20. Riot
Riot
“Portland tomorrow.” Golden hovers in the front lounge long after everyone else has gone to bed.
“Yeah.” I flip through my notebook of song lyrics. The pages tattered and crinkled with use.
It’s your turn to bleed for me
Your turn to shatter
I hadn’t known what came next when she came to my room the other night. Hating her should make everything cut and dry, but it doesn’t.
Golden takes a seat on the bench closest. He spreads his knees and clasps his hands together between them. Whatever he’s chewing on has concentrated into a wrinkle between his brows.
I put down my pen, annoyed. “Spit it out.”
“Did you have fun this morning? Making things awkward for all of us?”
I study my scraped and bruised knuckles. Rub my good hand over my aching one. My hand had been shaking so hard when I walked out on her. I’d punched the wall to make it stop. How dare she make me feel... anything.
Hate I can deal with, but the way I wanted her...
I fake cockiness. “What? You didn’t enjoy the concert? You want to fuck her as much as Bronx and Kodiak do?”
“Yeah, maybe I do.” His brow lowers even more, but he continues to appear unfazed.
Is that why he hasn’t brought anyone on the bus? Usually, he can be counted on to get the orgy started. I should have realized Kelsey is the reason he’s been behaving differently.
“As much as you do,” he adds.
What if I want to fuck her? What if I got a little lost in her scent and the noises she made with both our hands making her come? “Bullshit.”
“Is it?” He keeps staring at me like he sees through me. It’s possible he does after ten years together.
“Fine.” I pluck a few more sounds from the strings. “I want to fuck her. What man wouldn’t? She’s a good lay. But that doesn’t negate how much I hate her.”
“Does it have to?” he asks, drawing an invisible swirl on the windowsill over the bench seat while he continues to watch me. “We’re stuck on a bus and in hotels together for the next couple of months. You could fuck her and be done with it.”
“It’s not going to be that long.” Only as long as it takes me to write the new album. “She’ll be gone as soon as she’s no longer inspirational.”
I roll my eyes at inspirational. Sarcasm dripping off every syllable.
“The point is. You two are making this bus a powder keg. It’s been what... less than a week?”
It has been an odd few days.
“And today was... uncomfortable.”
Kelsey and I hadn’t exchanged a single word after she came out of the bathroom. We’d gone and gotten food in edgy silence and then she’d come back to the bus while I spent a good few hours working out in our mobile gym with Bronx. He’d been a grouchy motherfucker all day too.
Kodiak and Golden had both given me a wide berth. It would be great if Golden was still doing so. And Kelsey had retired to her bunk as soon as I stepped back on the bus. She’d even eaten the dinner Golden had taken her there.
“You know Bronx and I... we understand your boundaries. We’ll oblige them for now.
But if you keep taunting us with what we can’t have, who’s to say we won’t get sick of you thinking your word is law.
We’ve all wanted that woman at some point.
Push us too hard and we might all crumble to the temptation. ”
“You won’t fucking touch her.”
“She’s not yours anymore,” he says. “We all know it. Bronx, Kodiak, and me. But do you? Because you’re acting like a possessive boyfriend.”
The fuck I am. “This is about the band.”
“Is it?” He stares me down.
“Yes.” Do I really need to explain to him the danger she represents to all of us?
He huffs out a long breath. Shakes his head.
“What?”
“Nothing.” Golden rubs his face with his hand, locks eyes with me. “I was just debating on if I need to put in a request for a new bassist.”
Furrowing my brows, I stare at him. What is he on about?
He continues, “Seeing as Kodiak crawled into her bunk twenty minutes ago.”
I twinge my neck, turning sharply to look down bunk alley. It’s quiet and dark, but that doesn’t mean Kodiak hasn’t slithered into her bunk. An image of her riding the asshole fills my vision and turns everything hazy.
“Night,” he says, trying to hide the obnoxious smile that wants to break on his face as he finally fucks off.
I try to go back to what I was doing before he interrupted, but every tiny sound has my attention on bunk alley. Was that a moan? Is he fucking her right now? Did she tell him how much she loves to be edged? Is she whimpering in his ear, quiet and intimate.
The pen snaps, blue ink bleeding all over my hand and the paper. “Fuck.”
I put my guitar down and get up to put the pen in the trash before grabbing a cloth to mop up the ink splats on the table. The page in my book is ruined, and my hands are stained as I toss the cloth in the trash too. Folding my notebook in half, I stick it in my back pocket.
Bunk alley is quiet when I pass through on my way to the bathroom to clean up. The lack of noise sticks my teeth together. My temples start to pulse with a burgeoning headache. I need to get buzzed before my head turns into migraine city.
Lathering up, I scrub at the blue ink until it fades. There’s no way I’m getting it all off though. Karma, probably. For drawing all over Kelsey with permanent marker last night. “Fucking funny, Karma, considering what she’s done to me.”
Someone is breathing hard and fast when I exit the bathroom. A grunt accompanies it.
