Red Queen by Honey Brown Read Free Book Online

play I should be able to, and if Denny wanted to sing, well for God’s sake, let her sing. Let her belt it out.
    The volume crept up with the tempo. I watched her and played just for her, and ached for her to really sing. You could hear the loosening of her vocal chords, the smooth quality working into every note. She had the sort of voice to shimmer under your skin, awe you.
    I flipped through my mental playlist for songs that would suit her voice and songs that she might know. If she was unsure of the lyrics she improvised.
    And now she looked at me, smiling if we nailed it, her voice natural and strong; she lightly rocked her upper body and I tapped my foot as we formed a connection and began to pre-empt one another. I had the far-off thought that we were loud, that my fingers moved too easily and the music was too sheer in me and that Denny’s bare feet were on the boards and the blanket was forgotten, that she may have moved closer to me, so that we faced each other and held the music between us as we mixed it before letting it go. I thought we might have touched knees, and that she might have brushed my thigh. I could taste what we had and wanted it deeper, knew her voice still had range and strove for it – not ready to stop until I’d pushed her and made her strain. She saw this in me and grinned, teasing me with the ease with which she could hit the notes. There was more than a sniff of playful challenge and the tension was so close to sexual I couldn’t hold her gaze.
    Something heralded the end, I don’t know what.
    She collapsed back and I rested on the guitar; we grinned like fools, high. She licked her teeth.
    ‘You think we left our run a bit late for a record deal?’ she asked.
    ‘Probably wouldn’t sound so good behind the gas masks, anyway.’
    ‘Oh, I don’t know – worked all right for Michael Jackson.’
    A shadow at the corner of the cabin moved. My insides shrunk.
    Denny saw my face and turned to look over her shoulder. Rohan didn’t step from the dark, but stayed a broad-shouldered shape leant against the stonework.
    ‘Am I the only one taking the situation seriously?’ he asked.
    Denny’s chair scraped on the boards as she manoeuvred it back into place.
    ‘Have you any idea how far that’d carry? Why don’t you just plug in the electric, fire up the amps, and have a real go? I’m sure they could hear you in town if you made the effort. Not even mentioning how many could be moving in while you two play Sonny and Cher.’
    ‘Yeah, righto —’
    ‘No. Don’t even talk, Shannon, I don’t wanna hear it. I knew you played instead of watching this place, and I let it go. And now we’ve got a freeloading lodger, good for bugger all except, it turns out, singing . It’s a bloody joke, and at a time when absolutely nothing is funny.’
    He shifted from the wall and Denny pressed back in her chair.
    ‘I’m not gunna say it, Pup, because you know – you know what I’ll do if it happens again.’
    He turned and was gone.
    We listened to his heavy steps as he walked the front veranda and went inside. Denny breathed out.
    ‘I better go to bed,’ she said.
    I could just make out her screwed-up face, the regret in her eyes. She met my gaze. We smiled tentatively.
    ‘Goodnight, Sonny,’ she whispered.
    On the way past she gathered up the blanket from around her and draped it over my shoulders. The backs of her fingers brushed below my ear, her other hand cupped my shoulder. This alone was enough to freeze me, but when she dipped a hand under the long hair at the back of my neck and flipped it out from under the blanket, I shivered with the shock.
    It wasn’t until she was inside that I realised it was her only blanket and that at some stage I had to go in and put it over her.

2
    ‘ HE ’ S ALREADY LEFT .’
    ‘But I wasn’t up,’ I said.
    Denny pulled a face. ‘I think he trusts me.’
    I frowned sleepily at this.
    It shouldn’t have seemed sudden – we’d been slotting