Evanescent Ink (Copperline #4) Read online

  “You’re really good, though. I used to listen to you guys when you did your college radio show.”

  “No shit?”

  Raven laughed, low and throaty. “Really,” she whispered, and her hands glided down my arms to intertwine with my fingers. “You have very talented fingers, Mr. Massey.”

  “Fuck…" I sorta breathed. “That’s kinda hot when you call me Mr. Massey.”

  I felt her small, bare foot skimming up my leg. Her hips pressed up into mine.

  “Mmmm, Mr. Massey,” she murmured.

  With a sound that was half laughter and half moan, I set a quick kiss on her lips. My junk was already ready for round two, but I was on a bit of a mission here. While I couldn’t explain it, I just needed to delve a little deeper into her psyche. To share more than just the physical bliss. As amazing as that was, it seemed it was just skimming the surface of something simply phenomenal underneath.

  Something I craved.

  “Where are you from?” I probed as she feathered tiny kisses along my shoulder.

  “I grew up around Portland. How about you?” It was like a ping pong game. I asked a question, she batted it back to me.

  “Born in Colorado, moved around a lot as a kid. So, Portland, huh? When did you move to Montana? Must have been a while ago if you listened to us on the radio.”

  Ball in her court.

  “I was a sophomore in high school. So how’d you end up here?”

  Tap. She batted it back.

  “I graduated from high school in Twin Bridges,” I said, mentioning the small town I’d lived in that was about an hour away. My lips trailed from her neck across her collarbone, always moving, even while I talked. Trying to distract her, relaxing her with my touch to help her share. “Came to Butte for college mostly because it was close and I was kinda lazy. Decided school wasn't for me, so I quit and opened Ink.” And back at her. “Leaving your hometown in the middle of high school must have been a bitch, huh?”

  “Kind of a relief, actually.” She paused for a second as my lips began to venture down her breast, then veered off to skirt past the hardened nipple. “I bet moving around so much was a lot tougher as a kid, though.”

  She was good at this.

  “It wasn’t so bad. Gave me plenty of time to practice the guitar. Music was a way to find other people like me. People who didn’t quite fit the mold.” I drew the hardened bud into my mouth, and she moaned quietly. Then I lifted my head and gave it another shot. “Where did you finish high school?”

  “Anaconda,” she replied distractedly, referring to another small town just a little northwest of Butte. “So, is your family still in Twin Bridges?”

  “They never really stayed in the same place for very long. Practically vagabonds.” Trying again to steer the convo back to her, I kissed her, then focused my gaze back to catch hers. “You moved from Portland to Anaconda? Did you have some massive culture shock?”

  “A bit. What made you stay here in Ophir?”

  “The Mofos. They kinda became roots. Little tiny fragile roots, but they were roots. Something just happened when we got together. Something that made me feel like I belonged somehow for the first time in my life.”

  “You are pretty close. You all lived together at one time, too, right?”

  “That was my idea. I had it in my head that we’d get super motivated and practice all the time, then venture off to find fame and fortune.”

  “Rockstar dreams.”

  “Yeah. I was so jacked when I got us the spot at the Copperline. I was just sure some high-power music exec would hear about us. Come rushing to us with a contract to record and go out on tour and shit.”

  “You know there’s not many music execs in Montana, right?” she smiled.

  Our back-and-forth had shifted to become more talk and less touch, yet it felt so incredibly comfortable just sharing.

  “I figured one would be out on a hunting trip from LA or something,” I mused. “Maybe they would hear us on the radio. I knew it was just a matter of time.”

  “And then it would be all sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll?”

  “I guess it still was, just on a smaller scale. It seemed like enough, though. It fed the hunger. The parties. The girls. Maybe that's what killed me and Maggie.” I tried to keep the bitterness out of my voice, but it crept back in, poisonous and raw even as I lay here with Raven.

  “Was she jealous?”

