TAINTED: THE COMPLETE DUET

by Jenner, Carmen

  For the most part, Levi and I were alone. We should be making the best of that time, but it just felt ... off. Instead, I pick up the remote and switch on Netflix. I’m behind on Game of Thrones, on account of me not having owned a TV—or a bed to sleep in—before we came on tour. I select the episode I want and we watch. Ten minutes later, Daenerys Targaryen is bathing onscreen with a heavily muscled actor in a bad wig.

  “Christ she’s hot,” Levi says.

  “I know, right? It’s sickening.”

  “Babe, you’re easily that gorgeous,” he says, tenderly kissing my shoulder.

  I can’t help it. I laugh. “Oh my god you’re such a liar. You’d say anything to get a woman to sleep with you, wouldn’t you?”

  “What the fuck does that mean?” he asks, and I know by his tone I’ve hurt him.

  I roll over in his arms and look at him. “Levi, everyone knows you’d sleep with anything that moves. I’m nothing special; I’m just a girl who got really lucky. Or really unlucky, when you consider all the shit that’s happened since I said yes to this job.”

  “You’re special to me.”

  “Why? Because I let you do anal?” I say, tracing my finger along his lips.

  He pulls away, his brow creased, and those pretty hazel eyes of his hard. “I’m serious.”

  I frown as I look up at him. “You really mean that.”

  “Yeah, I really fucking do. You think I tell everyone that shit? I know you think I’m a heartless douche, Ali, but I’m not. I’m just better at hiding my feelings than Coop is.”

  “I don’t think you’re a douche. A cockhead maybe, but not a douche,” I tease.

  “A cockhead, huh?” He grins, and rolls me over onto my back, leaning down to kiss me. “Well this cockhead’s cock wants inside you.”

  “Can we just ... not, right this second?”

  “Yeah.” He frowns and a muscle in his jaw tightens. He pushes up on his elbows and shifts, flopping back down on the bed beside me.

  “I feel like you and I never get to just ... be together, you know? Like we don’t do anything but fuck.”

  I expect him to pout over that, but he doesn’t. He pulls me into him and we tangle our legs together. We’re both fully dressed beneath the duvet, but it’s nice to be close like this without it being sexual. Don’t get me wrong—if there’s one guy you want things to turn sexual with, it’s Levi ... or Levi and Coop, considering they’re both fucking incredible lovers, but I get things from Coop that I don’t get from Levi.

  There’s always this disconnect between us. We come together and we feed off one another’s pleasure, but even when our bodies merge, I won’t give him all of me. I can’t. Because there’s a part of me that belongs to another man, and deep down I suspect that all of us know it.

  That doesn’t mean that I don’t care for him, though. I don’t know whether all the cock has made me extra especially stupid when it comes to these boys, but the idea of being without either one of them hits me like an anvil to the chest. There’s something innately vulnerable about Levi. He hides behind his rock-star swagger and that enormous cock, but there’s so much more to him than that. It’s not even buried very far beneath the surface, but I suspect that before me, nobody had even bothered to look.

  I see it now, though—how tender hearted he is, how carefully he holds precious things. I feel it in the way he’s holding me now. Our bodies are as tangled and as close to one another as we can get without him being inside me. Even through our jeans, the hard length of him is pressed against my inner thigh. Desire stirs within me, but I simply press a soft kiss to his lips and let out a contented sigh as I snuggle deeper.

  I WAKE WITH A START, and kick off the covers. My skin prickles with sweat. Levi’s body is still wrapped around mine, and I snuggle deeper. Then I jolt out of the sleep haze, my eyes widening at a very pissed-off Cooper at the end of the bed.

  “Oh my god, you scared the bajeebus out of me.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb the two of you,” he says that with so much restrained anger in his voice, I find myself flinching.

  “You’re not disturbing anyone.”

  “Yes, you are. Quit talking or fuck off,” Levi growls. Cooper makes a beeline for the door.

  “Where are you going?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” he says. He’s facing the door, and his shoulders slump as he throws his head back, staring at the ceiling.

