Page 21 of Rock Bottom

“No? I bet I can break you with two words.”

I folded my arms. “Try me.”

Dante might’ve been nearly a foot shorter than me, but the way he prowled forward made him seem much bigger than he was. He stopped right in front of me, stood up on his tiptoes and leaned in. My trapped cock throbbed as warm breath brushed over the shell of my ear.

He made a sound in the back of his throat that was half animal, half human, but all sex. “Good boy.”

Bloody hell. With that voice, Dante was temptation incarnate. If he’d been anyone else…

But he wasn’t. He was the one man who was off limits, and this was nothing more than his attempt at a distraction.

I turned my face toward him, trying to ignore how right his scent felt wrapped around me. “I need your phone, Dante.”

He stepped back with a smirk. “Is that all you need?”

“Yes,” I lied through gritted teeth.

“What’re you willing to do to get it?”

I closed my eyes and sighed. “I’m just trying to keep you safe. Don’t make this any more difficult than it already is. Please.”

When I opened my eyes again, he held his phone out to me, his expression blank. I thought it must be a trick, but he let me have it without a struggle.

“I expect to have access whenever I need it,” he said.

“You can have supervised access to your phone for a few hours a day.”

“I didn’t say access to the phone.” Dante winked and walked back to his bed. “Although next time you want a show, let me know in advance so I can come prepared, pun intended.”

“Next time I want a show, I expect a better performance,” I replied.

“I’ll keep that in mind, big boy.” Dante’s laughter followed me all the way down the stairs.

I put my guitar aside and flopped onto the bed with a heavy sigh. My head throbbed and my palms itched. I needed a shower, but I didn’t want to take one. All I wanted was for this damn song to write itself, for there not to be thirty-two beams in the ceiling like I’d already counted a hundred times, and for that stupid bird to shut the fuck up.

Less than twenty-four hours without my phone and I was already losing my mind.

This sucks. I ought to go down there and give Mr. Perfect a piece of my mind. He can’t just take my only lifeline away without consequences.

Except he could, and he was well within his rights to do it. I knew I shouldn’t post on social media, and yet I’d done it anyway. It was my fault, just like everything else.

With a groan, I rolled over in bed and yanked my notebook and a pen out of the drawer. I flipped it open, looking for a blank page, but paused when an old photograph of my family fell out of it and landed on the quilt. I picked it up and ran my fingers over the glossy surface. It’d been taken the day we finished recording Electric Love Song. I’d taken my whole family out to celebrate. I was wearing the biggest smile, my arm thrown around David, two fingers up like rabbit ears behind Darwin’s head. God, he looked so young with his giant glasses and that dorky bow tie. He had two kids now, and I’d never even met them.

I closed my eyes, and I was right back in Tito’s Spaghetti House with them that night, the smell of garlic and tomato sauce heavy in the air. Damien was laughing like an idiot and Mom kept squeezing my hand in the booth, telling me how proud she was.

None of us knew then how big the album would get. We weren’t thinking about world tours, and signings, and putting out the next big thing. We were just living life, getting through one day at a time with help from each other. I missed those days, but things would never be like that again. That version of Dante was gone, and with him, any hope of ever having a family.

My fingers curled around the edge of the photograph. It was stupid, all this wallowing in my own pity. There were people out there who would kill to have half the success I did, so why was I lying there feeling sorry for myself?

Poor little rich boy Dante Deluca who has everything he ever wanted, who drinks away his fortune because he can’t cope with being alone in a crowded arena of screaming fans. Everybody sees him, everybody knows him, but he’s still fucking invisible. I could be replaced by a singing cardboard cutout, and nobody would notice for at least a week.

I tucked the photograph back into the notebook and tossed it on the floor. It wasn’t helping. Lying around doing nothing sure as hell wasn’t going to help either. I needed to find a way to work past this creative block. Then I’d feel better.

C’mon, Dante. Think. I rolled over onto my back to stare at the rafters again. Whenever you got stuck before, what did you do to get the creative juices flowing again?

I winced and answered my own question. Vodka, coke, and a blowjob, but I’m not getting those anytime soon. Well, maybe the last one once Church pulled that stick out of his ass so I could get in there. The mere thought of him on his knees for me was enough to send all the blood rushing to my dick.

Since we’d arrived in the cabin, I’d imagined him in dozens of scenarios—gagged and bound to a chair, tied spread eagle to the bed, bent over the chair and tied to the wall—but somehow I always wound up back at the same place: him kneeling on the floor with his arms bound behind his back. He’d look up at me like I was his personal idol. Not Dante the musician, or Dante the rock star, but Dante the man. I’d let him see who I was stripped of all those things, and he would still love me for it.

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