Wild Thing Read online

  So many keyboards.

  All of them with the wrong numbers of keys. None of these keyboards had the standard eighty-eight keys of a piano. From a quick estimate of the octaves, the biggest one had seventy-six, and the smaller ones above and to both sides held anywhere from twenty-four to fifty-six keys.

  Her hands felt cramped as soon as she stretched them onto the ivories.

  Or in this case, as she stretched her fingers onto the yellowed plastics. Rade’s instrument needed a good cleaning.

  Centerstage, Xan grabbed his microphone off the stand and called out above Tryp’s drumming and Cadell’s guitar. “Folks, we’ve had a problem. Rade and Grayson, who play the keyboards and bass, ate some bad shellfish in Maryland last night.”

  Yeah, telling the crowd that The Terror Twins were crapping blood was less embarrassing than telling them that they were too fucked up to play because they couldn’t handle their shit.

  Georgie was learning rock and roll lingo already.

  The crowd hooted its boos, and somebody yelled, “Fuck Maryland!”

  Xan continued, “So rather than cancel the show—”

  A collective gasp sucked the oxygen from the arena. Georgie could have sworn that the air withdrew like the ocean pulling back between waves.

  “—I asked my friend Faith here to fill in on the keyboards.” Xan Valentine gestured to poor little Georgiana, hunched shock-stiff behind the banks of piano keys.

  Georgie told her arm to rise—wave, damn it—and she managed a wan acknowledgment to the thousands of bobbing heads and eyes shining in the dark.

  They cheered.

  Of course, they cheered. Xan wasn’t ending the show.

  The revised set list taped to her keyboards fluttered in the blast from the cheering crowd, and their screams felt like hammers beating on Georgie’s ears.

  Just five songs were written on the list in Xan’s precise handwriting.

  She heard Tryp settle into a rhythm, and Cadell’s intro for “Nine Levels of Tortured Souls” wailed from his guitar.

  Up on the riser, Rhiannon stood in a dim pool of light, staring down at Georgie. The warm-tinted light glinted on her scarlet hair.

  Okay, “Nine Levels.” Georgie knew this one. This was mainly just rhythm chords pounding along to the drumbeats. The cramping pain in her shoulders eased.

  She glanced up as Cadell nodded to her, and her fingers settled on the keys.

  And she punched them down.

  The chords rang softly through a wedge monitor speaker on the floor by her feet, jarring her for just a second because the sound was coming from the wrong direction. When she played the piano, the hammers hit the strings in the body of the piano just past her fingertips, and even her electronic keyboard had speakers on the top of the case.

  Georgie slammed the next beat down, and she played.

  Up in front of her, Xan sang to the audience, leaning into the silvery microphone on the stand and playing a low beat on the bass guitar. The blond ends of his hair fell down his back, moving as he turned his head to sing to the various sections of the audience.

  They all stared at him, entranced.

  Georgie’s shoulders relaxed further, and her fingers found the keys. She played the chords, but she had heard this particular song through her earbuds a hundred times by now, studying Xan’s voice and range and just to hear him. She began adding in the fills at the ends of the lines.

  By the time Cadell strummed his guitar for the intro of the next song, “Lay Your Ghosts To Rest,” Georgie played the keyboard lines with him. Xan glanced back with a sly smile on his chiseled face.

  Georgie concentrated on her fingers and on watching Cadell and Tryp for cues, and she survived the first four songs on the setlist.

  The last song was “Alwaysland,” Xan’s closing solo where he drew down the energy of the crowd rather than let them riot and storm the barricades. He lifted the bass guitar from around his body and leaned it into a rack with five other, similar guitars.

  Tryp and Cadell were already jogging to the front of the stage for their curtain call. Cadell reached back, holding out his hand to her.

  She shook her head. Georgie wasn’t a band member, and she didn’t want to stand on the lip of the stage, hanging over the pit of the audience.

  Xan said something to Cadell, and he turned back to the audience. The four of them—Xan, Cadell, Tryp, and Rhiannon—lifted their hands and bowed, then ran off into the darkness, stage left.

