Always You

by Roxie Noir

  “What am I signing?” I ask, because she doesn’t seem to have anything.

  The girl pulls up her tank top. She’s not wearing a bra, and for a second, I’m so surprised I’m speechless.

  Then I think: I finally got asked to sign someone’s tits.

  “Do you have anything else I could sign?” I ask.

  I’m trying not to stare, but it’s surprising. They’re pierced, a little barbell through each of her nipples, and if I’m being really honest they’re nice tits.

  I’ve got absolutely no desire to touch them, but I’m only human. I notice when tits are nice.

  “Come on,” she says, and I flick my eyes to her face. She’s pouting, her pink lips in a sad little bow. “Please? You’ve always been my favorite member of Dirtshine.”

  “I don’t sign body parts,” I lie.

  “I watched you sign a guy’s arm earlier.”

  They’re still out, her shirt still up, and I wish she’d put them away.

  “If you’ve got a piece of paper or something, I’d be glad to sign that,” I tell her. “How about a bar napkin?”

  She takes a step closer. Still pouting, and now she’s really invading my personal space with her perky, pierced nipples.

  “You could think of it as foreplay,” she purrs, or at least tries to purr. “I’m sure you get lonely on the road and you could use something to remember Minneapolis by.”

  She runs one fingertip across a nipple, and I lean slightly backward on my bar stool, away from her because I’d really like this girl to put her shirt back on and stop touching herself in public.

  “I’m not thinking of it at all,” I say, still trying to be nice, especially because we’re starting to get looks. I grab a bar napkin and take the cap off the pen. “Look, this’ll last you much longer—”

  “Oh, did you want an autograph?” Darcy’s voice says behind me, a little brighter and harder than usual.

  The girl in front of me falters slightly, because it’s fucking obvious she thinks this is between me and her.

  “Sure,” she says anyway, her voice notably not sure.

  “Great!” Darcy says, and snatches the Sharpie out of my hand. “Totally happy to sign whatever our fans want! Now just hold still, this might tickle.”

  She grabs one breast and just about stabs it with the Sharpie. The girl with her tits out clearly didn’t have this in mind, but before anyone says anything Darcy’s done and steps back to admire her handiwork.

  “Perfect,” she says. “Make sure you keep those out for a few more minutes, otherwise it might smudge. Great piercings. Hope you enjoyed the show!”

  With that, she tosses the Sharpie at the girl, turns on her heel, and walks out of the bar’s back door.

  Yeah, she’s pissed.

  I quickly scribble my signature on a cocktail napkin and shove it at the girl.

  “Thanks for coming out,” I say automatically.

  “We can still—”

  “No,” I tell her. She’s still standing there, looking like a confused puppy dog with her tits out, when I turn and leave the bar behind Darcy.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Darcy

  I shove open the door to our tour bus and climb the steps, my heavy boots stomping on the metal stairs. I head past the main part, with the couches, a table, and a kitchenette, past the bathroom, and to the back where we’ve got two couches set up for napping behind a curtain. I don’t bother turning the lights on.

  This isn’t Trent’s fault, I tell myself, huffing down onto a couch and putting my head in my hands. He didn’t do anything besides refuse to sign a girl’s boobs.

  I still feel sick, the beer in my stomach churning, and I don’t even know why. She didn’t know about Trent and me, and he didn’t do anything. Hell, I’m the one who grabbed her boob and signed it.

  I just fucking hate the world sometimes, hate that other women can come up to him and act like they have a chance, and more than anything I hate how it makes me feel like some bug they need to squash so I’ll get out of the way.

  Footsteps at the front of the bus. The whole thing rocks very slightly, and I exhale into my hands because I know who it is.

  “Can I come in?” Trent asks from behind the curtain, and I flop backward on the couch.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  He slides the curtain open, leaning against one wall, his hands in his pockets, even his silhouette sexy as fuck.

  God, I can’t even blame that girl. I like it when he looks at my tits, too.

