Riding for a Fall (Get Your Rocks Off Book 2) Read online

  Well, I knew what I wanted to do now. His promises were whispered against the skin of my neck, the vibrations, the intent reverberating all throughout my body. My nipples pebbled painfully, the lace of my bra rasping against the sensitive points. His hand went to my hip, pulling me hard against him, as his lips began to brush the shell of my ear.

  “Tell me what you want, my sweet blooming flower, and I’ll give it all to you.”

  “I want it all.” There were those fucking words again, words that prompted a string of inarticulate growls from the audience. Fuck, why did I keep saying that? It was a red rag to a bull, and I was fairly sure I didn’t want to get gored.

  “Then you shall have it,” Aen whispered back.

  “Well, why don’t you start here?” Jake said, his voice cracking. He leaned over to get as close as he could to us. “You smell so damn good…”

  “But I want to know what the fuck is going on.”

  My words cut like a cold knife through the tension in the room. Whatever spell had been cast over the guys broke, and the lot of them started to move.

  “What have you told her?” Liam asked as he sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “Nothing, as instructed,” was Johnno’s sharp reply.

  “We don’t need to do this. You’re giving crucial information to our bloody enemies,” Lucas said.

  “Well, we’ll just have to sway her loyalties then, won’t we?” Billy said with a purr. “Give me a few hours with her. She won’t say anything to anyone except at our say so.”

  “Dear gods,” Aen said, his fingers tightening around me, “I haven’t seen the like in an age. You’re a quintet.”

  “Well, duh. Everyone knows we’re a five piece band,” Jake said.

  “No, and what a pathetic attempt at misdirection. You’re bonded, the five of you. You share power. That’s why you insist Kira stays with you. If Johnathon resides elsewhere, it’ll weaken you. Well, well, flower. I hope your little involuntary outburst is true, because your bond with your preceptor will link you to all four of his quintet.”

  Well, fuck.

  “Piss off the rest of you,” Johnno said to his band. “That includes you, Jake. Fucking hell, you guys are like bulls in a china shop.”

  “Honesty is always the best policy, Johnno. You know that,” Liam said. He got off the bed and pointed to the front of the bus. “Let’s get this shit on the road. I need a fucking beer.”

  I jumped slightly when the door clicked closed.

  “Everything will be fine,” Aen said in a low purr. His voice felt like a balm for my nerves, but I couldn’t let it stroke me, let anyone stroke me. I rolled into a seated position, but Aen kept his hand on my waist, anchoring me.

  “Do you mind if I take a seat?” Johnno asked as the bus began to sway. Evidently, we’d finally got on the road. I nodded, and he sat with his back against one of the walls, one knee bent up, his hand rubbing his face. “This has all been such a fuck up.” He looked at me with a kind of scraped bare expression I was beginning to associate with many of the people I’d seen since I transitioned. It was hard for me, but it seemed everyone around me wasn’t unscathed either. “Fuck, if I’d just been able to get to you the day you transitioned. If you’d changed on the road…”

  “And what difference would that have made?”

  “You wouldn’t be sitting all the way over there, for one,” he replied. “You’d seek me like you do Marlow, feeling that pull. I’d have been able to bring you into the group, stage it, protect you, let you find your feet slowly.”

  I wanted that too. I wanted to find the groove I’d had as a human, where I woke up every day knowing where I fit in the world, what my purpose was, however small. But I would. I looked around me, at the big window partially covered by a blind and saw a tiny glimpse of a whole other country out there. I could have gotten caught up in the bullshit and the half truths, but right now, I was on a fucking adventure and no one was going to take that away from me. So I told them that. Aen’s hand tightened on mine, and something terrible flashed across Johnno’s face, only to disappear behind a neutral mask—hope.

  “I’m Alice in Wonderland, I’m convinced,” I said. “But I need some tools to survive this. Why would Liam want me in bed with the rest of you? Like if he was looking for a stray fuck, it would be just a one night thing but that’s not what he was talking about?”

  “Power,” the two of them said, then snorted.

  “With fae, it’s always about power,” Johnno said.

