Undone, Volume 2 (10 page)

Up, back stage, a
couple of photographers were waiting for us. Right, the reason I was
there tonight. It wasn’t to black out from the most intense orgasm
of my life. It was to mug for the cameras.

“Give her a kiss!”
One of them called out to us. Ash looked down at me, devilishly
handsome. His hair rakishly messed up, I knew I’d done that to him,
fisting his locks as he’d eaten me out. It only made him look more
rock ‘n’ roll.

One arm along the small
of my back, the other along my shoulders, Ash swept me into a classic
romantic movie kiss, leaning me back and bringing his lips to mine in
a cherished caress. I forgot we were backstage at a sold-out show,
75,000 people screaming his name. I forgot men were there with
cameras clicking away, capturing every second. I even forgot his band
mates were standing there watching us with a spectrum of disinterest
(keyboard), amusement (drums), and thinly-veiled anger (Connor on
bass). All I knew was I felt like I was in
Gone
with the Wind
or
Casablanca
,
the timeless heroine swept away in the arms of her hero and true
love.

Then it was all over
and Ash was ushered away with the rest of the band to make their
grand entrance.

“Nice job. You’re
good at this.” Lola came up by my side, tugging on the string that
held my helium balloon of joy. “You two almost make it look real.”
Pop, there she’d done it. I came crashing back to reality.

“Can we share him
after the show?” A girl came up to my side in a tube top and mini
skirt. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen someone in an
honest-to-god tube top. I’d watched that movie
Boogie
Nights
a few months ago. She looked like she’d raided
the wardrobe of the actresses playing 70s porn stars. “I want to
suck his face off.”

“I’m just going
to…get a bottle of water.” I excused myself, finding a quieter,
darker spot from which to watch the show.

The man knew how to
perform. From the opening chords to the ending number, Ash had what
looked like every single member of the audience on their feet
screaming and clapping and shouting along with every word. I did it
too, from the sidelines, basking in the adrenaline, almost pinching
myself to prove I was really there, really the VIP guest of this band
I’d been listening to and loving since I was a teenager.

“I’m outta here!”
I sang along with him, enjoying belting out the words I knew by
heart. Everyone did, it was the ultimate fuck-you anthem, perfect for
breaking up or quitting a job or basically any scenario in which you
wanted to exit to rubble with your middle finger held high and proud.
“You never even knew my name!” I yelled.

Ash strutted on stage,
thrusting that pelvis of his. The cameras zoomed in on it again and
again on the jumbotron and every time it happened the arena erupted
in high-pitched screams. The man was sex incarnate. And he wanted me.

After the last song, a
throng of people rushed toward him, surrounding Ash like an amoeba.
“Have to do an interview!” he called out to me above their heads.
“Meet me after?”

“OK,” I called out
after him, breathless, wondering where? When? But he was already out
of sight.

“Come on.”
Seventies porn star girl took my arm and led me through a dark
passageway with a couple other women, then out a side entrance and
into a waiting limo.

“Wait, where are we
going?”

“After-party,” she
explained, pulling me with her into the limo. “He’ll be there.”

We ended up at another
fancy hotel nearby. They were already starting to blend together to
me. I had no idea how Ash made sense of it all, so many hotels, so
many shows. In a cloud of perfume and hair spray, we clustered into
the elevator, several of them already holding drinks they’d fixed
in the limo.

Somehow, I knew back
home my mother’s spidey-sense was tingling. I didn’t know how
she’d know, but I knew she would. She probably had a control panel
in her bedroom, right next to all of her religious icons praying for
my swift marriage and ensuing fertility. Right now, the panic button
was flashing red for High Alert. DEFCON 10: daughter with drunk
groupies heading to hotel suite for band after-party.

Stepping out of the
elevator, I told my mother in my head to shush. I was 24. I’d been
a good girl all my life, and right now this good girl wanted to go
hang out with her rock star boyfriend. Or pretend boyfriend.
Whatever, I wanted to not think so much!

“Have a shot!” tube
top girl shouted at me and I did it, swallowing down the burning
liquid in one fell swoop. I grimaced and she laughed.

