All Fired Up (10 page)

‘You bought me beer and cake. I’m happy with that. If you want to spend money, buy your mum a gift.’

‘I’m not sure she’d know what to do with this,’ he said, holding the piece aloft. He smiled at the shop assistant. ‘It’s exquisite.’

‘Ash,’ Ginny squeaked, but her protest fell on deaf ears. He was already reaching for his wallet.

He leaned close to her and moved her hair away from her ear so that he could whisper into it. ‘Accept it, say thanks, and you can fuck me outside round the corner if you feel you need to express any more gratitude than that.’

‘We’ll take it,’ he told the assistant. He left Ginny staring at the glittering asscher-cut diamond while he settled the bill.

‘Y
ou’re insane,’ Ginny insisted, once they were out of the shop. She opened the little case again. She couldn’t help herself – it was impossible not to look at the thing¸ even though part of her still rebelled at the notion of accepting it. ‘I could probably pay for a year’s worth of tuition with this.’

‘Do you need to pay for a year’s tuition?’

She shook her head. She’d saved up money to pay her way, and even if she hadn’t – ‘I wouldn’t let you pay them even if I did. I don’t want to be your kept woman, Ash.’ Travel expenses and hotel bills were different. They were only necessary because of his silly rules. Otherwise she’d have happily been holed up on the tour bus with him.

‘What about being my love slave?’

‘If anyone’s going to be a love slave, it’ll be you.’

‘OK,’ he agreed, surprisingly readily. ‘Buy me a collar and you can keep me instead.’

Ginny laughed. As if he’d ever obey an order, and she wouldn’t really want him to anyway. She liked the tug o’ war between them, both of them pulling in different directions, sometimes one coming out on top and sometimes the other. ‘I think your tastes might be beyond my budget,’ she told him, though he would look nice in a studded collar like those Xane sometimes wore.

‘Nah,’ Ash drawled, moving in close so that his thigh pressed against hers. ‘I have very basic expectations: a solid breakfast, the cartoon network and lots of mind-blowing sex. See, very inexpensive.’

Obviously he’d never had a minor heart attack over a cable bill. She closed the lid on the little box, realising that in some respects their life experiences were as far apart as the sun and moon. He seemed to catch on to her sudden sense of melancholy, because he folded his hand over the box and then wiggled his nose against hers Eskimo-style.

‘If I wear this, you’ll risk cutting your tongue to shreds when you’re licking,’ she told him.

His soulful blue eyes lit at the mention of licking, and the corners of his lips inched upwards, until a wicked grin had spread across his face. ‘That’s a risk totally worth taking.’ He let out a warm slow breath. ‘I want to lick you now, Ginny. I want to see you wearing this jewellery and not a whole lot else, and I want to suck your clit until you come so hard your bones are like jelly.’

He washed away her moment of despondency in an instant. Ash and his tongue were legendary, and hell, she knew first-hand that the legend had sprung up for a reason.

‘I’m not sure the middle of a street in broad daylight is the ideal spot for that,’ she remarked, attempting to sound scandalised in order to disguise her excitement at the mere possibility. ‘I mean, I know Xane’s no respecter of public decency, but I thought Danger Mouse was more prudent.’ While her friend Dani might not say a whole lot about what she and Xane got up to together, the world press hadn’t been nearly so circumspect – sex overlooking the ocean, sex on a train, and masses of sex on the beach. Sometimes she wondered if they’d snatched the wrong men and ought to arrange a swap. She’d have no issues with Xane’s propensity for scandalising the nation, or his rather fluid sexuality, and Dani would adore Ash for attempting to keep her out of the limelight. They’d have a lovely rural home somewhere together, where they’d rear 23 kids with increasingly ridiculous names, and grow hops on the roof.

But Xane was damned high maintenance, and Ash could make her melt just by crooking his little finger.

‘I’m not sure we’ve been watching the same show.’ He laughed and plucked the little box from her hand. ‘And, for the record, Xane doesn’t have a monopoly on doing it outdoors.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ she said, stepping in front of him and dragging him down to her level by snatching his T-shirt. ‘Gonna prove that to me, stud?’ She couldn’t persuade Ash even to be seen publicly with her. Today didn’t count. He was pretending to be Danger Mouse and not Ashley Gore, super-hot love machine from the global trailblazers of gothic rock, Black Halo.

