The Rocker Who Cherishes Me

by Terri Anne Browning

  My gaze lingered on the outline of his dick through the cotton material of his underwear. As I watched, my cheeks began to heat with a mixture of embarrassment and need as I witnessed his dick grow with obvious arousal.

  “That bath looks big enough for two, sweetheart. Do you care if I join you?” Wroth asked as he moved away from the door.

  Unable to form coherent words, I just nodded, then shook my head, then nodded again not sure how to tell him I wanted him to take a bath with me. He chuckled as he climbed into the tub with me, boxers and all. He sat down in the water so that he was facing me and my feet were in his lap. “You’re awfully quiet, Mari,” he grumbled with a knowing grin.

  Damn him, I loved that grin. It didn’t often make an appearance and when he did grin, or even smiled, it was like a kick to my heart. I loved when he was happy. Tried my hardest to make sure he smiled and laughed at least once a day when he was home with me.

  “I guess I’m just tired,” I excused after finally finding my voice and clearing my throat. “I didn’t sleep very well.” And it was all his fault. The kiss—kisses—from the night before were still haunting me.

  Wroth picked up one of my feet and started massaging, digging his thumb into my high arch in a way he knew made my eyes roll back into my head with pleasure. “I didn’t sleep too great either. Some chick kissed me last night and I couldn’t get the feel of her lips on me, her hands on me out of my head.” He rubbed harder and I couldn’t help the groan that escaped me at how good it felt. His words melted away my earlier shyness and I opened my eyes to find his dark ones glued to my face. “I can still taste you, Mari.”

  My tongue rubbed over my suddenly dry lips. “I can still taste you, too,” I whispered.

  At my confession, he made a growling sound in the back of his throat. I’d learned last night, as my hands had explored his chest under his shirt while we’d kissed for more than half an hour, that he made that sound when he liked what I was doing. That growl did disturbing things to my body. Made liquid heat gather between my legs and my nipples pebble with a need that I was scared he wasn’t going to fulfil.

  “I want to taste your lips again, sweetheart. I want to kiss you until your lips are raw and swollen. But I can’t do that right now. Not when you are so deliciously naked under these rapidly fading bubbles. I won’t be able to control myself.” He released my foot, placing it carefully back on his lap. Picking up my other foot, he skimmed my arch over his massive erection, making that bud hidden between my legs, that I’d learned to rub out my orgasms for this man, throb for attention from my fingers. Or his.

  With one hand he massaged my arch but the other skimmed up my calf, making my sex clench with need. Without thinking about what I was doing, I let my legs fall open, silently pleading for him to touch me. There. That growling groan escaped him again but he didn’t move higher than my knee before caressing back down to my ankle then repeating the same tortured path. I squirmed, my body on fire and my clitoris pulsing with the beat of my racing heart. I wanted an orgasm so bad right then I would have begged for it.

  But why should I beg for it when I could give it to myself?

  More heat filled my cheeks as I met his gaze boldly, but I didn’t let my embarrassment keep me from giving my body what it was screaming for. My arms had been resting on the sides of the tub, but I let them fall into the water. My left hand skimmed over my softly rounded stomach and down into the curls I kept neatly trimmed. My fingers combed through the curls, tugging lightly in a way that made my sex clench with need again. The tip of my middle finger moved over my slit and between my lips.

  The first touch of my soft finger over my bud made me moan. Wroth jerked at the sound and his eyes narrowed knowingly. His next breath was sucked in almost harshly, but he didn’t say a word. If anything his gaze dared me to continue. Under the bubbles and water, I added a little pressure to my middle finger and rubbed in tight little circles. I should have been more embarrassed, should have felt disgusted with myself for touching myself like this in front of him, but I wasn’t and I felt oddly powerful as I continued to rub my clit until I was gasping.

  Wroth’s breaths were coming in heavy pants, his hands no longer massaging my foot and leg but still holding onto my ankle. Wanting to have some kind of connection to him, I lifted my free foot and rubbed it over his hard stomach, feeling his defined abs as I pushed against him a little. Another growl-like groan escaped him and his lashes lowered until I couldn’t see those espresso irises any longer, but I knew that he was still watching me.

