Page 8 of The Bloodfeather Promise
Her feisty resistance is intoxicating, sending my blood churning sluggishly through my veins like heated wine. Maybe, just maybe, I should snatch her up. Toss her over my shoulder. Caveman style.
I feel even more dizzy. Goddamn, I can hardly breathe just from looking at her. ‘Want’ is too feeble a word to describe what’s coursing through my veins right now. I want tobreakher. Ruin her. Tame her. Fuck her until everyone understands she’s mine.
Where the hell did this insta-lust shit come from? The fact she is affecting me so completely leaves me snarling in confusion.
“I’ll tell you why.” My good-natured tone abruptly disappears, replaced by the usual coldness. The guys are so familiar with it, they all sink in relief. Even Dylan relaxes until I shatter any illusion of civility. “I’m gonna fuck you so good, you’ll never forget it. Just like Dylan’s last girlfriend, you’ll want me to fuck you again and again. Just like her, you will beg me for it. Beg me for every dirty thing I do to you. And just like all the other girls I’ve fucked, you’ll thank me when I’m done with you.”
Dylan’s face flushes red with anger. “You prick,” he seethes. “You fuckin’ prick. You think I don’t know the games you’re playing? That I don’t know about your sick, twisted, goddamn “blondes only” rule? Now, you pull this shit on top of everything else. Yeah, it’s all payback. Payback for Jessica. Payback for Alex. Payback foreverything.And you know what? I get it. Hell, Ialmostunderstand it, but this ends tonight. Get your shit together, Greyson. Because this past year, I gotta tell you, man, you look like shit. You play like shit. Fuck, even the songs you’re writing are shit.”
Raking a hand through his hair, Dylan pounds the table with his fist, as if uttering such dark secrets aloud is excruciatingly painful. “We’ve all agreed…if you don’t pull it together, if you can’t get things back in order, at least the way it was before Jessica and Alex died, then you’reout.Yeah, that’s right. At the end of the tour, and the moment we got some useable tracks for the album, you are done. Majority rules.Yourrules, remember? We all made that pact, and every single one of us is gonna stick to it. Even you. Fuck up, and the members of the band have the right to decide your fate.” With a fierce growl, he adds, “And fucking let her go, you depraved asshole.”
Greyson Finch getting slapped into next week by a feisty little brunette while on the receiving end of a Class C blowjob doesn’t register an eyeblink. But Dylan’s tirade? It sure as hell catches everyone’s attention. It brings the bar’s wild carousing to an abrupt halt.
I almost want to shake Dylan’s hand. Congratulate him. Our mild-mannered, laidback singer suddenly grew balls, balls big enough to gather the nerve required and voice aloud what everyone else is already thinking.
Mouth slack with obvious shock, Jack watches over his cowgirl’s shoulder. Our manager should know better, should knowusbetter. Why isn’t he stopping this disaster before it careens out of control and smashes all of us? That’s his job, right? Saving us from ourselves when we go too far.
And, yes, we’ve reached that point. The point of too far. Bubbling to the surface is everything that has been building inside me since Alex and Jessica’s deaths. Like dangerous acid, these emotions are corrosive. Scorching. Deadly. All-consuming. I can’t hold them back.
Releasing the brunette’s hair, I lunge across the table with no warning. My mad scramble knocks glasses over and sends girls screaming and ducking for cover, which is comical since two of them crawled out fromunderthat table only moments ago. Judging by the shock on Jet and Brant’s faces, it’s my best impression of a rabid spider monkey, and they have no clue how they’ll get me back inside the cage.
The chick we placed in the dead center of our fight calmly sidles out of the way. Her friend goes tumbling off Jack’s lap when he surges to his feet. For the next few moments, I catch glimpses of these two girls, standing at the edge of the gathering crowd, watching us brawl like it’s the newest documentary onAnimal Planet.
Dylan and I pummel each other, fists flying, some landing, some not. Mine mostly not. I berate myself for taking that pill Jett gave me. It muddles things, dulling the sharp, clear edge cocaine gave me earlier.
