All Fired Up (17 page)

‘That fucking hurt, man. I don’t suppose any of you ladies would like to kiss it better?’

Spook puffed the coarse hair into the wind. ‘Don’t be such a wimp. I thought you were supposed to be a rough, tough ninja warrior.’

‘Ninjitsu is Japanese. I practise Kung Fu.’

‘I hope there’s no more that involve hair pulling,’ Ash muttered to Ginny. ‘The only pubes I want involvement with tonight are yours when they get stuck between my teeth.’

‘I don’t have enough of them for them to get stuck there.’

‘That’s true. You’re all pink and soft and yummy.’ He was beguiled by the thought, and nuzzled up to her and licked her neck. The pair of them were seriously entwined by the time Iain was proclaimed the next winner.

‘Swap underpants with the person the bottle points to next.’

Ginny swore he tried to manipulate the spin so it would land facing a specific person. It might even have worked, if Xane hadn’t accidentally kicked the table leg, causing the bottle to roll into her lap.

‘I think that makes it you,’ Xane said giving her a lewd grin.

‘Sorry,’ Ginny stood and inched up the side of her skirt. ‘I forgot to put any on.’ The admission, coupled with a flash of bare buttock, earned her several claps and wolf-whistles.

‘Oh, well.’ Iain sighed grouchily. ‘Your skimpies wouldn’t fit me anyway.’

Lykke who sat next to him prodded his thigh. ‘You still need to swap. Get ’em off, dude.’

‘Off. Off. Off.’ Ash started a chorus, which actually brought a smile to his friend’s face. Ginny’s first impressions of Iain hadn’t been particularly high. He tried too hard, and ended up coming across as either sleazy or up his own arse. But since he and Ash were old friends, she supposed she ought to give him another chance. His willingness to get up and strip before a bunch of baying hounds, albeit coyly, with his back to the circle, did score him a few points. It earned him a few good-natured slaps on the back too.

‘Mind how you zip up,’ Rock Giant cautioned, while Iain’s boxers were being delivered to her.

Ginny held them up against her waist. ‘Man, these are bigger than my skirt.’ She wasn’t sure how he’d even managed to fit them under his jeans.

‘Don’t you dare put them on. I’ve seen you in enough boy pants today.’ Ash wound an arm around her leg and slipped his hand somewhere it shouldn’t be. ‘Plus, I like you all naked and easy-access.’ The tip of his finger stroked along the seam of her pussy lips, causing her to shiver and heat to pool in her groin. She tried not to be a total exhibitionist, but if he kept on doing that, she’d stand here and let him bring her off in front of everyone.

It was Dani who came to her rescue. ‘Ash, it’s you.’ She tapped him on the shoulder, whereupon he reluctantly withdrew his hand from under Ginny’s skirt to select his forfeit.

‘French-kiss the person whose birthday is next.’ A quick consultation established that was Xane, whose birthday was in a matter of weeks, much to Dani’s apparent surprise.

‘Aw, man!’ Ash didn’t seem surprised. ‘How come I always end up having to snog you?’

Black Halo’s sexy vocalist gave him an arch look from under his brows. ‘It’s the stud, and you know it.’ He limbered up his tongue, flashing his stud piercing.

‘Are you OK with this?’ Ginny clasped Dani’s hand. She knew her friend had had some major wobbles over her boyfriend’s bisexuality.

‘It’s just a bit of fun,’ she replied stiffly. ‘It’s not as if …’ Her gaze flashed across to where Luthor was sitting. ‘Never mind. I know they’re just mucking about.’

Mucking about or not, Ginny still suspected the two of them clashing lips might raise sparks, not that either of them seemed in any hurry to get on with it. ‘Forty quid says you’re too chicken.’ She nudged Ash with her elbow.

‘Babe, you’re going to be writing me an IOU.’

Ash rose from his chair and prowled around the outside of the circle to where Xane sat. He leaned over him from behind, so his long hair shrouded them as he curled his fingers into Xane’s biceps so that they pressed into the skin. In turn, Xane stretched upwards and pulled Ash down, while at the same time his hips lifted.

Oh, fucking hell!
Ginny pressed her lips together to restrain what was building into a full-on need to squeal. The ladies from Deanna Rädsla weren’t holding back. Never mind sparks – Ash and Xane clutching one another like that was damned explosive. Like hottest-thing-I’ve-ever-seen, somebody-turn-on-the-fan-before-we-all-melt hot. Nor was she the only person in the circle caught up in the spell of the kiss. Every set of eyes was glued on them.

