Dare (The Dare Trilogy) (13 page)

“Less than you’d probably expect,” he said. “Sure, it hurt like hell when the guy pushed a needle through my urethra, but the pain was over pretty quickly. Now, if I had real guts, I’d have gone for an ampallang or apadravya -”

“An ampa-what?” Dianne asked, giving the tip of his cock a kiss and resting her arms across his flat, muscular belly.

“Ampallang. It’s a piercing through the glans, side to side. An apadravya’s similar, but goes from top to bottom.”

“That would be... intense,” Dianne said, quivering at the thought and not sure if it was one she found entirely enjoyable. “So, why’d you have your ring done? Are you into pain?”

“Not really,” he said, though she noticed a glint in his eye as he spoke. “I mean, it’s like tats, isn’t it. You’ve got a few of those -”

“Not as many as you, though,” she interrupted, pulling herself up his body to kiss his shoulders. “And not as nice.”

“No, yours are cool. But, as I was saying, are you a pain freak because you’re into tattoos?”

She shook her head. “A couple of them hurt, like the one on my hip bone.” She rolled onto her side, indicating the spot where an abstract flower snaked across the skin. “I wouldn’t rush to have that one done again—it was like, you know, the needle was buzzing against the bone. Not so much painful as just weird.” Her nipples were slightly erect, her breasts swaying a little as she moved, and as she lifted her head back to Cam she saw he was looking at her, his loins twitching a little in appreciation.

“What about that one?” he asked, pointing above her left breast where a small heart was tattooed in red. She blushed at this.

“That was just stupid. I was seventeen—I don’t think I could even have it done, legally, but I knew this girl who knew this guy and... you know how it is.”

He nodded. “So it was your first one?”

Reluctantly, she indicated it was.

“Who was the guy?”

“Who says there was a guy?”

“Your first tattoo is a heart. Unless you were a lesbian at the age of seventeen, that was for a guy.”

Dianne felt somewhat irritated by this and instinctively raised her hand to cover the spot. “It was nothing. Okay, it felt like everything at the time, but really—it was nothing. The asshole broke my heart at the time, but hey, I was seventeen. Hearts are pretty easy to break when you’re that old.”

“What was his name?” Cam’s voice was very quiet and soft.

She shook her head, however. “You’re changing the subject. I’ll tell you another time—really, I will. But I don’t want to think about him today, not here. He was an asshole. Really. So...” She returned her head and arms to his lap and belly. “If you didn’t get pierced because you’re into pain, why did you do it?”

Cam did not return her direct gaze and thought for a moment. “A girl I knew had been with a guy who had it done. She said it, you know, stimulated her inside, that it would roll around inside her and give her extra pleasure. I thought, ‘Yeah, I could do with a bit of that’.”

“What was her name?” Dianne asked, and now it was her turn to be quiet.

Cam frowned. “I forget,” he replied, his clumsy lie writ large across his face.

“Yeah, right,” she told him, a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. “A girl gets you to pierce your cock and you can’t even remember her name.”

This made him grin. “I was twenty years old. I was having too much of a good time to remember everything.”

She slapped him for this and he growled at her, rolling around the bed, his hands tickling and caressing her, making her laugh. They kissed for a while and she cuddled into him.

“Perhaps we could spend all day in bed,” she said softly. “Get to know each other more.”

He gave a melodramatic groan. “Part of me would love to, and another part knows that you’re going to kill me. Anyway, I need to go over with the rest of the band and practice. We’ve got another gig tonight -”

“Not at
Notre Dame
, surely? They’ll kill Optima if they don’t go on stage again!”

Cam shook his head. “No, a bigger venue. Tony sent a text
—he’s been there already. Speaking of which...” His voice trailed away as he leaned over to pick up his phone. “Oh, shit! Is that the time already? I better get ready.”

As he rolled over and out of the bed, Dianne aimed a well-placed slap on his delicious, tight buttocks and turned onto her belly, watching him as he entered the shower. For a few moments she simply lay there, letting her feet dangle back and forth and kick against her own cheeks from behind. Looking idly across the room, she saw an acoustic guitar that Cam had brought with him the previous evening when he’d dropped off his stuff.

Still naked, she slowly climbed from the bed, her own sex aching slightly from the rigours of the previous night, and sat down on a chair next to the guitar, lifting it up into her lap and tuning it, listening carefully to the sound of the notes from each string.

When it wa
s close enough to being in tune she strummed the strings, playing a few chords and then picking out notes over the rosette. The guitar had a warm, full sound, and though her fingers felt a little sleepy at first, soon she began to move them with a fluency, first and little finger picking in harmony as her thumb and other digits joined in to create a rich melody.

“Well I wish I was a catfish,” she sang to herself, “swimmin’ in the deep, deep blue sea.” She let her voice rise up from her belly, filling her lungs and floating from her throat in a bluesy, melancholy drawl. She couldn’t help but smirk as she sang the next line: “I’d have all you pretty women’ fishin’ after me.”

Her shoulders began to rock back and forth in rhythm with the music, the wooden back of the guitar cool against the flesh of her nipple and breast, its lower curve resting on her thigh. Closing her eyes, she sang and played, losing herself in the moment...

...then opened her eyes to see Cam standing in the doorway of the bathroom, a towel around his waist, his arms and shoulders still glistening slightly with the damp, his tattoos shining slickly dark against paler flesh. His eyes were gleaming as he watched her. She stopped, feeling a little embarrassed.

“Don’t stop on my account,” he told her.

“I was just fooling around. Sorry,” she replied. Lifting up the guitar to return it to the floor next to her, she suddenly felt self-conscious of her nakedness and pulled her one knee up to her chest, throwing a defensive arm around it to keep herself small.

“What are you apologising for?” he asked, frowning.