  “You okay?” he rumbles.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Liar.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “I didn’t touch her,” he says.

  “I know,” I say quietly. “It’s not you. I’m just...”

  I sigh. He waits.

  “Jealous?” I say.

  In the dark, Trent chuckles.

  “It’s not funny.”

  “You know there’s nothing to be jealous of, don’t you?”

  I don’t answer him, just look out a darkly tinted window at the street, wishing I could explain what my problem is. Wishing I fucking knew what it was.

  “Darce,” he says slowly. “There’s nobody but you. There’s been nobody but you.”

  Trent closes the curtain behind himself. He walks over to me, put his hands on the back of the couch on either side of my head, and leans down.

  “I’ve wanted this for way too long to fuck it up.”

  “Me too,” I whisper.

  “This is dangerous, Darcy, and I fucking know that,” he goes on, his voice low and slow. “You’re not the only one who was afraid we’d lose what we had if we became more. I waited until I couldn’t fucking hold out any longer because I knew how bad it would fuck me up if I lost you.”

  He leans in closer, and I put one hand on his face.

  “I don’t think I’d make it, Darce.”

  “You’ve made it through worse.”

  “I haven’t.”

  My stomach twists, because there’s a litany of bad things in Trent’s past.

  “So I shouldn’t be jealous?” I ask softly, half-teasing.

  He laughs lowly, getting even closer.

  “No, you shouldn’t be fucking jealous,” he says.

  He kisses me hard, his teeth pressing into my lip before I open my mouth under his. I don’t know what to say that doesn’t sound fucking trite and perfunctory so I just kiss him like hell, my fingers in his hair.

  “In my defense, her tits were literally right in your face,” I murmur.

  “She was gonna have to do a lot better,” he says, his hand on my knee, his skin warm and rough through the pattern of my fishnets. “Believe me, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  I put my hand on his as his finger moves under the hem of my dress, grab the collar of his t-shirt in my fist.

  “I’m worried that we’re in the back of our unlocked tour bus,” I tease.

  He pushes his hand up further, so now it’s totally under my skirt, his calloused fingertips at the top of my thigh. My heart’s pounding in my chest, fire pooling inside me, feeling like I’m vibrating at high frequency.

  “I just said,” Trent growls, sliding his fingers through the holes in my fishnet, “you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

  I arch my back, and he shoves his fingers under my panties. I sigh as he strokes my wetness, pulling on his shirt even harder.

  “Not even our bandmates finding you with your hand up my skirt?”

  Trent nips at my neck, and I gasp.

  “If you’re worrying, I’m doing something wrong,” he says, the pad of his thumb finding my clit. “If you’re thinking about someone coming through that curtain and not this.”

  I hold my breath, biting my lip so I don’t make noise, and I trail my hand down his chest to his jeans, the palm flat against his erection. Trent growls, the noise low in his chest as he captures my mouth with his again, the vibrations traveling all the way to my toes.
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  Then he steps back, pulling his hand out of my skirt, and I’m left on the couch, disheveled and akimbo before Trent holds out his hand.

  I grab it. He pulls me up, launching me into his tall, hard body.

  Trent kisses me, roughly. I grab onto the waistband of his jeans, wanting his body against mine, needing the delicious friction of us together even though this is a stupid time and a stupid place, and we’ll be in a hotel room in thirty minutes.

  Instead he grabs my wrist, pulls my arm behind my back, presses my body against his. Even in the dark, Trent’s deep brown eyes are endless, bottomless pools and I’m breathless, powerless against my own desire.

  “Is this because I got jealous?” I whisper, half-teasing.

  “No,” he says, holding me even tighter. “It’s because I always want to bend you over and tear your fishnets off, and I’ve got the chance right now.”

  He lets my wrist go, spins me around, grabs my hair in one hand, pulling my head back against his shoulder as he slides the other up the back of my leg, his fingers running right across my fabric-covered clit and lips.

