My Life as an Album (Books 1-4): A small town, southern fiction series

by LJ Evans

  Then I told my brain to shut up as he joined me with a wicked smile that stretched his cleft and had me reaching for it with my finger.

  “Miss Mia, have you ever come on a man’s hands?”

  It was hard to respond. Because my breathing was already out of control. “Is that number thirteen or fourteen?” I teased.

  “It can be one hundred if you’d like. I just want to know, has anyone ever given you that type of pleasure?”

  His eyes were stormy. So, god-blessedly stormy. I felt like I might lose myself in just his eyes, and I wasn’t sure what would happen to me if I lost myself in the rest of him, but for once, I didn’t care. I wanted to lose myself. I didn’t want to be Good Girl Mia, or any kind of Mia.

  “Mia?”

  “No,” I croaked out.

  So he proceeded to show me, with his long musician fingers, and his kisses on my lips, and on my throat, and on my body, just what it was like to come on a man’s hands. Slow, and hard, and oh my god, so achingly beautiful. I was gasping, and moaning, and tugging at his shoulders, wanting even more of him and the peace he brought me. Because it was utter peace. More than in the quiet of the caverns. More than in the pages of a book.

  He was smiling as he felt my body shake and shiver into him. A smile that was so damn cocky, and yet so damn loving at the same moment that I felt any last wall I had crumble away, leaving me as bare and open in my soul as I was right now in my body.

  “I want to show you just how non-yucky oral sex can be, Little Bird, but I’m going to have to save that for later tonight, because right now, if I don’t put myself inside you, I might just explode,” he said with another cocky smile.

  He reached for his jeans on the floor and pulled out a condom, and I eye-rolled. He kissed me quick. A kiss for an eye-roll.

  “Why are you eye-rolling me?” he chuckled.

  “Do you really carry condoms in your pocket?”

  His smile was wiped away, and he looked at me with all seriousness. “Only since I met you,” he said huskily.

  He hovered above me and looked into my eyes which were, oddly, still open. I wanted to see him and everything he was doing to me and everything that I was doing to his body. With Hayden, I’d had my eyes closed the majority of the time, afraid. Afraid of losing my virginity and afraid of losing him. I’d just been afraid.

  Now, with Derek, I wasn’t afraid. I was longing. I was aching. I was hoping. He seemed to see that in me because he was so slow when he entered me, and so slow in every move he made until we were both moaning together, and I felt like every part of me was now entwined with every part of him. He fit inside me like that perfect puzzle piece should, even though it hurt briefly because I’d only done this once before.

  Then we went beautifully over the edge together until there was nothing but us, and our hopes, and our torn souls reaching for each other.

  It was life altering. The books were right. Hayden had been wrong. All wrong. There was nothing about this time that was like that time with Hayden, when he took, and I gave, and nothing was left after. Now, I felt like we both took, and we both gave, and what was left was more than what we had started with.

  I lay curled up against him, head on his shoulder, and I felt myself smile for the first time that day. A real smile. A smile I still was getting accustomed to because it had never been a regular part of me. I don’t think my whole life had seen me smile like this.

  He kissed my forehead and pulled me closer against him.

  “Thank you,” he whispered.

  “Umm. I think that should be my line,” I giggled. Mental head thunk because it was me, giggling.

  He chuckled. “I knew you’d been doing it wrong.”

  “Or at least he was.” I smiled against his chest and was rewarded with another deep rumble from deep inside him.

  “Thank God,” he sighed out. “Now I get to be the best sex you’ve ever had.”

  “Conceited much?”

  “Your words, not mine.”

  I slapped him playfully and went to pull away, but he tugged me back up tight against him. “I’m not done with you yet.”

  It was meant to be sexy. And holy potato peels, it was, but it also triggered memories of the only other time I’d done this and the guy had left me the following week.

  “Why not?” I asked into his chest.

  “Why not what? And does that count as your thirteen?”

