“Thank you so much for coming out tonight, New York City!” I yelled, waving at the audience. “Have a great night and drive safe!”
I walked off the stage, to the opposite wing from the one Ezra was standing in. If he still wanted to talk to me, I knew he’d go back to my dressing room, where we’d have a little privacy. After quickly taking my mic off, I speed-walked back to the room, certain I’d find him waiting outside. But he wasn’t there.
My eyes stung with tears and I swallowed the lump in my throat as I went inside and sat down on the couch. I wanted to call Taylor and talk to him, tell him that this asinine plan hadn’t worked after all, but I needed to wallow in my misery for a minute first. I’d just taken a huge risk, put my heart out on my sleeve, and it was all for nothing. He didn’t want me.
A knock sounded at the door, and my heart started pounding in my chest, so hard that I could feel it in my ears.
“Daph?” came Ezra’s voice, muffled through the door. “You in here?”
“It’s open,” I choked out.
The door opened just enough for him to slide in, and then he turned around and locked it before coming and sitting next to me on the couch. I turned to look at him, and he looked right back at me, neither of us saying a word.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” I finally said when I couldn’t take the silence anymore. “I wasn’t trying to blow you off. I just didn’t want to talk until I knew we’d have enough time. And I didn’t know what to say and I didn’t want to—”
I was cut off by Ezra cupping my face in his hands and crashing his lips onto mine, using my slightly open mouth to his advantage as he slid his tongue out, meeting mine and gently massaging it. Just like when he’d kissed me yesterday, I went dizzy from the intensity of it. He was kissing me like I was cold water and he was dying of thirst. Like I was the air he needed to breathe. A few of the tears that had been lurking just below the surface leaked from my eyes.
Too soon, he pulled back just enough to rest his forehead on mine, using his thumbs to wipe the moisture off my cheeks.
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for, Daph,” he murmured. “I’m the one who owes you an apology. I should never have walked out that door yesterday. I should have told you that I’ve never wanted anything in my life as much as I want you. I should have told you that you’re the first thing I think of in the morning and the last thing I think of at night. That the thought of anyone hurting you scares the shit out of me and I can’t—”
“Just shut up,” I chuckled, sniffling, then cut any possible response off with a kiss.
Ezra leaned back on the couch, pulling me with him. Not breaking the kiss, I shifted so I could straddle his legs. But then he pulled back again, putting a hand on my face.
“I hate to bring this up right now, but you still have a stalker somewhere out there, even if we haven’t heard from them in a couple of weeks,” he said quietly, his pained voice matching the sadness in his eyes.
“And they really don’t like seeing me with other people,” I finished for him. “I know. I’m still scared of that. I don’t want them hurting either one of us, or finding out about Ari and trying to hurt her. But I can’t…I can’t…”
I trailed off, not even knowing how to finish that sentence. How to tell him that I didn’t have the strength to stay away from him. That the thought of not being with him was so much worse than anything that freak could possibly do to me.
Oh, my God. Taylor, Alex, and Samantha were right. I did love him. This wasn’t a crush, lust, or just caring about him as a friend. This was the real deal.
“I know, angel. I can’t either.” Ezra brushed his lips against mine. “But if we’re going to be stupid enough to be together while you have a stalker on the loose, we need to keep it quiet. To keep us both safe. Can you do that?”
I nodded, and his response was to claim my mouth again. I curled my arms around his shoulders, clinging to him like a vice, as our lips and tongues moved in perfect harmony. His hands slid down to my ass, pulling me closer against him. I whimpered into his mouth as I felt his arousal beneath me, and I started to rock against him, needing the friction more than I needed to breathe.
Ezra’s lips left mine and slowly trailed down my jaw to my neck as he gripped my hips, guiding my movements. God, I wanted to get these annoying layers of fabric out of the way.
“You feel that, angel?” he whispered, his hot breath coating my skin and setting me on fire. “Feel what you do to me? What you’ve done to me since the day I met you?”