  “What is that? You showed me the sparks thing this morning. How will sleeping next to me help with that?”

  “We need to go further back than that. We need to talk about what power is and how it’s generated in fae. We are the children of the gods, and through that link, we can touch, more or less successfully, the divine. Turn around and sit on Aen’s lap.”

  “That’s where the power is?”

  Johnno smirked at that. “No, but we generate power through emotion, sensation, creation, and feeling. In some ways, we’re like generators. We take that small part of humanity we possess and use it to create power. Let Aen show you.”

  I turned around shyly, finding Aen already seated and ready for me. His smile was crooked and somehow vulnerable as I shuffled closer. The bus lurched at that precise moment and threw me into his arms, something that had him laughing.

  “Your eagerness flatters me, my flower,” he said, holding me tight.

  I had all sorts of thoughts that just came slamming to a halt as I felt the ways our bodies pressed against each other. My hand went to stroke that too red hair, his smile widening, and a barely perceptible nod encouraged me to bridge the gap. I was rewarded the moment I did, by the silky texture on my fingers, at the lazy slitting of his eyes, much like a purring cat’s would. He emitted a faint purr as I went back for more, the column of his throat bared as I thrust my hand into his hair, grabbing great wanton handfuls.

  This was weird, I knew that. The band, their maneuverings, Johnno’s eyes on mine as I stroked the hair of one man after having slept with yet another.

  “Kiss him if you want to,” Johnno said. “But feel it, the rise. Not just of love or lust, but of power. To me, it feels like a well filling up or a spring bubbling over but…”

  His words trailed away as I shifted, slowly, carefully. Kissing Aen wasn’t like doing so with another fae. The otherworldly beauty most possessed still fit within human parameters, even if it was up at the supermodel range, but Aen was so much more. He could never be mistaken for human, what with his colouring, bone structure, and lambent eyes. He was a light and I was a moth, so I leaned in closer.

  It was a cliché to have fireworks go off behind a couple’s head as they kiss in movies, but I now knew just how that felt. A muffled cry stuck in my throat, and I couldn’t pull my mouth away, or stop the slow, steady parting of our lips. The closest approximation to my mind was putting your finger in a light socket, but if this is what it was like, I felt cheated. I’d have done it over and over again, until every electrical wire in the house was burned out.

  I understood the power thing now as sensation smashed into me. You’d think it would overwhelm the feel of him—his lips, his hands, his tongue as our mouths moved. Instead, it was as if we kissed while a fourteen-piece symphony was played in the same room, a raucous counterpoint that swept through my whole body. My thighs spread further, and his hand went to the small of my back as the ache began to build. Usually, sex was the stroking of this or the sucking of that, a million tiny touches building and building, but this went beyond everything.

  “There’s a magic when we touch,” Johnno said, his voice close now, but I couldn’t look up. He was right, we were building stuff between us, Aen and I. “I’m going to touch you now. Just put my hand on your shoulder to show you what I mean. It’s OK, it’ll—”

  Our eyes turned as one to see a light pour into Johnno down his arm, then travelling through his body. He panted wildly as the glow continue
d to spread, an ecstatic expression replacing the former one of fear as his back bowed.

  I crawled free of Aen and felt his hands slide over me, not holding me in place but marking my passing, my back arching under his touch. I went to Johnno, watching him twitch as our borrowed power rode him, unable to stop myself from stroking the side of his face just to see the interplay of light as I did so. His groans were choked back and stuttering, tiny little exclamations of pleasure or cries for help, I couldn’t tell.

  “Careful, my flower,” Aen said, lying down beside the other man. “You’ll burn him out. Just pull it back inside you.”

  It? My mind, only partially online, struggled with that. I could feel the gentle insistent push of Aen’s request, but I had no idea what he meant.

  “You’re pushing everything we have to give to him. Part of your generous nature, but he can only take so much before something irreparable happens. Don’t break the connection, not unless you want to really hurt someone. Just pull back. Focus on the world outside, what you can see beyond the window. On the sounds beyond the door, the feel of the bed under your hands, the stroke of mine. Come back, Kira. Come back to me.”

