Guarded

by L. A. Witt

  “Daniel? What’re you doing?” If he was high, we were all fucked. No way could we go on without a lead guitarist. No, wait—Marcel, our backup bass player, could play most of the songs pretty well. He didn’t have Daniel’s flair, but if push came to shove, we could use him. We’d have to shuffle a few songs around—

  “I’ll tell you what I’m not doing—playing the fuckin’ show tonight.”

  He sounded sober. Which meant he’d come down off the junk long enough to start feeling miserable again. “Look, I know this town sucks, but it’s just one more night. In a few weeks we’ll be in New York. Madison fucking Square Garden.” I heard a soft bump, and pressed my ear to the door. “Remember when we were kids practicing in my folks’ garage? We used to dream about days like this. The Garden, the Hollywood Bowl, Budokan. All the places we’d play once we made it? We’re there, man.”

  “I don’t give a fuck. I’m tired.”

  “You can get on the bus the second we finish the show, I promise. The rest of the guys and I can sign CD’s by ourselves.”

  A heavy sigh. “You don’t get it, man. I’m fuckin’ exhausted. We haven’t spent more than a month home at a stretch in the last five fucking years. I’m tired of all the touring. I’m tired of not having a fucking life.” His coughed out a scratchy laugh. “I can’t even get fuckin’ laid half the time because all the chicks think I’m gay.”

  I choked back a chuckle. Not funny. No, really. Two hours ‘til show time. “You think it’s any easier for me?”

  “Yeah, you and your endless parade of pretty boys from the crew. My heart fuckin’ bleeds for you.”

  I immediately swung around. Was Jase…?

  Standing there in the hallway, with a look on his face like... I couldn’t tell.

  No more fucking around. “We can’t start canceling shows for no reason. You want us to get sued?”

  “So what? Let ‘em take it all—the bus, the fuckin’ airplane, the house. I don’t want it anymore. All those years ago, I never thought…” He sniffed, coughed. “All I want is off this fuckin’ merry-go-round.”

  Fuck. What was I supposed to do now? Banging on the door would just make him dig his heels in deeper.

  I didn’t have turn around to know that Jase had walked up behind me—his solid, steady presence was unmistakable. He reached past me, fingering one of the bathroom door hinges. “Get me a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, and I’ll have him out of there in ten minutes.”

  Twenty minutes later—Milo had to run down to the bus to get the tools—Jase and Milo lifted the door off its hinges. Milo dragged Daniel out, struggling all the way—

  Until Jase snagged him by the front of his shirt. “Quit being a dipshit and get ready for the show.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Think that’s what the cops’ll say when they find out you were partying with a couple of underage girls?”

  Daniel’s eyes bulged. “They weren’t underage!”

  “Did you see their IDs?”

  “But you…” He looked at me, then back at Jase. “You wouldn’t go to the cops.”

  “You never know who might drop an anonymous tip,” I said. Daniel’s head snapped around, but he didn’t bother saying “You wouldn’t” again. He knew I would, if he pushed me far enough. And after last night, it wouldn’t take much.

  Jase and Milo caught him under the arms and yanked him upright. “C’mon,” Jase said. “Let’s get over to the venue.”

  Chapter Six

  Jase

  Milo and I poured Daniel into the bus. The guy was almost as pliant as he was when he was high, which alarmed me. He wasn’t the first addict I’d dealt with, and he was heading down a very familiar path. The drugs weren’t just a high for him. They were a refuge from sobriety. When he came down, he started out combative, and when he got tired of fighting, he turned into… this. Depressed. Quiet. Completely passive.

  Milo sat on the couch beside Daniel and offered me a “what can you do?” glance. I just shook my head. What could we do? Not a whole hell of a lot. Daniel was a mess. It was going to take someone with a lot of letters behind their name to unfuck him, and even that might not work.

