So he started, doing just what he’d planned. He stroked his tongue slowly against the sides and she seemed to like it okay, but nothing was happening. It wasn’t like his dad had told him, so he decided fuck it. He moved his tongue to her clit—easy to find. He did decide to take one bit of his dad’s advice, and that was to move slowly. He didn’t want to overwhelm her, and he wanted her to enjoy it. After a minute or so, that’s when he heard her breathing change. She was taking in deeper breaths and every gulp of air became audible. She moved her hands back into his hair, and he felt himself growing hard again. He tried to ignore his own excitement as he focused on her, and he kept up the steady pace, increasing it a bit. After a few more minutes, she started taking deep breaths, lots of air into her lungs, and he was sure she was close. He decided then to go for broke and he sped up. She made a slight noise one of the times she was gulping down air, and that’s when he knew he was on the right track and that an orgasm was likely. He wasn’t going to stop then. A few more seconds and he felt the muscles in her thighs get tighter. He kept his hands on them but again focused on what his tongue was doing and then her thighs started to squeeze against him and she let out a small groan. He knew what that meant—what he did now mattered more than ever. So he kept up the same pace, focusing on the same spot, and her groans became cries, music to his ears.
After the longest time, her fingers started pushing on his head. “Stop.”
He paused. “You sure?”
“Yes.” Her voice was light and sounded like a pant.
“You okay?”
She continued to breath hard, her chest heaving. “I think so.”
He crawled up to lie next to her. Part of her hair was matted to her forehead. He pushed it aside with a finger and kissed her on the nose. “You sure?”
Her cheeks and chest were pink but she looked like she was glowing. Success. There was a twinkle in her eyes, and she managed a small smile. “Yes. I’m starting to wonder what I waited so long for.”
He chuckled and pulled her into an embrace. He let her sleep for a while, her naked body resting in his arms. After a long while, his dick softened back up but his balls ached. That was okay. He had a remedy for it later. He could hardly wait until she was ready…but he could and would wait, for as long as she needed.
Chapter Four
TWO WEEKS LATER, Bullet was formed. Brad had never felt this good about a band before. Somehow, he, Ethan, Nick, and Zane fit together. The song-writing process was fluid and nothing short of amazing. They all had the same vision for the band but different influences and inspirations, so the cohesiveness was almost instantaneous, while the music they were making already sounded different. Brad thought it was fresh and new, and he couldn’t wait until they had more songs written and could play a few gigs.
Leah watched them perform their first two songs. He sang one and Ethan sang the other. They hadn’t settled on a permanent singer, but Ethan seemed to do well when he was sober. The rest of the time, it was better to just let his friend become absorbed in his guitar while he covered the lyrics on all the songs. They started practicing every night after school, except Friday, because that was Brad’s night with Leah, and since he worked on Saturday and Sunday, they practiced for a couple of hours Saturday night, but not as much as they would have liked. Ethan started calling Leah Yoko behind her back until Brad told him to shut the fuck up.
He and Leah still saw each other as much as they could, and they continued to engage in sexual play, but they hadn’t fully consummated, and Brad wasn’t going to force the issue. She’d gotten really good at giving him head, and he had plenty more surprises for what he could do for her. He knew the first time for a girl could be painful, and he didn’t want to go there with her until she was ready.
A couple weeks later and the band had four strong songs. Brad started talking about playing some shows and then putting together enough money to record an EP. He started mapping out his plan with the guys and then Ethan said, “Dude, my grandpa’s making me go to college this fall.”
“So?”
“So…it’s not here. I’m gonna have to move.”
“Seriously?”
Ethan frowned. “Yeah. It’s just for a year, though. He made me promise to go for a year, and then if I still didn’t want to, he wouldn’t make me.”
“He can’t make you now, man.”
Ethan sighed. “He’s already paid the tuition, and he’s going to give me all the money I want while I go. It’s either that or…”
“Or what?”
