by Daisy Allen
“I wore this to fuck with Silas, that’s all.” The shake in her voice tells me everything I need to know. She’s scared, and she needs me to make her see what I see.
“You’re lying.”
She just shakes her head.
“You are,” I tell her again. “Don’t you know, after last night’s kiss, you can never lie to me again. It stripped everything that’s fake between us. All that’s left is truth.”
“And what is the truth, Brad?”
This time I know the words to say. “That you want me every bit as much as I want you.”
With that, I pull her into me, tipping her chin up to meet my mouth when I lower it to hers. The heat flares as soon as we touch. My arousal for her deepens tenfold. I could fall into her mouth and live in bliss forever. Her deep red, soft, warm, mouth of a fucking temptress. The heat spreads through me to her. I can feel it in the way her body becomes softer, pliable, open to everything I’m offering her.
Suddenly, I’m tasting the sweetness of her tongue. Fruity from her recent cranberry juice concoction, and waxy from her lipstick. Somehow, it makes my cock even harder and I wonder how I’m ever going to get her from here to where I want her, naked, in bed, wrapped around my hardness.
There’s a soft moan as she pulls her mouth away from mine.
“Take me home, Brad,” she says, the words husky against her throat.
“Home?”
“Yes. I want to go home. With you. Right now.”
And she takes my hand and leads me out the door and into a future that is changed forever because of this moment.
***
“Are you ready?” I ask her, but somehow it feels more like me reassuring myself than her.
I’m sitting on the side of her bed, suit jacket discarded during that first frantic kiss when we arrived home. Shoes are kicked off and my shirt is half unbuttoned.
She, however, is still in her heels and her dress, that goddamn cock-hardening, stuff-of-my-sex-dreams dress, hugging every inch of her curvy body. The low V-neck teases me with a hint of that deep, deep valley between her breasts that I want to suffocate myself in. She walks over to me, kicking her heels off and pushing herself between my legs, spreading my knees apart. Somewhere in the ten-minute ride home back to her car, the power shifted, and now she controls everything. And I’m hers.
Her hands are on my shoulders, her hair falling over us. It reminds me of the hundreds of times we’ve rolled around in the grass, on the bed, play wrestling and tickling each other, her mane a cascade of curls hiding us from the world. In the back of my mind, I wonder how I had restrained myself from kissing her. Because nothing could possibly stop me now.
She must have the same thought because her mouth is suddenly on mine. Already it feels like the most natural action in the world—as if nothing else makes sense unless we’re breathing each other’s air.
Just as I wonder how much longer I can kiss her before needing breath, she pushes on my chest and steps back from the bed. I grab her hand, and she shakes me off, her eyes locked on mine, telling me not to worry, she’s not going anywhere.
She reaches around her back and I hear the metallic sound of a zipper sliding down its track. She starts to wriggle and pull on the front of her dress. Reluctantly it grabs onto every curve of her body, not wanting to leave her, and I don’t blame it. But soon, she’s standing here, in only a soft pink lace G-string and dangling gold earrings, and there’s really only one thing left to do.
“I love you, Butter,” I whisper to her and pull her onto the bed.
Chapter Nine
Emily
Present Day
“We’re here, love. Let me get out and help you with your bags.”
The Uber driver stands by the side of the road waiting for me with my suitcase and I realize I can’t hold it off any longer. I’m going to have to get out of the car. And then into that tour bus over there. Where he is. Where he’ll be for the next six weeks.
“Emily!”
There’s a friendly female voice greeting me as I wave goodbye to the driver.
I turn around and just in time to almost fall over as she knocks me to the side in a big hug.
“Um, hi,” I stutter, a little intimidated. She pulls away, still grinning, her face warm and open. And my nervousness melts away. I love this woman already. I recognize her as Sebastian’s new fiancée and from her picture in the album cover as a guest artist, but she’s so much…more in person.
“I’m Cadence! It’s going to be so good to have another female around. Between Hailey and I we’re just about even in battling the boys, but you should push us over into winning territory!”
I shade my eyes from the sun so I can look at her face, so animated. “Oh…what are we competing for?”
“Everything, babe. Everything. Now come on! Let me introduce you to everyone.”
“Er—”
“Oh, that’s right! You know everyone already. In that case, come on! I can’t wait to hear about what they were like in high school.” She grabs my big suitcase and walks toward the buses, I hurry my pace to a quick trot to keep up with her.
“Well, they were loud, annoying, ridiculously good-looking...and they knew it. They couldn’t hand in homework if their lives depended on it, but they didn’t care because they were going to be music gods.”
“No... I said describe them then...not now.” She throws her head back and laughs and I can’t help but fall a little more in love with her as I join in with her laughter.
“What did we get ourselves into, right?” She winks at me as we come to the door of one of three tour buses parked side by side. “Come on! Let’s get you settled.”
I linger a bit, taking in the size of the bus. The outside of it is completely black, the windows tinted and no words except a small painted logo on the door. “Rock Roadster” it says, in pink and yellow neon paint. But it’s the size of the bus that’s really impressive. It looms over me and seems to go on forever.
