Chaos

by Jamie Shaw

  He moans against my mouth, and I kiss the sound away until he’s all the way inside me, my forehead dropping to the pillow next to his head. The length of him is making every nerve in my body flash-fire with electric heat, and all I can do is make tiny sounds of ecstasy against the soft shell of his ear as he begins moving in and out of me on his own, his strong hands holding my hips in place. With Shawn rocking in me, out of me, in me, out of me, I grip the bedsheets, the pillow next to his head, the roots of his hair.

  The moans coming from my throat become quicker, more frantic, and his pace picks up to match. He’s pushing me higher and higher, out of my fucking mind, and in the heart of the fire, I sit up straight and brace my hands on his shoulders. I steal the pace from him, my knees lifting me, rocking me, grinding me against him, until the world is spinning and I’m being flipped onto my back.

  “I’m so close,” I beg, and Shawn hikes my knees up to my chest, leaning back before pulling out and pushing back into me agonizingly slowly. His eyes are on mine as every single inch of him sinks deep between my legs, and my eyelids flutter closed as I burn alive beneath him.

  The mattress beside me shifts as he lowers to his hands, and his breath is hot on my ear when he says, “Do you know what I remember about our first time?”

  Every movement he makes inside me is so controlled, so deliberate, that all I can do is answer with a whimper.

  “It didn’t last nearly long enough,” he says.

  His lips capture the lobe of my ear in a warm caress that makes my toes curl, his heavy breaths stirring the hair at my temple and making my thighs tighten around him.

  “Do you want me to touch you?” he asks, and the way I pulse around him is answer enough. He leans back, wets the pad of his thumb between his lips, and watches me squirm as he lowers it to the ready bud that has me crying out his name. “I want to see that look in your eyes again, Kit. Open your eyes.”

  It takes every ounce of strength I have to open my eyes and gaze up at him, but when I do, it takes only seconds.

  “Oh my God,” I gasp, my back arching off the bed, my fingers gripping the base of the headboard behind my pillow. Shawn’s calloused thumb traces firm circles, and the image of him stays printed behind my eyelids even when they squeeze shut and my head throws back.

  The way his arms are flexing as he reaches down to touch me. The firm muscles in his chest, his stomach. The scruff on his jaw, the brightness of his lips. Those green eyes, and the way they demanded I fall apart beneath him, for him.

  The base of my wooden headboard is still biting into the palms of my hands when Shawn lowers back down to a missionary position. He kisses my neck, my jaw, my mouth. He’s unhurried as he moves inside me, firmly enough to keep my orgasm going, going, going.

  Eventually, my arms wrap around him, my nails digging into his back as I squeeze him close against my breasts. “I want you,” I breathe against his damp temple. Because God, I haven’t had enough yet. Not even close.

  “You have me.”

  And when he pulls away and I see the look in his eyes, I believe him.

  My hand curls behind the back of his neck and I kiss him—I kiss him like he’s mine. I claim every inch of his lips, of his tongue, playing and sucking and nibbling until his pace becomes a little less sure, a little less controlled. Shawn tries to pull away again—I can tell he’s getting close—but I suck at his tongue in long, seductive strokes that make him moan against my mouth.

  And God, that sound. My heart kicks. My back arches. I fall apart again, my knees trembling against his body as mine loses control. I kiss him desperately, and the moans coming from deep inside his chest grow hungrier and wilder until he gives himself to me, his hips jerking within the tight squeeze of my thighs—until neither one of us has anything left to give.

  And then, I hold him. I wrap my arms around him and hold him close, brushing my fingers through his damp hair, kissing the side of his face, biting my lip between my teeth when I pulse around him and his body responds. I hold him until he summons the strength to lift himself up and gaze down into my eyes.