I just whimpered again, unable to form the words to give him a coherent response. He trailed kisses back up my neck and jaw, and I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I turned my head and captured his lips again. He groaned quietly, sliding his hands up my sides under my shirt…until he came into contact with the harness I hadn’t taken off yet.
“What the...” he trailed off as he pulled back.
“My harness,” I chuckled.
“Right,” he said, smirking a little.
“Well? What are you going to do about it?” I asked.
He looked me in the eye, and I could see the lust brewing there. But underneath that was the same warmth that I’d grown to adore so much, mixed with something else that I couldn’t identify.
“Daph, I take anything off of you right now, and I won’t be able to stop until it’s all off and I’m buried deep inside you,” he said, sounding almost pained.
“What if I don’t want you to stop?”
He groaned and kissed me again, and again, I rocked against his growing erection.
“That what you want, angel? You want me to fuck you right here in this dressing room?” he breathed, his lips still touching mine.
“Yes,” I whispered, grinding harder against him.
I knew it was stupid. Even though he’d locked the door, it wasn’t exactly private here. But I needed this. I needed something to convince me that this was actually happening and I wasn’t going to wake up and find out I was dreaming. And if he changed his mind after he walked back out that door, I just wanted this one memory to hold on to.
Ezra’s hand slipped under my shirt, resting just above my hip. “I can’t fuck you here, Daph. We don’t have the time or the privacy for me to have you the way I want you, and even if we did, I don’t have any protection on me.”
I sighed. He was right and I knew it. I quickly kissed him and moved to get up, but his strong hands held me firmly in place.
“But I am going to take care of you,” he continued. “Right here. Right now. Will you let me do that?”
I nodded, and he moved his hands to the button of my pants, quickly popping it open and then dragging the zipper down. One hand slid inside, under my panties, and he groaned when he dipped his fingers into my slick arousal, gently massaging my clit. I moaned quietly in relief.
“Fuck, angel. Are you always this wet or is it just for me?” he rasped, his voice an octave lower than normal.
“Just for you,” I breathed.
His hand slid lower, and one finger pressed inside me, stroking my channel.
“Oh, God,” I moaned.
“Shh,” he murmured, cutting my cries off with a kiss. “I need you to keep it down. As much as I want to hear you scream my name, it’s not safe for anyone to hear us.”
I nodded my understanding, and he rewarded me by pressing his finger further into me. I whimpered and bit my lip to keep from crying out.
“You like that?” he asked.
“Yes,” I whispered, afraid to raise my voice any more.
He curled his finger, brushing it against my sweet spot, and I kissed him to suppress my moan.
“What about that?” he rasped against my mouth.
“God, yes,” I whimpered.
“What do you want, angel? Tell me.”
“This.”
He stroked my inner walls again, and I bit my lip, groaning. This was borderline torture.
“This?” he questioned. “Just thi
s?”
“No.”
“You want me to fuck you with my fingers?”
“Yes.”
“You want me to make you come?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me what you want, Daph. I want to hear you say it,” he murmured.
“Make me come,” I moaned quietly. “Finger me.”
“Good girl.” He rewarded me with a kiss. “Hold on tight.”
Ezra withdrew his finger, but quickly plunged two back inside me, pressing his thumb against my swollen nerve center as he started to pump his fingers in and out of me. I bit my lip to keep from crying out, and he used his free hand to coax my lip from between my teeth before crashing his mouth against mine, kissing me so deeply and passionately that I saw stars.
I completely lost myself in the feelings that were crashing over me in waves. Emotions so strong that I couldn’t put a name to them. All I knew was that, with every kiss, every stroke of his fingers, every touch, it was like he was jolting my heart and making it beat to a new rhythm: in perfect time with his.
Much too quickly, the pressure started to build up inside me, but as much as I wanted to make this last forever, I couldn’t stop it. I started to rock my hips in time with his hand, and he groaned, moving his lips to my neck.