“Come on in, babe!” I hear Cadence’s muffled voice and through the dark tint I can just see her face pressed against the glass.
I hop up the stairs and almost fall back down again.
“Holy shit,” I slowly exhale.
“What?” Cadence calls from somewhere down the back of the bus. Her head pokes out from a door about thirty feet away. “Oh, this ol’ thing? Eh, it’ll do.” She laughs and then comes out and walks toward me. “Just kidding, it’s pretty fucking amazing, isn’t it? I’m new to all this too so I know what you’re feeling.”
Amazing is one way to put it.
First off, it’s bigger than my entire apartment.
As soon as you step onto the bus, it opens into a wide entertaining area. Six…no, eight single recliners line the two sides, swiveling so you can look out the window or toward the other chairs. I wander over and sink down into one.
Wow.
Soft, buttery white leather. I love white leather. Always have. Between the chairs are side tables, designed for champagne buckets and glasses. I look up and two flatscreen TVs line up against the windows.
A curtain separates the rest of the bus and I get up to explore a little more. I push aside the curtain and there’s long thin hallway running along the right side of the bus.
“We have four small rooms on this bus. The other bus is the same. We’ve decided to split up boys and girls, is that all right with you? The third bus is just bunks for the crew and assistants. Dennis …well, we don’t know where he stays, he just appears when he’s needed,” Cadence says.
“Yeah, great. But don’t you want to stay with your new fiancé?”
“Er, no. I’m not staying on a bus with those other guys. I’d never get any sleep. Anyway, take your pick. Hailey’s already put her stuff in the front room, but you can choose any of the others that you like. I don’t really care.”
I smile at her appreciatively. I’m feeling a little more at ease knowing that she’ll be on this trip.
I pull my suitcase int
o the second room from the front and can’t help but let out a little gasp.
The room is tiny but so luxurious. I can’t imagine how they can cram this much into one room. The double bed takes up most of the space, wall to wall, but there are sunken-in shelves on one side, a large-screen tv on the other, and a narrow but full length wardrobe. I jump onto the bed and spread out like a starfish, slightly giddy and immediately regret it. I don’t want to get off.
“Cadence?” I call out.
“Yeah, babe?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been this happy in bed,” I gurgle happily.
“Is that a challenge?” a voice speaks up and a head pokes around the doorframe. It’s Brad.
I scramble off the bed and to my feet. I’d had an idea of how I’d wanted our next meeting after the press conference to turn out. This wasn’t it.
“Brad!”
“Hey, Butter.”
“Don’t call me that.” I feel my forehead crinkle into a frown.
His left eyebrow raises, amused. “It’s better than ‘dick-wad.’”
He has me there.
Coming out from around the corner, his body completely blocks the doorway. It feels like the entire room is filled with him and I’m suddenly feeling a little claustrophobic.
“So, Dennis wanted me to come and talk to you.” His eyes flick around the room, resting on my luggage.
“What about?”
“About...how we’re going to do this.” His hand comes up and does a random gesture, a twirl in the air.
“What’s there to talk about? You do your job, and I’ll do mine,” I say with all the conviction I can muster and wonder which one of us believes it less.
“And it’s as simple as that?”
“Of course.”
He fingers the doorframe, fiddling with some loose woodchips. “A few days ago, you wouldn’t even talk to me. Now we’re just supposed to live together for six weeks, touring Europe, and you really think there’s nothing we need to talk about?”
“We’re not living together,” I say, busying myself with unpacking some of my clothes and sliding them onto clothes hangers.
“Fine, living on two tour busses within ten feet of each other. Is that better?”
“Kinda.” I slide off the bed and open the wardrobe door, using it as a barrier between us. I close it to see he’s stepped further into the room and pulled the sliding door closed behind him.
Now I’m really starting to suffocate. I back myself up against the bed, trying to create distance between us. My leg connects with the edge of the mattress and I sink down into it. He leans over me, his arms bracing on the bed, his thigh brushing my leg as he whispers into my ear.
“Do you really think we can forget everything that happened in the past?”
His breath is hot against my neck, and fuck, he smells so good. Familiar, but different. Older, more mature. Manly. Irresistible.
“Brad...” I say, eight years of pent-up frustration catching in my throat.
“Because, I don’t know if I can.” His finger tucks under my chin and he lift my eyes up to meet his.
“Brad...” I say again, because I can’t quite seem to find any other words.
He lowers his head and for a moment, I almost let myself believe that we can do this. That we can kiss and it be nothing. That it doesn’t carry the weight of the past. But we can’t.
“Brad!” I say again, this time firmly and pushing him away. The room is so tiny, his back slams against the door.
“Ow!” he cries out. his hand instantly reaching around to feel the wound.
“Shit! I’m sorry!” I cringe, biting my tongue to stop me from running my hands along his back to check if he’s okay.
“It’s okay. It didn’t hurt.”
“No, I mean...I’m sorry, we can’t do that. We can’t, Brad. It’s too...it’s just too much. I can’t do this if I’m worrying that you’re going to be trying to kiss me at every turn.”
“Okay, well, that hurt.” His shoulders drop, like a deflated balloon.
I can’t help but let out a little laugh. Same old Brad.
