by Neve Wilder
They were both in their own world of arousal and pleasure, and part of me was in awe, wondering how Les had pulled this off. The other part of me was boiling over. It took a minute, maybe the shift of my shadow against the backs of Les’s eyelids alerting him enough to register me. Adam stopped and twisted around to gape at me, his mouth slick and swollen. The same mouth that asked me earlier if I found temptation on the road to be a threat to my relationship. I hadn’t answered. I never answered those kinds of questions.
I felt this strange disconnect at seeing him down on his knees in front of my bandmate. Les tilted his head, a dreamy distance in the gaze he fixed on me. “’Sup, Porter?” I didn’t know if he was slurring from lust or from alcohol, but it didn’t matter. His hand kept on riffling through Adam’s hair, lazily affectionate. Almost possessive.
I tried to logically dissect the sensation roiling inside me and twisting around in my gut, sending hot tendrils snaking up my spine and unfurling over my shoulders. It was anger and it wasn’t. It was disappointment and it wasn’t. It was jealousy and it wasn’t. For every thing I thought it might be, it was also the opposite. And only Les was capable of making me feel that kind of paradox.
“We’re heading out in fifteen minutes.” I backed out of the doorway and shut the door behind me, leaving the wings on the table and not caring whether they got cold or not. Then I slammed out of the bus and headed back into the venue with Mars and the roadies.
Later, when I climbed into my bunk and closed my eyes, I laid the scene out in my mind like a specimen on a slide, trying to examine and pinpoint my feelings exactly. Once, my reaction would have been different, less weighed down by emotion, more amusement that Les could get a seasoned reporter like Adam Slade on his knees. Never mind what it said about the guy’s ethics. His morals weren’t my business and Les’s shouldn’t have been, either, but it was different now, and it’d been that way for the entirety of this tour. And as much as I didn’t want to admit it, as much as I’d tried to put it out of my head, things had changed after the cabin and I was still struggling to figure it out. And what to do about it.
The memory of Les’s expression in that lounge wound sinuously over the backs of my eyelids, that half-lidded, deep green, arousal-heavy stare, the parted lips, plump and lush and wet. Once, I was the cause of it, and that was what was really fucking with me.
What inspires your lyrics, Les?
Les: Everything. My mind’s a crowded place. I walk down a street and there’s potential everywhere. I don’t really know how to explain the mechanics of it. People, places, random shit I see and get kinda hung up on.
Evan: He has frequent run-ins with telephone poles.
Les: That was one time.
Evan: At least twice. Remember Melbourne? And then there was the time I had to yank you back from stumbling in front of a bus in Rome.
Les: Oh yeah. Shit, well, that’s what you’re there for.
Evan: Loyal guide dog, yes.
Les: We need to get you one of those special guide dog vests so you can start coming inside at restaurants.
Chapter 11
Six months ago
There was a heavy current in the air, like the metallic tinge just before a storm, foreshadowing in the way Ella glanced between us after I’d scrambled to pour three shots, and we lifted our glasses and clinked them together. We huddled in a little cluster, and we all tossed back our shots at the same time, all swallowed at the same time, all lowered our glasses at the same time, then shoved them back on the counter and laughed.
A pregnant silence followed, a knowing silence glued together between the three of us by Ella’s hand on Evan’s forearm and the finger she’d hooked through my belt loop. I wasn’t sure what kind of line we were walking, but I was afraid to even speak and accidentally nudge it in the wrong direction.
Luckily, Ella stepped in by leaning to brush a kiss over my mouth, her hand still on Evan’s arm. It was brief, but I was shocked as hell to find Evan still standing there when it ended, this intensely focused gaze on me that softened when, in one smooth swivel, Ella’s lips were within a hair’s breadth of his.
“Please?” she whispered. I could see resistance in the way his hands hung slack at his sides. His shoulders twitched once, like he’d been about to take a step backward and stopped himself. He glanced away from Ella’s pretty mouth and back at me again, his eyes hard, almost challenging. Then he put his hand on her cheek and kissed her gently. Tenderly, as if he was making some kind of counter to what Ella had said earlier about liking my brand of roughness.
