In one rough swipe, he seized the rest of them from my clutch and lobbed them at the bag so hard a couple of them bounced out. “Like hell!” His dark gaze was a dangerous glitter and his nostrils flared. “You need condoms, Scar? You get ’em from somewhere else. Anywhere else. The fuck!”
“Yeah. I’m sorry.” My apology was a squeak. What the hell had I been thinking? What a stupid, stupid lie. On the one hand, seeing the pain in his face seemed justified given my agony of watching him with other women last night. On the other hand, I never wanted to hurt him. Ever. “I am. Really.” I reiterated my apology and since he was still a wall between me and my bunk, I took a step to the side. “Can I get by? Please?”
It was several long hard beats of my heart before he stepped aside, grabbed his bag without zipping it, left the fallen condoms on the floor, and departed. The rhythmic stomp of each stair stabbed at my ears. As the bus rolled to a stop, I took my time, checking my bunk for anything I might have overlooked, although I’d already cleaned it thoroughly, and at this point, I didn’t give a shit if I forgot anything.
When enough time ticked by that the bus was surely emptied of the band, I shouldered my bags and bumped down the narrow staircase.
“There you are.” The tour manager offered to relieve me of my bags when I stepped into the hotel lobby. When I politely shook my head, he passed me a keycard. “Get some rest, sweetheart. You look beat.”
I smiled my thanks and zombie-walked into the elevator. Glancing down at the sleeve the card was in, I punched the correct floor number and sagged against the wall as the car began to move.
Rest. Maybe I would do just that. Mix my own sleeping potion and snooze from now until my phone alarm went off for the next entry on the itinerary. According to today’s schedule, we were in Milan. Italy! However, I’d learned better than to sightsee on my own after becoming lost on foot in Austria. It had been a Google-Maps, Google-Translator, no-taxi-in-sight disaster, and I never wanted to feel that helpless again. Asking Gage to go with me was out of the equation for a while.
He would stew angrily for a few days and then act as if nothing happened. Gage couldn’t stay mad.
“Gage, tell your sister you’re sorry.”
“No. It was her fault.”
His father hadn’t convinced him to apologize for shoving me when unseen by our parents, I’d slapped him first. But despite being grounded for the weekend, by the time Monday rolled around, he’d surprised me with a poster from the newest Marvel movie given to him by a friend who had a producer father. He’d even helped me hang it, grinning and chattering the entire time.
Coming back to the present, I picked up the room service menu. While scanning it for my own rumbling stomach, I habitually created a text of foods advisable to the diet Landon and Gage were trying to maintain on tour. Before hitting ‘send,’ I backed Gage’s name off.
After unsuccessfully trying to play guitar, watch television, choose anything for myself to eat, take a nap, I gave everything up when I couldn’t stop thinking of the condoms. I was in the wrong just as I had been years ago in the slap/shove incident. I was an adult now and should be acting like one instead of waiting for Gage to forgive and forget. Standing before the mirror, I used my fingers to comb my hair into a ponytail and dabbed at the dark circles beneath my eyes with concealer. I sent a text to the tour manager, and the reply to my inquiry came back immediately.
Gage was just a few doors down from me. Staring at the four numbers in the text, I waited for courage to miraculously rain like manna from the heavens, but it didn’t. With the room number etched into my mind, I pocketed the phone. My legs felt like weighted sandbags as I stepped into the hallway and carried myself past one, two, and then stopped before the third door with the matching four numbers. Lifting a shaky hand, I knocked.
I had rapped three times over a five-minute period when I decided he was either sound asleep or out. Equal parts relief and depression overtook me when I turned away. The elevator pinged open down the hall and Gage stepped out.
His attention was on his phone screen as he walked. I drank him in as he closed the distance between us, unaware of my presence. Putting the device closer to his lips, he spoke, seemingly dictating a text.
“Haven’t decided. But I’m really in no position to say no. Not like anyone else is beating my door dow―” And here, he cut the end of his sentence off when he suddenly locked eyes with me.
