by Neve Wilder
Also, I wasn’t going to last long.
I braced my hands against the glass wall in front of me, leaning more of my weight into it as Evan licked up my shaft and pleasure roared through me. My hips rocked into the fist he wrapped around me, a low rumble escaping my chest while I tried to stave off my orgasm.
The next thing I knew, I was pitching forward.
I met resistance as I barreled into Evan, but it wasn’t enough to stop me. He went sprawling backward, his hand snapping out and clenching the back of my thigh in a futile effort to steady us. But no dice. I ended up on my side in a heap, Evan on his back, groaning. The greenhouse door we fell through swung gently beside him, knocking against his knee.
“Fuck,” Evan groused, and then looked over at me and started laughing. I wasn’t laughing. My shorts were tangled around my knees, I could feel a bruise forming over my ribs, and my supershiny fantasy moment had been cock-blocked by a fucking greenhouse.
I rolled onto my back and hitched my pants up, brushing away a frond of greenery that was tickling my cheek. I heard water trickling somewhere, and the air was humid and warm, pungent with the scent of dirt and plants.
“You okay?” Evan asked through his laughter, and I finally gave in and started laughing, too.
He helped me upright, and somewhere between my hand in his and him levering me up, we tangled together and started kissing again. Evan dropped his hands to my hips and shoved me up against a wooden counter laden with empty pots and a bag of soil that rattled and spilled over with my impact. His cock ground against my thigh as he licked my lower lip, reviving my dick. In seconds I was panting again. Slow kisses became deep strokes of our tongues, and I sucked on the tip of his, then latched onto his lower lip until he dug his fingers so hard into my sides I was certain there’d be marks tomorrow.
“Fuck, I want you.” His voice was sweet ache and hunger, and it hit every damn nerve ending in my body, making them dance like light thrown from a sparkler.
“So have me.” I didn’t know if he’d meant it that way, but I was sure as hell game.
“Right here?”
“Yeah.” I groaned and scrambled to kick off my shorts. I had no idea if he knew what he was doing, but I got my answer a second later when he spun me around. My palms flattened over the counter, fingers curling against the wood surface as he slid two spit-slick fingers between my cheeks, circling and rubbing my hole, then kneading the tract of skin behind my balls.
“Someone’s been watching po—” My words dissolved into a hiss as he prodded the tip of one finger inside me.
“You make a lot of assumptions about me.” The words landed close to my ear as he leaned in and licked a wet stripe over my neck.
“I’m usually right.”
“Mmm.” A nonanswer as he pushed his finger deeper inside me. I braced one elbow on the counter and turned a look over my shoulder. Evan’s attention was fixed on his finger as he pumped it in and out of me, the other still gliding along my taint. The tandem sensations saturated my body in arousal, making my vision go hazy at the edges. When I reached my other hand back and spread myself for him, he inhaled sharply and jerked his gaze to mine, his eyes wide and unfocused with heat. “You really are shameless.”
“And you love it.”
He didn’t deny it. “Where’re your condoms?”
“You make a lot of assumptions about me,” I threw back at him.
“I’m usually right.” He grinned, stepping around my side to cup my jaw and draw me up for another searing kiss. God, he was good at it.
“Wallet. Lube, too,” I managed around a moan.
Evan didn’t go for them immediately. His brow furrowed as if in concentration, and he kept one hand spanned over my jaw while he continued to play with me with the other, teasing the muscle, plunging a finger inside, stretching and plying me in direct proportion to the pressure of his touch. And it wasn’t expert, but it was fucking earnestly attempted, which was just as hot.
Outside, the drum circle started up again, and the tempo rolled through the ground beneath our feet. Evan picked up the rhythm and stroked me to it, his hips rocking gently against me, his touch a form of intoxication that blew any drug high or liquor buzz out of the water.