  I rubbed faster, glad for the warm water so that I didn’t have to lick my fingers or dip them inside myself to keep getting that little bud wet. I didn’t like to penetrate myself. I didn’t want anyone to ever touch me there but the man now watching me with his mouth slightly open and his chest heaving from his heavy breathing.

  “Marissa…” He grabbed my foot just as I let it skim over his dick. His body shuddered so hard that it made the water ripple at that small touch of my foot on him so intimately. With both feet now in his hands, he tugged roughly, pulling me across the tub without much effort because of his strength. I loved how strong Wroth was. It made me feel delicate, more feminine when I was next to him.

  I went willingly, wrapping my legs around his waist and meeting his ravenous mouth with a hunger of my own. His hands wrapped around my waist, grinding my hips against his thick erection. My soapy chest rubbed against his, my nipples pressed into his flesh to cause a new kind of ache from that bud between my legs, but only added to the pleasure-filled pain of my throbbing sex.

  His thick, hard dick pressed perfectly against the lips of my sex. With my legs wide open like that, my clit was exposed and his hardness was so much better than my fingers. I rubbed my sex against him harder, harder, harder until I tossed my head back, completely broke our kiss and cried out as the strongest orgasm I’d ever felt in my life consumed me.

  Wroth’s curse as he found his own release was lost on me as I fell against his chest, happily exhausted. Long, thick fingers rubbed up and down my spine and I could hear his still erratic heartbeat that matched my own…

  Blinking away that erotic memory, I picked up my Voss and took a long swallow to try and cool my suddenly heated skin. That had been only one of the few times Wroth and I had done something like that during those first two happy months of the spring tour the year before. Wroth had never tried to take things further than heavy petting, making sure that I was always taken care of, but only getting us both off when I begged him to let me touch him. Remembering the way I’d pleaded with him to let me touch him filled me with shame.

  I’d begged and begged just to get to touch him like I craved but there had been no one begging when I’d found him with his dick in some groupie skank’s mouth.

  The pain of that memory cut me deep and I let out a pained-filled gasp that had Bishop reaching for my hand. “You okay, Marissa?”

  Fresh tears spilled over. I tried to force a smile for the kindness he was showing me but was unable to pull it off. “I…” I couldn’t force words past the lump in my throat so I shrugged and shook my head.

  Strong hands suddenly landed on my shoulders and I jerked in reaction because I hadn’t been expecting it. Linc’s arms left my shoulders and lifted me easily, as if I didn’t weigh more than a sack of feathers. “Let’s go home,” he said with a sigh as he ushered a pale and teary eyed Natalie ahead of him. “You girls never give me a dull moment, you know that?”

  “Where’s Rhett?” I asked, noticing it was just the three of us once we stepped outside the club.

  “He’ll meet us at the apartment. Pretty sure it would have been signing his death warrant if he’d been seen leaving with either of you two.” Linc shifted me in his arms as a taxi pulled up in front of the club and he opened the door. Natalie climbed in first and then Linc placed me on the bench seat beside her before getting in and telling the driver where we were going.

  As the taxi pulled away, I glanced out
the window and saw that the crowd had only grown since Natalie and I had arrived an hour or so ago.

  Chapter 5

  Marissa

  The air was on the chilly side when I stepped out of the apartment building and into the waiting van that was ready to take me, Liam, Linc, Natalie, and Rhett to where the buses were waiting for everyone to board them. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, not caring that I didn’t have a drop of makeup on or that my hair was in a messy knot on the top of my head. I was still half asleep after having stayed up most of the night before drinking wine with Natalie and pretending like I wasn’t broken inside.

