The door opens.
Leon’s head pops in, scanning the room. When he sees me standing behind Kat, my arms around her shoulders, his brows furrow.
His expression is inscrutable when he says, “We’re on in five.” But his eyes dart from me to Kat.
Watching him, I slide my hands down the tops of Kat’s arms and squeeze them together. “We’ll be there,” I tell him, not even bothering to hide my smirk. Kat tries to wriggle free, but it’s like a dwarf fighting a giant.
Leon shoots me one last querying look before closing the door.
I release Kat from my grasp. She stands there for a few moments, as if unsure whether she can move — and I’ve done this, I think to myself with a spark of dark triumph. I’ve made her need my permission.
Just as I’m about to tell her to leave, there’s a knock on the door. One of the crew peers inside and, indifferent to Kat’s presence, he says to me, “We need you with the rest of the band now.”
Kat seems to wake at this. Without looking back at me, she rushes out the door, ducking beneath his arm, fleeing.
When the guy leaves, I find myself leaning against the wall. It’s cool against my naked back. Looking to the ceiling, I exhale long and deep, replaying the past couple of minutes through my whirling head. I almost wish I had something to smoke, so I can keep my fingers occupied. That way they can’t trail down to relieve my thick, stiff, aching cock.
I let out a long-held sigh, pouring all my frustrations into it. What the fuck? I’ve been with most high-profile lingerie models who barely kept my erection sustained for a minute. Yet this ordinary gal, a whole load of nothing, is doing things to my body — while she’s clothed — to the point I don’t understand what’s happening anymore.
Man, I want the X-rated version so bad, with her writhing naked on my bed, taking every inch of me raw.
I scrub my hands over my face, telling myself to wake up. I’ve got a gig to play before I can jerk myself off. I shrug on a dark string vest and leave.
The guys are near the side of the stage, talking quietly among one another. Conor’s sitting on a stack of amps, his feet brushing Seth’s shoulders. Leon’s whispering to Adam. Adam notices me approach and nods, spinning the base of his guitar on the floor. The group falls silent at my arrival.
Leon glances at my shirt with a raised eyebrow. “Feeling hot under the collar?”
“It’s five thousand dollars of sweet vintage Gaultier.”
“Oh. Feeling flush instead, then.”
He’s still giving me that expressionless look, like he doesn’t know what to make of me. Usually he’s happy to call me an idiot and I’m happy to take it, but now it’s like he’s shut down.
Conor smiles at me. “I like it. It’d go well with leather pants.”
Seth squints up at him with a frown. “Kid, you’re way too young to be giving advice on leather pants.”
“Deeply sorry, Mr. Fawkes,” Conor replies with a roll of his eyes.
Quietly, Adam says to me, “Heard you were with Kat.”
I glance at Leon, whose eyes haven’t left me the whole time I’ve been here. What’s his problem? I shrug at Adam, who seems intrigued.
Adam looks like he’s about to ask some more about it, but the music picks up and the lights spring into action. Conor slides fully onto Seth’s shoulders before leaping to the ground. The hush of anticipation from the crowd means we’re moments away from walking into earsplitting screams.
A voice from the other side of the stage introduces us in both Croatian and English: “It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Please welcome to the stage... ROYAL ELEMEEEEEEEEEENT!”
The answering roar is unbelievable every time. Every country, every continent, the wall of pure sound is the same. It only strikes you when you’re there, when you’re on the receiving end of it, and yet for some reason, the volume always comes as a shock.
Before I run to meet the bright lights and adoring fans, Adam claps me on my back. The presence of his palm burns an imprint for the whole gig.
6. KAT
IT’S DOWNRIGHT EMBARRASSING that I’ve never been to a gig before. It’s not like there weren’t opportunities — Colorado might not be as jumping as California or New York, but there’s always stuff happening in Denver. I lived a bit farther afield than Denver, I guess, in a village with a population of seven hundred. Also, growing up, I know it’s sacrilege and all... but I was never really that into music.
I mean yeah, there was the occasional thing. Dad loved his cheesy hits, and of course we both adored Broadway.
But the whole digital music revolution passed me by. Music without a context, without the visuals of a stage or story or costumes or a twenty-piece orchestra, kinda bores me. I’d replay my twenty-fifth anniversary concert of Les Mis VHS a hundred times, eventually upgrading it to shiny DVD quality, but I never got myself any kind of MP3 player. In fact, the first time I really used MP3 files was in my filmmaking course, editing sound for my documentaries.
So why I’m in Europe, in a country so obscure to me that it’s more like the answer to a trivia question than a real place, listening to the biggest pop group on the planet singing about partying on a weekday or something... well, it’s anyone’s guess.
All I can say is, I’m surprisingly pretty happy that Royal Element is my first proper gig.
Individually, the boys are... well, different is an understatement. But together, they’re unlike anything I expected. They work so well as a group that I almost don’t know where to point my camera.
I can guarantee Adam has most of the crowd’s eyes on him — including mine, safe in the knowledge that he can’t see me. His look of concentration as he works his guitar is going to be responsible for a lot of sexual awakenings.
But then he’ll mix it up a bit, putting down his guitar to leap onto the upper podium. He leans against Leon as he sings, their backs pressed flush against one another as they move back and forth, and the crowd shrieks like they’re losing their minds.
There’s something fun and admirable in the way he takes up space, dancing from one end of the stage to the other, messing with the rest of the boys as he does so. He’s like the audience’s boisterous host for the evening, guiding you into the deranged, hyperactive mind of Royal Element.
He’s glorious.
My stomach flips when he approaches Tarek. God knows what Tarek’s wearing but somehow it’s almost more hyperventilation-inducing than him being topless. Almost.
I haven’t given what happened between us much thought. Half because I’ve blanked it from my mind till I can get through this gig. The other half because I had to run. He distracted me so badly when I still had to collect my secondary camera and find my designated space in the foyer. For this gig, I’m a little bit to the side of the stage with the rest of the press photographers, but I have my own private enclosure.
Tarek looks like pure sin. As much as Adam is the sunny camera-ready perfect boy-next-door boy-bander, Tarek looks like he’s dressed for a different kind of movie entirely. His biceps bulge around a black mesh vest top that highlights his incredible physique, and the way he grips his microphone is borderline phallic.