by Jamie Shaw
“We have a winner!” Van shouts, and Shawn’s thumbs swipe delicately over my pert nipples, once, twice—
Oh God. I’m so hot, I’m squirming. Every inch of me is arching into his hands as he teases my primed, eager nipples. My eyes close, and his thumbs continue torturing me until they slide back down to my waist. Both of us are breathing heavy, and every muscle in my body is coiling, squeezing, demanding I get the hell out of this room and drag Shawn along with me.
I finish off my drink in one big swallow.
“Van,” I say in a voice I’m hoping doesn’t sound as breathless as I feel. He turns his head toward me. “I think we need more drinks.”
He gazes down at his full glass, grins, and calls a random girl over, ordering her to bring us something. The remainder of his tequila is gone in two or three big gulps, and then he sets his glass on the floor and we all watch attentively as Mike’s winner circles the pool to stand in front of him.
“Uh, I’m Bob,” Mike lies as he stares up at her. “You’re looking for Mike. I think he’s at the bar. Skinny guy, lots of curly orange hair.” He finishes describing our bus driver and points to the other room. “Have fun.”
The girl looks doubtful, but she follows his finger anyway, and I’m smiling like a lunatic when Nikki pouts, her face twisting with disappointment.
“Boo. Why’d you do that?”
When he doesn’t answer, Molly teases, “Maybe he’s not into chicks.”
It’s a bitch thing to say, and I get nasty right back—throwing out the equivalent of a bitch slap to Molly’s face. “Maybe he’s just not into groupie whores.”
“Hey,” she rushes to say, “I mean, that’s cool if he isn’t . . . ”
My teeth are grinding, but Mike doesn’t sound angry at all when he says, “Look . . . when I meet my wife, I don’t want to have to explain to her why I slept with a hundred chicks before I met her, okay?”
Every single person within earshot shuts up and stares at him, with every single girl melting for his words. Even Molly and Nikki are looking at him like they wish they were that girl he’s waiting for: because Mike could be Van—he could have taken that implant connoisseur somewhere private and had her do anything he asked—but he’s staying loyal . . . loyal to a girl he hasn’t even met yet. And that’s so much more than Molly or Nikki can ever hope for.
“More for me,” Van chides, jostling Nikki when he reaches over to clap Mike on the back. He shuffles her off his lap and stands up, stretching his arms out before heading for the hot tub.
Neither Nikki nor Molly bothers following him.
The rest of the night is filled with drinks and laughing, with pushing people in the pool and ordering forty dozen Krispy Kreme donuts from concierge. The music doesn’t stop, and neither does the party. Sometime around three in the morning, when Shawn’s discreet touches have grown too much for me to bear, I meet his eyes across the sunken sitting area in the middle of the suite and chew my lip between my teeth. When I stand up, his eyes follow me. When I turn away and cross the room, I know they’re still watching. When I slip outside the suite into the hotel hallway, I know no one notices—no one except him.
I’m leaning against generic eggshell wallpaper when the door opens, and when he steps through it, I grin. But only for a second, because that’s how long it takes him to cross the space between us, thrust his fingers into my hair, and pin me against the wall. His lips cover mine in a kiss that’s been building all night, and breathing becomes something I no longer need to do—because his fingertips are sliding down my neck, over my shoulders and arms, and around my wrists. He stretches my arms above my head, and I’m so his right now, I let him. He parts my thighs with his knee, pressing up against thin jeans until I’m squirming on top of him, making sounds against his mouth that are desperate and pleading. I’m on fire, and Shawn kisses at the flames, making them burn hotter and hotter until I’m devouring his lips just to keep them off my molten skin. If only I could free my hands, I’d be able to put us out, but each time I tug against Shawn’s grip, he pulls them even higher.