“Another!” she
declared.

“Give me a second.”
I retreated to a couch in the corner. Another woman joined me while a
few more cranked up some music—The Blacklist, of course—and
started dancing around the hotel room. One took off her top, then
another, and another carload of women arrived with a few more guys I
didn’t recognize and soon there was a hotel room full of about
twenty people dancing and talking and making out and drinking. No
sign of Ash, though.

“Let the games
begin!” The door burst open and Connor stood there, declaring the
official start of the festivities like a Roman emperor. “You!” he
roared to a man standing behind the bar with some vodka in his hand.
“Bottle, now.”

While the bottle got
hustled over to him, he pointed to two women standing in front of
him, both of them topless. “You two! Let me see some action.” On
command, they wrapped their arms around each other and started making
out, their tongues slipping and sliding together in a messy,
open-mouthed display. The room exploded in a cheer, a circle forming
around them, a few people clapping and cat-calling.

“Grab her tits!”
Connor yelled, tipping back the vodka bottle and emptying what seemed
to be half of it down his throat. The women complied, starting to
play with each other’s breasts. “Give her a good suck!” Connor
called out. One of them dipped her head down and made a big show of
it, grabbing the other woman’s large, fake breast and taking her
nipple into her mouth, licking, then sucking. The crowd went wild,
yelling, egging them on.

“Where’s Ana?”
Connor roared, his eyes roaming the crowd for me. Oh shit. He hadn’t
found me yet. I stood up and inched my way toward the door, hoping I
was hidden. But his eyes lit up with a ferocious gleam when he
spotted me.

“There she is!” He
pointed at me and I froze like a prisoner caught in a searchlight.
“Come on over, luv!” Someone pulled at me and others pushed at me
until I found myself right up next to Connor’s leering, drunk face.
“Want to get the party started, Ana?”

He trailed a finger
along the side of my face. I looked over toward the door, only a few
feet away but he stood between me and it. The crowd seemed to close
in on us, pressing forward, watching, waiting to see what would
happen. They seemed to know Connor liked to put on a show.

Connor brought his hand
down to his belt buckle. “You’ve seen Ash. Now you want to see
how a real man is built?” He started to undo his belt.

“Why do you get all
the fun?” Porn star girl to the rescue! Angry, pushy and no longer
in her tube top, the woman who’d dragged me into this mess now
shoved me out of it. “I want to suck your cock!” she yelled,
dropping down to her knees in front of Connor and taking over where
he’d started.

“Yeah! That’s it!”
He brought his hands to her head. I saw my opening and took it,
literally running out the door.

The car ride home
seemed to take forever, the stretch between Santa Clara and San
Francisco oozing slowly out mile after mile. Shaken, I took the time
to sober up and calm down in the back seat. My phone buzzed a few
times but I needed some time to just breathe and feel grateful I’d
been able to slip out of that party.

Thank God I wasn’t
likely to see much more of Connor. The Blacklist only had one more
show on my PR Romance agenda, on New Year’s Eve. After that, there
would be no reason to spend time with that creep ever again. This
whole deal was hard enough without him harassing me. The library, I
reminded myself. If I kept this up for a month Ash would fund the
library for the next twenty years. I could do this. It was worth it.
I just needed to avoid Connor.

Finally, I pulled out my phone. Ash
had been trying to get ahold of me. He’d texted:

Where are you?

and

Let’s go to my place.

Then

Are you at the party?

Then

You OK?

I texted him back that
I was fine. I told him I was heading back to my hotel. Then I put the
phone away.

He’d wanted me to
join him back at his place, not at the Santa Clara party suite. Well,
maybe the misunderstanding was for the best. Had I met him alone back
at his place, I knew where things would have led. It was better this
way, I told myself. Better to be alone, sobering up and crashing down
hard in a car by myself. Tomorrow I’d go back to New York and have
a few days to detox. The Ash Black detox program. Kind of like those
crash diets where you cut out all the good stuff, no alcohol or
caffeine or sugar or bread. It was supposed to reset your system and
make you never crave the bad stuff again. Only my experience was
after the initial high, it just made my cravings worse.