  “I think I’m only at ten,” I told him.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty sure.”

  “I’m pretty sure that I can make you ask a very different question,” he said as his hands started to twirl at my hip and then in between my thighs. And he was right. My why went straight out of my head, and all I could think was please, please Lord, will you take me again?

  And he did.

  Over. And over. And over. As the light faded and the sky darkened. I’m sure the stars were out there twinkling, but I never saw them. I didn’t care if I ever saw them again. I only cared about seeing the storm in his gray eyes as he reached for me, and I reached back.

  Because Ed is so right in “Firefly.” It was all about teaching my skin new tricks and warming me up with his lips. Our hearts together. Our lips and faces and cheeks meeting in a wild beat. Making sure I held on tight as Derek quietly sewed my broken heart back together.

  Together

  PHOTOGRAPH

  “Loving can heal. Loving can mend your soul.”

  -Ed Sheeran

  Music woke me up. “Little Bird” was playing, and I slammed the home button with as much might as I could, and next to me, Derek chuckled.

  “You really don’t like mornings.”

  What could I say? I didn’t, but waking up next to him, the feel of his body next to mine…somehow that made it okay. I couldn’t help but smile at him and then reached over to kiss him. I kissed him, not like a good girl, but just like me. Like I wanted to kiss the guy who fixed my heart that I had thought was broken beyond repair. I kissed him like I wanted to give him something.

  He smiled against my lips and reached down to touch my nether regions, and I couldn’t help but flinch because I was painfully, wonderfully tender down there.

  “Are you sore?” he asked with a cocky smile.

  “Duh,” I said back with an eye-roll that earned me a quick kiss.

  “But it’s a good sore, right?” He was still laughing at me.

  “You’re a moron,” I said. I went to get out of bed, but he pulled me to him and tickled me until I went limp in his arms, staring up at the face that was so gorgeous it could stop a zillion hearts.

  “So, the oral sex? Ew or not ew?” He was still enjoying himself way too much for my liking. I flushed a thousand shades of red because thinking about what he’d done to me and what I’d done to him in the darkness of the hotel room was much more than even this Mia could handle in the morning light.

  I pushed my forehead into his chest. I didn’t want to respond. “I think you’ve reached your twenty-question limit.”

  “I’m assuming that’s a ‘not ew’ then.” I smacked him, face still hidden.

  He kissed the back of my head and then bounced out of bed with so much impossible energy that I couldn’t help but be reminded of Cam. And Jake. But mostly Cam. Today, the thought of them didn’t force the guilt to bubble up. Instead, I got to keep it hidden away.

  “Let’s go, hot shot,” he said, tugging at my foot while tickling the bottom, which had me bolting upright to remove my foot from his grasp.

  “You’re awful,” I told him.

  “Liar.” Then he disappeared into the bathroom, showing me his naked parts that made my very sore body hum with delight anyway.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  True to her word, the vet showed up early. She gave us a checklist of things to watch for, a handful of bottles to feed the kitten with, and a list of other supplies that we would need. Then, we were on the road
.

  It wasn’t even eight by the time we headed the Camaro toward the highway and Denver. It was going to be a long haul. Plus, Derek had rehearsal that afternoon. Thank God their show wasn’t until the following day, but it was still going to be exhausting.

  I had the kitten bundled in my lap while Derek drove. I looked over at him. We hadn’t really slept much in the last couple days. Hardly at all on this trip. “I should drive,” I told him. “You have to have your energy for tonight.”

  “We’ll switch halfway, and I’ll try to nap,” he said with a smile that made my heart and body zing.

  Then we rode in silence. Happy, peaceful silence.

  I felt content. A feeling that I didn’t know if I’d ever had.

  “What are we going to name her?” I pondered aloud.

  “Jane,” he said.

  “Jane?”

  “After Jane Austen, of course.”

  “That’s so bland though,” I told him, unsatisfied.

