Chapter 43 – Rafael
RAFAEL
The green room door shuts and the sound is so fucking loud in the sudden quiet that we both freeze.
Bells is standing three feet away in rehearsal clothes.
Loose white t-shirt that hangs off one shoulder, white tour pants slung low on her hips, red combat boots unlaced.
Her bone-handled knife is strapped to her outer thigh because she doesn't go anywhere without it now and I'm not stupid enough to suggest she should.
No binder. No prosthetic.
No anything other than Bells.
The triple mark on her throat is visible above the neckline of her shirt, three overlapping crescents in shades of silver and pink. Mine is the middle one. I know this because I've looked at it approximately a billion fucking times since putting it there.
"So," she says.
"So," I say.
We stare at each other.
Holy shit. I actually have Bells alone again.
Through the thin door behind me, Carmine's voice recedes down the hallway along with Phoenix's heavy footsteps as he herds our giant drummer toward whatever social media bullshit the label demanded. Something about a casual behind-the-scenes rehearsal video for the pre-show promo push.
They're milking the fuck out of his sweet-and-sexy golden retriever Viking aesthetic to offset Rex's… intense appearance. He's the one doing all our social stuff lately since I have no filter and I'm more likely to run my mouth about something that'll give Carmine more stress hives.
"Normal, Phoenix. Just be normal. And for the love of all the gods, do not mention anyone's genitalia."
Rex left twenty minutes ago. Took his shit and disappeared to take a break on the rooftop because Carmine was getting on his nerves as usual. At least he's in a halfway decent mood, which is… surprising.
Maybe because the world didn't end after all.
Actually, nobody can stop talking about the big reveal that Bells is a girl.
Moreover, Bells is a girl who got kidnapped by a fucking psycho stalker.
Carmine won't let her confirm she stabbed him in the eye, then the neck, only for him to plunge to his fiery grave, so she's made a game of hinting at it it over the past couple of days leading up to the show. In increasingly less subtle ways.
Another reason Carmine's been putting Phoenix front and center.
As far as the law's concerned, it was clear self-defense, so none of the rest of the shit matters.
As far as the public's concerned?
Bells is a fucking idol.
And I can't wait to see the look on the faces staring back at us from the crowd when she tells them the rest of the truth tonight.
"You're staring," she says, a grin tugging at her full lips.
"You're worth staring at."
Her grin widens into a full-blown devilish smile. "Smooth."
"I have my moments."
She closes the distance between us in two steps and her hands find the front of my shirt and she pulls herself up on her toes and kisses me.
It's soft at first. Almost tentative, which is not a word I associate with Bells under any circumstances. Her lips brush mine and her fingers curl into the fabric over my chest, and the bond wrapped around my heart twinges and pulls.
I cup the back of her head and deepen the kiss and she makes a sound against my mouth that goes straight to the base of my spine.
My other hand finds her hip. The knife holster presses against my fingers and I trace around it to the warm skin above her waistband where her shirt has ridden up.
"Door's not locked," she murmurs against my lips.
I reach behind me without breaking the kiss and flip the deadbolt.
Footsteps in the hallway.
We both go still.
The footsteps pass. Someone from the crew, moving fast, not stopping.
Bells exhales through her nose and grins against my mouth. "Carmine's gonna drag us back out for another run-through in like fifteen minutes. There's a non-zero chance of you getting cockblocked again."
"Then stop talking and let me work."
She laughs—quietly, for once—and I walk her backward until her thighs hit the arm of the green room couch. It's a shitty couch. Faux leather the color of an avocado, peeling and showing the yellowed foam beneath.
You'd think in a venue like we're playing tonight, they'd have nice furniture. Then again, rock stars have a weird urge to destroy nice shit for the hell of it.
I lift her onto the arm of the couch and she wraps her legs around my waist and pulls me in. Her heat pressed against my cock even through two layers of fabric makes my vision blur for a second.
"Off," she says, tugging at my belt.
I get my belt open. She gets her pants down. We're a tangle of hands and buckles and I knee her in the pussy. She hisses and I mutter an apology against her collarbone as she shoves my jeans down my hips with both feet.
"Romantic," I deadpan.
"Shut up and fuck me, Raf."
Her hand wraps around my cock and my brain empties the fuck out.
I grip the back of the couch with one hand and her hip with the other and push into her, and the choked-off gasping sound she makes and kills by burying her teeth in my shoulder is the best thing I've ever heard.
The couch creaks.
Loudly.
We both freeze again.
"This couch is a fucking snitch," she whispers.
I shift my weight off the arm and onto my feet, pulling her with me so I'm standing and she's wrapped around me, her back against nothing, held up entirely by my arms and her legs locked around my waist.
I thrust up into her and she bites my shoulder through my shirt again to muffle herself.
The pressure of her teeth makes me snarl into her hair and my hips snap harder.
Her fingers dig into my shoulders. Her breath is hot and ragged against the side of my neck and every exhale carries a tiny sound she's trying to swallow.
"Quieter," I manage.
"You're one to talk," she pants. "You're growling."
"I am not—"
"You literally sound like a fucking bear."
"SHHH."
I adjust my grip on her ass and drive deeper. Her eyes roll back and her mouth opens on a moan that she barely catches, clamping her lips together at the last second. The muffled sound vibrates against her closed mouth and comes out as a squeaky hum that's somehow even more obscene.
Footsteps in the hallway again.
