by L. V. Lewis
She leaps off the bed and runs to the bathroom.
“What the fuck?” I realize I’ve made light of something that is really bothering her, so I jump off the bed and follow her into the bathroom.
“Don’t come in here, Brody,” she yells.
I glimpse her sitting on the toilet before I quickly back out and close the door. When she doesn’t emerge for twenty minutes or so, I get dressed to leave. I’m at the threshold when I change my mind. Leaving things like this will probably make it as awkward as fuck on the plane tomorrow.
I go back to the door and knock. Even if she is having digestive issues, it shouldn’t take her this long in the bathroom.
There is no answer, so I try the door, but it’s locked. I find something to jimmy the lock and go in anyway. I figure, fuck, she’ll have to fire me if I’m out of line.
She’s in the shower where I join her to find her huddled in the corner, crying. I get wet going in after her, but I have more clothes.
I dry her with a towel and lead her back into the bedroom, still crying. That’s when she tells me about country Connor Weatherby, her ex-boyfriend. After her mother had mentioned him, I should’ve Googled his ass, but I felt as if I haven’t told Sky everything about my past, so I shouldn’t go snooping around in hers.
I lay her on the bed and hold her. We’re getting her bedding as wet as fuck, but I have to get to the bottom of her meltdown.
“What did that bastard do to you?” I ask after she calms down a little.
“He was caught on tape having sex in a pool with two groupies,” she cries, “And when I confronted him about it, he said I could really blow on stage, but in bed, I couldn’t blow my way out of a paper bag.” Then she truly begins to sob.
If I weren’t so mad at that stupid fucker for undermining her confidence in that way, I might laugh at what sounds like a clichéd joke.
“If he hadn’t been such a selfish prick, he could’ve coached you with your technique rather than going out to get it somewhere else,” I say.
“Can you coach me on my technique?” she asks. “I’ll stop asking questions in the middle of it, and just listen to you. I promise.”
“I’d be happy to coach you,” I say. “If you do what comes naturally, and concentrate on enhancing the feeling, not messing up, you’ll do fine.”
By the time she hits her stride in oral skills, we’re both spent, and I end up spending the night, or what little of the morning we have left before we leave in Sky’s limo for the airport.
EIGHT
BRODY
DAY TEN
Skylar rips her earpiece out.
“I can’t hear my sound properly out in the room,” she says with a frown.
Sound check in London is a disaster from the word go. The venue has recently undergone massive renovations but failed to take into account the acoustics. I could leave it to the sound engineers to figure out later, but I didn’t want to see her crash and burn right out the gate.
I also have an ulterior motive for getting shit done. She’s agreed to be a tourist with me in all the cities we visit—contingent on her work being done first.
I approach the guys in the booth.
They’re scratching their heads and asses in confusion, but look askance at me.
“Hey, the reverb times are for shit in here, giving this entire venue an equally shitty quality of presence. Until the builder can get in here and undo some of the improper acoustical treatments, I say you just fix it with active acoustic technology. That should create a virtual acoustic space to achieve a workable musical environment.”
A lightbulb seems to go off in all their heads simultaneously.
“Bollocks,” one of them exclaims under his breath.
I wink at them and walk away. “Thank you very much, gentlemen,” I say over my shoulder. “Skylar will return for final soundcheck an hour before practice tomorrow.”
Skylar bats her eyelashes at me theatrically as I return to the stage. “My hero!”
“That remains to be seen.” I offer her my arm like a proper English gentleman.
I nod to Malik. “Let’s blow this popsicle stand.”
We exit to the waiting, hired limo. Malik, aided by venue security, clears a path for us through the fans hoping to get a glimpse at Skylar.
She rewards a few of them with outstretched hands by signing their CD cases, magazines, and T-Shirts.
While rabid, her fans are for the most part well behaved. The Savages and I got underwear, boobs, and sometimes bare asses for autographs. Of course, Skylar’s fanbase is younger, given that she just graduated from bubblegum pop a couple of years ago.