His arm fell. The text appeared forgotten as his long legs, encased in the sexy straight jeans that looked so good on him, slowed their stride. He wore a belt today, which was rare for him, and I had a split second fantasy of it looped around my wrists.
What the hell?
Gage and I had never been straight vanilla, but neither had he ever restrained me with more than a grip of his long guitar picking fingers.
“Wassup, Sis?” His casual tone sounded recovered from his fury of a couple of hours ago, but his features were still stony instead of relaxed.
Stop calling me that! “I have a confession.” Across the hall, a door opened, and one of the faces I recognized as a tech on the tour nodded at the two of us before departing toward the elevators. Unnerved at the interruption and our lack of privacy, I lost what focus I had. “Can I come in?” He’d made no move thus far to unlock his door, and I chewed at the inside of my lip while waiting for his ruling.
Without a word, he jabbed the keycard into the slot, flipped the latch, pushed the door open with one arm, and motioned with his chin for me to go ahead. After crossing the threshold, I hovered near the door when it clanged closed behind him. He flicked his phone to one of the tightly made beds and turned to face me, hands resting on his hips.
When I was quiet too long, he repeated, “Wassup, Sis?” And this time I was sure he’d stressed the ‘S’ word.
Shifting my weight, I forced the words out. “I was counting them.” My throat constricted, refusing to say the word condoms. His brows drew together, clearly not yet understanding what I was blabbing about, and I tried again. “I was going through your bag to count them. Not take them. See, when you left your bag with mine the morning of the festival—was it Budapest?” The towns were a blur. “It was the time you stayed in my room. I looked in your bag to make sure you had everything before our guys took the luggage. Anyway, I started folding the clothes that looked clean, and by the time it was all said and done, I noticed there were eight.” I braved a look and found his intent gaze roving my face. “Condoms. Eight. I don’t know why it stuck with me.” Yeah you do… “But this morning… This morning I just wanted to know if there were still eight.”
“Why?” His look had softened, and the borderline pity lurking in the depths of his dark eyes suggested he knew exactly why I’d felt the need to count condoms the morning after he’d had gorgeous women draped on his lap and rubbing against him on the dance floor.
I felt one of my shoulders lift in the barest shrug, and my reply was mumbled to the carpet fibers. “I don’t know.” There was no way I would say it aloud—would give a voice to the wondering if he’d banged one or more of those women against a bathroom stall. When I thought about it, despite the gentleness of his question, ‘why?’ had been a kind of asshole thing to ask me. Boldly, I lifted my gaze to his and tacked on, “Bubbah.”
I’d put up with ‘Sissy’ for the better part of a week, but ‘Bubbah’ was his undoing. I saw it in the set of his jaw and felt it in his fiery glare.
Pivoting away from me, he bent, jerked his bag from the floor, and slung it onto the bed. The grate of the zipper was loud in the silence that had settled. He upended the bag, letting the clothing free-fall to the bed. A charging pad and an electronic tablet bounced onto the mattress. His shaving kit skittered to the edge of the bed. Grabbing the foil packets as they appeared, he placed them together in a haphazard pile. But they were easy enough to count. Six. He seemed confused and frantically rummaged some more. When one of them fell to the floor, he stilled. Seemingly, we’d both remembered
at the same time the two left on the bus floor.
With a quick bend, he picked it up and turned back. I shivered at his closeness and the contact with his skin when he pressed it into my hand.
“I told you, I didn’t really want one…”
“You know what we need, Scar?” He cut off my protest and tipped his head down to mine. “We need closure.”
“Closure?”
“I miss you. I miss us. The way we used to be.” He continued to hold my hand, and his whisper stirred the fine hairs against my hairline. “I fucked up. And you know I’m sorry about that. I wished for so long we could find our way back. But if we’re not going to… We need to make a better last memory.”
My thoughts shifted to the barn, wondering if he was referring to sex, and before I could wonder too long, he confirmed it.
