Conquest (37 page)

Jesse tried to shake away the growing hurt. He couldn’t let Evan affect him. He needed to focus. Everything he ever dreamed of waited for him outside his dressing room door. He lowered his gaze. Almost everything.

He forced himself to stand up. He changed into a pair of black leather pants, and instead of a shirt, he pulled on a short black leather jacket.

He pet Achilles. “You stay here and be a good boy while I go perform.”

Jesse walked out of his dressing room to Kenny, Julian, and Trish waiting for him, and the roaring voices of the crowd chanting “Conquest.” He held his right hand out, the others fell down on top.

“This is the start of the beginning,” Jesse said. “This is where we lay the foundation and let the world know we’re a force that won’t be stopped. Together, we
will
conquer the world. Let’s do this!”

The others yelled with him and headed for the stage.

The arena lights dropped. The crowd screamed louder in anticipation. Julian hit the keyboards, pulling out long, deep notes. Kenny’s guitar broke through the darkness with throaty smooth cords. A steady beat from the drums came in, getting louder and louder. Over it all, Jesse’s voice began to rise, growing stronger with each note. When he hit the top of his range, he could hardly hear himself over the roaring crowd. The lights flashed on. He ran to the front of the stage, and lit into the fast lines of “Vanish,”

“You look in my eyes,
Thinking you can see all the tears I’ve cried, You don’t know me,
Don’t hold me.
I can’t believe I bought all the lies that you sold, Took ‘em to my heart to hold,
Then you let me go.

You breezed through my life,
Night after night,
Pushing me to the edge,
With your smile so beautiful and cold. Now you stand before me and cry, Saying you want me by your side. But I need to go,
I need to run.
I need to vanish like the sun,
Into the coming night.
Let me go,
Walk away,
Let me vanish from your life forever. Let me go,
Turn away,
I need to leave this all behind forever. Let me go,
Fly away,
I’d be happier alone forever.
Let me go,
Run away,
Let me vanish in the night forever…”

Kenny’s guitar solo blasted to life at the end of the chorus.

Jesse looked out over the crowd, seeing nothing but a bouncing, jumping mass of faceless bodies screaming hollow affections to him.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-
TWO

Brandon looked at his watch, a quarter past two in the morning, then peered over the stainless steel railing beside the booth he sat in, down to the first level of the club where Jesse stood out against the gyrating crowd on the dance floor. Even though he was surrounded by people pushing and shoving, wiggling and squirming, to be the next to dance close to him, Jesse moved to the fast thumping bass driven beat like nothing else in the world existed.

Brandon sighed and faced around. Kenny, Julian, and Trish sat at the table with him, picking at the birthday cake they had gotten for Jesse. A plate with a piece of untouched cake was still where Jesse sat long enough to blow out his twenty-one candles before he hit the dance floor, where he’d been for the past two hours, lost in his own world of music and alcohol.

He had gone down once to tell Jesse to take it easy on the booze, but Jesse laughed at him and spun away, allowing himself to be swallowed in the churning wave of bodies. Kenny and Julian tried talking to him also, but Jesse answered them by tipping his bottle of Guinness back to finish it and signaling for another. Trish attempted to approach him, though she seemed to forget her original intent and ended up trying to dance with him, but Jesse gave her no more attention than he gave all the strange women fighting to grind against him.

Brandon looked back to the dance floor and saw one of the bartenders making his way through the crowd toward Jesse. He glared down at the guy who had been overly attentive to Jesse all night, keeping a constant supply of fresh drinks flowing to him. It was obvious the guy wasn’t going through the extra effort to get a bigger tip. He’d have to watch him closely and make sure he didn’t try anything.

Jesse raised both arms above his head, dancing with his eyes closed, letting his hips and torso sway with the music. He thought about how good the music felt pumping through his body. So long as it didn’t stop, he wouldn’t stop. That was the one horrible thing about his concert; the music had stopped. He hadn’t wanted it to. He tried to drag the show out for as long as he could, fearing playing the last song of the night, but it couldn’t go on forever, and when they played the final song for the last encore, it was one of the worst feelings in the world. As he walked offstage, the reality closed in on him that despite the adoration from the thousands he’d just stood before, he was alone.

But here in this club was music again. Here, he could forget about reality for a few hours more.