They parted slowly, trading silent secrets as they did, and not breaking eye contact until the very last moment.

Ginny folded her arms across her breasts to conceal her bullet-hard nipples. Rock Giant hid his discomfort with a strategically placed jacket, while Dani, Luthor and Elspeth sought refuge in the bottom of their glasses. The only person who didn’t look as if they were about to melt on the spot was Iain.

‘I’m not sure it was necessary to consume each other’s tonsils,’ he complained.

‘I
t was Xane, wasn’t it?’ Ginny whispered into Ash’s ear sometime later. They’d left the Deanna Rädsla van on the pretext of seeing Drunk Alien Funk, some obscure band from Belgium who were playing one of the minor stages. ‘I mean, he was the one who gave you the best frickin’ blowjob of your life, wasn’t he?’ She’d been wondering about that since the night when she and Ash had first met, and he’d honestly only rated her as third on his deliverer-of-mind-blowing-orgasms list.

It hadn’t taken much effort to figure out that one of the two ranked above her was his former girlfriend Connie. The guy was still hung up on her, five … six years on. However, the second name had completely eluded her until now.

He and Xane had just seemed too damned comfortable with one another.

Ash didn’t immediately deny it, which would have absolutely confirmed her theory, but she did feel him stiffen. ‘What makes you think that?’

‘You, the way you look up to him, and the way you were together.’

‘I’m not carrying any sort of torch for him, if that’s what you think.’

She shook her head, denying she believed that. ‘I didn’t say you were. Just that he … Xane was the one who blew your mind and left you confused.’

‘There wasn’t anything confusing about it. He’s an addict. It was one time ’cause the ladies bailed. Need to know more details than that?’

Absolutely. She wasn’t Dani. She didn’t have a meltdown over the idea of two blokes getting one another off. In fact,
she
got off on the idea. She danced in front of Ash, and cuddled up to his front, halting him. She met his gaze and bit her lip. ‘Tell me everything. How it happened. How you feel about it. All the really juicy and totally perverse details. Whether it was just a blowjob or something more.’

‘Babe,’ he replied, kissing her off, ‘I’m not nearly drunk enough to relate that episode.’

‘Phooeey! Why’d you need to be drunk? I’ve never even seen you tipsy.’ She wrapped her arms around his waist and slid her hands inside his clothing. ‘Don’t be a spoilsport. You know it’ll turn me on.’

‘Will it?’ He cocked an eyebrow, seemed to consider, but shook his head.

‘I’ll tell you about the time I happened to bump into a rock star in his dressing room and ended up spending the night with him and his two mates.’

Ash shook his head, making his long hair fall over his face. ‘I already know that one. I don’t want to talk about it, Gin.’

‘But why not? It’s not something to be embarrassed about. You shagged one of your best friends, so what, I married … hope to one day marry one of mine.’ His eyebrows skyrocketed. ‘Too soon to admit that?’ She massaged the knots that had suddenly appeared in his shoulders, noting he didn’t answer either question.

They had walked all the way over to the stage before he said anything. ‘He made me come like it was as easy as breathing, Ginny. There aren’t many people I can say that about, and he was the first post-Connie to make me feel something other than empty afterwards. The thing is, and here’s the rub, the whole episode meant nothing to him. I was just his fix for the night.’

‘But you didn’t actually want it to mean more than that, did you?’

Ash’s face scrunched into a mass of furrows. ‘No. Dealing with Xane’s libido is hell enough from a distance. I just felt sordid and used. And fucking flabbergasted over exactly how hard he made me come.’

‘Bet I can make you come harder.’

His impish grin re-emerged. ‘I’ll bet you can too.’

‘Of course, I might need a little run-up to it.’ Ginny buried her face in his neck and inhaled the delicious mix of man, leather and shower gel. ‘He fucked you in the arse, didn’t he?’ she whispered into his fragrant skin. ‘I’ve only let one man do that to me. He liked it. I didn’t. It was fucking painful.’

Ash kept his lips sealed, only opening them when she prompted him to do so with the tip of her tongue as she sought to deep-kiss him. No matter, his silence and the vivid darker-blue ring around his irises told her everything she needed to know. Pain had not been a factor.