Safely in the limo on one bench seat with Malik on another, we breathe a collective sigh of relief. While musicians appreciate their fans, they can never know if a psycho prepared to do harm is in their midst. Malik is exceptional at keeping his body in front of Skylar. I know without a doubt that much like a Secret Service agent for the president of the United States, he’d take a bullet for her.
I’d sparred with him once in LA. He’d wanted, to paraphrase, to see what I was working with. He’s a very skilled fighter. I must not have been too shabby, because he’s asked me to spar with him a couple of times a week during the tour. I hope my ribs and I don’t live to regret this decision.
“Back to the hotel,” Malik barks to the driver.
“You’re not going sightseeing with us?” Sky asks with a pout.
“Nothing to see here but old-assed buildings and ruins I’ve seen already,” Malik says. “Wash off that makeup and go low-key with Brody.”
Looks like I’ve just gotten the seal of approval from the former Special Forces Marine. “Were you stationed here while you were in the Marines?”
Malik grunts something that sounds like a yes.
“And he’s still just a big old teddy bear,” Sky teases.
A teddy bear that will turn into a grizzly in a heartbeat if anyone steps incorrectly toward his client. Yet Sky is not just his client. In the seven years he’s been in her employ, they have become friends. In many ways he’s like the uncle she never had. He may be old enough to have fathered her, but I don’t think even he is brave enough to bed the barracuda.
I shake off that visual and turn to Sky. “So, where to first, My Lady?” I ask in my best English accent.
“We’re in modern-day London,” she reminds me. “What century is that accent from?”
“Hell, I don’t know. I probably heard it on Game of Thrones.”
She laughs. “Get it straight, Kent. These Brits won’t stand for you mucking up their vernacular.”
“Bloody hell,” I say and pounce on her, tickling. “Can’t a man talk however he bloody well pleases in this day and age?”
She’s screaming with laughter. “Stop it, Brody… Oh, God, please stop!”
“You’d better stop, dude,” Malik says as calmly as you please. “If you make Sky fuck up her vocal cords again, Mrs. Samuelson is going to geld you.”
I stop immediately.
Damn, I’d forgotten about her vocal cord issues just that quickly.
Malik laughs, cackling like a fucking hyena almost all the way to the hotel. Like Malik, I haven’t gotten it twisted. I know exactly who’s in charge.
Sky and I have connecting hotel suites, and this solves one very significant potential problem. At least here in London, neither her entourage nor the paparazzi will get any shots of me visiting her room after hours.
We are lounging in my soaker tub after a grueling six hours of sightseeing, trying to soak the soreness out of muscles that hikes on cobbled streets, up countless sets of stairs, and through craggy terrain surrounding Stonehenge have caused.
Her head is against one end of the tub, and mine is at the other. I relax with my eyes closed in the companionable silence.
“I have a suggestion,” Sky murmurs.
“Hmm. Such as?”
“Let’s stretch out some of the sightseeing at our next locati
on, mm-kay?”
“I’ll make a note of that,” I say and close my eyes again.
“And let’s do room service tonight, ’kay?”
This time, I don’t open my eyes. “Okay.”
Sky and I are acting like Kim and me in the early days. It’s scary to think that I’m going through a similar phase with someone else, but it’s exhilarating, too.
We stuff our faces with a selection of items from the hotel menu. I’m somewhat recovered from the busy day, but Sky is nodding off like a junkie.
“Ready to turn in?” I ask.
She jumps at the sound of my voice and shakes off her impending slumber. “Nope. We’re gonna finish watching this movie.”
I smile at her immediate insistence that she’s doing anything other than catnapping on my shoulder. “Sky, the movie has been watching you for half an hour.”
“Okay, let’s go to bed then,” she agrees, standing and stretching like a feline.
