“Yo! We’re Sugar Cane and you know what you got to do, people. Tell Vixen how much you want her!” he hollered.
The crowd went nuts. Screaming, whistling, stomping their feet. Liam turned toward the exit, glad to be leaving before his eardrums started bleeding.
“Relax, boys and girls. Vixen is more than ready to come out and play,” a sultry female voice said.
Liam turned to the stage, instinct telling him he wasn’t going to like what he was about to see.
The crowd took it up a notch, screaming and stomping as a woman strutted onto the stage in black, four-inch stilettos. She wore black fishnet stockings with red satin garters and a pair of tiny black patent leather hot pants. A strip of belly and most of her breasts were bared by a tight black leather vest. Her face was painted white like a geisha and her eyes burned out at the audience from a band of black makeup that striped the upper part of her face like a mask. Her lips jumped out in brilliant red, a match for the single vibrant streak running through her rock-and-roll hair.
He stood stock-still, staring at Zoe as she slowly rotated her hips in a suggestive circle.
“Let’s hit it, lovers!” she howled into the mike, and loud, pumping thrash blew out at him from the speaker stack.
Zoe started to sing, her voice strong and sultry as she strutted across the small stage. She pumped her arm in the air, thrust her hips. She slid a hand over her crotch and threw her head back in feigned ecstasy as she sang about sex and desire and taking what she wanted when she wanted it.
He stood frozen at the exit for almost the entire first song. Finally he shouldered his way back through the crowd to take up a position against the bar, his arms folded across his chest as he watched Zoe perform.
He’d never seen anything like her. Without a doubt, every heterosexual man in the place was hard. Probably half the gay ones, too. She was every man’s darkest fantasy: pure, unbridled sex, strutting, shaking it, daring every man in the audience to want her, to try to satisfy her.
Halfway through the second song, she tugged at the studs on her vest and pulled it open to reveal a black lace bra and a second rose tattoo across her hip and half her belly. The crowd howled its approval. She slid a hand from one breast to the other then down her stomach, all the while singing about liking it hard and fast. She turned her back as she threw the vest to one side. He stared as the rest of her tattoo was revealed.
Etched into her skin in shades of black and gray, the tattoo curved around her hip to climb her spine, a thorny rambling rose that promised as much pleasure as it did pain. It disappeared beneath the tangle of her hair only to reappear again as it twined its way around her throat.
Movement near the front of the stage drew his attention. A bare-chested, burly skinhead was hauling himself over the lip of the stage. Liam started pushing his way through the crowd, seeing the inevitable in his mind’s eye—some drunken idiot pawing at Zoe, security rushing in, fists being thrown, broken faces and bones. He’d barely taken three steps before Zoe walked straight up to the interloper and placed the spike of her heel dead center of his chest. She didn’t drop a note as she pushed him off the stage.
Liam stopped, staring at her for a long moment.
He had no idea who she was, what had made her into the woman onstage whipping four-hundred-odd people into a sweaty, horny frenzy.
Slowly he returned to his station at the bar.
It was going to be a long night.
SWEAT TRICKLED DOWN Zoe’s spine as she worked the stage. For the first time all day, she felt like herself. Seeing Liam Masters again after so long had thrown her, dredged up some of the bad, old stuff from the past. But she’d burned it off by the time she sang the chorus to “Come and Get Me,” and by the time she was on her knees belting out “Release Me,” she felt invincible.
Mikey hammered out the last few chords of the song as she pounded her fists into the stage, thrashing her hair around. She was grinning like a madwoman when she stood and made her way to the drum riser to grab the bottle of water she’d dumped there, the thunder of applause vibrating through the soles of her stilettos.
“You are on fire tonight, babe,” Kane, the drummer, said as she dropped her head back and sucked down water.
“I feel good,” she said. “What’s next?”
“‘Make It Hurt,’” Kane said, checking the playlist taped to the floor beside his kit.
Zoe lifted the hair off the back of her neck.
“Okay, let’s go.”
