Mate-Prize Read online

  Mate-Prize

  by

  Renee Bond

  Copyright © 2019 by Renee Bond Inc.

  Copyright © 2019 by Renee Bond Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the author.

  Published by Renee Bond Inc.

  Bond, Renee

  Mate-Prize

  Cover design by Lisa Richards

  Images by Anatol Smith

  This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults. Any resemblance to any persons, real or fictional, is coincidental and unintended.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  I hope you enjoyed Mate Prize!

  Chapter 1

  Rachel

  The crowd was wild.

  My blurring vision was filled with lights - string lights, neon liquor signs, and the glowing sticks my thousand-strong crowd had in their clothes, around their necks and through their hair. The scents of sweat and body heat and booze and tobacco and pot smoke filled my nostrils. The little venue in which my band and I were playing couldn’t have been more packed - we were probably violating at least a half dozen fire codes.

  But nobody cared. They all just screamed for more. For my music.

  For me.

  I launched into the last guitar solo of the song, squeezing my eyes shut as I fell dramatically to my knees. I fucking loved that part! My fingers felt as if they didn’t even need me, they were moving so fast and so sure, plucking every string perfectly, building the crescendo of alt-indie rock to an overpowering climax.

  Then, in a blink, it was over. My guitar, and our bass guitar, keyboard, drums and backup guitar, all fall silent.

  The crowd roared, and I was nearly blown backwards off the stage.

  “YEAHHHHHHH!” I cried, jumping up and holding my guitar above my head triumphantly.

  They loved me. I could see it in their eyes. They were screaming for more.

  And I fucking loved it.

  But we’d been playing for two solid hours, including at least four encore songs. My throat was raw from singing and screaming. My fingers were white-hot, desperate for a break. I looked at Andy, my bass player. He drew a finger across his throat, indicating that he’s had enough too.

  I stepped close to the microphone in front of me. Time for the hard part.

  “Thank you guys so muuuuuuch!” I shouted, dragging it out, really working the crowd. Their applause nearly drowned out my words, even though I had a damn mic. “We’re tired, thirsty and horny, so we’re done for tonight. Now let's all get drunk and laid!”

  Another roar. Everyone loved that line.

  I stayed on stage for another few minutes. A few fans jumped on stage, and I posed for pictures with them. I even signed one guy’s shirt.

  Finally, I went backstage. As soon as the adrenaline started to wear off, I realized just how spent I was. I checked my phone. It was one in the morning. Shit. We’d been playing for even longer than I thought!

  “Sweet show Rachel!” said Steve O’Hare, owner of the Happy Hours bar and music hall in downtown Kansas City where we were playing that night. He was fat as hell, at least three hundred pounds, and had obviously been drinking. But he’d paid half up front for the gig, which makes him a great guy in my book.

  “Thanks!” I said. “I told you we would rip your roof off!”

  “I’ll never doubt you again!” he said. “Drinks are on me tonight, food too. You guys earned it!”

  That made me grin.

  “Free booze? You’re going to regret that!” I said.

  Steve just laughed.

  “You’re probably tired, so I’ll get out of your way,” he said. “But plan on coming back my way next time you guys are in town!” I gave him a friendly pat on the back as he walked off.

  The party in the dressing room was just getting started as I walked in. Everyone in my band was inhaling calories from a table loaded with fries, burgers, chicken fingers, nachos - all the standard bar food fare. There were six - no, eight - other women eating with them. Fans, no doubt. A year ago, it would have just been us. These days, any of us could invite two hot pieces backstage apiece. And we did.

  Speaking of pieces, I spotted three boys at the end of the food table, each a slightly different combination of hot and cute. One had blue hair. Another was wearing a cutoff jean vest laden with pins, buttons and patches, which showed off his muscular arms to amazing effect. I couldn’t decide which looked more delicious: the food, or them.

  And of course, they were all clustered tightly around one girl in particular. Ellie, my nerdy baby sister, was clearly delighting in the attention of the three hunks surrounding her. Hell, I could see her blushing from across the room.

  Time to make my move. She wouldn't last another ten minutes alone with those three.

  “Ellie!” I said as I shouldered my way confidently between two of the boys. “Didn’t I tell you that you’d have more fun watching me play than fucking studying?”

  “Hey Rachel!” said Ellie.

  Man, had she grown another two inches in the last year? She was a freshman at the University of Kansas. Studying mathematics, of all fucking things. I don’t know where she got that from. Certainly not our deadbeat dad, who’d left our family when we were little, and not from our mom, who worked her ass off to raise us but really wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. And holy fuck, she sure didn’t get it from me. I cut every single class I could. It’s a damn miracle I finished high school at all. Hell, maybe if they’d let me study what I wanted, I could have gotten decent grades. I certainly act like one sometimes, but I’m no idiot. But making a girl like me sit still all day, studying what they tell you, when they tell you, every fucking day?