“One thing I hate, I mean really hate, to the point of obsessing about it constantly, is that the last time—our last memory of us together. It was hot. But shit, I was fucking fuckin’ you like a beast. And then it all went bad from there.” He dropped my hand but ran his fingers up my wrist, up my arm to my elbow and then down again. “I think I could deal a lot easier—we both could—if the last time was not a wall bang in a barn.” And then his thumb brushed my lips in that old familiar way, sending a jolt of lightning down to my belly and then farther. “If it was as sweet as it was hot…”
Could I do it? Bang Gage, knowing it was for one time only?
Yes! My body screamed, and acting on no will of my own, my tongue darted out, tasting his thumb.
Chapter 32
The intimate caress to the tip of his thumb caused a shiver to wrack his frame, yet at the same time, liquid fire lapped every cell of his body. Fuck, he had missed her tongue.
Just as much, he’d missed the look in her eyes when he touched her like that, when he kissed her… His chin instinctively dipped, but he curbed the instinct, waiting.
What he’d suggested was either the smartest proposition of his life or proof how much of a self-indulgent ass a former rock star could be. Later, when he looked in the mirror and reflected his intentions, he never settled on a clear answer. Not that he cared.
All he cared about was possessing her again. And in the process, getting Scarlette fuckin’ Conterra fantasies out of his system once and for all, so they could be best sibling-like friends. Her blues were partially hidden beneath her thick lashes for the longest as she evaded his eyes in favor of her slide on sneakers. Her lids lifted, but she stared beyond him, and he rubbed his dampened thumb into her lips. Finally, her eyes met his gaze, and she tongue lashed his thumb again, this time drawing it into her mouth with a suckle and holding it with her teeth for a moment.
He jerked his thumb from the heavenly ministrations of her mouth, and his lips crashed to hers, eager to replace his digit with his tongue. His fingers splayed the sides of her head, forking into her hair as he slanted his lips across hers and a guttural groan escaped the recesses of his soul when their tongues clashed.
The kiss was as wild as it was sweet. The force of it sent her stumbling backward, but he held her steady and groaned yet again when she clutched his shoulders for support. Her back hit the door and then her head settled into the groove of one of the panels. They fed and fueled on one another’s kiss. Her head was still in his hands when he drew back just far enough to ask, “So, yes?”
Her breathing was as labored as his was, and he drowned in the beauty of her flushed cheeks and passion-steeped eyes. A flicker of impatience crossed her expression, and unable to reach his lips, she kissed his throat. The heavenly slide of her lips and tongue made it to the hollow above his collar bone before he lost it and used her ponytail to tip her face back to his, capturing her mouth again. His fingers worked her shorts, and he hooked her panties, dragging until both garments hit her ankles. Inhaling the scent of her as he nipped at her neck, he pushed at his jeans when he felt his belt part under her hands. His fingers dug into her fine ass, reacquainting with the curves and valleys. Tracing the heat of her slit, he swallowed her whimper into their next kiss, and then her yelp when he plunged his fingers into the warm wetness that was all his. “So wet for me.”
Unable to wait, he knelt a bit and in one smooth movement replaced his fingers with his cock. Gripping her, he pulled her up with him, and cursed with familiar satisfaction when her legs wrapped him. When their rhythm had her wedged to the wall, her shoulders and head bumping, he managed some sort of thought process, enough to swing them around and still locked together dump her onto the tall bed. She released her arms from his neck, but not the grip of her legs and he straightened, maintaining his hold as he continued to rock her. Strands of her hair had escaped the ponytail and lay in wild disarray on the bed and clothing around her face. Beneath the sleeveless blouse, her tits bounced and he wished he’d taken the extra half a minute to rip the garment from her body. His mouth watered, missing what he hadn’t taken the time to taste.
Her head bumped his bag enough to send it over the opposite edge of the mattress, and her fingers curved, reflexively clutching the cord to his charger. Her eyes held his, the lids half closed. Hiking her legs up a bit higher, he angled his thrust and growled in satisfaction when those blues rolled back into their sockets and she screamed his name. Again, and again she shrieked, mixing his name with unintelligible syllables of gibberish. And then she was simply screaming. His ears thundered with his own pulse and he bit the tip of his tongue to hold himself back until he felt her legs tremble for the second time. With a roar of his own, he slammed himself to her as he came, and it was then he noticed as if in an alternate reality, the condoms settling from their bounce all over the bed.
