Twisted Heartstrings

by A Kelly Sweeney

  My toes curl as my body tenses. My release is so close I can feel myself gripping him. As I slip over the edge, I can feel him swell within my tightening muscles. I know I'll be tender with how deep he is as he comes with me.

  Collapsing on me, he attempts to keep some of his weight off me by using his forearms to support himself. I can feel his warm panting on my neck as he catches his breath. Moments later, he slides himself from me to discard the condom before pulling me back into his arms.

  Resting my head on his shoulder, I drift to sleep with a satisfied smile on my face.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Toni

  When I wake, muted light is filtering in from the darkened windows. It takes me a moment to realize I’m on the bus and not in my room. I reach for my phone to check what time it is. I gasp when I realize it's noon. I've never slept this long before.

  Getting up, I toss on a pair of sweats and a baggy sweatshirt before I head out to the front of the bus. I blush when I realize I’m the last one up and that the guys are all sitting around the TV playing games while Jasper sits in front of his computer at the table.

  Standing there watching them interact with each other, I can't help but smile. They constantly rib one another, truly acting like a family. Jasper is sitting fairly quietly, only adding an insult here and there. It's hard to believe that I'll be spending a month with them and getting to know them better.

  “Do we have anything to snack on?” I ask, knowing my body is wanting food.

  “Check the cupboards,” replies Christoph. “There might be something in there. Usually the bus is stocked for us before we leave.”

  As I root through the cupboards I’m surprised to find that there is actual food on board. Although, most of it is junk food. I find a box of cereal, amused that they would have any. I check the fridge and find milk. I bring my bowl of cereal and sit across from Jasper to eat. As I sit and eat, I watch the boys play their game, noticing how competitive they are. They get louder and I wonder if they tried to keep their volume down while I was asleep.

  “Wanna come distract your man, Toni?” Nicholai asks. “He's kicking our asses.”

  I laugh. “Uh, I don't want to piss him off.”

  “Good call,” Jasper replies with a smirk. “He gets mad if he's winning and someone distracts him so that he loses. They’re all a bunch of poor losers.”

  “Fuck you, Jasper,” Christoph says.

  I can't help but laugh. “I'm sure Jasper doesn't swing your way, Christoph.”

  Everyone bursts out laughing except Christoph, who glares at me, making me laugh even harder than I already am. I can't help it, it’s like he’s sulking, even though everyone is just playing around. But this is the first I’m seeing their normal group dynamic, considering the vast majority of my travel time so far has been spent in the bedroom with my sexy as sin boyfriend. Wow. It felt weird but so right to call Lucius my boyfriend.

  When I’m done eating, I clean up what I used and take a seat on the couch between Christoph and Nicholai so I can watch the guys play. Soon enough, I’m telling them what to do in order to try to help them beat Lucius. But even with my help they still lose.

  They pack away the controllers, knowing they will have to start getting ready for sound checks soon. I head back to the bedroom to get dressed in actual clothes rather than the sweats I have on. I pull out a pair of jeans and root through my bag for a decent shirt; I want to look nice for the guys.

  I find a shirt that will be comfortable for taking pictures while still being dressy enough to look good, and I smile to myself. It's the first time I've wanted to dress nice for someone else. Even for past boyfriends I never really tried or thought about what I wore. But then again, Lucius isn't just any other man. He's a man many people drool over, and his female fans have expectations of the type of woman he should be with.

  I quickly change, knowing the guys will want to get in and start getting ready. Once I’m dressed, I grab my makeup bag and head to the front of the bus.

  Sitting across from Jasper again, I begin the task of getting my makeup on. I can see Jasper shake his head out of the corner of my eye. Men never understand why a girl wears so much stuff in order to look pretty, when they just toss on whatever without a care. And it's not like I normally wear a lot of makeup. Usually the only time I wear a ton of it is when I’m having a day when I know I look like crap.

