by Neve Wilder
“Yeah, actually, so if you don’t mind, I’m pretty sure you got what you needed at the restaurant.” I did my best to affect a casual air, like we weren’t cowering behind a curtain. Well, mostly me. Les still appeared enraptured by the discovery of Joey McIntyre. He had a lifelong obsession with boy bands that he’d told me about in great detail one night in Denver when he’d been out-of-his-mind stoned, and his depth of knowledge was frightening.
She shrugged lightly, completely unmoved. The wax museum was proving to be another stupid idea on my part. We should have just kept walking.
“I got some boring, lukewarm displays of affection, but nothing that’ll sell covers and, therefore, make my trip here and my paycheck worthwhile, so…” Her smile sweetened. “I thought I might stick around for a while. See what’s for dessert. By the way, you’ve been spotted.” She hiked a thumb over her shoulder. “The sidewalk out front is filled with adoring fans and a few not-so-adoring ones. Seems your relationship has stirred up quite a vat of emotion.”
I glowered at her, gritting my teeth, but Les touched my elbow lightly, then slid his hand up along my bicep and wrapped his arm around my shoulder affectionately. He plastered on his charming smile, the one that lit up his eyes and melted panties and boxers alike. Even if it wasn’t aimed in my direction, it was still stunning. An unwanted heat spread over me as his fingers drifted over my sleeve.
“How about a deal?” he suggested.
The photographer cocked her hip, lifting an expectant brow.
“We’ll give you something good and you prance yourself back out there and tell them we’re not here.”
“Les.” That was me, trying to tell him we weren’t going to bargain with fucking paparazzi.
“How good?” That was her, ignoring me.
“You’ll have to change your panties afterwards, sweetheart.” His voice oozed sex like syrup, and that did the trick. She swung her camera up, fingers flying as she adjusted the settings.
I didn’t have even a second to formulate a protest before Les plowed into me, shoving me up against the wall. The flail of my hand sent one of Arnold’s forearms flying off, and something in the wall lodged uncomfortably against my spine. A light switch, maybe?
But then Les’s mouth hit mine like a shot of whiskey. Rich and dark, with the afterburn of his teeth scraping over my lower lip. One of his hands twined over my shoulder, sinking into the loose curls at the nape of my neck, and I grunted when he tugged and pressed harder against me. The heat of his body against mine, and the tongue that barreled into my mouth overwhelmed me with sensation. I stopped thinking. Stopped thinking about the photographer and Arnold’s broken arm and the people outside. My lips parted on a groan, and Les deepened the kiss as I fisted the side of his shirt, low near his waist, balling up the fabric until my knuckles brushed his bare skin, and he shivered.
Les wedged his thigh between mine and forced my legs wider, his erection hard and forceful against me, the roll of his hips subtle but demanding in pressure. I couldn’t help it; I reacted to the friction, felt my stomach contract as I rocked into him and he let out a soft moan, the pleasure in it transmuting and rolling through me like sound waves. God, was I still breathing? I knew that if I felt his dick like a steel rod, he had to be feeling mine and would know without a doubt how turned on I was. His tongue all but fucked my mouth, and then his teeth dragged over my lower lip, and just as I was about to give myself fully over to it, it was gone.
Cool air rushed the space between us as Les wrenched himself away and tousled my hair playfully before turning back to the reporter. I was left gasping and panting for breath in the vacuum.
“Better put on the brakes, because once this guy gets started”—he thumbed at me—“he can go all fucking night. He’s seriously insatiable.”
“Likely to fuck him right through this wall,” I agreed, somehow managing a sober expression despite my aroused half-fugue state where the sensation of Les’s mouth and weight against me pinged off every nerve ending in my body. I’d gone from zero to uncomfortably hard in a span of seconds.
From the corner of my eye, I caught Les pressing his lips together to suppress a grin as the photographer smirked, then waved a hand at us. “All right, all right. I’ve got enough.”
“Sure you don’t want to stick around and watch how I can make him speak in tongues?”
