resting on his knees, his brilliant eyes as dull and vacant as stale blue paint turning grey. At Rathe’s insistence, Ryan had showered, dressed in clothes Hunter had picked out for him; the combo of leather jeans and a white cuffed shirt looking nauseatingly good despite Ryan’s wan complexion and fingering Hunter’s envy like guitar strings, and had even gone through a warm up with them and sounded, once again, sickeningly good for a man bereft.

But the moment they’d been shooed offstage so the ‘real’ band could warm up, Ryan’s voice had gone silent again, his shoulders curling around the grief he was holding close to his chest. Hunter shared Ryan’s grief, and yet the promise of performing was helping him keep his head up, getting his heart to get from one heavy thud to the next. He’d shed endless tears for Callie Clay for weeks but tonight, he would sing for her, and her alone, and hope that it made her feel as he did.

There was a knock on the door, low voices whispering and rising above the crackle of the crowd beyond.

‘They’re going on in a minute.’ An irritated woman’s voice said. ‘Maybe you can see your boyfriend after.’

‘I am not their girlfriend lady and I’m telling you that if you don’t let me in, I have ways to make them come out…’ Callie’s voice was sweet, but Hunter could hear the snap in it even from a row of lockers away.

‘Then who are you? The bands have been warned to keep their groupies away from the free liquor.’

‘I’m not their groupie. You could say I’m…’ there was a giggle, ‘their Muse.’

Hunter turned, stumbled towards the door and saw that Ryan had already leapt to his own feet, animated like he’d been electrified.

‘Cal!’ Ryan coughed out her name before Hunter could, and had her wrapped in his arms before Hunter had taken two steps. ‘God where have you been?’ His voice was hoarse as he pulled back from Callie, his fingers digging into the flesh of her shoulders. Every part of his body tilted towards her. ‘I thought you’d left town!’

‘And miss this night? No way!’ Callie smiled fondly and wrapped her arms around Ryan’s shoulders, resting her chin on one and closing her eyes, smiling blissfully. When they opened, she saw Hunter, and for a moment, her eyes seemed to shimmer like Northern Lights. ‘You knew I’d be here, didn’t you Hunter?’

Hunter’s throat was tight, and when Callie disentangled herself from Ryan and stepped towards him, he had to work very hard to not look down at the way her low-slung jeans and diamond- studded black belt hugged her curves, or the way her artfully torn Lonesome October shirt fell off one golden shoulder. It was bright red, like Hunter’s hat had once been, and the band’s logo had been screen-printed in black across her breasts.

‘Where did you get that?’ He asked, feeling his confidence skyrocket to know that his band name was gracing Callie’s breasts, which she’d once saved for Metallica and Green Day, and that his hat was back on her head where it belonged.

‘Marnie and I have been screen-printing them all day!’

Hunter’s eyes widened. ‘You can screen print?’

She winked. ‘I have an arty friend, Renee who helped us.’ She grinned, striking a little pose. ‘And now we have a stand set up at the back, selling them.’

Hunter almost laughed. ‘Callie you’re insane! Who’s going to buy those?’

‘Well for now the sales are going remarkably well. I have some girls I know selling them- the supernaturally beautiful type in daisy dukes and platforms, and once you guys rock out tonight, the rest of the stock is gonna fly.’ She winked at Ryan. ‘There’s already enough to buy you guys that new amp even after we pay Marnie back for investing. And then maybe to start a Hunter’s rent fund.’

Hunter wanted to high-five her. But he hugged her himself. ‘Dancers?’ He asked.

‘Oh please. They’ve got skills, but rhythm is all mine.’

Hunter was overwhelmed by excitement to know that pass or fail, they were going to have a new amp as a result of that evening. He wanted to keep Callie in his arms and ask more questions, tell her how he was feeling, ask her where she would be standing, but then Ryan was pulling her away by the hand, behind the lockers.

‘Callie… can we talk?’ He looked haunted again. ‘In private?’

Callie glanced back at Hunter, her black hair, which looked fuller and fluffier and wilder than Hunter had ever seen it before whipping around her shoulders. Her amber eyes seemed to throb with panic. ‘Now? Really?’ She glanced over at Hunter, guiltily, pleadingly asking him to intervene. ‘Shouldn’t you be trying to think about the set?’

