He pushed me back up to my feet and spun me around to face him. His hands grazed my ass as he read my shirt silently.
No pants are the best pants.
Lola had a thing for buying graphic tees, and I liked to wear them to bed.
“Fuck yeah, they are.” His grin was achingly gorgeous. I melted down onto his lap, straddling his legs. “You know what the best kind of shirts are?”
I smiled brightly. “What?” I replied, already knowing the answer.
He slowly pushed the cotton up my sides, brushing past my breasts as he went, and then over my head. “No shirts,” he whispered against my neck.
I ground against the growing bulge in his jeans. The sensation of being completely naked while he was still fully clothed was a new one. I looked down to see my creamy skin up against his denim jeans and black t-shirt.
I continued to gyrate against him, causing the roughness of his pants to rub against me in the most beautiful place. "I'm kind of getting a stripper vibe right now," I whispered into his ear.
“Fuck, I’m glad you were the one to say it.” I moaned when he cupped my breasts roughly. “I was visualizing you as my personal stripper, giving me the best damn lap dance a guy could receive. You don’t know what you’re doing to me right now.”
“Oh, I think I do…” I circled my hips.
“As much as I love this, Pipes… if you keep rubbing on my jeans, you’ll be sore tomorrow. And not the good kind of sore.” He placed his hands underneath my armpits and lifted me from his lap. I winced and tried to hide my yelp.
My underarms were stinging from being dragged from the car, but I didn't want to think about that right now. I certainly didn't want to call attention to it. However, I should have known nothing would get past Rhett.
“Ever?” he asked. I stepped back from him, and he glanced at my body. My stomach dropped when his face fell. “Shit, baby.”
I had lost count how many times I had been scooped off the ground today, but here I was again perched in his strong arms.
“I can walk…”
“Bruises,” he mumbled. I looked at him with confusion. “You have bruises. Those fuckers bruised you.”
I let him carry me all the way to my bed, but when he placed me down and proceeded to cover me with a blanket, I bolted upright.
“Don’t you even think of treating me like glass, Rhett Grayson!”
“I know you’re not glass, Ever James,” he bit back. His hands began pulling at his hair and he started to pace. “You’re a goddamn diamond. You’re precious and rare, and everyone wants a piece of you. And some days—days like today—I can’t stand that they think they can just take what they want from you.” I rose up on my knees and inched my way toward where he now stood at the end of the bed. “They take, and they take, and they take! And what do you get out of it? Bruises, a bleeding foot and probably a sore scalp.” He continued his tirade as I began running my hands up behind his neck. “Yeah, you have more money than you could possibly ever spend. You live in this great apartment that is as secure as the freaking president’s panic room. What else do you get that makes this all worth it?” He finally let out a rush of air as if he had been holding it the whole time.
“I get music,” I responded. “And now I get you.”
“Is it enough?” He molded his body up against mine. We were chest-to-chest, and I could feel his rapid heartbeat thundering against my own.
“I’m not a typical girl, Rhett,” I started.
His sly smile that I loved made an appearance as his hands moved to my waist. “I’m fully aware of that.”
“I don’t like the usual lovey-dovey romantic stuff. I don’t want someone who can give me expensive jewels. I have all that. I don’t want someone who can take me on a fancy date. I just want someone who will fall asleep with me every night. Who will challenge me. Who will call me out on my celebrity bullshit. Who can keep my heart safe.
“You take care of my soul, Rhett. You made me feel alive again, and I had no idea that I was even missing that feeling. And as cheesy as it sounds, you take my breath away every single day.” His fingers threaded through my still damp hair and he gripped the back of my head. “So I’ll ask you the same question,” I quietly said. “Is this enough for you? Am I enough for you to have to deal with all the crap that comes along with me?”
He stared into my eyes so long that if someone were to quiz me on the various shades of blue in his eyes, I would ace it.
