One Night Only (24 page)

And then I lose. I'm not quite sure how. Everyone seems shocked at the sudden end, the crowd, me even. The bar bell tolls for chucking-out time.

“Did you do that on purpose?” asks JazzStar.

I find I can't speak. Honestly, I don't know what I'd tell him.

“So what happens now?” asks one of the crowd.

“I don't know,” I say. I feel my mouth has formed in a small smile. Then it hardens. “Rematch,” I demand. But the bell tolls again. “Rematch,” I repeat. And JazzStar stares hard. I don't want this to end yet.

“Everyone out,” calls the barman.

“You're staying here, right?” I nod my head at the ceiling.

“Yes.”

“Rematch. Upstairs.”

The crowd, which has been easing away at the sound of the bell, shifts differently now. No surprise; the atmosphere above the board is almost so think you can taste it. Surely they think they see where this is going.

Who cares what they think?

JazzStar set out the board again quickly in his room. There is one chair; he takes it. The board goes on the bedside table he drags round, and I'm left to perch on the end of the bed. I doubt the connotations are being lost on either of us but even so, the game is the priority.

“You don't like losing,” he comments.

“Damn straight I don't.”

“But…?”

“A close fight's better,” I admit after a heartbeat.

Move, move, move, move: barely studying the board, studying each other's facial expressions. Move, move, move. The room is warm and stifling. Promotion at the eighth rank. His queen captures my king.

“You're doing this on purpose,” he says.

“No way.”

Move, move, move. My mouth is as dry as a desert. I can't remember the last time I went this long playing without pleasuring myself too. When another piece of his reaches the eighth rank, ready for promotion, he says, incredulous, “You're going to lose again. You're doing this on purpose.”

I shake my head; I can barely speak. “I just like to draw out the game. Promote your piece.”

He moves to make it a queen, then stops. “No.”

“No?”

“I refuse.” He's breathing hard.

“Then
you
withdraw?”

“I didn't say the game's over.” He stares at me. I think I'm getting the gist; my heart's in my mouth. Chess: always think ten steps ahead. Of all the permutations I can read in his eyes, and his in mine, this is surely going one way.

“Stand up,” he snaps.

“What?” My authority's being challenged. Do I like this? I wonder.

“Stand up.”

My legs spring up, showing themselves eager. JazzStar flicks a wild look at the tiny room, then almost pushes me to one side as he heaves against the mattress. What's he doing? Going to take me on the floor? Again, I can't decide if it's prickling excitement
or trepidation coursing over my skin, and the uncertainty is electrifying. The mattress comes off, smashing a light on the stand. Metal springs show strung between the low, dark wood slats of the bed, like a network. JazzStar forces the mattress sideways against a wall. A thought occurs, so delicious it catches in my throat, but then I'm distracted: the chessboard topples.

“The game!”

“Sit.” And he really is breathing heavily. My legs almost give anyway.

“You can't take your move—”

“I'm taking it now.”

And it occurs: red-hot anticipation spreads over me as my legs sink against the hardwood. It's all in keeping with the game.

Queening.

JazzStar—the man I know only through brief typed conversations, who could be anyone on earth—takes one pace forward and rips down my skirt, panties and all. Before I can react he dives beneath the bed in this small, rented room. When his hands reach up through the slats a jolt like he's attached live wires to me shakes me, because we've never touched before. He even groans as he touches me—what a turn-on! His hands rub against the insides of my thighs like he can't get enough, smooth hands that reflect his desk-and-keyboard lifestyle, and it occurs what power I have now that I'm above him. I hear him breathe deeply in through his nose—god, I must be reeking of desire by now. I press down against the slats and springs and his fingers press against me as he lifts his head up and his tongue, that tongue I've been watching ever more interestedly as this evening's progressed, whips out against my cunny lips.

“Oh, Christ!”

It has been almost three hours of foreplay, if you don't count the four days building up to this. JazzStar licks me again and
then starts kissing: quick, deep kisses ranging from the mouth of me up to almost where my clit is and down to the soft patch of skin in front of my anus, like he can't get enough of me. I rock forward, trying to match his rhythm but he's going too fast and desperate for me to catch him. Ahead on the carpet, his erection is standing proud through that suit of his. It must be agonizing; the idea that it might be frustrating him warms me.

