Page 39 of Naughty Dreams
He did a riff from “Hot For Teacher.” As they recognized it, the crowd yelled some more. DJ waited them out before speaking again.
“I knew that every cent of the ticket was going to be worth it. The band was the fire breathing horses pulling the chariot, and me and everyone else were about to have the ride of our lives.
“This is the place you're meant to be, right here, right now. With us.”
The lights blasted on, and the band launched into “Smoke It,” Tal’s drumming building like a thunderstorm, and DJ and Pete circling each other, dueling warriors using their instruments instead of swords. During his solo, Steve grinned like a demon, hands flying over the fretboard, his hips rocking.
Apparently DJ nearly getting shot had goosed the band’s passion for what they did. The show had extra energy, DJ’s voice, the band’s music, the way they strode, pranced and leaped around stage, reaching new heights.
The music influencer standing near Roy in the wings had three million followers. And yet his face was suffused with anI can’t believe I get to be herelook.
“They just get better and better,” he said to Moss. Moss looked like he wholeheartedly agreed.
“We are Survival,” DJ screamed into the mic at the end of the song, lifting his hand up to the crowd. “It is what we are, what we do.”
With a wide sweep of his muscled arm, he struck the opening chord to “Comfortable In My Own Sin.” He flirted with the mic for several verses before breaking away from the mic stand and joining Steve, heads beating time like Tal’s powerful drum kicks. When he returned to the mic, his thigh moving beneath his instrument to keep time with the beat, he was so damn sexy Roy could barely ignore him the way he needed to do.
But he did, because his job was to pay attention to everything else. The part he kept locked down would yearn for and anticipate his review of tonight’s footage. Even now, snapshots of it, like that intriguingly flexing thigh, were sliding past the lock, feeding the anticipation and desires that lay behind it.
Dory offered himself up to the crowd with the gut- wrenching words he sang, with his flashing eyes. His body quivered and arched toward the mic.
Some things we can't fix.
I can't fix.
Some things we can't heal.
I can't heal.
Lost in a wasteland
Watching the onion peel
Away to the core.
Wishing there was more.
To me. To us.
At one point, when he was moving from the center stage mic to the one on the right, his gaze met Roy’s. Since Roy’s attention was usually everywhere else but on DJ, eye contact was so rare it felt fated, giving it a significance far beyond what it should mean. Two men looking at one another for a split second during a concert.
But in that blink of time, Roy felt the full impact of DJ’s flushed face, his mouth in a sensual snarl.
He’d worn Roy’s shirt. Roy had seen it up close before they went on stage. No way that blood had come out, but small patches had been sewn over the splatter pattern. Crimson hearts outlined in black, each no bigger than a quarter. The buttons had been replaced by decorative ones, pewter fox faces. Rolled up to his elbows, the sleeves were held with silver pins that looked like miniature versions of Roy’s money clip. The rips had been sewn with glittering red thread.
While the garment had been glammed up by his costume people to fit DJ’s image, it was still Roy’s shirt, and DJ had covered it with reminders of what they’d shared at the club.
Kid was relentless.
The wind machines blew the shirt back from his lean body in the low-slung jeans. His diamond-studded belt flashed as he pivoted, his hips jerking, ass twitching.
He was a damn incubus, begging to be captured, wanting to be the prey instead of the predator. Wanting someone he could trust to help him hold onto everything, keep it from taking him over in the wrong ways.
He knew Roy was strong enough, and so did Roy.
When the crowd went home, Roy could demand Dory offer himself to one person only—his Master. Because that was what DJ needed. Maybe Roy, too.
What had happened in Miami, with the shooter, with the stalker, had shaken things loose from Dory’s past. He didn’t ignore or avoid them, but it was bad shit. If he accepted DJ as his submissive, Roy could give him an aftershow workout to purge it.
