My head was all over the place all afternoon, but by the time six rolled around and Alicia arrived, I knew there were a couple of things I needed to say to her before we left on tour. I buzzed her in, trying to convince my damn heartbeat to slow down.
None of what I was about to say was normal for me. Jesus. I felt like a teenager.
Alicia was oblivious to my crisis of confidence, throwing her purse down on my couch before turning, hands on her hips as she raved about the incompetence of some of the people she’d dealt with since leaving the office this morning.
“And then,” her eyes flashed in irritation, knuckles whitening as her fingers tightened on her navy pencil skirt, “he told me having double the number of people at the meet-and-greet wouldn’t be a problem. Can you believe his audacity? You’ll be there all damn night with that many people.”
“Asshole,” I muttered, but I didn’t give a shit about the meet-and-greet. I was listening to her, but it was really hard to focus on anything other than her standing in the middle of my living room looking the way she did.
She might not have realized it, but she’d come to a standstill right in the center of the spacious room. Soft light from the sunset outside made her loose hair almost glow where it fell past her shoulders. Lights were blinking on in the city below, making it look like she was on a postcard in front of the wide windows.
One heel clicked against the floor in her annoyance, eyes and stance fierce. She was fucking beautiful and brilliant.
Yanking me from my thoughts, she snapped, “Are you even listening?”
I closed the distance between us, winding my hands into her hair, my mouth crashing down on hers. Kissing her so hard, my lips stung, I was breathless when I released her. “I was listening, but I couldn’t stop thinking about doing that.”
Dazed, she blinked up at me, heat sparking in her sapphire eyes. “What was that for?”
“For believing me enough to stand by me this week.”
She frowned. “Jared, I—”
I gently brought a finger to her lips. “I’m not stupid. I know you must’ve wondered, but you stuck around anyway. That means something to me. A lot, actually.”
“I was just—”
“Doing your job,” I finished for her, a smile tugging at my lips. “Thing is, I don’t believe that anymore. The stuff you do for me goes way beyond the line of duty.”
Her eyes flitted from mine. “Maybe.”
“Hey.” I lifted her chin and held it between my fingers so she would look at me. I needed her looking at me when I said this. “It’s okay. What I feel for you, it …”
A strangled sigh escaped as I searched for the right words. Fuck. Why was it so much easier to write or sing than it was to talk? “This week was torture for me. I honestly don’t know what I would’ve done if Madison was pregnant with my baby. And not because of the kid. It would’ve been hard, but I would’ve learned to live with it.”
“Why then?” she whispered, tentative for the first time since I’d met her.
“Because of you.” Trailing my fingers across the soft skin of her cheek, I marveled at the way she leaned into my touch. She was precious to me, this girl. Everything she did and said and was, it was everything I never knew I needed in my life. She was everything. “Because it would've ruined things between us, and I couldn’t live with that.”
“Why?”
Christ. She was killing me with that question. Inching so close to her, I could feel her heart pounding almost as fast as mine was, I said the words I never in a hundred years saw myself saying to a woman. “Because I love you, Alicia Diamond. Somehow, some way, I broke all my own fuckin’ rules, and I fell in love with you. And I think, unless you’re the hardest, most dedicated worker of all time, that you love me too.”
Stunned silence followed my life-changing declaration. If I thought the word “why” was killing me before, I was wrong. The silence, that was what was really killing me. Her eyebrows jumped to her hair, and her eyes popped wide open.
Twin orbs of the clearest blue, the color of the ocean on a sunny day, stared up at me. She didn’t even blink.
“I, uh.” I started to turn away from her. Shit. What a colossal fucking mistake. “I—”
She grabbed hold of my arm, finally blinking as the corners of her lips lifted into what grew to become a radiant smile. “Give me second here, you fool. For a guy who can’t even admit we’re in a relationship, you just shocked the hell out of me. Of course, I love you too. I lo—”
I wanted to hear her say it again and again. And then again. But I needed to kiss her more than I needed my next breath or anything else in the world. Cutting her off by claiming her mouth with mine, I wrapped my arms around her and lifted her against me.
Her skirt bunched between us as she wound her legs around my hips, her arms winding around my neck. I felt her smiling against my lips before she broke the kiss. “I love you, Jared Larsen. I never thought I would be able to say those words out loud, but I love you too.”
Heart clenching and constricting in my chest, I knew in that moment that I was forever changed. There was no going back from this. Nor would I ever want to. A piece of her lodged in my heart right there. Irremovably, irrevocably, it now had her name written all over it in flashing neon letters.
My heart belonged to her. My soul belonged to her. I belonged to her.
CHAPTER 68
ALICIA
Jared kissed me like he was pouring his very essence into me. His lips were hungry and demanding yet tender and loving at the same time. His stubble scraped my skin from the force of his passionate kisses. He was devouring me, consuming me, and I let him. Because how could I not? I was doing the same to him.
Our limbs tangled, hands reaching and tugging and exploring. His scent enveloped me, familiar, comforting, and exhilarating all at the same time.
We stumbled back, and Jared hit the couch, pulling me down with him until I was straddling his lap. Our mouths remained fused together as our hands started getting rid of the layers of fabric between us.
