Once inside, Jerry told me we could relax and began to walk me towards a series of doors with various well known bands, and solo artists’ names on the doors. M3rCy was right at the end and Jerry explained it was so that no one disturbed them when they were resting before the gig.
Pushing the door open, the first person I saw was Tori, who threw me a look that could have killed then put her head down shaking it like she was disappointed. Placing her palms on the dressing table she pushed herself to stand and walked past me.
“Go home, little girl— you’re going to be eaten alive.” It was said in almost a whisper, but the tone of her voice told me in no uncertain terms it was a threat.
Gibson had begun to stand when I went in and was smiling when he saw me, his lips stretching to form a grin until the altercation with Tori. “What the fuck did she just say to you?”
Gibson’s face was dark and I was not about to upset the applecart when he was about to go on stage. “Welcome to the madhouse honey,” I replied.
Gibson’s face relaxed and he strode over and pulled me into a hug. “Damn, girl, you look good enough to eat.” Smirking, he bent his head, placing his lips close to my ears. “Oh, but I did that already, right? I’ll just have to work up an appetite on stage so that I can fit those seconds in I guess.” Leaning back, he grinned roguishly and came back in for a hungry kiss.
Normally I’d have been embarrassed, but the way that Tori had behaved made me want to show her that she was toying with the wrong girl. Just because I hadn’t said much didn’t mean I wasn’t capable of taking care of myself, so I kissed Gibson back, allowing my hands to snake up his t-shirt and run across his belly and back.
Gibson pushed back and stared at me with hungry eyes, cloudy with lust and he’d shivered more than once when I’d stroked my hands over him. He had certainly been getting aroused and his hands slipped to cup my ass and pull me against him.
“Fuck, Chloe. I can’t do this now. You’ve gone and made me hard in these skinny jeans. You need to keep those magic hands of yours in your pockets pre-gigs, darlin’.” The beaming smile on his face made his eyes twinkle and my heart fluttered in my chest at the way he was looking at me.
Someone coughed at the side of us and Gibson turned his head. My eyes followed his and we saw Lennox smirking and shaking his head. “Hmm…definitely a first. Get your horny ass over with the rest of us and put her down. You can play with her later.”
Gibson punched Lennox on the shoulder. “No one plays with Chloe. Not even me, and fuckers, y’all are gonna give her respect, y’all hear me?” Simon made a snorting noise and Mick and Lennox started laughing. Mick came over and put his arm around me. Gibson scowled and he put his hands up and backed away from me.
“Jeez, Gib, I was only going to welcome her into the fold, dude.” Mick turned to face me, “Seriously Chloe, it’s great to have someone to keep this dumb fuck in his place. Anyone that can control his dick is an asset to us all, right guys?”
Gibson’s jaw twitched and he threw a fuck-you look at Mick and his smile dropped like Gibson had slapped him. “Joking aside, glad to have you with us, Chloe. I’m sure Tori will be happy for the female company.” Glancing at Tori, she gave me a sarcastic smile and then went back to reading her Kindle.
Initially, I hated standing there being judged by all of them, wondering what they thought about me and maybe taking bets about how long I’d last. After a few minutes though, they were chatting easily and asking my opinion about stuff and I really felt accepted by them. Well… all but their female band member.
Rapid knocking and the ten minute call came from a muffled voice outside the door. Everyone in the room immediately got on their feet and I suddenly realized how conditioned these guys were. It may have been the same routine they did week in week out, but they were all extremely disciplined and professional as soon as it came time for them to go to work.
Staring out from the side of the stage was a surreal experience. Watching the thousands of heads, the nearest with faces so clear, watching their expressions, and when I looked further back the heads were just dots to the point I couldn’t even ascertain the hair coloring.
Monotonous low murmurs of noise from the sea of heads echoed in the stadium until they killed the lights and then there was an instant silence. I was in awe at how the flick of a switch could control that many people.
Once that initial act had sunk in, the anticipation of the crowd to the band coming on stage had begun to grip them and there was a low buzz of conversation. I stood waiting with them and for the inevitable roar of appreciation from them when Gibson and the rest of M3rCy were visible on stage.
I was extremely excited at being given the privilege of seeing M3rCy perform at such close quarters and like the crowd, I was buzzing as well, especially since I knew Gibson intimately by then. I was still getting my head around that thought when the bass boomed out of the amp next to me, and I almost jumped out of my skin with fright.
Stunned, then shocked to the core by the sudden noise and the pace their performance moved at, it took me a couple of minutes to focus at what was going down on stage. Gibson was Gibson at his best, flirting with all the women, but he never touched anyone, not like in the old days when he was being dragged off of female fans at Beltz.