The multi facets of irony in what had just happened didn’t escape him.
The condom he’d placed in her hand was unopened on the floor behind him somewhere.
Once again, they’d fucked like animals.
And he was no closer to giving her up as a lover and having her back as a sister.
Chapter 33
“Son of a bitch.”
At his curse, I drug my eyes open and couldn’t keep from moving my chin enough to nuzzle the dark damp strands of hair resting against my face. He’d collapsed crossways on the bed with me, and one of his legs lay intimately between mine.
Lifting his head, he eyed his task as he worked a few of my blouse buttons from their slots. His fingers stroked the valley between my breasts and then the swell of each. Dipping beneath my bra, he tugged at one of the achy taunt nipples. His words were breathy. “That didn’t exactly go as planned.”
Meaning we’d screwed like wild animals again? True dat. But I couldn’t add my amen yet. My limbs were still rubbery and my lips wouldn’t part.
“Want to go again?” He’d liberated one of my girls from the confines of the bra and now we both watched as he toyed with it. My heart slammed against my ribs, but I controlled my breathing.
“Whatever.” I gave in to the urge to tease him with words as much as he was teasing me with touch. “We can have a do-over if you want to.”
His gaze darted to mine, and I saw the flicker of hurt before he aptly read the sass in my eyes. “We don’t have to.” He pressed a finger between my lips, wetting it and brought it back to his playground. “If you don’t want to.” The cool air of the room bathed the damp tip, making my body long for his mouth, not his hand.
Summoning every ounce of my sapped strength, I rolled to him, running a hand up beneath his tee shirt, stopping on what I sought. I smiled in gratification to hear his groan when my fingers circled one of his nipples. “Want to take a shower? Play it by ear?”
It was a game we’d had between us in the past and my memories flickered pleasantly within the lobes of my brain.
Want to fuck? Maybe. Come swimming with me. We’ll play it by ear.
Want your dick sucked? Oh, I don’t know… Let’s take a shower. Play it by ear.
Which of course, ‘playing it by ear’ had never been a serious o
ption. Sex had always been the agenda from the beginning of any of our wordplay. As it was now.
Grabbing my hand, he tugged me upright, and we sprinted to the bathroom. A push shoved the door closed. We stripped the vestiges of our clothing in record time—socks, shirts, and my bra. He adjusted the shower and we stepped over the side of the tub and wrapped together beneath the spray.
His head dipped and I groaned when our lips meshed. Not that anything was on my mind now except the familiar fire burning through my every vein and capillary, but I’d already conceded some time ago that no kiss would ever be as good as the ones Gage and I shared. Our kiss was every bit as hungry as the one that had begun the crazy out of control ride in the bedroom. His mouth consumed mine and our tongues slipped and slid together in all of the ecstatic ways I remembered…
Until he stopped, and forcefully set me away.
In the lighting of this room, his eyes took on a whiskey hue as they skimmed from the lips he’d just kissed to my toes, which almost touched his. My body reacted as if it were his hands instead of his languid look caressing it. My nipples hardened, heat pooled into a wet ache between my legs, and the goose flesh prickled my skin.
Reaching out, he traced a finger down my chest and stopped at the sensitive patch of skin just below a slight bikini line leftover from days in his pool more than a year ago. “I love looking at you…”
“Ditto…” I slid both hands up hard flat abs and moved closer to glide them around to his backside. “New ink?” With my tongue, I traced the half-opened rose and its charred petals positioned in the center of his breastbone among all the barbed wire music staffs and notes I remembered.
“Like it?”
“Mmh, hmm.”
He ran a finger down the conclave of my chest. “Um, earlier, I didn’t ask and should have. You still okay this way?” His other hand remained on his own body and encircled around those long thick inches of pleasure. An answering throb or two pulsed between my thighs. At first, I misunderstood what he was asking, remembering all the times he’d indulged my voyeuristic side. But his next words cleared things up. “With nothing between us…”
Hung Out: A Needles and Pins Rock Romance Page 18