Devious Minds (11 page)

I
’m in hell. Freaks everywhere.

Jumping in my face, wearing Dr. Seuss hats and goggles, men lapping glow-in-the-dark liquid off one another’s chests, and women dressed as men kissing other women dressed as men (that one I didn’t mind so much).

As I made it up to the bar, my pocket buzzed.

Nate
:
Yeah, working. What’s up?

Peters
:
Heard of DJ Sinister?

Nate
:
Chick DJ from SpaceRoom?

Peters
:
She’s in here right now.

“What can I get you?” A man wearing a Victorian-era outfit with a top hat and watch gears all over his face leaned over the bar toward me. “We got some Jungle Juice back here.”

Jungle Juice.
Better stay away from that or Sydney will think I’m trying to recreate my experience in “Pound Town.” Speaking of, I know it was that douche Nick. He was on the same floor our freshman year.

“You gonna stare at me all day, muttering Pound Town? Or are you going to drink?” He threw a wheel cog over his left eye like a monocle. “Don’t have all night, kid.”

Hmmm, what do girls like? Something fruity, right?
Wait, this was Sydney we were talking about.

“Two double whiskeys, no ice, top shelf.”

The man turned around, grabbed a bottle of Jameson off a glass shelf, and gave two nice long pulls into plastic highball glasses. Glancing over the bar top, I noticed he had a fake shotgun attached like a peg leg.

“You dressed up in steam punk, right?” I said, half proud and half annoyed I recognized the trend.

“I wear this every day.” He released a low growl, like a cagey badger, and slammed the drinks down on the bar. “That’ll be twenty-five bucks.”

See what I mean? Freaks.

After making my way back the concession booth, I noticed Sydney was nowhere to be found.

Of course.

I was about to make good on my promise and call in the pigs, when I felt a tap on my shoulder.

Whipping around, I found Sydney, not in an Iron Man costume, but in a long white tank top with a pterodactyl on the front. It fell mid-thigh and was wide enough to fit her ten times over.

“Where the hell did that come from?” I handed her a drink, and she pointed across the room to an enormous man squeezed halfway into an Iron Man costume.

“We traded,” she said nonchalantly, taking a sip. “But I kept the mask.” She flipped the ridiculous mask over her head and scooted from side to side.

Where the fuck did she change?

“Where did you change?” I yelled into her plastic mask.

She twirled around in a circle.

“On the dance floor,” she yelled back, running full speed into the crowd.

Fuck
.

Pushing my way through the crowd, I found her hopping around, drinking whiskey, her mask flipped up. She looked crazy. People were bumping into me, so I quickly slammed my drink, knowing I’d pay for it later. Sydney did the same and set our glasses down against a concrete wall.

I stood completely still amongst a crowd of people who’d just broken out of an insane asylum, including Sydney Porter.

Sydney grabbed my ears and pulled my face down to hers. “You have big ears. Why do you hate this music?” She was inches from my face, and she stared down at the ground, shuffling her feet.

Big ears
? I’d jerk my head back, but I was sure she’d rip them off my head.

Why do you hate this music
?

Clever, Sinister.
She veiled her question with a petty insult, hoping to throw me off. What she was trying to say was
Why do you hate
my
music?
I saw the way she looked at me at Kappa Delta, pissed off I wouldn’t dance to her “sweet beats.”

When I didn’t answer right away, she tugged on my earlobe again. “Seriously, they’re huge. Like flying saucers blocking the sun from a large metropolitan area.”

“This music’s okay,” I blurted out, fully knowing I’d regret that later, too. I just wanted her to shut up about my ears. “Just don’t want to be razzed by the guys.”

She gave me a radiant smile. “Dance for once in your life, asshole.” She released my head. “No football players around here to give you crap.”

No, just Sydney Porter, and she’d certainly throw this back at me the next chance she got.

“No. I’ll just stand over here.” I took a step away, bumping into a giant termite. A man dressed as a termite, that is.

Raising her arms, she slid them behind my neck, pressing her chest against mine, and I froze. Was this the double whiskey? The three Jell-O shots she pounded outside? The four drinks I saw her throw back at the SpaceRoom?

“Sydney, you don’t want to do this,” I warned in her ear. “You don’t want to go here, remember?”

I pulled her hips back to look her in the eyes. “Peters and Porter… this can’t happen.”

She gave me a sly smile and ran her tongue subtly, yet not so subtly, over her bottom lip. “It will happen if I say so, Peters.”

She slid a hand up my stomach, and I sucked in under her touch. “Rule five, do whatever I want, just for tonight. We can go back to throwing hand grenades at one another tomorrow, but be my bitch tonight.”

