One Night with Sole Regret 03.5 Share Me (Prequel) (2 page)

“Her father is a big fan of ours,
” Shade continued, “so when he asked us to come out and help them raise some money to help his little girl fight for her life, we couldn’t say no.”

“Be sure to buy a T-shirt on your way out,” Kellen Jamison said in the deepest, sexiest voice Lindsey had ever heard.
How could she possibly think about anything but the sound of that voice in her ear when it echoed around her from every direction? “All of the profits from merch sales go to helping the Carlisle family too.”

Owen stepped up to his microphone. “
You know what?
Fuck
cancer,” he bellowed, thrusting a fist in the air.

He
soon had the entire auditorium chanting, “fuck cancer, fuck cancer, fuck cancer” over and over again. Even stick-up-her-ass Mrs. Weston was yelling it along with the others.

When the crowd settled again, Shade said,
“Thanks for coming out tonight and supporting Ellie’s cause. Now we’re going to rock your faces off.”

Shade started the next song with a battle cry that
caused a thrill to streak down Lindsey’s spine. Hard to believe this group of bad ass men would be willing to give up their Christmas Eve to help out a little girl they didn’t even know. Lindsey was surprised that tears were prickling at the backs of her eyes as she thought of their selfless act. Suddenly, the members of Sole Regret seemed more substantial to her than walking aphrodisiacs. She wondered what kind of men they were. Maybe she could find a way to get to know them. And not just so she could check two tasks off her fuck-it list. She had a powerful need to thank them for being awesome.

Chapter Two

Owen glanced around the tour bus, looking from one grim face to another. You’d think his band mates had just come from a funeral, not
from a kick-ass benefit concert that would likely save a little girl’s life. Owen shifted his Santa hat to the cocked and ready position and reached for the black garbage bag of decorations his mom had sent along with him when she’d learned he wouldn’t be able to attend their family’s annual Christmas Eve celebration. His brother wouldn’t be attending either—Chad had been deployed to Afghanistan in August—so Owen was somewhat glad that he wouldn’t have to sit across the table from an empty chair and wondered if his brother was dodging bullets while he was dodging Grandma Ginny’s questions about when he was going to settle down and make pretty babies for her to spoil. Though he missed his family as much as the next guy—yes, even Grandma Ginny—Owen wasn’t going to lounge here on the bus and sulk all the way from Wherever-the-hell-they-were, Idaho to Wherever-the-hell-they-were-going, Montana. He was going to make the best of their situation and not let his bummed out band mates ruin his perpetual good time.

Owen’s prime
target was Kelly. Not because the rhythm guitarist was the most depressed—that honor went to their vocalist, Shade—but because Owen needed a partner in Christmas cheer and Kelly always had his back. He didn’t even have to ask Kelly for his assistance. They’d formed a pact of mutual mischief long ago.

Owen dug the
snot-green, artificial Christmas tree out of the sack and set it on the end table between the pair of recliners where the band’s drummer, Gabe, sat reading of all things and Shade sat glowering at nothing.

Straightening the branches of the tree into something slightly more pine
shaped, Owen hummed under his breath and then broke out into song. “
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree, how plastic are thy branches
.”

Shade lifted his head and one dark eyebrow rose above the frame of his aviator sunglasses. “Do you have to be obnoxious right now?”

“Why,” Owen said, “is it interrupting your sulking?”

“As a matter of fact, it is.” Shade reached for one branch of the hideously fake tree and bent it into a wider angle.

“And why are you sulking? It’s Christmas Eve. Are you afraid you’ll get nothing but lumps of coal in your stocking?” Owen dove into the sack of decorations and pulled out several strands of lights. His family was of the opinion that it was not possible to have too many lights on a holiday tree. When fully lit, the Mitchell Family Christmas Tree could probably be seen from Mars.

“Julie only has one third Christmas,” Shade said. Arranging another branch, and then dropping his hand when Gabe turned his attention from his book to watch him try to perfect the
unperfectable.

“But she doesn’t have to,” Owen said. “You can give her another Christmas when we get home next week. She’d love that.
I’ll even wear my Santa hat and shimmy down the chimney to put a smile on her face.”

Shade crossed his arms over his chest, his scowl deepening. “It’s not the same.”

“At least it isn’t my fault he’s sulking this time,” Adam said. The lead guitarist had his acoustic guitar out and was quietly strumming some riff he was working on for the next Sole Regret album.

“I’m
not sulking,” Shade said.

“
Looks like sulking to me,” Kelly said. He rose from the sofa to stand beside Owen. He inserted a long, tattooed arm into the sack and dug out a red rope garland. He lifted his eyebrows at Owen, before flicking his eyes at Shade pointedly.

Owen tried not to grin and give their silently exchanged plan away, but it wasn’t easy.
He nodded ever-so-slightly.

“You’re the o
ne who signed us up to play a benefit concert on Christmas Eve in the first place,” Adam said to Shade. “You don’t even know that kid.”

Owen winced. Did the two of them really need
to pick a fight tonight? Surely they could find it in themselves to put aside their differences on Christmas Eve.

“I didn’t have to fucking
know
the kid, Adam. She has leukemia. Her family has no insurance, no jobs, no money to pay for her chemotherapy. A few hours out of our busy schedules gives her a chance to see her sixth birthday. Do you always have to be such a selfish prick?”

“I had absolutely no problem with doing the benefit concert. It’s not like I have better plans for Christmas
anyway and believe it or fucking not, I do care. But you sitting there looking like your dog just died after you made the decision to do the concert in the first place is pissing me off. I’m not gonna lie,” Adam said.

“There’s a first time for everything,” Shad grumbled.