  I hadn’t seen the persistent haze of thrumming pleasure colouring my view of the surroundings until it all snapped back. I was shaking, my arms unable to support my weight as I flopped down, face forward.

  “Skin to skin,” someone said, covering my back with their body, another moving into my arms. We just lay there, listening to the discordant, monotonous music of the road, until we came back down.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw Johnno staring at me, a curious expression of worry and care on his face. A small smile came soon after.

  “That was…not what I was expecting. Kira, that was…”

  His voice trailed away. Of course, it did. There weren’t words for it, and my memory of it was hazy, as if it was beyond my brain’s comprehension. I was conscious of having touched something bigger, higher than what we were, and that was it. Instead, we just stared at each other, and as that went on, I felt like an understanding passed between us, though I’d never be able to say what. He reached for me, then paused, Aen shifting behind me.

  “You can touch her,” he said. “That took me by surprise, but I’ll siphon any excess energy off now.”

  “Is that OK?” Johnno said to me.

  “God, you’re the guitarist with my favourite band. If you had any idea of how many fantasies I had about that. Oh, wait, you probably do.”

  He cocked an eyebrow at that. “Everything I saw featured Liam front and centre, nothing for the rest of us. Drove us mad.”

  “Well, he’s not here now.”

  You should never say the devil’s name, for fear of summoning him. Johnno stroked my hair, then leaned forward, depositing an almost chaste kiss on my mouth. I felt the surge of energy he’d talked about, a wave now rather than a flood. When we pulled back, his eyes sparkled for a few seconds. I didn’t get to ask why, as just then, the door slammed open.

  “Meeting, in here or out there, now. I want to know what the hell that was,” Liam said.

  He seemed fairly intent, throwing himself down on the booth seat when we emerged, but the rest of the band obviously didn’t feel the same. Jake was rubbing himself all over the vinyl, a crazy grin on his face, his eyes muzzy when they finally opened.

  “Goddamn! You’re not a butterfly, you’re bloody Mothra! What the fuck was that, and how can we get some more?”

  “Shut up, Jake,” Lucas said. He drained his beer in one long mouthful, then threw it into the nearby bin, but even I could see he was shaken. He snatched Jake’s can next and made short work of that as well.

  “Sit down,” Liam said, frowning when I took a seat in the booth on the other side of the aisle, followed by Aen and Johnno, but he wasn’t the worst affected. That was Billy.

  If I had to give him a non human designation, it would have been a demon. He was darkly seductive, in control at all times, and I couldn’t help but remember the sight of something shifting inside him when I was filming him. I’d dismissed it before, not realising there was this whole other world of paranormal creatures, but now I was forced to reconsider it.

  He wouldn’t look at me at first, the muscles in his jaw flexing, his fingers tracing shapes on the table that made me itch to do the same. When he glanced up, perhaps feeling the weight of my gaze on him, I saw something I’d never expected to see—fear. This was a man shaken to the core, and I couldn’t work out why our little interlude would get that kind of reaction from him. I got they were linked, Jake made it clear they’d felt at least some of what we had generated, but why would power like that scare him? I didn’t get a chance to ask, as Liam had obviously decided that he’d waited long enough.

  “Anyone want to tell me what that was about? You’re still unaligned, so that wasn’t fucking amazing sex slamming into us like a Mack truck.”

  “Fucking felt like it,” Jake said, resting his head on Liam’s shoulder, only to have it shoved off.

  “You asked me to start orientating her to this life. I was showing her how we share energy, using Aen as she seems more comfortable with him.” This earned Johnno a growl. “I dunno what happened, if it was him, her, or something else, but it damn near fried my brain.” He flexed his hands, as if he was shocked he still could, then twisted them into a gesture I couldn’t follow. A great lariat of golden sparkles shot out from his hands, flicking out in a loop over the rest of the band’s heads and sending points of light skittering over their skin, much to Jake’s delight, before yanking it back.

  “This you?” Liam asked Aen.