* * *

Having walked all the way to the Pavilion stage, they decided to stay there. They listened. They chatted. Drunk Alien Funk – or Fuck, as Ash branded them – weren’t too bad, although their major gimmick seemed to be a giant inflatable six-breasted alien that their vocalist regularly pretended to hump.

Iain turned up after a little while, claiming the party at the Deanna Rädsla van had broken up, and that Spook had suggested they check out some of the smaller acts as potential support groups for future tours. Ginny wasn’t sure she believed he’d just happened upon them, but since he brought beers they let him stay, though she only sipped hers. She was far more interested in getting Ash naked and down to the onsite swimming lake for some wet and wild fun than she was in getting intoxicated. Also she wasn’t keen on the way Iain seemed to sideline her. She and Ash had been cosy before he’d arrived, cuddling close and teasing one another with illicit touches that made them both giggle and the folks around them prod one another and point out what they were doing. Ash still had his arm around her waist, but his attention was on Iain, who kept talking about things she had no interest in or knowledge of.

‘I’m going to use the little girls’ room,’ she said after a while, leaving Ash to hold her beer bottle. She left them talking, leaning against a set of barriers that were supposed to delineate pathways but had been knocked askew earlier in the day. When she returned, Iain was waiting for her alone, his red and black hair artfully masking one eye.

‘Where’s Ash?’

‘Went for a slash. He’ll be back in a tick.’ Iain held out her beer to her, coaxing her closer by giving the neck of it a gentle shake. She took it, and a couple of swigs. She hoped Ash
was
only going to be a tick, because, no kidding, she didn’t like the way Iain’s fathomless black eyes glittered when he looked at her. After a moment or two, she perched upon the railing.

‘Have you played here before?’ They needed to talk about something, didn’t they? The silence was just too awkward.

‘Yeah.’ He scratched his head. ‘A couple of times. This isn’t my first band. I’ve played in the big leagues before.’

‘I know that. Ash said you used to live together, you and some other guys you knew in college, and that you all used to jam in your kitchen.’

‘I didn’t realise he’d spoken to you about me.’

‘He hasn’t said much.’

Iain tapped his beer bottle against his lip. ‘I guess I’m just surprised he said anything at all. It’s not like he’s wanted to hang with me since I agreed to save his band from ruin. Can you believe they were going to try and tour without a drummer? They’d have been so shit …’ ‘
Shitter
,’ she swore she heard him murmur under his breath. ‘They’re lucky I was free to help out. Not that any of them see it like that. Kind of wish someone would pop their over-inflated egos sometimes.’ He gave her a pursed smile. ‘I know, I should keep my remarks to myself, but they’ve been shitty to me from day one with the exception of Ash. Steve Matlock was a decent drummer, but you’d think he was the only person who knew how to keep a rhythm from the way fucking Xane talks about him.’

‘He lost his best friend,’ she said in Xane’s defence. ‘You’d be looking for someone to take your anger out on if the same happened to you.’

‘Yeah,’ he agreed, bristling so much she felt obliged to concentrate on her beer until he’d retracted some of his spikes. ‘That’s the funny thing about this. I did lose my best friend. I lost him five fucking years ago, right when we were due to make it big. Ash ever tell you how Xane and his arty bunch of losers poached him? He was the hottest up-and-coming guitarist the UK had seen in decades, and they just had some shit guy who could barely play, so they shmoozed the fuck out of him until he jumped ship.’

‘I’m sure that’s not quite how it happened.’ It certainly didn’t tally with how Ash had described his first meeting with Spook to her.

Iain didn’t appear to be listening.

‘We were supposed to make millions. Would have made millions. The deal was already on the table.’

‘You’re doing that now, aren’t you?’ Black Halo were at the top of their game, they’d just rocked a crowd so big she had trouble comprehending the scale of the numbers. There’d been thousands, millions of them …

Iain scowled and his nostrils flared. ‘They’re not my band. You think I want to be one of Xane Geist’s fucking minions, or part of his slut circus? I’d rather choke.’

Ginny did choke, on a mouthful of her drink, which she sputtered down her front. Did Iain imagine she wouldn’t relate this stuff back to Ash and the rest of them? Maybe he assumed he and Ash were so tight Ash wouldn’t believe her. ‘You don’t want to be a permanent member of Black Halo, then?’ Surely he did. Who wouldn’t want to be? If she had any musical talent, she would be.

Iain clapped his hand into the railing she was perched upon, making it wobble. ‘You have to be kidding me. No way, not that they’re going to be around long enough for that to even be an option.’