  I shuddered at the memory of my ex and his downward spiral. Way too similar to Daniel, and the outcome had been…

  Jordan caught my eye. He stood a few feet away, arms folded across his chest and gaze fixed on Daniel. My throat tightened. He was the very epitome of everything I’d felt during my ex’s deterioration. Every hour of lost sleep had etched itself into the shadows under his eyes, and his shoulders were taut beneath the weight of worry that was unimaginable to anyone who hadn’t been through this.

  It was no wonder so many people thought Daniel and Jordan were an item. Forget the fact that they’d been inseparable since they were kids, including living together for the last several years, or all the rumors that had flown once people caught on that Jordan was bisexual. The toll Daniel’s addiction had taken on Jordan was indisputable proof of what was between them. Maybe it wasn’t anything romantic or sexual, but they loved each other.

  I turned toward Daniel again, watching him stare into a bottle of soda one of the roadies had brought him. He was sober, at least. As long as Milo and the rest of the crew kept an eye on him, he’d be all right. None of us dared leave him alone. They were all afraid he’d find a way to get high. Past experience made me worry he’d do something a lot worse.

  “We should get on the road.” Milo looked past me. “You ridin’ with us, boss?”

  “No.” Jordan’s tone was quiet and flat. As I turned around, he started toward the door. “Come on, Jase.”

  I hesitated, throwing another look at Daniel and Milo. There really wasn’t anything I could do for him now—as long as he was on the bus with supervision, he’d be all right. As well as could be expected for him, anyway.

  So I did the only thing I could: I followed Jordan to the other bus.

  From what I’d heard, Jordan used to ride on the same bus as everyone else, but after a bout of migraines on one of their last tours, everyone had agreed he needed a quiet place of his own to decompress after shows. He’d resisted, if the scuttlebutt was true, insisting he was part of the band and shouldn’t have his own ride, but after two migraine-free weeks, decided it wasn’t such a bad deal after all. Most of the time, he and I still rode with the rest of the crew, but if he wasn’t feeling well, we both moved to the other one.

  And I was fine with that most of the time too. The crew weren’t the only ones with pounding heads and ringing ears after a show, and the dark, silent bus—or low light and quiet conversation—was heavenly.

  When I stepped onto the bus, Jordan had closed the privacy screen between the cab, where the driver was waiting for the signal to go, and the rest of the bus. I let myself into the back, and Jordan was peeling off his leather jacket. Just that motion seemed to take more energy than it should have, his face pulled into a grimace and his arms moving so, so slowly, and without a second thought, I took the back of the collar and helped him out of the sleeves.

  “Thanks,” he muttered.

  “Don’t mention it.” I turned away to drape the jacket over the back of a chair. As I faced him again, I took a breath that was supposed to turn into “do you think Daniel will be all right for the show?”, but then Jordan’s mouth was over mine. I froze, hands hovering uselessly in the air. My lips moved with his—kissing him had already become so natural, it was almost involuntary—and after a few seconds, I gently grasped his hips. I still didn’t know what the hell was happening, how we’d gotten from there to here, but my body wasn’t arguing.

  The bus’s diesel engine had been purring unobtrusively in the background, and now it roared to life, the floor vibrating beneath my feet. A second later, the bus lurched into motion. I’d anticipated it, if not consciously, but Jordan apparently hadn’t, and his center of gravity shifted. We grabbed onto each other for balance, and I rested my hip against the chair to support both of us.


  And we were still kissing. As the bus picked up speed, I couldn’t decide if the motion or the kiss was more disorienting.

  Jordan pressed against me, pushing me back a step until my ass hit the counter behind me. His hard-on took my breath away, grinding against my own through our clothes. What the hell? Two minutes ago, he’d been struggling to bear the weight of his best friend’s world, and now he… this…

  I broke away, but couldn’t pull back very far. My hands—moving on their own—went to his face, reestablishing as much contact as possible, cupping his lightly stubbled, sharply angled jaw as we panted against each other’s lips. This was madness. This was fucking insane. We… what the fuck…

  “Jordan, we—”

  “Fuck me.” Two words had never sounded more desperate, more like the man breathing them was about to break. Collapse. Shatter.

