There aren't a lot of couples left dancing, but I make us get into it anyway. I'm a dancer by trade and Dax is a drummer so even though this isn't our usual scene, we fall into the groove like we're professionals. We both know how to find our rhythm, baby.
I almost pee my damn pants when the next song the band decides to play is You Make Me Feel So Young. Of course that's the one they'd play for me and Dax, with our six year age gap.
“Does it bother you that I'm older than you?” I ask him as he spins me in a circle. I've asked him this before, I think, but the drinks are making me feel a little … you know, Crazy Sydney-ish.
“You can't possibly be serious?” Dax asks as he clasps my right hand in his, laying the other on my hip and grooving our bodies to the music, grinding us together in a way that's maybe edging on inappropriate. Not that I give a fuck. Appropriate is just a social construct that I haven't followed in years. “You're beautiful, smart, witty. And Sydney, it's not like you're old. You're fucking twenty-nine for Christ's sake.”
I lay my head against Dax's chest and feel his breath stir my hair.
“You know, everyday since our cover came out, I've spent at least a good half an hour staring at it.”
“Did you masturbate to it?” I whisper and feel his body vibrate with another chuckle.
“Maybe.”
“So did I.”
Dax gives me a full, throaty laugh this time, finishing up the song with a flourish and a bow. When he rises back up, he takes my hand and draws me to our table for another round of drinks, watching as I suck a green olive between my lips and stare at him.
“This is the best date I've been on in years,” I tell him honestly, setting my drink aside. “And it's not because of the location or the music or the food, Dax. It's the fucking company.”
“You're going to kill me tonight if you keep talking like that,” he says, this tender affection in his eyes that makes my breath catch, my heart thunder. My nipples are suddenly hard and I find myself squeezing my thighs together to fight a rush of desire. God, I love this guy. He's just so … well, cute. That's what he is. He's a nice goddamn guy. And I've never dated one of those before.
“Well, it's true,” I tell him with a faux haughty lift of my chin, flashing a sudden smile. Something about Dax makes me want to be goofy. It's a good thing, too, because when he gets nervous, he starts to get goofy, too. I think we'll work well together, me and him. Which is good because you know how I just … do things? You know, just for the sake of doing them? Well, I purchased a dress at that boutique with my brother's credit card. First off, he owes me. And second, I found this lacy see-through mermaid gown that drags on the floor and highlights all my curves. I just had to have it.
Now I just need him to pop the question. Either that or I'll have to do it. I guess I don't much give a shit either way, but there's this gleam in his eye right now that has me curious.
“Let's get out of here,” he says, reaching over and taking my hand. I rise to my feet and follow him outside. I'm glad I'm not wearing flats because Dax starts to run, taking me with him, pounding the streets of New Orleans as we laugh and our bodyguards keep up with us in easy jogs.
Dax takes me all the way over to Bourbon Street, weaving us into the colorful crowd, lighted signs turning the street a million different colors, old buildings and balconies drawing my eye up and around. There's so much to look at, a million things. It's overwhelming.
I'm panting and smiling as he drags me along and then pauses, pushing me up against the wall outside a bustling restaurant and kissing my face off. My hands curl around his shoulders as Dax puts his palms on either side of my head and leans down to kiss me properly, his tongue taking over my mouth with that icy sting of his, freezing me and then switching on the heat, so that I melt into a goddamn useless puddle.
Fuck, he owns me. He so owns me.
When Dax slides one hand down and under my dress, I gasp, biting his lower lip as he teases my clit piercing with his thumb, slicking his way down to my opening and playing with the hot aching plushness of my folds.
There are people everywhere, so many of them that we get lost in the fray, jazz music leaking out the door nearest us and mixing with the excited chatter of tourists. I'm not even ashamed to be one, standing there in that wild energy, my young rockstar boyfriend sliding two fingers into my hot cunt. Dax wraps his other arm around my waist and pushes my body hard into the wall with his, grinding his erection against my hip bone as he fucks me with his hand in a way I've never been fucked by any other man—not with a cock, a mouth, or otherwise.
