Rock Chick Reckoning (Rock Chick #6)(50)

My eyes came open and I stared, frozen to the spot in disbelief.

Mace was there, onstage, right in front of me, right in front of five hundred people.

I stayed frozen as his hand wrapped around the neck of my guitar; he yanked it over my head and then jerked me forward so that my body slammed against his.

His free arm sliced at a slant around my back, crushing me to him. His head came down, his mouth finding mine and he kissed me, right there, right onstage, right in front of five hundred people, open-mouthed, hard, wet and ful of everything.

His body bent forward, pushing mine back so I was His body bent forward, pushing mine back so I was arched over his arm, my torso and h*ps pressed deep into him.

He kissed me and kept kissing me as the band played around us, pushing the song longer, longer…

I heard the cheers, the shouts, the stamping feet, the applause, the crowd was wild, my subtle edge as a possible lesbian was forever obliterated.

And through it al , Mace kept kissing me.

When he final y tore his mouth from mine, he didn’t move away. He kept me bent over his arm, his face less than an inch from mine, our eyes locked and we were both breathing heavily. My heart was beating like a hammer, I could feel it in my chest, in my throat and, dear God, I could feel his too.

“You didn’t get it,” I whispered.

I could taste the acid of tears in my throat, the sting of them at the backs of my eyes.

I real y, really needed him to get it.

But he didn’t understand that he turned my world to black and he didn’t get it that I couldn’t go through that again.

“No, Kitten, you don’t get it,” he whispered back.

My hands were clutching his shoulders. I started to try to push but I realized I couldn’t. I couldn’t push and keep control of my tears and my terror and my shaky belief in the fact that what I was doing was right. Not al at the same time.

So I just held on.

“Let me go, Mace.”

He didn’t let me go.

Instead he spoke.

And what he said with the background soundtrack of the repeating end notes of a soul-destroying rock song changed my f**king life.

“I can’t be the star in your sky when you’re the only star left shining in mine.”

This time, my breath took the Concord out of retirement and shot to Paris.

That was right before the gunshots rang out.

And the gunshots rang out just seconds before Mace and I went down, Mace’s big, hard body landing on mine like a dead weight to the sickening, discordant sound of the strings of a crashing guitar.

Chapter Nine

Sex Wax

Jet

I was smiling at Daisy, stil high from Stel a and The Gypsies’ “Ghostriders” which always lasted at least ten minutes (if not more) and, no matter how many times we heard it (which was every time we saw them play), they made it fresh, ful of energy and it always brought the house down.

But tonight, it was more. The band was on fire and that fire blazed through the crowd, white-hot. It was enough to make us forget our troubles, the danger again confronting us and just enjoy some good ol’ rock ‘n’ rol .

Daisy grinned back at me and shouted, “Yippee kay yay!”

So, of course, I shouted it right back at her.

Over Daisy’s shoulder, I saw Annette and Roxie doing a high five then they bumped h*ps and, seeing that, I giggled.

It was great being a Rock Chick.

Only thing better was being Eddie’s Woman.

Lucky for me, I was both.

My eyes slid through the crowd, looking for Eddie (not finding him, by the way) and coming to stop on Tex.

Like he had been al night, Tex was sitting at a stool, his back to the bar. But now, his narrowed eyes were locked on something as if that something was something he did not like.

Since there were a lot of things Tex didn’t like, I didn’t think much of this.

Then, to my surprise, I heard the first notes of Pearl Jam’s “Black” coming from Stel a’s guitar.

Good God.

I felt as wel as heard the tremor of surprise go through the crowd and my stunned body slowly turned. On my way around, I saw that Indy, Al y, Roxie, Daisy, Ava and Annette were no longer Post-“Ghostriders” high. They were al staring, mouths wide open, at the stage.

The Gypsies never did an encore.

As in… never.

When my eyes hit Stel a, I instantly became transfixed.

She was at the mic and singing a slow, “Oh yeah”.

Her eyes moved then locked on someone in the crowd and I knew without looking where her gaze was directed. I knew without looking that she was going to sing to Mace.

Like she did a few months ago when she sang Hank Wil iams.

And, just like then, after she started singing, it hurt to listen.

But it was a beautiful pain.

I knew it hurt her to sing it just as it hurt me to hear it. She poured feeling into every song she sang but that song…

that song, she poured her soul into it and the entire club felt it. And, in a club-wide moment of shared, stunned reverence, we were al dead silent while we watched her communicate her pain.

It was arresting. As the song wove through the crowd, the lyrics a gentle assault, we al stood frozen and watched.

Then, as if from nowhere, Mace was onstage, his long legs eating the distance as he came at her. We watched as he pul ed her away from the mic, tore her guitar from her hands and then he was kissing her.