  “Kinda the opposite. She liked it. Loved it. Provided it. She said she was priming me for the debauchery of rockstar life, for when I got big and famous. I thought I had it made and started to feel like it was enough. I got to play guitar on a regular basis… my girlfriend encouraged me to fuck other girls. What's not to love.”

  “A lot of guys wouldn’t complain about that,” she laughed. “It’s kind of like a fantasy.”

  “I didn’t mind it at first, trust me. I thanked my lucky stars and rubbed it into Justin’s face at every chance. I had a girl, my girl, yet I still got more pussy than him. It used to really piss him off.” I grinned at the memory, but it faded quickly as I continued on. “After a while, though, I guess it started seeming like I was just a tool. A toy. I was her chick magnet.” I choked back a harsh laugh, and studied Raven with mock wariness as she lay beneath me. “You don’t like pussy, do you?”

  She laughed, and the sound seemed to chase away some of the pain that had just creeped back into me.

  “I’m pretty set on dick, thanks,” she replied, “and you really know how to use yours. Your fingers are awesome, but your cock… it’s pretty fucking talented, too.”

  I felt it swell a little at the mention. Like it was taking a little bow in response to the flattery. Raven’s eyes grew dark and serious, telling me she had felt the slight movement. Her tongue darted out of her mouth, and she caught her lower lip in her teeth. As quickly as it had appeared, the sense of loss had completely seeped out of me, replaced with a heated, carnal ache.

  “How does it compare?” I asked.

  “To dick in general?”

  “To other apas. Other piercings you’ve tried.”

  “Yours is the first apa I’ve had,” she murmured, “and it’s kind of amazing.”

  “You’ve never had a guy with an apa before?” I asked. Raven exuded a worldliness. I figured she’d had all kinds of dick, modified and not.

  “Not many guys are willing to go there. I dated a guy for a while who had a Prince Albert, but that’s it,” she admitted with a shake of her head. “I’ve done the procedure on guys and always wondered what it was like.”

  “So tell me,” I breathed. “What is it like?”

  “Really. Fucking. Awesome.” she said with a seductive smile. “I’d already had little fantasies about you, but then I heard you had an apa and… well, it made me even more curious.”

  “You had fantasies about me?”

  “Well, yeah. I sat there in my interview with you wondering what you were like.”

  “Fuck me… you dirty girl.”

  “I didn’t even know about your apa then.”

  “This kinda blows me away. You always seemed so remote. So cool.”

  “I’m pretty good at keeping shit like that under wraps.”

  “Damn, I’ll say.”

  “But, yeah,” she replied. “I went home after you hired me. I was living with my cousin, Lacey, at the time, and we got plastered. I told her how hot I thought you were. She bet me fifty bucks that I’d end up sleeping with you within a year.”

  “I guess at least you won the bet.”

  “You had Maggie.”

  “But not just Maggie. I had a lot of other pussy, too, brought in by Maggie.”

  “Yeah, but, as you’ve probably figured over the years, I’m not her type. She likes the classically gorgeous, white-bread, American model type.”

  “True,” I nodded.

  “She wouldn’t have wanted me, though, even if I had been an all-American girl next door. She knew I had a little thing fo
r you, I think.”

  I remembered back to that night in Ink. Raven standing up for me. Maggie saying she was done. Calling Raven a pathetic little freak.

  He’s finally free if you still want him, she had said.

  “So that night at Ink… that wasn’t just a pity fuck.”

  She shook her head, bringing her eyebrows together like I was out of my mind.

  “I am so not fucking you out of pity, Drew.” She ran her hands up my back, arching into me and breathing life back into my arousal. “I’m getting a hell of a lot in return.”

  “Yet you don’t want to spend the night.” It bothered me more than it should have. It made me feel a little used. Different than how Maggie had made me feel, but still. More than anything, though, I’d realized that Raven chased away my demons. If she went home, they might come back, reminding me of Maggie’s cold rejection. “You want to keep this a secret. We just work together and fuck on the sly.”

  Even to my own ears, I totally sounded like a petulant little bitch, but I couldn’t help it.

