All Night Long

‘Brilliant!’ Rock Giant shot upright. A manic grin stretched across his rock-hewn features. ‘Bagsy I’m driving.’

‘If you must.’

‘Yes!’ Rock Giant punched the air. ‘I get to drive the va-an … I get to drive the va-an.’ He clasped an invisible steering wheel and proceeded to zoom around the room. ‘OK, everyone, get your shit together. We’re doing this. Fall in. Fall in.’

Not quite sure if she was included in this escape plan, Ginny watched the guys collect assorted jackets and trinkets from around the room.

‘If we end up in A and E I’m holding you personally responsible,’ Spook muttered to Ash, as he fell into line behind Rock Giant. ‘Last time he drove the bus, we ended up doing a three-sixty-degree roll down an embankment, and I swore I was never getting into another moving vehicle if he was controlling it.’

‘Well, if you’d prefer to drive?’

Abject horror filled Spook’s handsome face. He shook his head. ‘No way. You lot drive on the wrong side of the road.’

‘The left is the right side of the road,’ Rock Giant griped.

‘Yeah, how’d you figure that out? It doesn’t even make sense.’

Rock Giant proceeded to careen around the furniture, over-egging his performance with brake-screeching sound effects. ‘I’ll go get the van keys off Ulf.’

‘Dear God,’ Spook sighed with his head down.

‘It’s OK, baby, I’ll protect you.’ Ash draped an arm around his shoulder and squeezed.

Spook shook him off. ‘Lay off the soppy stuff. I’m not here to provide you with post-coital cuddles. You’re supposed to do that with the girl.’ He headed towards the exit with his long white-blond hair falling around his shoulders and his purple guitar slung across his back. ‘I am so glad I insured my fingers. At least I can live off the proceeds after he mangles us.’

‘Is Rock Giant’s driving really that bad?’ Ginny asked, forcing Ash to remember her presence.

‘It’s atrocious. Let’s pray there aren’t any corners between here and the hotel.’ He extended his hand towards her. ‘Are you prepared to chance it?’

Ginny stared at his hand a moment, not sure how to respond. He was fun, but he’d definitely been odd with her the last few minutes. Then again, maybe he was irked over the fact he hadn’t come. ‘If you still want me?’

‘Why wouldn’t I?’ His brow creased into a frown, which also turned the edges of his mouth down. He clasped her hand and pulled her into his embrace. ‘You promised me a whole night of fun, lady. The night’s barely begun.’

‘Yeah.’ She traced her palms across the surface of his washboard abs. ‘But I wouldn’t want to take up your time if I’m not pleasing you.’ She looked up into his blue-grey eyes fearing the truth she’d see, but there was no hint of disappointment.

‘I’ve no complaints.’

Ginny drew her touch downward, so that her palm skated over the hummock distorting his fly. ‘Sure about that?’

‘Absolutely. Besides, I need to smother you in treacle yet and lick it all off.’ He held her head still as he leaned in to kiss her lips. It wasn’t a frantic sparring of tongues like the previous kisses had been, but more tender, gentler. ‘I’m fine, sugar plum. You don’t need to worry about a thing.’

Ginny wasn’t entirely convinced, but let it ride. His façade of easy charm didn’t entirely mask the sliver of pain in his eyes.

‘Guys.’ Rock Giant’s bellow echoed down the narrow corridor to reach them in the dressing room. ‘We’re set. Hurry it up.’

Ash grabbed her hand. ‘Let’s go.’ He dragged her along the corridor as though a horde of fans were on their tail and he was the security guy detailed to protect her.

Chapter Three

With Rock Giant behind the wheel, they left tyre tracks on the road as they sped out of the building towards the stadium exit. He seemed to have forgotten the fact that he was driving a van loaded with several grand’s worth of the band’s equipment and three passengers.

‘He’s a maniac,’ Ginny bleated to Ash. She thanked God that all the fans were at the front of the building or there might have been a few fatalities as a result of their exit. On the up side, she got to cling onto Ash, whose plan did appear to be working. As they tore across the car park, she caught intermittent glimpses of the two Black Halo limousines. They were completely surrounded by fans who had crossed the security lines and were making movement nearly impossible. A couple of fans had even climbed onto the roof of the front vehicle.

‘I hope you’re stuck there for hours,’ Ash hollered at the front car, which Ginny assumed was carrying Elspeth along with the band’s drummer, Steve Matlock.

‘Oi! Less of that,’ Rock Giant chastened him.