  Not this lady.

  “You boys treating my kid sister like the gentlemen you’d better fucking be?” I asked, flashing a playful glare and a snarky smile around the group.

  “Of course,” said the cute one.

  “Wouldn’t dream of anything else,” said the handsome one.

  “She was telling us all about her advanced calculus class,” said the beefy one.

  “Was she now,” I said. I clucked my tongue at Ellie. “What did I tell you about being smart in my dressing room?” I asked.

  “That I should only do it to impress the boys,” Ellie said sheepishly, “not bore
them.”

  “Damn right,” I said. “Now who’s doing a shot with me and my sister?”

  Chapter 2

  Rachel

  I didn’t let my kid sister get too drunk. Though it was kind of funny to see her try to take a shot. She and hard liquor weren’t made for each other.

  After about an hour of mingling and flirting, I excused us to my trailer. Despite the image I’ve been building so deliberately these last couple of years, I really didn’t like to fuck around with random men. And I sure as Hell wasn’t about to let my little sister anywhere near that kind of situation. She’s a lot younger than the eighteen years old that she is.

  Two o’clock in the morning found me and Ellie sitting on top of my trailer, drinking one last nightcap from two longnecks we’d bought at a local craft brewing company, our feet dangling over the edge of the tailor's roof as we soaked in the lit-up night skyline of Kansas City. It was a beautiful autumn night, perfect temperature, light wind. KC is one of those city’s that’s big enough to have a hopping nightlife, but still small enough to have fresh air even on the city streets. Unlike a few of the other, larger city’s my band played.

  “I can’t believe how successful you guys have gotten,” she said.

  “It’s been a hell of a ride,” I replied.

  I’d started our band, Last Chance, in high school. Andy was the last original member - the others had dropped out, one by one, either to get real jobs before we were making any money, or to go to rehab once we’d started to get successful. That was life, though.

  One minute you’re right on track, chasing your dreams.

  The next minute, you find yourself somewhere you never in a million years expected to be.

  I don’t know where I’d be right now if I hadn’t started Last Chance. I’ve been a troublemaker all my life. I started smoking pot at fourteen. I crashed my neighbor’s car, which I’d “borrowed,” at fifteen. By seventeen, I’d considered vandalism a minor hobby. Shit, mom buying me that second-hand guitar later that same year probably saved my life. I finally got an outlet that wasn’t destructive. Finally found something that I thought was worth learning. Was finally able to do something that made people proud of me. Eventually, I started Last Chance, and from the first gig I knew what I was going to do with my life. With that guitar in my hand, I could write my own ticket. I could go wherever I wanted. Do whatever I wanted when I got there. My guitar made me free.

  And free is the only way this lady knows how to be.

  “I can’t believe you’re on the honor roll after just one semester,” I said.

  I loved my sister, and she loved me. But we couldn’t have been more different. After our dad left, and mom had to take that extra job to put food on the table, all we really had was each other. We drove each other crazy sometimes. But we always made up, and it made the good times that much better. We had the same friends growing up, even though I was two years older than her. We only started to drift apart after I finally got out of high school. Sometimes I think Ellie saw the road I was heading down and decided that she wasn’t going to waste her life, like it must have looked like I was doing.

  But it all worked out in the end. Me and Ellie texted and emailed each other constantly. She was the one normal thing in my crazy wild ride of a world. I don’t know what I would have done without her.

  “It’s easier than getting up on a stage in front of a thousand people!” she said. “I could never do that. I don’t know how you do it. But you looked incredible up there! Only….” Ellie got that quiet tone she gets when she wants to say something, but is too embarrassed to.

  “Spit it out, little sis,” I said. “No fear!”

  “Well… you might want to get, like, a sports bra or something. Your boobs really bounce around up there when you’re jumping around.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Oh, like I never noticed that?” I asked. Now it was Ellie’s turn to laugh. “All part of the image, baby,” I said. It was true. All musicians need an image. Mine was “hot girl all the guys want to fuck.” I wore tight, revealing tops to show off my ‘talents,’ tight pants to show off my skinny legs and full ass, and I dyed my hair jet black to complete the whole ‘bad girl’ look. I even had a string of colorful tattoos down one arm - a tropical flower, a roaring tiger, a fish swimming in a river, even a laughing white skull. It was the one part of the job I might change if I could. Flaunting what you got in front of a crowd gets you noticed by all the right people, but also by all of the wrong ones. But hey. If the worst thing I can say about my life is that I dress more down than I like to get attention, I got a great thing going on.