She danced her tongue against his, making him groan hard. Although the prospect of him getting her off somewhere he shouldn’t made her legs turn to jelly, they were much steadier than his.

‘You challenging me?’ he gasped, when she gave him a second to breathe. ‘You really want to risk being arrested, seen and totally blowing our cover?’

‘I want you to get down on your knees, lift up my skirt and put your mouth where it matters, but I think you’re a big chicken.’

‘Is that so?’

She nodded.

‘Sheesh!’ He made a whistling noise through his teeth. ‘You’re a bad influence, Ginny Walters. I don’t know if my mum’s going to approve of you. She might think you’re a bit wild.’

Oh, bugger! It didn’t look as if this conversation was heading in a direction she’d like.

‘If I do it, will you wear the bauble I bought you?’ he asked, flashing her the most outrageous grin at his riposte.

‘Sweetheart, if you bring me off using just your tongue, then I’ll let you put it in place.’

He seemed to grasp the seriousness of that offer, because he made a choked kind of sound that might have been ‘Baby.’ She was glad he got it, because up to now she’d only trusted herself and her piercer to get that intimate with her anatomy.

‘Where?’ he said. ‘’Cause we need to find somewhere right now.’ He tugged at his long hair as he circled, looking for the perfect venue. The street full of shops didn’t yield an immediate answer.

‘Here,’ Ginny replied, tugging him towards a narrow alleyway sandwiched between two of the cramped mediaeval buildings. She prayed it led to a dead-end and didn’t turn out to be a convenient short-cut between two major thoroughfares. As luck would have it, it led somewhere even better: into a quiet churchyard, with mossy weathered stones and black lead railings. She took a good look around to make sure they weren’t being observed. There was no one about, but the church doors stood open, so it was obviously in use. Then she darted beneath the catkins of an enormous weeping willow.

Ash prowled in behind her, shedding his leather jacket as he walked. He let it fall upon the twigs and dry earth. God, she thought, he looked hot in that T-shirt, like he was about to rip his way out of it at any minute, it fitted so well.

Ginny slowly retreated until her back hit the tree trunk.

‘Show me,’ he demanded.

Provocatively, she inched her hem up her bare legs, showing first her knees, then the curves of her thighs, then just the merest glimpse of her panties.

‘More,’ he mouthed, his face filled with hunger. ‘Show me more.’

She lifted the hem another centimetre, which wasn’t nearly enough for Ash, who dropped to his knees before her and snuggled up against her thighs.

‘My lady needs to be bare. I can’t see anything with these ugly things in the way.’ He hooked his fingers under the sides of her panties – which weren’t ugly, but black and lacy – and then drew them down her legs so they hung around her thighs. ‘That’s better.’ His tongue found her sweet spot and flicked over the base of her barbell and then the underside of her clit, proving that she could go from slightly horny to oh-my-God-give-it-to-me-now-or-I’m-going-to-die in under a second.

Of course, being Ash, he was merely saying hello. No sooner did he have her pulse racing than he backed off and let her steam while he explored first the other end of her piercing, then the parts of her thighs that were normally exposed above her stocking-tops. Ginny shoved the heel of one hand into her mouth to stifle her groans. He raised goosebumps across her skin and made her squirm against him with need.

Ash Gore had a mouth made for sin. More specifically, it was expertly engineered to make licking a thing of absolute beauty. The really killer part was that he got off on wiggling his tongue into naughty places.

‘Are you gonna draw this out?’ she asked, praying the answer was no, because, honestly, she didn’t want to wait.

‘It’s impolite to dive right in. I need to say hello to all my favourite bits first.’

He had too many favourite bits, apparently. Her toes curled when he nipped the base of her belly. Her fingers tangled in his hair when he sucked and then worked his tongue against her swollen lips. When he finally returned to her jewel and the sensitive nub it rested against, she nearly came on the spot.

Ash latched on hard, sucking and dancing his tongue against the underside of her clit, while her piercing added to the effect from above.

‘You might want to pipe down a little,’ he said, smiling up at her through the litany of curses she was shouting.