Light and music from Van’s suite suddenly spills into the hall, but Shawn doesn’t stop kissing until I do, and even then, he doesn’t release his hold on my wrists. He watches me as I watch over his shoulder—a new cluster of girls enters the suite, and when my dark eyes turn back to Shawn’s, he’s staring at me like nothing else in the world matters. When I try to lower my hands, he refuses to let them budge, and I surrender control faster than I ever thought I would. His eyes darken, my knees go weak, and I just wait. And wait. When he brings his lips to mine again, it’s powerful, dominant, and it makes me squirm between his body and the wall.
“I want you,” he breathes against my neck, sending a sweet rush of heat between my legs. His breath is warm against my skin, his tongue smooth as he dips it into the hollow of my collarbone. With my hands restrained, there’s nothing I can do except let him have me. And God, I want him to have me.
“Let’s go somewhere.”
He lifts his head from my skin to meet my eyes, and the smoldering look in them makes my heart trip and stumble. When I move to lower my hands this time, he lets me, and when I step away from him and start walking backward, he calls after me.
“Where?”
“Anywhere.”
I give him a devilish smile that he can read like one of his books, and when I start to sprint down the hallway, he’s right on my heels.
I have no intention of getting away—I never have, never did—but the fact that he’s chasing after me . . . it makes the running worth it.
Chapter Sixteen
ON THE ROOF of the hotel, under a thick blanket of summer stars, Shawn and I are completely, completely alone. During our sprint through halls and stairwells, I nearly crashed into housekeeping, who we ultimately convinced to let us on the roof. I pretended to be a groupie, Shawn pretended to be a member of the “huge rock band” the entire staff had heard about, and by the time we got on the roof, we were both giggling like mischief-making kids. Shawn tried to kiss me, I laughed and jumped away, and he chased me to the edge of the roof. But the view is what caught us, and now, as we stare out over a city that seems to shine just for us, he takes my hand in his.
“It’s beautiful,” I say, mesmerized by the skyline. Touring hasn’t left much time for sightseeing, but I know none of it would have been like this—just Shawn and me, alone, standing at the edge of the world.
When his soft chuckling sounds from beside me, I turn my head and say, “What?”
“Is this the part where I’m supposed to stare at you instead of the view and say something corny like, ‘Yeah, it is’?” I laugh and look back out at the lights, but from the corner of my eye, I can see him still staring at me. His voice becomes exaggeratedly serious when he says, “Because it is. Beautiful, I mean.” I laugh harder and nudge him with my shoulder, and he wraps his arm around me.
“You’re a dork.”
“Only around you.”
I smile out at the sky, content under his arm because there’s not a single place I’d rather be. The breeze carries the crisp scent of his cologne, and it wraps itself around me like a cool summer blanket as the silence between us stretches and stretches, out into the dark, winding through sleeping city streets.
When it reaches too far, I ruin everything by opening my mouth. “I thought we’d have our clothes off by now.”
I blush fiercely as soon as I say it, curling my toes tightly in my boots to punish my foot for putting itself into my mouth, but Shawn’s voice is honest, soft, when he says, “So did I.”
I relax under his arm, thinking—and hoping—that this isn’t something friends with benefits would do. They wouldn’t race to an abandoned roof just to laugh and hold each other. They wouldn’t stand here like we are, creating a memory like this.
When I turn toward Shawn this time, curling my fingers around his shoulders and bringing my lips to his, the kiss is soft, controlled. It’s not a fire. It’
s a message. It’s a million things I can’t say, and I when I lower from my tiptoes, I can’t help smiling up at him, warming from the inside out when he mirrors that smile right back at me.
Clothes and all, it’s perfect, and we eventually settle with our backs against the brick wall of the hotel, our shoulders touching and my arms wrapped loosely around my knees. The view really is gorgeous up here, but a poor substitute for Shawn’s green eyes. I can’t stop myself from stealing glances at them, and each time he catches me and smiles, I have to look away to keep myself from giggling like the girly girl I’m not.
“I’m going to ask you to do something,” he says after a while, “and it’s going to be weird. But don’t laugh, okay?”