  He looked down at me, tipping my chin up and then brushing a thumb over my lips. I wanted to open them up, suck him inside, something that made him smile wickedly.

  “Some, but not all. You don’t understand what you have, wannabe Lord of Hartley. Kira’s something beyond measure.”

  “Care to let me know what that means?”

  Aen finally looked Liam’s way, his fingers tightening around mine. We all tensed, wanting to hear his answer. As if aware he had a captive audience, he just smiled, bright and brilliant.

  “You haven’t earned that yet, Hartley. You have a small fledgling thing of a court that you want to build into a real power. You want to throw off the yoke of the Rutherglen, presumably due to a litany of petty and not so petty insults. But you are brutish and ham-fisted in your dealings with Kira. You think you can force…what? An attraction? A pull? I don’t think you even know. You just reach for her, clumsy as a child, wanting to snatch up a toy before anyone else does.”

  “You’re in my territory, whatever the hell you are, and so is she. I need to know whose side you’re on.”

  “Hers,” Aen replied simply.

  “Why?” I said finally. While I loved that Aen was standing by me, and seeing him slap down Liam was well worth the price of admission, I was beginning to feel like a bone fought over by dogs. The surprise on the band’s face was a given, but I hadn’t expected it of Aen.

  His brows twitched for a moment, then he said, “Because you woke me up.”

  I didn’t get a chance to reply or investigate that further, as he kissed my forehead, leaving a burning sensation in its wake, before he said, “Look after her until I return,” to Johnno and then disappeared.

  Liam just blinked at this, then fixed me square in his sights for the first time since we’d emerged.

  “Fuck this,” he said, eyes running over me. “It’s time to start working out what we have.”

  He got to his feet, obviously going to approach me, but Johnno was up and blocking his way before he could get any closer.

  “No.”

  “No, brother?”

  “No. Not like this. You don’t have to break everything to see how it works.”

  They were evenly matched, in height, power, even intensity. They stared each other down, before Liam finally broke away.

  “Fine, but on your head be it. Make her ours and
soon. We can’t afford for that little powder keg to go off and pull in all the things with sharp teeth wanting a taste. I’ve already been informed that Duke Franklin and his crew are coming on board for a few guest spots, and that was from just having a quick sniff at her. We need to get some sleep. We’re performing tonight.”

  And with that, I watched the other members of the band move towards the bedroom at the back, Johnno shaking his head and smiling when I couldn’t help but watch shirts get pulled off over heads and shoes toed off.

  “I need my camera,” I mumbled without even thinking about it. That urge to record the pretty was a welcome impulse that had been missing for too long.

  “And something comfortable to sleep in. You’ll need to be sharp tonight. Rutherglen wants promo shots on the website pronto, and anything else you’ve got besides. We’ll be up to a ridiculous hour with the first after party. It’s always a big one.”

  “How do I sleep? In a strange bed, with The fricking Changelings and a whole new job?” Johnno took my hand when he heard the waver in my voice and rubbed my knuckles. “And what the actual fuck was that with Aen?”

  “Grab your camera and something comfortable,” he insisted. “Your gear will be in the spare bunk. If you can’t get to sleep, I’ll help.” My eyebrows shot up at that, but he just laughed. “Magic, love. I know some soothing spells.”

  “Magic Valium? You definitely need to teach me that one.”

  “When we test your power a bit more. Don’t want you sending whole cities to sleep for a year and a day.”

  I looked down at what Marlow had provided for pyjamas, tugging down at what felt like ridiculously small shorts again, but it didn’t produce any more fabric. The old band shirt I was wearing as a nightshirt was almost longer than the shorts. I shook my head, grabbing my camera that I’d left on the bathroom sink, then opened the door and went to the bedroom without pausing. Otherwise, I’d never make it.

  That lasted as quickly as it took me to open the door, because damnnnn… Just as I’d imagined, there were half-naked bodies everywhere, the guys having stripped down to underwear or shorts in my absence. The late morning light caressed their bodies, picking out the details of the many tattoos and the long lean shapes of their muscles. I raised the camera without even thinking about it, causing Liam to scowl.