“Shit,” I whispered, tipping my head back when he started trailing his lips along my jaw and down my neck. My dick throbbed and I wanted him so much my cells ached with the need to feel him thrusting inside me. Almost every time I’d imagined us together, it’d been the other way around: me behind him, pounding him senseless. I didn’t typically like bottoming, so the force of my desire was electrifying. I had no idea if he sensed it or what—sometimes we were on a wavelength to a degree that was frightening—because he asked, “How long has it been since someone was inside you?”
“Years.” And when I detected hesitation, I hurriedly tacked on, “I want it, though. Fuck, I want it like you wouldn’t believe.”
Evan’s fingers worked me a few more times, and I was left pushing back into nothing when they abruptly retreated. I heard him pawing through my pants, and I collapsed over the counter, gulping air while he got himself ready.
“Yes,” I groaned at the wet tip of his sheathed cock anchoring against my hole. He reached for my hips, sliding his length up and down my furrow a few times, his fingers tightening to keep me steady. He dropped his forehead to the nape of my neck and laughed. “Shit, this might be short-lived.”
“It’s okay, sweetheart, I won’t judge.” Even if he couldn’t see my grin, I knew he could hear it in my words.
He clapped a hand over my mouth and nudged the head of his cock inside me. Not recklessly, but with enough force that I couldn’t reply when he said, “Call me sweetheart again and you’ll regret it.”
When he pushed in deeper, I moaned into his palm, and he kept it pressed over my mouth so that every sound coming from my throat vibrated against his skin.
“Jesus,” he exhaled softly, and I knew exactly what he meant. There was something eerily perfect about how he fit against me, the palm he had clapped over my mouth, and the seductive, swaying bassline of drums surrounding us as he fucked me.
I licked his palm, salty and tart, and he twisted his hand, sliding his thumb between my lips, running it along my teeth. I clamped down and sucked, and he exhaled another groan, his hips surging forward harder. Electricity streaked up my spine with every thrust. I twisted my hips a little and… there. A string of curses escaped me as Evan nailed my prostate over and over.
“Does it feel good?” I whispered.
He thrust into me faster, and his arm came around me, pulling me upright. “Yes,” he grated out against my shoulder.
“Good. Do it harder and tell me how much you like it.”
“Such a fucking talker. You’re tight. So fucking tight, and…” His words came out with gaps between them, and then his breath hitched again. “Stop asking me to string fucking words together right now for fuck’s sake.”
The pots on the table rattled, soil spilling from the counter to the floor.
“Then get your hand on my cock and get me off. Maybe I’ll shut up.”
“Doubtful,” he grunted in a tease, but he dropped his hand from my chest and slid it down my stomach to give my cock a few rough strokes. That was all it took. I came with a whimper and a full-body shiver, contracting around his cock as I slicked his fist with my load. I gasped out his name, babbled all kinds of nonsense, and felt him begin to shudder. My cheek smacked into the counter as he flattened my spine with a brutish shove of his hand, then drove into me hard, over and over as he shattered with a moan.
Our bodies heaved against each other as he draped gracelessly over my back. A minute passed, and then he pulled out of me. I rested my cheek on my forearm, watching from the corner of my eye as he bent to pick up the foil wrapper and wrapped it around the spent condom.
I was about to make a flirty quip suggesting he drink more often when my shorts landed on the counter next to me, and he said, “I’m
ready to go once you clean up. I’ll meet you out front.”
And then he just fucking left.
I watched him go in bewilderment, then took stock of my surroundings. The moonlight pouring in thick shafts through the clear roof of the greenhouse, the marks in the packed dirt floor from our bodies, the dishevelment of my hair. The aches on my body from where I fell, the bruised feel of my hips where he’d gripped me, the throbbing echo of his dick inside me. And for the first time in my life, I felt fucking used.
