by Jenika Snow
“Thank you, although I’ve gained weight.” She started chuckling and picked at her shirt.
Yeah, she had put on weight, but shit, she looked good. Before she had been thinner, but now she had a woman’s form, with curves that went on for miles and had him hard just thinking about what she looked like with no clothes on. He shifted on the bed to hide his growing erection. “You look good, Zoe.” He cleared his throat and looked back down at his drumsticks. “Your brother is good?” He might have been a selfish bastard back in the day concerning the drugs and using, but before that he just wanted to be friends. There was so much he wanted to say to her, to confess and try to work through it, but he bit his tongue and glanced up at her once more. “I haven’t talked to him in a few months since he started med school.” He watched her throat work as she swallowed, and he knew there were a lot of things she wanted to say, too. But she didn’t say anything, and just like him played it off as though there was nothing between them.
“We don’t talk much either, but I know he’s been really busy with rotation at the hospital and all that.” She was twisting her hands in her lap.
“You’re nervous.” He didn’t know why he said that because surely that wouldn’t help the situation.
“I am.” They held each other’s stares for several seconds, and he saw this expression filter across her face. Before he knew what she was doing she stood and walked over to where he was sitting on the bed. The scent of her filled his nose, and he held in his groan.
“Have you been working out?” she asked as she looked at his biceps.
“Yeah, after…” He glanced out the window at the large blue spruces and evergreens that lined the property. He didn’t want to tell her about that part of his life, not yet at least. When he looked back at her it was to see her gaze locked on his. Her eyes were this light green color, unique and so damn gorgeous. “For the last couple of years the whole band has been working out.” He shrugged, knowing that the guys thought working out would be a good way to help burn off the need that he had for his addiction, and keep his mind focused on what was really important. But what no one else knew was that one reason why he had cleaned up his shit was because of Zoe. He thought about her, wished things could be different, but life was what it was, and there was no going back.
“Do you want to talk about anything in particular?” There was a note in her voice that told him she knew he had a lot on his mind, but he couldn’t talk about that shit right now.
“No, Zoe.” He inhaled deeply and glanced out the window again. For several seconds neither said anything, but then he felt the lightest of touches on his arm. When he looked down it was to see Zoe resting her hand on his forearm.
“Luke.” She whispered his real name, and his heart started pounding hard in his chest.
Keeping his expression neutral, he looked at her again, saw the longing in her face, and knew what she was going to do. She had never looked so vulnerable before, and although he knew he should stop her as she leaned in closer, he couldn’t do it. And then she was pressing her mouth to his, and the flavor of her burst throughout his whole body. His cock hardened instantly, but this wasn’t how things should be going. He pushed away from her right as she slipped her tongue along his bottom lip. He hadn’t been able to stop the low sound that came from him. He stood, started pacing and running his hands through his hair, and trying to figure out how in the fuck to get his dick to go down.
“Oh my God, I’m sorry.” She sounded frantic.
He looked over his shoulder and saw how red her face was. God, he didn’t want her thinking that he disliked it, not one fucking bit. “Zoe, please…”
She looked up at him and he thought she was going to cry, and that tore his damn heart out.
“I’ve been friends with you and Lane my whole life, and even though I want—”
She shook her head and stood, cutting off when he was going to tell her that he did care for her, but that he was afraid things would be ruined between everyone.
“No, please don’t say anything.” Her voice shook, and he took a step closer, wanting to comfort her. She held up her hands to stop him. “I shouldn’t have done that. I overstepped bounds. Sorry.” And then she turned and left his room, and Beats stood there feeling like the biggest asshole that ever lived. He should have gone to her, but instead he sat back on the bed, rested his head in his hands, and tried to figure out how in the fuck things had gone to shit when he was trying to avoid just that.
Chapter Six
“You’re serious?” Five said at the same time he leaned forward and rested his forearms on his thighs.
