Chaos

by Jamie Shaw

  “Tonight’s important,” she reminds me as I tug them down over her thighs, her knees, her ankles. And in the back of my mind, I know that. Jonathan Hess is waiting inside Mayhem with paperwork, but Jonathan Hess can wait. If Kit and I go in now, neither of us will be able to concentrate. We’re doing this for the show, the crowd, the band.

  Or at least that’s what I tell myself as I tug her panties down with her jeans. She kicks them off the tips of her black-painted toes, and I step back between her legs. “I love you,” I say as I palm her ass in both hands, dragging her to the edge of the counter.

  “I lov—” Her voice catches as I sink deep inside her, and she finishes with a low, sexy, “Shawn.” Her moan is as deep as the path I pave inside her, her dull nails scratching over my scalp with every single inch. I peel them away and kiss the calloused pads of her fingers one by one, each lingering touch of my lips making her wetter until I’m seated all the way inside her, until I’m just as breathless as she is. My forehead glues itself to the shoulder of her T-shirt because she just feels so. fucking. good. She feels fucking amazing.

  How we are now is nothing like how we were our first time. Now, when she says my name, I know she means so much more than Shawn Scarlett. When she looks into my eyes, she’s seeing more than her own name in lights.

  I should’ve seen it back then—the way she looks at me, the way she probably always has—but I was a blind man until she walked away . . . two, three, four times.

  My fingers hook under the hem of the shirt separating me from her skin, and I impatiently tug it over her head. Then I’m reaching for her bra, she’s grabbing at my shirt, and we’re locked in a battle of wills as I try to strip her of her clothes at the same time she tries to strip me of mine. Both of us end up laughing, and I eventually let her win.

  She continues giggling until I cup her breast in my palm and slide my thumb across her nipple. And at the quiet gasp that grabs her, at the look in her eyes—that dark, bottomless look that spells desire in the black of her gaze—I bend down and suckle a pink tip between my lips. Her back arches, her thighs squeeze, and I . . . I’m barely holding it together as her pretty little nipple pebbles beneath my tongue.

  I take my time—because I have to with her if I’m going to last—teasing one blushing pebble and then the other before teasing her by asking, “How are we going to celebrate tonight?”

  The soft moan that purrs from her mouth is more than I can handle. With her nipple still perked between the seam of my lips, my eyes travel up over the delicate curve of her neck, the line of her chin, the pink of her cheeks. Under thick lashes, she stares down at me, and I make a show of parting my lips and tracing my tongue over her in long, slow strokes that she watches for only a moment before her eyes flutter closed.

  “Open them.”

  With her half-lidded gaze watching my every move, I make a feast of her. I nibble and flick and suckle until she’s coiling tight around me, and then I bury my fingers in her hair and pull her to my mouth.

  I lose track of time, of where we are, of everything but the way she kisses me senseless as I thrust into her over, and over, and over. She’s so tight—her heat around my cock, her fingers on my back, her lips over mine. I’m so fucking lost, I don’t even know how I keep moving inside her, except that I’m desperate—desperate to hear the sounds she makes when she comes for me, for the way her pupils swallow her irises and she looks at me like she wants to do it all over again.

  “Fuck,” I say, trying to slow my pace because I’m about to come undone.

  “Don’t stop,” she begs, and when she asks me like that—like she needs me to keep feeding myself inside her—there’s no way in hell I’ll ever deny her.

  I say a silent prayer that she’s closer than I am, because God, I’m going to come soon if she doesn’t—

  A heavy moan rumbles in my chest when she clenches around me, her fingers digging into the coiled muscles of my back as I follow her over the edge not even a full second later. I empty into her as her insides hug me tight, squeezing and milking and unraveling me until I can’t even think.

  Kit is moaning into my ear, saying my name and stringing curse words together, but I can’t stop—I push into her until I have absolutely nothing, nothing left to give. And even then, I want to give her more. I want to give her everything.

  When I kiss her, she must be able to tell how badly I want to take her again, because her tired voice reminds me, “We are so fucking late.”

