‘I’m not interested in just being your fuck toy, Xane. I don’t want to be the guy you call when you and Dani feel like spicing things up a little.’
‘You won’t be. Just give things a chance to settle.’
‘I’m not expecting perfection overnight. I just want to know exactly what it is I’m getting myself into, because I thought it was a relationship.’
‘It is … It will be.’ Xane fisted a handful of Luthor’s T-shirt and jerked the cotton up enough so that he could rub his other hand against the skin he exposed. Luthor was so frickin’ perfect to hold and touch, with his work-hardened physique and long slender limbs. He was damned good to look at too, and that was before you even got as far as his natural heterochromia. One sea-green eye and one tawny drank down his image.
‘Is that a promise? Do you swear it?’
Xane answered by pushing his tongue into Luthor’s mouth and initiating another round of fierce kissing. He shifted his stance so that their hips ground against one another, providing some welcome friction where he suddenly needed it.
‘I love the way your tongue stud feels.’
‘Yeah.’ Xane pushed his hands into the back of Luthor’s baggy jeans and grabbed himself a satisfying handful of firm arse. ‘Wait until you feel it caressing your cock.’
‘It has caressed my cock, and I can recall exactly how mind-blowingly good it felt. Too bad a blowjob is beyond the bounds of your accord.’
‘Don’t make this harder than it needs to be, Luthor.’
‘Am I making it hard?’ He pushed a hand between their bodies and copped a feel of Xane’s cock where it was trapped behind his zip. ‘I guess I’m making something hard.’ He squeezed. ‘You can see the problem we’re going to have, can’t you? If we spend time together, it’s inevitable that things are going to get tense, but actual relief, that’s not allowed.’
Yes, he could see the dilemma, and his mind was frantically trying to see a way around it, but, as Luthor said, there wasn’t one, other than somehow conjuring Dani out of thin air and having her just stand and watch. Even if he could do that with a simple snap of his fingers, he couldn’t see her patiently standing by and observing them even kissing, let alone screwing one another above once a week, and possibly not even that often.
Luthor was right, there were serious holes in the plan, and yet he understood why she’d insisted on those conditions. Dani wasn’t specifically trying to keep them apart, or torture them; she was trying to buy herself some security. He couldn’t snatch that from her, not when she was adapting and trying so hard to understand and give him what he wanted.
He pushed Luthor to arm’s length, breathing hard through his open mouth. ‘Stop … We have to stop … show some restraint.’
‘For how long?’
He didn’t have an answer to that question. ‘Let her get used to the idea of us. Then we can reopen the negotiations.’
‘Or I could just get down on my knees right now and suck you off.’
‘Don’t.’ Xane held out his palm to keep Luthor at a distance, but with his other hand he was toying with the fastening of his jeans. ‘Take the bucket, go and help Rock Giant.’
‘I don’t think he wants my lips around his cock.’
Xane turned his back. He didn’t know why Luthor was being like this, after he’d been so reasonable before, but piling on an additional layer of stress when he was already feeling stretched and torn wasn’t helping him keep his head clear. Sex, after all, was his drug of choice. It had ever been his method of checking out of bad situations. Flood the pleasure centres and the world became a happy place. If he was fucking, he didn’t have to think, but not thinking about this was only going to get him into trouble.
‘Did I hear you offering me a blowjob?’
Praise be for Rock Giant. That bastard had just saved him.
‘Graham didn’t actually make you sign up to that as part of your contract, did he? I enjoy getting head as much as the next guy, but I’m strictly no-dudes when it comes to my tackle.’
‘I just had to make myself available … to play,’ Luthor clarified. ‘The contract didn’t cover blowjobs.’
‘No dodgy codicils or anything.’ Rock Giant scratched his armpit.
‘No.’
‘That’s OK, then.’ He held up his mobile phone. ‘I just got a call from Elspeth. Apparently Graham and Sally want to talk to us all. We’re to head over to the motorhome for a conflab. Decisions need to be made about what happens next.’
Three weeks later. July 17, Sweden.
‘No, Xane, don’t!’
Dani’s protest went unheeded as her lover pressed her against the side of the tour bus, trapping her between warm metal and his scorching hot body. She supposed saying ‘wait up’ to a sex-addicted rock star was rather like taking an alcoholic to a bar and then forbidding them to drink. And she could hardly protest if her efforts were having the desired effect when she’d dressed to entice him.
It was the location and timing that were the issues.
Dani clasped her hand tight over Xane’s where he’d just slid it beneath the hem of her regrettably short skirt. ‘Will you behave? Your band-mates are going to be here any minute.’
‘Then that’s a minute we can use to our advantage.’
Trust him to see it that way. Not that she really minded, because while she certainly didn’t share his exhibitionist tendencies, Xane only had to quirk his brows the way he was doing right now and her insides started fizzing with excitement. From everything she’d heard and read about relationships, the first flush of love ought to have been wearing off a little now, but that wasn’t her experience. Looking at Xane still made her heart skip a beat. She still woke beside him and grinned inanely at her good fortune, and the sex … Well, the sex still happened all of the time. Whenever they had a minute or three spare, in fact.
The only slightly troublesome aspect of their relationship was Xane’s attraction to his band’s new drummer, Luthor Albrecht. Dani had tentatively agreed that it was OK for Xane to see him too, but she’d not had to think about that over the last 22 days, because Luthor had been off drumming for his former band, Denna Rädsla.
‘Dani,’ Xane coaxed her with his come-to-bed eyes and a husky purr. He stroked a finger down the side of her throat.
Dammit! How did you say no to six foot of solid muscle with the hots for you? You couldn’t. Leastways, she couldn’t. Not when he had bone-structure to rival the gods, and his beauty hit you like a smack in the guts. He literally took her breath away, every time.
‘No one is going to see us. There’s no one around to see us.’ As far as Xane was concerned his band-mates didn’t count, not that they were here yet, but they would be, and all too soon.
After their lead guitarist had collapsed on stage during their last gig, and innumerable troubles with their former drummer had led to their current tour being delayed, the various members of the band had gone their separate ways in order to get some quality R&R. Today was when that vacation ended and they were supposed to start pulling their shit back together – Xane’s words, not hers. Although he still hadn’t explained why that meant they had to meet in a quayside carpark in some random Swedish town.
‘I