He makes it sound so ominous, I prepare myself for the worst. A guy I dated in college asked me to refer to him as “Daddy” once while we were making out, and I laughed so hard as I walked out of his life, I’m pretty sure I never gave him an answer.
My voice is nervous when I answer Shawn. “O . . . kay . . . ”
He spreads his knees and pats the ground between them. “Can you sit here? And . . . let me hold you?”
Butterflies swarm out from my heart, through my veins, and into my stomach. They’re fluttering wildly, their wings forcing goose bumps to the surface of my skin, as he waits for my answer. The nervousness in me wants to stall by asking him why, by ruining the moment, but instead, I swallow thickly and push that reaction down deep. I crawl between his knees, settle with my back against his chest, and swoon when he wraps his strong arms around me.
“Are you comfortable?”
I can’t help it this time—I giggle quietly—and when he asks me what I’m laughing about, I say, “You act like you’ve never been with a girl before.”
“Never like this. Not with a girl like you.”
If only he knew—that he was with me once, years ago, far more intimately than this. On a night like this, at a party like the one we just left, before he let me walk away. Before he forgot my name, my face, our story.
I try to push the memory away, but it’s hard when his arms are finally wrapped around me and only one of us remembers the first time our eyes met, the first time our lips touched.
My very first time ever.
“I used to have a crush on you in high school, you know,” I confess. I know he doesn’t remember, but I can’t stop myself from hurting, or hoping. My heart reaches for his in the dark, trying to make him remember.
“Did you?”
I let out a little sigh when my heart comes back empty, and he rubs his thumbs over my arms. “Yeah,” I say.
Shawn starts playing with my fingertips, his hard-earned calluses rubbing against mine. “You shouldn’t have.”
“Why not?”
“I wasn’t a good guy in high school.” When I lift my chin to gaze up at him, he brushes my hair away from my forehead and tucks it behind my ear. His T-shirt is soft against my cheek, his voice even softer when he says, “A guy like me wouldn’t have been good for you in high school.”
I want to argue with him, but I don’t know that I can. And anyway, what would be the point? I turn back around, settle against his chest, and let him tighten his arms around me. “What makes you good for me now?”
“Probably nothing. But I want you anyway.”
Part of me sighs in contentment while the other part wants to ask for how long. For the rest of this tour? For until he gets bored? For tonight? For forever?
“You don’t really know me,” I say, but Shawn’s response is quick.
“I know you talk in your sleep.”
I push off his chest and shift to look at him. “I do not.”
“Yes, you do,” he says with a playful smirk. “Last night, you kept saying, ‘Oh, Shawn, oh, you’re so hot, I want you so bad—’ ”
My jaw drops in a gasp. “You’re so full of shit!” When he starts laughing, I smack at him until he wraps me in his arms and tugs me back against his chest. I laugh along with him, delighting in the way his body shakes against my back, until I’m smiling out over the roof again.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” he asks of me after a while, and I can hear him smiling too—it’s shining through his voice.
“I like ketchup in my macaroni sometimes.”
His thumbs stop tracing over my arms when I say the first thing that pops into my head, and the night is silent when he says, “Damn. That changes everything. I think you should go back inside.”
I laugh, and his thumbs start up again, keeping me still in his arms.
The smile is still in his voice when he says, “Tell me something else.”
“It’s your turn,” I argue.
“What do you want to know?”
“Have you ever been to a party like that?”
“Like that?” With my head nestled in the crook of his shoulder, he says, “Nah. I’ve been to some crazy parties, but none like that.”
“If you’d sign with Victoria’s dad, you could have them every night.”
“Why would I want to?”
I spin around and face him, bending my knees over his thighs. “Isn’t that the dream?”
He rests his hands on the worn knees of my jeans, twining his fingers into the threads. “You mean having someone else tell us what to do?” When I wait for him to elaborate, he says, “It’s not worth it. I never want someone telling me what to write or what not to write or how fast we have to put stuff out there. Cutting the Line is good, but compare them now to how they sounded five years ago.”