And tonight, I didn’t
even go through the initial phase of abstinence. The second I climbed
into bed, what did I do? My fingers found my naughty sex and slipped
right in, remembering what Ash had done to me on that piano bench.

He’d pushed me back,
taken my ass in his hands and devoured me like a panther with a fresh
meal. I had no idea it could feel so good. I’d always wondered, of
course, but couldn’t imagine how I’d get past feeling
self-conscious. The few times it had come up with Stan, he’d acted
like we were talking about him eating a poisonous fish. It had been
hard to imagine enjoying it when the act had obviously been so
distasteful to him.

But Ash. He’d clearly
loved every second of it. He’d breathed me in and lapped me up and
made me feel like a rare, exquisite flower that offered
life-sustaining nectar. My fingers down between my slick folds, I
worked myself, remembering how he’d played with my clit, knowing
exactly how and when to push, when to tease. He’d sensed my body’s
responses even better than I did my own, taken me where I hadn’t
even imagined reaching.

I loved how he got a
little rough with me, spreading my legs wide, so wide it almost hurt.
He brought out something in me, some sensuality, a deep desire to
feel possessed by him. To serve and submit.

My breathing quickened.
I brought a hand to my breast, massaging, pinching down on my nipple
the way he had the other day. Pressing deep into my hole, then down
on my clit I worked myself up, up and over. As the ecstasy bucked
through my body, it was his name I called out into the dark recesses
of my hotel room.

Ash

I sat on the couch in
the hotel suite, one girl on my lap, a second to my right, and a
third to my left. A few more danced in front of me, putting on a
show, hoping I’d watch. But all I could think was ‘damn it.’ I
wanted to see Ana again after the show. I wanted her.

I’d headed to the
after-party after I couldn’t find her and didn’t hear from her.
Then my phone had buzzed with rejection. She was in a goddamned car
heading back to S.F. When was the last time I’d been rejected? I
had to search my memory for that one. It had to be thirteen or
fourteen, the years when I’d first met Connor at boarding school in
England. Those upper crust aristocratic Brits had wanted nothing to
do with either of us. At my full height with none of my adult bulk
and muscle, I’d rattled around that cold campus like a ghost.
Seemed the only time people noticed me was to sneer or shove. Thank
God for Connor. Had we not met and started playing music together, I
don’t know what I would have done.

But what was I doing
sitting at an after-party literally covered in pussy thinking about
those dark days?

“You were amazing
tonight.” A girl with candy-red hair and lips whispered into my
ear.

“Thanks.” I have
her waist a squeeze. But then I eased them all off of me and stood
up. The dancing girls lit up with excitement. Was I joining them? But
I disappointed them all, heading through a bedroom with three or four
people making good use of the bed. Not surprisingly, Connor was one
of them, snorting coke off of a boob. Again?

“Where you going, old
man?” He called out, a devilish grin on his face, a trace of powder
on his chin. He’d taken to calling me that lately, with an edge. I
didn’t like thinking about it. He and I had always been so close.
But more than once over the past year I’d wanted to ask, Aren’t
you getting tired of this?

I mean, take snorting
coke off of a boob. It wasn’t so much that it had gotten boring,
but it wasn’t exactly like the first time, now was it? I hadn’t
done coke in a couple of years. I didn’t like how paranoid and edgy
it made me. And I could think of much better things to do with
breasts. But Connor didn’t seem to be slowing down, not one bit. In
fact, the more I did, the more he seemed to speed up, as if daring me
to say something.

I waved him off and
headed into the bathroom, splashing some cold water on my face.
Drying off, I looked at myself in the mirror. I squared my shoulders
and studied my reflection. Broad chest, I filled out a t-shirt well
enough to get girls wet even before I picked up a guitar. I’d come
a long way since those scrawny, lonely, adolescent days. Hadn’t I?
I thought Ana had enjoyed herself tonight. I certainly had. And I
couldn’t have been more clear, I wanted more of her. A lot more. My
fingers twitched and itched to be on her skin again. I could still
taste her, feel her quivering on my tongue.