“He takes back my truck and my guitar.”
“He can’t do that.”
“Technically, he can’t, but he’s done a lot for mom and me. I can’t just tell my grandpa to fuck off.”
Brad sighed. He knew Ethan’s grandfather was a cool dude. He’d been the only good man in Ethan’s life. Brad wished the man lived closer where he could have actually had an influence on him. Brad had known Ethan for a long time, and the guy’s mother made one shitty choice after another. He didn’t understand how she’d wound up having such a great father. Ethan had never said, but Brad suspected Ethan’s parents had just been plain bad for each other, and Ethan had been caught in the middle of many a bad thing. Ethan’s dad leaving hadn’t helped, either, because June had managed to bring home plenty of men who were as bad, if not worse, than Ethan’s dad had dreamed of.
Still, he couldn’t hold his friend back. He’d wanted to have a band with his best friend for the last couple of years and now that everything was starting to gel, it was upsetting to have it pulled right out from under him. But he knew his friend and knew Ethan would never choose to go to college on his own. Maybe it would be good for him. He’d have to focus and apply himself, something he’d rarely done in high school. The guy was smart—Brad knew that much. Maybe Ethan’s grandfather saw potential. “So how often could you come home?”
Ethan shrugged. “I dunno. Maybe once a month? And then after the year was up we could hit it hard?”
Brad shrugged. “Maybe.”
Zane said, “Yeah, I have to do the college thing to.”
“You have to too?”
“My dad said he’s tired of me being a loser. He says my hair’s too long, and I’ll never get a job looking the way I do if I don’t get an education.” Yeah, Brad knew Zane’s dad hated the hair—he’d commented about Brad’s before too. Zane’s wasn’t as bad, though—his black hair barely went over his ears, and against the guy’s olive complexion and dark blue eyes, he would have thought the guy’s dad was giving him tips on how to attract girls.
Brad felt his heart sink. He’d been considering doing a few things—playing here and there—without Ethan for the year, but he couldn’t do it without a bassist too.
“Yeah, but…Ethan and I are going to the same school.”
“Where you goin’?”
“Western.”
Brad thought for a few minutes. Well, that wasn’t so bad. It was close. At least it wasn’t out of state or on Colorado’s eastern slope. Zane said, “But I don’t want to do more than a year either. If my dad sees I’m just wasting my time and his money in school, I think he’ll change his mind. He wants me to be like my sister. She’ll be a junior in college next fall, and she’s on the dean’s list and getting scholarships ‘cause she’s so smart.” He laughed. “I told my dad to send me to Juilliard, and he got pissed.”
He hoped the disappointment didn’t show on his face. He’d been hoping to be discovered in a year; instead, they’d just be getting started. “Well, can we at least do some of our writing through email and stuff?”
“Yeah, man. And we’ll come home once a month too.”
Zane said, “We get a week off at Thanksgiving and a month off at Christmas too.”
Nick hadn’t said a word till that point. “Come on, ladies.” Nick tended to be the quiet one, but when he talked, he usually made them laugh—or at least tried to. Even his demeanor didn’t demand too much attention—his short
dark brown hair made him the odd man out of the group, and his blue eyes took in every little detail. He might have seemed quiet, but he didn’t miss a thing. “We’re not breaking up. We’re just cooling off for a while.”
Brad shook his head. While he appreciated the humor, he didn’t care for the setback. So, he’d have to rearrange his plans. Maybe he could spend the next year working his ass off and buying all the things the band would need. They needed better amps and shit like that. He’d make a list and prioritize what they needed most and start checking things off one at a time. What was going to make things worse, though, was that Leah was going to be attending Colorado Christian University in the fall, and that was somewhere in the Denver area. If she’d been around, it wouldn’t have been so bad. He had a lot of thinking to do. His band was his dream.
