Page 8 of Reflex

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Spook didn’t wait to hear Alle’s response.He shoved the phone into his jeans pocket and ran.

It didn’t save him.

The crowd reached him before he’d got more than three steps.Swarmed him, lifted him danced him around like a bottle on an ocean wave.Too many people.Too many bodies.Way too many demands.

Things stopped making sense.

His fist curled, as he contained the urge to lash out, to push people away.Soon it wasn’t only his clothing being touched.There were at least a dozen hands under his shirt, and others pulling at his fly.Some simply clung on.Others mapped the contours of his body, their fingerprints searing his skin.

Not good at any time.Particularly discomforting when he was still half-hard.

He started to pull inside himself.The rushing sound from earlier had returned to his ears.Relax.Just focus on breathing.

Where the hell were security?

There was no fending them off.No holding them back.It was all he could do to keep his hands in front of his face so that he didn’t end up having his eyes clawed out.The number of hungry mouths presented and seemingly keen to eat him alive was bewildering.

“Ladies!”

The holler resulted in a momentary stilling of the crowd, before the mayhem resumed.A figure cut through the mass, heading straight for him like a black rider, only in place of a hood and cloak, he wore shades and a security shirt and cap.

One guy wasn’t going to disperse this lot.

“That’s enough now ladies.Break it up.Give the man some breathing space.Believe it or not, rock stars have boundaries, too.”

Security with a sense of humour.Brilliant.

Some of the clawing hands actually left him.He no longer felt quite so caged, or likely to be knocked off his feet.He could breathe – well, a little.Unfortunately, those unperturbed by the arrival got more tenacious.

Someone squeezed his arse.Someone else caged his cock in a possessive grip, and crowed in delight at finding him semi-hard.Something tore.Spook glanced down as the lower half of his T-shirt sheared away from the remainder.The perpetrator gave a triumphant cry before being ruthlessly shoved aside by the security guard.

“Bloody hell, they’re like vultures.”

As abruptly as they’d arrived, the hands were gone.

Spook tentatively lowered his hands a fraction so that he could see over the tops of his fingers.Every inch of his skin prickled in a way that made him want to scratch at the flesh.

“You all right, mate?”

This guy obviously wasn’t part of the venue staff.With that accent, he had to be part of their crew, not that he could recall having seen him before.

“Girls huh?Suppose you never get used to it.Come this way, right.Let’s get you back inside.”

Spook flinched as the man’s hand hit his shoulder and turned him about.

Keep your hands to yourself.Twitchy over the continued contact, Spook nevertheless allowed himself to be guided back into the building.He could be in the dressing room, in the shower, in about forty seconds.He needed to scrub his skin.It felt like there were bits of other people’s dirty souls stuck to him.

The door closed behind them.“Wait.”. The crowd must have shifted him about more than he’d realised.This was a different part of the building to where the dressing room lay.There were no sounds.No roadies.No work crews.No noise, except the hum of some sort of generator.Everything was painted the same muted grey, and the faint reek of stale sweat and vomit rose off the flooring.

“Where the hell…?I need to get back to the band.”

“Yeah, it’s this way,” Security dude drawled, like there was no great rush.Screw that!Spook made an abrupt one-eighty towards the door they’d come through, which had the added bonus of relieving him of the guy’s grip.“Whoa!Where are you going?You can’t go back out there.”

“Quickest way.”

“Yeah, no.”