“Yeah I’m fucking serious for the fourth time.” Jacks looked at Beats and Matty before bringing his attention back to Five. He had gotten up early and got the rest of the band up to talk to them about this. Jacks had to walk over bodies as they had been spread out across the master living room just to try to find Five and Matty. Beats had been in a room across the hall, and he had been acting funny ever since Jacks had gotten him up, but Beats refused to talk about it when Jacks probed. He better not be using again. Although he worried about his friend even two years after he had gone into rehab, he tried to trust Beats that he was staying straight. There were naked chicks strewn across guys, beer and liquor bottles littering the floor, and even coke residue covering the glass coffee table. This was a fucked up scene, and one he didn’t want Beats to have to deal with if he was feeling weak, but when he looked at the drummer all he saw was this apathetic expression covering his face. When he realized he wanted to broach the subject with them last night he had been anxious to get this shit rolling.
“What does Tanner have to say about all of this? She cool with it?” Matty asked in a gravelly voice that sounded like he probably hadn’t gotten much sleep last night. Hell, Jacks bet they had gotten no more than a couple of hours before he busted in on them and woke their asses up.
Jacks looked over at Matty, and although his eyes were closed and he looked like shit—as did the other two—he knew that he was still with them. “I wanted to run it by you guys first. Why bring it up to her if you didn’t want her to join in?”
Matty opened his eyes then, and turned his head to look at Beats and Five. “Shit, I’m good with having Tanner come along, but she needs to know that being on tour will show her a lot of stuff in the music industry that she may not approve of.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “I mean what she saw last night was nothing compared to the fucking carnage of being on the road and touring.”
Yeah, that was going to have to be something that they talked about, because although touring and what they did was about the music, they also had the screaming fans, the drugs and booze that were always right in front of them even if they didn’t want it, and of course the sex. There was a lot of dirty, random sex, and although she had seen some of that at the party last night, being on the tour bus, at those concerts, and in the thick of it backstage was a whole other world.
“Where is she now?” Five asked. He sighed and threw his legs up on the couch so he could sprawl out.
“In one of the other rooms.” Right now Jacks and the rest of the band were in a sitting room that held a kitchenette and living room, but even then they had to kick out the two people that had been naked and sleeping on the floor.
“Other rooms?” Five cracked an eye open and looked at Jacks. “I know for a fact she isn’t in the one Beats put Zoe up in last night, and she isn’t in the master suite.” Five didn’t break Jacks’s stare, and he knew that the band’s bass player was already thinking of all sorts of shit. “Where did you sleep last night?”
“What difference does it make?” Jacks leaned back in his chair. “That isn’t even what we are talking about right now.”
Five shrugged and closed his eyes once more. “I’m just wondering if the two of you shacked up for the night. I mean I saw the way you were checking her out, man.”
Jacks felt the gazes of Matty and Beats on him now.
&nb
sp; “What did I miss?” Beats asked in this weird tone.
“We aren’t going to go there. And you didn’t miss anything, Beats.” He wasn’t going to get into this with them, at least not until he spoke to Tanner and knew that letting their … whatever they were doing was okay with her to be out in the open. Once their relationship, if she wanted that with him, was out there for all to see the media would jump on that like it was the news of the century. He didn’t know if she was all for that. If she agreed to what he was going to propose, then she’d be in the spotlight—to an extent—and be subjected to all the bad shit that came with being associated with a rock group. “Beats, Five, you good with me bringing this up to Tanner? I think she would be an asset to the band, especially after we have just been talking about revamping the site.” Jacks leaned back in his chair once more, not even realizing all of his muscles had been strained when the conversation of him and Tanner sleeping in the same room and been brought up.
“Tanner’s a cool chick. I don’t mind having here there. I’m just worried that she’ll get shell shocked once on the bus. I mean this isn’t practicing in your folks’ basement, Jacks,” Matty said with his eyes still closed.
“I’m good,” Five said.