  Georgie picked her way down the steps, squinting down at the faint glow of the tape on the edges. The stage lights had dazzled her eyes, and blue and fuchsia spots wove in front of the black steps edged with pale lines. A high tone rang in her ears, close to an F-sharp.

  In the wings, Xan caught her hand as she arrived, leaned down, and whispered something against her skin.

  “What?” she yelled, her voice sounding flat even in her own deafened ears.

  Xan laughed and looked down at her face. He said more loudly, enunciating, “Do the encore with me.”

  “You always do that one alone. You don’t need me.”

  “Our version of ‘Alwaysland’ is fantastic,” he said. “I want to record it in a studio someday.”

  “I made it through the set. Just let me go.”

  “Come on,” Xan held onto her hand and turned to tell Jonas something before he led her into the darkness of the stage again.

  She followed him.

  Later, she told herself that he overwhelmed her, that he ambushed her, that it wasn’t because sipping at the crowd’s roar appealed to her.

  They walked through the dim light to the stage, but the lights above brightened. Georgie was able to see the steps to the keyboard array as she climbed this time, lessening the chance of a horrendous mishap.

  The crowd’s chant smoothed to a sustained cheer.

  Xan climbed up beside her.

  “Shouldn’t you be down there?” She pointed to centerstage, but the downstage area was still dark.

  “Not this time.” Xan walked along the back of the risers and snagged the stool from Tryp’s drum kit, carrying it in one hand by the base. Setting it behind her, he faced the audience.

  A roadie ran over with a microphone, handing it up to Xan where he perched on the stool, his long, slim legs planted on the floor.

  As Georgie settled into the keyboards, adjusting her chair so she could reach the two levels of keys, Xan trailed his fingers down her arm. “Like Rachmaninoff,” he said.

  “Right.” She glanced over and, while she was turned away from the audience like that, had a moment to really look at him.

  He was definitely Xan Valentine, all wild energy and sharp edges, his knee bouncing beside her legs, but his hand, soft on her elbow, wasn’t. Xan didn’t touch like that. He grabbed, he held her down or against a wall, and he plundered her body for everything she had.

  Even though Xan was surveying the audience, he caught her eye and smiled at her.

  Xan focused only on the crowd.

  In his metaphor, Alex was blending with Xan along their continuum.

  But Xan always performed.

  Georgie set her fingers on the keys, summoned the music from wherever it hid inside her, and played the opening notes.

  The crowd stilled, their screams dying away.

  Georgie looked away from the keys and her hands, to Xan.

  His stool was set higher than hers, and he sang over her head to the audience. His words floated over her, meshing with the lush music emerging from her chest and her hands, sending both out to the audience, separated from them by only a few feet of darkness.

  Georgie sneaked a peek at the crowd stacked into the arena around them—all of them focusing down on her and Xan like thousands of scavengers—and went back to concentrating on her hands.

  Xan sang to them, “While I live, while I breathe,” but his hand slid around Georgie’s back. He held his warm palm and fingers there, his hand a caress on her spine. His hoarse voice was not q
uite as wrecked as usual, maybe because the second set had been so short, but she winced to hear him hurting.

  Georgie played the song without thinking once about what her hands were doing on the keys or what the audience was seeing, only thinking about Alex’s hand on her back.

  She lifted her fingers, and the song fell out of the air.

  Xan took Georgie by the hand and led her to the edge of the stage, and they bowed before the clamoring crowd. The swarm of them watched her, their eyes following her, and she caught her breath that she had somehow ended up in front of an audience, playing music, and not choking to death.

  The lights doused, and Xan grabbed her hand as they ran backstage. He laughed as he grabbed his duffel bag from Jonas. “You were magnificent! Come on. It’s another damned runner.”

  Tryp met them at the edge of the tunnel, blocking their path.

  Xan asked him, “Shouldn’t you be in the cars?”

  “Who the hell is she?” Tryp demanded, pointing at Georgie. He turned. “Do I know you? Should I know you?”