“Oh god,” I groan as he takes my mouth again, drags an orgasm right out of me, the sounds of my pleasure disappearing down his throat as he tongues me, dominates me, takes me. Despite his cute quirky little innocence, Dax McCann's got a little bit of alpha in him.
By the time he lets me up for air, I'm panting and sobbing a little and I realize he's pressed something metal into the sweaty palm of my hand.
I lift it up, his fingers still buried inside of me, my pussy clamping and squeezing around him with the aftershocks of fuck knows how many orgasms. Dax is breathing hard, too, and I realize he's managed to fuck himself into an orgasm by rubbing against me. Holy shit, but that makes me hot.
But not as hot as the pair of rings in my hand.
“These …” I pant as Dax removes his fingers and slips them right into his mouth, cleaning off the proof of my arousal with his tongue and lips, drying his hand off on his shirt and smirking. I wish I could tear his pants off and feel his pierced cock fill me up. But right now, I just need to figure out how to speak English. “These are the ugliest things I've ever seen in my life,” I whisper as I study the French angelfish rings. There's a pair of them, just like the ones on my ankles. The jeweled fish are tiny, surrounding the white gold band, glittering in the lights of Bourbon Street. “I love them,” I gush as Dax leans his forehead against mine.
“I know it's not a traditional engagement ring, but … will you marry me, Sydney Charell?”
“You bet your sweet young ass I will,” I whisper as I grab the sides of his face with my multicolored fingernails and kiss his face off, pressing the rings against his slightly stubbled cheeks. When I pull back, Dax slips one on my finger and one on his. It's not very traditional, but dude, we just fucked in the middle of a crowded city street.
I think we're way past that.
We skip through Dallas and Albuquerque like they're nothing. Naomi and Turner, Ronnie and Lola, they flat-out refuse to go to anymore clubs which sends Brayden Ryker into another cursing fit, but finally he just backs off and leaves us alone to grieve.
The only thing that keeps me going is Sydney, her fingers curled through mine, her warm breath on my shoulder while she sleeps. I know that as soon as this is over—if I live through it—that I'll be spending a long, long, long time grieving the loss of one of my best friends. But right now, thinking about her only makes me pine for oblivion and I can't do that, not when we're so close to the end.
Not when I get to marry Sydney Charell.
I touch the stupid fish ring, and it's not like I don't know that it's ugly as sin, but … it suits her. All of her color and her craziness and the weird eighties clothes that she wears.
Once we're parked firmly in Vegas, the hideous desert sun beating down on our heads, Turner calls us all outside and we huddle in the corner of the lot against the chain-link fence smoking pot and drinking beers, the camera crew's eyes focused firmly on our little group. But at least they keep a slight distance. Naomi pulls out a pair of scissors and we surreptitiously pass them around, snipping the cords on our mics.
“We probably have, like, seconds to figure this out,” Turner says as he looks at our ragtag little group of idiots. “Basically, there's no way in fuck we're sneaking out of this place.” He glances over his shoulder at the randomly placed guards along the fence. They are everywhere, keeping us in as much as keeping the raging fans out. He looks back at us and th
en sighs, sweat already dripping down the sides of his face. “We're using Ronnie and Lola to get the fuck out of here.”
“I told the fucking ranga that I'm pregnant and want to see a doctor. As pissed as he is at Naomi, he agreed to get a van together,” Lola says with a wary smile that says she's excited about the baby but just as nervous as the rest of us as to how we're getting out of this thing.
“We'll all pile in the van with our shit stuffed into some duffel bags, and we'll change at the chapel. We found one that's right next to an OB/Gyn's doctor's office and just down the street from the License Bureau. We'll stop in, grab the marriage certificates, and walk back to the chapel.”
“How romantic,” Sydney says dryly, but there's this hint of excitement in her voice that says that maybe it is kind of exciting. I sure as hell hope so because till death do us part could be three hours from now… or sixty years from now. Knowing myself, I'm sure I'll be sticking this out to the end no matter what. Frankly, I'm praying for the latter.