“All I want for Christmas is a pair of ball gags to shut you both up,” Gabe said and lifted his book until all that was visible of his head was his foot-high red and black mohawk. “I’m trying to concentrate over here.”

“
Ball gags?” Kelly nodded. “I can probably fulfill that wish.” He started to wrap the rope garland in long loops from hand to elbow. Owen knew Kelly could produce two ball gags in a matter of minutes. He also knew exactly where Kelly kept his secret stash of kinky implements if he ever felt the need to borrow something. Recently Kelly had taken up a new hobby—tying knots. It was a perfectly innocent hobby for most people, but not so much for Kelly.

Carefully untangling a strand of lights, Owen pretended to be intensely interested in their drummer, Gabe, to keep attention off Kelly, who was fashioning a loose noose out of one end of the garland
. The dragon tattoos on the shaven parts of Gabe’s scalp stood in complete contradiction to the colossal, decidedly boring, book in his hands. “What are you reading about?” Owen asked, as if he didn’t already know he didn’t give a shit.

Gabe pushed his reading glasses up his nose and grinned deviously.
“Friction.”

“And how to reduce it with proper lubrication?”
Owen asked. Gabe was the only person he knew who tried to apply the laws of physics to sex.

“You don’t want to reduce the friction too much,” Gabe said. “You want it slick and wet, but not too juicy.”

“I disagree,” Shade said with a grin. “The juicier, the better.” At least his sulking had diminished.

“
Yeah,” Kelly agreed. “I like it dripping wet so I can lick it clean.”

“
The conversation on this bus always turns to pussy,” Adam said.

“There’s nothing better to talk about,
is there?” Owen asked.

“No,” his band mates said in unison. They all laughed at the one thing they
always
agreed on.

“
And there’s definitely nothing better to think about,” Gabe said, “so you all need to shut up. I’m
thinking
.”

“Who needs
this worse, Owen?” Kelly said. “Shade or Gabe?” He was now prepared to act on his plan.

“Personally, I think they both need it,” Owen said.

“Need what?” Shade asked.

“Looks like Shade volunteered to be first.”

“First at what?”

Kelly moved fast—
like ninja
—and Owen stepped back out of his way, awaiting his opening to assist him.

Shade was bigger than Kelly, but Kelly had the element of surprise on his side. Before Shade could even react to Kelly jumping on him, Kelly had the garland
of red rope around Shade’s forearms, binding them together from wrists to elbows. Shade might have been able to break free of the garland given time, but the instant Kelly stepped away, Owen went after him with strands of lights, wrapping several strands around Shade’s upper arms and chest, crisscrossed in a web of unbreakable art. Kelly had taught Owen all he knew about shibari and Owen had taught Kelly all he knew about calf-roping. Their combination of skill, teamwork and speed ensured that Shade wasn’t going anywhere until they decided to free his arms.

As was common for Shade, once he go
t over his recent, perpetual dour mood—his divorce was to blame—he was happy to join in on their fun and play along. He laughed as a second strand of lights was used to secure him to the chair around the waist. He was in danger of hyperventilating with laughter when Kelly found some sparkly tinsel in the sack and wrapped it around his neck several times.

“Now you have no choice bu
t to be in the Christmas spirit,” Owen said. “No more bah humbug out of you.”

Chuckling at the spectacle the
coolest member of the band made trussed up like an abomination of a Christmas tree, Adam added to the festivities by strumming Christmas carols on his guitar. “
On the first day of Christmas my buddies gave to me, decorations on a Shade tree
.”

“Shut up,” Shade yelled, but he was
snickering too intermittently for anyone to take him seriously.

Kelly found a gaudy tree topper in the sack. Before he could add it to their
tree
, Gabe snatched the tinsel-trimmed star out of Kelly’s hand and set it on the pinnacle of their Shade tree. Gabe wrapped the light cord under Shade’s chin and then around the star to hold it somewhat upright atop Shade’s head. Apparently, Gabe had given up on reading his
The Physics of Fucking and Friction
book or whatever it was called. None of them could resist messing with Shade. He worked so hard at being cool onstage and in public. Sometimes they had to remind him that he could still act like a kid and have some stupid fun when there wasn’t anyone important watching.

Gabe found a package of blue glass bulbs in Owen’s sack of Christmas cheer and dangled them f
rom the strand of lights near Shade’s crotch.

“You did not just give me blue balls,
Force,” Shade said with the deep, commanding voice that made their road crew scramble for their lives.

Owen laughed.

Adam added to his song, “
On the second day of Christmas my buddies gave to me, two blue balls and decorations on a Shade tree.
”

“I will give you blue balls when I punch you in them,” Shade said.

“You shouldn’t threaten people when you can’t fight back,” Adam said.

“Plug him in,” Owen said
, hoping Shade and Adam didn’t actually get into more than a pissing contest.

Kelly located
the power cord and plugged it into the outlet behind his chair. Gabe plugged the star into the end of one of the light strands.

When the multicolored lights began to flash
and cast brilliant specks of lights all over their tattooed, buffed-out, sunglasses-wearing lead singer, they all burst out laughing. Owen grabbed his cellphone out of his pocket. “Okay, this is going on Facebook.”

“Don’t you dare,” Shade said, his smile fading and mouth opening in
exasperation.

Oh, Owen dared. He even gave
the candid picture a caption—
All Dressed for Christmas with No Place to Go
.

“Hey, guys?” their driver, Tex, called from the front of the bus. “We’re going to have to pull over soon. The snow is coming down so heavily I can’t see the road.
We better park until it lets up or a snowplow blows through.”

Snow!
Oh yes. A perfect addition to Shade’s festive attire.

“Sweet,” Owen said, grinning at Kelly who quickly caught on to his newest nefarious plan.