I pick up the remote off the coffee table and turn off the television.
As I expected, she walks toward the bedroom in my suite, not her own.
“You’ve got a full day of rehearsal tomorrow,” I warn.
“So?” She stifles a yawn.
“You sure you want to sleep in there and not over there?” I point from my bedroom toward her empty suite for emphasis.
“Yeah, I’m good.” She continues walking, stripping out of her clothes as she goes, and I just shake my head and follow her.
A good night kiss sparks the embers, and a hot and heavy make-out session kindles a roaring flame. I have eaten her out to one orgasm, and now she’s returning the favor. It’s only taken a couple of days with my instruction for her to become adept at giving a spectacular blowjob.
Now she was giving head like a champ, and she was excellent at relaxing her throat muscles so she wouldn’t repeatedly gag through the process like some chicks do. It had to be connected to her singing, or breathing, or maybe she was just a fucking natural. I don’t know, but I’m getting the benefit of it.
Sky doubles down on the massaging of my cock with her tongue, and my eyes roll back into my head from the sensation.
She sucks hard, releases slightly, and squeezes my balls. Repeating this sequence causes me to thrust into her mouth. I can’t help it, and she doesn’t protest.
She continues to fellate me until I shoot my load into the condom, which I’ve insisted on wearing to give her some semblance of safety.
She hadn’t had sex in seven months and assured me she was clean. I’d last been with the toe-sucker and I’d had an examination after, but I didn’t get the results prior to leaving LA. I promised Sky I would share my results when I received them. In the meantime, we’re okay using condoms.
I make sure Sky is still wet for me by teasing her slit with the tip of my cock, smearing the broad head of it against her clit. She moans loudly and I push just the tip of me into her. Stretching her. My cock throbs with the anticipation of being buried in her. She is so tight. I love making love to her, and I don’t think I will ever tire of fucking her. She is responsive and likes it a little rough—my personal preference—so I might be good for the duration. I slow my movements, almost to stopping, at that thought.
“What’s wrong?” Sky pulls her lips away, nipping my bottom lip with her teeth in the process. She squeezes me with her pelvic muscles as if to prevent me from moving away.
My cock throbs with the need to be buried in her, despite my thoughts taking some weird segue as I’m fucking her.
“Nothing.” I begin to move again in earnest.
She meets me thrust for thrust, rolling her body the way I like, working me deeper and deeper into her snug, wet, tightness.
She begins to tremble beneath me, and I know she’s almost there. I arch my back filling her yet further. I reach between us to circle her clit with my fingers—to bring her release closer to my own.
I continue to move in a staccato fashion.
“Come with me, Sky.” My voice is guttural, frantic. I speed up yet again.
“Oh—fuck—yes!” Sky screams her orgasm.
She falls apart beneath me, gripping the sheets. The look of raw unadulterated pleasure lingers on her face.
“Brody—” she gasps and her body writhes.
“Shit, Sky. I’m with you, baby, I’m oh fuck…”
My blood is like fire and my muscles contract and quiver. My orgasm rips through me the same way it has done every time I’m with Sky.
Sky milks me, grabbing my ass and rolling her hot body beneath me.
The aftershocks hit me like mini earthquakes.
I pull out of her slowly and collapse by her side when the earthquakes finally stop.
“You are a rock star,” she says. This strikes me as funny as hell, then Sky laughs too, and I roll off the bed to find the wastebasket.
I quickly discard the condom so I can get back into bed with her. I gather her slippery body against me and kiss her. We lay on our sides. I’m unable to make my muscles work right just yet, and I imagine she feels the same.
“Jesus, Sky. Is it always going to be like this? I came so hard my cock hurts.”
She giggles and curls into me and presses her lips to my throat. “Wait, let me catch my breath. Do you feel how fast my heart is beating?”
I touch her neck near her carotid. “Whoa, girl. Slow it down. Deep breaths.”