“It's called the Littlest Rocker Chapel,” Naomi says dryly as one of the producers for our stupid TV show makes his way toward us, probably to inquire about our fucked-up mics. “And there's a guy that looks like Kurt Cobain that does the ceremonies.”
“This is fucking crazy,” Ronnie whispers as he stands up straight and slides his hands into his pockets. “I can't believe I let you talk me into this.”
“You'll be thanking me later when all the shit goes down,” Turner says, some of the usual cocky edge missing from his voice. It's hard to swagger and smirk when people are dropping like flies around you, I guess. “So. Whatever you want to bring, find some way to smuggle it in the bathroom under a towel or something and then stuff it in one of the bags.”
“Excuse me,” the producer says as Turner sticks his hand into the center of the group.
“On three,” he says with a small grin, “we all shout like, something cool or whatever.”
“Maybe we can summon Captain Planet to take out the big, bad corporate monsters?” Sydney suggests and I find myself grinning from ear to ear.
“The fuck are you talking about?” Turner asks as Naomi raises her eyebrows and Lola looks confused as hell.
“Too young or too underprivileged to have seen Captain Planet and the Planeteers,” Ronnie explains with a sad smile, putting his hand in over his friends. “Earth, fire, wind, water, heart. Turner can be Captain Planet himself. Now let's go.”
He turns on his heel and pulls Lola along with him, flicking the remains of his cigarette in the producer's direction and ignoring the man completely.
“I still don't get the reference,” Turner says, but I'm not about to explain a nineties cartoon that my dad said was the devil and banned me from watching because it made demonic references to magic and witches. What he meant was that the idea of five teens fighting to protect the world from corporate corruption and environmental destruction was abhorrent to his strict conservative ideals. I only got into the show when I turned twenty-one.
“Do you think we'll get a wedding night?” Sydney asks hopefully as we walk slowly back toward the buses and listen to both Naomi and Turner tell the producer to eat shit.
“Doubtful,” I admit, but I grab her hand and pull it to my mouth anyway, giving her warm sweaty skin a kiss. “But once we get back to LA, I promise to give you a thousand wedding nights.”
“I want to go on a honeymoon to someplace snowy and remote, hole up in a cabin surrounded by snow and spend days making love. Fucking is okay, too. You can bring your restraints or whips or whatever the hell else you want to try.”
“Shit, with the money we've made, I'll buy you a cabin.”
“Maybe give me a baby, too?” she asks, and I grin.
“Maybe.”
We climb the stairs to the bus and get ready for the wedding.
“I'm gonna chunder,” Lola says, putting her head between her knees as Ronnie rubs her back and passes over a bucket. I have no idea where he got it from, but I'm fucking glad that it's here. She's already threatened to puke twice and we've been in the van for ten minutes.
“Please don't,” Turner groans, laying his head back against the seat as I glance over my shoulder. “If you do, then I will and then it'll be like The Exorcist up in here.”
Naomi smiles tightly at me, and we share this guilty look where we acknowledge the very basic fact that Paulette murdered Blair. What right do we have to get in this van and drive to some chapel in the middle of a desert to get married? Why should we get to be happy when our friend is dead?
It only lasts for a second because I look away. Thinking about Blair makes me feel … disconnected from the world. I don't have that luxury right now. Right now, I need to be here. I need to experience this, drink in every moment, and I need to do it while on high alert.
“This the place?” Raelia—the giant female bodyguard chick—asks as we pull up to a small parking lot and I spot the chapel next door, this tiny church with a giant bell tower and a mural of Kurt Cobain holding a guitar painted onto one side.
Uh-huh.
If I wasn't already thoroughly accustomed to weird shit, I'd probably be experiencing some sort of … shock? Here I am, in a van full of rockstars, about to get married to an ex-stripper whose brother wants to kill me. And we're going to do it all for like, a hundred bucks apiece in a shady Las Vegas chapel with a drive-through attached.
But don't worry—we sprung for the classy upgrades, like you know, flowers and stuff.