He felt someone grip his arm and rolled his head loosely to see who it was. It was the bartender who had been subtly flirting with him all night. Tall with a nice athletic build, dark hair and dark eyes, but he was just another guy. Another nameless face.

“Ready for another?” the bartender asked, holding a fresh beer toward Jesse.
Jesse swiped it out of his hand, gave him his empty bottle, and put the fresh one to his lips in a long drink.

The bartender leaned toward Jesse’s ear. “My name’s Ryan.” “What?” Jesse yelled over the music.

Ryan pressed closer to him, his lips almost touching his ear. “I said my name’s Ryan.”

Jesse nodded and moved to spin away. Ryan’s grip on his arm tightened. Jesse snapped his head around, giving him a harsh glare, then saw the look in Ryan’s eyes, the hunter-like gaze that told him this man wanted to screw the hell out of him. It wasn’t anything like how Evan would look at him. Evan could be fierce, rough, aggressive, dominant, but through it all his eyes always held unending affection. Not like this guy, whose eyes unsettled him and gave him warning that Ryan would take what he wanted, how he wanted, and would care little how he felt about it.

Jesse tried to jerk his arm free. Ryan held on and smiled at him, the gesture making him more uncomfortable rather than putting him at ease. He felt Ryan press a small plastic bag into the palm of his hand.

Ryan put his lips to Jesse’s ear again. “I have more, if you want. We could have a hell of a party when you’re ready to get out of here.” He released Jesse’s arm and gave him another grin as he maneuvered back toward the bar.

Jesse looked down at the tiny bag in his hand. He had never tried ecstasy, but he had seen it enough in clubs to know that’s what the two small white tablets in the bag were. He closed his hand in a fist around the drugs and staggered off the dance floor. He reached the stairs to the second level, managed to only trip on the last one, and went to the table. He crashed down in the booth, almost sitting on top of Brandon.

“Hey! Why aren’t ya dancin’, super dancer boy?” Jesse asked, his words slurring.
“It’s time to go,” Brandon said. “You have a tour bus to catch in the morning, remember?”

“Ya think it’s gonna leave without me?” Jesse laughed. “And I can’t leave now. I haven’t found anyone to have sex with yet.”

Kenny let out a derisive snort. “Dude, you’re so wasted, I doubt you could even get it up.”

 

Jesse snatched Kenny’s hand with reflexes that seemed far too quick for his drunkenness. “I’m hard right now. Feel.” Kenny twisted his hand out of Jesse’s. “Idiot!”

Jesse burst out laughing and crawled over Brandon’s lap on his hands and knees to get to the part of the booth closest to the steel railing.

Brandon pressed back away from him. “Will you sit your ass down!”

Jesse ignored him and knelt on the seat with his back to the table. He hung his torso over the railing, waving down at the dance floor with both hands, and yelled, “Hey! Does anyone wanna have sex with me?”

Brandon grabbed Jesse around his waist and pulled him from the railing. Jesse fell on top of him, laughing so hard he could barely breathe.

“Brandon, look, look,” Jesse said between laughs. He brandished the tiny bag of ecstasy before Brandon’s face. “That bartender guy gave ‘em to me.”

Brandon ripped the bag out of his hand. “That son of a bitch! Did you take any?” He grabbed Jesse’s face in both hands, looking intently into his eyes. “Did you?”

Jesse shook his head as much as he could in Brandon’s hold.

Brandon gazed at him for another moment, then released him. He flung the pills over the rail to the fall on the dance floor and looked to the others. “We need to get him out of here.”

“Brandon, Brandon,” Jesse said, tugging on Brandon’s arm. “I gotta pee. Come with me to the bathroom. I don’t want that guy to follow me in there.”

Brandon rubbed his hands over his face and through his hair in exasperation. “Alright. But then we’re leaving.”

Brandon slid out of the booth, waited for Jesse to clamber out, then followed him down to the first level. He walked close behind him to not lose him in the crowd as they worked their way to the restrooms. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the bartender weaving his way between bodies behind them.

Brandon faced forward, hoping his body remembered enough karate to react if the guy tried something and wishing he hadn’t quit practicing it. The guy looked to be around six feet tall and built with solid muscle. If it came to a physical confrontation, he knew he wasn’t going to get out of it unscathed.

As they neared the restroom, Brandon glanced back to see the bartender was just a few feet away. He decided he didn’t want to start a fight in the restroom. The last thing he needed was to get his head cracked open on a porcelain sink or his face smashed into a mirror. He turned fully around, prepared for a fight.