One year. They had one year, and if Ethan and Zane decided school was what they wanted to do in after that year was up, then the band would never be their thing…and he’d have to start from scratch again. That was it, though—one year. He hoped he’d be able to wait.
* * *
One week before graduation, he and Leah were lying on his bed, having finished another hot and heavy session. She was swirling a finger on the few random hairs that had decided to sprout on his chest. He was running his hand over her hair, feeling full and alive. The closer he got to graduation, the more he dreaded it. He knew she wouldn’t be leaving for college until August, but it made him sad just the same. Still…he was going to enjoy their time together while they had it. He tried not to think about it.
Leah lifted her head to look him in the eyes. She too looked sad. She must have been thinking what he had. “Hey.” She looked down at her finger again. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
He didn’t like the sound of that and sat up a little. “What?”
She blinked. “Well, you know I’m going to college this fall.”
“Yeah.” It was as though she’d been reading his thoughts.
“You know what I’m going into, right?”
“Political science. Isn’t that what you said?”
She nodded. “I’m going to double major in prelaw.”
“Okay.”
Her face changed and she looked even sadder. She blinked again. “I really like you, Brad, and I’ve loved our time together.”
His heart sank. He already knew where it was going, even though he didn’t want to believe it. She liked him? When he fucking loved her? How the fuck had he missed this? He clamped his jaw, hoping to hold it together while she talked. “Where’s this going?”
“That’s what I mean. My dad’s decided we’re all going to move to Lakewood. He’s already found a house there. I’ll still be living in the dorms, but my family will be close by.”
He sucked in a breath. “Are you breaking up with me?”
“Uh, well…”
“You are.”
She was quiet for a moment before she said, “Well, yeah, but it’s not because I don’t like you.”
He had to be cool. He just nodded. “Okay.”
“Brad, you know we can’t be together, right? We’re so different.”
Now he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He knew she was still wet between her legs from what they’d been doing earlier, and now she was dumping him like he’d meant nothing to her. “If you feel that way, why’d you go out with me in the first place?”
At least she acted like breaking up with him wasn’t something she wanted to do. He’d give her that. “Because you’re sweet and good looking and I liked you.”
He felt deflated. He’d just been fun for her to finish out the school year. And now she was ready to dump him. He felt like a pile of dog shit, and he wasn’t going to beg her to keep seeing him until she left. If he wasn’t wanted, he wasn’t going to force himself on her. But after all they’d been through. What a fucking idiot he’d been. He’d never felt that way about a girl before, and he needed to make sure he never would again.
He couldn’t remember what he said after that, but he pulled her to his chest and held her close. He’d hold his head high at graduation and put his heart into his band. But right now it felt like a large hand was squeezing his heart, making it impossible to breathe. He had to find a way to make it through that first.
Chapter Five
UNBELIVABLE. BULLET ALREADY had thirteen solid songs by mid-July, and they’d played a couple of shows in small venues. They hadn’t played to huge crowds, but they were already gaining a bit of a fan base.
Okay, so about ten people had told Brad they loved the band. It still did his heart good to know he was moving people with his music.
He hadn’t dated since Leah. She’d come by his house the day her family had moved in June and kissed him on the cheek. It felt like she was branding him, the kiss hurt so much. If he hadn’t loved her as much as he did, he’d have been pissed at her.
He knew he should be going wild now, fucking everything he could find, but he couldn’t. He needed to let her go first before he could see someone else.
Still, he tried. He and the band went to a party one night after a show. They’d been drinking and a girl had cornered him. The beer made it a little easier to allow himself to be kissed and groped. But then he found out the girl’s boyfriend was on vacation. He wouldn’t have minded a little one-night stand, but no way was he going to help a girl cheat on her boyfriend. No way. Not after he’d seen what it had done to Ethan—another excuse to get drunk and high, but even more because of what it had done to his dad before that.