Ella reached for me, pulling me closer until I was anchored at Evan’s side. My hand collided with his as I wrapped her waist. I knew what she wanted, and I definitely knew what I wanted. And I could only assume that since Evan was still there, he was okay with it, too.
Triple kisses were one of those great in theory things, but the spatial configuration proved tricky. Ella tipped her head a little when I joined in, making room, and the space between the three of us became a breathless microcosm of tongues and lips lashing out sloppily. There wasn’t a lot of finesse to it, and mostly it was hot because it was so dirty and disorganized.
I caught a swipe of Evan’s tongue, a darker, masculine flavor and heat compared to the light pink dart of Ella’s. She shifted her focus between us. One second I was lapping at the sides of their mouths as she kissed Evan, the next my tongue was flicking smoothly over the length of hers and I felt the background scrape of Evan’s teeth at the corner of my mouth.
Someone groaned. Me. And I realized I had a hand on each of them and my fingers were sneaking drowsily behind the hem of Evan’s T-shirt to spread across his lower back. A handful of minutes passed in this strange tango of lips, and somehow we seemed to get closer together until we were all squashed against each other and I wasn’t sure who was touching me where. I thought Evan’s hand was near my shoulder and Ella’s around my waist. She sucked at Evan’s lower lip, and I dropped my mouth to her throat, pulling a moan from her when I nipped at the tight cords of tendons there.
All I was thinking about was how insanely fucking hot this whole situation was and how damn awkward it was going to be if one of us stopped. I didn’t want that. I’d have done anything to keep us from getting stuck in an awkward, foot shuffling silence.
I was into Ella, I really was, but the second Evan got involved, it was over for me. I’d been rocking a low-key hard-on for him for months. Maybe even since shortly after we’d formed the band. There was something about him. Some presence that drew me to him that I couldn’t explain. I was sure some of it had to do with our music and how on the level and connected we were when writing and performing together, but there was something else less definable there, too, a longing in me that went beyond the songs we composed. I wondered about him all the time, and though I spent weeks and months on end with him, watching him with Ella was like having the curtain ripped back on this side of him he’d kept from me. A side I found very fucking intriguing indeed.
The moment she reached into his pants and stroked him, his eyes went hot with desire. His lips parted on a soft, surprised exhale, and I was a goner. My low-key crush exploded into full-on cosmic-sized lust. I wanted a hit of him the way I wanted my next breath, and even though I already knew that whatever I got tonight wasn’t going to be enough by a long shot, I was still bound and determined to get it.
Chapter 12
Present day
I wasn’t even sure how what happened with Adam Slade happened. He did the interview, asked the questions, and sometime around the end, I became aware that he’d been giving me that look, the hungry I-want-you look that I was more used to receiving from fans than reporters. And when I flicked up my eyes and caught him doing it again, he’d jerked his gaze away, swallowing hard. I suppose you could say I instigated it by stretching my arms out over the back of the couch and letting my legs sprawl wide. When he looked back at me again, I tilted my head to the side, watching his expression and reading ev
erything I needed to know in how it shifted. He was on his knees for me less than a minute later.
It wasn’t until I closed the door behind him as he tripped down the steps of the bus that I registered the scent of wings and remembered Evan and I were supposed to hang out. Probably the reason he’d been so gruff when he opened the door. Or maybe he was just pissed at the reporter for crossing a line of integrity, but shit, that happened all the time and, if nothing else, I figured I’d just guaranteed us a raving write-up. Evan could thank me later.
Or so I told myself, because I still felt guilty. I poked through the bag of food as the bus started up. The roadies trundled through the door, with Evan bringing up the rear and heading directly for his bunk. I cut up with the crew for a while, then went back to the bunks to see if I could make nice with Evan. But when I peeled back the curtain, he had his back to me, and even a poke only roused him enough to mutter a curt, “Exhausted.” Then he fumbled behind him and yanked the curtain back into place.