  I shudder as scorching heat races through me. Trent grabs a handful of fishnet, and before I know it his thick fingers are ripping through, so I bite my lip, my head pulled back, and find the button on his jeans, pull down the zipper, and then he’s filling my hand, his hardness straining against it as he groans into my ear.

  I think I’m melting with anticipation, the sensation like lava running down the inside of my skin. Even though it’s been a couple of weeks since the first time we did this, it still feels breathless, brand new, like everything is for the very first time.

  Except now, I know exactly how good it’s going to feel, and it sharpens the anticipation to a knife point.

  He pulls my panties aside roughly, slicking my wetness from my lips to my clit, and I bite back a moan. I stroke him once, feeling him pulse in my hand, and then he lets my hair go, pushes me forward. My shins hit the couch and I kneel on it, grabbing the back for stability, my skirt hiked over my hips and my back arched.

  Trent doesn’t tease me and he doesn’t hesitate, just slides the tip of his cock between my lips and then drives himself in with a single stroke.

  My fingers claw at the back of the couch and I fucking shout, all my muscles tensing at once with the sheer, perfect pleasure of suddenly being filled so deep I see stars. There’s a low rumble behind me, Trent grabs one shoulder, and then I’m just lost.

  It’s hard and fast, so fucking good that I can barely even make a sound. This is what it feels like when Trent finally stops being gentle and fucks me like a beast, when he hits every pleasure spot inside me relentlessly, when he just fucking takes what he wants.

  I’m just glad that what he wants is me. I’m glad I’m already kneeling on this couch, because otherwise my knees would have buckled. My face is on the back of the couch, the fabric between my teeth, my breathing ragged and uneven and my mind totally blank with sheer fucking pleasure.

  I come like a stampede, and I think I just whimper. My toes curl in my shoes and I’m biting the back of this couch, my whole body shaking and trembling. Trent slams into me a few more times, sending a tremor though my muscles and then I can feel him throb and pulse deep inside me, his hand tightening on my shoulder as he groans, shuddering.

  I’m not sure I can ever move again, but after a few moments, Trent bends over me, his forehead against the back of my head. He stays that way for a moment, kisses the sweaty back of my neck, then pulls out and flops on the couch next to me.

  I collapse on top of him, the two of us sprawled and taking up the whole enormous couch. My head’s on his chest and I can hear his heart still thumping away, his skin warm and slightly damp with sweat.

  “Oops,” I finally say, after a while.

  “Oops what?” he asks, not moving a muscle.

  “Oops, we had sex on the bus.”

  “Were we not supposed to?”

  “Seems like a bad idea.”

  “I thought it was pretty good.”

  I shift slightly against him, trying to pull my skirt down.

  “So I should get jealous more often?”

  “You don’t have to,” he says, a grin in his voice. “You can just say, hey Trent, bend me over this couch and fuck me good.”

  “That does sound simpler,” I laugh.

  Then the door to the bus opens with a hiss and a squeak. We both freeze. Footsteps coming down the length, and Trent lifts his hips off the couch, shoving himself back into his jeans and zipping them up.

  I pull my skirt down and scoot several inches away from Trent, trying not to laugh. The footsteps hesitate just outside the curtain.

  “Is that Darcy and Trent?” Gavin’s voice asks.

  “Just us!” I say, hoping I sound like someone who didn’t just get her brains fucked out.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Sure!”

  The curtain moves three inches, and Gavin’s eye peeks at us before he pulls the whole thing back.

  “You ready for the hotel?” he asks, and if he’s suspicious, he manages not to show it.

  I just give him a thumbs up.

  “Brilliant,” he says, and heads forward again.

  “Do you think he knows?” I whisper.

  “I’m sure he thinks we were just having a really deep conversation back here,” Trent deadpans.

  I raise one eyebrow at him. He shrugs.

  Fuck it, I don’t care if Gavin knows, I think.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Trent

  After Minneapolis, we go to Chicago, Indianapolis, Detroit, Toronto. Gavin never says anything about Darcy and me, and no one else shows me her tits.