Brad loved his mom, but it had taken him a long time to forgive her for that. He’d never asked, and neither of his parents had ever outright told him, but he knew. His dad had left his mom because she’d been fooling around on him. Brad’s older brother had already moved out of the house. Brad had been eight at the time, his brother twenty. Brad had wanted to stay with his dad after the divorce but had never asked outright. His mom kept the house and his dad found a little apartment to start out with, so he’d never even asked for custody. By the time Brad started high school, though, he’d managed to forgive his mother her indiscretion and his dad his failure to ask for his son. His dad had been an active participant in his life, so he couldn’t hold anything against the man. He’d been a great dad. And his mother had been a good parent as well, tending to his every need, including helping him through biology, a subject he’d grown to detest. Once she and his dad split, she’d gone back into nursing, something she hadn’t done for years, getting a job at the hospital. Once Brad was in middle school, she began working mostly nights because of the shift differential. She earned significantly more working crappy night shifts than she had working day shifts. It was around that time that Brad had started finding forgiveness for her, because she was willing to work her ass off to keep him fed and clothed, and she trusted him alone by himself. That said a lot.
Of course, over the years, Brad had done a lot to earn that trust. He did plenty of chores around the house, had never hosted a party there in his mother’s absence (even though it would have been so easy to), and stayed out of trouble at school. Sometimes, he felt like he was the parent and his mother the child.
So when his mom called to ask if Brad could pick up her and one of her friends from the bar because they’d had too much to drink, he wanted to tell her to call a cab. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. It was a Thursday night and he and Bullet had already finished their rehearsal. He’d sat down on the couch, ready to veg to whatever he could find on the television, when she’d called and asked. There wasn’t anything on he was dying to see anyway, so he got in the car and drove to the bar where his mom said they’d be.
She was standing out on the sidewalk in front of the bar, smoking a cigarette and chatting with some guy. She didn’t see him, so he pulled into a parking space. He walked half a block and then had to tap on his mom’s shoulder to get her attention. “Oh, hey, son. What are you doing here?”
He d
idn’t roll his eyes, though he’d wanted to. “You called me and asked me to pick you up.”
She smiled at the man across from her. “Just a second.” She led Brad a few steps away by his elbow. Her voice was low. “Actually, son, I’m going to stick around. I’ll find a ride. But Misti still needs one. Could you please give her a ride?”
“I might as well. I’m here.”
His mother looked behind him and then raised her voice. “Misti!”
A thin woman with dark hair looked up at them. She’d been sitting on the curb next to the stop sign. Brad figured that meant she’d been totally wasted. But she’d been doing something on her phone. She stood and slid her phone into the back pocket of her jeans and walked over. Brad noticed his mom had walked back over to the guy she’d been talking to earlier, leaving Brad standing by himself as the other woman joined him.
“Brad, right?”
He nodded. “Yep.”
“Misti. I work with your mom.” She held out a hand. She didn’t seem too trashed.
“Nice to meet you.” The woman had dark hair that ended at her shoulders, so it was longer than Brad’s but barely. She had dark eyes to match her mane and she had prominent dimples. She didn’t even have to smile for them to be evident. He shook her hand and then turned to his mother. “You sure you don’t need a ride?”
His mom threw the cigarette on the sidewalk. “Yeah. I’ll catch a ride later.”
He was pretty sure his mom was doing the middle age crazy thing. After she’d broken up with the lover who’d destroyed her marriage, she’d been discreet. Brad knew she’d seen guys now and then, but she’d been subtle. The last month, though, she’d been going out a lot, and if Brad wasn’t mistaken, she was gonna get laid tonight. He told Misti, “My car’s over here,” and started walking that way, lost in thought. He hadn’t been with anyone since Leah, just couldn’t bring himself to, and the funniest part was that he and Leah had never fully consummated their relationship. She was still a virgin the night she’d broken up with him, and so Brad didn’t even want to think about how long that meant he’d gone without.
Fully Automatic (Bullet) Page 4