  I watch as the guys head back to start getting ready. Before Jasper gets up he hands me a box. As I look down at the box that he handed me, my jaw drops. It’s a one terabyte external drive. I only mentioned I wanted to get one, he didn't need to get one for me. I glance back toward the back, gaping before looking back at the box. Shaking my head, I put the box down next to my computer and finish getting ready.

  I’m packing up my makeup when Lucius slides in next to me, putting his arm around me to pull me into his side. I glance up at him, his ice blue eyes bright as he holds me to him.

  “What a pair of lovesick puppies,” Nicholai teases, as he passes us. “I can't wait for the honeymoon phase to be over.”

  I look at Nicholai, smiling. “Maybe you just need to get a woman, rather than the jail-bait you hook up with.” It’s well known that Nic usually hooks up with younger girls who I’d consider barely legal.

  “Ouch, Toni, you sure know where to hit a guy,” Nic returns, holding his hands to his heart as if I’ve wounded him.

  I laugh. “Aww, Nic can't take ribbing from a woman?” Lucius’s chest rumbles as he chuckles quietly. I just hope that if I cross a line with teasing that someone tells me, rather than getting pissed off with me.

  Nicholai laughs. “You’ll definitely fit in with us, Toni.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Toni

  After the show, when we’re all back on the bus, I enjoy sitting and hanging out with the guys. Once I’ve finished doing some of my work, I relax with a beer and chat with them. What surprises me is that Lucius stays up with us, probably because he wants to stay awake until I’m ready to head to bed, or maybe he just wants to enjoy some time with the guys.

  “Nicholai, what's one of the pranks you pulled that backfired?” I ask, knowing they love to play pranks. I was thankful I had yet to be pranked. I know my time will come; a right of passage into their fold when they decide I'm truly one of them.

  “Chris and I had put hair remover in Luc and Al's body wash, only to have them swap the bottles with ours. We ended up losing chunks of our body hair.”

  I laugh. “I guess that served you right.”

  Chris replies, “Oh, yeah. We stopped with the pranks like that. We thought about putting hair dye in your shampoo and conditioner but figured Luc would kill us if we did.”

  “You got that right,” Luc replies.

  I’m starting to get tired and figure it is time to head to bed. Leaning into Luc I whisper, “I’m ready to go to bed.”

  He growls quietly into my ear, “Thank fuck! Let’s go!”

  “Well, I'm off to bed. Have a good night, guys,” I say, as I make my way to the bedroom with Luc following me.

  I know both of us are tired, so I strip down, climb into bed next to Luc, and cuddle into him, lulled to sleep by the beat of his heart beneath my ear.

  Light is streaming in when I hear a chuckle that stirs me awake. Somehow during the night I've rolled to my back, away from Luc while he slept on his stomach. Pulling my right arm away to rub the sleep from my eyes, I find that I can't. I go to move my left arm and find it hard to move. As I blink the sleep away I glance down.

  “What the fuck,” I mutter. Hearing snickering, I glance up to see both Chris and Nic grinning and hear the click of the camera Chris is holding. “What the fuck,” I yell this time. The sheets are tangled around me and my upper body is bared, Luc's back is exposed and one of his legs freed from the sheet.

  My right arm is tied to the headboard while my left arm is tied to Luc's left arm. I keep trying to pull on my left arm only to feel the material starti
ng to dig into my wrist. I can't help but panic as a memory hits me.

  I was only eleven or so and had just been placed with my fifth foster family within the last year. They had wanted a boy, but instead got me, not hiding their disappointment over me being a girl. I was stuck being treated like a slave to the family, beaten when they thought I'd done something wrong. I tried to be a good girl, but tonight I was getting in trouble for something I didn't do. My foster brother lied, saying I broke the vase that he smashed on purpose.

  I found myself being tied to the bed with coarse rope that was sure to chafe my delicate skin. He liked when I was left with marks. Danny, their son, was sitting on me in order to hold me down while my foster father was tying me to the bed face down. I could barely breathe under his weight.