  It was hard work pretending. I knew from experience from a time when I had to paste a brave smile on my face and act like I wasn’t tired of giving up as cancer had tried to break me. Now it was Wroth who had broken me, and I couldn’t help but think it was ironic that it had been Wroth who had given me the strength to continue to fight that battle but it was now him who made me want to crawl into a ball and just give up on life. As hard as I had tried to move on, to get over my heartbreak, I’d only been deceiving myself. An hour in the same room with the man who had caused my broken heart and I was ready to just find a vein and slice.

  But I couldn’t let anyone know that. I might have those thoughts going through my head, but I wasn’t going to further embarrass myself by letting people know that Wroth had destroyed me so utterly.

  Natalie was the last to get into the van and the driver shut the door before walking around the vehicle and climbing behind the wheel. It was only then that I took a moment to glance in the back of the van where my brother was sitting with Linc. Rhett had taken the seat in front of them, but there was already someone waiting in the seat behind Liam.

  “What the fuck?” Natalie gritted out as she lifted her bottle of water and tossed it over the two seats that separated us and Zander Brockman. “You should have been at the bus an hour ago, you dumbass.”

  Zander didn’t even flinch when the bottle hit him in the chest, just opening it and taking a thirsty swallow. By the looks of him he must have been out partying because he was still wearing the shirt and jeans he’d been wearing when I’d stopped by Liam’s apartment last night. Zander had been eating pizza and playing some combat game on the Xbox.

  “Found some fun downtown,” was his only explanation.

  Natalie glared at him for another minute before turning around in our seat. Clenching her jaw, she glared out her window as we rode through the predawn traffic of New York. Sighing, I leaned my head against my own window and closed my eyes. I was exhausted, my entire body hurting from a depression that I’d given up fighting two nights ago. I hadn’t slept much since then, and the only relief I’d had was when I’d drunk an entire bottle of red wine with Natalie the night before.

  The van pulled into a huge parking lot fifteen minutes later and I took my time climbing out. Seven buses were already rumbling, waiting for us. Another van pulled into the lot from the opposite side, stopping right behind ours. I didn’t pay any attention to who stepped out. I knew what bus I wanted on, and I was going there before anyone else could stop me.

  “Rissa,” Liam called as he lifted his suitcase along with my two cases from the back of the van. “Where do you want these?”

  “Give them to Rhett. He said he would take care of them for me.” I’d talked to both Rhett and Linc about it the night before. Neither had a problem with me bunking with Rhett since he most likely wouldn’t be on that bus the majority of the time anyway.

  “You are not fucking sleeping on a bus with those motherfuckers, Rissa.” Liam ignored Rhett when he stepped forward to take my bags and walked around him. My cases were heavy and the old Liam would have been unable to carry all three at once. The new Liam never failed to impress me with how far he’d come. “I don’t know them, you don’t know them. Wroth will go rage monster on everyone’s ass and I’m not fucking starting this tour off with that shit.”

  The mention of Wroth’s name stopped me in front of one of the buses and I turned to face my brother with a glare that made him take a step back. “I don’t give a flying fuck what you want. Or if it’s going to make Wroth mad. You can both go fuck yourselves because I will sleep wherever the fuck I want.”

  The few people standing outside the buses who had been talking suddenly went very quiet and I refused to blush when I felt their eyes on me. I didn’t swear very often, and even when I did I rarely used the word ‘fuck’. But if Liam was going to throw that word at me repeatedly, I was going to throw it right back.

  Liam’s mouth opened, then closed, only to open again. I rolled my eyes at him and turned back toward the buses, looking for the one that was for the members of Trance and Alchemy. As I passed one, Lana stuck her head out of the door. “Hey, we have more than enough room. You can come with us.”

  I forced a smile for her, but shook my head. “Thanks, but I don’t want to intrude. I’ll be fine with Rhett.” I loved Lana and Drake, and Nevaeh was such a sweet little girl. But being around that happy little family would only make me hurt more because I knew I would never have that. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was jealous of Lana and Drake because it was so obvious that Drake loved Lana more than life itself and I ached for that.

  “Okay, sweetie. But if you change your mind, our door is always open.”