  “No,” Georgie said. “I’m just a pre-law undergrad. I’m not a musician.”

  “Bullshit. I was at The Colburn School for piano. I know everyone. Where did you study?”

  “Nowhere,” she said.

  “Tanglewood,” Xan said, stroking his hand down her back again, “for performance. She’s good enough to have gone to any conservatory she wanted, but she wasn’t afforded the opportunity.”

  “Oh.” Tryp stepped back. “I’m sorry.”

  Xan said, “She’s incognito. Come on. Let’s go to the cars before we’re blocked in for fucking hours.”

  Georgie ran.

  She wanted to laugh because Xan’s English accent always went Northern working-class Brit when he said fucking, all N’c’stle consonants and no vowels, but they tore through the tunnels, racing for the cars.

  Tryp ran beside them, his long legs reaching for the ground like a rangy colt. Xan held her hand as she ran, pulling her. She gripped a handful of her skirt, keeping it away from her feet and these stupid high heels that wobbled and slid every time she pushed her heels at the slick cement floor.

  Jonas ran behind them. His shoes pounding the floor echoed on the walls and overhead lights.

  Xan called back, “How are those two assholes doing?”

  “Still stoned,” Jonas yelled. “We sent them back to the hotel.”

  Three dark SUVs idled in the parking garage, yellow sodium lights striping the glossy paint on the roofs and hoods.

  Tryp dove into the first one, and Xan veered, pulling Georgie to the middle car. The security guys running behind them turned for the trailing one.

  Xan pushed Georgie into the open door and slammed the door behind them as the SUV lunged away from the curb.

  He turned to her. “You were magnificent,” he grated out, his voice harsh in his throat. “Truly phenomenal. Performing unrehearsed is damn-near impossible, and you pulled it off.” His voice cracked on the last word.

  “Don’t say anything. Just cool down.” After the last few weeks, his post-concert recovery had become routine.

  He nodded, and his duffel bag on the floor began buzzing.

  “That’s Rhiannon. Cool down with her.”

  He fished through the bag for his phone and wrapped the thin blanket around himself, but he had already begun shaking.

  Georgie cuddled into his body, trying to warm him up. He wrapped his arms around her, singing low scales, and his body hummed under her chest as the SUV drove into the night.

  CANCELLATIONS

  Xan Valentine

  After the short but bumpy SUV ride to the hotel, the elevator whined a lonely, sharp-edged keen and lifted them up the tall hotel to the penthouse, which Xan had secured for the night. He had been dipping into his own funds more and more often for such extravagances, rationalizing that Georgie was his co-writer and thus counted as a band member and thus their room per-diem should be doubled or more.

  Rationalizing the expense didn’t quite reach all the way to using Killer Valentine’s money to pay for the penthouse, however. If the tour didn’t turn at least a modest profit, he would have a hard time justifying it to his family’s wealth managers.

  His Grace Alex de Valentinois was intruding.

  Xan drew himself more tightly inward, knitting himself together.

  He was a fucking rock star after a fucking show, and he would swill the Dom Perignon and fuck the gorgeous creature beside him until the front lobby clerks heard her screaming his name because he was a fucking rock star.

  He told his phone, “Call Yvonne.” After the rings, Xan asked, “How are the assholes?”

  “Better than if they were alone in some closet, cleaning their guns so the shadow men won’t get them,” she said.

  The elevator doors opened, and Xan took Georgie by the hand to their room. He said into the phone, “I’d rather have you with them than running around town. Cancel the appearances tonight.”

  “You sure about that?” she sighed. “I always hear about it the next day.”

  “No regrets tomorrow. Cancel everything.”

  “Rest your voice. See you at ten tomorrow morning. Two phone interviews and a phone conference with Elektra’s A and R lady. Nothing in-person. I booked a conference room at the hotel for the calls.”

  “Excellent. Tomorrow, then.” He slipped the phone into his pocket and poked the keycard into the door reader. He barely shut the door behind himself when Georgie grabbed his arm and spun him against the wall, pulling him down by his shirt to kiss her.