The sound of voices drifted towards them from the church, where a small party of tourists had appeared from the interior darkness and stood blinking into the sun. Ginny tensed, praying the leafy boughs were providing adequate concealment. For a moment she feared they weren’t, because several of the group appeared to stare straight at her. Then the whole group turned away and followed the crooked path towards the gateway and the main exit on to a broad boulevard in the distance. ‘Maybe right here isn’t the most sensible venue.’

‘Oh, no, Gin. You’re not cheating me out of my reward.’

Ginny stroked his upturned face. His lips and chin were smeared with evidence of her arousal.

‘Give me your shirt,’ she insisted.

‘You’ve been dying to get this off me since this morning,’ he complained, as he dutifully handed it over.

Too right, she thought as she stuffed Danger Mouse’s bum into her mouth. At least now she had something to muffle her groans as Ash set her back on a pathway to the stars. When he moved his hand so that his thumb circled the edge of her opening, she had to clamp her teeth down hard.

Round and round went the teasing motion, not quite dipping inside, then there was a second assault: his index finger against the furl of her anus. Her excitement reached a crescendo as he fucked her with his thumb while continuing to suck. The digit gave her muscles something to hold onto as they clenched and released.

Ash was smiling up at her when she peeped down and realised she’d torn her fingernails to shreds on the tree bark. ‘So tonight,’ he said, while kissing her fingertips better, ‘after the gig, my dressing room, and we’ll put this little gem we’ve bought in its rightful place.’ He picked up his leather jacket, dusted off the dirt, then reclaimed the hinged box and thrust it deep into a pocket.

Ginny shook out his T-shirt and tried to smooth out the worst of the creases. There wasn’t a lot she could do about the wet patch, but Ash didn’t seem to mind. He put it on and rubbed it like a lucky charm.

‘Maybe you might want to retire it on a high,’ she suggested.

Ash put a finger to his lips. ‘Penfold, shush!’ he admonished.

I
t began raining partway through the gig that night. Ginny knew because she stepped outside for some air during the interval. The change in the weather seemed to signify a shift in something else too, intensifying the feeling of discontent that had been niggling at her from the start of the tour. The afternoon spent with Ash wandering the streets of Antwerp had brought that into sharp focus. Relationships needed grounding in normality. They couldn’t be all fluff and no substance for ever. She needed some commitment, even if it was only him admitting to the band that they were dating.

The atmosphere at the Antwerp venue didn’t help to quell her dissatisfaction. Normally she loved watching Ash and the guys on stage, but tonight the drums were too loud, there was too much pushing and shoving, and the crowd of women the venue crew had let backstage were a bunch of vicious cows with about as much class as dogs in handbags. Nor did she think she was the only person out of sorts. Elspeth had serious talent, in that she could make her presence felt even when surrounded by the testosterone-fuelled nightmare that was the rest of Black Halo, but tonight she looked bruised, as if, were someone to poke her too hard, she’d shatter, and what she really wanted was to sleep curled up in a real bed with a warm body beside her.

Ginny was totally on board with that. A mug of cocoa and her favourite winter socks sounded kind of heavenly right now. Enough with the smorgasbord of gore and glitter and the loud, sweaty audience, barely civilised by a thick coating of gothic gloss.

Matters worsened when she was unable to get through to Ash’s dressing room and had to wait along with a guy-hungry rabble. Cave Troll, whom she could normally charm with a wink and a flash of her stocking-tops, was off duty, apparently getting some much-needed shut-eye in preparation for an overnight drive north into Holland.

Her feeling of discontent only deepened when she watched her best friend Dani run over to meet Xane as he came off stage, and he swept her up into his arms and kissed her as if his life depended on it. She and Ash ought to have been enjoying this adventure together, supporting one another in the same way. Damn Ash and his insistence on secrecy. Could he not see that the open display of affection that Xane and Dani shared was what she wanted, not a diamond set into a piece of jewellery no one would ever see?

She was sorely tempted to say to hell with his rules, storm the barricade and go and snog him senseless for the whole room to see, but she didn’t; she patiently waited.

Fuck! She was turning into everything she’d promised herself she’d never be.

‘Move over, fat arse.’

Ginny had the breath knocked out of her as an overzealous and extremely rude fan shoved an elbow into her midriff in order to secure a space at the barrier.