That performer had been a boy. The version I was looking at in front of me right then was very much a man. A man who could do and have whatever he wanted. Girl after girl threw numbers on stage and Gibson played into that by picking them up and putting them in his pockets.
Tori came off stage during a song where there were no keyboards and stood beside me. Folding her arms she said, “I give you a week.” Inclining her head at Gibson she said, “Baby girl, he’s way too hard for you to handle. Trust me. That right there is a lot of man. He can play rough.”
I had already made my mind up about her. Anything she said I was going to suck it up even if I didn’t like it. Turning to look at her, she was giving me a smirk, and I could see that she looked smug.
Tori had a trump card; I’d seen that look before and there was no way I was giving that girl the satisfaction of seeing me running scared. “And you’d be the one to know that how?”
Snickering she said, “Well, he almost cut me in two when he made me come. And he’s rough. So…” Eyeing me up and down, she took a towel down from her shoulder and dried sweat from her arm then placed it back there again with a smug smirk on her face.
Her words demolished me and as I looked up at Gibson I almost faltered in my resolve, but he was doing an acoustic set of “Inches from Paradise” sitting at my side of the stage with a single set of blue spotlights shining on him.
I stopped thinking and started listening, mesmerized. When he finished the song, it was as if he sensed I needed him and turned, smiling over at me. However, when he saw Tori speaking to me, his face became dark and he began to stride across the stage in my direction. As soon as I saw his reaction, I was sure she had been telling me the truth.
Overwhelming emotions of jealousy, loss and hopelessness threatened to cripple me and I stood there for a moment, my eyes flicking between Gibson and Tori, then out to the crowd that were predominately women at the front. I then wondered how I was supposed go forward with everything I knew about him? All that temptation day after day, staring him in the face.
Before Gibson could get to me Tori stated, “Day one, Chloe. That’s when he made me come. He’s a one and done kind of guy. You want to try to tame that dick? Good luck girl, but if I were you I’d get that shiny little luggage bag of yours and get out of Dodge, because he’ll break your heart and you don’t look like the kind of girl that can deal with the shit that’s gonna be slung in your direction.”
Swallowing hard, I knew that if Tori hadn’t delivered her last few sentences in the way she had, in all probability I’d have made the decision to cut and run, but when I saw the look on Gibson’s face, I knew that someone had to place their trust in him.
Against
all the odds of us meeting again, against everything my head was telling me, I was still standing right there in front of him. Someone had to place their trust in him sometime, and he’d asked that it be me.
Smiling at Gibson, I blew him a kiss and his concerned, furrowed brow seemed to disappear with the impact of it. A wide smile spread and he winked sexily at me, making my panties instantly wet.
Confident for the moment I was making the right choice, I turned back to Tori stating, “Yeah, maybe that’s the difference between you and me. There’s a huge difference between five years and five minutes, honey. Maybe if you hadn’t been so blatant and easy, you’d have had more success.”
I gave her an intentional smug smirk and looked her up and down. “Then again…maybe not. By the way, I’m not the pushover you think I am. And, for your information, I fight dirty. So bring it on Tori, because Gibson wants me and you just made my mind up for me. So…I guess I’m definitely staying and unless you stop having designs honey, my guess is your card is marked.”
Shaking inside, I was impressed at how confident I sounded when I delivered my warning. My epic performance with Tori, the first class bitch, was almost as good as the one Gibson had just finished on stage. I felt that whatever was going on was between me and Gibson and what came out of it may be something and nothing, but for that moment I’d made up my mind to be with him.
Gibson came off stage and scooped me up in his arms, my legs wrapping around his waist as his hands slid under my ass in support like a well-practiced routine. Backing me up against the wall, his sweaty face was inches from mine.
As we walked away from the stage, the lights came on and the crowd began to leave. “Love Runs Out” by One Republic played on the tannoy and Gibson hummed the tune for a moment, then turned and looked at me again.
“Are we okay?” Smiling, I nodded and his mouth crushed mine in a devastatingly mind blowing kiss and my heart raced as my senses went into overdrive. When he drew back to look at me he gave me a knowing smirk. “Promise you won’t laugh?” Furrowing my brow, I nodded again.
“Chloe… right here, at this moment you give me reason. I almost asked him what he meant, but something inside told me that what he had said was a big deal for him so I just smiled slowly and shook my head bashfully, then dropped my gaze. Gibson’s finger crooked under my chin and he lifted my head to fix my gaze again. “So Chloe Jenner, are we going to do this? Are you ready to trust me?”