  “Coop ... stay,” I say. He turns and faces me, and the look in his eyes is so desolate it takes everything I have not to go to him. “Please?”

  He sighs and shakes his head, and then he retraces his steps to the bed and toes off his boots and socks.

  “Move over, Quinn,” he says.

  A sleepy smile spreads across my face. Levi groans and shifts farther across the bed, but his arm is around my waist, and he pulls me back against him. Coop climbs onto the mattress. As he lies down and faces me, he grabs my hips and pulls me closer to him. Levi presses in against my back. His hand cups my breast from behind and squeezes, then he kisses my neck until I’m arching back into him. Cooper bows his head and reverently takes my nipple in his mouth, T-shirt and all, biting down hard and pulling a gasp from me.

  Levi’s hands tug at my hips, but Cooper grabs my thigh and hoists it over his, effectively pulling me closer to him.

  “Now, now, boys, there’s enough of me to go around.”

  Was there though? Or will their constant push and pull wear me too thin? At some point all three of us will have to face the reality of what we’re doing here.

  Coop makes a derisive sound in the back of his throat, pulling me from my thoughts. Levi bites down on my earlobe, snagging it between his teeth, then he trails kisses over my jaw. His hands tilt my chin towards him and he kisses me, slow and deep, until I feel as though I can’t breathe.

  When Levi releases my mouth, I turn back to Coop. He’s watching me with hard blue-grey eyes. I know he’s not happy. I felt it this morning when he kissed me goodbye, but I didn’t know what it meant until now. He’d been studying us since the second he walked through that door. It all becomes clear as day: he thought Levi and I would fuck without him, and the idea scares the shit out of him, if his expression is anything to go by. His eyes seem to bore into me. He looks so tormented, but I know Cooper—he’s stubborn to a fault, and I know this is one question he can’t bring himself to ask.

  Infinitesimally, I shake my head, and the tension just drains out of him, replaced instead by a fierce swell of possession. It’s so odd how you can barely know someone and yet know their thought process exactly, and feel all too keenly what him or her are feeling. There’s more than just connection and our bodies joining at play here. I don’t know what it is, but the three of us are supposed to be intrinsically intertwined. I feel that more deeply than I’ve felt anything else in my entire life. I can’t explain it, and it’s far too early to feel anything but lust and affection for either of them, but in many ways they both own pieces of my heart. It’s making them fit together that’s the challenge.

  “You’re thinking again.”

  I laugh softly. “Yes, I am.”

  “What about?” Levi says, his palm splayed across my stomach.

  I sigh and swallow down the lump in my throat. “I don’t—”

  “Talk to us, Ali,” Cooper demands. There’s so much there in that one look, so much lust and pain and challenge. It’s as if he wants my pain, because he hurts too, so why shouldn’t I? What he doesn’t know is that I already feel it, from head to toe, with every fibre that makes up my body. I feel everything he does and more, infinitely more because I don’t just feel for him, but for both of them, and for me.

  I’m the bridge that connects us all, and it scares the shit out of me that a strong wind could come and blow it all away—that’s how tenuously I’m holding onto both of them. That’s how fragile we are. At any given moment, a breath, a harsh word or a mere look could tear it all apart. Tear us apart, and I don
’t have a clue what comes after that storm, but I never want to be standing in the desolation left in its wake.

  I’m losing my mind. I’m sinking, drowning, and on fire all at once. I’m split down the middle, torn in half by two different men, two different bodies pushing and pulling me in all directions, breaking me down and then lifting me up again, shoving me into the fire and soothing my scorching flesh with their kisses that act as a balm.

  When it becomes apparent that I can’t say anything, that I can’t make sense or put into words exactly what I’m feeling, Coop seizes my face with his hands and kisses me tenderly, so softly it brings tears to my eyes. I turn and bring Levi’s lips down to mine, and those wretched tears track down my cheeks.

  “Hey, did we hurt you?” Cooper says, but I just shake my head.

  Did they hurt me?

