EDGE OF DESIRE


Stop staring. Stop staring at him ye fool. Stop…

Her brain was being logical. But her body was not cooperating with the common sense of it all. Darcy was locked in place. The mass of laughing, drunken people between her and him and him and her, were a blur. It was as though none of it existed. They were air. He was the only tangible thing in the entire pub, maybe the entire world.

He was tragically beautiful, this creature of a man that she couldn't comprehend. And it felt so good to not understand. It felt good to not be able to read him front to back, page to page, like so many others. It felt good to be lost in those soulful eyes without a direct route back. But it also seemed dangerous, particularly dangerous considering her circumstances.

Darcy didn't even know herself at times. She frightened herself too often with her own decisions and directions. She was a free spirit and that had cost her so very much in life, in love especially. And for these reasons, the black-eyed wonder of a man could not be so readily trusted, by her or because of her. He looked like a heart-breaker. He smiled like an assassin in the night, out for only one thing at all. But God, he was like a black hole, gravity from his eyes and lips and hands and whole body, dragging her into him by chokehold force. She was afraid of how aroused he made her. She was afraid of not looking away. But she was even more afraid of what might happen if she did.

Darcy, you idiot! Stop. Look away. Pay attention to the bass player. Oh God, what was 'is name? Ned? Neil? Nick?

"Noah!"

Noah. That's it. Pay attention to Noah. Smile at Noah….

She forced a smile, blinked away the dry spell of her eyes and turned them back to the guy from the band, the one that had been flirting with her for most of the evening. He was shouting something to his friend on the stage, something about needing one more minute. And then Darcy felt his hand touch hers, lift hers, and he kissed her knuckles.

"Have t' go play this first set. See you after, doll?"

She nodded absently, feeling those same black eyes watching her, moving towards her through that invisible crowd, orbiting her.

"O' course," she managed with a tight grin.

"Great!"

The young, roguish looking man named Noah, stumbled back. He gulped the last of his beer, slammed the glass down on a nearby wooden bar top, and lifted his hand with a waving smile. Darcy did the same.

But when he shouted, "Come on, Johnny! We're ready," she realized that his wave was really more of a beckoning gesture, and his eyes weren't on her, but on someone directly behind her. Darcy dropped her hand in embarrassment and moved her eyes to her friends flirting at a table close by.

There was a rich aroma of something that brought her focus back, suddenly. The person Noah had been shouting at brushed past her shoulder. It was a man, a tall man, and he smelled dark. He smelled like something musky and sinister and too intense for words. He smelled like liquor and rhythm and sex. He smelled like everything she'd been looking for and too much of what she shouldn't have.

Darcy turned her eyes up slowly, taking the long way around to see that the stool the black-eyed man had occupied was empty. He was the one brushing past her. He was the one moving into her line of vision. Her heart sank a little, but in no bad way. She was just surprised, and also not surprised. She'd expected this to happen at some point. She'd expected him to make his move. She'd expected to feel this dizzy and starry-eyed, like a child who had spun around in circles too long. His voice, a dark whisper, seemed to both worsen and steady the spinning.

"Whatever you do, please, promise me you won't sneak away before the set ends, love."

Her eyes were open wide as his words spilled straight through her. She'd only just promised Noah that she wouldn't leave. And now here he was, those sinful black orbs like lasers shooting into her heart, begging her to stay for his own selfish purposes, obviously.

Darcy straightened as much as she thought she could without touching him. She tossed her wild, shoulder-length hair, and stared at this stranger as she replied.

"I'm not going anywhere."

He just nodded with a simple, "Good", and turned for the stage.

As he left her, Darcy swore she might fall flat on her face without him there to balance the universe spinning around her. She half expected for that same gravity that had pulled her in, to knock her on her ass without his beautiful eyes directing the equilibrium of her mind. When he was there, Darcy was faint. But when he was gone, she realized it was even worse. Without him there, whoever he was, she felt like a star fading into the night sky, all alone.

Her mind was a warped with these thoughts as she stumbled to the table where her friends were, and crawled onto one of the empty stools. She heard Maggie whisper in her ear, "Oh dear God. Give me a shot o' him on the rocks."

Darcy laughed nervously, her eyes moving back upward from her feet. She saw the object of her friend's interest on the stage. Their interest was the same. Noah had called him Johnny. She smiled.

"John Rochester," another friend of hers, Gillian, broke in. "He's something idn't he?"

"Something," Darcy murmured.

There was a beer sliding across the table in her direction. She absently reached for it, clutching the wet glass as the beer sloshed over the rim. Her focus was elsewhere. It was on John's hand, cradling the neck of his guitar so sensually, as though it were the arm or leg of a beautiful woman. It was on the way he threw the strap over his neck and found his footing in front of the microphone. It was on his long fingers, dabbling at the strings of the instrument, making her legs tremble. There was music filling the place. But all she could think about was what sort of music he made between the sheets and what those fingers could do under the veil of a private evening.