I know exactly what he means. “Their first album was amazing.”
“And Van knows it.” His fingers continue navigating every slit and fray in my jeans—every single one, like he needs to touch every inch of my exposed skin, even though I doubt he realizes that’s what he’s doing. “He loves the life, but he hates what he has to do to have it. Vicki’s dad has him under his thumb. That would kill it for me and Adam, and I know Mike and Joel wouldn’t like it either.” His fingers glide into a slit behind my calf, and I pretend not to notice, not to love the way he’s touching me as much as I do. “What about you?”
“I like things the way they are.”
His smile warms the chill of the wind on my cheeks. “They’re going to change, either way. It’ll just be slower this way.”
“I like slow.”
“I’m starting to like slow too.” His eyes drift to my lips, and the breeze itself seems to still. “Like now . . . I really want to kiss you.”
“Why don’t you?” My voice is shallow, hollowed by breath he steals.
“Because I like this.” His fingers crawl back up my legs until they’re twining into the ragged threads stretched over my knee again. “Tell me something else.”
“Like what?”
“Where do you see yourself in five years?”
My attention lifts from his fingers to his eyes. “Jeez, you couldn’t have gone with something easy?” He grins, and the adorable line that sets in his cheek makes me want to answer anything he asks. “I don’t know, hopefully still playing music.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s the only thing I can say for sure.”
There are things I know I want—like Shawn, every single bit of him—but I don’t know where we’ll be tomorrow, much less five years from now. And when I try to guess, it just hurts. Because five years is almost six years, and six years is such a long time.
He nods with understanding, and I ask, “What about you?”
“Definitely still playing music. Hopefully with you.” He smirks, and I smile. “By then, maybe we’ll be on a label.”
“I thought you didn’t want to be on a label?”
“Not right now,” he explains. “I want to be big enough that when we draft the papers, they have to kiss our asses instead of the other way around.” I chuckle and shift closer to him, listening as he continues. “And I don’t know. Adam and Peach will probably be married or something by then, so I’ll
probably be homeless.”
I laugh and joke, “I’d let you live with me.”
“So there then,” he says with one of his unguarded, bright smiles. “We have a plan.”
I look away, at a piece of gravel next to my boot, and I can feel my own smile dimming as I pinch it between my fingers. “Part of me never wants this tour to end.”
“Why?”
I lift my gaze back to his, my eyes making a confession even as my mouth asks the question my heart has been too afraid to. “What happens when we get home? To you and me?”
Do we pretend the kisses we shared over coffee on the tour bus never happened? Do we keep fooling around in secret? What happens when he meets someone better than me, prettier than me?
“What do you want to happen?” he asks.
“Don’t do that,” I plead.
“Do what?”
“Make me embarrass myself.”
He studies me for a long moment, and then he says, “I told you I wanted you. You think that wasn’t embarrassing?”
“What does that even mean?”
“What do you mean, ‘what does that even mean?’ It means I want to be with you.” A subtle blush creeps onto his cheeks, but I still can’t believe Shawn is saying what I think he is.
“Be with me how?”
He laughs and shakes his head. “Christ, Kit, do you not see how into you I am? I’m saying I don’t want us seeing other people, okay? I want you for myself. I want to see where we might be five years from now.”
The smile that consumes my face turns night to day, pushes the dark into tomorrow. “Ask me.”
“Ask you what?”
“Ask me,” I press again, and he chuckles as he picks apart a thread in my jeans.
“You’re the worst, you know that?” When I just keep smiling at him, he can’t help smiling back. “I swear, if you say no—”
“Ask me.”
He takes his time, inhales a deep breath . . . and then, he asks me. “Will you go out with me?”
“Can you be more specific?”
When he starts to argue, I laugh and kiss him, silencing him with my answer. I kiss him until his arms are circling around my waist, until I’m his and we both know it. “Okay,” I say when I part my lips from his. “But if I’m yours, you’re mine.”