No way was I ready to give Gibson an all-access pass to my feelings and fully commit to anything, but I was happy to be with him until he gave me reason not to be. “Trust is somewhere in the future for me, Gibson. If you can accept that, then I’m here. Whatever else happens is up to you.”
Gibson nodded and pulled me in for a hug, and I knew then that it was really the beginning of something between us. The odds of us ever even coming across one another again had been an almost an infinite number, so I figured as long as I had one rule, if he raised his voice in anger to me or I felt threatened by him, then that would be my cue to leave.
The odds were definitely stacked against me with Gibson and I knew I was choosing a dangerous path to go down, but I had played it safe with Kace and look how that turned out. Gibson had said we get one life and that I was different. I had barely existed for the previous year with Kace, but with Gibson I felt I had lived a year in a day when I was with him… and he made me feel safe.
There was definitely some rough times in our future with the constant fear of what Kace’s next move would be and how the media would deal with us as a couple. And I’d be hated by Gibson’s fans. Those thoughts petrified me, but I knew wanted to be with him, so I had to trust the team of people working with him to keep me safe.
“You can be with someone a lifetime and not know them,” Gibson said once to me as well. That was certainly true about Kace, I thought I knew him well and being with Gibson and seeing how he was in public and private, in one day I felt I had a better insight into him than I ever had with Kace.
All it had taken was a few days for Gibson to rock my world as I knew it and already I was thinking Gibson’s legacy to his kids of his reputation as a womanizer could stand, or I could face the challenge to change that.
I was scared as hell about trying to fit in to his future, but he’d chosen me and gone to lengths for us to get that far, so I figured it was time for me to meet him half way.
To be continued
OTHER TITLES BY K. L. SHANDWICK
Everything Trilogy
Everything Isn’t Enough
Everything She Needs
Everything I Want
***
Love with Every Beat
ABOUT K. L. SHANDWICK
K. L. Shandwick lives on the outskirts of London. She started writing after a challenge by a friend when she commented on a book she read. The result of this was "The Everything Trilogy." Her background has been mainly in the health and social care sector in the U.K. She is still currently a freelance or self- employed professional in this field. Her books tend to focus on the relationships of the main characters. Writing is a form of escapism for her and she is just as excited to find out where her characters take her as she is when she reads another author's work.
Website: http://www.klshandwick.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kl.shandwick
Twitter: https://twitter.com/klshandwick
Table of Contents
DEDICATION
CHAPTER 1 - M3RCY ME
CHAPTER 2 - TOWELS
CHAPTER 3 - LUCKY GIRL
CHAPTER 4 - GETTING IT OFF THE GROUND
CHAPTER 5 - TAKING IT IN
CHAPTER 6 - HIT IT
CHAPTER 7 - BREAKING FREE
CHAPTER 8 – COWARD
CHAPTER 9 - FLYING NORTH
CHAPTER 10 – NESTING
CHAPTER 11 - PLAYFUL BANTER
CHAPTER 12 - SHE HUNG UP
CHAPTER 13 – DINNER
CHAPTER 14 - THE WINNER
CHAPTER 15 - STUPID DECISIONS
CHAPTER 16 - SWALLOWING HARD
CHAPTER 17 - STEAM
CHAPTER 18 – CONFUSION
CHAPTER 19 - HUH
CHAPTER 20 – EXCITED
CHAPTER 21 - EASY
CHAPTER 22 – TRUCE
CHAPTER 23 - UNWELCOME FEELINGS
CHAPTER 24 – COMPASSION
CHAPTER 25 – CONFESSIONS
CHAPTER 26 - FRESH START
CHAPTER 27 - DIFFERENT SIDE
CHAPTER 28 - PARTYING HARD
CHAPTER 29 - PRYING EYES
CHAPTER 30 – SUPERMAN
CHAPTER 31 – EXPECTATIONS
CHAPTER 32 - BREAKING DOWN
CHAPTER 33 – FIERCE
CHAPTER 34 – RECLAIMING
CHAPTER 35 – DESERTED
CHAPTER 36 – STARGAZING
CHAPTER 37 - READ WRONG
CHAPTER 38 - PASSPORT
CHAPTER 39 - SOMETHING I NEED
CHAPTER 40—REARING UP
OTHER TITLES BY K. L. SHANDWICK
ABOUT K. L. SHANDWICK
Romance: Gibson's Legacy ( New Adult Contemporary Erotic Romance) (Last Score Book 1) Page 33