Darcy's hand shook and her beer crashed to the wood floor beneath her. She might have been embarrassed by this, if it had been at all possible for anyone to notice. The place was far too loud, though, and far too condensed and far too out of control for it to even matter. All that did matter was the sound of his voice, when it finally broke through the torrential cloud of smoke and lights and noise.

Stranded in this spooky town,

Stoplights are swaying and phone lines are down…

Snow is cracking cold

She took my heart

I think she took my soul…

With the moon I run

Far from the carnage of the fiery sun—

She felt as though she was being beckoned by the chords of the song, by the electrifying strums of his instrument and the rasp of his voice as it bellowed over the speakers. Darcy slid down from the stool, her heels crushing the broken glass. She disappeared into the waves of human sweat and clouds of tobacco. She followed the regret in his tone. She followed the sadness and the sound of sought after redemption.

Driven by the strangle of vain

Showing no mercy, I do it again…

Open up your eyes

You keep on crying,

Baby, I'll bleed you dry…

Skies are beneath me

I see a storm bubbling up from the sea…

And it's coming closer…

It's coming closer…

Stumbling into a clearing, the sea of bodies parted and made way for only him and her, all over again. Maybe she was imagining this. Maybe his voice and this song of his and that thrilling beat of his guitar were all in her head. Maybe she was dreaming this. Maybe she would wake up any minute in a tangle of wine and sheets and paintbrushes and self-indulgence. Maybe this was her overactive mind, fantastical as it too often was, playing the worst of all tricks on her.

But then again, if it was all a dream, why couldn't she enjoy it? Why couldn't she just plant her heels right here in this gritty wooden floor, run her hands down her body and sway to the rhythm all around her? Who was to say she couldn't raise her hands up high over her head and rock to the roll of every drum and guitar, every growl falling from that man's dangerous lips?

Darcy didn't even bother searching for the answers. She just did what she loved to do. She moved and spun and weaved and danced her little heart out in that grinding mess of bodily excitement at Fiddler's Green. She turned her back on the band, arms twisting in the haze of smoke and dark lights. Her hips swung and her pink shoes stomped. Her short black hair brushed the blades of her shoulders as she threw her head back, eyes closed, inhaling the wonder of this well orchestrated dream.

You sh-sh-shook my bones,

Leaving me stranded, all in love on my own…

What do you think of me?

Where am I now?

Baby, where do I sleep?

John was not singing for Lara, the ginger-haired Goddess of his earlier attentions. He was not singing for the unruly crowds or screaming, shaking women with hands stretched for only him. He was singing for the little pixie in the middle of the floor, the blue silk of her dress bunched at her hips, her thighs. He sang just to keep her dancing that way, reeling for him.

Her back was to the stage, but the low cut of her dress revealed to him what he had not seen yet. There were stars, three blue ones that curled around her shoulder blade. With every sway of her arms and back, the bone would move and the stars would move with it. God! That was a glorious sight to behold. He smiled into the microphone, his eyes intent on Darcy's body.

As if she knew how steady his gaze was, as if she knew that the instrumental chorus in the song was because he was waiting for her to acknowledge him, Darcy swung around slowly. She stared up at him. She stared right through him and left herself open for him to do the same. She shivered, breathless and loving it. Then, with all of the other patrons screaming around her, she opened her mouth, smiled wickedly, closed her eyes and threw her hands into the air. She leaped around in front of the stage and released a pure, high-pitched cry of starlit electricity. She sent it straight to his ears, his mouth and mind and quivering manhood.

John's eyes went wide and he bit harshly into his lip, fangs drawn in ways he never allowed on stage or in the company of humans. She'd done something to him. She'd broken through him with one perfect shrill above the rest. She'd sent his body rocketing with a pleasure that sex had never even induced. And it was altogether too different for any mix of words or rhymes or lyrics or pretty verses to describe.

Something told him that what he was hearing, a screeching lullaby really, was not what the crowd heard. They moved on as though nothing had changed. They were hardly affected. But he was. He was torn to pieces, shattered, still as stone and speechless. The band kept playing but his lyrics did not travel with them. All he could think about was doing anything possible, anything at all, to stir that sound from Darcy again and again and again.

Feels so good when I'm home

Two-hundred years of chasing

Taking its toll…

And it's coming closer

Yeah, it's coming closer!

Oh, you're coming closer…

Closer…

His voice trailed on into other songs, some his own works and some, covers of giants like John Lennon and the Rolling Stones and the Clash. His band had never been good at making or sticking to set lists. Too often the crowd was like this one, dedicated to choosing every song played. What the audience shouted, they played. What was inspired by the moment, they played. What got a room full of people dancing and beers sold and tips made, they played.