“Suck me,” I command, nearly growling, the way I've always wanted to command someone.

JazzStar obeys. He takes each lip gently into his mouth. I feel this oh-so-sweet tug first on one side, then the other, and he even tries to suck my clit. It turns out I'm not so good at being a remote commander because I can't help but reach my arms reach through the bed to cradle his neck—it must be aching, not that it's an entirely selfless gesture on my part. I slip my hands down his collar, needing to feel the sweat on his skin. I dig my nails in and can tell he enjoys it by the way his body arches. I repeat this and he gasps, mouth full of me. He pants warmly against those most sensitive parts. “Suck harder.”

As obvious as his pleasure is, I feel I'm winning this game. Perhaps that's not so fair, as I have so much advantage. It's near torture easing myself up from his lips but I do. I catch his eye and it seems like we're so in tune mentally; he shrugs himself out from under the bed and I resume my position atop him, except now I go down to touch my lips against his cotton-clothed cock.

“Don't you fucking withdraw from this one,” he gasps, grabbing air from outside the sweet prison of my crotch. “Don't you—”

He comes wonderfully, bloody fiercely, despite the fact that my lips haven't even touched any flesh of his. But his coming is enough to wipe out any holds I've been putting up against
myself, and I let the waves roll in, calling out against his salt-stained trousers.

In a little while I ask, wiping a little juice from my mouth and feeling very distant, “Who won?”

“I think—it's a draw.” He manages to lift his head a fraction to look at me. “Can you deal with that, competition-queen?”

I nod weakly.

 

It's a small university town so everyone—friends and classmates included—knew soon enough that I'd gone up to an older man's room and not come down, though most probably thought I was dull enough that it really had just been another chess match. JazzStar hasn't been on the games site since then. I think he'll come back under a different user name. So far I've not played anyone with his style but I'm still enjoying my other, lesser tournaments.

I do it for the money. Mostly.

 

 

 

 

 

A
nyone who tells you that fame is the biggest perk of being a rock star is lying; sure, there's the high of being onstage, the rush of hearing your song on the radio, the fact that I never have to commute on a subway train at eight in the morning again. There's the fact that I can dye my naturally red hair an even more fiery shade of red/orange/bad-ass and get applauded, not sent to HR. There's meeting celebrities, even going to the White House once, and travel galore, and knowing that every day I get to see my art not boxed up or hanging on a wall, but alive, being hummed or sung or danced to. I love entertaining people, love being able to take my thoughts and feelings and turn them into a rock song that goes beyond words. But best of all, I love the boys who love me back.

Okay, “love” is overstating the case. I hunger for the boys who lust after me; they're men, really, but I like to call them boys, even to their faces, and they like it too. They, my groupies, are the biggest perks of the job, by far. The kind of fan a six-foot-one,
Amazonian, tattooed, screaming redhead lead singer (of my band Fiery) gets aren't exactly the type who'll object to anything. I once had a boy come backstage who I told I wanted my own personal tattooer to put my name on his ass. No sooner had I said it than this sweet young thing dropped his pants! Even I don't have an on-call tattooer, and I wouldn't have gone through with it anyway; I just wanted to see what he would do.

We tour about ten months of the year; I've chosen bandmates who like the itinerant lifestyle as much as I do. Two of them, Steffy and Craig, are actually in committed relationships, while Benny is like me, the kind of guy who just goes with the flow. We're in a city one night, maybe two, and we don't form attachments, except to each other. We're not lovers, though we have been known to take a tumble on the rare night when there just aren't any groupies to our liking or we want a warm body to curl up next to far from home.

Usually, though, what happens is something like what happened tonight. Our gigs typically end around midnight, and then the real show starts. Sometimes while I'm onstage, I'll let my eyes roam over the audience and try to pick out a boy who just looks like he'd be the perfect fuck. You might think that I'm not discriminating, but that's far from true. I have standards, especially because this guy's only gonna get one shot to perform. You don't want someone so insecure or uncertain that he shoots too soon or can't get it up. I want a guy who's turned on by my power, but not so turned on that he can't access his own, if fucking is on my agenda.