I closed my eyes, fighting the urge to slam her against the nearest wall and make her come so hard the roof shattered. My resolve to fuck
with
Sydney was morphing into a need to fuck Sydney.

“Open your eyes, Peters.”

I did, and she looked up with the greediest, most lust-filled expression I’d ever seen. This was game over for me—Sinister won. I leaned down to her face, and my mouth stopped just above her plump lips.

“DJ Sinister in the house. Get your ass up here, shorty,” DJ Bently (Nate) screamed into the microphone. Hearing her name, she broke from my arms and shot her eyes to the balcony.

Fucking Nate.

Nate graduated from Northern two years ago, and we were from two very different worlds. In middle school, he’d be the bullied kid and I’d be the jock pushing worms down his throat. We were partnered in a lab class, and after feeling me out, he approached me about a private poker game held on Tuesday nights. And since I love robbing my teammates blind at parties, I wanted the practice (that’s how I could afford twenty-five-dollar whiskeys).

Nate pointed to a set of sidesteps leading to the balcony, and Sydney took off like she was on fire, leaving me behind in the crowd. I lost her in the mob, so I focused on the stairs to make sure she made it. When I didn’t see her, I started to panic, but not two seconds later, a petite, sweaty hand grabbed mine.

“Come on, micro-dick. I guess football players are dense.” Sydney pulled me through the crowd and up the stairs toward the DJ booth.

A bouncer stopped us at the top of the stairs and looked over at Nate. With one hand on his headset, Nate nodded, and we stepped onto the grated ramp leading to his alcove.

Nate waved me over, but Sydney hung back, gaping at the crowd below.

“Hey, man. What’s up?” Nate peered around my shoulder at Sydney, checking her out.

“You don’t know me.” I gave him the message, and he nodded. “I want her to think she made it up here on her own. Not because I whoop your ass on Tuesday nights.”

“No,” Nate said, eyes still stuck on her. “I’ve been meaning to meet her for a while. Heard about the
phenomenal DJ at the now cool SpaceRoom
, so you did me the favor.”

I’m not sure why that annoyed me, but it did.

“Outta my way, Snake.” Sydney brushed past me and stopped next to Nate, and I took a few steps back, letting her do her thing.

Nate showed her around the controls. Then he leaned in, saying something into her ear. Sydney threw back her head and laughed as Nate laid a hand on her forearm.

I glanced up at the atrium ceiling and focused on the lights, trying to cool down. Sydney Porter was a drug slowly trickling into my body, bending me to her will. This wasn’t what I expected. She wasn’t what I expected.

“DJ Sinister, everybody!” Nate screamed into the microphone and raised her hand in the air like she’d just won a boxing match. The crowd responded in a thunderous uproar from below. Sydney’s face could have cracked in half she was smiling so wide.

“DJ Sin will be laying beats for the next seven. Be nice!”

Nate left the booth and headed my way.

“Better get on that,” he said, jerking his head in Sydney’s direction. “Grabbing a beer. You have seven minutes, QB!” He pushed past the bouncer at the end of the ramp.

I turned back to Sydney. Her back faced me and she swayed her hips under her ridiculous shirt. Leaning over the soundboard, she flashed a partial view of her black lace underwear. The bottom of her ass curved out under the fragile fabric, showing a generous amount of flesh resting just above the backs of her smooth thighs.
God… Buddha… Muhammad… Elvis, give me the strength to reject this petite temptress, this succubus in a fat man’s pterodactyl shirt.

T
here is nothing better than this.

My life is complete.

I can die a happy woman.

But, God, don’t take me now, because DJ Bently just left the stage, and now I’m mixing for a real down and dirty crew.

My face ached I was smiling so hard. Pulling off my mask, I dropped it on the floor and picked up the headphones.

After showing me the effects system, Bently laid down a track and whispered in my ear, “Grabbing a beer. Back in seven.” Being groped in a dark closet seemed mundane compared to these seven minutes in heaven.

I bounced. I ran in place like I was in a bad exercise video. I sucked the musty warehouse air into my lungs, dragging the music into every cell of my body.

Nothing could feel better than this. Nothing.

I added another track, exploding the speaker with a fast beat, and danced around until I felt a pair of hands run up the sides of my thighs, slow and easy.

“What are you doing?” I yelled up at Peters. He was standing directly behind me and the top of my head landed just below his chin. His answer was to pull my backside into his hips.

“I’m dancing, Sinister.” He groaned into the back of my neck. “This is what you wanted, right? No inhibitions. I’m your bitch tonight, right? We can start flinging knives in the morning.”

