Stryker's Desire (Dragons Of Sin City Book 1) Read online

  “Show away,” she said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I woke up in my own bed, for once feeling like I’d managed to get a decent night’s sleep in spite of the fact that Sophie and I had been up until about four, having sex over and over again. We’d only stopped at three-thirty in the morning because I had promised to get her to her car so she could get home in enough time to feed the cat.

  I had to get to the studio but we’d all agreed not to get started until two in the afternoon; when I checked the time on my phone it was only eleven. Time enough to get a shower, grab some breakfast, and maybe get in a little practice on one of the songs we’d changed up the day before until I had to get to the complex. I scrolled through my Facebook feed for a few moments in bed, thinking about Sophie; there was still something between us, I knew, but I couldn’t deal with the situation with her until I dealt with the one with Mark. I wondered if Sophie had already let Mark know that she would have to cancel—and if so, how she’d done it. Almost feel bad for the guy, I thought idly. Mark had no idea that I’d gone for the same girl but more successfully; he’d probably be pissed at me, but like Nick had pointed out, it wasn’t like it was the first time any of us had gone for the same girl.

  As if my thoughts were a cue, my phone buzzed in my hand while I was on the way to the bathroom to grab a shower. It was Mark. Sophie canceled on me. What the hell, man? I stared at my phone for a minute, feeling guiltier than I thought I would. Had she said something about why she had to cancel? Before I could reply, I got another text—from Sophie. I tried to tell Mark that it was just a scheduling conflict, but he kept pushing for another date and I eventually just gave in and told him I’d decided to go out with you instead.

  I sat down on the rim of the bathtub. Obviously I wasn’t going to get my chance to have a calm, normal talk with Mark about what had happened with Sophie—he already knew, and from her instead of from me. I asked her out that night we went to Prop, I wrote to Mark. She said yes. She shouldn’t have agreed to go out with you in the first place. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything, man. I put my phone aside and stepped into the shower, hoping against hope that that would be all there was to talk about—at least for the day.

  I got another text while I was shaving, but I waited until I was done to look at it. What the fuck, dude?

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Mark had a right to be pissed at me—I could recognize that. I had been pissed at him, even though it wasn’t his fault, when I’d found out he was going on a date with Sophie. But I’d known and he hadn’t. From his perspective, I’d basically pulled the rug out from under him.

  I got another text, this one from Nick. Mark says he’s not coming in today. Guess he knows? I cringed.

  Sophie canceled her date with him, I replied. She told him why. If Mark wasn’t going to be in the studio that day, there was no point in any of us being there—we were still doing the live room recordings, not the individual parts yet.

  Fuck, dude. You going to talk to him? I thought about that question and didn’t have a good answer for it. I’d have to talk to Mark sometime; I’d have to see if I could get him to understand where I was coming from, what had happened, the fact that I wasn’t out to screw him. I kept thinking about the rant he’d gone on the night we’d both met Sophie: that it was unreal that Jules had a girlfriend before he did. Sophie might not have been anything serious to him, but between Jules having a functioning relationship against all the odds and me pulling a chick he wanted without him knowing about it, he was obviously going to have some wounded pride.

  If we’re not in the studio today, I guess I have to, I wrote Nick. Alex and Jules sent texts confirming that Mark had told them about not coming in too, and wondering if I knew anything about it; they didn’t really know what was going on with Mark, or with any of the other members of the band, not the way that we used to know about each other’s lives, ever since they’d gotten together with their girlfriends. Nick only knew about it because he and Liv had been at Prop.

  I bit the bullet and finally replied to Mark’s message. Hey, man. Let’s meet up at Nippers since, apparently, we’re not working today. If I was going to talk to Mark about the situation at hand, I was going to definitely need some fucking coffee before I did. I threw on some clothes and got into my car and went up to Rhino in Boca while I waited to hear from Mark. I texted Sophie to let her know that it was okay—that I’d work things out with Mark on my own, that we were still on for our next date. I had no idea whether or not I would actually be able to square things away with Mark; but I hoped that I could.

