âmes pétillantes ~ classic rock imagines

• Roger Taylor •

There was a ring on his finger this time. His wedding finger. You were playing with it, basking in the sticky tepidity of his hand resting against your ribs and the weight of him lying behind you. It was warm, almost too warm, so the covers had long been discarded, but it was too dark for you to see if it was a wedding ring. Though it had to be. What else could it be?

It hadn't been there two months ago. You were sure of it.

Maybe it was your imagination, but the bed seemed to start smelling of strange perfume as soon as your fingers touched the white-hot band circling his finger. But, then again, maybe yours was the strange perfume.

He was shuffling restlessly behind you, his grip tightening as he brought you both closer together, forcing your fingers to slip from the ring that seemed to fit so comfortably, so right, against his bony knuckle.

The soft ends of his shaggy hair were tickling at the sensitive skin of your neck as his nose bumped across the back of your head on accident, lips fumbling for your ear in his woozy state to mumble something that you couldn't hear properly.

You could feel it against your belly. It was the coolest thing in the room but it felt as though it was burning through your skin. Branding you.

He mumbled again, his lips having found your ear now, and though his rough voice was speckled with sleepiness and seduction, you could hear him clearly.

"Are you staying?"

It was a question he asked every time to give you the choice, even though he knew his grasp was comfortable, welcoming and endlessly unrelenting. Even though he knew the answer. Even that night, when a million beautiful faces were hanging off his arm in flashes in your mind, every single one of them tied to him by a thin band of dazzling gold, he knew the answer.

"Yes."

He always picked the most beautiful hotel suites. Walls of deep reds and glimmering golds, glass chandeliers and soft accent lights, beds that seemed to stretch on for miles draped in silky smooth sheets, jacuzzi bath tubs with a rainbow of cosmetics, carpets like clouds, and the most breath-taking views of some of the best cities the Earth has to offer. That particular night was no disappointment.

He had landed in New York only 20 minutes before your phone had begun to ring, and less than half an hour after that the pair of you were falling over the sofas and into the floor length windows in a desperate attempt to make it to bed.

From where you were lying, you could see the Big Apple from its best vantage point - too far up to make out the people. An array of multi coloured lights glimmered like a million gleaming fireflies, reflecting off the towering, sleek skyscrapers and off the window of his room in a dizzying way. The city didn't need people for its heart to beat - it could live and thrive so beautifully all on its own.

Even so, you couldn't help but think about them. Down there were people, regular, everyday people, sleeping, partying, making love with regular, everyday people, yet there you lay with a shining rock star so far away you couldn't even catch the gleam from the sequins on their party clothes.

There you lay with a shining rock star you had never been able to call your own, and now probably never would.

For a year and a half, he'd been finding new ways to excite you. Never, until that moment, had you felt so detached from everyone, everything, the entire world.
He could sense your distress. He always could. His hand brushed up and down your stomach in a ticklish way, the metal leaving imaginary welts against the guilt-burned skin there. You didn't know what you were going to say, but nothing would stop him from asking.