An elbow shot out of the crowd and nailed the bartender in the nose. The guy’s head snapped back, he fell to the floor howling in pain. He covered his nose with both hands, but it didn’t staunch the blood from pouring between his fingers. Brandon didn’t need to get a closer look to know the guy’s nose was broken. He turned his eyes to the crowd to see who had hit him and caught the flash of a white New York Yankees logo on a navy baseball cap before the wearer vanished among the people. Brandon exhaled all his breath in a shocked gasp.

He felt Jesse’s hand on his arm and looked at him. Jesse stared in the direction the Yankees cap had disappeared. “Jess?” Brandon said hesitantly. “Did you see someone?” “I thought…it felt like…” He shook his head and looked at the bartender.

Kenny and Julian shoved their way through the crowd. “Jess!” Kenny yelled. “Are you okay?”
Jesse nodded slowly.

Brandon grabbed Kenny’s and Julian’s wrists. “You guys watch him. I’m going to pay our tab so we can go.” Both looked at him, confused, but nodded in assent.

Brandon watched Jesse stumble into the restroom with Kenny and Julian, then darted in the direction the Yankees cap had gone.

” ” ”

Brandon and Kenny half carried, half dragged Jesse into Brandon’s apartment with Trish and Julian following behind. They wrestled him to his bedroom, somehow managed not to step on Achilles dancing around them, and dropped Jesse on the bed.

“Whoever thought his skinny ass would be so damn heavy?”

Kenny said, flexing his sore shoulder muscles.
“If he hadn’t gotten away from us after going to the

restroom, he would’ve been able to walk in himself,” Julian said. “But he decided to start doing shots.”

Brandon looked down at his brother lying passed out on the bed and shook his head in a mix of pity and disappointment. The call buzzer dinged and he turned to answer it. Kenny and Julian followed him from the bedroom, Kenny asking if he could have a drink of water since he had overexerted himself carrying Jesse, and Julian asking to use his bathroom. Trish stood alone in the bedroom.

She took a tentative step toward the bed, then another. She sat down beside Jesse. Her eyes moved over his face, lingering for a long moment on his lips. She reached toward him and brushed his cheek with the backs of her fingers. Jesse didn’t move. She gently touched her fingertips to his lips, amazed at how soft and warm they were. Jesse took a slightly deeper breath, his hips rolled in the smallest of motions.

Trish looked down to his hips. She saw movement behind the black leather, the material beginning to strain against Jesse’s organ expanding within its confines. Her heartbeat quickened, heat flushed her skin. She wanted to touch him, to feel the weight of his erection in her hand. He had told her he’d been with women. She knew he could do it again. Now with Evan out of the way, her path to Jesse was clear.

She understood he was still coping with the loss of him, but eventually he’d realize how bad Evan had been for him, that he had poisoned him every day with his obsessive, jealous, and possessive ways. But she could give Jesse the kind of relationship he deserved.

She rubbed her hand down his chest, over his firm abdomen, to the top of his pants.

“Ev,” Jesse groaned.
Trish jerked her hand back.

Jesse shifted on the bed. He started to open his eyes, closed them again, then finally opened them almost all the way and looked up at her. “Trish? Where’s Ev?”

Struggling to keep the irritation from her voice, Trish said, “He’s not here, Jess.”

“He’s not? I thought I felt him—”
“He’s not here,” she snapped. “He didn’t even bother to come to our show tonight. He didn’t even care enough to call you and say good luck, or happy birthday. He doesn’t give a shit. He only cares about himself and his career, remember?”

Jesse rolled onto his side away from her. “I thought he was here.”

Trish winced at the pain in Jesse’s voice. She leaned over him, resting both hands on his shoulder. “It’s okay, Jess. I’ll stay the night if you want me to so you don’t have to be alone.”

Jesse lay quiet and unmoving.

From the living room, Trish heard voices, and with the original three of Brandon, Kenny, and Julian, was a fourth she also knew well. Before she could react, Evan walked into the bedroom with the others. She tried to look at him in defiance, to tell him with her eyes that she had more right to be beside Jesse than he did, but at the simmering rage and fierce protectiveness in Evan’s gaze, she drew her hands away from Jesse, stood, and stepped back from the bed.