“Ah!” I screamed and came, engulfed in waves of pleasure, pounding through me, lifting my hips right off the bench. He milked every last drop of orgasm out of me, drinking it down like he’d never get enough, licking and sucking and savoring every quiver, every shudder.
A knock sounded on the door. “It’s time!” A loud, male voice sounded from out in the hallway.
Whoops. He’d probably heard the whole thing.
Ash sat up between my knees, a triumphant grin on his gorgeous face. “That’s going to happen again. The second I get you alone after this show.”
Laughing, I sank back against the bench, completely spent. He might kill me if he did that to me again. “I don’t think I can take it, Ash.”
“Oh, we’re going to push all your boundaries, Ana.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me up to sitting, then standing, and helped me get dressed. “This is just the beginning.”
Fully clothed but in a daze, he led me down where the rest of the band was waiting.
“Where you been, old man?” Connor looked at Ash, then at me and his gaze turned accusatory. “Got it.” He nodded, tight-lipped.
“We ready?” Ash asked the group and the other two answered with fist-bumps and ‘hell-yeah!’ Two out of three wasn’t bad, I guessed.
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 dipp
ed 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.