  IT TAKES ME a pathetic amount of time to pull myself together and collect our clothes from the floor, but then Kit and I get dressed and straighten her sexed-up hair as well as we possibly can. When we finally make our way inside Mayhem, hand in hand, Adam smirks his face off at me. I’ve spent most of my life lecturing him about being on time, but now, he’s the one to say it—“You’re late.”

  “Really late,” Mike emphasizes.

  “Good,” I say. “John can wait.”

  “Yeah,” Joel chides, “because I bet that’s why you’re late. And not because you and Kit were busy fu—”

  Dee and Peach both elbow him in the ribs, and he grunts as he doubles over.

  “You look great,” Dee tells Kit, and Kit grunts a little too, which pulls a smile onto my face. She’s friends with the girls, but she’ll never really be one of the girls, and that’s just one of the things I love about her. She’s hot as hell, and she knows it, but she doesn’t flaunt it—because she doesn’t need to. Even when she’s wearing one of my baggy T-shirts, an old pair of jeans, and an oversized flannel, she looks like a siren, smiles like a siren, laughs like a siren.

  I drape my arm over her shoulders. “Is he waiting in the greenroom?”

  When the guys confirm that Jonathan Hess is, in fact, waiting for me in the greenroom, I walk back there with Kit still held captive under my arm. I shake hands with Jonathan. I try not to laugh at the sour look Victoria has on her face. I don’t negotiate.

  Ever since we performed with Cutting the Line at their show in Nashville last August, our popularity and sales have skyrocketed. Even Mayhem has had to close its doors to people standing in line, and now, Mosh Records is finally prepared to do the ass-kissing they’ve been wanting us to do for years. The lawyer I staffed checked out the paperwork this morning, and everything was in order. Jonathan’s label is merely a name we’re attaching to ourselves for mutual benefit—his people will help us, and we’ll help his image. For a percentage of our sales, every resource of Mosh Records will be made available to us, and the label will have no say—none at all—over the music we produce or when we produce it. They’ll help with marketing, producing, booking, networking—and all we need to do is keep doing what we’re doing.

  Every ounce of hard work I’ve put in over the past ten years gets poured into every letter I sign. I watch Adam sign, Joel sign, Mike sign, Kit sign. And then we all shake hands and leave. It isn’t until we’re backstage again that I pick Kit up and spin her around.

  She laughs and squeezes my neck tight while everyone celebrates. “You did it,” she says in my ear when I finally put her down, and when I pull away and see her smile, it’s all the reward I need. Without her, I would’ve celebrated with the guys tonight—I would’ve gotten drunk and hooked up with a groupie after the show—but I would’ve gone to sleep alone.

  Tonight, I’ll be next to Kit. I’ll be on her and inside her and it will be so, so much fucking better than it would have been if she wouldn’t have stormed back into my life with her combat boots and her take-no-prisoners smile.

  I kiss her one last time—two, three last times—and then we take the stage. Me, Kit, Adam, Joel, Mike. We’re as high as the crowd, adrenaline-fueled by the time Adam finally pulls his mic from its stand and riles up the crowd.

  “We just signed with Mosh Records!” he shouts, and cheers rise up from the crowd—along with a few boos. Adam laughs. “And they totally kissed our asses! I’m pretty sure I could say they suck a giant cock right now, and they would
n’t be able to do a damn thing about it!”

  “But we’re not going to do that,” I chime in while the entire room screams, and Adam grins at me.

  “What, do you think I’m an idiot? Of course we’re not going to do that!”

  I chuckle into my mic, and Adam spins back toward the crowd.

  “Shawn has been working this out for us for years. And you guys helped make it happen. So I just want you to give yourselves and Shawn a huge fucking round of applause before we start this show!” The crowd screams, and Adam turns toward Mike. “I don’t think that was loud enough, do you?”

  Mike takes Adam’s cue and shakes his head.

  “When you think they’re loud enough, go ahead and start.”