  Yet Raven soothed me with her soft understanding. Her free and easy brand of common sense and compassion.

  “Drew, you just got out of a pretty serious relationship. I’d be an idiot to even think of hooking you right now because you’re still taken. So I’m your friend. I’m your distraction.”

  “And you don’t think the fact that you’re constantly single and I’m constantly single is going to raise any eyebrows?”

  “You just had your heart ripped out of your chest, remember? Everyone is aware that it might take a while before you feel like getting back on that girlfriend horse. As for me, half the people in Ophir think I’m a lesbian thanks to Justin.”

  “True.” Justin had said things like that ever since Raven had started working for me. “Why does Justin think you’re a lesbian?”

  Raven rolled her eyes and sighed in exasperation. “Because he hit on me and I didn’t go for him. And, on top of that, I don’t really… date. Therefore, by Justin logic, I must be a lesbian. I like to think I’d be the girl in a relationship, but he’s positive I’m a lesbian.”

  “A lesbian who only likes dick?”

  “That’s not exactly something I just spout out and tell people. Besides, it keeps guys from hitting on me all the time, so no biggie.”

  “Damn Justin. He shouldn’t have hit on you. None of my friends were supposed to hit on you. I told all them that, him more than once.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re off limits,” I replied, not entirely certain myself why it had always been so important to keep the guys away from her. It was more than just having her work for me. More than wanting a piercer in my shop. I wanted her there.

  “Off limits?”

  “You’re my employee,” I managed. “And you’re great. Like with work and shit. I don’t want to lose that.”

  “All the more reason to keep this a secret.”

  “I guess.” It tasted bad in my mouth, though. Like rejection.

  But Raven made it better. She always made it better. The soft touch of her hand left my back to glide over my shoulder and curve along my jaw.

  “Don’t ever doubt your worth, Drew. To be completely truthful, I could get attached to you way too easily.” I looked at her through the glimmers of moonlight and saw a raw honesty in her eyes that soothed my frayed ego. “But it wouldn’t be smart of me. You’re rebounding something fierce. You lost someone you thought was going to be around forever. That’s a volatile place to be. This needs to stay free and easy. Fun.”

  Looking down at her in the shadows, I felt something chipping away at my conscience. A hint of a kindred spirit. Someone who had lost, even if she didn’t want to share that part of her. I studied the sincerity in her eyes. They held a glimmer of something more. Some strange energy that almost seemed to buzz around us. It held us aloft for a moment, almost floating in the air. In the blink of an eye, it vanished to be replaced with a sly smile. She kissed me just below my ear and whispered in a throaty voice.

  “Now, what was that about wanting to get off again?”

  I felt a sharp and gentle tug of her teeth on my earlobe. She circled her hips and pressed against me, reviving the lustful ache that she had alleviated only a short time before.

  Serious time was over. Raven wanted to play some more.

  She didn’t stay all night, but she stayed for most of it. She did get me off… quite a few times. I got her off a few more. We danced around the sensitivity of her words and focused on the carnal. On the pleasure.

  I drifted off to sleep as the sun was just starting to appear over the mountains. When I woke up, it was noon. All that remained of Raven was the faint scent of her perfume on my dark blue flannel sheets.

  I wondered how things would be different at work after our heart-to-heart. Oddly, they really weren’t different at all.

  Raven was back to herself. All hints of vulnerability had vanished overnight. She wore her mask and piled her purple hair up on top of her head. She joked with the customers and Neil.

  And she treated me just like she always had… with the exception of the tiniest secretive smile now and then.

  So went the next day, and the day after that. A week faded into the past, then another.

  And Raven and I stayed free and easy.

  Every time we came together, she would leave me satiated and breathless. In my truck outside the Copperline. In my bed while a party raged downstairs. On my office couch at Ink while Neil ran to pick up lunch.

  She wove in and out of my every day, keeping me from falling too low.