  Once my arms and legs were tied to the bedposts, Danny got off me and yanked my pants down. I screamed, telling them to stop. They both laughed maniacally. I can hear the rustling as Mr. Maxwell pulls his belt from his pants.

  I scream at the first strike against my bare skin, the leather of the belt abrading my flesh. The burning pain is all I feel with hit after hit. I can't help but try to squirm as tears fall, wanting to get out, but the rope is tightening around my skin, making my hands and feet tingle as numbness sets in.

  I'm crying so hard I can't hear what they are saying. I want to retreat into myself, find a safe place away from the horror I have to endure. Wishing I had a family who treated me better, wishing I'd never been born. It's not the first time they've beaten me, and I know it won't be the last. Both father and son are enjoying the pain being inflicted upon me.

  “Stop struggling, Toni,” Chris hisses, pulling me from my past. “The prank is more for Luc than you. He'll get you loose as soon as he wakes.”

  I watch helplessly as they back out of the bedroom, snickering. I try to calm myself down, but it's no use, I can't help but panic. Nic and Chris are just trying to prank us, not hurt me. But my panic isn't letting me see clearly. I need to get loose.

  Shouldering Luc, I say through clenched teeth, “Wake up Lucius. Those fuckers are gonna get a beat down!” I’m trying to fight back the anxiety that being tied up gives me, but every moment that I’m immobile brings me closer to losing it.

  Luc groans, “Go back to sleep, baby.”

  “Luc, we're tied to the bed. They have a picture of me half naked!” I practically scream at him.

  He turns his head to me. “Say what?”

  I go to pull on my left arm to show him, but due to the angles our arms are in I can't pull much. “Luc, Nic and Chris tied us to the bed. My left arm is tied to yours and my right is tied to the bed.”

  Trying to push himself up I notice when he realizes he's tied too. “Those fuckers.”

  I watch as he keeps pulling on his right arm. It's tied to the bed frame below the mattress. It's not long before I hear material rip, telling me his arm is free. It takes him a few moments to figure out how to maneuver so that he can free his other arm without hurting me.

  As he moves carefully to not hurt either of us, I watch as he brings our wrists up. It's then that I realize it's a pair of my underwear that was used to tie us together. With his free hand, he makes quick work of getting our arms untied.

  With my left arm free, I try to move up the bed to make it easier for Luc to loosen my right arm. Once free, I watch as he throws on a pair of boxers before storming out the door. I pull on a pair of shorts and a tank top as I follow suit. I'm so angry I want to cry, but I want to make them pay first.

  “Where's the camera?” Luc bellows, as I make my way down the hallway between the bunks.

  Coming up behind him, I can see both Chris and Nic smirking while Nic replies, “It's been put away for safekeeping.”

  My body is quaking in anger, of feeling not only violated by what the pair of them did, but also from what happened to me in my past. My blood boils and I want to hit someone or something. I feel embarrassed that they saw me panicking; I don’t want them to know the broken me. I hate that after all these years the abuse I was subjected to still affects me the way that it does.

  I push past Luc and slap both Nic and Chris. “Where the fuck is the camera? No one is gonna see that picture!”

  “Fine, it's in my bunk,” Chris says, pouting like a child.

  Luc goes to the bunk and pulls out the phone, scrolling through to delete the picture.

  “You ever do that again I'll chop off your nuts and mount them to the side of the bus,” I threaten, as I glare at both of them. I really want to hit them again.

  They both chuckle before Luc decks them both, effectively shutting them up.

  “I ever catch you with a picture of Toni in any state of undress, I'll let her do it,” Luc hisses before storming off back to the bedroom.

  “We're sorry, Toni,” Nic says contritely.

  “You crossed the line with that prank. And using my underwear? Fuck, Luc just ruined a pair. What were you thinking?”

  “We thought it would be funny,” Chris replies.

  I hold up my arm to show them the welt growing on my wrist. “You think this is funny? Luc has one too.”

