Dare (The Dare Trilogy) (22 page)

“Janey!”

“Come on, love. You wouldn’t have me any other way. Admit it.”

Their banter was disturbed at that moment by a roar from the doorway. As she turned to see Tony and James entering, Dianne noted with amusement that the concierge was staring
at Janey with evident contempt. Thus it ever was, Dianne thought to herself—and Janey was right: she wouldn’t have her friend any other way.

Tony immediately rushed up to Janey, lifting her in his arms so that her head came above his. She dipped down her face, planting her lips upon his and kissing him in a fashion that seemed more akin to eating the Irishman alive than anything else. James came to a stop, his eyes glittering and his cheeks red. When she lifted her mouth from Tony’s, Janey slapped him eagerly on the shoulders. As he put her down, she rushed to the keyboard player and held his face in her hands.

“And how is my pretty boy,” she cooed, her voice suddenly deeper.

“I’m good,” Jim replied, his cheeks almost scarlet now. “I missed you.”

“Oh, and I missed you. I missed both of you.” With a grin Janey looked back to the others. “Now this is going to be a weekend to remember!”

Dianne was confused. “How long... how long are you staying?”

“Till Monday at least. Perhaps a little longer.”

“But we’re only in Berlin till tomorrow.”

“I know, but you don’t think I was going to miss out on
all
the fun, do you?” Without waiting for a reply, she turned to Tony. “So, how was it last night?”

Tony shrugged. “Pretty boring to tell the truth. It’s hard to get excited about an orgy when the others are so obviously faking it
—either that or so off their tits they can’t perform.” He glanced back to Cam and frowned. “Your mate, Johnny. Fucking hell. I don’t know whether to admire him or feel sorry for him.”

Cam opened his mouth to say something but a sly smile spread across the drummer’s lips. “Where’s Dan?” he asked.

“I’ve no idea. I thought he was with you.”

“Nah
—he fucked off before we’d finished. Remember that blonde he was with when you left? The tall one, with the big boobs?”

“I remember,” said Dianne, suddenly recalling the woman
—and also the slightly strange feeling she’d had when she’d seen her.

“Yeah, well he got a little more than he bargained for with that one. Put him in a right sour mood, but then what’s new with our dear old Daniel?” As Tony spoke, James began to snigger.

“What do you mean?” Cam asked.

“Oh, I’ll let him tell you all about it,” Tony scoffed.

Janey, in the meantime, had placed an arm around James’s shoulders and pulled him in closer to her. With her stilettos, she was nearly as tall as the keyboard player. “And how are you, my ickle-wickle boy? Didn’t they treat you properly last night?”

“Not really,” sighed James. “I missed my mommy.”

“Oh, poor baby,” breathed Janey, pulling his face into her half-exposed cleavage and letting her fingers run through his hair. Her own face was deepening in colour, her lips half open as she held the young man to her chest. “Well mommy will have to treat you better, won’t she.”

The concierge was starting to move from behind the desk, no doubt fearing what display of excess would occur next. “I think we better go,” Dianne said.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Janey replied, her eyes shining as she looked at Tony, her hand still stroking James’s hair. “I hope you two didn’t get too shagged last night, because I’m well and truly gagging for it now, I can tell you.”

With a flourish and a huge grin, Tony lifted the suitcase from Cam’s fingers and turned to grasp Janey’s free hand as the three of them returned to the lift. “Keep an eye out for Dan,” he hollered back. “And remember to ask him how he got on with Birgit!” Then the elevator doors closed and they were gone.

“Mommy?” asked Cam incredulously. “Ickle-wickle boy?”

Dianne sniggered at this and shook her head. “Probably best you don’t ask. I hate to think of all the things those three are going to be up to this afternoon. She’s a piece of work, is Janey.”

“You’re telling me.” Cam placed his arm around Dianne’s shoulders. “Want to go and try to keep up with them?” he asked with a wink.

She poked him in the ribs. “Perhaps later. You can take me for breakfast first. I’m bloody starving.”