Chapter 28
I couldn’t stop thinking about wrecked bands. The Civil Wars, the White Stripes, No Doubt, Sonny & Cher, Oasis—and countless other musicians who churned out hits and soared on the charts and then went up in flames. Music was tricky that way. And worse when there were feelings involved. It wasn’t like an office romance where you could switch departments or do your best to ignore someone. When you made music with another person, you were giving them a piece of your soul and stitching it to theirs. It was a vulnerable process that was both primal and carnal, which was exactly why the best songs resonated with people and took on a life of their own. It was procreation absent of biology, and that was why it was a phenomenally bad idea to go fucking with the dynamics if you could help it. Apparently I couldn’t.
I could still smell Les on my skin as I stood in the front yard and waited for him. Still taste him while I watched him walk across the grass toward me wearing a dark scowl, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his shorts. Still feel his body against mine, the warmth of him, the give as I buried myself in him. It was like nothing I’d had before and everything I wanted again. And I fucking hated that.
We said goodbye to Maize, then Les stalked ahead of me to the car. Five miles of silence became seven down a road of my own making. I had plenty of time to look for things to blame. The beers, the shots of Jager. But it wasn’t the alcohol’s fault for loosening me up enough to do the thing I’d been denying I wanted to do. It’d just been a primer.
“You need to fucking say something,” Les said, cutting a look across at me that might as well have had teeth the way it gnashed at me.
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Something that makes up for you just tossing my shorts at me and dismissing me like a goddamn groupie.” His hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I don’t mind being used. I know the score. I do it plenty, so it’s only fair, but I don’t go out of my way to remind someone of their status.”
“Why don’t you mind being used, though?” That wasn’t the question I should have been asking, but it was what came out.
“My body is just a fucking body, Porter. It has various holes that like to be filled and an appendage that likes to fill other holes. I don’t get why it’s a problem to enjoy that, to enjoy getting off and not make a fucking federal case out of it. There’s zero reason that if we enjoy doing that together during this stupid mission impossible, that we shouldn’t do it. But I don’t want to anymore if you’re going to go catatonic afterward. That’s not hot. That’s not sexy. It makes me feel like shit.”
“Then we should stop.” I made it sound so simple, and what was more, I said it as if it was, when it was anything but. Inside, my thoughts were festering, growing tentacles and suffocating me. Because while Les could be cavalier about sex, I’d tried and I wasn’t good at it. And I’d rather have Les pissed at me over being a dick than me be heartbroken when this stupid ruse reached its expiration date and Les went back to his old ways on tour. But fuck, the way I felt right then, it was already too late.
“Done.” Les clipped. He yanked the keys from the ignition once we stopped outside the cabin, then stomped inside.
I woke hours later, a glance at the clock showing three in the morning. My temples throbbed with a headache that pulled me out of bed and toward the kitchen in search of ibuprofen. Les’s bedroom door was cracked, the room dark. I tossed a couple of pills in my mouth and chased them with two full glasses of water to clear the desert off my tongue.
I set my empty glass beside the sink and listened to the twang of guitar rising from the stairwell, then followed the sound to the basement quietly.
Ever have a flash where, for just a second, you see someone you’re used to seeing daily as if they’re new, like it’s the very first time you’ve stumbled across them? Devoid of the little quirks and habits you pick up on over time, devoid of personal history. Just a stranger you glimpse from across a room. Just possibility. At the bottom of the steps, I turned, looking through the open door of the music room, and I saw Les just like that. It made my breath catch in my throat and my heart thunder in my chest.
He sat on the floor with his back to me, bare legs crossed as he softly strummed his guitar and hummed. His notebook lay open beside him, the white pages glowing beneath his dark scribbles, and the sliding door a few feet from me was open, letting in the sound of crickets to accompany the low croon of his voice. I’d never heard the song before. His naked back was slightly hunched, ink and imagery moving and shifting over muscle. I knew which of his tattoos had stories, and the stories behind them, and I knew which ones he’d gotten just for the hell of it. And now, I knew what it felt like to be inside him, to have his body in my thrall at the same time I was undeniably under his spell. It was addictive and intoxicating to a frightening degree. I’d always felt close to him; even when we were arguing, there was a bond that was almost brotherly. Now there was something new, something different. A place I wasn’t sure I’d be able to return from. Deep-seated, overwhelming desire.