  I sat down outside with a couple of donuts and a big coffee, and lit a cigarette. Mark and I were in a band together; we were friends. We’d been friends for years. Surely, we could get through something this minor—right? I finished off my donuts and lit another cig, staring at my phone and willing it to vibrate, to flash on the screen that Mark had texted me back. I kept telling myself that it was just a one-day delay, that we’d hash it out over beers and everything would be fine. But after three cigarettes I had to admit that it was taking Mark longer than I would have thought to get back to me. Are we meeting up or what?

  A couple of minutes later I got my response: Fuck off.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A week after Mark had told me to fuck off, instead of meeting with me, I found myself at Respects again. Once more, I had cigarettes, lighter, ashtray, and a beer in front of me; but I was by myself. I lit up and looked around the bar, trying not to be the morose asshole I felt like. It was eleven, so people were starting to come in, but I didn’t think there would be that many; according to Sophie, the place was almost never super packed on a Wednesday. Thursdays--for Flaunt--it would get busy, and then on Friday, and almost always on Saturday, but unless there was an actual event, Wednesdays mostly only managed to bring out the diehards.

  I flicked the tip of my cig in the ashtray and looked behind the bar. Sophie was in perpetual motion, taking stock of her supplies, closing out tabs, opening tabs, going into the back for whatever it was anyone needed. Queens of The Stone Age, “No One Knows” came on through the system and I saw her hips beginning to move in time, as she scribbled something down on a pad. I wasn’t sure if it was just me, but it seemed like she got hotter every time I saw her; when I’d picked her up to drive her to work about an hour and a half before, it’d been all I could do not to drag her back into her apartment and convince her to let me make her late. She’d pulled her hair back into the spiky, small pigtails I’d liked so much the first night I’d seen her, but she was wearing a pair of shorts that barely covered her ass, along with a thin, almost transparent shirt that draped across her shoulders and clung to her tits.

  “Want another shot?” Sophie leaned in closer to me over the bar, and I shrugged.

  “Might as well,” I replied. “Not like I have anywhere to be.” It had been a week--and none of us had gone back into the studio, because Mark refused to respond to anyone. Either he told them to fuck off, same as he had me, or he just didn’t answer. Things were starting to get desperate; the record label wasn’t happy with the fact that we were stalled out on the album, especially since they’d given us the biggest budget we’d ever had. We were going to have to come up with something soon, but no one in the band seemed to have an idea of how to move forward.

  I couldn’t help but feel more than a little guilty about it; I couldn’t make myself believe that Mark’s tantrum was all about Sophie, but obviously, that had been the straw that had broken the camel’s back. If we couldn’t figure out how to move forward, then it was going to be bad for all of us. Not that Jules won’t just bounce back. He’s already got that side project. Alex could go solo. Nick… I sighed, pushing the thought out of my head before I’d even finished it. In a certain light, I could understand where Mark was coming from; at least, where he’d been coming from before, the night we’d met Sophie.

  But knowing where he was coming from didn’t really seem to help all that much. I
still didn’t have an answer for what to do about the situation. My phone buzzed on the bar top and I turned it over to see the screen flashing. I had a text. I unlocked my phone and stubbed out my cigarette, taking the shot from Sophie without even looking. Meeting tomorrow. Ron’s office. Mark won’t be there. It was from Nick. I knocked back the shot and considered the message.

  Is Ron going to be there? What’s the deal? I took a sip of my beer and lit another cigarette. This was certainly getting interesting--I knew that it would eventually come to some kind of meeting; some kind of sit-down. The fact that it was Nick messaging me about it instead of Alex was a little unusual.

