Chapter Twenty #2
A wicked laugh tumbles out of Dax, and he’s in front of me again in two strides.
He hoists me up off the counter, and I lock my legs tight around his waist as my arms loop behind his neck.
His hands grip my rear, holding me up higher as he dips his head.
His mouth closes over me, his tongue flicking the piercing through my shirt.
We both moan appreciatively. He repeats the gesture on my other breast, teasing me with his tongue until the cotton of my shirt is soaked through.
“Is this you not distracting me?”
He hums, nuzzling his face into my neck before bringing his mouth back to mine in a bruising kiss.
His hands knead my ass, his fingers ghosting back and forth at the apex of my thighs, just shy of where I want them.
When one long finger grazes exactly where I want it, I gasp like I’m coming up for air.
Dax grins lazily, setting me back on the counter. Leaning down, he takes my earlobe between his teeth and tugs gently. “Not distracting—motivating,” he murmurs.
I humph in disagreement, pulling at his shirt to get him closer.
He doesn’t budge. “Motivating,” he repeats, moving his hands to my shoulders and holding me in place as he takes half a step back. “If you want more—” He gestures to himself, then to my hacked-up paper and raps his knuckles against my laptop on the counter.
My jaw drops, and I have to wiggle it back and forth to get it to slot back into place.
Dax smirks and his dimple winks as he begins slowly backing out of my kitchen, every inch between us taut like a bowstring.
“I cannot fucking stand you,” I call after him as he laughs the entire way out of my apartment, leaving me flushed and panting in my kitchen.
But y’know what? I’m fucking motivated.
[Excerpt from Sloane Donavan’s Final Revelations interview transcript]
2003–2006: A Bit Feral
MARCUS: We released our third album, Shadow Psalms, in 2003, and it ended up being an apt metaphor for the next few years.
JONAH: Shadow Psalms was the second album we recorded with Dropkick Records, who we had a three-album deal with.
DAX: We decided rerecording our first album, Sacrament [previously recorded with Garage Door Records], fulfilled our contract of three albums.
JONAH: They did not agree.
CAIN: They owed us a fuckload in unpaid royalties. We made them so much money and we barely saw any of it. But we saved every penny we did get, and as soon as we had enough—
BARRETT: We sued their asses.
MARCUS: They did not like that. Our name was already in the mud from that Offbeat article—and every other reporter parroting Song’s shit—so everyone believed Dropkick when they started bad-mouthing us to anyone who’d listen.
[mocking] Dax and Marcus are divas. They’re impossible to work with.
The only difficult thing we did was ask to get fucking paid.
DAX: We already weren’t speaking to the press, but even if we wanted to, we couldn’t while the case was ongoing. So we just had to take it on the chin.
JONAH: Every band on their roster was being screwed. We were just the first band that could afford to take them to court.
BARRETT: It took two years, but we won. We fucking won.
MARCUS: That was a nice paycheck.
BARRETT: I paid off my dad’s medical debt with that.
DAX: I finally got my own place with that check.
CAIN: I proposed to my girl, moved us out of our tiny apartment.
JONAH: I invested it. That’s a boring answer, isn’t it?
MARCUS: I started my own label. A lot of Dropkick alumni signed with me. Funny, that.
JONAH: We were a bit trigger shy to sign with anyone too soon, and we had a whole album we’d written but couldn’t release while still locked in the lawsuit.
MARCUS: We ended up releasing it under my label, just to get it out there to the fans.
DAX: That album, Prodigal Son, is special to all of us for a lot of reasons.
Mostly because we produced and released it ourselves, but for me…
People think—I thought—good art is made in the mess, that whole tortured-artist schtick.
I definitely bought into that when I first started.
But by Prodigal, I’d been sober for a few years, had some perspective, and I’m really proud of the lyrics Marcus and I wrote for that.
And we were all, like, simmering with rage and energy, waiting to see how the lawsuit would pan out, and it translated.
BARRETT: There’s something a bit feral about that album. We were like animals caught in a bear trap, waiting on the judge’s ruling, ready to gnaw our own legs off to get free. And once we were—
MARCUS: I know a lot of fans have nostalgia for our early records, but I think we hit our stride around Shadow Psalms, and Prodigal Son and Purgatorium kept that momentum going.
DAX: There were multiple points in our career where I’d thought, It can’t possibly get better than this—and every time, I was wrong. Getting free of that label felt like a new start. Seven years and four albums in, and we felt like we were just getting started.