“That’s it, baby,” he encouraged me. “Take what you need.”
I turned my head to kiss him again, and he slid a hand up my back, maneuvering his way under the harness so he could pull me closer as he picked up his pace.
“Let go, Daph,” he whispered against my mouth. “Come for me.”
Pressing his thumb harder against my clit, he curled his fingers to find my sweet spot once more, and I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d tried. I crashed my mouth back to his, kissing him to muffle my cries as I unraveled. He groaned, tightening his arm around me, and continued to gently pump his fingers and massage my clit, eliciting another—much smaller—climax.
“You are so goddamn beautiful,” he whispered, kissing my forehead. He withdrew his hand from my pants and stuck his fingers in his mouth, sucking my juices off. “Fuck, angel. You taste like heaven.”
Quickly, he re-zipped and re-buttoned my pants, and I collapsed against his shoulder, unable to hold myself upright anymore. I’d never come that hard just from someone’s hand before. Hell, I could count the number of orgasms I’d had that were that powerful, period, on one hand. He wrapped his arms around me and planted a kiss on the side of my head.
“Daph, as much as I want to just stay like this with you all night, we need to get out of here before someone comes looking,” he said after a couple of minutes.
“I know,” I sighed, moving off of his lap.
“I’m nowhere close to done with you,” he chuckled, turning to give me another kiss. “I’m going to go do my job and make sure it’s safe to get you out of here, you’re going to get out of your stage clothes and that ridiculous fucking harness, and then we’re going to go back to the hotel. And if you want to be with me tonight as much as I want to be with you, answer the knock on your door. Okay?”
“I will,” I promised.
With one more brush of our lips, Ezra got up and walked back out of my dressing room.
My head was spinning as I shut the door behind me, and I fought the urge to pinch myself to make sure I was awake.
Had that really just happened? Had Daphne actually just performed a song in front of a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden for me? Had I actually just decided to be stupid enough to give in to my feelings for her while she had a stalker on the loose? And had I really just made Daphne come undone in her dressing room?
Forcing myself to go back into work mode, I went and did a quick sweep of our path to the car to make sure it was safe and asked the rest of the guys to get rid of the crowd of fans waiting outside and hoping for an autograph. Yes, I was being that selfish. I wanted Daphne all to myself tonight. Even if all we did was sleep in the same bed, fully clothed. I just wanted to be with her and spend the rest of the night making up for being a colossal asshole yesterday.
I went back and knocked on her door again.
“Daph? You decent?” I asked.
I heard her chuckling behind the door, and I realized the irony of what I’d just said. Not fifteen minutes ago, I’d had my fingers inside her up to the third knuckle as she unraveled in my arms, and now I was asking if she was decent.
“Yeah, come in,” she called.
I went into the room, quickly turning around and shutting the door behind me. Then I turned and found Daphne wearing a pair of yoga pants, sneakers, and a tank top, with all of her stage makeup wiped off. Just like I liked her. While she was fucking hotter than hell onstage in those skin-tight leather pants and high-heeled boots, she took my breath away like this. Like this, she looked…more real, I guessed. More human, and less like the rock and roll icon she’d become over the past few years.
But, for some reason I couldn’t figure out, she looked…embarrassed? Unsure?
“So, this is what I look like when I’m not working,” she mumbled.
“Nothing I haven’t seen before,” I reminded her.
She gave me a weak smile. “I know. But…I don’t know. It feels different now.”
I closed the distance between us in three long strides and tilted her chin up to make her look at me.
“Daph, in the two months I’ve known you, I have seen you exhausted, scared, upset, happy, pissed off, hangry, undercaffeinated, overcaffeinated, drunk, and pretty much any other way you can imagine. I know what you look like when you’ve just rolled out of bed, and I know what you look like when you’re going out to a club after a show. I can tell by the slightest change in your voice if you’re upset and trying to hide it or if a fan is making you uncomfortable. I know when you’re pumped about a show and when you’d rather be anywhere but on that stage.