  And I think, for a little while at least, that life might be almost perfect. I’m touring with my band, playing shows every night, my best friend and I are some kind of together, and nothing really changed. As far as everyone else knows, we’re still the same Trent and Darcy as always.

  Except I wake up with her naked in my bed. That’s an important difference.

  About a week after the tour bus, we’re at the Broad Street Theater in Boston, doing sound check at five in the afternoon, and we’re stuck there because when I strum my guitar in open tuning, one of the notes is hitting exactly the frequency that makes a light fixture in the ceiling rattle.

  “Okay!” one of the theater’s employees calls from a catwalk, where he’s doing something that involves a lot of clanking to the light. Try it again?”

  I strum each string one by one, until the high E makes something buzz.

  “Fuckin’ ancient lights,” the guy in the catwalk mutters.

  “At least we know which note it is,” Gavin says.

  “Just don’t play that one,” Joan jokes. “How hard can it be?”

  “Again?” the guy calls. I pluck the string.

  “Fuck!” he shouts.

  “Try wrapping some tape around it or something, mate,” Gavin calls. “If you stick something to the fixture it ought to change the frequency just enough so it’ll stop doing that.”

  There’s a clatter above. Some creaking.

  “Huh?” the guy calls.

  “Have you got any tape?” Gavin shouts.

  “Yeah?”

  “Try wrapping some of it...”

  My phone buzzes, and I reach into my pocket to silence it.

  “But I need to secure it tighter!” the guy in the ceiling calls. “It’s buzzing.”

  “It’s not buzzing because it’s loose, it’s buzzing because of the way sound works,” Darcy calls, and I can tell she wants to add you dipshit to the end of her sentence but doesn’t.

  “Can we just send Gavin up?” Joan asks, her voice low enough that the guy can’t hear her.

  I have a bad feeling this is going to take a while, just as my phone buzzes again. I frown.

  “It doesn’t matter, anywhere that the light won’t melt it!” Gavin calls.

  I think we’ll be here a mi
nute, so I pull my phone out of my pocket and glance at the screen.

  NORTH DELANO STATE CORRECTIONAL FACILITY.

  Well, at least he’s calling me from the proper prison phone this time, not from a cell phone that someone probably stuck up his ass to smuggle in.

  “Guys, I gotta take this,” I say. “Sorry, I’ll be right back.”

  “We’ll be here,” Joan says grimly, and Darcy flashes me a thumbs up. Gavin’s got his arms crossed in front of his chest, futilely trying to explain resonance frequencies to the guy in the ceiling.

  “Hey,” I say, walking off stage. “What’s up?”

  There’s a pause, then the person on the other end clears his throat.

  “Is this Trent Ryder?” says someone who is definitely not Eli.

  “It is.”

  He’s in the fucking infirmary again, in a coma or something which is why he’s not calling me himself...

  “I’m very sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Eli Ryder was killed yesterday,” the man says.

  I stop short, right in front of a brick wall, and I fucking stare at it, mind blank. I stand there for a long, long time, because suddenly the words are just a collection of sounds and it’s all fucking nonsense.

  “Eli?” I finally ask.

  “Yes.”

  My ears are ringing. I feel like I’ve been hit in the gut, like I can’t get a breath, like I can’t even see.

  “Killed?” I hear myself say.

  “He was stabbed in an altercation,” the man answers carefully.

  “No, he wasn’t.”

  Silence.

  “I’m afraid he was.”

  “No, he fucking wasn’t because he’s an idiot and an asshole but he didn’t get fucking stabbed in fucking prison,” I tell him, though I’ve got no fucking clue what I’m saying. “Eli is goddamn fine and probably jerking off in his cell to some porno mag so it’s in your best fucking interest right now to figure out who the jackass who got stabbed really is and tell that poor bastard’s family.”

  “Sir, I’m afraid that—”

  “Shut your goddamn mouth,” I growl. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, and unless you find out you’d best hang this phone up and tell Eli to call me now.”