Finally, he spoke. “I wasn’t even looking for someone when you came along. It was me and my guitar. Nothing could come between us. I was focused. I didn’t want anything else. But then you stepped onto that stage, that night at the bar when I had no idea who you were. You stood there with this incredible energy that vibrated through you, and before you even said a word, you had us all captivated. And now… this is the only time in my life when I’ve wanted my hands on anything other than my guitar. I never took risks before you, Pipes. Even though the last thing you wanted in your life was me, you still managed to light this fire underneath me to strive for more. You made me take chances. None of this would have happed without you.”
He climbed up on the bed, and I pulled him down on top of me. My fingers pushed his soft cotton shirt up over his head so I could run my hands down his smooth chest.
“I don’t want to be the one to take your breath away.” His words were vibrations against my skin. “I want to be the one that reminds you to keep breathing. What you do for a living has forced you to be surrounded by people who want to take every last piece of you. But I’ll be here making sure they don’t take all of you. I’ll keep you safe. If you ever get scared, all you have to do is look at me, and I’ll wrap you up and hold you tight. I love you, Ever. I don’t care if that word terrifies you, because I’m not going anywhere.”
My hands were clawing at Rhett’s legs to get the jeans away from his body. I pushed his shoulders and then climbed on top of him. He cupped my breasts and squeezed just enough to make me feel it between my legs.
This man. He wasn’t perfect. Neither was I. But he admitted his mistakes and still held me tight when I made them in return. I tried to think back to when he became the center of all my thoughts, and it had to have been when I first heard his music in the subway. I hadn’t even looked into those beautiful eyes of his, and yet I was still enamored by him. He was all I wanted. Flaws and all.
Rhett pushed inside of me, and I wasn’t terrified at all to say it. He filled me up so much that the words couldn’t be contained.
“I love you too, Rhett,” I cried against his lips.
~*~*~*~*~
We hunkered down in my apartment for weeks, existing only on food, water, and each other. During that extraordinary time, we finished our first album, the one Rhett, Nixon, and Jared all convinced me to name Ever Lonely. It had an underlying theme of finding yourself, filled with honest truth from the previous few months and a few snippets from our pasts.
It was painful.
It was beautiful.
It was everything I ever wanted in a record.
I had been lonely. Not in the sense that I lacked company or friends, because I was always surrounded by people. I actually had a few great ones in my life that I had come to appreciate more each day.
I had been lonely in the sense that I had no idea what I was doing with my life. They told me to sing, I sang. They told me what words to belt out, and I never questioned them. They told me to date this person, and I readily accommodated them. They told me to go left, and that’s the way I went. They told me to jump, and I obliged.
It wasn't until Rhett that I discovered my own voice. This industry was hard and anyone in it needed a thick skin, but I didn't have to allow it to strip me bare. I had made it here for a reason. It was time they understood what made me Ever James.
I no longer wanted to be afraid of the fire. I wanted to become the fire.
— TWENTY-FOUR —
Six months later…
EVER JAMES BAND Dressing Room.
It had been a long time since the whole band had been required to get ready in one dressing room. With Nixon being my cousin and all, we tried to ensure that anything involving the removal of clothing was done in separate rooms.
Thankfully, the television studio had at least provided a five-paneled screen to divide up the room. I’d claimed the little area behind it as mine.
My face was currently smashed into a donut-shaped headrest while my body lay flat on a massage table. Sam’s warm hands worked the trigger points on my sore shoulder.
A few weeks ago, Lola and I had the brilliant idea to take an aerial yoga class on one of our tour stops. Everything went off without a hitch during the class with trained professionals. It wasn’t until I tried to be some freaky sex goddess and put on a little private show for Rhett that I slipped from the silk straps and dislocated my shoulder. Imagine the mayhem–and subsequent headlines—when Rhett Grayson ran into a Phoenix emergency room with Ever James wrapped in his signature leather jacket and a blanket in an attempt to cover her lingerie.
The pictures were still all over the gossip rags.
Nevertheless, even with a sling on my arm, I still performed the next day alongside my favorite guys.