She strode to the front of the stage to grab the mike. Faces screamed up at her out of the audience. She loved these gigs. Becoming Vixen for the night was about the most fun she could have without being naked or partaking of prohibited substances. The opening riff of “Make It Hurt” roared out of the speakers. She planted her feet wide and pushed her hips forward as she ground out the lyrics. She stared out into the darkness of the club. All she could see was a sea of black, but occasionally individual faces were picked out by the roaming spot. Dancing women dressed like herself, in as little as possible. Built men shaking their fists in the air. Bright-pink hair, neon blue.
Her stomach flipped when the spotlight roamed across the bar and she caught a flash of a tall man standing there, arms crossed over his chest, his gaze drilling into her. Just a flash, but her body told her who it was.
Liam, here.
Watching her.
Her first reaction was anger that he’d invaded yet more of her territory. Then she remembered the way he’d eyed her this morning, as though he couldn’t quite believe his eyes, and her sense of humor came to the rescue. If he hadn’t approved of the tattoo parlor and her tight jeans, she could only imagine what he was thinking right now.
The thought was so delicious she had trouble not laughing into the mike.
Knowing he was watching added new spice to every move she made, every word she sang.
When she slid a hand from breast to breast and arched her back, she made sure he got an uninterrupted full-frontal view. When she offered her backside to the audience and slowly swiveled her hips, she imagined him watching, grinding his teeth over how wrong it all was.
She felt high, all powerful, dizzy with the danger of it. She could feel him brooding out in the audience, could sense his heavy disapproval beating at her from across the room. And she didn’t care. She so didn’t care.
By the time she belted out the last song, she was buzzing with adrenaline. She took her bow with the rest of the band, but her eyes sought Liam in the darkness. She could just make out his silhouette and she threw him a cocky, knowing smile before turning on her heel and striding offstage, working her hips and ass for all they were worth.
Take that, asshole.
“Man, what a gig! Best night in ages!” Derek, Sugar Cane’s bass player, said as they made their way down the stairs to the change rooms.
“Zoe, baby, you rocked hard tonight,” her lead guitarist, Mikey, said. “I thought we were gonna have to beat the audience off with a stick.”
“You guys were great,” Zoe told them. “I had a good time.”
Kane grabbed a six-pack of beer from the fridge in the band room and offered them around. Zoe shook her head, reaching instead for the bottle of bourbon she’d opened before the show.
“We heard anything more about those gigs up in Sydney?” she asked as she took a pull straight from the bottle.
“Nah. I’ll get onto the promoter tomorrow, chase him down. You know what those guys are like,” Derek said.
The guys collapsed onto the saggy, stained couch in the corner. Zoe propped her butt on a table and lifted her hair off the back of her neck.
“Man, I am steaming,” she said. She could feel sweat rolling down between her breasts.
“You said it, baby.” Mikey’s gaze was fixed on her legs.
No prizes for guessing what he wanted. But Zoe wasn’t in the mood for Mikey tonight. He got way too possessive after sex and it messed with the band dynamic too much. She wasn’t any man’s property.
“I’m going to go clean up,” she said.
She hooked the neck of the bourbon bottle between two fingers and made her way down the cinder-block corridor to the pokey change room. Inside, her work clothes were draped over the back of a chair, and her makeup kit was folded open on the counter in front of the mirror. She took another pull from the bottle and eyed herself in the mirror. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth as she again imagined Liam Masters’s reaction to Vixen’s performance.
Hilarious. Way, way too funny.
Then she heard the scuff of footsteps and turned her head to see him filling the doorway—tall and dark and intense.
Her smile widened into a grin and she raised the bourbon bottle in salute to him.
“How’d you like the show?” She held up a finger before he had a chance to speak. “No, no, let me guess. You thought it was all wrong.”
He didn’t say a word, just walked into the room and pushed the door shut behind him.
Suddenly the small space seemed even smaller. Zoe took another mouthful of bourbon.
“We need to talk,” Liam said.
“Do we?”
“I want to help you out. If you need money, a fresh start. Whatever. I’ll get you whatever you need,” he said.
She slowly put down the bottle. He was offering her charity. Like she was some down-and-out junkie or streetwalker.