I stood in the doorway listening until his back straightened, as if he sensed my presence, and he turned a look over his shoulder to find me.
“It’s good. New?”
He gave me a muted nod. “Came to me the other night. Been working on it ever since.”
“When were you going to share it with me?” I rested my head against the doorframe, my gaze pinned to the back of his neck where a tendril of ink disappeared into his hairline.
He seemed noncommittal and wary of my presence, one shoulder hitching up as he set his guitar down and replied, “Maybe tomorrow.”
I wandered deeper into the room and dropped down to the floor across from him with my back against the bottom of the couch. “So you’re just having what, an impromptu practice session at three in the morning?”
“I do this almost every night. Why do you think I sleep so late?”
I had no idea, other than guessing alcohol was involved. He laughed softly at my expression. My teeth sawed at my lower lip, and he kept watching me like he was waiting for me to tell him why I’d interrupted him.
“I’m jealous of you, you know,” I confessed.
He barked out a short, doubting laugh. “Why?
“Because you’re not afraid of anything.” He’d never seemed to care what people thought of him, wasn’t afraid to bomb an interview, or of getting too attached to anyone. Wasn’t afraid to fail.
“Jesus. You have no clue.” He sighed and bent his knees up, resting his forearms over them. “I practice everything before I show it to you to make sure it’s not complete garbage.”
“I don’t think you’re capable of writing garbage.”
“Oh, I am. You just never see it.”
“Why not? You hear my garbage all the time.”
“Why do you think, Ev? I want your respect. I want you to think I have some clue as to what I’m doing. I constantly feel like I have to measure up, earn my place.”
Anytime we were working together there’d be these moments when he’d pause looking at me, like he was gauging my reaction. I always thought he was just a glutton for praise or that he was waiting for me to catch up or add something to the song. But now he was telling me point-blank that he was looking for my approval. Thinking about it made me feel things I didn’t want to feel toward him. An intimate tenderness that simultaneously broke my heart and made it clench up. “What are you even talking about? You’ve already earned your place a million times over.”
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“Tell that to the label,” he mumbled.
“What does that mean?”
He bit his lip and shook his head. “It means just what I said earlier tonight. You’re the real breadwinner here. You’re the one with the pipes and the mad guitar skills I can’t even hope to ever live up to. I have lyrics, a decent voice, and passable talent. All of which require you to make them better. If you decided tomorrow you wanted to go back to writing, too, you could. Easily. You’re the full package, Porter.”
His voice, so raw and vulnerable, sank into me like stones. I wasn’t even sure where to start. “You’re selling yourself way too short,” I began, looking him dead in the eye and hoping that my sincerity came across. “We’re a team, and I’d never have come this far without you. I’m not going to abandon you.”
He grunted something and picked up the guitar again.
“Can I look?” I reached for the notebook, wanting to see what he’d been working on. The hook he’d been humming looped around through my mind, searching for some kind of grounding wire.
He pulled the notebook just out of reach and shot me a small smile. “No. It’s not finished, and you’ve seen enough of my raw parts for one night.”
My chuckle brought his gaze to me again, fierce and glittering. “You know what I mean,” he tacked on.
I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry about tonight. I didn’t mean to make you feel used.”
“There’s a way to do it without making someone feel used, you know.” The raised eyebrows that followed told me I wouldn’t be so easily forgiven.
“Yeah, well, I guess I’m still learning.” I needed to tell him why getting this close to him was a bad idea. Why it was a bad idea that he was under my skin and constantly on my mind. That I wouldn’t want to let go and that one thing I knew for certain about him was that he was never meant to be tied down.