Oh God, I wished he’d stop talking.
The photographer arched a brow. “I’d be tempted to insert myself.”
Les shrugged. “We’ve done it before.”
“I don’t like being third wheel.”
I grabbed Les by the nape of his neck and squeezed before he could dig us deeper, ignoring how imagining what his mouth could do made my dick throb. “That’s enough. Jesus.”
The photographer winked smugly at us and vanished back through the curtain with a little farewell wave. From my new vantage point, I caught a beckoning sliver of red light beyond Demi Moore’s legless torso. I started toward it and had just pushed through the doorway into another storage room with more wax figures when Les hauled me back by my waistband. “Not so fast, Romeo.”
Chapter 23
“What? Let’s go!” Evan was practically shouting, and he tried to jerk away to continue forward, but I kept my fingers fastened to his waistband, holding him in place as I stepped around to face him.
“Chill out, we’re not—”
He lurched forward to try and pass me again, and I yanked him into me. He was going to drive me to desperate measures? Fine. I snaked my hand between us to palm his erection, attempting to ignore just how much touching him like that had my own cock ready to explode, because dammit, I was trying to make a point. He went stone still, eyes flaring wide, and we spent a handful of seconds staring each other down, his chest rising and falling in rapid breaths against mine. That close, I could see the heat in his cheeks, feel it rising from his skin.
“You want to take your hand off my dick?” he finally asked, giving me a cool expression that didn’t quite dampen the color in his face.
“You’re hard as a fucking rock.” I was proud of myself for not moaning it, because God knew I’d dreamed of touching him just like this for months. Hell, years.
“Where are you going with this?”
“Where do you think I’m going with this? You enjoyed that back there.” I inclined my head toward the room we’d just been in, in case he’d somehow forgotten the way he’d been rubbing up against me.
He pressed his lips together so tightly they paled, then he hitched one shoulder. “I wouldn’t read into it too much, Les. Boners happen.”
I snorted and shook my head, curling my fingers tighter around the hard heat of his bulge. The crinkle at the corners of his eyes was minute but telling. “You were into it,” I said slowly, “with me.”
“I know how to put on a show, same as you.” His brows pinched together as his mouth turned down.
My grip on his waistband stopped him from going too far when he tried a different tactic and took a step backward. I let the hand on his cock fall back to my side but closed the distance between us, still determined to hash this out. “And you were into it with Ella and me, which is why it was so confusing that you were such a dick about everything the next day.”
“I wasn’t a dick.” His tone was insistent, but the tiny thread of guilt in the eyes that darted away from mine spurred me on as I gave him a flat, unpersuaded stare.
“You said”—I held up a finger as I quoted him—“‘That was something I’ll live to regret.’”
“That doesn’t sound like me being a dick; that sounds like evidence that I’m psychic.”
Stubborn fucker. I cocked my head at him, one brow winging up. “And then you gave me the cold shoulder, and you did that for the next six months.”
Evan scoffed with a choked-out laugh. “I did not.”
“You did. Look, I get it. You were worried it would change our partnership, relationship, whatever.”
�
��And it did.” The conviction was back, the guilt gone, and I could tell in the uptick of his breathing that he was exasperated. Which was fine with me, because I was, too. It was about time we confronted this shit.
“Because you flipped out about it and made the last tour miserable trying to pretend it didn’t happen. But it doesn’t have to be a big deal. It wasn’t for me. It was… fun. It was hot. I fucking liked watching you with her. I liked touching you. I liked screwing her with you. I liked”—I paused, because I was too close to telling him how much I liked him—“it with you.” I watched Evan’s face as I spoke, because there was a change happening. The cracks started forming when I said I liked watching him, and by the time I finished, he seemed almost hesitant. His shoulders had gone rigid as steel girders, and he glanced away from me with a flare of his nostrils.
I loosened my grip on his waistband and slid my hand behind the band of his boxers. The humid warmth of naked skin and the wiry curls of his pubic hair met the tips of my fingers as I brushed them lightly over his cock. He swallowed visibly, gaze shifting back to meet mine before he set his jaw as if steeling himself for something far worse than the potential of an orgasm.