He nodded in agreement and the pair of them left the hotel lobby into the bright sunshine that flooded the Berlin streets. As they walked along, Dianne squashed the many questions she wanted to ask, pushing them to the back of her mind: she wasn’t sure that she wanted to know the answers, not just yet.

The White Ark—more and more beleaguered with every mile they travelled—was also on the wrong side of cosy with Jane as part of the entourage. Not that Tony and James minded. The drummer spent far too much time fooling around with the brassy blonde, who would shriek her furiously filthy laughter as they drove along, with James sitting beside her, his head often resting on her shoulder as she stroked his head tenderly.

Dianne, while sometimes bemused by the relationship the two members of Black Ark had formed with her friend, was genuinely glad to have Janey join them, while Cam
—aside from one withering glance at her suitcase as he placed it in the back alongside their equipment—was the spirit of hospitality.

“How long did you say you were staying with us?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Three days, maybe four. Okay, five tops, then I really have to be in London. I’m not so feckless as young Dianne here that I can throw in my job. Why?”

“Well, it looks as though you’ve packed for a month here. At least.”

“Pff! You think that’s a lot of clothes! My very good friend might be a slattern, but I like to travel in a certain style.”

And so Jane was sitting in the back seat, squashed between Tony and James with Dianne perched on the end. While Dianne was wearing regulation jeans and a T-shirt, which Tony had complimented her on in very flattering terms, Janey was dressed in a voluminous, frilly blouse and a long, black skirt slit to the thigh
—a thigh that frequently attracted the fingers of both her paramours much to her own amusement.

In the front of the van, Cam sat alongside Dan who seemed to be the only one not impressed in any way by the appearance of Janey. Indeed, on the first day she had joined them in Berlin he had disappeared for most of the time, only
returning an hour or so before they were due to go on stage. Afterwards, he had vanished equally suddenly, not even seeking out the company of Darius or other members of Optima as he had done on most of the tour so far.

And now he sat in the front of the van, staring ahead with grim resolution and refusing to remove his eyes from the road
—especially when the others made gibes against him, Tony in particular. Nobody had said anything specific, but Dianne had a suspicion that she knew what had happened that night.

“I must say,” Janey said, raising her voice so that the two men in the front of the van could hear her as well, “you’ve improved a lot since we first heard you in London.”

“Oh, thank you,” Dan sneered sarcastically. “Like we need your fucking approval, you and your friend.”

Janey shrugged at this and instead directed her attention towards Cam. “And you were pretty spectacular. I mean, you were really good in London, but I don’t know what happened after
—you pulled the stops out last night.”

“Thank you,” Cam said politely, one eyebrow raised in amusement as he half turned to look at Janey. “Mind you, I think your opinion’s biased.” He nodded in the direction of Tony and James.

“Of course,” Janey replied, squeezing a thigh of each of the men sitting either side of her. “My boys can do no wrong by me.”

“Just as you
can’t do anything wrong by us,” said Tony, lifting his mouth to kiss hers, one of his hands sliding along her skirt and exposing even more leg—which previously Dianne had thought impossible.

“I mean,” Janey continued after she had finished apparently biting off Tony’s tongue in a thoroughly shameless manner before turning her attention to James, squeezing the young man’s crotch as she did so, “I don’t know much about music –“

“Fucking great,” Dan muttered. “Some fucking retard complimenting us on our music. Just what we need.”

“I don’t know much about music,” Janey said more sharply, her eyes fixed on the back of the head of the bass player, “but
Di’s really into that stuff and she tells me you’re really good.”

“We hit our stride in Berlin,” Cam agreed politely.

“Hit our fucking stride?” Tony almost bellowed. “We fucking rocked! We ruled, I tell you.”

“I don’t think we’ve ever been that good before,” James agreed. “Let’s hope we can keep it up. We’ll be headlining with Optima as the support band if we get any better.”