I don’t remember how we end up in the parking lot. Dylan rains punishing, bruising blows on me. For some reason, they don’t really hurt. It’s more annoying that the crowd only makes half-hearted attempts at breaking us up. Even the muscle-bound security guys aren’t putting any effort toward diffusing the brawl when they easily could. Guess everyone is enjoying the awesome spectacle of me getting my ass kicked. Speaking of which, a thought occurs that it’s a fucked-up rule when management ignores drugs and sex inside their establishment, but they will sure as hell toss your ass to the curb at the first hint of a fight.
My best friend’s fist connects squarely with my face, and I think I hear the crack of my nose. It accentuates my landing on hands and knees, a broken beer bottle dangerously close to my hand. The jagged green glass sparkles in the streetlights. An inch over and it would have cut my damn finger off. That right there might have meant the end of my career. New fury swells inside my chest, growing into an out-of-control tsunami wave.
“All your fault, Dylan… All your fault…” I mumble, trying to balance myself on suddenly clumsy feet. The parking lot tilts crazily, the cool spring air burning my lungs. Finally, someone steps in. I think it’s Brant who makes a grab for Dylan’s arms.
No one bothers holding me back. I just got my ass handed to me, so I’m obviously not a threat. Hell, at the moment, I can barely stand up.
“Maybe it’s Alex’s goddamn fault,” Dylan breathes heavily from the exertion of rearranging my face. “Ever consider that, you clueless bastard?”
When the fuck did I become scared of Dylan Harrison? He looms over me, making me want to shrink away.
“Dude, don’t. Just don’t,” Brant groans, throwing a pleading glance around the gathered crowd, looking for help. His gaze lands on our manager. “Goddamn it, Jack. Do something for Christ’s sake!”
“Maybe if your brother wasn’t fucking my girlfriend, they’d both still be alive,” Dylan mocks while at the same time shaking Brant off. “How could you not know it was going on? How could you not know Alex was fucking her, too? Every chance he got. Behind my back, yours. All of us.” His voice cracks on the words. Do they hurt his throat while spilling out in so much verbal vomit?
Pushing myself to my feet from the dirty, uneven pavement, I half-trip, half-stumble toward an open limo door. Jack stands beside it, blank-faced and silent. His hands practically shake with the desire to push me into the luxury vehicle. Maybe he’s worried I’ll throw a punch because he doesn’t dare try and touch me.
The brunette and the redhead, arms still linked together, stand a few feet away from my manager. Teeth tugging at her lower lip, my dark-haired girl watches me. A black leather skirt hangs crookedly from her hips, and while that could be a result of my eye already swelling, there is no mistaking the fact her legs are a mile long. Am I dreaming they are encased in thigh-high black boots? Goddamn, she’s sexy as hell. Somehow, I’ve gotta get a taste of her. But first, there’s this little problem with our lead singer that must be dealt with.
That punch in the face sobers me up. A little, anyway. Still, I unleash on Dylan, screaming at him, at my friends, at all of them. My words are hardly more than an indecipherable tangle of curses and threats.
“Every word of it is the truth, Grey.”
“You’re a goddamn liar,” I spit blood and fury at Dylan. “Alex wanted nothing to do with Jessica. He felt sorry for her, that’s all. And because you fucked things up, he tried smoothing things over, like he always did. What do you care anyway? The night they died you had some random girl bouncing on your dick.”
“And, you made sure Jessica saw that, didn’t you?” Dylan counters, brushing tawny colored hair out of his eyes. “That’s why you sent her back to my dressing room that night. You knew she would walk in on us. Damnit, Greyson. Can’t you just admit it? You couldn’t stand it when she dumped you in the first place. Not that any of it matters now, for God’s sake.”
“Fucker. Don’t blame me for this shitshow. You were the one screwing around behind her back. For weeks.”
“Because she was screwing your brother behind mine and had been for months.” Dylan exhales a deep, cleansing breath in a concentrated effort to calm himself. “When you get your shit together, maybe you’ll open your eyes to the truth. Greyson, I loved him, too, like a brother, even if he fucked me over with Jessica. But you are blind to how he was. How he pursued women, regardless of who they might be with. I’m not the reason they left together that night. It would have happened anyway. They’d done it so many times before. Don’t you get it? Everyone knows the truth. Everyone except you.”
“Fuck you,” is my response.