  “Calling a kitten Elizabeth seems too much.”

  “Definitely not Elizabeth!” I agreed. “We’ll have to think about it.”

  “You may have to think about it, but she’ll always be Jane to me,” he smirked.

  I cuddled the kitten as it slept, and somewhere along the way, I fell asleep too, because I came awake as the car stopped in a Target parking lot.

  “I’m sor—” I started to say, but then stopped. Derek grinned at me.

  “Good thing you stopped. Was going to have to find a lake to toss you into.”

  “What are we doing?”

  He pointed to the store. “Supplies for Jane and supplies for us.”

  “Supplies?”

  “We did use all my condoms, and I have a feeling we are going to need some more.” He grinned that devilish grin.

  “Who says?” I couldn’t help but tease back.

  “Best sex you’ve ever had, and now you tell me you’re done.” He shook his head in mock exasperation.

  “It's kind of hard to say it’s the best when there was only that one other experience to compare it to,” I said without thinking.

  He was halfway out the door, but slid back into his seat to look at me. The shock on his face got me more than anything. I busied myself with Jane the Kitten.

  “You’re joking, right?”

  I felt the heat creep into my skin. I shrugged. What was there to say? I shouldn’t have said anything.

  “Who was this complete jackass? And why on earth were you still carrying a torch for him?”

  I wanted to be defensive. I wanted to be mad. I couldn’t, though, because I knew he was right. “Hayden. His name was Hayden.”

  “Well,” he tilted my chin toward him, “Hayden was not only an insensitive ass, but the biggest fool on the planet, because you are the most delightful creature this side of paradise.”

  “You sound like such a suck-up.”

  “Do I?” He sounded surprised.

  “Yes. No one says that kind of stuff. No one that really means it anyway.”

  “But I do,” he said, and kissed me so that my toes curled and my aching body ached in a different way.

  He pulled away. “Sorry, no time for you to ravish me here. Things to buy. Miles to travel.”

  I ignored all the questions swirling at the back door of my brain. Instead, I went inside with this energetic man where we bought the kitten supplies, a kitten carrier, food for us to eat on the road, and the supplies he’d already mentioned which I tried not to look at while the clerk rang us up. Then, we were back in the Camaro, with me driving.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  It was four-thirty by the time we pulled into Denver. George and the guys had been texting and calling for the last hour. They were stressed because some of the equipment wasn’t working right, and the venue was having sound issues.

  I drove Derek straight to the club. He looked tired as he came around to the driver’s side to kiss me through the open window after buckling Jane’s carrier into the passenger seat. He had napped for an hour or so, but it wasn’t enough.

  “You’re tired. I feel like that’s my fault,” I said, being careful to avoid the word sorry.

  “I believe that I started everything yesterday,” he said.

  “True, but—”

  “No buts. Go to the hotel, take a long, hot bath. Ease those sore loins,” he teased. “Although, I’ll probably be late and too tired to ravish you. Damn. That really sucks.”

  I pushed his hand off the window. “Go! George already hates me.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  “Of course it does. Who wants anyone hating them?”

  “Miss Mia.” He tried to reach back in, but I put the car in reverse and backed away.

  “Have fun!” I said and then drove away from him.

  The hotel wasn’t far, and thankfully, it was pet friendly. I checked in and had to have a bellhop help me with the luggage plus all the kitty supplies. I felt like Mama, traveling with the entire family when we went on road trips for Jake’s or Cam’s sports.

  In the room, I made sure Jane was locked up tight in her new carrier and then did exactly like Derek suggested; I took a bath. It made me sleepy, but it eased my sore muscles. I got out and looked at my body in the mirror. It was far from fat. It was just round… curvy. Suddenly, that didn’t seem all bad. Derek seemed to like it.

  Even as sleepy as I was, my brain wouldn’t quite leave me alone in the quiet of the room with just the sound of the air conditioning unit clicking on and off.