  Her soft mouth touched his, a bright silvery taste on her tongue that sounded like chimes in his ears, and the energy of the stage ignited in him again. The cold shock of the black noise of the car’s engine coupled with the stage screaming in his ears had worn off the frantic edges of the performance adrenaline. The noise crushed him every night like a vise around his lungs, after the fire of performing had polished his passion to a bright shine.

  He hated the freezing cold that shocked through him after the violence of performing. It felt like he was disintegrating, like the other one was trying to blast through.

  Xan grabbed Georgie around the waist with one arm, turned them both, and pressed her against the wall with his body. She struggled, trying to turn them back, but Xan was a fucking rock star brimming with the taste of fire and shining golden light behind his eyes.

  His Grace, Duke Alexandre de Valentinois might have allowed her to take the lead, but Alex wasn’t there.

  WHO’S DOMMING WHO

  Georgie

  When Xan slammed her back against the wall, Georgie fought to flip him back over, but his muscles strained against her body. He kissed her hard, his mouth grinding against her lips, and he stroked down her back, past that place on her lower back where his warm hand had rested during “Alwaysland” that felt sensitive, like she had been sunburned there, down to her ass. He lifted her, dragging her leg around himself, and pushed his body between her legs, grinding his jeans against her clit and already sending shocks up her spine.

  Desire grabbed her, stealing away thought. Her heart thudded in her chest. As she had for months, when Xan pinned her to a wall or a bed or bent her over a chair, when his hands possessed her body, she gave up control.

  He backed off for just a second, his dark eyes glazed over, but his eyes locked on hers. “I should shower.”

  Georgie could barely see him through the haze of passion swimming in her head, and she grabbed his shirt with both her fists and dragged him down to her again. Whiskey lingered in his mouth, a dark, smoky taste that she drove her tongue into, and he groaned and crushed her closer to himself. A musky, male scent and the last dregs of his sweet lemon cologne drifted out of his clothes, but his sweat from the show hadn’t turned sour yet. She nipped his neck and inhaled, breathing him in.

  His hands ran over her, first clenching her ass, lifting her farther like he was trying to fuck her through their clothes, dragging her over
his jeans, then up her waist and shoulders, then to her breasts, filling his hands with them and using his palms over her nips.

  He lifted her again and ran his teeth down her neck, biting her skin over her pulse and snagging the skin on her shoulder with his teeth.

  Xan grabbed handfuls of her dress and strained.

  “Xan! You’ll rip it!” she gasped.

  The bodice tore gracelessly, coming away in chunks at the seams. He growled, “Boris will buy you five more tomorrow.”

  “Well, in that case—” She reached for his shirt, intending to yank it and pop the buttons off.

  Xan shoved her higher up the wall and pressed his mouth to her boob, pushing aside her bra cup and tonguing her until her nip tightened in his mouth. His shirt was still in her fists, but she couldn’t pull it apart like she wanted because his mouth and tongue swirled around her boob, humid and hot and licking her. She grabbed him around his neck, holding his mouth on her, and felt him chuckle through her flesh.

  He let Georgie slide down the smooth wall and he kissed her mouth again, hot and rough, and he twisted her arm over her head like he was spinning her while dancing. She turned, and he pushed her against the wall again, pressing himself against her back, and he tore more of the dress off her. The cloth cut into her skin as he ripped pieces of it away, tearing jagged swathes of cloth off until rags fell around her feet.

  Xan pulled her hips back, grinding her ass against his pelvis through her underwear. His mouth scraped the tendons of her shoulder, almost biting down, but his teeth dragged her bra strap over her shoulder, first one, then the other, and he held her against his body.

  She struggled again, trying to turn because she wanted him in her arms, under her thighs, but he ground up against her again, laughing under his breath.

  “Let me turn around,” she said.

  “Use your safe word if you want me to stop,” he said, his voice harsh in her ear.

  No way in Hell did she want that, so she shoved her butt back against his cock, and he growled again.