Page 96 of Conquest

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.

CHAPTER THIRTY-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.