Page 119 of Beneath the Stain

I’m not telling her jack. Get your ass over here and stop being a prick. At least when I rip people up, I back it up by firing their asses. Jesus, fucking amateur.

Trav laughed—he couldn’t help it.Shut up and warm up. Aren’t you in the waiting room?

No. I’m in the dressing room, hiding from the massive fucking clouds of pot smoke. The whole band is with me. Sobriety sucks fucking ass in the social department, you know that?

I’ll totally rim you as a reward, Trav texted, remembering that sweet, dirty fantasy he’d been having.

DID I MENTION I’M IN THE GREENROOM WITH THE GUYS? Jesus—Kell read that over my shoulder. He’s gagging in the bathroom. Way to kill the mood, Trav.

Trav stared at the text in absolute horror.

I’ll see you when I get there, he texted lamely, then groaned and threw his head back against the seat.

“Everything all right, Mr. Ford?”

Trav looked at Walter, the driver, and grimaced. Walter was a white man in middle age, nondescript, very discreet, and as reliable a person as he’d ever met.

“Dating a rock star has its drawbacks,” he said after a minute. This guy had taken them to their first date, after all.

“Yeah, but I understand they fuck like gods,” Walter said pragmatically, and Trav stared at him, wondering when his own teeny brain was going to explode.

WALTERTOOKhim to the VIP entrance and handed him his pass, which was great, because it meant he could charge through the myriad tunnels and back ways until he got up to the stage entrance. His guys were there, standing back to let the other band come through the loading bay, with lots of high-fives and “Great set!” praise as they went. It had never hit Trav before, but his guys, for all their flaws, were gentlemen that way. Even Blake and Kell, for all the girls they’d had, hadn’t ever disrespected them—just gone through a lot of them. These were good boys, he realized, an absurd lump in his throat.

He hated to let them down.

The Coliseum lights went down, indicating that the band had ten minutes to set up, and Mackey looked behind him and caught sight of Trav.

“You’re here!” he said, his eyes widening. He’d gone to town with the guyliner and mascara, and his customary lacy shirt was nipple-piercing pink and cut right under his pecs. He didn’t have a coat over it like he usually did, so his entire midriff was exposed, as well as the narrow line of his back.

But as he turned, Trav wasn’t looking at his back.

“Nice ink,” he said through a dry mouth. And ohdamn, he wasn’t being sarcastic in the least. That screaming monkey tattoo, the guyliner, the layered white-blond hair—Mackey was there, the living embodiment of every trashy punk artist fantasy Trav had ever entertained. The added bonus was that Trav knew the real boy underneath, and he was three times as beautiful as the image—the image that was currently charging at him full tilt.

“You’re here!” Mackey crowed, leaping into Trav’s arms without hesitation or doubt. Mackey’s mouth descended hard, crushing, invasive, and proprietary. Trav cupped his hands under Mackey’s ass as Mackey wrapped his legs around Trav’s waist, and then just hung on for dear life.

Mackey was going to ravish him, unrepentantly pull all of Trav into his body, and leave him drained, a brittle husk, in the clutter of the backstage loading bay. Hot, Mackey’s mouth was hot, and his touch was hard and possessive, rubbing Trav’s neck and the shoulders he could reach with his hands. With a growl of impatience, he hopped down and glared. Trav’s brain was still shorted out from that kiss, and he rubbed the back of his hand over his wet, bruised mouth and stared back, totally without words.

“Take off your jacket,” Mackey demanded, and Trav let it slip from his shoulders. Without another word, Mackey reached up to his collar and undid the first button. Then he grabbed both sides of the shirt and yanked, ripping all the buttons off the front.

Trav was too shocked to do more than say his name. “Mackey?”

“Take that off,” Mackey ordered, moving his hands to the neck of that frothy, lacy thing he’d apparently cut off right under his pits. He wriggled out of that while the rest of the band started calling his name, and then held his hand out imperiously for Trav’s plain old white button-down. “Take off for a fucking week, leave us in the middle of the lurch.” Mackey yanked Trav’s shirt out of his hand and slid it over his shoulders. He gave a bare, sensual wiggle and smiled evilly into Trav’s eyes. “And then run in here like I wasn’t shitting my pants. The only thing I ever fucking wanted from you was to see me look good, and here we are,in my house, and you barely fucking get here in time to see me play. You’re lucky I don’t take your pants too.”

Trav was still breathing hard as Mackey stalked off to prep his equipment. He was tying the ends of Trav’s shirt together over his tattoo as he went.

Debra came up next to Trav, blowing out a breath in relief. “Man, if you’d seen the way he tore up the tech crew, you’d know you got off easy.”

Trav looked at her and shook his head. “There is no getting off easy with Mackey,” he said sincerely, and wondered what else the night had in store.

“We’d better get to the side if we want to watch,” Debra said knowingly. “They’re not going to kill the house lights for the first number.”

Trav was getting tired of staring at people and catching flies, but he couldn’t think of anything else to do. “They’re doing what?” he asked, wanting water, a shower, and a chance to beat off and get rid of his hard-on, not necessarily in that order.

Deb shrugged. “Hey, I think they can pull it off. Have you seen your guy in action?”

“In videos, yes,” Trav admitted.

Debra tucked a bit of silver-gray hair behind her ear. “I think he’s gonna shock the hell out of us both,” she admitted.