  “Right… right now?” I blinked. “Jordan, you go onstage in”—I turned my wrist just enough to glance at my watch—“an hour and a half.”

  “And we’ll be on the road for another twenty minutes.” His forehead creased. “We don’t need even that much time.”

  I swallowed. “But we’re…”

  “Jase.” He slid both his hands up my chest, and I was sure he was a second away from grasping the front of my shirt. “I need this. I need… I need you.”

  That hit me in the gut. With his hands where they were, he had to have felt the spike in my pulse, but if he did, he didn’t show it.

  I ran my hands down his face and the sides of his neck. He shivered as my fingertips drifted over his throat. He tilted his head back a little, arching his neck and pressing it against me, and he exhaled as my hands continued over his collarbones.

  I closed my fingers around his wrists, but didn’t push him away. I just needed to touch him. Make more contact than what he was already making.

  “I have condoms,” he murmured. “Lube. Everything. Just…” His hands opened and closed on my shirt, his slender wrists twitching within my grasp. After a moment, he met my eyes. There were tears in his. Just an extra shine, a hint of a shimmer, but unmistakable. In a shaky whisper, he said, “I need you tonight, Jase.”

  Any resistance I might’ve had was gone. Just… gone. Somewhere in the back of my mind, a voice told me he was using me. That this was an outlet, that I was the nearest warm body when his world was off balance and he needed something to blow off steam before he went onstage. Just like the first time, when we’d fucked after I’d dragged Daniel back to the hotel.

  But I pulled Jordan into another kiss, and that voice couldn’t silence that soft moan he released. Or still the way his hand shook as he freed his wrist and reached up to touch my face. Maybe this was just cathartic for him, something he could’ve had with anyone who happened to be around, but I couldn’t justify denying him that.

  If he was this brittle, and I could give him what he needed, then that was enough to convince my conscience, my ego, and whatever else didn’t like me gently guiding him back toward the bed. If this meant the difference between the Jordan Kane who needed to be onstage tonight and the one who was shaking, borderline crying, falling apart in my arms, then that was justification enough for pushing his shirt over his head. Unbuckling his belt. Helping his trembling fingers with my belt and my fly and my buttons. Laying him across that too-huge bed in the back of the bus.

  I broke a long kiss and started downward. Jordan tilted his head, baring as much of his throat as possible, and he swore under his breath as I kissed my way from his jaw to his collarbone. It took all I had not to press my teeth into his flesh, to mark him and make him gasp, but I had just enough of a grasp on the world outside this bus to remember how many people were watching him and would notice a bruise like that. Even as I continued down, lips skating over the hot skin of his chest, I didn’t dare bite. His shirts didn’t always stay on during shows. A fresh bite would… raise eyebrows.

  I found his nipple and circled it with my tongue, making him arch and gasp. Then, I finally did bite down, digging my teeth in just enough to make him hiss.

  “Oh my God,” he moaned.

  I moved to the other nipple and did the same, telling myself it was just to make sure any marks I left were even and wouldn’t draw attention, but knew damn well that was bullshit when he swore again and squirmed. My cock was painfully hard now, my whole body breaking out in goose bumps every time I brushed against his thigh or even the comforter beneath us. I couldn’t help rubbing against him, my vision blurring at the friction between my dick and his hot skin and firm muscles.

  “Jase. Please.” That desperation was undeniable now. “Fuck me.”

  I pushed myself onto my arms and came back up to kiss him. Jordan embraced me and dragged me down, pulling our bodies together and kissing me feverishly as he breathed hard and hot against my face. We didn’t have much time—I’d lost track already, and it wouldn’t be long before the bus stopped at the venue—but we weren’t getting any closer to me fucking him. We were both turned on and clawing at each other, kissing and grinding and rubbing hard cocks together, but the condoms and lube were still out of reach and undisturbed beside the bed.

  And if we waited too long…

  I broke the kiss and forced myself out of his embrace. “Condoms.”

  He didn’t try to pull me back. “Over there.” The gesture was heavy and barely controlled, as if he’d forgotten how to work his arms, but it was enough to let me know which drawer had what we needed.