I swear that’s a whimper.
To hell with this. I march over, grab the privacy curtain on Kelsey’s bunk and yank it back hard enough it comes off its hooks. Only to find she’s all alone.
Golden is a fucking liar.
Her eyes pop open. Unfocused at first and then glaring right at me. I press two hands onto the frame, ready to hoist myself into the bunk with her. She needs a reminder that she doesn’t get to fuck with my bandmates.
Something stings my neck as she moves upright quickly. Her hand is near my throat, where the burst of pain is.
“Come any closer and this fork will be buried in your neck for real,” she whispers threateningly.
So that’s what it is.
I wrap my hand around her wrist and squeeze until she cries out and releases her weapon. It clatters onto the wooden frame of the bunk and then onto the floor.
“Who the fuck let you have a weapon?” I loosen my grip on her wrist. It had to be Jasper. He’s had eyes on her since day one. “I’m going to fire his ass.”
“You will not.” She glares at me as she snatches her hand back. “And a fork is hardly a weapon. He refused to let me take the knife I wanted.”
“You’re a fucking psycho.”
“You saw the neighborhood I was living in,” she says. “And you’ve been an absolute asshole. I don’t trust you.”
“The feeling is mutual,” I growl back. “But you used to know me well enough to be certain that I would never, ever force myself on you.”
Her shoulders release. She takes a deep breath and this time her whisper has softened. “Yeah. Except…”
I held her down when I took those photos and marked her up like she marks my posters. Those photos will probably never see the light of day. They’re just a nice addition to my personal collection. Blackmail potential, a way to ensure she continues to do as I say.
“You’re not the only asshole I have to worry about.” Her eyes widen and her lips turn thin, like she didn’t mean to say it out loud.
“You’re not afraid of me?” Maybe she thinks I’m a sucker. I was certainly sucked in by her two years ago.
“No. Should I be?” The hardness returns to her posture.
“If you fuck with my bandmates, yeah.” I want to climb into her bunk, pull down her pajama pants and fuck her. I don’t care if my bandmates come out of their bunks to watch. Let them see what a filthy mess I leave her when I’m done.
“I’m not,” she mutters. “You didn’t need to rip the curtain down.”
“Make sure it stays that way.” I shove away from her and storm into the bedroom. Golden might have been fucking with me... probably his way of getting payback... but he’s not wrong. I want to fuck her. I am going to fuck her. Maybe then I’ll be able to forget about her completely.
I pull my notepad from my back pocket and toss it on the desk before reaching for the stash of gummies I keep in a Pelican Micro Case with my bud since I can’t smoke on the bus. I take a couple.
Stripping out of my shirt, I pop the button on my jeans and flop down on my back on the bed. Placing one hand under my head, I rest a hand on my stomach and try to concentrate on my breathing. I need to relax if I’m going to shake this cunt of a headache.
It’s hard to relax when it’s killing me not to touch her. I want to wrap my hand around her throat while I fuck her to the edge of sanity. Drawing it all out like the sweetest possible torture.
I want her pussy rippling when she’s close, her whiney moans pleading with me to let her get off.
My cock turns to granite. Sticking my hand in my jeans, I wind my hand around it and take it out.
I drag my hand up and down in an easy motion while I recall what she felt like on my fingers this morning.
How sopping wet she’d been. How her skin carried a lingering trace of perfume, but the bathroom smelled of her arousal.
Pre-cum beads on the tip and coats my palm on the upstroke, lubricating my cock as I push into my fist until it meets my pelvis. God, what I would do with a piece of her around my cock. Her mouth, her pussy, her ass.
I stop long enough to open the bedside drawer and retrieve her stolen panties.
These will do. And maybe after... I’ll give them back to her coated in my spunk and goad her into wearing them.
I coil the lacy black panties around my fist. The material provides a new level of friction along the underside of my cock.
Fuck. I groan as I pick up the pace, fucking my hand while I fantasize about pounding all my hate into rough fucking her sweet pussy. My breath grows ragged. My stomach tightens. I coat my hand and her panties with hot spurts of my cum.
I use the lace to clean up when I’m done. I can hate her and fuck her. The two are not mutually exclusive. And she’s going to want it. She’s going to beg for it.
Better yet, I can use it to break her.
I carry her panties to the desk where I put them aside to flip through my notebook to the unfinished lyrics and rewrite them.
You’re the sweetest poison
I’ve ever pumped into my veins
I tried to quit you
But I have never been the same
Oh woman
It’s your turn to bleed for me
Your turn to shatter
Your turn to know how it feels
I’m going to rip your heart out
For the sweetest revenge
I shut off the light and lay back down, lighter and more relaxed now I’ve made the decision.
I’m going to need more ammunition if I’m going to destroy her. It’s a pity I haven’t had time to look through her memento box properly yet. No doubt it holds all her deepest secrets.
The next city where we stay the night off the bus, and I finally have privacy, I’ll have to retrieve it. See exactly what she’s hiding and then use it against her.