On the Steamy Side - Louisa Edwards [70]
The eyes on him, the bodies throwing themselves around, flashing skin and heat and leather in what could only loosely be characterized as dancing—those things usually sent Frankie into ecstatic dervish mode, at once immersed in the music and in tune with the crowd.
Tonight the music eluded him. The crowd, rowdy as ever, didn’t thrill him. Frankie’s attention was well and truly snared. Snagged and caught on one little table a short distance from the stage, where Jess Wake sat, so very un-alone.
Frankie fumbled a chord. Noelle tossed a glare over her shoulder, toxic orange dreads swinging and banging into the microphone. Frankie acknowledged the singer with a two-fingered salute and a breakout bass riff that sent the crowd mad. Over at the Table of Doom, Jess whooped and shot out of his seat, leaving Wes fucking Murphy with his mouth hanging open in the middle of some no-doubt hilarious anecdote.
Right. That called for a bit of the old sex appeal. Frankie caught Jess’s bright eyes and smoldered. Gave him a hint of the tongue between the teeth and a slow, subtle hip grind, too.
Might as well go all out.
The results were heartening: Jess swayed toward the stage like a mouse hypnotized by a snake, the man at his table forgotten. Frankie smirked. There was nothing quite like staking a claim in front of a bar full of sweaty mashers. Jess stared up at him, pretty blue eyes glazed over with want, and all of a sudden, Frankie was done with the gig.
He rushed the rest of the set, knowing he’d catch hell from Noelle and the others later, but just not giving a tinker’s damn about it.
When it was finally, finally over, Frankie barely took the time to lift the strap of his bass over his head and lay the instrument down where he’d been standing before he bounded off the stage and over to Jess. Who’d sat down at some point, but leapt to his feet and tackled Frankie the minute he was close enough.
“You rocked tonight! I even liked the New York Dolls cover.”
“Infidel,” Frankie said. It was easy to be indulgent with his arms full of Jess. “Personality Crisis is a classic.”
“It has a good bass line, anyway.” Jess was determined not to like the Dolls, which Frankie couldn’t understand. Luckily, the young squirt made up for it by loving the Ramones with a passion nearly as unnatural and fervent as Frankie’s. Not to mention Patti Smith.
Thinking of the high priestess of punk made Frankie remember the night Jess had first talked to him, asking about the image of Patti tattooed on Frankie’s arm. The idiot boy hadn’t even known who she was, but he’d been drawn to her like he’d been drawn to Frankie—and Frankie had taken full advantage of that fatal attraction.
Eager to sample the delights of that attraction again, Frankie boa-constrictored Jess and whispered in his ear, “Let’s head home, eh? Got some new pillows at the flea market; I’ll let you toss ’em wherever you like.”
The Garret was furnished with rugs, carpets, throws, pillows, and discarded sofa cushions. Frankie was on a perpetual hunt for pillows in exotic colors and fabrics.
Jess squirmed back far enough to see Frankie’s face. “Ooh, new pillows. What are they like?”
“Lime green,” Frankie told him. “Largish. Material’s like nothing so much as shag carpeting.” He arched a brow. “Appropriately enough.”
Jess blushed—and God, how Frankie did love the fact that he could still make his boy blush—but pulled away.
“Soon,” Jess said, a promise in his eyes. “But I can’t leave Wes sitting here all by himself after I practically forced him to come out. Can we stay a little while?”
Bloody hell. Exactly what he’d hoped to avoid. Frankie could see the bloke over Jess’s shoulder, young and beautiful in that confident, catalogue way Frankie could never manage in a million years.
Wes tipped his chair back and waved at Frankie, a smug expression on his supercilious face, as if he knew exactly what Frankie and Jess were talking about.
Probably wanted Frankie to throw a wobbly and insist