This time they slow.
Bells slaps her hand over her own mouth. I hold absolutely fucking still, buried inside her, her thighs trembling around my waist, both of us staring at the door like it's about to explode.
The footsteps continue past.
"Holy fuck," she breathes through her fingers.
I don't have time to laugh because my body decides this is the moment to stop cooperating. The adrenaline and her scent and the bond singing between us and the fact that she's clenching around me every time we freeze all goes straight to my cock.
My knot is swelling.
Oh, FUCK no.
Not now.
Not with Carmine right down the hall.
The thought of him immediately makes my knot soften just enough to stop catching on her entrance.
But her thighs are actively fighting me, locking harder, her heels digging into my lower back. Every omega instinct she has is telling her the exact opposite of what I'm about to do, which is pull the fuck out before I fucking knot her.
The knot swells another fraction of an inch and my vision strobes.
"Bells," I groan.
She whines. An actual omega whine, high and helpless and pissed off, and it claws at my inner alpha that wants to snarl and slam home and never let her down from this wall.
I put my forehead against hers. "Baby. If Carmine walks in on us locked together, he'll kill us. And if he doesn't, the memory of Carmine's face every time I fuck you will."
A strangled laugh comes out of her. Her legs loosen. Barely.
"FIIIIINE."
It's enough.
I pull out.
The loss of her is physical agony and the half-swollen knot aches with nowhere to go. I bury my groan in the crook of her neck.
She wraps her hand around my cock and it takes three strokes to finish me off. I bite down on the collar of her white shirt to keep quiet, my own hand working her through her orgasm as she chomps on my shoulder again so she doesn't scream.
By the time we're tangled up in each other, panting, my shoulder's throbbing where her teeth went in and I'm pretty sure it's going to be a huge pain in the ass onstage tonight.
Worth it.
She laughs breathlessly and slides down to her feet, grabbing a towel from the makeup counter and cleaning herself off with the efficiency of someone who's spent years doing quick changes backstage. The white shirt has a wet spot on the hem that she examines.
"Think anyone will notice?" she asks.
"That you got come on your rehearsal shirt at eleven in the morning? No. Thank the gods you only ever wear white."
She grins. "Hey, not all of us can pull off the vampire aesthetic like you and Rex."
"You can pull off anything," I say, and I mean it.
She runs her fingers through her white hair, adjusts the knife strap on her thigh, and turns back to me looking like she just finished a meditation session instead of getting fucked against a green room wall.
I'm still standing here shoving my cock back into my pants, breathing like I ran a marathon.
She pats my cheek as she passes. "You're adorable when you're wrecked."
"Don't call me adorable."
"Adorable. Cute, even."
She drops onto the couch. Not the arm this time. The middle cushion, where the faux leather is the least peeled. She pulls her knees up and wraps her arms around them.
I finish putting myself back together and drop down next to her. The couch creaks under both of us like it's reporting us to HR.
A little late for that.
"You okay?" I ask.
"Peachy."
Her hand is on the handle of the knife strapped to her thigh, thumb running along the bone grain the way someone else might worry a rosary.
"Hey," I say.
She doesn't look at me.
"Bells." I reach over and cover her hand on the knife handle with mine. Her thumb stops moving. "You can be peachy and also losing your shit about tonight."
Her jaw tightens. She stares at the opposite wall, which is covered in Sharpie signatures from every band that's ever used this green room.
Somewhere in the middle of the graffiti, there's a faded stick figure that bears a startling resemblance to Carmine all the way down to the slicked-back hair and red chicken pox marks above the collar of his shirt.
The stress rash. He even looks pissed.
It's the kind of shit that would usually have her cackling.
She hasn't even noticed it.
"Everyone already thinks I'm brave," she says finally, still staring at the wall. "Stabbing my stalker, or, well… hinting at stabbing my stalker. Surviving a fire. Fronting a rock band in a mask and hiding that I've been a girl for years."
"You are brave."
"Yeah, well. Brave's easy when you get to pretend to be something you're not."
I don't say anything. I wait.
"The second I say the word omega, all of that changes," she says. "I'm not the scary one anymore. I'm the one people want to protect. Or fuck. Or fix."
"Or all three."
She nods. "Yep. Or all three."
I squeeze her hand.
"You don't have to tell them tonight."
"Yes, I do."
She finally looks at me.
Her eyes are wet, but she's not crying. It's the shine that shows up right before she starts swinging at something, which happens to also be the shine that shows up right before she sings.
"I have to," she says. "Not for them. For me. If I walk off that stage tonight without saying it out loud, I'll hate myself tomorrow. Rex was unmasked. It's time I was, too."
I lean over and press a kiss to the top of her head. "You're gonna kick ass, babe."
"Thanks." She nuzzles my throat, sighing. "I'd better rescue Phoenix from Carmine."
"Yeah."
She doesn't move.
Neither do I.
A full minute passes before she peels herself off my shoulder and stands. She adjusts the knife strap on her thigh one more time and unlocks the deadbolt, then pauses with her hand on the knob.
"Raf?"
"Yeah."
"Thanks again."
"For what? The sex or the pep talk?" I ask, grinning.
"Yes."
The door shuts behind her.
I sit back on the shitty couch with my shoulder throbbing and my jeans uncomfortable and the bond in my chest still humming off-key.
Then it tunes itself.
Because somewhere down the hall, she's already laughing with Phoenix.