  “Never thought of it like that,” said Ellie. She still braided her long brown hair, and was wearing a simple KU tee-shirt and blue jeans. She was such a damn egg-head.

  “So where you guys off too next?” asked Ellie.

  “Got a few shows lined up in New Orleans next,” I said. “After that? Wherever the fuck we want. We got an actual name now. We can line up a gig in just about any city we want, with a week or two of notice. We never plan out more than a month in advance, and we’re even a little behind on that.”

  “Must be nice to be able to just roll wherever the wind takes you,” said Ellie. “Though I’m not sure I would do well with that little structure in my life.”

  “You haven’t changed a bit,” I said. “What are you going to do once you get out of college and don’t have somewhere to be every hour of the day?”

  “What everybody does when they graduate,” said Ellie. “Get a job!”

  I made a sound of playful disgust.

  “Next you’ll be telling me you’re getting married, pregnant and moving to the suburbs to be a good little housewife,” I said.

  “Well, if the right guy came along,” said Ellie, “and he made a lot of money….”

  “Wow,” I said. “Don’t ever let me hear you say that again. I mean, do what makes you happy. Just don’t say it! Ellie Faraway. Homemaker. I think I’m going to puke.”

  “We can’t all be rolling stones!” said Ellie. “Someone’s got to do all the normal things!”

  “You’re more than happy to them,” I said. “If I ever tell you I’m getting married and settling down, put a damn bullet in my head, would you?”

  “Never!” protested Ellie. “I actually think you would be a great mom,” she teased.

  “You take that back right this instant!” I all but shouted, scandalized.

  We laughed. It felt good.

  Before that night I hadn’t seen my sister in over a year. I left home on… less than amazing terms. I was only just starting to email with my mom again. Mom was a big believer in college. In getting that nine-to-five. In buckling down, scraping money together, getting a mortgage. It was how she raised us after my dad left, after all. So she never really was able to accept that I was more like him than her. I just… I don’t know. When someone tells me to do one thing, expects me to do something… I do the opposite. It wasn’t that I didn’t want my mom in my life. Far from it. I’d just needed to find my own path. And now that I had, she was finally starting to come around.

  “Well, it’s pretty late,” Ellie said, yawning. “I’m going to call a cab.”

  “Good idea,” I said, even though I didn’t need to get up tomorrow. We were rolling out early in the morning, but it wasn’t my turn to drive. “Next time we’re in town, I want you to bring at least ten of your friends to my show, you hear me? There are backstage passes in it for everybody.”

  “Only if you bring me a souvenir from every state you play in,” said Ellie.

  “It’s a deal.”

  We both just sat there for a minute. Both of us knowing it was time to part. Neither of us wanting to.

  “Hey,” said Ellie suddenly. “I just want you to know… I’m really proud of you. I have a pic of Last Chance on my desk in my dorm. All the other girls are so jealous of my bitchin’ rockstar sister!” She got quiet again, then: “I just wi
sh… that you were around more often, you know? I know you gotta make a name for yourself. But we’ve got to find a way to get together more than once a year, ok?”

  I’m not exactly the sentimental type. But I felt a damn tear well up behind my eye. That little nerd always could reach right into my chest, take my heart in her hands, and do whatever she wanted with it.

  “Yeah,” I said, getting quiet myself. It felt kinda weird to be this close to her again. But as I opened up, I realized just how much I’d missed connecting with my little sister. “I know what you mean. Seeing mom once a year might be ok. At least for a while. But… I miss you, out there. I’m really glad we kept in touch. In the beginning, when it was hard to get by on a few bucks a gig, knowing there was at least one person in the world who believed in me… it really kept me going.”

  “Aww,” said Ellie. “I love you, big sis.”

  “I love you too kid,” I said.

  We embraced. It felt… good. It felt, for just a moment, like I was actually part of a family again. Ellie even kissed me on the cheek.

  I realized then that I needed family in my life. I had been concentrating on my singing career exclusively, not really thinking about anything else. Hell, for the last few years, a family had just seemed like an obligation, something to tie me down.

  But now… I didn’t want Ellie to leave.

  Ellie’s cab came. She got in and drove off.

  I stayed up on the trailer, watching as the brake lights disappeared up the street. And, for the first time since leaving home… I actually felt a little bit lonely.

  I wondered what my life would look like with a man in it. Could that even work? Could I have a long-distance relationship with someone? I certainly couldn’t date anyone in the band!

  I sighed. Took another drink.

  “Is there a way for a girl like me to be part of a family?” I whispered aloud.

  In response, a little voice in the back of my mind whispered back: