Strings by Kendall Grey

don’t trust
him, and I definitely don’t like the way he ogles her.
    “ If you guys are ready,
I’m gonna get rolling,” Freddie calls from the front.
    “ Rock on,” Rax
says.
    The engine cranks up. Jinx claims the bottom
bunk adjacent to mine, and Jillian stuffs her purse in the space
above Jinx.
    “ Since we’ve got several
hours of driving, it might be a good idea to get in a little
rehearsal time,” Jillian says. “I’m still not happy with the bridge
on ‘Take It Like a Man.’”
    Kate’s curtain slides open. “Where do you
propose we do that?”
    Jillian gestures to the tables. “Hop to it.”
She claps her hands twice.
    Kate frowns and slides down from her perch.
She puts a cap on her attitude and moseys to the front. Jinx
follows. I’m not sure what the guys are doing in the back, and I
don’t care.
    No, really. I don’t. I’m here to rock with
my girls.
    Kate settles down on the couch and plugs
into her monitor. She puts on headphones. Jinx whips out her
electronic tabletop drum kit and joins her.
    I wonder how Jillian convinced Kate to join
us on the tour. Kate’s not her usual stabby self. If she had a
tail, its tip would be in her mouth. Interesting.
    I crack open my bass case and join the
chicks for an epic practice/jam session. When my growling stomach
prompts me to check my watch, I nearly shit myself. One thirty?
Where the hell did the day go? Guess I got caught up in The Rock.
That’s a great thing.
    I look out the front window. Freddie pulls
into the lot at the venue, parks, and shuts down the engine. Chills
race up my arms. Holy shit. This is it. We’re playing a gig
someplace outside of Athens, Georgia. People don’t know us here.
But they will after tonight.
    I smile. Hell, yes.
    The guys announce they’re going for burgers
down the street. The girls ask if I want to grab food, but I can’t
fucking afford it. I politely decline and retire to my bunk for
some rest.
    When everyone’s gone, I grab one of the
cheap protein bars I packed and eat it too fast. Still hungry, I
look around for a distraction. I can’t devour my entire food stash
on the first day of the tour.
    Music. That ought to send my mind in a
different direction.
    I shove in my earbuds, pull up my ’70s
playlist, and crank up the ancient iPod. A few minutes later, I
fall into a hard sleep filled with dreams of Shades’s rugged face
buried in my muff. Shit, I can’t even escape him when I’m
unconscious.
    Why? Why must my raging libido hold me
hostage like this?
    Zeppelin’s “The Lemon Song” fills my ears as
I climb out of my dream back to the toilet of reality. No heater
running while the bus is parked. Feels as cold and empty as my
apartment.
    I pause the music, slide the drape aside,
and peer out. “Anybody here?”
    No answer. I restart the song and close the
curtain.
    I lie shivering on my back, staring at the
steel ceiling of my too-small cage. Thoughts return to Shades, even
though he’s off limits.
    It irks me how he blew me off. I’m not used
to being ignored. Maybe because he’s loaded, he thinks he’s better
than me.
    I fucking hate entitled, rich assholes.
    So why do all of my roads lead back to Todd
Armstrong’s Emerald Fucking City?
    The way he bossed me around the night I
butt-boinked him tickles the pleasure center of my brain. I
expected him to submit. I liked the idea of controlling him.
Humiliating him. Using him. When it backfired, it turned me on even
more.
    I’ve never had a lover top me from bottom.
I’m always the one on top, even when I give up the ass. I’m the
classic control freak.
    Jimmy Page’s solo mesmerizes me…
    I recall the feel of Shades’s gorgeous
tattooed spine against my tits while I pounded him, the burning
expression when I called him a whore…My legs shift under the thin
blanket. I drag a hand over my aching breasts and rub hard,
imagining his hungry mouth there. The flat of my other hand rubs my
clit through the jeans in slow, sensual circles. The