  I had to wonder if the rest of the band thought it was my fault that Mark was throwing such an epic tantrum. After all, the spark for this had been him finding out about me and Sophie. You have to admit that you were pretty pissed about the fact that he and Sophie were supposed to go out after she’d already said yes to you, I reminded myself. And it was true--and Nick had pointed out how stupid it was for me to be so touchy about it. And then, too, it’s not like he knew. Obviously. I finished off my beer and signaled to Sophie. At least for a little while, I had enough money not to worry too much about running up a huge tab, and how I’d pay for it. We were still getting quarterly royalties from the first few albums, and since things had gotten so good with everyone else in the band drawing more and more attention to us, those checks were bigger.

  Ron’s not going to be there. He’s letting us figure this shit out. But the label is pretty...the polite way they put it was ‘concerned’. I almost laughed out loud at Nick’s understatement. The label was pissed. They’d dropped money on the studio of our choice, and they were bleeding that money for however long we went without working, since--unless we contacted them and told them to suspend the album--they couldn’t just quit the lease on the place. My phone buzzed again. Noon, Alex says. You going to be there? Sophie cracked another beer and slid it in front of me.

  I sighed. I knew I didn’t really have a whole hell of a lot of choice. I’ll bring pizza, I texted back. There was no real getting around it--I’d need to be there. Especially since Mark apparently wasn’t going to attend, it was a good idea. There was no doubting what we’d be discussing: the future of the band, and how we were going to deal with the situation.

  “What’s up?” I looked up and saw Sophie standing across the bar from me, hands resting on the bar top. I shrugged.

  “Meeting tomorrow with the boys--except Mark, who apparently won’t talk to anyone,” I told her. “At our manager’s office, but he won’t be there.”

  “I assume you’ll hash everything out?” Sophie looked doubtful.

  “Jules will bring some dope, I’ll bring some pizza, we’ll talk about whatever everyone wants to talk about,” I said, shrugging. Sophie stepped back and grabbed her pack of cigarettes from where she’d left it, next to the register.

  “What do you think the outcome is going to be?” I wasn’t the only one who felt guilty about the situation between Mark, the band and me. Sophie had admitted that she hadn’t quite known how to say no to Mark’s date invite; she also hadn’t known how seriously I’d meant it when I’d asked her out first. But at this point, none of that even completely mattered. It was obvious to me at least that Mark wouldn’t throw such an epic tantrum without there being more at stake than a girl.

  “No idea,” I said. Sophie lit her cigarette and took a drag. “That depends on what they’re thinking.”

  “Do you think they think it’s your fault?” I shrugged again and drank down some of my beer.

  “Nick doesn’t seem to, but it’s hard to say for sure what Jules and Alex have concluded,” I told her. “Even though he’s got a girlfriend now, Jules is still a morose bastard--so he’s probably likely to think it’s fucking everyone’s fault. Alex just wants things to keep trucking, as far as I can tell.”

  “So it might come to an argument?” I pressed my lips together. Sophie held her cigarette between her lips and poured me another shot of Jameson with a wink. I always made sure to pay my tabs, and after her comments about dating guys in the local scene I had made sure not to even think about asking her to comp me anything, but sometimes she tossed me a shot for free.

  “It might,” I said, gesturing for her to pour herself a shot as well. “I’m paying for these--period.” Sophie shrugged and poured herself a shot from the bottle before putting it away. We both knocked back our alcohol; I chased mine with a gulp of beer and Sophie chased hers with a mouthful of some cocktail she’d mixed for herself. “Anyway, if it comes to a fight, at least it’ll be a change.” Sophie laughed.

  “Change is better than nothing at all, right?” I nodded.

  “I don’t think it’ll be a fight,” I admitted. “I think it’ll be...tense, but I think that we’ll figure something out. I sure fucking hope that we do.” I scrubbed at my face. I hadn’t realized how much it would bug me to be out of the studio for a week straight, with the record label breathing down our necks. I’d never had an argument with Mark that had lasted longer than maybe a couple of days, at the most. Usually by the day after, we’d more or less forgotten what we were mad about.

