Taste Me (12 page)

Where the hell had all these people come from? “Chico?” Lukas snapped into his headset. The scrappy werewolf who’d just cleared Scarlett’s dressing room had vanished into thin air, and Lukas needed him at Scarlett’s dressing room door. Someone had died, Scarlett was about to drop, and he was stuck playing traffic cop to tipsy hipsters. “Passes. Now,” Lukas demanded from each member of the giggling, rowdy group who swarmed the hallway.

“Right behind you,” Chico said. The Sebastiani Security lieutenant’s shaved head gleamed like an eight ball, and pea-sized diamonds blazed in both ears. The ornamentation made him more menacing rather than less, because Chico only broke out the bling when he didn’t care if you saw him coming.

Lukas jerked his head at the crowd. “Get these people out of here.”

Chico stepped toward the tipsy group and growled deep in his throat. They hurriedly dispersed, leaving behind a copper-tinged cloud of fear.

“Theatrical, but effective. Why is this hallway such a sieve?”

“Fight broke out at the entrance. Jack needed backup. Do you plan to stay at the door?” Chico indicated Scarlett’s dressing room door with a jerk of his head. “If so, I’ll take the T in the hallway to keep this area clear.”

His silent mini-comp mocked him. The comm channel was quiet. Whatever had caused the ashes to barrel down his throat like a pyroclastic floe hadn’t popped yet. “Sure, I’ve got it,” he replied. There was nothing he could do until he got some actionable information.

As Chico disappeared around the corner, Lukas reached to his right front pocket for the small container of breath mints, popping one in his mouth as he paced in front of the closed dressing room door. Humidity leaked from the crack under the door. Scarlett must be taking a shower.

Ah, shit.
The woman scrambled his brain. He should already have initiated a check-in of principals. “Jack.”

Jack turned on his outgoing audio, but Lukas could barely hear him with all the crowd noise at the entrance. A high-pitched voice screeched, “Is that your hand on my ass?”

“Hold on a sec,” Jack shouted. The noise lessened as he walked to a quieter area. “Ah, silence. What’s up?”

“Everything okay down there?”

“Fight’s over, crowd’s clearing. We’re pouring people into taxis. What do you have?”

“We need an immediate visual verification on all principals. Can you—”

“Got it,” Jack replied. His voice tensed, but he didn’t waste time asking questions. “You’ve got Scarlett?”

“Confirmed.”

“Sasha’s right here. I’ll start at the VIP box and check in shortly.”

Lukas swallowed heavily, the essence of ashes still stinging the back of his throat. It had felt—tasted—close.

Turning off his outgoing audio—his crew didn’t need to hear him mutter and swear while he paced—he pulled his mini-comp and checked the Hot Sheet. He wanted to call Gideon Lupinsky, but he had absolutely nothing to tell him yet. All he could do was wait for Jack to check in, damn it—and imagine Scarlett, naked and wet, behind that locked door.

“Hey, dude, feeling any better?” Tomas Diego asked Lukas as he approached from the band’s dressing room next door. He dragged a half-dozen people in his wake.

Lukas shoved his mini-comp into his pants pocket. “Passes.” He quickly but carefully examined the laminated passes hanging off people’s necks, sending everyone except Diego and Tia Quinn on their way.

“Well, look who’s here. Lukas Sebastiani,” drawled the curvy vampire who possessed a coveted All Access pass. Tia Quinn, an award-winning investigative journalist who’d gotten her start writing reviews for
Rolling Stone
, was here to interview Scarlett. Her pass authorized her to roam anywhere in the venue except Scarlett’s dressing room and the VIP box.

Earlier, Lukas had overheard Garrett canceling their interview. Why was she still here? “Ma’am, why don’t you go upstairs to the after party, enjoy a drink? Garrett will reschedule your interview before you leave tonight.”

She raised her eyebrow slightly, a tiny fang peeking over her purple-glossed lips. “Do I look like a ma’am to you?”

Lukas took in the precision-cut blond hair, the knockout body, the clinging black pants topped by a tiny T-shirt and a battered leather jacket. “No, ma—no, Ms. Quinn,” he finished carefully. “But we need to clear this area.”

“Okay,” she responded agreeably. But instead of walking away, she planted herself on the eggplant-colored leather couch in the alcove directly across from Scarlett’s dressing room, her expression saying “not specific enough, doofus.” “I’ll just wait until she gets out of the shower and say a quick ‘hi’ before going upstairs.”