  Mike grins, and Joel, Kit, and I motion for the crowd to get louder. Louder. Louder. When every single person in the venue—including the bartenders, the security, our roadies—are screaming at the tops of their lungs, Mike taps his sticks together and hits his first drum. The venue lights cut, the stage lights flare, and with the air glowing blue, I play my first chord. The music hums through my fingers and up my arms, swallowing my thoughts as I work my fingers to the bone. I shout backup into the mic, twining my voice with Adam’s in a way that’s as familiar to me as the weight of my guitar, and he plays to the crowd, the girls, the fans.

  The groupies are ravenous tonight, screaming and reaching and threatening to bring down the barricade. We play song after song, watching everyone in the pit sing back to us with their hands in the air and their bodies bouncing to the beat. Two, three, four songs. I stare through the spotlights, skimming over the frantic first row, until—

  Until my heart lodges into my throat and I nearly pluck the wrong damn string. If my Fender wasn’t strapped to my neck, I probably would have dropped it.

  “You see her, right?” Adam asks me as soon as the song is over. His mic is switched off, and I step away from mine and just nod my head.

  Danica fucking Carlisle. Mike’s fucking ex. Cheering from the front row. Desperate for Adam’s attention, my attention, anyone’s attention.

  “What do you think she’s here for?” Adam asks, and my fingers strangle the neck of my guitar.

  To make Mike miserable. To mess with his head. To summon her hellhounds and ruin the show. “I have no fucking clue.”

  Six years ago, she tore Mike’s heart right out of his chest, and now she’s acting like his biggest fan, like she didn’t completely destroy him when she tried to make him choose between us and her.

  “Do we tell Mike?” Adam asks, and when I give him a look and shake my head, he nods in agreement. He gulps down his water and walks back to his spot front and center, ignoring Danica like she’s invisible.

  For everyone else, she’s impossible to miss. When we start playing again, she jumps up and down, screaming her head off while the poor chick next to her barely avoids flying hair and elbows. While everyone else in the front row is reaching for Adam and losing their minds, that poor girl’s arms are crossed over the railing she’s hugging to avoid getting knocked backward into the pit. She’s a tiny thing who keeps glaring at the bitch next to her, and when Danica yells something down to her and tries to lift her arm into the air, I realize they’re here together.

  Not surprising. Even Danica’s own friends can’t stand her. But Mike . . . I still don’t think he’s over her. Six years, and he’s still never given another girl the chance he gave her. He probably still thinks she’s the one who got away.

  I try to put her out of my mind, finding Kit’s gaze across the stage. She knows something’s up, and I smile at her to ease the tension that’s tightening the inside walls of my chest.

  My smile gets bigger when I think about what she’d do if I told her that the girl who broke Mike’s heart is here. She’d probably tear her guitar from her neck and do a kamikaze dive off the stage. Her entire family has a penchant for violence, and my girl is no exception.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks as soon as we’re backstage before our encore, and I curse my face for giving me away.

  “How do you do that?”

  “Do what?” she asks, her hands curling into the soft fabric at my waist as she scrunches her nose at me.

  “Know what I’m thinking,” I answer.

  She can read me like a book of music, and I’m not sure yet if I like it or not. But that’s just Kit. Maybe it’s the product of having grown up with four brothers. Or maybe it’s something she learned from being a twin. Or maybe it’s just because she knows me like no one else does, because she’s close to me in a way that no one else has ever been.

  Her dark eyes narrow up at me, her long lashes drifting together. “Stop trying to distract me.”

  Since we promised not to keep secrets from each other ever again, I take a deep breath and drop my lips to her ear. “Mike’s ex is here.”

  And, being the pro that she is, she doesn’t even glance his way. She keeps her eyes locked on me as I pull away. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  I shake my head.

  “What are you talking about?” Mike asks as he towels the back of his neck. He’s a sweat-drenched mess, just like the rest of us, after beating on the drums the way he does. He’s the best fucking drummer I’ve ever seen, and one of the best friends I’ve ever had, and if Danica Carlisle thinks I’m going to let her crush him again—

  “Nothing,” Kit and I both say in unison.

  Mike raises an eyebrow, stumbling forward when Adam claps him hard on the back. “One more song.”