  “Here’s hoping, right?” I raised my beer and Sophie raised her cocktail and I hoped that I wouldn’t massively regret agreeing to go to the meeting.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “You’re sure you’re going to that meeting tomorrow?” Sophie glanced at me from the driver’s seat; I’d somehow managed to get too tipsy to drive back to her place between getting the messages from Nick and the time Respects closed down for the night at four.

  “Sure I’m sure,” I said with a shrug. “Why wouldn’t I go?” Sophie reached over and grabbed her pack of cigarettes out of the center console. She turned onto the entrance ramp for I-95 headed south and kept one hand on the wheel, her palm controlling the turn while her other hand tugged a cig free of the pack. I watched with fuzzy-headed wonder as she lit up with one hand and maneuvered the looping ramp effortlessly, merging into the almost-nonexistent traffic.

  “You’re drunk right now and it’s eight hours away,” Sophie pointed out.

  “I’m not that drunk,” I countered. “Just drunk enough that it’s better that you drive us than that I do.” Sophie gave me that knowing little grin, the one that drove me crazy, that had made me determined to win her over.

  “You’re going to be hungover,” she pointed out. “Is that the best frame of mind to talk about the future of the band in?” I laughed.

  “It’s the absolute best frame of mind to do it in,” I told her. “If I can’t manage to support the continued existence of the band when I’m hungover, then it’s not worth keeping the band together.” But the thought of the band breaking up--and over some stupid bullshit problem that Mark was having about me ending up with a girl he wanted at that--sent an irrational surge of anger through me. “I’ll be fine by the time I have to be at Ron’s office.”

  Sophie raised an eyebrow with more than a little doubt in her eyes, but didn’t try and argue with me about it. I took control of the stereo, hooking my phone up to it and pulling up an old Silverchair album: Freak Show. I started it on the first track, “Slave,” and glanced at Sophie; we’d talked about music a few different times, and of course since I was a musician, it was important to me that someone I wanted to date more seriously had decent taste in music.

  “Oh, god,” Sophie said, shaking her head and grinning.

  “What?” I looked at her with interest even as I lit a cigarette.

  “Fucking eighth grade of middle school,” Sophie told me cryptically.

  “What about eighth grade?” Sophie’s cheeks lit up in the orangey glow of the safety lights on the highway as we passed under them.

  “That’s when I listened to this album for the first time,” she said, sighing. She flicked the butt of her cigarette through the crack in the window and shook her head again. “I used to have such a crush on Daniel Johns.” I laughed.

&nbs
p; “Is the only reason you dated me because I’m a fellow Daniel?” Sophie rolled her eyes.

  “You play a different instrument,” she said tartly. I snickered.

  “I can play guitar too, you know,” I pointed out. “One of these days I’ll serenade you with ‘Ana’s Song’.”

  “No!” Sophie shook her head. “No--that’s all about mental illness. Do ‘My Favourite Thing’ instead.” I grinned and took a drag of my cigarette.

  “I might at that,” I told her. Sophie gave me a look through her eyelashes and we continued on the highway as one song changed to another. I’d spent the whole night watching her work, enjoying the curves of her body, all but staring at her whenever I wasn’t forced to talk to someone else. I wasn’t sure whether Sophie had chosen her outfit because it was comfortable or because she knew it made her look like a little sexpot--but I didn’t care.

  We’d made an agreement, after our second date: while we’d wandered around the Norton, we’d talked about the fact that with me being a musician and her being a bartender, we’d have to either be okay with each other flirting or just never, ever let the relationship get serious. I wasn’t even sure just yet that I wanted it to be serious, but I knew that I wanted Sophie in a way I hadn’t wanted very many other women I’d met in my life. Pretty soon, we’d have to make some kind of decision about whether or not we were going to be an actual “thing”--but with the band in such a weird place, I didn’t want to make more drama in my life, and Sophie had told me flat out that she wasn’t interested in jumping the gun. So, for the moment, we were just seeing each other. Of course, the date at the Norton had ended up with me at her place, ordering pizza from an Italian place up the street just before it closed for the night, and us racing to see if we could fit in one more orgasm before the delivery guy got to her apartment.