  It was now a Friday night, and I had to cut out of work a little early to get over to the Copperline. As I arrived, Brannon was lending a hand to Cody and Denny as they set up. Even though Brannon wasn’t part of the band, he was always there. Always helping. Never far from her man, Sophie was perched on a barstool talking to Cody’s girl, Ilsa. Those two had become fast friends over the past year or so, having bonded over their own dysfunctional parents and quiet demeanors.

  I’d been there for about a half-hour when Justin made his appearance. He started tuning up as he scanned the slowly building crowd for hotties. A few of the usual bar-sluts fluttered their eyelashes his way. A few fluttered theirs my way as well, which had me feeling a little uncomfortable. I still wasn’t entirely sure what defined free and easy between Raven and I, but I was pretty sure that going manwhore like Justin would put a crimp in whatever we were doing.

  And I kinda liked what we were doing.

  We’d just left the stage for our first break when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see Raven standing there. Moreover, Raven standing there twisting her hands together nervously. This was so not the Raven I was accustomed to, and it freaked me the fuck out at first.

  “Rave, you okay?” I asked.

  She glanced over at the bar, then grabbed my hand and pulled me back into the hallway I had just emerged from.

  “I need to talk to you,” she murmured.

  “Okay,” I replied and followed her lead. Back to the stage steps where she stood one step up from me, raising her up to just a few inches above me. Even though I was concerned about whatever was troubling her, the horndog in me noted that the hem of her short skirt was at the perfect level for me to skim my hands under. In spite of all the fooling around we did, I’d woken up with my dick in my hand and her name on my lips every morning for days. I was primed and ready to go.

  “So my cousin is here,” Raven suddenly blurted out.

  “Your cousin?”

  “Yeah, Lacey. She decided to come to Ophir for the night.”

  “Okay,” I trailed off. I had no clue where she was going with this.

  “She wanted to come listen to you guys. Your notoriety has spread, and she’s heard from friends how awesome you are. I slipped up and mentioned that I know the band, so she wants an intro. She’s a bit starry eyed.”

  “And?”

  “Well, she, um… she al
so knows I’ve slept with my boss.”

  “You told her you got busy with me?”

  “She’s got a way of getting me to spill shit. The thing is, though, she doesn’t know that you, Drew Massey of the Bangin’ Mofos, is my boss.”

  “I take it that you don’t really want her to.”

  “Right, because she’ll be all over that shit. She has this image in her head that my boss is some skeevy biker dude who I’m totally just using to get off. If she saw you and knew it was you, she’d start pushing me to make it into something serious. Something that it’s not. Something neither one of us needs. She’d make it all awkward and we couldn’t keep going like this. So please, don’t say you’re my boss.”

  “She might not be quite as—”

  “If you say anything, I’m never sleeping with you again.”

  I immediately shut my mouth, strangely enjoying this somewhat. Raven was flustered. I’d seen Raven cool, I’d seen Raven pissed, I’d seen Raven turned on (that was my favorite), and I’d seen Raven sad.

  But I’d never seen Raven flustered.

  Her cheeks had flushed. She seemed a little short of breath, and her eyes flashed with a nervous energy. It actually kinda fired me up for more.

  “You just can’t say anything to her,” she rambled on. “I can’t let her know it’s you I’m sleeping with.”

  I shrugged.

  “Drew, she already thinks you’re some kind of rockstar, so if she thinks I’m fucking you, she’s going to be all kinds of whacked about it.”

  I nodded.

  Raven narrowed her eyes at me.

  I looked innocently back.

  She frowned. “What?”

  I raised a brow in question.

  “Why aren’t you saying anything?”

  I narrowed my eyes back at her.

  “Drew,” she scowled and smacked my arm. “Say something.”

  I sighed with mock frustration, although I could barely contain the chuckle in my throat. “You told me if I said anything you were never going to sleep with me again.”

  “I meant I didn’t want you to say anything to her.”

  “Okay, well you maybe should have clarified, because I kind of like sleeping with you.”