  I found them, and made short work of putting on both the rubber and the lube, and then I was on top of him again. Dizzy, desperate, hard as hell and about to go insane, I pinned him down and settled between his legs. I wanted a kiss—God, I wanted to kiss him—but if I did, I’d never get inside him, and if I didn’t… if we waited… if…

  “Holy fuck,” he groaned, eyes squeezed shut as my cock pushed past the tight ring. A shudder lifted his back off the bed, and he was so goddamned tight, I could barely imagine getting every inch inside him, but slowly, he yielded to me. Each stroke went a little deeper, and suddenly, I couldn’t go any farther, and without any conscious thought I was fucking him faster. Harder.

  Jordan was already in another world, eyes heavy-lidded but still gleaming with pure lust. He ran his hands up and down my arms, and when I reached up to grab onto his hair, he tried to guide my hand elsewhere.

  To his throat, I realized with enough of a start to jar me out of my rhythm for a couple of strokes.

  As I recovered, I wrestled my hand free and slid it under the back of his head, and when I grabbed a handful of hair, he released another hiss of breath and tightened around my dick. He reached up and ran his fingers through my hair. Not grabbing, just resting them in my hair and on the back of my head.

  Gripping his hair tightly, I leaned down and kissed his neck. “I’m not going to choke you this time.”

  “Okay.” But he couldn’t hide his disappointment. His hands lightened in my hair, and while he probably tried to release that breath as softly as he could, the way his chest sank was more than just his lungs deflating.

  I kissed his neck again and closed my eyes. Fuck. He needed this tonight, and being choked was part of that need, part of that release that would let him function in front of thousands and thousands of people. But where the hell was the ground between what he needed and what I could give him?

  I released his hair and pushed myself up. Still fucking him, still jarring his entire body with each thrust, I met his eyes. That hunger and need were etched across his face and burning in his eyes.

  “Jordan.” I gritted my teeth. “Hold your breath.”

  His eyes widened a little.

  I thrust harder, enough to make him wince, and ground out, “I said, hold your breath.”

  He didn’t suck in a breath and make a big show of it. He just… stopped breathing. His chest stopped rising. His lips were together and his nostrils weren’t flaring.

  “Hold it until I tell you to let it out,” I whisper
ed. “Until I let you come.”

  His eyelids slid down, and he pressed his lips tighter together. He was tight now. Holy fuck, so goddamned tight. His body didn’t move with mine, didn’t resist it or complement it—it was as if every bit of concentration he had was now focused on holding his breath. No sign of distress, just intense focus.

  “Jordan.” When his eyes opened, I whispered, “Come.”

  His eyes rolled back and his back arched hard enough to change the angle I was fucking him and nearly drive me over the edge with him. Semen jetted across his abs and as far as his chest, and only then did he finally exhale, releasing a long breath before gasping for air. Eyes closed, lips apart and pulled into the ghost of a blissed out smile, he was the very picture of broken tension and total release.

  And just like that, my own orgasm came out of nowhere. It had been building, building, building, but the release was unexpected. I forced myself inside him, shuddered, and then collapsed over him.

  Jordan wrapped his arms around me. “Thank you,” he whispered.

  * * *

  The bed in the back of Jordan’s bus became as familiar as my own bed at home. I had one on the bus too, closer to the divider behind the cab, and hadn’t used it for a solid week by the time we stopped in Atlanta for another show.

  We’d fucked for miles down the interstate last night on the way up from Jacksonville, and Jordan had been out cold by the time we’d arrived. Now the sun was coming up, though we wouldn’t have known it if Jordan hadn’t pulled back one of the blackout curtains a few minutes ago to take a look while I’d gotten rid of the condom.

  “Fuck,” he muttered and pressed the edge of the curtain back onto its Velcro strip. “Too damned bright out.”

  “And we have to join the land of the living again soon.” I returned to the bed and lay down beside him, not bothering to pull up a sheet since we were both still hot to the touch. “Maybe we should turn on a light so your eyes have a chance to adapt?”