I let out a cracked laugh, not quite understanding this one-eighty in his personality. “You don’t bring a knife to a gun fight, Peters, but if you’re referencing your dick, I’d be shocked to receive a paper cut.”

He pressed even farther into me as I continued to mix.

Looking back on this now, I should have just elbowed him in the stomach and tripped him off the edge of the balcony, but I was drunk. Elated by the dancing crowd. Everything about this place screamed sex—the people, the lighting, the sweat dripping off bodies, and Peters’s husky breathing against my ear breaking down my protective dome. I tried to muster the strength to stop him, but with my mind half altered, my body took over completely.

As if he knew I was struggling, he gently lifted the back of my damp hair and planted his lips on my neck. His tongue swept across my skin, and he softly moaned over my fret board. I released a sharp breath into the microphone, and he laughed against the back of my ear.

“What… are… you—”

Before I could finish my pathetic plea to end this, his hands slid over my front, gliding down my stomach and stopping just before the waistband of my underwear.

“Peters,” I rasped.

His hand rolled over my shirt, and he pulled it deep between my legs. I let out a breathy groan into the microphone and tipped back my head until it rested against his shoulder. Peters dragged his tongue up the inside of my neck like I was a Popsicle—his favorite flavor—long and flat. He pulled my sweat into his mouth.

When the music rose to a sharp crescendo, so did my panting, right into the mic. It was hard to believe this six-foot-two behemoth could deliver such a delicate touch, but I didn’t have to turn around to know it was him. My body had a memory of its own.

“Should I stop?” he whispered into my ear.

“Yes, stop,” I whispered, rolling my neck to the side to allow him full access.

He chuckled as he dove into my neck and rubbed between my legs again. I was breathing heavily, not caring if the microphone was in front of me. It was rhythmic and it didn’t clash with the music; it enhanced it. Husky breathing every second beat. I could feel the swell building and my muscles starting to tighten as he sucked on the back of my neck, hungrily groaning into my skin.

“Whoa, that’s more action than this balcony has seen in a long time.” Bently’s voice came from nowhere, and Peters jerked away his body like I was poison. “Seriously, DJ Sinister, you can come back here whenever you want.” Bently laughed, pulling his beer up for a swig.

Scanning the balcony for the nearest exit, I realized I would have to pass both of them before getting to the stairs. I had a what-the-hell-did-I-just-do look on my face, and when I glanced at Peters, it was on his, too.

Before I could brush past them, Bently grabbed my arm and pulled me back to the booth. “Be cool, shorty,” he whispered into my ear, and I closed my eyes. “Play it off. No one cares. Open your eyes and take your bow.” I opened them to the masses below.

People were drinking and laughing and making out and dancing.

No one cared about the DJ and QB, arch nemeses, standing up on the balcony, about to get as intimate as lovers. They didn’t know us, and we didn’t know them. If there ever was a place for judgment to lapse with Gray Peters, it should be in the safe embrace of five hundred lunatics.

“DJ SIIINNNESTEEERR!” Bently screamed into the microphone, to which the crowd lost their shit. Most likely because the good DJ was back.

Bently nodded at Peters, and before I knew it, I was pulled away. We made our way down the stairs and pushed through the masked mob. Several people slapped me on the back, spewing out accolades to DJ Sinister, but Sydney Porter was about to enter cardiac arrest. When we passed by a dark hallway, Peters jerked my arm back and dragged me into obscurity.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you up there. Too much booze I guess.” Peters raked a hand through his now drenched hair. “Shit.”

“Nothing happened, Peters.” I honed in on his eyes so he understood the plan. “As far as I’m concerned, we were passengers on a crowded subway.”

“Passengers on the subway?” He smirked and looked down at the ground. His dark hair swung across his forehead, blocking my view of his face, and I brushed it to the side.

“Yes, you’d be the homeless guy with gout, riding the rails night after night, just trying to stay warm. I’d be the five-foot-ten supermodel who just got her big break. Then the subway hits a bump in the track and it goes dark. For seven minutes.”

Peters lifted his head, sporting an incredible grin. It was infectious, and my cheeks lifted, matching his smile. Just for tonight, his beaming face was all I wanted to see.

“And because I have the body mass of a praying mantis, I fall into your lap, turn around, and slap you across the face for getting ‘handsy’ with me.” Lifting my hand, I lightly smacked him across his cheek, and his grin grew wider. “Then I stand up, shake it off, and hop out at the next stop to meet my multi-platinum musician boyfriend.”

He closed his eyes and laughed. “So what do the homeless guy and the supermodel do now?” he said, leaning a hip against a flyer-covered wall.

I reached up and playfully tugged on his ears. “They dance!”