He comes over and sits next to me on the bed and I don’t move when he put his hand on mine. “I can’t believe you’re here.”
“I really can’t believe it either.”
“And yet, we can’t talk about what happened...?”
The bed shakes along with the shakes of the head.
“And we can’t...”
“We can’t anything. I’m serious.” I take a deep breath and force myself to look at him. I need him to know I mean what I’m about to say. “I need this job, and I need this story to be good. I need this opportunity. And I need you to not fuck it up for me. Please. Do this for me.” I don’t know it, but I squeeze his hand with every word.
He doesn’t move. Not even to squeeze my hand back. He just nods, and says, “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Of course, ‘okay.’ If it means that much to you, then I won’t do anything to jeopardize it.”
“Thank you, Brad.” I squeeze his hand again. This time on purpose.
“No problem.”
We sit there in silence for a moment. I can’t say what he is thinking, but I know that my thoughts aren’t of this time, or of this place, but of eight years before. And what could’ve been.
It’s minutes before either of us speak again. And when we do, it’s Brad who breaks the silence. “You know, I know you don’t want to talk about what happened—”
“Brad...” My voice is soft but firm.
He pulls his hand away from mine and presses his index fingers against my lips. “Shut up for once and let me finish.”
“Sorry.” His hand falls back onto the bed and my eyes involuntarily follow.
“Look, I don’t know what it is you’re feeling toward me, toward us. But it doesn’t change the fact that all I want is for you to be happy. It’s what I’ve always wanted. Always. Whether you’re working with us or not. I just thought I should say that. I didn’t ever think I’d get this chance to say it, so I am now.”
And I believe him. And from the look on his face, he knows I do. I just can’t open my mouth to tell him I feel the same way about him.
He doesn’t give me the chance to try, though. Propelling himself off the bed, he slides open my bedroom door and bellows. “Okay! Let’s get this show on the road! First stop, Cambridge, baby!”
He gives me a wink and one last long look before storming down the bus, leaving me to wonder.
Chapter Ten
Brad
It’s a good thing the bus windows are tinted. Or else I’d probably be permanently stuck to the side of one, my nose breathing a foggy pattern on the glass, trying to get just a glimpse of Butter this entire trip.
How can she still have this effect on me after all these years? Hadn’t I put enough time, enough space, hell, enough women between us? I shouldn’t still be able to remember the way her skin smells, the way her lips taste, the way she moved against me. But I can; everything is still seared into my memory, endless of layers deep, never to be shed from my mind.
Even now, the past and the present keep weaving in and around each other. Standing over her in her bedroom on the bus, the way she looked up at me is no different to how she looked eight years ago. And my body can’t fucking help but respond the same. I want her. All of her. Her body, her mind.
Just sitting here thinking of her, I can’t help but sport a raging hard-on. Sitting next to her on the bed, it was all I could do not to straddle over her and take her. Remind her of what it was like the one night we had together. The sounds she made, the way she came in my arms, her body spent, her eyes begging me for more. Fuck. She’s every bit as sexy as she was when she was eighteen. Who am I kidding? As stunning as she was then—it can’t compare to the woman she is now.
I want her. I want her future and I mourn the loss of a past we should’ve had together. If only she’d talk about what happened. Is she real
ly so embarrassed about how she acted that she won’t even let me get some closure? Or have I read it all wrong…that I’m the only one carrying a torch here, and this really is nothing but a job for her?
No.
There’s something more—I just don’t know what it is yet.
“Oi! Bradley! Get out here, the girls are here!” Jez yells from the living area on our bus.
I jump off the bed and practically fling myself out the door. Cadence greets me with a wave as she perches on Sebastian’s knee, and Hailey winks at me from her spot on the couch. Her legs are tucked under, settling in with a blanket.
“Um. Where’s um, where’s Bu- er, Emily?”
“Oh, she’s taking a nap on the other bus, so we thought we’d take the ride to Cambridge over here to give her some quiet and to get used to traveling. You guys can be kinda overwhelming,” Hailey tells me.
My heart plummets so fast I half expect to hear a thump at my feet. Really? Already? After all this time apart, now, just a day in, all it takes is for her to be out of sight for me to miss her this much?
“Good! It’ll give us a chance to give you all the gossip on that witch,” Jez snarls as he settles onto the couch with Hailey, rolling his eyes.
His comment draws a gasp from the girls, who look over to see Marius nodding. “Yeah, hell. Two fucking months with her. What a drag!”
“Oh, close your damn mouth, Brad. You know how we feel about your precious Emily.” Sebastian narrows his eyes, as if disgusted at just the mention of her name.
I’m stunned by their comments. She hadn’t come up in conversation for years now. I had no idea they felt this way about her.
“Still?” I ask them, turning to look each one in the face for a second.
“What do you mean, ‘still’? You think we can forget what she did? And what you were like for over a year after?”
“What? What happened?” Hailey and Cadey sit up, eyes wide, waiting for the story.
“It’s nothing. Don’t listen to them.” I wave my hand dismissively.
“She broke his fucking heart. Like, broke it into a million pieces or however the saying goes,” Jez growls, pulling on Hailey’s blanket.