“I’ll talk to her, and hopefully she’ll be on board.” Because I really want her to come with me. Thinking of going away and not seeing her for months at a time, and that was a short time estimate, sounded like a shitty idea. Jacks stood and left the guys in the sitting room so he could go back to see Tanner. They’d be fast asleep in about five minutes anyway.
Once he was in his room once again he went over to the double doors of the bedroom and pushed one side open enough that he could lean against the frame and just watch her as she slept. Maybe it was creepy as fuck, but he liked how peaceful she looked, and of course got a damn hard-on when he saw her curvy form under the lone sheet. She shifted, and the sheet tightened marginally around her ass. He could see the crack of her bottom, and his balls drew up tight. She had a spectacular ass, round and big and exactly the way he liked them.
“Do you normally stare at people when they are sleeping?” Her eyes were still closed, and her voice was muffled, but he saw the tug of a smile at the corner of her mouth.
“I can safely say I’ve never watched anyone sleep before. But with you I have this creepy fascination with your body.”
She smiled wider this time and rolled onto her back. “Is that right?” The sheet successfully covered her chest to his disappointment, but he saw the outline of her breasts and the stiff peaks of her nipples and that led to his very overactive imagination. But then she stretched and the sheet slid off of her chest, and he couldn’t stop himself.
Jacks took off his clothes and was making his way toward her when she wrapped the sheet around her and quickly jumped off the bed. “What are you doing?” Here he stood, staring at her like some kind of asshole with his dick all hard as she dashed into the bathroom. “Tanner, what in the hell are you doing?”
She leaned around the doorframe. “You don’t expect me to get all up close and personal with you first thing in the morning, do you?” She shut the door, and five minutes after her being in there she finally emerged.
His cock was all but deflated, but seeing her standing in the doorway, with that sheet bunched in her hand right above her breasts had him getting hard again in record time. He liked that the discomfort that had been there right after they had sex last night was gone. She didn’t seem like she felt awkward over all the times he had touched her, fucked her, and licked her like she was a damn ice cream cone melting in the sun. What he wanted to do was be buried inside of her again, but he really did need to talk to her, and if they had sex—which to be honest was what he wanted to do at this particular moment—it would just be stalling. He grabbed his shorts off the floor and put them on before sitting on the edge of the bed and patting the spot beside him. “Come here, Tanner.”
She looked at him a bit suspiciously, and he was pleased to say disappointedly, and came over to sit beside him. “You’re acting weird all of the sudden.” She shifted on the bed so one leg was bent and she was facing him fully. “Everything okay? You’re not regretting…” The fact she was the one that now looked worried about him regretting what they had done instead of it being him last night, warmed his heart and broke it at the same time.
“No, Tanner. I’m really fucking glad things played out the way they did, and I’d like them to continue to play out.” He watched the confusion on her face thicken.
“I guess I’m not following what you’re saying.”
He ran his thumb along her cheek and exhaled. “I talked to the band first since I wanted to make sure it would be cool with them, but—” Damn, why was this hard? “I want you to come on tour with Savage Light and help us re-create our website and the graphics.” The silence that stretched between them was heavy.
“Seriously?” She leaned back, almost as if he had slapped her, and her eyes slowly widened. “You seriously want me to come on tour with Savage Light as your graphic designer?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t know what else to say, because clearly this was as shocking to her as it had first been when he broached it with the guys. “Obviously there would be legal forms and shit like that to be taken care of before anything could move forward, but you’d be exclusive to the band, help create logo designs with the rest of the team, and, well…”
When he didn’t finish she lifted a brow.
“What?” She said that one word softly, almost coaxingly. Jacks swore she already knew what he was going to say by the look on her face alone.
“I want you on tour with me, too, Tanner. I don’t just want you there as an employee to the band, but as my girl.” He heard her swallow, and then she looked away from him. He didn’t press her, because he could see from her profile that she was trying to work out what he had just said in her mind.
“This might be the most surreal thing I’ve ever experienced.” She turned her head and faced him again. “I mean, aside from sleeping with Jackson ‘Jacks’ Lorde.”