I gave up and returned to the lounge to stare at my notebook for a while. Nothing came. I felt words distantly, but I couldn’t coax them out onto the page. I was braintied. Was that even a thing?
Giving up, I climbed into my bunk, plugging my earbuds in and listening to a playlist Blink made for me. He was good at finding new music he knew I’d like. The bus swayed gently beneath me, a three-ton rocking cradle. I’d gotten used to how the vibration of the pavement below hummed in my bones for hours after we stopped anywhere. Some days I felt more highway than human. More parts moving with purpose than skin and bone. I had trouble slowing down. I had trouble just being still. Maybe it had something to do with moving around a lot growing up, the wandering and very fluid nature of my parents’ relationship and being their sole offspring. I’d always been aware of everything. And I’d always felt this freeform sense of… loneliness, I guess. A sense of not being fully grounded, and yet anytime in the past when a lover tried to tie me down, I’d be the first to flee.
I hadn’t had a girlfriend or boyfriend in years. Not since I’d started on this crazy journey with Evan. In a fucked-up kind of way, he was my primary partner, even if we weren’t in a sexual relationship. I had no idea whether or not he felt the same. But it was powerful in a way I’d never experienced with anyone else; the times when we were onstage and I looked over at Evan only to find him already looking back at me, how we navigated intuitively around each other, how I knew the song he wanted to play just by watching how his fingers stretched toward his strings. I wanted to touch him constantly, touch him like I had that night with Ella. My fingers permanently ached with the need, and they ached then as I lay there, knowing he was three feet across the aisle from me, his stocky body folded up in the bunk, and still somehow a world apart. But he’d made it clear that that would never ever happen again. He didn’t want it.
When I woke up the next morning, we were in Indianapolis, parked on a side street near the venue—some old theater that’d recently been revamped. Jimmy lay sprawled on the couch, catching a nap, and I dug through the minifridge, contemplating leftover wings for breakfast when the door swung wide and Mars poked his head in.
“Pancakes?”
“Fuck yes.” I tossed a T-shirt over my shoulder and clattered down the narrow staircase. Just outside, Evan was bent over stretching his hamstrings. He was drenched in sweat, an empty water bottle tucked in his waistband and another one in his hand. His running shorts were plastered to his ass, and he looked like a Men’s Health magazine come to life. He emptied the rest of his water bottle, then set it down to peel off his shirt and wring it out while I tried not to stare.
“Your healthy habits are an insult to musicians everywhere,” I told him.
He sent a dismissive gaze over me, and I tugged at the hem of my T-shirt self-consciously. He was literally the only person in the world who could make me self-conscious, and I fucking hated it with a passion. “You should try a few sometime.”
“Nah. I’m good. I’m now a lifetime member of Fitness Underachievers Anonymous. About to go make some more shitty food choices so I can level up. My stomach’s screaming for pancakes and bacon with a side of aspartame.”
“Are you sure that scream isn’t an SOS for something green?” His brow ticked up as he swiped a bead of sweat from his forehead with the corner of his shirt.
“Pretty sure it’s a mercy plea for excess sodium, yep.” I hesitated, trying to read his expression, but he had his hand shading his eyes from the sun, and all I could see were planes of shadow on his sharp features. “Sorry about last night, by the way. I forgot.”
“I noticed.” He dropped his hand to his side, pulling his lips in, like he was debating saying something else, then shook his head. “It’s fine.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“You coming for pancakes?”
“Shower first, then I’ll be over.” He mopped his shirt across his bare chest, and I gave myself an allowance of a measly two seconds to admire the hard lines of his torso coated in a healthy sheen of perspiration—which wasn’t enough. His body deserved at least a handful of minutes. Preferably a whole night. Then I forced my gaze away and headed down the street to the IHOP.