Two weeks later, my shoulder was still bothering me. Cue, Sam being hired to help with massage therapy while on the road. I ditched the sling a while ago, but an ache still irritated me onstage.
We just wrapped up our seventeenth show of the Ever Lonely stadium tour in Las Vegas. We all stayed in Sin City to film an episode of a hit television show where celebrities participated in a lip sync battle. Our episode pitted me against Rhett, Jared and Nixon. I fought to get one of the guys on my team, but the producers thought it would be television gold to have my entire band against me.
We had one show left on our tour, and it would, of course, be in our beloved hometown. There was nowhere better to end our first tour with our newest band member than New York City. Due to scheduling issues, the last show wouldn’t be for a few more weeks. From Vegas, the guys would all go home. Rhett needed to be with his dad, who wasn’t doing so well in his final stages of Alzheimer’s. Nixon and Jared just wanted to be back in their own place. Lola, Rose and I were off to Los Angeles, where I would be playing myself in a small role in a new movie.
The boys had all gone to raid the craft services table while I relaxed in the darkened room. Well… relaxed as much as I possibly could with fingers digging into the sore tissue of my shoulder. It was the best kind of pain, but I white-knuckled the table every time Sam was around.
After daily massages for two weeks straight, I knew Sam’s routine by heart. I knew he would come in strong, and then close to the end of the session he would switch to a light, relaxing touch. The last area was always my infraspinatus muscle, the most tender area of my shoulder. My knowledge of my own anatomy had improved with all of the doctors and X-rays.
I braced myself for his oiled-up fingers to apply the worst kind of pressure when something different happened. The soft touch of familiar fingers grazed across my skin. By the time they traced up my spine and over my shoulders, I knew those weren’t the fingers of a highly trained massage therapist. No, these were the calloused fingers of someone who spent their days and nights stroking the strings of a guitar. They weren’t knowledgeable in the art of massage, but they were knowledgeable in me.
The soft hiss and then click of the door proved my speculation. Sam had left the room, and I was now at the mercy of the only person I could truly be vulnerable with.
Rhett’s hands trailed down to the base of my spine and then moved outward to run up my ribs, just barely grazing the sides of my breasts. I tried to hide the arousal it sparked, but my ass rose infinitesimally. I didn’t want him to know just yet that I knew it was him. Toying with Rhett was my favorite pastime.
He pressed into my sore shoulder, but just like all the times before when he had rubbed my shoulder, he was too gentle. It wasn’t anything like what Sam put me through. Rhett hated seeing me in any kind of pain, even if it would help me in the long run.
As his fingers descended my body once again, I decided to be a bit more brazen. He must have been having similar thoughts because his hands confidently moved down my back, under the sheet draped over me and up over my bare cheeks—a place Sam had never even considered going.
I felt Rhett’s hesitation. In my head, I pictured him glaring daggers at me for not responding the way I should if Sam had his hands firmly grasping my naked ass. I started to chuckle but was able to mask it with a long moan.
A noise that sounded a lot like a snarl left his lips, and in a flash, I was no longer staring at the floor. Rhett’s face moved over mine, and I smirked.
Not the reaction he had been looking for…
“You knew.” The relief and agitation in his voice was loud and clear.
“The second your fingers touched me.” I grabbed his hand and kissed his palm.
“That was mean.” His lips moved against my throat.
“You trying to trick me doesn’t make you so innocent either.” My back bowed when he took my nipple into his warm mouth.
Out in the hall, we heard shouting as people rushed by our door. We weren’t the only talent in the building tonight. It reminded me that the rest of our band would be returning any minute.
“What about…” I gasped when he went for the other nipple.
“Nix and Jared? They went to get drinks. Liquor store is a ten-minute walk each way. We’re good.”
The guys would more than likely be spotted on their walk down the Vegas strip, but unlike me, they could navigate mobs of fans. They loved the attention and the swarming women. Nixon would pull out his phone and Instagram himself with hands all over him. Jared would be grabbing a few phone numbers for tonight. Since Alex, who was now Rhett’s full-time assistant, wasn’t interrupting us, he was probably with them as well.
