Dare (The Dare Trilogy) (11 page)

With a contemptuous flick of her head, Dianne turned her attention back to the front. She could see Tony coming on stage, taking up position behind the drumkit, and she looked out eagerly for any sign of Cam.

Bang! Again she was nudged in the back, this time with such force it nearly sent her sprawling. She heard something in French and, her face a mask of anger, she turned round. “Why don’t you just piss off!” she told him.

“Ah,” the neanderthal said. “Anglais. You have come all this way for Optima?”

“Black Ark, actually,” she said, glowering up at him. His look of absolute confusion gave her considerable satisfaction as she turned back to the front, this time catching sight of Cam striding onto stage, just behind James and surly-faced Dan on his heels. She began to whoop and holler, jumping up and down in her excitement—and forgetting what a spectacle she was presenting to the arrogant Frenchman behind her.

When she felt his hand groping her backside, however, although she felt shock for a second she knew immediately what to do. Gritting her teeth together, she folded her arm so that her bony elbow became a spike and jabbed backwards sharply. One of the most fortunate things about being so petite was that her arms came to just the right level to cause men of a certain size considerable damage where they were least expecting it, and she had the satisfaction of hearing the neanderthal grunt in pain before moving away. She might be on her own at that moment in an unfamiliar city, but that didn’t mean she was going to be a victim.

As Cam lifted up his guitar and slung it across his shoulder, she saw his eyes scanning the crowd as the rest of Black Ark took up position. Even from here his blue eyes were distinctive and she could see them moving back and forth, searching, searching—until he saw her and a broad grin spread across his face.

“Good evening, Paris! We are Black Ark!” he yelled, winking towards Dianne who felt a surge of powerful emotions rising up from her abdomen. She whooped and yelled, but the reaction from the rest of the crowd was considerably more muted
—they clearly had no idea who Black Ark were. She did have the pleasure of noting the response of the neanderthal blonde, who looked at her with faint disgust as though she had just revealed some mental deficiency.

Cam gave a laugh and small shrug at the crowd’s reaction and only now peeled his eyes away from Dianne, turning back to Tony and nodding him to count them in on the first song. This was one she hadn’t heard, with Tony striking up a big, throbbing drum noise that laid the rhythm for Dan’s low bass line, the sound filling Notre Dame easily and reminding her of something from an older Queens of the Stone Age track.

Above this, Cam began to play out his power riffs that lay alongside the pulsing swell of James’s keyboards. While Dianne still felt the most peculiar sensation between her thighs, as though she was going to climax again simply from seeing Cam up there on stage—a sensation that was not lessened in the slightest when Cam looked at her with those shining eyes of his—at the same time she had been expecting this. Rather than the chaos of emotion she had experienced at NightWorld, this time she could actually listen to them.

And they were good. Not perfect
—she hated herself for a moment because she was so critical, but in truth she wanted to think with her brain and not her heart (or her pussy, for that matter). There was a slight slippage between Dan’s bass and the rest of the group, and occasionally even Cam’s fretwork was a little rusty, but she admired the sound that they were aiming for. The key was B major, and with the high but not too fast beat it gave their music an uplifting, happy atmosphere. As they played, the crowd began to react almost subconsciously, moving from apathy to slightly heightened anticipation as Cam came towards the mic.

“When I waited for you, I knew what I was doing,” he growled, his voice almost perfectly matching the major tones of his guitar playing. His style was largely effortless, only
glancing down once towards the microphone stand to check his position, then leaning in with a graceful control to stare out towards the audience—his eyes scanning them all once again to bring them in before coming towards Dianne once more. “And when you entered my head, you knew what I needed.”

With these words, there was the merest hint of a snarl across his lips and Dianne felt herself opening up once more between her legs. She pressed her thighs together and dipped down ever so slightly, feeling stupid like a teenager all over again: in some respects, she was glad she wasn’t wearing knickers tonight
—they would be soaking before barely half an hour had passed.

Cam now gazed across to Dan who, to Dianne’s slight surprise, was getting into the spirit of things, his hand flying across his bass guitar as his body shook in time to his and Tony’s rhythm, his eyes fixed on the singer as he came forward to the front of the stage. While the first lines of Cam’s song had been delivered to her
—and to her alone, she just knew it—Dianne now appreciated that Black Ark were playing for their audience, bringing along the entire crowd who only a few moments before couldn’t have cared less for this unknown British group.

Building up to the chorus, Cam closed his eyes now, his right hand flashing across the pickups. “If I sing with you, will you sing with me? If I open my heart, will it have to be that I’ll lose myself in this endless sea? And if I wait for you, will you wait for me? Can you be the one through eternity?”

As he sang the final bars of the chorus, now those eyelids flashed open, like lasers of perfect blue, picking out Dianne in the middle of that crowd.

You bastard, she wanted to scream as yet another orgasm, milder than those she had experienced only a few hours earlier, pulsed through her loins. Stop it! But instead she let herself go, jumping up and down like a number of the rest of the audience, letting the music flood over her with an intensity that she knew they simply wouldn’t get.

She held herself together after that a little better. This time there was no need to rush to the toilets, and when guys made a move to her, attracted by her glow, she rebuffed them easily. She knew what the rest of the night would bring, and she had no need to doubt what would happen. However, as they came to the end of the set she did have one flashing moment of concern about what this would entail.

Many in the crowd now were hooping and hollering as loudly as she now, and she could see not just Cam but the rest of the group beaming broadly as they raised their fists in triumph. Soon she’d be joining them, but there was just one thing she needed to do. Pushing her way through the crowd, not feeling self-conscious at all about the fact she was going commando
—and even enjoying the sensation—she came to the toilets. Entering there, she saw what she needed and was pleased to have remembered bringing a few euros with her.

When she left, however, she frowned to see Cam and company returning to the stage. She was pleased to see them, of course, but it was pretty unusual for the support act to come on and do an encore. The crowd was in a fairly good mood after their first set, however, and greeted them generously.

There was something wrong, though. Dianne couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was, but as she looked up at Cam and the rest of Black Ark she could sense it. The first time he had come on stage, he had looked confident—a little cocky even—and when he had sought her out in the crowd his eyes had flashed a message of supreme certainty.

Now they sought her out again and, to her surprise, she saw that this time he was looking troubled. Still, when he saw her, he gave a little smile.

“Okay,” he called out. “Thanks so much! We’re just going to play a couple more numbers to get you ready for Optima!”

At the name of the band the audience had come to see, a few cheered and were willing to indulge Black Ark’s grungy, passionate rock. But it wasn’t the same: perhaps it was that Dianne was especially sensitive to it
—though she had only seen them twice, now, yet for her own personal reasons she was watching this group much more intently than any other member of the audience. Immediately she could sense the more introverted experience of the band now, the fact that they were watching each other. Something was wrong.

Despite themselves, it made itself felt in their music, which this time was not quite so expansive, not quite so confident. They were playing as professionally as ever, with those slight rough edges that Dianne liked in many ways as hooks into their emotion, their enthusiasm, but it was as though they were not letting go completely. She was sure most of the rest of the audience didn’t notice, but as Black Ark moved into a second, and then a third track, the crowd started to become restless.

“Optima!” Someone shouted, and then the name was taken up as a chant. “Optima! Optima!” That single word was boomed out again and again, and now Dianne could see that Cam was looking clearly worried—as indeed were the other members of the group.

They continued valiantly, but when the glasses
—plastic, fortunately—began to shower them from the dance floor, it became increasingly difficult to play. Dianne, looking around furiously, saw that it was a small contingent of people who were being most vociferous—among them the neanderthal she had elbowed in the balls previously. When he saw her, he gave a vicious leer and threw another half-filled glass towards the stage, this one hitting Dan in the face and soaking him.

That was it. With a snarl, Dan pulled his bass from his shoulder and threw it against a speaker, storming off stage. For a few seconds the others continued to play, but soon ground to a halt as all coherence had been torn from their music.

This became the signal for the rest of the audience to break loose from their bonds of restraint. Glasses and even a few bottles—glass this time—fell as a shower, along with boos and hisses and the chant rising upwards again and again: “Optima! Optima!”

Dan
, Tony and James realised they couldn’t keep up their defences any more and retreated from stage. Dianne’s own heart was in her mouth as she watched the empty stage with instruments left in place as roadies and security came on to keep the increasingly unruly crowd in place.

Her eyes were moving from left to right, looking for any sign of Cam, wondering whether to try and force her way through the people. As such, she did not notice him coming up behind her and jumped when he held onto her arm. At first, thinking it was the troublesome Frenchman, she turned expecting to launch into a stream of abuse, but her eyes flashed gratefully when she saw Cam instead, a coat over his arm.

His own expression, however, immediately caused her to be troubled again, especially as his eyes were fixed not on her but on the rest of the crowd as though he expected more bad news at any moment.

“Come on,” he said, bending down to talk quietly in her ear as he held her gently but firmly with his hand. “We better get out of her. Optima’s not coming on stage tonight, and when this lot finds out there’s likely to be a riot.”

There wasn’t exactly a riot as they left, but it was quite clear that the crowd’s mood had not settled after the earlier fracas and, if anything, was likely to get uglier. Keeping her head dipped down and, unconsciously, gripping her skirt against her thighs with one hand as Cam gripped the other tightly, she followed him out of
Notre Dame
into the night air.

The early summer air was warm but she was glad of the coat she had brought with her. Glancing at her watch, she saw that it was approaching eleven o’clock and realised that Black Ark had been on stage for nearly two hours: the gig itself was meant to have continued well past midnight, but she was convinced now that Optima wouldn’t appear in front of the crowd they’d left behind.

“That man is a complete and utter prick!” Cam cursed under his breath. Dianne didn’t need to ask who he was talking about: she had only met Darius once, but in many respects he had not lived up to her expectations. No, she corrected herself—he had lived up to one possible outcome, that of the difficult artist, whose tantrums were worth putting up with if he was as much a genius as everyone thought he was. Cam, it seemed, did not share the majority view.

They were walking down the
Rue de Rivoli
now from what Dianne read on road signs. As they had left the nightclub, Cam’s attitude had been protective—even a little overbearing—but now he held her hand in a more relaxed fashion.

“It was a bit of a dump,” Dianne said in reply to his earlier curse. Cam looked at her, ruefully at first and then with a small, sad smile.

“Yeah, it was,” he agreed. “Mind you, Black Ark’s played quite a few of those in recent months.”

“And I’ve been in plenty of them,” Dianne told him. “I just wouldn’t... well, I wouldn’t expect a group as big as Optima to play there.”

“But a group as small as Black Ark, they’re fine, are they?” he snapped then, seeing her shocked and somewhat angry expression as she pulled her hand away, he relented immediately. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “It’s been one helluva night.”

Dianne frowned. “I understand, but I’m not going to hang around for you to take your frustrations out on
me—you hear?”

Cam’s mouth opened and closed in astonishment but, as a resigned look entered his eyes, he nodded. “Yes, I hear you,” he said more quietly.

She came up closer to him and took hold of the front of his coat. “Listen,” she told him very gently. “I can see how frustrating this is for you, but you were great tonight on stage. You really rose to the challenge.”