‘Think about the set?’ Ryan pressed Callie up against a locker, his voice low and sharp and desperate, his fingers stroking desperately at her hair. ‘Callie I haven’t had a thought that didn’t have you in it all day. You think if you show up now, I’m gonna give a flying fuck about the set?!’

Callie’s eyebrows were knitted together. ‘Well you should!’ She poked him in the chest. ‘God Ryan, you’re supposed to be the level-headed one here! This band needs you to think about the set. And you need to not think about me, okay?’ She held his face. ‘I’m sorry if what happened between us last night made you think that it was a prelude to how it was going to be from hereon but it wasn’t okay? I was weak, and foolish and just, well… lost. In the bluest eyes in the world.’ She pushed Ryan’s already flowing tears away from the rise of his cheekbones as though she thought she could absorb his sorrow as her own. ‘I keep trying to find a way to keep you guys in my life,’ she whispered brokenly, ‘but I can’t have one without hurting the other. I can’t love one without my heart breaking for the other. So it’s the music I’m going to give my heart to, Ry. The beautiful music you make. I’ll print your shirts, I’ll scream your name, I’ll sing along and I will always care for you more deeply than I will ever care for another soul but-’ her voice tightened. ‘But I’m not going to fall in love with you.’ She stepped out from under his arm and backed away from them, towards the corner. ‘I’m not the hero anymore, okay? I’m the broken branch now.’ She glanced at Hunter. ‘Once you guys finish this set, and TFITR starts playing, I’m leaving. And I will never, ever come back to cause you guys even a fraction more pain.’

‘What? Where are you going?’ Ryan croaked as Hunter cried out the exact same sentiment.

‘I have an audition for Wicked in New York in a few weeks, and a plane ticket for L. A. for tomorrow morning. I’m going to go stay with my folks for a while...’ she looked down at her hands. ‘The ticket is one-way.’

Hunter breath rushed out of him. ‘You can’t mean that Callie.’ He said, stepping towards her. ‘You can’t just leave it like this! You’re in love with one of us. You have to be!’ Beside him, he felt Ryan rest his head onto the locker and sigh.

And then Callie Clay did the most shocking thing Hunter had ever seen her do; worse than dancing like a burlesque girl at this disco, worse than falling to her knees and allowing Ryan’s hand to strip her while Hunter stole her kisses, and worse than screwing him to heaven and back and then abandoning him in Hell- Callie stepped away and shrugged. She actually shrugged.

‘Then how come I’m not?’ She asked, her eyes dull, her voice expressionless. She began to saunter past them, whipping Hunter’s red hat off her head and thrusting it hard into his chest as she marched by. ‘Why don’t you just write a fucking song about it?’

Hunter’s heart dissolved and was replaced with icy stalagmites. Ryan’s breath sucked in a whoosh and he seemed to choke on the pain. Neither of them moved when she strode out the door and slammed it behind her, and neither of them flinched after.

‘Sk8ter Boi anyone?’ Nick asked in a jocular manner, slapping Ryan on the back of the shoulder, appearing from seemingly nowhere. ‘Could she make her heartlessness any more obvious guys?’

‘No.’ Ryan said woodenly, picking up his blue guitar from the couch as he strode towards the door. ‘She can’t.’

Hunter could not move. He was paralysed as every grief-stricken cell in his body turned to undiluted rage. Callie was dying, and if he and Ryan weren’t precious enough to her to spend her last days with, he was going to go out on that stage and show that bitch exactly what she was missing, and worry about his broken heart later.

*

‘Calliope this is not the time to fall apart!’ Imogen had taken Callie by the shoulders and dragged her behind the T-shirt stall the instant she’d seen her sister hyperventilating her way back through the crowd. Calliope felt like every one of her organs had been punctured, and her heart had worked itself up into her throat. She leaned back against the chain-link fence and heaved in another not-breath, pressing her hands to her head like a winded marathon runner. Every time she remembered the absolute joy on Ryan’s face when she’d walked in, then its collapse after she’d flung ugly words at them like rocks, twisted the knife in her lungs.