I pushed up from the massage table to stand and stretch out my body. Rhett’s eyes were on me as I bent and twisted. I reached a hand out for him, and he walked me backward to the edge of the room. He moved down my body until he was kneeling in front of me. Like always, he looked up at me with every emotion on full display in his ocean eyes.
That look reminded me of the genuine awe Rhett displayed the first time he heard one of our songs on the radio. He cried, and then I bawled. Every first experience of his was like the first time for me all over again. And this time I didn’t take anything for granted.
That look also reminded me of walking out onstage with Rhett and the guys at the first stop on our tour. We were at AT&T Stadium in Texas, and it was one of our biggest crowds. Talk about throwing Rhett straight into the deep end.
Once he got past a round of pre-show barfing from his stage fright and then the complete shock of standing in front of that many people… he fucking beamed. And when he heard sixty thousand people sing our lyrics for the first time, he turned his back and wiped his eyes. Although he would never admit that he cried onstage.
The looks of utter joy and wonder on his face were my favorite, but I wondered when it would all fade. When would the audience become just another audience? When would a new song become just another title on another record? When would he gaze up at me and just see the girl he sings with every day? When would I no longer see that look of complete adoration and the soft touch of his worshipping lips that I felt on my thighs?
“You’re not supposed to look so sad when I’m about to put my tongue between your legs.”
“I don’t want you to get used to me. I don’t want you to lose the excitement you get for all of this…” I gestured around the room. “I’m afraid what it’ll be like when all the newness rubs off of running onto a stage. Or when we win awards, because we will win them.” I would bet my life savings on a trophy in our hands come awards season. There were already whispers of a few Grammy nominations. “
You look at me with all of your feelings clear as day on your face, and I dread the day you learn to conceal them.”
Rhett gazed up at me for another beat or two and then stood. He grabbed me around the waist and pulled me until he was sitting on the table and I stood between his legs.
“I sure as hell hope I get used to running onto a stage in front of thousands of screaming fans. I would love to not have to hug the porcelain god five minutes before I’m belting out ‘No Empathy.’” He smirked, knowing full well that’s not what I was looking for.
The door to our dressing room opened and the lights flicked on, temporarily blinding us. The sound of bottles clinking and Nixon finishing some dirty joke about being hungry and horny filled the air. Jared and Alex’s laughter soon followed behind.
“Well… that sucks,” Rhett grumbled as he pulled the sheet from the table up over my shoulders and walked over to my bag.
“Hey, love birds, quit necking for a second and come join us!” Nix called from the other side of the room divider.
Rhett rooted around in my bag and walked back over to me. I tossed the sheet on the floor as he pulled my sports bra down over my head, followed by a t-shirt. Then I shimmied my panties up my legs and quickly put on a pair of black leggings. We were all in our comfy clothes, knowing we’d have to change outfits when it was our turn to film.
Rhett combed his fingers through my hair, trying to tame my curls. “How about we just say how we feel about each other through our songs tonight?”
Part of the fun of the show was that the people who were competing against each other didn’t know what song their opponents would be performing. I had tried to sneak in on the guys’ rehearsal, but Alex and Gage caught me every time and sent me on my way.
“What if I’m not singing that type of song? What if I’m singing ‘Anaconda’ by Nicki Minaj or ‘Bodak Yellow’ by Cardi B?” My smile was a mile wide.
He narrowed his eyes. “You would…” I laughed because he knew how much I loved that Cardi B song. I had annoyed the guys on long bus rides through Nowhere, America rapping her lyrics at the top of my lungs. Even if they liked the song when it first came out, I had definitely made it overstay its welcome. “I swear to God, if Sienna found you some outfit that has your ass hanging out like in that ‘Anaconda’ video, I won’t even have to be the one dragging you off the stage. I’ll just let your cousin and Beau lose their minds on you.”
Ever Lonely (Ever James Band Book 1) Page 32