“For messing around with your guitar. I should have asked.”

He came and sat down on the bed, just across from her. “It’s there to be played,” he said, “and you play really well. What was that? I recognise it from somewhere.”

“Catfish Blues. My dad used to play it sometimes.”

“Your dad played guitar?”

She nodded. “He was in a blues band for a while, but gave it up after he got married and had me.” She shrugged. “It happens.”

Cam looked at her thoughtfully. “I didn’t know you played—I mean, you said you did, but I didn’t...” Suddenly realising what he was saying, it was his turn to blush. “I guess that sounds patronising.”

“Yeah, just a bit. I’m used to it, though.”

He appeared genuinely pained by this. “Well, I didn’t mean it that way.” His face lit up at another thought. “Hey, why not come over to the new place, hang out with us for the day?”

She smiled, her expression slightly bittersweet. “I’ll see where you are, perhaps come and meet you later. I’ve not been to Paris before, and I feel like exploring a bit. I don’t feel like doing the groupie thing today.”

The look on his face indicated that her words stung and she regretted them immediately. When he shrugged, however, she dipped her head so that she wouldn’t have to look at him and went through to the bathroom to shower. She felt a bitch because of what she’d said, and looked forward to the water cleaning away her suddenly stupid emotions, but when she left the shower and went into the bedroom to apologise to Cam, he had already gone.

On the table on her side of the bed was a scrap of paper with an address for the
Rue Morgue
, which she guessed was the name of the venue they would be playing at later. She entered the details into her phone and pulled on jeans, low slung boots and a T-shirt and jacket, dragging her long hair from the denim collar.

Outside the hotel where they were staying, Dianne suddenly felt a little lonely. She wasn’t entirely sure what had happened, but she’d frozen over with Cam all of a sudden. It happened so often when it came to her and music. Guys pretty much saw a pair of tits and a pretty face, with ass and legs to match, and no-one took her seriously. She felt that, for a second at least, she’d seen a similar look in Cam’s eyes
—patronising and slightly contemptuous:
hey, she’s pretty and she can play the guitar
. But the more she thought about it, the more she wondered if she was projecting the kind of bullshit she’d experienced so many times before onto him.

She needed a friend, calling up Janey from her contacts and waiting for the phone
to engage. When Janey answered, Dianne could hear her buddy let out a squeal of pleasure.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay.”

“Are you sure?” Janey asked. “You sound, I don’t know, a little...”

“I’m tired, that’s all. It’s been a pretty hectic day.”

“And night, I bet,” Janey sniggered. Then she let out a sigh. “You lucky sod. I’m so jealous of you right now.”

Dianne bit her tongue, not letting on about the White Ark and the rather sordid condition of
Notre Dame
the previous night, or the hotel where they had meant to be staying. “Well, it won’t be much longer. It’s fun though,” she added, forcing herself to believe that it was fun. “How’s Magnus?” she asked.

“Oh, that little prince of yours is enjoying the life of Riley. Don’t worry about him! I’m taking very good care of your precious.”

This made Dianne smile, as did just hearing Janey’s voice. Dawdling near the hotel for a while, watching traffic drive by and people walking on the pavement, she shared tittle tattle and mindless gossip with her friend, activities that made her feel much brighter and dispelled her fug.

“Well,” said Janey at last rather regretfully. “Some of us still have to work, unfortunately. I’m jealous about that as well, bitch!”

This made Dianne let out a sigh. “Well, don’t be. God alone knows what I’m going to do for money when I get back.”

“Oh, you’ll be alright,” Janey said. “Live a little. Go on! Everything will be here when you get back. Give my love to
my
boys,” she added with a snort. “Tell them to come and visit me when you all return to London—and hands off! If I hear you’ve engaged in any kind of hanky panky with them, I swear I’ll cut your tits off.”

With a laugh, Dianne bid Janey goodbye and flicked off her phone, smiling now as she followed once more the road that led from the hotel towards the Seine, picking out the path that she and Cam had followed the previous night, a slight smile on her lips now at the thought of him.

Throughout the day, Dianne felt herself approaching a kind of bliss as she wandered the streets of Paris. Leading off the
Rue de Rivoli
, she found the huge arcade of
Les Halles
and window shopped in the huge, sunken area below street level that was filled with people, before following a meandering route to the
Palais Royal
.

The sun was bright and the air not too hot, a breeze blowing gently through the crowds of people as they wandered among the shops. For a moment, Dianne smirked as she thought how pleasant it would have been to come out dressed as she had the previous evening, feeling the warm air between her legs. Taking a spot beside the pavement outside a café, she ordered a coffee and light lunch then watched the people, individually or in couples, passing her by.

Seeing one pair, a young man and woman about her own age, she felt a little lonely all of a sudden. This was her first time in Paris, and to appreciate it fully she thought that really it would have been better if Cam had been with her. Pulling out her phone, she dialled his number.

“Hey,” he said, his voice warm and sending a strange feeling through her as she heard it. “What’s up?”

“Oh, nothing much, just enjoying the day. I just thought it would be nice to have company, though.”

He laughed at this. “Well, it’s been a bit hectic here, but I think we’ve got everything set up. We’ll be doing a sound check in a while
—after Gary’s finished throwing his hissy fits.” The slight emphasis he placed on Gary made her giggle.

“I thought you said this was a better venue.”

“It is, it is.” He sounded a little weary on the other end of the phone. “Ah, to be fair he just wants everything right—if it hadn’t been such a fiasco last night, I could be more sympathetic to Darius-anal-retentive-Optimus being such a prima donna. Anyway, enough of that. You want to come over and hear us practice?”

Having determined the precise location of the
Rue Morgue
and chatting a little more, Dianne finished her lunch and took a pleasant stroll towards the nightclub.