  The bus I was looking for was at the back of the lot and I climbed on without bothering to knock. The living room area was already full. Bishop was sitting at the table with a cup of coffee in front of him while his drummer, Carver, was eating a breakfast sandwich from McDonalds. The Trance bassist, Jasper, was sitting on the floor in front of the couch with his Beats on. Dave and Jake, the two other members of Alchemy, were standing in the kitchenette eating their breakfast while Leif and Winston, the remaining two members of Trance were in the recliners already half asleep.

  When I stepped forward they all went quiet and turned their eyes on me. A few of them gave me sexy grins, but the others were all giving me frightened looks. I raised a brow at Jake who was the closest to me, wondering what had made him pale and his eyes widen as if he’d seen a ghost. “What—” I started to ask, but another voice cut off my question.

  “I’m not going to play your games, Marissa.” My body went white hot at the first sound of Wroth’s voice, only to go ice cold at the second.

  I turned to face him, not scared of him in the least—unlike most of the men on the bus. Glaring up at him like I’d done Liam earlier, I refused to be affected by the sight of Wroth in sweat pants that hung off his lean hips and a white T-shirt that had a hole in the bottom. “I’m not playing games, Wroth. Now get the fuck off my bus.”

  His eyes narrowed when ‘fuck’ came out of my mouth. “Who’s been talking like that in front of you, Marissa?” Wroth didn’t tolerate people cursing in front of me. Most people tried to clean up their language when I was around because they didn’t want to piss him off. I couldn’t have cared less how people talked, but he demanded they respected me.

  Too bad he hadn’t respected me a little more.

  Someone pounded on the front door and I heard Natalie calling from outside. “We leave in two minutes.”

  “Guess you’d better get to your bus. See you later,” I told him with a smirk as I took a seat on the couch.

  “Yeah,” Wroth muttered. “Guess I’d better.”

  If I’d been expecting him to just turn and go I was sadly mistaken. Wroth stepped around Jasper and bent toward me. My heart sped up at his nearness and the scent of his body wash as I inhaled sharply made my panties wet in an instant. “What are you..?” I let out a squeak when he lifted me as if I didn’t weigh the equivalent of one and a half girls and tossed me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “Wroth!” I screeched as he walked off the bus. “Damn you, put me down.” I pounded my fists on his back, but he didn’t even flinch as he continued to walk, easily holding onto me even when I started kicking.

  His grip only tightened on my legs so that I di
dn’t land a kick to the one place I was trying to aim for: his balls. Feeling one large hand on my thigh and the other on my ass, I quieted and remained stiff in his hold. When he paused in front of a bus I was all too familiar with, I clenched my eyes closed. “I hate you,” I whispered brokenly.

  After taking a few steps inside the bus, he sat me down on a recliner and straightened. I noticed that the living room was empty and was thankful for that small blessing so I didn’t have to further embarrass myself in front of everyone. Wroth’s eyes were shuttered, his jaw clenched hard enough that I was pretty sure he was going to break his fillings. “Hate me all you want, sweetheart. But you are going to ride this bus or stay home. And I don’t mean that damn apartment here in the city. I’ll send you straight back to the farm. So, your choice, Rissa. This bus or back to Tennessee. But those are your only choices.”

  “You can’t make me go back to Tennessee.” I stood so that he wasn’t towering over me. Not that it really mattered. Wroth was so tall that he easily stood a foot taller than me. My head barely reached his shoulders. “You don’t own me, and I sure as hell am not your responsibility. You can’t make me do anything I don’t want to do.”

  “You’re right.” His eyes darkened and he lowered his head until we were on eye level. “I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. But I can have Emmie keep you from going on tour with us. And then Liam will worry about you being in the city all alone, and we both know that you won’t let him worry about you. So you will end up at the farm where he knows you will be okay.”

  I pushed him away, making him step back since I’d caught him off guard. “You are such a dick,” I snapped. But I didn’t argue with him further. He was right. If he wanted me off this tour he would make Emmie kick me off, and I wasn’t going to put my brother through three months of constantly worrying about me being safe in New York. So I’d end up in Tennessee.