  “You wouldn’t have the welts if you didn’t struggle so much,” replies Nic.

  “You fucking tied me up!” I holler, as I smack him again.

  Jasper comes from the bunks rubbing his eyes in a pair of tight white boxers. “What's with all the yelling?”

  “Ask these two knuckleheads,” I reply, as I push past him to head to the bedroom to try and cool off. I don’t even care that I shoved him out of my way.

  As I close the door softly behind me, I watch as Luc plays with his phone. I sit next to him, leaning my head on his shoulder. “I can't believe they did that.”

  “It's not that bad of a pic,” he says, as he shows me.

  “Oh my God, I hope they didn't post that.”

  “You look good tied up, we should try it sometime,” he replies with a smirk.

  I giggle. “Luc, there is no way I’m letting you tie me up after that. Even if they didn't do that, it's something I'd never be able to handle.”

  Pulling me so that I’m straddling him, he kisses my lips before slowly kissing his way to my neck. Between kisses he says, “But what if it's something I want to try? Having you at my mercy to pleasure.”

  “You don't need me tied for that. All you have to do is touch me and I'm at your mercy,” I moan.

  My anger dissolves into desire. This is how much this man affects me. How he can transform my emotions in an instant.

  Chapter Twenty

  Toni

  One night after a show I find myself restless. Luc is fast asleep next to me, but sleep evades me. It's only been a few days that I've been on tour with the guys, and I feel comfortable around them. I quickly slip from the bed, pulling on a pair of sweatpants and a hoodie.

  I make my way toward the kitchen, figuring that maybe I can get some work done. The guys are all in bed, so I quietly turn on my notebook, the screen providing just enough light for me to type by, compared to using my tablet. To make sure I don't wake anyone, I grab my headphones and move with my notebook over to the loveseat, hoping it's far enough from where the guys are sleeping.

  I turn on some music to listen to as I work and begin sorting through the pictures I took today, smirking at a few of the candid shots I got. A lot of them are of the guys joking around backstage, while others are of them deep in thought while waiting for the opener to finish so they can take the stage. I know these are one's that they won't want shared with the general public, so I post them on their personal pages for their friends and family to see.

  I start editing the rest of the pictures to clean them up before posting them to the group and individual pages. I have fun captioning them as I post and hope they don't get mad at me for what I'm writing.

  I nearly jump when I find Jas taking a seat next to me. When we've worked together we usually sat side by side. I'm more comfortable around him than I was before, bu
t I still feel awkward around him on occasion when I’m feeling vulnerable.

  “Hey,” I say quietly, pulling off my headphones.

  “Can't sleep?” he asks.

  I shake my head as I answer, “No. I don't know why either. Just feeling restless.”

  “Comes with the territory when you're stuck on the bus and not used to it.”

  “It's not that. I think it mostly has to do with how I grew up. For years I survived on only a little bit of sleep.”

  “Why would you have to survive on a little bit of sleep?”

  I'm not sure if I want to tell Jasper about my past, especially with the fact that we have a shared history that he may not even remember. But if I want him to open up to me about his past, then maybe I need to open up to him about mine.

  With a sigh, I answer. “From the age of ten, I was in foster care. For years, I bounced from home to home, and let's just say I hated it. It wasn't until I was with my last foster family, when I started high school, did I get a family that actually cared about me. They even adopted me. But I went through a lot of abusive situations with most of the families I was placed with. Because I never knew when something would happen, I would stay awake as long as I could.”

  “Why were you in foster care?”

  “I was taken away from my mom. She was deemed unfit to care for me.”

  “That sucks,” he says.

  “Yeah, my life did for a while. But there's something I've been wanting to ask you for a while now but haven't had the privacy to be able to.”

  His expression changes, as if he's wondering what I want to ask him about with no one else around. “What?”

  Swallowing in order to give me an extra moment, I then push on. “Um. I don't know how to say or ask this.”