And the Midnight Trio Read online

  And the Midnight Trio

  Story 3 of Strummed

  ♦♦♦♦

  by Harper Eliot

  For music lovers, and for musical lovers

  ♦♦♦♦

  Sweetmeats

  In some ways, there is no greater testament to the joy of the human condition than music and sex. Music can be as soothing as a gentle kiss, or as powerful as an orgasm. The most powerful music can make your heart beat faster and make the hairs on the back of your neck rise in excitement and expectation. Music can make you move, moan, dance and shout. Music is to the soul as orgasm is to the body.

  Music and sex are so visceral, so sensual that it seemed obvious to combine them. This book is that combination.

  If, as you read, you find your fingers beginning to drift, your body starting to move, and a rhythm rising within you, do not be alarmed. Let the story take its toll until you too sing out loud!

  -Kojo Black

  Also from Sweetmeats Press

  Paperbacks & eBooks

  The Candy Box by Kojo Black

  Sun Strokes by Kojo Black

  Immoral Views by Various Authors

  Named and Shamed by Janine Ashbless

  Naked Delirium by Various Authors

  Making Him Wait by Kay Jaybee

  Seven Deadly Sins by Various Authors

  Strummed by Various Authors

  Made for Hire by Various Authors

  In the Forests of the Night by Vanessa de Sade

  ♦♦♦♦

  A Sweetmeats Book

  First published by Sweetmeats Press 2013

  Copyright © Sweetmeats Press 2013

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing from Sweetmeats Press. Nor may it be circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ISBN 978-1-909181-24-3

  Typeset by Sweetmeats Press

  Sweetmeats Press, 27 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3XX, England, U. K.

  www.sweetmeatspress.com

  And the Midnight Trio

  ♦♦♦♦

  by Harper Eliot

  The radio buzzed and crackled into the low-lit room. It struggled there, ten feet underground, pressed against the cold brick wall, searching for radio waves with its coat hanger aerial. Sometimes it gave up altogether, hissing and sputtering out, begging to be switched off at the outlet. One of these days it wouldn’t turn on again. But Violet hadn’t bought the radio; it wasn’t hers. It was an unrequested luxury, and the idea that it was her job to replace it, or even that it required replacing, hadn’t crossed her mind. It had been there before her.

  Frowning, she leaned a little closer and listened, trying to hear the muffled song through the crowding static. She felt the disappointment bubble in her seconds before she identified the song as another manufactured pop hit sung by an auto-tuned peroxide blonde, and she switched the radio off.

  Stretching her arms above her head she felt her shoulder crack and the muscles in her back tense below her ribs. She wondered when the crack had started. She’d noticed it one afternoon last week, brushing her teeth in the dingy shower at home. Or perhaps it was two weeks now. The days had begun to bleed into one another, running on into hours and seconds. Sometimes she looked at the clock above the cooker in her kitchen and couldn’t decipher the hour by the thin arms. Insomnia had something to do with that. But Sunday, Sunday stood as a marker. Solid, unmoving, restful Sunday. The club was closed, and she always knew it was Sunday because Sam would be in her bed, snoring softly against her cheek.

  Maybe that’s tomorrow, she thought as she lined her eyes in thick black. She stood, bent over her dressing table, her face close to the mirror, trying to judge colour and detail in the ever-dimming light. One of these days she would remember to bring the white Christmas lights from home and string them up around the table. For now she let her memory-imprinted hands blindly paint her face, and hoped for the best.

  Time had become elusive when Violet started working at the club; that much she knew. It was being nocturnal, and it was the suggestive nature of nightlife. She had also noted that as time became less present, she had to work harder to keep her cares in line with the cares of her employer. David was nice enough; thoughtful, reasonable, funny, kind. But he wasn’t going to let her get away with being less than she had been when she auditioned. Every night, when she arrived at the club, she would work hard to remember her fresh-faced enthusiasm, and attempt to replicate it in the mirror. Some nights she slipped; but with concentration she could still paint ambition on her lips.

  Violet used to pretend she had been hired for her voice. It was steady and strong, beginning to balance between liquor and smoke, finding the rich notes and the husky breath. It was pleasing enough, and she knew how to put it to use, but more recently she didn’t mind telling herself the truth. She had been hired because she knew how to flirt. Not just with coy smiles and witty comebacks, but with the turn of her wrist and the angle of her hip. She knew how to sell sex without stripping or even licking her lips. She could press her ear to her shoulder and send shivers through her audience. One night she had hovered her spiked heel over the wire of her microphone and watched the club’s patrons squirm and lean closer. Another night she had crouched at the side of the stage eating an apple, watching the rest of the band tap and strum laconically through a beautiful instrumental piece. The folded shape of her legs beneath her, steady and compact, had been enough to play into the audience’s hands. She had been offered a lot of cocktails after the set that night.

  “I was going to give you a warning for that,” David told her later as they shared a bottle of wine on the roof. “That was piss-poor showmanship. But the bar took about £200 more than usual. Keep it up.”