“Do you like this?” I watched him, trying to read any minute changes, and he watched me back just as intently. His eyes were the stormy dark of clouds threatening to break. My pulse raced; I could feel it thundering at my temples and throat. When he said nothing, I let my hand dive deeper, hot skin against hot skin as I gripped his shaft between two knuckles and dragged a rough caress up his length. That tight set of his jaw broke open on a stuttered breath.
“Tell me the truth.” I rubbed the pad of my thumb over the crown of his cock and felt a slight tilt of his hips in response. “Do. You. Like. This?”
“Yes.” He exhaled, closing his eyes. Resignation and confession that stood my hair on end.
I reached deeper, cupping his balls, squeezing the heel of my hand against them, and fuck, I wanted to rip his clothes off right there and get down on my knees, same as I’d wanted to that night with Ella but had been too scared to push it. “Do you want me to stop?”
“Yes.” A ragged sound that escaped him while his eyes were still tightly shut.
He seemed so desperate and conflicted that I stopped provoking him, removed my hand, and took a step back. “Porter—”
He shook his head, eyes flying open, his lips parting to speak.
“Hey!”
I whipped a glance over Evan’s shoulder to find the booth attendant hobbling toward us.
Evan gave me a wild, disoriented look and then shoved me roughly toward the exit. “Go!”
I took off, Evan on my heels as I stumbled through the door, and heard him call out, “Your exits are supposed to be clearly marked!”
We hauled ass all the way down the alley, careening around the corner onto another street before I had to stop, bend over, and catch my breath because I was laughing so hard, mostly for the whole cockeyed situation.
“What the fuck’s so funny?” Evan skidded to a halt next to me, then rested his back against the wall. When I’d recovered enough to look up, I noted he was hardly winded. Fucker could probably run a marathon right now.
“Your exits are supposed to be clearly marked,” I mimicked.
“Well, they are. It’s a fire hazard.” He tried to conceal the threat of a smile by wiping the side of his hand across his mouth, but I’d caught it.
I pushed off the wall and scraped a few strands of hair from the side of my cheek. Then I reached for him, wanting to pick up where we’d left off, but he ducked away and started down the sidewalk, throwing his hand up to hail a cab. Whatever momentary interlude we’d had was clearly over.
I ambled after him, and when a cab pulled to the curb and stopped, he got in, scooting to the far corner without another word, looking out the window with his lips pinched in a thin line. We rode home in a thick silence that could’ve been a result of so many different things that I wasn’t sure which angle to attack it from. Or if I even wanted to bother. He was clearly struggling with everything that had happened tonight, maybe even before, and I sure as shit wasn’t a therapist.
Once we got back to the cabin, the stalemate between us seemed less oppressive since there was more room for it to breathe than in the cab. Evan pushed a cold bottle of water against my stomach while I peeled off my T-shirt. “Drink it. We have a lot of shit to do tomorrow, and if you’re hungover, we’ll lose half a day.”
“I won’t be hungover tomorrow. Fuck’s sake, would you give it a rest?” I might be slightly hungover tomorrow, but I’d be up at the crack of fucking dawn and ready no matter what, just to spite him.
He folded his arms across his chest and gave me a look. All that was missing was him tapping his foot impatiently. After cracking the seal on the water bottle, I upended it, downing the whole thing in one long series of gulps under his watch. When I finished, I swiped my forearm across my mouth. Evan’s gaze flicked down to my chest and then jerked up again. He lifted one hand to tug at the roots of his hair, then shook his head in what seemed like annoyance.
“My dick is attracted to you, yes,” he said out of nowhere, and my pulse stammered before thrumming wildly in response to that declaration.
Unfortunately, he continued. “But I’m not a slave to my dick like apparently ninety-nine percent of the male population is, and everything else about you…” Another shake of his head. “So I don’t trust it.”
“You don’t trust me, you mean.”
