The Rock Star Lost His Voice, and Now He Lip-Syncs to Mine novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Three Frames

Vaughn blames Yuna for the sync slip and she forces a live camera of Fraser's mouth into the Well. That night in his hotel suite he goes down on her at the desk and she leaves a lipstick print over his heart, until a text says she is off the bus.

Vaughn made the clip play on a laptop in the Detroit arena office, with the sound turned up.

Fraser's mouth hit "salt" three frames after my voice did.

He ran it four times, with Bev and me standing in front of his desk.

"Somebody has a phone and a slow-motion button," Vaughn said, "and I have a pipe that drags."

"I don't drag," I said.

"Your breath is late. It's on the clip."

"I sing to a click and a lyric prompter, Vaughn. I can't see his mouth from the Well."

"You can't see it because it isn't your job to see it."

"It's my job to match it."

"It's your job to be seamless."

I could feel my pulse in the Sharpie on my palm.

"Then give me a camera on his face," I said. "One monitor. I'll lock to his mouth and it's seamless."

"Cameras make records. Records make lawsuits. No."

Bev cleared her throat.

"Already built," she said.

Vaughn turned his head very slowly.

"I'm sorry?"

"There's a camera on the mic stand at the lip of the stage, with a feed to the Well."

"I did it at four this morning."

"Without my authorization."

"It's my board," Bev said, in the voice she uses on stage managers. "Come to soundcheck. If it doesn't work, fire me."

At soundcheck Fraser stood at his mic in a black T-shirt and mouthed the first verse of "Salt Road" into a dead stand.

I sat in the Well with a small, bright picture of his lips six inches from my face, and I sang to them.

They hit every word at the exact moment my voice came out.

Bev watched the waveform and the screen, and she smiled for the first time in the nine months I'd known her.

Vaughn stood behind her and said nothing for a full verse.

"Fine," he said, biting the word off.

That night I sat under the stage and watched Fraser's mouth, and for the first time in nine months we were one thing.

I could feel the crowd feel it.

Dougie got me out of the arena at midnight on a room-service cart.

I lay under a tablecloth with a silver dome on my chest while he rolled me through the service corridor and sang Whitney Houston.

"Lift your knees," he hissed at the elevator. "I'm going to say you're a roast chicken."

"I'm going to kill you."

"Floor twenty-two, madam. Mind the gravy."

He parked the cart in front of a door at the end of the hall, knocked twice and vanished.

The door opened.

Fraser had showered and his beard was damp.

He wore jeans and no shirt, and there was a small black-and-white swallow tattooed over each hip.

"Roast chicken," I said.

He looked at me, and the corner of his mouth went up.

The suite had a king bed, a long desk and a wall of glass, and Detroit lay below it in a spill of orange lights.

I walked to the window and stood with my back to the glass.

"Come here," I said.

He crossed the carpet slowly, and I took him by the belt loops and pulled him in.

"I said not tonight," I said. "It's tomorrow. You're billed."

"Aye." His whisper cracked on it. "Name it."

I put my mouth over his heart, where the ink was thickest.

I wore red lipstick, always.

I kissed him until it left a perfect print on his skin, a red mouth over a black ship.

He looked down at it as if I had signed him.

"That one's mine," I said.

His breath shook.

"Aye," he said. "It is."

I pushed him back an inch and unbuttoned my jeans.

"Kneel."

He went down on the carpet without a word.

I stepped out of my jeans and my underwear, and he put his hands on my hips.

"Tell me where," he whispered.

"Everywhere."

"Yuna."

"Start at the top."

I hooked one leg over his shoulder and braced my back against the cold glass.

He kissed the inside of my thigh and moved up it slowly, with his beard dragging over the skin.

Then he put his mouth on me.

I made a sound I hadn't made in the Well in fourteen months.

His tongue was patient and hot.

He licked me from my entrance up to my clit in one flat stroke that nearly dropped me.

"There," I said. "Again."

He did it again, and again, and then he found a rhythm and stayed in it, slow circles, like someone learning a song.

I put my hand on the back of his head.

His shaved scalp was warm under my fingers, and I held him where I wanted him.

"Harder. Use your tongue. Oh, fuck, like that."

He groaned into me, and the sound ran through my clit and up my spine.

Both his hands tightened on my hips, and his fingers shook.

I looked down.

Fraser MacFarlane could fill any arena on earth.

He was on his knees on a hotel carpet with his eyes closed and his hands trembling on my skin.

"Look at me," I said.

He opened his eyes, green and wet and wide.

"You don't have a microphone," I said. "You don't have a band. You've got me, and nobody is recording."

"I know." The whisper broke. "That's the bloody point."

He slid two fingers into me and sucked my clit, and I came apart against the window.

My leg buckled and he caught me.

I came a second time on his tongue before the first had finished, with my head against the glass and Detroit going blurry below.

I slid down the wall until I sat on the carpet in his lap, my forehead against his collarbone.

His hands were still shaking.

"Hey," I said, and covered them with mine.

"Nobody's wanted me before who wasn't wanting the voice." His rasp was almost nothing. "I've been a mouth in a spotlight for twelve years."

I knew what it was to be wanted for what came out of your throat, and I held his hands harder.

"I don't want the voice," I said. "I've got it already."

He laughed, soundless, into my hair.

I felt how hard he was against my hip and reached down.

He caught my wrist and kissed my palm over the faded STAY.

"Not yet," he whispered. "Tomorrow. You're billed."

On the desk his phone lit up and buzzed against the wood.

I read the screen over his shoulder.

It said Vaughn.

It said, "She's off the bus in Columbus."

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