  Maybe there was even an art to seducing money out of rich businessmen, although she doubted the painters down the road at St. Martin’s would agree. Nevertheless, David was pleased and Violet received a fair share of the takings considering she only worked two hours a day. Sam said she needed another job. She could survive on the money she earned at the club, but he said she deserved more than that. She shouldn’t work the bare minimum and spend her remaining twenty-two hours at home waiting to go to work.

  “Don’t you want to do something during the day?” He asked, lacing his fingers through her hair.

  At the time she had frowned, hungover. It had been a long time since she had woken up feeling capable of doing anything during the day. The hours between sleep and work were for recovery. On Sunday night, neither drunk nor working, she had thought about it again. It couldn’t hurt to take better care of herself. Fewer cigarettes. Less alcohol. Her sister and her brother-in-law were always detoxing in January. Violet had scoffed at the thought, but couldn’t help admire the glowing, even tone of her sister’s skin when they gathered for their father’s mid-March birthday.

  But even with her sister standing as evidence for potential improvement, and after Violet’s resolve at the end of the weekend to take better care of herself, by Monday she was rationalising it away; what had she ever wanted with sobriety? She liked alcohol because it was engaging. It filled hours she had never been able to fill before.

  Still, the thought was there. In an attempt to get her to take an interest in his subject — she forgot now what it was — a teacher at school had told her that interest was the first symptom of love.


  Looking at her reflection she murmured to herself, “One day I’ll take an interest in something and it’ll be worth being sober for.”

  For now she was content flirting with the concept of ‘taking an interest’. Tonight she was a star — young, with a lust for flesh to tease, and substances that you could only buy under the counter. Neither of these were a problem. She never had anything more than hangovers to worry about. Besides, she could still stand on the stage, professional and talented, and look down her nose at the wasters on the street with red track marks on their forearms. She was nothing like them.

  She was distracted from her reflection by a knock. Sam stepped into the room, his sandy hair tousled, only half dry after his late and rushed shower. Despite his haphazard approach to maintaining a professional appearance, Sam always looked well turned-out. His white shirt was crisp, and under the stage lights his hair would fall softly over his brow before they even started playing.

  Walking over to her as she pressed her rouged lips together, he slipped a calloused, possessive hand around her waist, stroking the pale, naked flesh of her concave belly.

  “What time is it?” She asked, setting the gnarled lipstick down on the surface of her dressing table.

  “We have time.” Sam pulled her slender, boyish frame back against him and grazed her neck with his teeth. “Take your knickers off,” he ordered as he snapped the clasp of her bra open and watched the lacy garment slip down her arms.

  Once she had wriggled out of her plain white panties, he showed her his fingers, nails bitten down to the quick, before he put them inside her. It had been like this from the beginning. There had never been any question as to who called the shots. Sam took her as he wanted, and she let him because when they woke up in the morning he would grin and tickle her and show an interest in her wellbeing.

  Unlike the patrons of the club, Sam seemed disinterested in the seductive flex of her shoulders. He had kissed her, that first time, standing on Waterloo Bridge after she had spat into the water below. With his teeth in her lip he had hissed at her not to “fucking spit in the Thames”. She’d laughed and he’d planted a death grip on her neck and walked her, like that, all the way back to his flat.

  As he drew the slickness from her willing cunt with his masterful fingers, Violet felt herself, ten years younger, fawning over musicians with her adolescent obsessiveness. Like all the girls her age she had kissed posters of boy-bands with her shiny, pink, glossed lips, leaving them sticky and adored. Of course, it was different with Sam; he was neither fawned over nor pretty. He didn’t possess the requisite chiseled jawline for teenage fandom, and his body was more tense than toned. But his smile was genuine, unashamedly showing the overlap in his front teeth, and when he pressed his deft fingertips between her thighs, she felt the skill of a musician, in control, in charge. He worked her body, pressing dimples into her flesh, and leaving purple bruises when she let him.

  Their eyes met as he cupped her breast in his other hand, still grazing his teeth into the hollow above her collarbone. His reflection was of a man, unkind, uncaring. Violet gasped to think how others would see him; so cruel. They wouldn’t know the purring smiles she awoke to, nor how her body sang as he bit into her flesh.

  He had drawn blood once.

  Feeling her cunt give way under his touch, flooding his fingers, he slipped one hand to her neck, unbuttoning his trousers with the other, and pushed her down, over the table. There was something skilled but mechanical about how he knew and used her body. Still she moaned in ecstasy as he drew scratch lines down her back, and slipped himself inside her.

  As he thrust into her, deep and self-assured, he ran his fingers between the purple butterflies inked just under her skin. Three points of colour on her pale flesh. She flexed her muscles just so and he could swear he saw their wings flutter, pulsing against her heartbeat.

  The butterflies were the work of Sam’s friend, India. For the first one, Violet had lain on Sam’s bed, on her stomach as India straddled her waist and seared her skin with the needle. At eye level with Sam’s belt, Violet had watched him grow hard while she winced and fought to remain still. He had placed his firm hands on her shoulders and Violet had wondered if it was to keep her still, or to satisfy his own lust for control. In either case, she buzzed between him and India, and when she was done, and India had left, she let him touch the marks, making her moan until he was hard enough to fuck her.