She takes a few deep breaths and giggles again. Her heaving chest slows. “I’m at a loss for words for how good it’s been for us. Connor never…”
I can tell by the rapid change in her skin temperature, she’s likely blushing. “Connor was an asshole,” I finish.
She laughs outright. “Yes, he was.”
“You’re an incredible lover, Sky. Don’t let Connor, or anyone else—even me—try to tell you anything different.”
I don’t just think she needs that boost of confidence. I really fucking mean that she’s incredible.
I feel contentment in the quiet aftermath of our lovemaking. We’re holding each other, breathing in tandem, heartbeats syncing up like metronomes.
And I am scared shitless for what this all may mean.
Day Sixteen
There’s something about Paris that’ll fuck you up if you’re a commitment-phobe. The quaint hotels, restaurants and shops are designed for couples seeking romance in The City of Lights, and if you’re not fully cognizant of it, you’ll buy right into that shit. I did, right after we finished the concert there and we had a couple of days before flying to Berlin.
Our routine for each city already established, Sky and I dine at an oyster bar near the Arc de Triomphe on our final night in Paris, feasting on dozens of the aphrodisiacal bivalves and a couple of bottles of crisp white wine which masquerades as something light, but packs quite a punch, then we share a dessert called a brioche feuilletée. The only way I can describe it is a cinnamon roll without the cinnamon served with candied fruit and homemade vanilla ice-cream.
Sky’s eyes roll back when she bites into it the first time. “Oh my God, this tastes like an orgasm.”
It’s kind of a “When Harry Met Sally” moment, because a few people around us hear her clearly and laugh.
Sky’s freckled face turns beet red. “I said that out loud, didn’t I?”
I nod and take another bite of the confection. “Yep.” She is adorable when she says or does something totally unexpected.
An elderly couple just leaving stops and the little lady says with a wink, “Your girlfriend is right.”
Sky cringes, as if she expects the other shoe to fall, but we’re incognito, so they don’t know she’s the American pop singer who just filled the city with thousands of rabid fans a couple of nights ago.
“I just might take offense to being upstaged by a dessert,” I say, and the couple laughs.
“Tell me about it,” the little old man agrees and they shuffle out of the restaurant, still laughing.
Sky ducks her head
and digs in again. “I’m just going to pretend that didn’t happen.”
The couple’s insistence that Sky was my girlfriend careens through my head. What the fuck? In their defense we have been acting like that’s what we are. My chest tightens, my lungs squeezing painfully as I breath in.
A girlfriend.
Maybe in another lifetime, if I hadn’t fucked up my life and Kim’s the way I had. But just three weeks into this European Tour and I was romancing a woman again, and I didn’t know how to stop. Especially, here in Paris. Or maybe I just didn’t want to stop, regardless of where we were.
I was drawn to her, and it was damn near instinctual the way I responded to her. She made me feel things I haven’t allowed myself to feel in so long, things I resisted out of some kind of fucked-up shame because the last time I’d loved a girl, she died.
“Hey, where’d you go?” Her voice brought my eyes back to thoughtful eyes that covered me, pulled me in, and dragged me under.
“Sky.” I uttered her name toward the ceiling, my reply hoarse with a sadness that threatened to overwhelm me. I searched inside myself to ascertain my next move, a way to resolve the feelings warring inside me—to exercise that partially-won integrity I operated under now. “I’m no good for you.”
Eyes not leaving mine, she slowly leans toward me over the small table. “Don’t I get to have a say in that?” she murmurs.
“Of course you do.”
“Then I already did the night of the party. Nothing has changed.”
“You must want…” I shake my head, “more.”
“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t.” She lays her hand in the center of my chest. “It would be great if besides your body, I could have your heart.”
Sky doesn’t pull any punches, she lays herself bare, not knowing if I’m going to go running for the hills and leave her in the lurch for another PA, part-time lover, and whatever the hell else I’ve become to her.