  No, not physically. Not in any way that will show on the outside, but it hurts, so much, because I know this won’t end well. I know better than anyone that we’re walking on shaky ground, and that we’ll likely all get hurt in the fall, and that after the dust has settled maybe we’ll be okay, maybe we won’t. A part of me never wants to find out. The rest of me knows that I will be walking away with a broken heart. It’s foolish to believe anything less.

  “No,” I whisper when I have words again. “I think I did that all by myself.”

  “Red—” Levi begins, but I turn so I can see his face too and I silence him by pressing a finger to his lips.

  “Can we just sleep here tonight?”

  “Yeah,” Coop says, trailing his fingers along my hip.

  “Why are you crying, Red?”

  “Because I know eventually this has to end.” I stroke his cheek and then turn and do the same to Cooper. “And I’m not ready to face that yet.”

  “Why does it have to end?”

  “Come on, Levi. You know why.”

  “There are plenty of polyamorous relationships that work out,” he says. “Look at Hugh.”

  I give him a sad smile. “Last time I checked, polygamy wasn’t working out so well for all of those bunnies.”

  “Well yeah, because there’s a hundred of them,” he mumbles.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say, my throat constricting. “No matter what we do here, this ends badly for one or all of us.”

  “It doesn’t have to,” Levi says, resting up on his elbow in order to see my face. “Why can’t we just be without putting limits on it, especially a time limit?”

  “Because it does have a time limit.” I take a deep, shaking breath. “What, are we going to do this forever? Settle down in the suburbs with a dog and a white picket fence, the perfect little household of three?”

  “I don’t know. Why can’t we just be with one another and see where it all leads? We don’t need a label; we’ll make our own fucking labels.”

  “We’re already in too deep.” Coop whispers, pushing the hair back from my face. He kisses the tip of my nose, and when he pulls away, I think his gaze must be a mirror of my own. There’s a war raging inside him. Pain, lust, anger, sadness. All fighting to the surface. Demanding to be felt. I know because I feel it too. “You can’t save any of us right now.”

  He runs his fingertips over my face and down my neck, my arm, and across to my breast, circling my nipple. I shrink back because it tickles, and Coop gives me his trademark smirk. Levi gently grasps my shoulder and rolls me over so I’m lying on my back. They both run their hands over me in lazy arcs, sweeping fingertips over my breasts, belly and upper thigh. In all my time with Brad, he’d never comforted me like this. How is it that two men, whom I’ve known for all of a few weeks, have shown me more love, companionship and more affection than one man who I’d given my heart to for five years?

  We lie there, each of us silent, weighed down by our thoughts, buried beneath the weight of all the things we’re not supposed to feel. All the things we promised ourselves we wouldn’t feel.

  Despite the ache in my chest I smile as their stroking becomes lighter, until they’re no longer moving and have instead both settled into sleep with their hands on my body, each laying claim to it the way they have my heart.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  SHUT UP AND SING, LOSER

  COOP

  I sit at the window and stare out on the dark landscape around us as I quietly play a new riff over and over on my acoustic. My band mates are asleep, but Ali-Cat isn’t. She climbs out of her bunk and pads softly down the aisle in a Taint T-shirt and a pair of cotton panties. She closes the curtain, shutting us in our little kitchenette, and quietly makes us both a coffee, grabbing a bottle of whiskey and pouring a decent helping into each cup. She slides the coffee across the table to me as she slips into the booth. I smirk—because I know she loves that shit—and I continue to play, watching her as she brings her cup to her lips and swallows down a mouthful. Her throat bobs as she swallows, and I try not to imagine her swallowing back my come as I lead into the familiar licks of “All I Want is You”, her favourite.

  “Sing it to me.”

  I shake my head. “I’ll wake everyone up.”

  “If you don’t, I’ll scream and throw the kind of tantrum worthy of one of your spoilt fangirls.”

  “And here I thought you were one of my spoilt fangirls?”

  “I’m hardly spoiled,” she teases.

  “You don’t call multiple orgasms spoiled?”