“Ms. Quinn—”

Tia hitched a thumb at the closed dressing room door, her purple nails filed to lethal points. “That set list was a huge ‘fuck you’—or was it a ‘fuck me?’—to someone. Whoo-ee.” She fanned her face with her hand. “My panties are still steaming. Did she and Duncan break up? Is he here?”

Lukas stood silently in front of Scarlett’s door, not saying a word.

“All I know is, if I were incubus, I would have been down for the count—or least had my tongue jammed down somebody’s throat half the night. But here you are, standing strong and tall. How is that?” Her eyes narrowed. “
Why
is that? Why is Lukas Sebastiani, of all people, guarding Scarlett Fontaine’s dressing room door?”

Why couldn’t she be a random entertainment stringer instead of an investigative journalist? “Ms. Quinn—”

“Tia! Dude! What’s it been, five years? Seven?” Tomas chose that moment to drag the journalist into a bear hug, whether she wanted to be dragged there or not. Tia looked momentarily annoyed before returning the embrace.

Lukas almost missed Tomas’s conspiratorial wink.

“Let me buy you a drink, catch up,” he suggested to Tia.

“On the house,” Lukas added. Hell, they could drink the place dry if it kept Tia Quinn from asking questions he couldn’t answer.

“Thank you,” she replied, shooting Lukas a look that clearly said, “Don’t think for a minute that I’m dropping this.” “I didn’t expect to see you playing tonight,” she said to Tomas. “Where the hell is Stephen?”

Your guess is as good as mine, lady,
Lukas thought grimly. The man had been missing for over four hours. Even for an incubus, it was a marathon session worthy of a Viagra endorsement.

“Ms. Quinn? Tomas? I think the after party is getting started upstairs,” Lukas said. “Why don’t you go on up? We really need to clear this area.”

“And you haven’t told me why yet.”

His only response was a bland stare.

“Okay, okay. No need to break out the cuffs.” She looked his big body up and down, and raised a brow. “Unless you want to? No? Too bad.” With a final look at Scarlett’s dressing room door, she allowed Tomas to lead her down the hall.

Leaving him free to check in on Scarlett. Dripping wet, singing in the shower not twenty feet away.

***

It took two groaning tries for Stephen to lift his head off the floor. Around him, speakers popped. He smelled hot wires and melted plastic, and his own semen. The computer monitor nearest him displayed white letters and numbers across a cheerful blue background, and the other monitor had winked out completely.

What the hell happened?

He couldn’t hear music pulsing from the floors below any longer; the show must be over. Damn, how long had he been out? They really had to get downstairs. Or upstairs, to the after party. Where he would probably be fired. “Annika. Babe.” He nudged Annika’s leg, setting it swinging. Her French-manicured toenails glowed in the dim light. “The show’s over. We’re going to have some serious explaining to do. I’ll be lucky if I…”

No response. Had she actually fallen asleep with those knobs digging into her back? “Annika.” Again, no answer. His heart beat faster.

Please be sleeping. Please be sleeping.

He pushed himself up, staggering to a stand between her limp legs.
She lay slack and unmoving on the soundboard, her mouth stretched open in a soundless “O,” staring at him with dry green eyes—expressionless, but accusing him nonetheless.

His heart beat a fast tattoo.

Shards of broken light bulbs glittered like rhinestones on her face and body, and he gently brushed them away from her cheekbones with his thumbs. There was no recoil, no tinkling giggle. Whatever universal energy had made her uniquely Annika was unmistakably gone.

The enormity of the situation, of what he’d done, hit him like a freight train. Pulling up his pants with a yank, he sank onto the couch to think. The speakers snapped, crackled, and popped accusingly.

I need one hell of an alibi.
He was very stupidly—and very publicly—not at work tonight. His text message asking her to meet him in the recording studio was on her PDA. His fingerprints were all over the studio, and his DNA all over her body.

He’d killed the Siren Second. He’d killed Scarlett’s sister.

His mind raced, erasing a few lines and re-sketching reality to align with the aspects of the story he couldn’t change: he’d texted Annika. They’d hooked up. While they were in the act, someone… knocked on the door. Thinking it was Garrett, coming to drag him back downstairs for work, he’d opened it. A man—two men? Yeah, two men—had pushed into the room, attacked him. Knocked him out. He had no idea how long he’d lain there, unconscious—or what had happened while he was out.