  We drag ourselves back onstage, play one final song, and then Adam and I begin walking off, pretending we don’t hear Danica shouting, “ADAM! ADAM! IT’S ME, DANICA!”

  Even Joel finally notices her, and I have a mini panic attack as I imagine him saying something to Mike before Adam or I get the chance to stop him—but then Kit’s arm is hooking around his and she’s saying something in his ear. He casts a look at me, and then at Adam, before entering our silent agreement to keep pretending Danica’s dead.

  And I breathe easy again—too fucking easy, because when we walk out to the buses, there she fucking is.

  “MIKE!” she shouts, breaking into a sprint and throwing herself into his arms. Kit takes a step forward, but I catch her by the elbow before she can do anything that would earn her charges and jail time.

  Mike’s arms hang limp at his sides as Danica hugs him like she never left him—like they’re still high school sweethearts. I want him to push her away and tell her to go fuck herself . . . but that isn’t Mike, and eventually, his arms lift to hug her back.

  “Aren’t you happy to see me?” she squeals, leaving me, Adam, and Joel looking at each other like what the fuck.

  “What are you doing here?” Mike asks, but Danica is already pulling away to smile wide at Adam. She wraps him in a hug he doesn’t return and finally answers Mike.

  “I live here now.”

  Danica hugs Joel next, who pacifies her with a one-fingered tap to her back, and then she moves to me, but I step out of reach. “What are you doing at our show?” I ask, and she pouts at me before giving a bullshit answer.

  “I wanted to see Mike.”

  “Why?” Mike says before any of us can ask the same question, and it’s the tiny girl who was standing next to Danica in the crowd who’s the next to open her mouth. The girl can only be five foot one at best, with a short auburn bob and big, green eyes.

  “Yeah, Dani, why?”

  Danica shoots a glare over her shoulder before smiling sweetly up at Mike. “Can we talk?”

  Kit gets twitchy with the urge to answer for him, and I hook my arm around her shoulder to keep her from pouncing on anyone. I know how she feels—I want to answer for Mike too, because anything other than “No, you fucking heartless bitch” won’t do, but I keep my mouth shut and wait.

  “Sure,” he says. And then he leads her onto the bus.

  “I WANTED TO punch her in her stupid face,” Kit says the next day at her parents’ place.
As usual, her dad is in the bathroom, her mom is in the kitchen, and the rest of us are hanging in the den—me, Kit, Leti, all four of Kit’s brothers . . . I’m still not sure if they like me yet or not, but at least they’re not still trying to put me in the hospital.

  I’m rubbing the phantom bruises on my side, and Mason is smirking, when Kit furrows her brow at me and says, “Do you think they hooked up?” Her eyes search mine, but I know she already knows the answer.

  Yeah, I think they hooked up. When Danica asked him to show her the other bus and Mike agreed, the rest of us sat with her cousin, Hailey, on the double-decker. It was awkward as hell, but Hailey handled it like a champ. As soon as she saw Mike’s video game setup, she asked if she could play, and then she and Peach entertained themselves while the rest of us wished the she-devil on the other bus would hurry up and dive back down to hell.

  “Yeah, I think he hooked up with her,” I answer honestly, and Kit growls.

  “Why?”

  “Was she hot?” Bryce suggests, and Kit shoots him a deadly look that almost makes me laugh.

  “He’s Mike,” she counters, and I know what she means. Mike isn’t one for groupies or shallow girls, but . . .

  “He’s still a dude,” Mason throws in. “When’s the last time he got laid?”

  “Mike could have girls a lot prettier than her.”

  It’s true, but none of those girls is Danica—his first love, his first lay, his first everything. “He loved her,” I say, and Kit’s face softens with worry.

  “Do you think he still does?”

  I know better than to try to sugarcoat it. “Probably.”

  “I don’t like her.”

  “None of us do.”

  “I like her cousin though . . . And she was like . . . a gamer.” A mischievous smile curves Kit’s troublemaker lips, and I chuckle at the suggestion in her voice.

  “So you’re playing matchmaker now?”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “You sound like Mom,” Ryan says, and as if on cue, Mrs. Larson’s voice winds through the house, calling us to the dinner table.