If I do spot a candidate, I'll have our roadie, Genius (his nickname for himself, but one that, with his voluminous store of random knowledge, we've had to concede is pretty accurate), go pull the guy aside and give him a backstage pass. Does that sound sleazy? Well, so be it. Nobody's complaining. I look for
boys who I can toss around my hotel room; who I can pick up, throw across the bed, maybe take over my lap and spank. You work up a lot of adrenaline, not to mention aggression, when you're onstage, and even playing the shit out of my beloved electric guitar isn't always enough to get it all out of me. Besides, the guitar won't fuck me back. These boys will.

Sometimes I think I should've been born a guy; I'm told I talk like one, cuss like one and even fuck like one, but I don't wish I were a guy. I like being a loudmouthed, smart-ass wild girl. I like being unpredictable, and I love having a new specimen of manhood to play with every night.

There is a magic to getting to start over, to have an unfamiliar human body at your fingertips, waiting to be explored. Tonight, it was Jacob. He was twenty-five, but looked a few years younger. He had black stubble set against his pale skin, and was wearing a slightly worse for wear T-shirt of ours from five years ago, along with black jeans that had seen better days, and black and silver sneakers. I cared more about the look on his face than the look of his clothes, and what I saw when Jacob stood before me was pure adoration, like he was ready to worship me in every way. He already was, in a sense, as I flung myself all over the stage, flitting my eyes back to him on occasion. He clearly hadn't brought a girl to the show, and his eyes seemed to bore into me.

If I were looking for a soul mate, I, like other women, might have a whole checklist of things I wanted to know: job, pedigree, hobbies. But since all I wanted was some fun for the one night I was in town, a way to let off steam, to keep on seeing that worshipful face after I'd gotten off the stage, I didn't care about all that. What I cared about was how looking at Jacob made me feel: sexy, hot, invincible. During sex, I like to feel the way I do onstage, like the ruler of my own mini-universe. When
I winked at Jacob, I saw the small gesture make its way through him; he knew what it meant, he knew what I wanted. After so long in this business, I can spot my special submissives easily.

There was no band T-shirt that said, “I want to be ordered around and made to lick a powerful woman's pussy.” There was no hairstyle that could convey, “My dick gets hard when a hot woman growls at me.” It wasn't a fashion statement, for me or for them, but somehow, we found each other. Powered by the adrenaline rush of knowing I'd have a boy to test out the new red suede flogger I'd picked up at a sex shop that afternoon, I blazed my way through the set list and even added two songs to the encore.

“Hot damn!” Genius greeted us as we left the stage. “Someone's got a fan.” He was onto me; he was always onto me, and not just because I'd pointed out Jacob earlier. Genius could spot these guys a mile away, too, and sometimes I was kind enough to let him play with the ones I didn't want, if they swung that way. He knew, though, that my music was powered by sexual desire, and that I was hungry to continue that flow of energy.

“Should I go get him for you?” The others just looked at us and rolled their eyes. They didn't quite share our groupie-spotting vision.

“Nah, make him wait a little while. Give him these to play with,” I said, reaching under my short skirt to take off my sweaty panties.

I hopped in the shower, even though there's a part of me that likes the sticky post-show sensation, the way the heat and the glitter and the magic still cling to me. I emerged and slipped into another skirt, a very short latex one, skipping the panties. I slipped a see-through white tank top over my head, knowing my nipple piercings would be visible, and brushed my favorite permanent red lipstick back onto my lips. I smiled at myself in
the mirror, reminding myself, as I do every day, how lucky I am to have crafted the perfect life for myself. If I'd been stuck in a house all day with a baby, even if I had a guitar by my side, I just wouldn't have been happy. I see the joy my friends get from their kids, on the rare occasions I get to visit with them, and know that, in its own way, rocking out makes me just as happy. As does what happens after.