“Tomato, tamatoh.” He shrugged, then turned on his heel and walked down the hall to his bedroom, leaving me standing there in flabbergasted silence. Fuck me sideways; I had no idea it was possible to feel ecstatic and crushed at the same time.
If you could relive one show you’ve played, which one would it be?
Evan: The first one on our first tour.
Les: Really? We were so damn nervous, though. I thought you were gonna hurl on my shoes.
Evan: If I ever hurl on you, it’ll be a direct hit, trust me. But no, in all seriousness, I’d pick that one. We’d played bars and smaller venues forever—college campuses, stuff like that. But right after our first album dropped, MGD put us on a big stage at a huge festival, and I guess that was the moment I really knew that everything we’d been working our asses off to achieve had finally arrived.
Chapter 24
For the next three days, I set my alarm and went running when it was still dark outside, before Les even had a hope of being up. Since the night at the wax museum, we’d spoken minimally. Maintaining a standoff in fifteen hundred square feet was no small task. That we managed to actually write through it was impressive, but we were hurting there, too. Our playing felt uninspired even though we were working on songs we’d already agreed were good. Les was either angry or letting me process, and I hated that both possibilities made my stomach knot up for different reasons—none of which I was allowing myself to address right then. We came to write an album, not for me to descend into some weird pit of emotional fuckery. It was so damn unlike me it was disconcerting. And it didn’t help that every time I closed my eyes, I saw that penetrating stare of his as he’d shoved his hand down my pants at the museum, the quiet demand in his eyes. I couldn’t have lied if I’d wanted to. And now I was trying to avoid having to do it again.
Les found me in the music room restringing my guitar and let out a bitter chuckle as he leaned up against the doorway, folding his arms over his bare chest. I couldn’t help but look at the lean lines of his torso, the shift of muscle in his forearms as he crossed them, the ink all over his arms and pecs. It was as if once I’d admitted my attraction to him in my head, I couldn’t stop noticing everything about him. It was annoying as hell, and I dragged my gaze back down to my strings, yanking out a loop of wire so hard that it snapped against my hand with a sharp sting.
“Fitting.”
“What?” I kept my attention focused on my lap as I pulled out a coil of new strings and began sort
ing through them.
“Your shoulders look about as tight as those strings.” He pushed off the doorway and came inside.
“I slept wrong last night.” I rubbed the back of my neck as if to demonstrate. Hell, it felt like I’d slept on everything wrong, and the fact that Les could tell with a glance what most people wouldn’t even notice got that prickle of nerves coursing through my body again. We knew each other too damn well, and while it’d been good for our music, it was wreaking havoc on my ability to detach from him when I wanted to.
“Feels like I’ve been sleeping wrong for months,” Les mused, a smile playing over his lips as I glanced up. He brushed one hand over his bicep, goose bumps rising with the touch. “Cold down here. Coffee?” He turned away even as I grunted a no.
A few minutes later, he returned with a mug for me anyway, setting it on a nearby side table whose surface was liberally scattered with rings. “One sugar, splash of milk,” he affirmed, without me even having to ask. Then he flipped through his notebook, tore out a page, and set it on the table in front of me before dropping onto the floor and riffling through a series of records I’d stacked there. “Hit a vein, I think.” He jutted his chin toward the paper drenched in his cramped writing. “I’ve got a sound for it, too.”
He hummed a few notes, the melody ascending and then dropping low. I set my half-strung guitar aside and reached for his, trying to mimic the sound of his voice as I let my fingers skip around and find the notes. “Like that?”
“Yeah, but maybe um…” He paused, head tilting side to one side, thoughtfully. “Drop it an octave and see.”
“Yeah.” He nodded when I did. “What do you think?” His eyes were wide and imploring. I’d forgotten how he could be when it came to music, the way he sometimes seemed like he was waiting for approval, and how his smile curved so gently when I gave it, as I did then. Because I was skimming the lyrics and hearing the melody in my head, and it was good. For as cocky as he was about other things, Les truly was a collaborative writing partner, always willing to listen and experiment.