Heart slamming against my chest, I pressed myself up against his warm skin after our shirts hit the floor. Body like marble cased in velvet, he felt like heaven as he held me close to him. My fingers wound into his hair, his skating up and down my sides.
He cupped my breasts and ran his thumbs along the sensitive skin underneath before bringing a nipple to his hot, wet mouth and kissing me there. My head rolled back, my eyes closed. It would never cease to amaze me what pleasure this man could evoke in my body.
Groaning against my chest, he licked and kissed his way back to my mouth. My nails dragged from his scalp to his back, eliciting a low growl from the back of his throat. Hands working on the zipper of my skirt, he tried rolling it off, but the position I was in made it difficult.
Clumsily, I lifted myself off him, and together we got the darn thing out of the way. Jared rolled my soaked panties down with it, baring me to him completely.
He shifted and lay me on my back on the couch, eyes roaming along every inch of my exposed skin. Not the first time he saw me totally buck naked, but it was the first time my body wasn’t the only thing bared to him.
As I lay there, my heart and mind were exposed to him too. When his eyes met mine, it felt like he could see every fiber of my being all the way to my soul. A silent moment passed between us, a moment in which our confessed feelings were almost as tangible as our sweat glistening bodies.
Our eyes locked together. He reached for my hands as I reached for his. Lowering himself over my body, he kept our hands clasped tightly together.
I had a feeling this was the way it would be from now on. Us. Together. As one. And I’d never been happier.
The only way this could get better was if I could get him closer to me somehow. I wrapped my legs around his jean-clad hips, moaning at the friction of the rough material on my aching clit and his erection it encased.
“Jared.” His name fell from my lips softly. Rever
ently. A whisper almost, a plea.
Letting go of my hands, he rolled his hips to the side and flicked the button on his jeans, kicking them off. I pushed his briefs down with them.
Every inch of his beautifully inked skin on display, I drank him in. Every dark sworl of ink on his arms and ripped abdomen, the intricate designs and the carefully scripted words, I cataloged them all in my mind. Because they were mine now too. He was mine, and I was his. Plain, simple, impossible, but still somehow true.
He caught me staring, but there was no smirk. Not this time. This time, there was only pure, absolute love staring back at me. He crawled over me again, resting with his knees between my legs as he claimed my lips for a long, slow kiss.
As frenzied as we were when we first started kissing, he was taking his time now. He moved his lips down my body. Over my neck. Kissing my breasts. My stomach. I gasped, wrapping my arms around him to pull him closer to me.
Brushing a lock of my hair behind from my face, he kept his eyes on mine as he lowered his hips. In one smooth stroke that made us both moan, he slid all the way into me, watching my face as his hands found mine and our fingers linked together.
For all the sex we’d had, it’d never been quite like this before. This was intimacy in a way I’d never experienced before. He plunged into me, my hips meeting his at every thrust. All the while, our gazes were glued together.
Moving together in a rhythm that hypnotized me, we climbed higher and higher, together every step of the way until my back arched and my sex clenched around me. My fingers dug into his hands as I shuddered and moaned beneath him.
Surge after surge of pleasure erupted in me, flowing out through my body as it took over and the best kind of sparks of ecstasy shot through me. Some women described their orgasms as rendering them capable of hearing choirs of angels sing. I didn’t hear the choir of angels, but what I heard was better. My climax triggered Jared’s, and he tensed above me as he came on an epic groan.
Jared kissed me deeply as we both came down from our euphoric highs. Our hearts thumped together as our mouths moved in time with our slowing breaths. Lazily, Jared pulled away from me with a slow grin spreading on his face as he turned my fingers over in his hand. “I think I finally get the difference between fucking and making love.”
Bringing my head down to his shoulder to place small kisses there, I nuzzled his neck. “You have a preference?”
“Only about the person it’s with,” he mumbled, his fingers drawing patterns on the bare skin of my back.
The sun had dipped almost all the way down on the horizon by now, its fading light faint and disappearing fast. Ambient light from outside lit up the room enough for me to see our clothes scattered around on the floor when I turned my head away from the crook of Jared’s neck.
I should get dressed. There was a lot left to do before tomorrow, but I couldn’t bring myself to move. Jared was still buried deep inside me, and it didn’t look like he planned on moving anytime soon either.
Dragging the tip of his nose over my skin, his lips placed the softest of kisses in its wake. Goosebumps lifted the fine hairs on my arms and shoulders under his ministrations, and I shivered, cuddling back up against him.
Screw work for tonight, I decided then and there. It wasn’t in my nature to move work down a rung on my priority ladder, but I was going to cut myself a break this once. Jared and I had both been through a lot this week, and it’d been a long day.
He needed me. I could feel it. To be honest, I needed to just be with him too. Plus, the hottest guy on the face of the planet who also happened to be the man I was desperately, madly in love with because somehow his soul was more beautiful than his body, finally told me he loved me.
I was going to savor this moment.
Sebastian, the asshat of a coordinator, could clean up his own mess. He was a grown man. I was sure he could deal with it by himself. And if he couldn’t, tomorrow was another day. Tonight, however, I wasn’t going to feel guilty for making myself the priority. And Jared. He was right there at the top with me.
