Page 105 of Naughty Dreams
Roy’s large hand closed around his fingers, pressing a folded paper and a pen against his palm.
He needed that touch, but in this precarious moment, if he reached for the hand instead of the pen, his soul would crack.
I am too fragile.
I need to come to you strong.
But will I ever be strong enough?
He’d change the vocals on the last line, driven upward and harsher by the fiercer drumbeat. The guitar strings would createa shriek of sound as he crossed the frets, letting that savagery lead.
His heart’s drumbeat moved into the base of his throat. His head started to roar.No. Get it down, DJ. Don’t lose it.
Reawakened, the muse refused to be thwarted by loss. Hell, it would probably thrive on it, using up the so-called artist until there was nothing left. What remained would be only what the muse had given him. Or what it decided not to take back.
What does it matter? Why does any of it matter?
Only yesterday, he’d worried that the words and music would never come together for him again, and now that it was trying, he was pissed. Pissed at the muse, pissed at the world. He wanted them to be pissed back.
A different muse spoke, with a voice like a mountain god. “Write it down, Dory.”
Roy was the only one who used that name. Even if he hadn’t discussed it with DJ, he wouldn’t have needed his permission. From their first meeting, there’d been certain things it seemed Roy had the God-given right to do.
Roy rested his fingers against the hollow path of DJ’s spine, connecting to all the other hollow spaces inside. The sub in him wanted to obey, take that shelter. The sudden inexplicable rage in him was having none of it.
No. Fuck you. I'm out.
Roy’s touch moved back to the clutched pen and crumpled paper and closed over DJ’s hand. The man had a grip like a bear trap. Had he forgotten DJ needed working fingers, in case he ever played guitar again?
“Write it. The fuck. Down.”
Every enunciated word was backed by a power he’d like to capture, translate into a fuck-me-before-hopelessness-kills-me song.
DJ lifted the paper, a used envelope from a power bill. Wow. He figured Roy just ordered the lights in his condo to turn on, because Roy’s voice could turn on anything.
Neither his dick nor the muse gave a fuck about how much his heart hurt. Both of them were willing to use the pain for their own purposes.
While he scribbled the words on the envelope, Roy turned his back to DJ, bookends with no books in between. He was shielding him. DJ guessed he’d signaled the shopkeeper to keep her distance.
He folded the envelope and tucked it and the pen into the back pocket of his jeans. His elbow brushed Roy’s coat, and DJ registered the butt of the gun Roy wore harnessed beneath it. In the interest of blending, it was a casual jacket over jeans and one of those cotton crew necks he looked so good in, this one a blue-gray that picked up his eye color.
DJ inhaled Dial Mountain Air soap, and the aftershave that kept Roy’s square jaw mostly smooth. Shaving products could only do so much against facial hair driven by uber alpha testosterone. When DJ had told him that at breakfast, a welcome and leisurely interlude sitting on the deck, watching the river and the birds, Roy had called DJ a wiseass.
Heat. Roy always smelled like heat.
Fire banked
Fire unleashed
Hellfire glow
I always know
That heat is for warming me
Heaven or hell or from the Earth
The source is true