  He doesn’t say anything, and neither do I. Instead, he lowers his lips to mine, and when he kisses me, softly with absolutely nothing separating us, I know with everything I am that he was right—

  Neither of us is half a person. Not anymore.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  IT’S WEIRD SEEING my twin with Leti . . . It’s weird seeing my twin with anyone. Under the hazy blue lighting of Mayhem’s main bar, I watch Leti whisper something in Kale’s ear, and I watch Kale smile softly at the reflective black bar top, the back of his shoulder pressed tightly against the front of Leti’s chest.

  It’s weird—like seeing a bunny giggle or a puppy with purple eyes—but I can’t stop smiling.

  Kale and I worked things out the day after Shawn and I spent countless hours making up for lost time. Everyone in the world tried to contact us that day, but we made the world wait.

  The next day was chaos.

  Shawn dragged me back to his apartment with him so we could tell Adam, Joel, Rowan, and Dee in person about us being together. Then he told Mike over the phone, with jeers and catcalls flying from the background. I finally understood why he wanted to wait until the tour was over to tell the rest of the band, but even with Adam and Joel behaving like the ten-year-olds they perpetually are, the smile was etched permanently on my face. Shawn told them about me like he was announcing an award he’d won, and the way he held me close, it made me feel like one.

  I drove all the way home to talk to my family that same night—sans Shawn, in spite of his protests that we should go together. It was something I needed to do on my own. My talk with Kale was short—an apology from Kale, followed by a hug, an “I forgive you,” and a bone-crunching punch to his arm from me. I gave him a bruise that lasted over a week, a black-and-blue reminder to worry about his own love life from now on.

  Shawn was already waiting for me in my loft when I got home late that night, and I told him about the invitation my brothers not-so-kindly extended that he should-slash-better come to our next family dinner. And even though I tried-slash-threw-a-tantrum to dissuade him, Shawn wouldn’t get the hell out of my Jeep that following Sunday, and I had no choice but to bring him along.

  We arrived a few hours before dinner, with my brothers immediately suggesting a game of touch football that I knew damn well would involve a hell of a lot more than harmless touching. They had that dark look in their already-dark eyes—the one that told me they remembered every word I’d blurted at the dinner table, and that my explanations about Shawn being a good guy now had fallen on deaf ears.

  “They’re going to pulverize you,” I warned with the hem of Shawn’s shirt gripped between my fingers. We were standing on the sidelines of my front yard while my brothers waited impatiently on the grass for my boyfriend—like a pack of killer whales waiting for its prey to dive into the water.

  “I know,” Shawn agreed, unpeeling my fingers from his clothes one by one. A soft kiss on my cheek, and then he added, “Let them get it over with, okay?”

  I gnawed on my lip, but let him dive into the infested waters. And I watched my brothers eat him alive. I cringed every five seconds while my dad watched approvingly from beside me, his broad arms crossed over his even broader chest.

  Fifteen minutes in, when Shawn finally intercepted the ball and took off toward the end zone, I bounced onto the toes of my feet and screamed for him to GO, GO, GO. I was waving imaginary pompoms down the field, jumping on an invisible trampoline, when Mason charged at him and landed a vicious shoulder to the ribs. Shawn went airborne, his feet flying out from under him, before landing in a curled-up heap. I had just put one boot in front of the other, prepared to tackle my six-foot-three, two-hundred-forty-pound brother to the ground, when Shawn rolled onto his side and held up a hand for me to stay where I was. I froze, my hard eyes narrowed viciously at Mason while he hovered over Shawn and smiled.

  “I thi
nk maybe we should call a doctor,” he taunted while Shawn gripped his ribs and struggled to catch the wind that had been knocked out of him. “What do you say, Kit?” Mason’s voice boomed from across the yard, and not one of our other brothers stepped in to help. “Should we wait six years to call?”

  Everyone watched as Shawn coughed and writhed, and I was two seconds from showing Mason how deadly my combat boots could be—when his hand dropped in front of Shawn’s face. I watched as Shawn took it, I watched as Mason lifted him to his feet, and I watched as every single Larson on the field that day landed an elbow or a knee or a well-placed shoulder. By the time I drove Shawn home that night, he was in no physical condition to be even sitting up straight. I cast a worried glance at him from the driver’s seat of my Jeep, the light of passing cars chasing away the shadows on his face.