‘Is it normally like this?’ Ginny asked. She knew Black Halo were huge. They were major international stars, but the mayhem outside resembled Beatlemania at its height, not the aftermath of a present-day rock concert. In her experience, and she’d been to several big gigs, people didn’t get this riled up about catching a glimpse of their favourite star, not when they could spend hours at home stalking them on the Internet, and particularly not en masse like this. Sure there were exceptions, but that only accounted for the compulsory bunch of shivering groupies, not this.

Ash was contemplating the outside world with a measure of uncertainty too. ‘It’s often crazy,’ he muttered. ‘But not typically this deranged. Mind you, we do normally stick it out until the end of the show, instead of calling it quits a couple of tracks in.’

He lowered the window and leaned out. ‘Bye, Elspeth.’ He waved at the stranded limo. ‘Stupid bitch.’

Rock Giant slammed on the brakes, bringing the van to a screeching halt just short of a lamppost. He turned to glare at Ash, who ducked back into the vehicle, looking significantly paler.

‘Knock it off with the name-calling or I’ll go park us up beside them.’

Ash shook himself and seemed to settle comfortably inside his own skin again. ‘Oh, come off it,’ he protested, not appearing remotely contrite. ‘She’s properly screwed us over tonight. She deserves a few names hurled at her. Even you have to accept that.’

‘Elspeth isn’t the one who screwed us. Xane’s the one who walked off stage. I can’t believe you’re defending him.’

Xane had walked off stage! Somehow, by hanging around in their dressing room instead of watching the show, she appeared to have missed something major.

‘I’m not defending him. I think he’s a prize dick. I’m just pointing out that Elspeth’s the root cause of this. I know you and her are besties, but even you have to admit she’s a cow on occasion.’

‘That is such shit, Ash.’

‘Uh, drive!’ Spook demanded. He reached across from the passenger seat and put the van into first. ‘Seriously, this is not fucking funny. If we sit here like lemons, they’re going to be all over us.’ A highly likely prospect, since Ash’s yelling had attracted a certain amount of attention.

With a discontented snort, Rock Giant slammed down the accelerator pedal again, causing them to shoot off. As far as Ginny could tell, he favoured an all-or-nothing approach to motion. No pootling allowed. Things weren’t helped by the fact that he ramped the volume on the onboard stereo up to ear-splitting levels, and hammered out the drum rhythm against the wheel. She couldn’t understand the lyrics; they appeared to be in a foreign language, although the vocalist’s death growl made it difficult to say for certain. She thought it might be a song about trolls. Hell, she felt as though she was currently hanging with a bunch of them.

Spook dug a beanie out of the footwell and pulled it down over his ears.

Their escape apparently guaranteed, Ginny settled back against Ash’s side to endure the rest of the ride. Unfortunately, their triumph at escaping the arena proved extremely short-lived. Even Rock Giant’s expert slaloming skills couldn’t get them past the gridlocked lanes of traffic blocking the route to the hotel.

‘All this because Xane has a strop,’ Rock Giant bellowed over the music. He slapped the steering wheel in annoyance. ‘Much as I like driving the van, we should have stayed put. We’re not getting anywhere near the hotel without flying.’ They could see the upper storeys and the lights of the hotel signage up ahead, perhaps three minutes’ walk in a straight line. ‘I wouldn’t mind so much, but I really need to piss and take a shower.’

‘Don’t we know it,’ Ash groaned. ‘I can smell your filthy armpits from here.’

‘You don’t smell so hot yourself, lover boy.’

Ginny disagreed. Ash smelled pretty divine to her, all hot and musky with a hint of something woodsy mixed in. She guessed the latter was the remains of whatever cologne he’d spritzed on before he went on stage. Unless, of course, what she could smell was sex. She had creamed all over him, and neither of them had properly had the opportunity to clean up.

She kept the thought to herself. It’s was kind of fun watching and listening to the guys interact. She reckoned she’d learned more about them in the last five minutes than even their most diehard fans would glean from a thousand interviews. They were close but fractious, and, yeah, there were egos aplenty in play. Oh, and they all had issues, some of them better disguised than others. She’d seen the scars on Spook’s inner arms as he’d held the camera between her and Ash. Rock Giant’s driving was enough to tell her he needed help, and as for Ash … well, she was still working on figuring him out.

‘Where’d Melodrama Boy trot off to anyway?’ Rock Giant yelled over the music.

‘He left with some girl,’ Ash replied, sitting forward in order to make himself heard. ‘I don’t know who she was. I’d never seen her before. Cute though. Nowt like Elspeth.’