“'Party Animal!’” the girl next to me screamed. “'Party Animal’, sing 'PartyAnimal’!”
“'Jenny’, sing 'Jenny’again,” hollered the lady on my right. “Sing 'Jenny’.”
“I can’t hear you!” Robbie yelled, cupping his ear and stretching the microphone out farther. “What do you want? Tell me.”
I struggled to decipher an overwhelming request through the mayhem of song titles hollered out.
“'Strawberries and Screams’?” Robbie asked, standing upright and grinning. “You want 'Strawberries and Screams’again?”
“Yes, yes.” My two neighbors yelled with new enthusiasm. “'Strawberries and Screams’.”
The guitarists picked up the first funky lines of 'Strawberries and Screams’, a record that had been played to death on UK radio and was obviously still a fan favorite. It wasn’t one of mine. Hearing Robbie sing about making love to a redhead with pale skin and fruity nipples made my skin itch and my jaw clench.
“Excuse me,” I said to the girl who’d jostled me. She took no notice so I pushed past her into the aisle. I’d had enough.
I trotted down the steps and walked into the deserted corridor. I could still make out Robbie’s voice filling the stadium, swirling around his crowd the way it used to swirl around me. The beating music vibrated into my soul, dragging a deeply buried memory to the forefront of my mind.
I stopped and leaned back against the cold wall. Dropped my head into my hands and braced my knees. I was at the mercy of my mind’s eye, and like flicking a switch I was suddenly there again.
Robbie’s face hovered over me and the gorgeous scent of his naked skin enveloped me. He ducked and murmured hot words into my ear. Hot words that spoke of how he felt and exactly what dirty deeds he wanted to do to me. My heart fluttered and a flush of tickles traveled over my scalp as his warm breath shimmied across my neck. He shifted his weight, his long, naked body solid and lean as he pressed me into the mattress in his small bedroom.
“Jenny,” he murmured, sliding his hands between our bodies as his legs eased mine apart. “Jenny, Jenny, it’s only you, always you.”
His fingertips created a tingle across the flesh of my stomach. His touch was so delicate, so full of love. I loved him too. My heart was swollen with it. He kept moving his hand over sensitive skin as his kisses headed lower down my neck and trailed across my breasts. He touched my intimate folds of flesh, separating them and searching out my clit. I thought I might burst with desire for him, with my need to become part of him, fade into him.
I let out a small moan of longing as he left my clit and pushed into me, filling me, claiming me with his fingers. But it wasn’t his fingers I wanted. I wanted more. I squirmed, searching for his erect cock. Desperate for him.
“Patience, Jenny,” he said with an amused lilt.
But Robbie was not a patient man, and the next thing I felt was the smooth, round head of his cock pushing into my wet channel. He always got it just right, slow and steady while I stretched around him. I groaned and hunted for his mouth, plunged my tongue in to find his as I locked my ankles at the base of his spine.
My palms traveled over the smooth, soft skin of his shoulders. His body was so perfect, so strong and so amazingly in tune with mine. He upped the pace, shoving in and out as I clung to him with all my strength. My breath caught as the blinding pleasure of the orgasm he’d created deep within me flooded my veins and strummed my nerve endings. In a tsunami of ecstasy, we came together, crying out, clinging to each other as though our lives depended on it. My pussy spasmed and throbbed, pulsating around his cock as he filled the condom, riding through his insanely intense pleasure as I claimed mine with a greed I’d never known before or since.
I dropped my hands from my eyes. It had been a long time since a flashback had overwhelmed me. Blinking in the harsh light of the corridor, I reoriented myself to my surroundings. The walls were painted a sickly green and the floor strewn with litter. Robbie was still singing, hammering out the chorus of Strawberries and Screams. A small tremor attacked my body. I could have told myself it was the cold but I knew it was the vividness of the memory that had generated the pleasurable little shiver.
I glanced left and right and pushed away from the wall. Soon the corridor would be heaving with thousands of fans all heading home. If I didn’t want to get caught up in the surge of people, I had to get moving.
I shoved my hands deep into the pockets of my pink hooded top and clutched the small red plastic card that had dropped onto my parents’ doormat twoweeks ago. Manic Machines—Full Access Backstage Pass was written in thick black letters along with the dates andmy name.
I knew he’d sent it, along with a single ticket for each of the Wembley performances. Four tickets in total. Four separate nights. He wanted me to come to the show—really wanted me to.
The tickets were strange after such a long time with no contact but Robbie had never done things the conventional way, which, I guessed, was why he was the superstar he was.
I hadn’t wanted to come to his concert and never would have chosen to. I knew seeing Robbie in the flesh would exhaust my confused, long-buried emotions. Also I didn’t know if I could cope with seeing him do his stuff—singing brilliantly and entertaining thousands with his chat and his devastatingly handsome smile and all the time him not belonging to me. But curiosity had gotten the better of me, which was why I was here on the last night of Manic Machines’ tour.
My soft shoes were silent as I searched for signs to backstage. Eventually, after what felt like a mile with no luck, I asked a stern-looking security man who bent my pass with nail bitten fingers, testing for authenticity.
“You’ve come the wrong way, love. Best thing you can do now is go outside,” he said after he’d all but bitten the plastic between his teeth. “Then head toward the black gates and show this pass. They’ll direct you from there; it’ll be quicker than going back the way you came.”
“Thanks,” I said, re-pocketing the small rectangle of plastic and wondering whether to follow his directions or just jump on the Tube. It would be easier to ride home and forget all about Robbie. Forget that I’d seen him. Forget that I’d listened to him sing about the way we’d been when things were good between us. The way we’d kissed and made love, shared our fears and dreams. The way he’d held me tight and lost himself in my vanilla-scented hair. How he remembered I’d used vanilla shampoo was beyond me. Had he really become lost in my essence when he buried his face in it the way he described in the lyrics to 'Jenny’?
I stepped outside into the cool October evening. It was pitch dark and the lampposts shone amber. A hint of drizzle caught in the pools of light and dampened my hot cheeks. I turned toward the looming black gates. They were huge and spiked. Beyond them was a host of trucks and vans. Several generators chugged.
“Can I help you?” a stern voice asked from the darkness on the other side of the gate.
“Er, yes,” I said, looking for the owner of the voice.
A small man wearing a suit and a peaked cap appeared. Stadium Security was embroidered in gold thread on his jacket sleeve.