  “I think they like me,” he joked, and the only reason I could laugh is because I understood my brothers well enough to understand that they did like him. They beat the shit out of him, but they helped him back to his feet every time, and the fact that he was still breathing had to count for something. It was their way of making things right.

  Shawn’s body was still achy from that game when he came to the next family dinner, and the next. My brothers chided him about how tender his bruises still were—just like they would tease each other—and even though Kale was the slowest to come around, eventually he stopped narrowing his eyes at Shawn from down the table.

  “You really do love him,” he said to me quietly just before we left last Sunday.

  Instead of denying it, I pulled away from our hug and smiled. Aside from my psychotic break during that unforgettable family dinner, I hadn’t said the words yet—neither had Shawn—but I felt them. I felt them when he smiled at me, when he held me, when he made me laugh. And I felt them when he did none of those things. I felt them all the time.

  I expected Kale to shake his head or scowl or twist his lip between his teeth, but instead, he gave me a small smile—just a little one, but one that I remember perfectly as I stand under Mayhem’s blue glow with my elbow on the bar, directing that same smile at him and Leti. I always imagined what it would be like to see Kale with a boyfriend, but I never imagined he would seem so . . . peaceful. Content.

  Happy.

  He turns around, Leti leans into him, and I blush when my twin’s hands find my third-best friend’s waist, holding it tight as he steals a kiss that makes my ears blush.

  “You guys are disgusting.”

  Joel’s voice snags my attention, and when I turn to him, he’s busy watching Shawn’s fingers curl round and around in my hair. Since we came out as a couple, Shawn has made no secret that he and I are together—that I’m his, that he’s mine. His hands are always on me, always grazing or holding or touching, and while I would never have thought I’d like that so much . . . it’s Shawn, and I’m starving for the roughness of his fingertips when they’re not somewhere on me. I angle my chin to grin at him standing behind me. “I think he’s jealous.”

  Shawn smiles down at me, his green eyes content as he continues playing with my hair. “Probably because Dee makes him sleep on the couch all the time.”

  “I like sleeping on the couch,” Joel protests, and Dee quirks a perfectly shaped eyebrow into her perfectly powdered forehead.

  “You do?”

  God, those two are still a mess. Fighting and making up, fighting and making up. I swear they do it just for the make-up sex, which Joel always brags about and—if Dee’s constant antagonizing is any indication—she enjoys just as much.

  Joel scrambles for a save. “I mean . . . I mean, no. No. I hate it. Seriously hate it.”

  I chuckle against Shawn’s chest when Dee mutters something about making Joel sleep in the tub from now on, and Joel smirks at her before whispering something in her ear that I thank God I can’t hear. Shawn’s arms circle around my waist, tugging me tighter as I melt against him.

  “I’m nervous about the show tonight.”

  I turn in his arms and wind my arms behind his neck, my nose scrunching up at him. “You’re never nervous.”

  He gives me a soft smile and then kisses the tip of my nose, effectively unscrunching it. “I know.”

  “What are you nervous about?”

  “You.”

  The scrunching starts again. “What are you talking about?”

  Shawn smirks and checks his phone. “You ready to head backstage?”

  On the way, I ask a million more questions he doesn’t bother acknowledging. And none of the other guys bother answering me either, even though I can tell they know something is up. Shawn straps the guitar around my neck because I’m too busy harassing everyone, and I don’t stop throwing questions at the backs of their heads until we’re in full view of the crowd.

  Shawn shoots me one last smile over his shoulder before taking his spot at the other end of Mayhem’s stage.

  The whole performance, I wait to find out what he was talking about. I wait for anything unusual, anything out of the ordinary. But nothing happens. We play our hit songs, the crowd screams them back to us, and the mania in the room builds and builds until I convince myself the guys must have just been messing with me.