Whatever the hell kept Darcy's hips moving that way, John took note of. He studied her for hours, and kept on studying her even after the set.

The crowd went wild as each of his band mates fell into the pit. They were praised and kissed and drowned in free booze. They smoked and partied and plucked at pretty girls. But John was only interested in the one that was getting away, the one grabbing her coat and wrapping a rainbow scarf around her neck. His mind raced and he leaped off the stage after her.

Darcy had fulfilled her promise—to him and to Noah—by staying for the entire set. Even though he was sure he saw something else in her eyes as she watched him perform, it didn't seem to matter. She had only sworn to give Noah her attention afterwards, and that fire, John realized, had been quickly doused. His friend, for all of his good intentions, was not capable of giving his concentration to one woman for the night. He was sure that she had seen what John was seeing now, Noah's tongue halfway down Lara's throat.

On the one hand, it must have been a major blow to Darcy, as it would be to any woman. He was sure of that. But on the other, it cleared the way for him to make his own impressions on her now. And he refused to let her get away before he could.

He saw two pink heels weaving through the melted bodies. He saw a swish of that sapphire silk against the backs of her soft knees. He saw three blue stars swinging from a canopy of black hair, and he forced his way through the mob, his hand stretching as far as it possibly could. John grabbed her wrist and pulled.

Darcy shrieked and stumbled back on her heels. She hit something hard, but not a wall. It was cool, but not a table. It was gray cotton and muscle. Her free hand had landed flat on the chest of a man, the one who held her wrist and eyes captive, when she looked up.

She understood then how the fish in Galway Bay must feel, flopping around on the decks of fisherman's boats, their beady eyes reflecting their maker mere seconds before their life came to an end. She understood better than she ever had how boundless the universe could be, and how small she was inside of it. She understood how a little girl would feel, staring into the hungered eyes of a beast, waiting for it to swallow her whole. She understood, she felt, and still she wanted to be right there. She didn't really want to go anywhere.

"Just where do you think you're going?"

His grin was wicked. It was razor sharp and claiming.

"Home," she replied blankly.

John shook his head and she stiffened in his grasp. Her hand moved off his chest and she settled on her heels again.

"Yes. I am."

"No, you're not."

Was he serious? Was he actually going to try to keep her there against her will? Was he going to talk to her like that in the middle of a crowded room, simply because he thought he had some undeniable right to her?

Darcy gritted her teeth and pulled her wrist away from him. "You're not going t' tell me what to do. I'm going 'ome."

Her heels shifted back, like he knew they would. Her body spun in a cloud of blue silk and tobacco smoke, like he knew it would. She took one step for the back door of the pub, just like he knew she would.

But her one step became a fumble, a twist and a slam. John's hand snaked around her waist, and with a shuffle of his boot he forced her against the empty brick doorway. The crowds and noise and spinning lights formed a shell around the tangle of their bodies in the corner. He cradled the back of her head, his fingers twisted into those blackberry locks and his mouth collided hard with hers.

Darcy's body trembled at the power, the sincerity in the cold fire of his kiss. Her hands gripped his arms, his shoulders, and the nape of his neck. She ravaged for balance. She tried not to completely drown in the spice and musk of his lips. Though she tried in vain to push him off, she soon gave in so willingly to this man, who didn't even know her name.

His strong arm around her waist, lifted her even higher against the wall. Her heels left the ground and her thighs hugged each of his. John knew he could take her right there. He could lift the silk of her dress up around her hips, brush aside whatever damp lace or satin he might find, and bury his cock deep inside of her while his fangs sank into her vein.

He growled, breaking the kiss at the thought. Darcy breathed heavily against his lips, eyes half closed.

There were people moving around them, their eyes shifting into the darkness at the way he had Darcy pinned to that wall, his dangerous hands holding her as if she were his prey. John worried for the first time in a long time. He carefully sat her back down on the heels of her shoes, stroking her hair and face. He always knew the right thing to say to a woman. He never struggled for words and he never stared into a pair of beautiful eyes and got lost. But here he was, for the second time in one day, floundering for air that he didn't even need. He found himself saying the only thing that his lips would allow with this girl.

"My name's John."

And surprising even him, she giggled breathlessly.

"Darcy."

He smiled and kissed her mouth sweetly, his hands sliding down her cheeks and brushing over her every curve. He held her hips and touched his forehead to hers.

"I have an apartment a few blocks from here."

"Okay," she replied immediately.

"Would you like to—?"

"Yes."

John hadn't even needed to finish. They just understood one another. She just happened to want exactly what he wanted, all into the night.