Dianne bit her tongue at this while Cam remained silent. Black Ark had, indeed, attracted the attention of Berlin even during their short stay, more so even than Optima in some circles. Though he said nothing, Dianne knew that this worried Cam a little.

It was Dan who had no reservations about stating the obvious, however. “Too fucking right,” he snarled. “If we carry on like this, we won’t need those cocksuckers anymore.”

“Hey, Dan.” Cam’s voice was calm, reasonable. “Remember Johnny’s a good friend of mine, and those cocksuckers have given us a break.”

“Friend,” Dan sneered. “What do you know about friends? That fucking Johnny Korpus is too strung out to even know what day of the week it is, and all your
friendly
chit chat with him hasn’t got us paid yet, has it?”

“Watch your mouth.” Cam’s voice was ominous, the tone threatening so that, for an instant, everyone in the van sat up and took notice. Dan started to say something in return but then, having glanced across at his co-driver, thought better of it.

“Well I for one will be glad to get to Prague,” Janey said brightly at last, breaking the awkward silence that had descended for a while. “It’s a very beautiful city, apparently, and you know what they say about beautiful cities.”

“What’s that?” asked James innocently.

“Beautiful cities make beautiful women very horny.”

“I can’t wait to test that one out,” leered Tony, bending down and planting a kiss in Janey’s delicious bosom as Dianne covered her eyes in embarrassment. She had already started to hear some of the kinky things that Janey was trying out with her two new friends, and the thought of what new heights
—or depths—they would achieve made her blush.

“Fucking hell,” grumbled Dan. “Don’t you ever give it a rest?”

“What’s up, Dan?” jeered Tony. “Still waiting to find a beautiful woman to check if their horny for you?”

Dan said nothing but looked back at Tony via the rear view mirror with pure malevolence in his eyes.

“I’m sure we can find someone for you,” James joined in. “Mind you, it has to be a special type, doesn’t it.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Dan snarled at this.

“Yeah, do you reckon there’ll be anyone like Birgit in Prague? I mean, you hear all sorts of things about these Eastern European women. All tastes catered for, eh?”

“But I guess the problem is that we can’t be sure that Dan’s really on the lookout for a woman, now, can we,” mused Tony, lifting a finger to his lips in a melodramatic posture as though thinking. Janey said nothing, smirking as the two men on either side of her ribbed Dan, but Dianne was aware that Cam’s shoulders were rigid now and the tension was growing from the driver’s seat.

“Fucking shut it!” Dan slammed his hands on the steering wheel.

Tony ignored him. “I guess we could find the right lady, but she’d have to be packing something extra
—you know, down there.” Both James and Janey laughed at this and Dianne had a glimpse of Dan’s face fixed in a rictus of fury in the mirror.

“The one thing I can’t quite decide...” James was speaking up more boldly now, which somewhat surprised Dianne. Janey’s presence was having an effect on him in multiple ways. “...is whether Birgit took it or gave it.”

“Yeah, I’ve wondered that as well.” Tony leaned forward and placed a hand on Dan’s shoulder across the back of the seat. “Perhaps you can let us know, Daniel: what’s it like to take it up the arse? And did she have a big cock? That’s what we all want to know.” Dianne turned her head at this, blushing for reasons she didn’t want to share with the rest of the group.

“Can you really call her a ‘she’? I’m confused,” James again assumed an innocent expression. “Is a tranny a ‘he’ or a ‘she’? Perhaps you could tell us, Dan, seeing as you’re the expert and all that.”

“I didn’t fucking know, okay? And that fucking cunt Darius let me carry on like a right fucking idiot!”

“Oh, I think you did really well. Really well. We’ll find you someone similar in Prague. One chick with a dick coming right up. Or two, if you’d prefer a spit roast.” Tony was revelling in the situation now, but the bassist’s reaction threw even him.

They had been travelling along one of the main highways towards Prague and were passing a slip road that led into the middle of the Czech countryside. Without warning, Dan pulled hard on the wheel, speeding along the road and causing cars behind them to start hitting horns in warning as they veered out the way.