We took up three booths in the restaurant. I packed in next to Blink and Reg, a ball cap pulled low over my eyes. The other patrons didn’t recognize me, but I could tell by the gaggle of servers clustered around the hostess stand darting looks back and forth at us that they did. Mars, sitting across from me and next to Terry, speared a pancake and ate the entire thing in two bites. I was two deep into a stack of four and already getting full.
Blink relayed a story about some dimwit sound guy at the last venue, then turned a scathing eye on Mars, who was licking syrup from his fingertips. “You need a trough.”
“I’d eat from a trough. No problem. Would save me the trouble of forks and knives,” Mars said, like silverware was a huge inconvenience. I snickered and passed over the rest of my pancakes to him and then turned a look aside as Blink muttered a “whoa” under his breath.
When I glanced up to find the source that earned such a reverent sound, Evan was walking toward us. Evan was… Evan could come across as really intimidating unless he was smiling, because he was hard all over. Not just his body, but all of the angles of him, too. Super structured cheekbones, a steel-edged jaw, insanely attractive in that kind of fierce, untouchable, reserved way that made you want to get inside him and figure out what made him tick. He was lines and edges and definition, not a soft spot on him, except maybe his lips, and now was definitely not the time to be thinking about those. He had a fierce resting bitch face, which was why Blink was muttering. I didn’t even know it was possible, but Evan’s RBC had achieved new heights. His brows were tightly knit, and Oscar the Grouch had nothing on the scowl he sported as he stalked toward us.
“Did someone replace his hair gel with lube or what?” I asked, half-serious. Mars laughed and shook his head, but we all got quiet as Evan reached the table. He dropped onto the bench across from me, next to Mars without a peep, then picked up the menu and glared at it before he looked up and actually snapped his fucking fingers for attention. When the waiter ran over, he barked out a terse order, then slumped down on the bench. He did all of this as we watched in silence because his behavior was so unusual that none of us were sure how to approach it. Evan got mad on occasion, sure, but it was always this kind of inwardly directed thing. He could be complaining to a sound guy, but the second the guy’s face fell, he’d go soft and backtrack.
Mars and Blink both stared at me, which meant I’d been silently elected to figure out what the fuck was wrong with him. That was a bad idea.
“Your G-string sitting too deep in your crack or what, Porter?” And that was why it was a bad idea. When I got nervous or flustered, I inevitably resorted to what was probably the worst thing to say. And people always ended up even angrier. Always.
Evan didn’t bat a lash at first, didn’t even look at me.
Then he blinked slowly and leveled a gaze on me that could’ve frosted the Devil’s ass cheeks. “Sorry, not sure I heard you right. Thought I’d check and see if you had a cock crammed down your throat. Looks like you don’t, though—at least not right now—so I guess that means you were just spewing your usual meaningless horseshit.”
Every jaw at the table dropped because Evan and I antagonized each other back and forth, but even when it was bitchy, it was never overtly aggressive the way it was now.
“Uhh… I’m gonna go check the equipment,” Blink said, and bailed, sliding from the booth so fast the plastic seat squeaked. Mars followed with an excuse so lame I didn’t even register it. The other guys trickled after them, trying to act natural, but very evidently wanting to leave us alone.
The waiter delivered Evan’s order, and he plowed into it in surly silence. I kicked my feet up onto the bench across from me, leaving Evan plenty of room, and folded my arms over my chest as I watched him. He kept eating as if I wasn’t there.
“I can’t tell if you’re waiting for me to ask what the fuck is wrong with you or if you’re just hoping I’ll ignore it.”
“The last one,” he said around a mouthful of hash browns.
“Well. You’re kinda making that impossible. You’re putting out a vibe that’s got people running like an elevator fart.”
“So get off the elevator and let me finish eating in peace. Funny you should mention elevators by the way.”
He was still focused solely on the wobbling yellow cluster of scrambled eggs that he jabbed at and poked into his mouth.
“This about last night, still?”