“This is it,” Ronnie says as our bodyguards park the van and we climb out onto the sizzling pavement. The TV crew pulls up right next to us, but we knew this was going to happen. It was inevitable. Everyone knows we're all planning on getting married—they saw us buy rings, saw the girls buy dresses at a place that Paulette picked out for them—but that doesn't mean we need to give either the Washingtons or the Hammergrens time to sabotage our shit.
“Let's go,” Turner says, hauling one of the duffels up his shoulder and hopping the short row of scraggly desert bushes between the two parking lots. Our guards look a little confused and, of course, they immediate get out their phones to call Brayden Ryker, but that's okay. We'll be in and out of this place in a jiff.
We head down the block to the Office of Civil Marriages and walk inside. Nevada has an online form that can be filled out in advance, so we took advantage of that on the bus. All we have to do is pay our fees and show our IDs—our real ones this time. And then we're off to the chapel itself.
Inside, it's cool, the AC running on full blast, the walls covered in framed portraits of 'celebrity weddings' that have taken place here. Of course, most of the the celebrities are D-list reality TV stars or one-hit wonders who had their days in the sun back in the eighties.
“Yo,” Turner says, tossing the heavy duffel onto the floor and banging his fist on the counter. A woman who looks remarkably like Courtney Love from the nineties—blonde, big lips, small boobs—appears from the back, passing through a dark curtain. I wish I could describe the look on her face. “We're here for the four o'clock spot. Three couples. You said you could fit us in quick. We've got a show tonight.”
The woman sputters for several long minutes as she spots the cameras and then finally holds out a stack of clipboards with paperwork on them. We all fill them out, hand over our marriage licenses and our credit cards and then follow along as the Courtney Love imitator—wearing a replica of the wedding dress the real Courtney wore in her wedding with Kurt Cobain—takes us back to some dressing rooms to change.
The girls take one, the boys the other.
“See you on the other side,” Sydney says, smiling as she slips into the room across the hall with a smile. Naomi follows after her, hauling a duffel bag of her own, and then closes the door behind them.
“At least I'm not fat yet, right?” I say as I smooth the short white dress into place. It's cut just above the knee, the sweetheart neckline low enough to show off the girls, the cap sleeves cute and feminin
e. Basically, it's nothing at all like anything I ever wear—except for the fact that it's kind of slutty. Well, as slutty as white wedding dresses really go.
“I can't even believe that I'm being forced to do this,” Naomi murmurs as she slips into the long white gown that Sydney basically forced her to buy. It's all lace on the top with thin straps and a deep V-neck. The skirt is big and full, falling gently to the floor as it fans around her. “And I don't mean marrying Turner,” she corrects as I raise an eyebrow. “I mean being forced to rush through this just in case I die tonight. It's sick.”
“It's not where I expected to see myself at thirty, that's for fucking sure,” Sydney says as she slips into a full lace gown that's almost see-through. It clings to her body in all the right places with strategically placed bits of opaque fabric beneath to hide her lingerie. And trust me—we all got some. After we picked out our dresses, we headed out to lunch and then moved onto some serious sexy time shopping. I bought a strap-on, but I think I might wait to ask my new husband if I can fuck him in the ass with it until later. Doesn't seem romantic enough for a honeymoon night, right? That is, if we even get a honeymoon night.
“Can you even see my feet underneath this thing?” Naomi asks, standing up and looking a fuckin' vision in the fairytale ball gown. Since we didn't have time to get custom made dresses, we had to go with floor models. This one hadn't needed much alternation at all. Naomi has such a perfect body, she slid right into it like it was made for her.
“Nope,” Sydney says and Naomi nods briskly, kicking off her white heels and sitting down in a chair to slip her knee-high black leather boots on instead.
“Good. Then fuck it. I'm wearing boots”—she pulls them up her calves and drags up the zipper—“and shades.” Naomi stands up and pulls her black sunglasses down from her blonde hair. It's coiffed into a careful knot at the back of her head, courtesy of Sydney. I don't know shit about coiffing or whatever it's called. I let Trey's sister do my hair, too, giving me a nice dark bun near the crown of my head and letting her drape a small veil with pearls onto my scalp.
Get Hitched (Hard Rock Roots Book 9) Page 15