Planting a kiss at the underside of his jaw, I asked, “Yeah? Who do you prefer it being with then?”
He chuckled, and I felt it inside me. A soft moan fell from my lips at the feeling just as Jared lifted his head. “Seriously? Are you just fishing for compliments now?”
“No.” I continued placing kisses up his jaw and sucked his earlobe into my mouth. “I just want to hear you say it.”
Feeling the deep groan in his chest rattle against mine, I nibbled softly on his lobe until he said. “You. I love you. You’re the only girl I want to be inside of. Making love, fucking, don’t care. As long as it’s with you.”
“You say the most romantic things to me,” I teased, my lips brushing his cheekbone as I made my way to his mouth. “But I love you too.”
Sighing contentedly, his lips parted for me, and I kissed them, soft and pliant against mine. “Wanna know the best part?”
“What’s that?” I asked between kisses. He was starting to harden again, and the muscles in my core fluttered in response.
“I get to be with you every day for the next six months.”
Joy bloomed in my chest, warming my heart and bringing a smile I couldn’t contain with it. “I’m really excited about the tour. It’s going to change everything for the band, and the new album is going to skyrocket on the charts. I can’t wait to be there to watch it happen with you. How does it feel to have all your dreams come true?”
His arms tightened around me as his hips started to move again. Slowly. Deliciously. Capturing my mouth for another kiss, he looked right into my eyes when he broke away to tell me. “The best part of those dreams coming true is the part where you’re there with me.”
EPILOGUE
JARED
6 Months Later
“And then fireworks exploded everywhere. It was fucking epic,” Caleb told Gerry, who was lying in his bed at home enthralled by the stories we were telling him about the tour.
We’d kept in touch with him while we were away, but now we were back from tour, and we were all meeting up with him to see how he was doing. After arriving with arms full of snacks, we carried some chairs and couches to his room and got comfortable there, all of us taking turns giving him the blow-by-blow of the entire tour.
Empty wrappers and soda cans were strewn around the room after the last two hours of catching Gerry up, but we’d clean it later. For now, we were all just happy to be back with him.
He hadn’t said as much, but we knew he’d been through a tough time while we were gone. Some days when we called, he could hardly stay awake to talk while other says, he was too sick and had texted saying he’d call us later.
Alicia had told us just after the start of the tour that there was some kind of holdup with his treatment, but we didn’t have the details. All we knew was he was done with it for now and was on the mend.
Gerry was doing much better, but he still had a couple more weeks before getting back to work. Eager to see him, we’d arranged to come to his house today even though we’d only gotten in last night.
Eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiled at Caleb’s description of the end of our last show three nights ago, he turned his attention to Alicia. “Well done, my dear. Sounds like you knocked it out of every park this tour. I’m proud of you.”
She flushed, reaching for his hand to give it a gentle squeeze. “I couldn’t have done it without you. Thanks for always being there to save my ass when I called.”
Laughing, he inclined his head. “An absolute pleasure to watch it all come together. Even if it was from far away.”
“Speaking of you staying far away.” Shifting on the couch Alicia and I were occupying beside his bed, my hand on her thigh, I met Gerry’s eyes. “You said you’d tell us what the doctors were saying when we see you in person. Then, you asked to hear about the tour first. What’s the good news?”
Sucking in a quiet breath, I prayed it was good new
s. Gerry fluffed a pillow behind his back, and Matt’s hands shot out to help until Gerry gave him a look. Matt dropped his hands, a bashful expression in his eyes. “Sorry. Was just trying to help.”
Gerry smiled softly. “I know. That’s why I couldn’t have you boys around. Too much with the trying to help, but hopefully, that’s all done now.”
“So it is good news?” Nick asked, voice as tight as my chest was feeling while we waited for an answer.
“It’s good news. I’m clean, for now. There’s always a chance the cancer could return, but the doctors are confident I should be fine.”
We were all on our feet the next second, jumping and cheering and hugging. Tears shone in Gerry’s eyes as he observed our excitement. “Don’t know if I would’ve made it through without all your encouragement and support.”
Gone were the days Gerry couldn’t stand us, and we merely tolerated him. In this room now was a real family unit. We’d all grown and grown up a lot since starting work on this album, and it’d never been more evident than it was today.
Dom reached over to brush a thin lock of gray hair from Gerry’s temple. “And we wouldn’t have been here at all if it wasn’t for you, so let’s not keep score.”
“Glad you’re doing better, old man.” Matt smirked, dodging Gerry’s hand when he tried to hit his arm. “Seriously, we were worried.”
“Worried about little old me while your album was soaring to number one, and you were breaking hearts the world over while on tour? I’m sure,” Gerry teased, but I could hear the emotion in his voice.
We all could, and I was pretty sure we were all feeling some of it. Knowing Gerry was back home fighting for his life had humbled us on this tour, helped us focus on what was really important.
For me, that wasn’t just the music. It was very much also the girl sitting next to me. Everyone, including Gerry, knew about us now, and while I’d endured some ribbing back when they found out, they were all supportive of our relationship.
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