  She grins. “Okay maybe, I am spoiled, but I’m definitely not a fangirl.”

  “Jeez, tough crowd.”

  She laughs. “Shut up and sing, loser.”

  I do. She closes her eyes as I quietly sing the lyrics to one of the saddest and most beautiful songs ever written.

  “Fuck, you’re beautiful,” I say, and her eyes snap open as she frowns.

  “I don’t remember those being the lyrics, Coop,” Ali complains. She grins though, and I know my words have affected her. I don’t know much about Ali’s past, but I know that even if that douchebag ex of hers told her every second of every day that she was beautiful, it wasn’t enough. I hate that his cheating so obviously made her doubt how fucking incredible she is. “Now you have to start all over again.”

  “How come you don’t like my songs the way you do other bands’?”

  “Um, I don’t know, Coop.” She rolls her eyes, “Maybe because all your songs are about your ex?”

  “You need me to write you a song, Ali?”

  “No. I don’t need anything but your mouth on mine.”

  “And my cock in your tight hot cunt,” I say.

  “And that,” she agrees. I set the guitar aside and pull her closer, so she’s leaning into my side.

  “I could easily lose my mind with you, Ali.”

  “I think I already have lost mine.” I know she’s referring to the shit that still hasn’t died down over our video. The record company has hired a team of lawyers, hell bent on having every last trace of it removed from the Internet, but they get one taken down and it pops up on another site. That Gainy fucker is suing Levi, so once we’re done with these next three shows we’re hopping a flight back to Nashville for a court hearing.

  “I think I lost mine the second I met you, Ali-Cat.”

  “Really? I kinda hated you the second I met you.” She pulls back so she can look at my face.

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Oh, yes I did. You were this close to getting junk punched, mister.”

  “Nice.” I sip my coffee, relishing the warmth and the smooth burn of whiskey as it slides down my throat.

  “Well, I couldn’t exactly punch your pretty face. Not the lead singer of Taint. Imagine the field day the press would have had with that.”

  I run my hand down her arm, over her hipbone and across her upper thigh, tracing my fingertips over her pubic bone, applying slightly more pressure as I stroke her clit through the soft cotton.

  “I remember these panties,” I say quietly, and lean over to get a better look at her arse. They’re the ones
that she’d worn that night we’d kidnapped her and taken her to the bar, the ones that Levi had written Rock Stars Only on as she was hoisted up on Zed’s shoulder and her arse was on display.

  I remember how much I’d wanted to fuck her then, how I’d stared at her and wanted inside, even in front of the other guys. I’d wanted to throw her down on the asphalt and show them who she belonged to, and let them know that I was the only rock star getting inside those panties. I hadn’t done anything about it then, but I sure as hell would now.

  “I couldn’t bring myself to throw them out.”

  “Do you know how hard I was that night?”

  “I’m guessing about as hard as you are now.” She leans in, softly kissing my lips. “You mean I could have been fucking your brains out since July?”

  “Ali-Cat, if it were up to me, I’d have fucked you senseless in front of everyone that first day at Harbour Records.”

  “I think I would have liked to have seen that. It would have made for some awesome angry sex.”

  “You want angry sex?” I say, looking down at her face. She tilts her head up and stares at the ceiling, as if she’s really contemplating it.

  “No. Not with you.”

  “Not with me? With who, then? Levi?”

  She nods, and chews on her bottom lip.

  “Why not with me?” I ask, trying to keep the anger from my voice and failing.

  “Because it’s more with you.”

  “More? What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know.” She shakes her head and tries to sit up, but I pull her back down on top of me, so she’s wedged between the table and my chest. Her heart beats rapidly against my chest, and her breath is hurried. My lips tip up in the corners. “Do not smirk at me, mister.”

  “Where are you running to, Ali-Cat?”

  I tilt her chin up towards me and I lean down as though I’m about to kiss her cheek, but I whisper in her ear instead, “What did you mean by more?”

  She lets out a deep sigh. “I meant that it’s different with you ... with just you.”