But when he woke up? Oh my god. Look at what they’d done to poor Annika.

He nodded slowly, refining the picture, building and layering the story with increasing confidence. Annika had told him earlier that there were no security cameras on this floor. It wasn’t perfect, not at all, but… scary how easily it could work. He looked at the room through the eyes of what he and Annika had consensually done, and what had happened to her after—while—he’d fugued out. The large strokes of the scenario were there.

Those damned light bulbs worried him. The same thing had happened when he was with Andi Woolf at Subterranean, and he couldn’t afford to have the investigators draw any more parallels between the two crimes than absolutely necessary. Even if he swept up all the glass shards—even if he discovered a way to get rid of them—there was nothing he could do to replace them in the light fixtures themselves. The men must have smashed them after he blacked out. No—after they
knocked
him out. Yeah. They’d gone nuts, smashed the place up. Why? He had no idea.

He was a victim here too.

Yeah, he could sell it.

Stephen’s gaze flitted around the studio. Ah. There. Now they were talking. A golf club leaned in the corner by the coffee station. Stephen wrapped the tail of his shirt around the handle. Grasping the club solidly in his hands, he bashed at the computers. Brought the club down hard against the soundboard, on both sides of Annika’s body. Her weight shifted a little with the second blow, but her lashed hands kept her from slipping off the soundboard’s tilted surface. He smashed the club against the popping speakers, and at the framed art on the walls for good measure. Glass shattered. The head of the putter dug a dozen divots into the drywall. He turned in circles, knocking over mike stands, drums, chairs, music stands, and guitars. He kicked a few amps over, and for the finale, swept the club through the chunky mugs and carafes near the coffee pot, knocking it all to the floor. Dragging a straight-backed chair underneath the one surviving light bulb, he smashed it.

Breath whooshed in and out of his burning lungs as he admired his handiwork. He stared at Annika for long, long seconds, until he heard muffled footsteps and laughter from the nearby stairwell. The after party hosted by Elliott Sebastiani and Claudette Fontaine at the president’s penthouse apartment had probably started. Guests using the stairs would pass within ten feet of the studio door. Frankly, he was surprised some incubus or succubus hadn’t already been drawn to the floor and discovered them.

He couldn’t put it off any longer.

After one final bittersweet glance at Annika, he walked over to the maple coffee table. Eyed the sharp corners.

He threw himself down. There was a flash of white-hot pain, and then… nothing.

***

“Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“Go ahead, I’ll be right here,” Lukas assured Jesse. Apparently Scarlett’s favorite body lotion was nestled away in one of the unpacked suitcases upstairs, and Jesse wanted her to have it when she was done bathing. “She’s in the shower.”
With water coursing over her naked body.
“She won’t even know you’re gone.”

“Okay. Be right back.”

After Jesse left, Lukas turned off his outgoing audio and slipped into Scarlett’s dressing room. The shower was running full blast, and Scarlett’s whipsaw emotions misted the air. Lukas inhaled deeply, her essence washing away the ashy aftertaste lingering in his mouth.

He moved like a sleepwalker toward the brightly lit bathroom. When he reached the door, he didn’t bother to hide. He just stood there and watched as she sat in an exhausted huddle on the floor of the shower, her head tipped backward to loll against the wall. The stall’s chest-high, glass block wall turned her silhouette into wavy undulations, but he could see her hand move gently between her thighs. Her pleasure shivered into him and back out again, and a breathy groan escaped.

Her hand stopped as she sensed his presence. She slowly rose from the floor to face him, meeting his gaze through the billowing steam, her body hidden by the glass block from the chest down. Her luscious mandarin essence bathed his taste buds. He swirled his tongue to gather as much as he possibly could.

A vicarious taste wasn’t nearly enough.

He moved closer—one step, two, three—until his face was so close to hers, he could feel her every breath. A fine spray of water splashed his face, hair, and sweater, but he didn’t care.

They stared at each other. Finally, she whispered, “Kiss me. Please.”

He didn’t have the strength to deny them both. He’d be gentle if it killed him.

He’d barely dipped his head when she grabbed his hair and yanked, crashing their lips together. Gentleness? Scarlett clearly had other plans. Her soft, wet tongue delved hungrily into the cavern of his mouth.