“Don’t think for a second that I just want the Daphne DeVille who gets up on a stage and sings her heart out every night. I want that woman because it’s a package deal. If I want you, I get her too. But the Daphne I really want is the woman who smiles and greets every single member of her crew, every single show, no matter how tired she is or how much she does or doesn’t want to go onstage that day. The woman who buys coffee and pizza for everyone on this tour at least once a week, just because. The woman who rambles when she gets nervous. The woman who called her best friend to babysit Arielle when I had a family emergency, and who I caught having a private concert with her singing along to a Miley Cyrus song in front of this mirror yesterday. I want the real Daphne, not the Daphne I’m going to have to share with thousands of screaming fans every night.”
“You’ll be sorely disappointed. The real Daphne’s not all that interesting,” she sighed.
I kissed her deep, cutting her off from saying any more self-deprecating shit. I wanted to find that fucker Chad Van de Berg and any other men or women who had contributed to crushing her self-esteem into the ground and crush them into the ground.
“Ezra, all clear to bring Angel out,” Hector said over the radio, bringing me back to reality, where I was still on the clock until we got back to the hotel and got Daphne safely to her room.
“Let’s get out of here,” I told her. “I hope it’s okay that I asked the guys to get rid of the masses tonight.”
“I’m glad you did. It doesn’t sound nearly as bitchy coming from you.” She smiled wide enough for those dimples I loved so much to show.
Now that I could, I brushed my lips over one of them, then stole a real kiss. I knew it was too soon to tell her how I felt about her, but if I couldn’t tell her, at least I could show her.
I groaned as our two Escalades pulled up to the back entrance of the hotel. The entrance that was supposed to be private. Except that somehow, someone had let the information about which hotel we were staying at leak to the masses and there were at least a hundred screaming fans waiting outside.
“Up to you, Daph,” I said, turning to Da
phne. “Want us to get rid of them?”
She sighed. “It’ll just take longer. Have the guys clear a path for me and I’ll sign a few autographs on my way in. No pictures.”
I smiled. She didn’t refuse pictures often. I’d only seen her do it one other time: when her cousin, Jillian, came to her show in Philadelphia and she wanted to spend time with her. It was surreal to think that tonight, I was the person she wanted to be with that badly. But I also knew she appreciated her fans and didn’t want to seem rude. So I leaned in.
“You don’t have to do that for me. We have time. Travel day tomorrow, remember?” I whispered into her ear.
“I know,” she chuckled quietly. “But we still have to be up early to get on the road and I’m not in the mood to take forever posing for pictures tonight.”
One corner of my mouth turned up and I discreetly squeezed her hand.
“Angel asked us to clear a path to the door for her. She’ll sign tonight, but no pictures,” I said into the radio.
“Ten-four,” came Hector’s voice over the radio. “Stay put. We’ve got it.”
Hector and his team got out of the car ahead of us and got to work having the fans form two lines with a path in the middle. He was quick and efficient, and within five minutes, he was done.
“All clear, Ezra,” he said over the radio.
“Ten-four. We’re coming out now,” I told him, then turned to Daphne. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be,” she chuckled, pulling her signature pink Sharpie out, then handing her small clutch to me for safekeeping. “Let’s do this.”
“Okay. Garth, got her six?”
“Ready when you are,” he said.
Neil got out of the front seat of the Escalade, and then I opened my car door. I swore the screams I heard coming from this crowd of maybe a hundred people were louder than the screams of the twenty thousand fans that Daphne had performed for tonight.
Taking a breath to steel myself, I got out of the car and held my hand out for Daphne. She chuckled and smiled at me as she took my hand and got out of the car, using her free hand to wave at her fans. Garth was right behind her. And I immediately went into work mode as I escorted her forward.
Falling Angel Page 16