He could tell she was teasing him, but there was still this unsure tone in her voice. “I know I kind of sprang this on you. We just saw each other again after five years of not speaking, but this feels really fucking right, Tanner.” He reached for her hand again. “But just because we haven’t seen each other doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking of you, and I would hope you have been thinking of me, too,” he said.
She nodded. “I’ve never stopped thinking about you. But, Jacks, you don’t even know my work. For all we both know, as well as the rest of the guys, my work could be vastly different from what you are going for.”
He was shaking his head before she finished. Okay, she might have a point, but he knew that her work—regardless if he hadn’t actually seen it yet—didn’t make a difference. This was Tanner, she was wickedly talented, and he wanted her on the tour, and in his life. “I may not have seen the stuff you actually got your degree for, but I grew up with you, remember?” He smiled and was thankful when she did the same. “I’ve seen your designs, know how talented you are, and think you’ll make a great addition to Savage Light.”
She stood and started pacing, and once again he could see all the things she must be thinking flashing across her face. She had always been an easy person to read. And then she stopped, turned and stared at him, and for several seconds did nothing but that. “And you’re serious?”
Jacks couldn’t help it. He started laughing.
She kitted her brows and folded her arms under her breasts, well, as well as she could given the fact she was only dressed in a sheet. “You’re laughing at me.” She said it deadpan and didn’t phrase it like a question.
Jacks stood and walked over to her, wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in close. “I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at the situation, and in reality it is actually one of those nervous laughs.” He looked into her face, then let his gaze go down to her lip
s and felt that consuming desire for her fill him. “I just don’t want another five years to pass between us, Tanner.” Cupping her face he held her still while he leaned down and kissed her. She smelled minty, and when he slid his tongue along the seam of her lips and she opened for him, that spearmint flavor coated his taste buds. He pulled away before the kiss got too carried away. “I’m not expecting an answer right now. Talk to your parents, think about it really hard. If you decide you want to take this job that means being on the road with us for the next three months, dealing with the press, rabid fans, and the groupies that come out of the woodwork.” He still had an arm around her, but he felt her tense. She wasn’t naive in thinking that she wouldn’t be subjected to this kind of stuff if she came, that much was clear on her face. But he needed to drill this home with her so there were no surprises. “The guys screw a lot of random chicks, Tanner, and you’ll see that if you are on the bus and even backstage, amongst a lot of other shit.”
She looked down at the ground and pulled away from him. “Will I see that from you?” Her voice was low, but clear.
Had that been a part of his life for the past five years? Yeah, in all its gritty and filthy glory, but asking Tanner to come on tour with them was also because he was selfish. He wanted her, had always wanted her, and this seemed like the logical and smart step to ensure that. “The only one I want is you.”
She lifted her head and looked at him.
“Don’t give me an answer yet. Just think about it. We do have to head out in three days because we have a concert in Denver, but if you are still unsure by then take longer to decide. We can always come back to Brookstone once the tour in Colorado is over with.” He took her hand in his and gave it a light squeeze. “I just want you, only you.” He said it again, making sure to stare right in her eyes so she knew he was dead serious. Why was it so imperative now that he make her understand how much he wanted her? He didn’t know, didn’t care, and was just going where it felt right. And it all felt right with Tanner. But of course there was that nagging voice deep down inside of him that said something was going to get screwed up, and that being in the position he was in would eventually ruin what he wanted. Tanner was everything good and light, and there were parts of his life that were dark and bad. He didn’t want that shitty part to seep onto her, and walking away from her would have been the right thing to do. But he was a selfish bastard, and if he did let her go he would forever wonder what would have happened if he had actually tried being with her. Hell, he might still lose her if she didn’t want to go. That would suck, but at the same time that was okay because it would have been her decision and he had put himself out there. Life on the road and living a musician’s life would put a lot of things in perspective to her, and also show her that it wasn’t all fame, cash, and parties.