  Now, with her breasts pressed into the wooden dressing table, Sam drove himself into her again and again. She could hear where they met, their bodies forced together with each penetration, and although aroused, she knew he was taking her for his pleasure, and that he would be done long before she found any satisfaction.

  Gasping for breath, her ribs forced hard into the wood, Violet strained to look up, into the mirror, to see the mask across her lover’s face. He grunted, his gaze hungrily fixed on the sight of his cock pushing her open. Turning her head a little further, she felt her neck ache and stretch.

  “I love you,” She gasped.

  Reaching out, he slapped her cheek hard and growled as he began to cum, filling her cunt, spurt after spurt. She felt it, thick and sticky, coating her insides. She could feel her cheek burning, but she grinned anyway, blissful at the way he fucked her.

  Stumbling back, breathing hard, he withdrew and moved to lean on the arm of the sofa. Violet stood up, feeling his cum leak out of her. She reached down to pick up her knickers, but he cut his hand sharply through the air to stop her.

  Catching his breath he spoke. “No underwear.”

  ♦♦♦♦

  Peering out into the audience from between the worn red curtains Violet decided it must be either a Friday or a Saturday. Whilst the club was popular, it was never quite this full during the week. She hoped it was Saturday, as she could feel the weight of tiredness in her feet, and their frenzied fucking downstairs had made her hungry for Sam. She longed to take him home with her and keep him tucked under the duvet on her unmade bed.

  Standing in the wings, Sam kept one firm hand on Violet’s hip as they watched David tread the stage, welcoming everyone to the club that night. Violet tried to listen for some mention of the day of the week, but if David said it, she missed it. Maybe it was when Sam leaned in to whisper in her ear, giving her unusual comments that had become regular between them.

  He cleared his throat. “And don’t look for me after the set. The guys and I are going over to Gordon’s to play there. I’ll be back about midnight.”

  Violet nodded that she understood and wondered, again, what time it was.

  “Anyway, enough about me!” David grinned, ever friendly with his audience as they chuckled in response to a joke Violet hadn’t heard. Although not a compère by trade, David was confident and just funny enough to fill in time between acts — or Violet assumed he was. Truth be told she had neither the attention span nor the inclination to listen to him any more. She frowned in the wings, running lyrics through her head like facts memorised for an exam and trying to ignore how Sam’s hand grew tighter on her hip. Eventually she was awoken from her reverie as David gave them their final introduction. “Please welcome our house band, Violet and the Midnight Trio.”

  A warm smile from Sam as he walked out into the lights, and Violet followed after the other musicians.

  The audience, slightly drunk and very lethargic, gave a light but appreciative round of applause as the band took their places and the first song started. Violet sank into the music, feeling the tinkle of the piano, a tap on the high hat, and Sam’s low thrumming bass carry her forward until it was time for her to open her mouth and sing.

  Standing there, singing songs she knew as well as she knew her own face in the mirror, she was brought to a different kind of consciousness. Onstage she always noticed how her thoughts became larger as her body was busy. Hitting that first high note, she raised her hand to her face, wrist bent to accent the sharp line of her jaw, and came, more fully, to terms with
the reasons behind her employment. After all, no matter how much she loved singing, she was never as aware of the notes that parted her lips as she was of the eyes that searched her angular, boyish body for feminine reflexes.

  Refused the luxury of underwear, Violet had slipped into a blue silk dress that slinked around her body, creating the illusion of curves as the light played over its sheen. It worked well enough that no one noticed the slightly frayed hem or the small tear under her arm. Stage lights were, for the most part, unforgiving, but the distance between her and the audience hid such slight sins.

  Alive with the music, Violet was awake. She never realised the half-conscious state she lived her life in until she was performing; and as soon as the performance was over, she would forget. But for now she was wide-eyed and aware of every flicker of movement in the room. In particular, the way the gentleman to the left of the stage shifted in his seat, dipping his hand briefly below the table from time to time. Just some minor discomfort, almost certainly, but Violet felt the thrill of being wanted bristle across her skin.

  The first night she had sung at the club, the wanton eyes of her audience had come as a surprise. All the nerves she had held in the wings about remembering the notes and annunciating the words dissipated as she became minutely aware of her body. Every inch of skin pulsed with uncertainty as she tried to seduce her audience and trick them into hearing something better than she could produce. It was a while before she found her rhythm, but that first week she was carried on the advantage of being a novelty. It didn’t take long for her to identify herself in their eyes. For the suits and gentlemen, this club was one step below burlesque and striptease, and for a month or so she was the new girl at the harem, wanted and paid for handsomely.

  Violet had mourned the novelty as it wore off, but found comfort in cementing herself as a coy seductress. She might have lost her initial appeal, which held so much excitement, but at least she was in control and as far as she could tell, or as deep as she imagined, still wanted by the majority.

  Turning to show the room her naked back and entrance them with the purple butterflies, she glanced at Sam. Head down, fingers curled around his instrument, he played with intense concentration, barely present on the stage at all. All movement was between him and the double-bass, his first love. Violet didn’t mind playing second to the grand, dark instrument, and had sometimes felt honoured as his deft fingers thrummed across her body, deepening the heaving of her chest as he pressed between her labia.