  I felt like I’d been on this trip for much longer than six days. It was as if I’d lived more since knowing Derek than I had my whole life. But it also wasn’t my reality. It wasn’t what I would be returning to in another fifteen days.

  I’d wanted my heart to feel lighter. And it did. I’d wanted to escape briefly. And I had. I wanted to forget Hayden. And he was not much more than a bad memory of things I shouldn’t have done.

  I’d also known, from the moment Derek had walked into the dealership, that he could unravel me. Like a ball of Christmas garland that had been flung in a box for someone else to deal with the next year. And he had done that too. Unraveled me.

  I just didn’t know what would be left when it was all done. Would there be a Mia that could return to her old world and pick up where she left off? Because I didn’t have a choice. You don’t move away from parents who have lost everything because of you.

  Really, I didn’t want to move away from them or my life in Tennessee. I just wanted to feel…I don’t know…not broken…not defective. And after this trip, I thought I might be trading one scab for a different one.

  Eventually, the tiredness forced me to sleep, and I only woke up as Derek was climbing into the bed with me. Scary that I hadn’t even heard the door.

  “How’s our baby?” he asked through a voice that was so tired I wanted to cry.

  “Good. She ate, pooped, slept, just like a real baby,” I whispered. “Go to sleep.”

  Derek kissed my neck, drew me up close to his body, and slept.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  The next four days were a blur. We didn’t even have a chance to use the new box of condoms we’d bought. Derek was at the venue all day, singing all night, and I was taking care of the kitten. The day after Denver, we were supposed to go spelunking, but I didn’t want to leave the kitten for that long, so I stayed in the motor home while the boys went.

  When Derek came back, he wasn’t happy that I hadn’t gone with them and said something about needing to find a babysitter for our child. I didn’t know how to react to that as I often didn’t know how to respond to him. Our child. It seemed crazy to even say those words out loud.

  Because a child wasn’t the anticipated outcome from a three-week escapade. A child couldn’t be divided in two when we both went back to our real worlds. I could feel the emotion Derek was pouring into me. Even though I didn’t know why, I could see tha
t he didn’t just think of this as sex, but I also didn’t know what he expected to happen when the trip came to its natural conclusion.

  After the spelunking, we drove to Vegas, where I had never been. Derek insisted that I get the full experience, so he drove me down Las Vegas Boulevard, and I stared in wonder at the lights, and sounds, and energy that seemed to hum through the entire place. Like the electricity that lit the lights was also lighting up the people. As if they were all automatons.

  We stayed at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, where the band would also be playing. Our suite was huge and impressive, but was tucked away so that you couldn’t see the lights from the strip. This was both disappointing and a relief because all that false energy made me feel as if I were in a different dimension even more than this whole trip had me feel.

  That night, the Vegas girls at the show were more trashy than any of the fangirls at any of the other stops. They looked like hookers ready to be paid. I hated it when people put down girls for the way they dressed, but even I couldn’t defend them.

  As we left the theater, Derek was mobbed by a crowd that was aggressively vying for his attention. The crowd tore me from his grip, and I got shoved against a wall with a bang that twisted my ankle in the wedges I’d worn and shook my whole body. I could hear him call my name, and I saw him forcibly thrust some of the tramps aside to get back to me. When he reached me, he picked me up, and I wrapped my legs around him. He pushed his way through the crowd as casino security finally showed up and escorted us to the elevator.

  I was still shaking when the doors of the elevator shut us in, and I suddenly realized why Trista didn’t always travel with the band. This was insane. I forced him to put me down, and I wanted to wince as my ankle gave, but I also didn’t want him to worry.

  “Are you okay?” His voice was gruff, angry, but I knew it wasn’t at me. He was eyeing me like Mama had when I’d come home from caving with him.

  “Yes,” I said, not wanting him to know how shaky the whole experience had left me. My ankle would be fine by the morning.