“Gee, thanks, Lord Liam. How good of you to come down amongst the peasants and offer your bounty. I feel so privileged, I hardly know what to say.”
His gaze swept her from head to toe.
“Do your parents know you do this kind of thing? Your brother?”
She was a little sick of the judgment in his tone.
“This kind of thing? What exactly are you referring to, Liam? My singing? My career?”
“I’m talking about putting yourself on display for anyone to look at,” he said. “Letting every man and his dog stare at you and imagine what it would be like to screw you stupid.”
She shrugged, knowing somehow that it was the one reaction that would really piss him off.
“Men can look and imagine all they want. I’m the one who decides when and what they can touch.”
She raised her chin, daring him to say more. The silence stretched between them for what felt like a long time.
“What happened to you, Zoe?” he finally asked, his voice low.
She blinked, caught off guard by the pain in his face, the sincerity in his tone.
“You left and I grew up,” she said, turning her back on him. She didn’t trust herself to look him in the eye.
She could feel him watching her as she stowed her cosmetics in her kit.
“Let me help you. For old times’ sake.”
She closed her eyes, despising herself for the way he could still make her feel. Tears threatened for the second time that day and the emptiness inside her yawned wide.
God, she had to get him out of her change room and out of her life.
It had taken her years to find a place and a persona that made it all bearable, doable, survivable.
She would not let him strip her of her armor.
She let her eyelids drop over her eyes as she turned to face him, at the same time hooking one thumb into the waistband of her hot pants.
“I don’t need any help from you, Liam,” she said. “The only thing I need from any man is the one thing I don’t have myself. If you get my drift.”
She watched as her meaning dawned on him and his expression grew even grimmer.
If that didn’t get rid of her self-appointed Sir Galahad, she didn’t know what would. After all, it had worked a treat twelve years ago.
“Don’t play games,” he said. “There must be something you need.”
“Definitely,” she said. “Especially after performing. It always makes me hot.”
She fanned a hand in front of her face. At the same time, she used the thumb in her waistband to pop the stud on her hot pants. The small sound brought Liam’s gaze to her waist.
“Not interested?” she asked, finding the tab of her zipper with her fingertips.
She had a sudden flash of how it had been all those years ago, the way he’d slid his hand under the waistband of her jeans at first rather than undo her fly, how she’d had to beg him to touch her properly.
The memory urged her on as she slid her zipper down.
“Don’t.” His voice sounded too loud in the small space.
A muscle jumped in his jaw.
Good. She wanted him to sweat. She wanted him gone. And she was enjoying being the one with the power for a change. Once, she’d begged him to love her and he’d pushed her out the door, then abandoned her without a word. Tonight, she was the one in charge.
She snagged her thumbs into the belt loops of her hot pants and pushed down. She had to wriggle her hips a little to get the leather over them.
“Tight,” she said, wrinkling her nose. She pushed the hot pants down her legs and stepped out of them, standing in front of him wearing only her black lace thong and bra and her red garters and stockings.
“So what’s it going to be, Liam? Are you going to give me what I need, or are you going to make me take care of things myself?”
She touched the tip of her middle finger to her tongue then slid her finger down her chest until she found her left nipple through the lace of her bra. She brushed it lightly, then caught it between thumb and forefinger and squeezed. Heat shot down her belly to her thighs and her nipple hardened into a tight, needy peak.
She could hear him breathing.
“I just want to make things right for you,” he said.
“And I told you how you could do that.”
She’d meant to drive him away, but the way he was watching her so intently was having its own effect on her. Suddenly it wasn’t a game anymore.
She’d always imagined what it would be like to be with him. She’d held him in her hands, stroked him, found the single bead of desire that had glistened on the head of his penis. She’d had his fingers between her legs, inside her. She’d been so desperate for him that she’d begged him to take her virginity. But he’d pushed her away and left her wanting.
Not this time. Not if she had any say in the matter. She took a step backward until she felt the cool ridge of the counter against the backs of her thighs. She propped her butt against it and lifted her leg up onto the seat of the chair beside it.