  Nothing happens.

  Until it does.

  “We want to do something a little different tonight,” Adam announces into his mic toward the end of our set, and I stare across the stage at Shawn. He stares back at me, his tattered black jeans and his vintage black band tee absorbing the blue tint of the stage lights. “Shawn and I have been working on something new,” Adam continues, his voice a muted sidenote to the cacophony of my thoughts. “Do you want to hear it?”

  When the crowd’s screams start bouncing off the walls, Adam grins at me. I finally pull my attention from Shawn to furrow my brow at our lead singer, who chuckles before turning back to the audience.

  “It’s something acoustic.”

  Roadies rush two stools onto the stage as Mike moves his sticks to one hand and Joel unstraps his guitar from around his neck.

  “Shawn wrote this one, and it’s pretty fucking amazing.”

  Adam takes the acoustic Gibson a roadie hands him, and Shawn trades out his guitar as well, for the priceless vintage Fender he played for me the first time I ever visited his apartment. He takes his seat on a stool next to Adam as Joel and Mike usher me off the stage.

  “What’s he doing?” I ask, unable to tear my eyes away.

  The guys never answer me. Or maybe they do, but I just don’t hear them. My eyes, my ears—every single part of me is tuned in to Shawn, watching him sit next to Adam with that Fender on his lap.

  The last time I saw them like this was when I was in fifth grade, watching them at a middle school talent show. Then, I thought I was in love.

  Now, I really am.

  “This song doesn’t have a title yet,” Shawn says as he adjusts the mic in front of him, and I smile at the uncharacteristic nervousness in his voice. He clears his throat, locks the mic into place, and leans back. When he starts playing, forgoing any further introduction, his fingers strum chords that tug at the strings of my heart.

  His beautiful voice fills the room, from wall to wall, touching every soul in the crowd. Every single fan is hanging on the tune of his guitar, the sound of his voice, the words of his song.

  He sings of a girl who was the sun, and he sings of walking away from her. He sings of rooftops and sunsets, of secrets and dreams. He sings of heartache and six years.

  He sings of love.

  His green eyes find me from across the stage.

  He sings of me.

  Mike’s arm wraps around my shoulder as tears start to drip down my cheeks, and when Shawn’s song fades to an end, I can’t help it—I cross the stage until I’m with him.

  In front of his stool, I wipe the heels of my palms under my eyes, having no idea what to say.

  “I love you,” Shawn says first, his voice carrying through his mic and filling the entire ro
om. He stands up and dries the rest of my tears with the gentle pads of his thumbs, and I know he’s going to kiss me.

  “I love you too,” I say when his lips are halfway to mine, and he pauses before dropping them the rest of the way. Just a second, just long enough for me to lose myself in the promises in those green eyes, and then his lips claim mine.

  The fans explode into applause, but Shawn kisses me like they’re not even there. He kisses me like it’s just us—in a kitchenette, on the roof of my apartment, on top of a penthouse suite. He kisses me in front of everyone, and in my heart, in his arms, on a stage for all to see, I know—

  I know where we’re going to be six years from now.

  Epilogue

  Shawn

  “YOU’RE GOING TO make me late,” I say, and Kit giggles against my mouth. I love that sound—because I’m the only one who can make her make it, and she hates that she can’t stop me from doing it every chance I get.

  “Go.”

  “Seriously,” I say between kisses, too lost in the feel of her—of her long hair slipping between my fingers, her satin lips seducing mine, her sexy thighs cradling my hips. I force her farther onto the kitchenette counter as I press tighter between her legs. “We need to go in.”

  “Then stop kissing me,” she orders, her voice a convictionless, breathless moan that makes me swell against the inviting heat of her.

  I break my lips from hers to press them to her throat. “No.”

  Her fingertips scratch into my hair as she gives control without really giving it. She plays me just as well as a six-string guitar, knowing exactly how to touch me to get me to do whatever she wants. I’m sucking at the curve of her neck when I finally get her out of her jeans.