Swallowing another moan at the rough, lusty tone of his voice and the erotic sight of us in the mirror, I nodded and bit my lower lip, intent on keeping it down.
I fumbled with his zipper, relishing his sharp intake of breath when I palmed his hot length. Not to be outdone, Jared shoved my strapless dress down, his big hands closing over my breasts. My nipples grew into hard little peaks under his touch.
Jared tore the lacy cup of my bra down, turning me around to drop his head to my chest. He puts his hands under my ass and lifted me onto the countertop, stepping between my thighs and pressing his hard bulge against my thin panties.
Scooping my face to his, he crushed his lips to mine, grinding against me as we kissed, moving his hips in a way that drove me crazy. His hands left me for a second to shove his jeans over his ass, revealing tight, black boxer briefs.
My hands slid under his T-shirt, feeling his hard muscles and wishing we had time and space for skin-to-skin contact. But not today, not here.
Reaching down to cup his crotch again, I massaged him, groaning so loudly, Jared lifted a hand and clamped it over my mouth.
“Shh, unless you want everyone to know what’s going on in here.”
I shook my head, looping my arms around his neck to pull him to me. If I had his mouth on mine, I got to kiss him and muffle whatever sounds escaped at the same time.
Win, win.
One of his hands disappeared and then he broke apart our kiss to tear a condom open with his teeth. Dropping his hand slowly, he used his free hand to lift his briefs from his cock. He let the package fall to the floor and slid the latex down his length.
He was panting a little when his eyes met mine again. “You still okay with this?”
Looking like he’d go mad if I said no, he waited for my answer. I lifted my butt one cheek at a time and wiggled out of my panties, letting them fall away from my feet as I spread my legs.
“I’m sure.” I nodded.
Groaning quietly, he guided himself to the hot wetness between my legs. I was swollen and desperate, needing him inside me now. He didn’t disappoint. Sliding the head of his shaft to my heated entrance, Jared looked me in the eyes and drove his hips forward.
Hands on my ass, his fingers dug into my flesh as he drove himself into me in a heated frenzy. I wrapped my legs around his firm butt and adjusted myself until I was positioned just right. Every forceful movement of his hips rubbed my clit, sending shudders of pleasure rocketing through me.
My hands were in his hair, holding him against me as he slammed our bodies together. I kissed him hard, clinging to him as waves of ecstasy thundered through me.
My climax came hard and fast. It started in my clit and raced through my body. Crying out, I was vaguely aware of Jared’s hand closing over my mouth again.
Spasms rocked my body, my muscles clenching and pulsing so powerfully, Jared grit his teeth and spiraled into his climax right after me. His hips twitched as he found his release, his teeth sinking into my shoulder to keep from letting any noise escape.
His chest sagged against mine when he was done, his strong arms supporting me by winding around my back. Jared chuckled softly, his breath feathering across the sweat-dampened skin on my neck. “That was a great idea.”
“Glad you approve.” I smiled against his forehead. Dropping a quick kiss on his temple, I extricated myself from his grip and turned to survey the damage. Studying my reflection in the bathroom mirror, I decided I didn’t look like a complete train wreck. My lips were swollen and my hair a little mussed, but it wasn’t so bad. My cheeks were flushed and my eyes big, but there was nothing I could do to change that.
“I’ll go first,” I told Jared, smoothing my dress down. I might’ve chosen this particular outfit for its easy access earlier. It would be lying to say the thought of doing what we’d just done hadn’t occurred me while I’d been getting dressed.
Jared didn’t want to turn down the invitation to join the mile- high club, and I hadn’t wanted to waste the opportunity.
I didn’t know what the rules about this kind of thing were on private planes, but we could’ve gotten arrested several times over for what we’d just done on a commercial airliner. I’d never been on a private plane before with a guy I was intimate with, and the opportunity was too good to pass up.
A girl had to live a little, and Jared definitely made me feel alive. If all I was going to get from him was fun, I was milking every last drop of it out of this that I could.
“Okay,” he agreed, cracking open the door to peek outside. “I think the coast is clear.”
I jutted my chin out and left the bathroom, only to deflate like a balloon when I saw Caleb’s eyes flicker up toward the bathroom I’d just come out of. Coast is clear, my ass!
Jared and I weren’t a secret, exactly. Some people knew about us, like Kelly. And Nick probably put things together after the Veteran’s benefit. But we also weren’t advertising it.
The plane was quiet, the guys all immersed in screens of some kind. Only Caleb seemed aware of me moving about the cabin back to my seat.
Jared slid into his beside me not a minute later, snapping his seat buckle into place with a lazy, satisfied half-smile on his lips. I leaned over, coming down from my bubble of orgasmic bliss with nervous jitters running down my spine.
“I think Caleb saw us.”
He didn’t flinch, his eyes darting to his brother’s before landing on mine. Reaching out to grab my hand, his thumb ran gently across my knuckles, and he planted a swift kiss on my shoulder. “Don’t worry about it. It’ll be okay.”
He didn’t let go of my hand, drawing lines over the back of it until I felt the tension slowly start to melt off. Somehow, I trusted him when he told me everything would be fine.
It also didn’t escape my notice that this was the first time I was seeing this side of him. The human side. Jared-freaking-Larsen was trying to comfort me. Who would’ve ever imagined that?
CHAPTER 34
JARED
“This place is sick.” Nick pushed his sunglasses to the tip of his nose with an approving grin. Gesturing toward the lobby of our hotel in New York, he slid his eyes across the high ceilings and polished marble floors.
Matt smirked, making himself comfortable on one of the plush red couches decorating the waiting area. “Thought Gerry said we’re done with nice places after the last … incident.”
The incident he was referring to was a drunken mishap after one of our shows on the last tour. We’d hosted a party that got a little out of hand, and the damages Gerry, our lawyer Ted, and our ex-PR guy Brad had to take care of had been legendary. Though I doubted they’d agree with that assessment of the damage we’d caused.
“Someone must’ve changed his mind.” Dom yawned, jerking his head toward Alicia standing at the check-in counter with Gerry.
Late afternoon sun was filtering in through the floor-to-ceiling windows, casting an orange glow over the opulent lobby. Modern sculptures were scattered across it, obscuring my view of Gerry and Alicia who were checking us in.
The lobby was on one of the higher floors of the building we were in, the New York skyline hazy in the fading light and some low-hanging clouds. People moved briskly through the lobby. No one paid any attention to us, waiting at a cluster of couches in the corner for our room keys.
Clicking heels pulled me away from people watching in time to see Alicia hurrying to us, a stack of entry cards in her hand. She’d pulled her hair up before we landed, exposing her smooth neck and the small silver studs in her ears.
The dress I had bundled up around her trim waist only hours ago showed off toned legs I couldn’t wait to have wrapped around me again. My cock was obsessed with this woman, stirring as I watched her hips sway gently from side to side as she walked up to us.
“Room keys,” she announced, pulling them one by one from her stack and handing them to us. “Go get settled in. Luggage will be brought up to your rooms. We’ll meet down here in two hours fo
r our final meeting before the interview tomorrow. I’ve booked the conference room down the hall, first door on the left. Don’t be late.”
A round of grumbling met her instruction, but after making each of us promise to be on time, she turned and went to meet up with Gerry who was waiting for her on the other side of the lobby. The guys and I made our way to the elevators, and five minutes later, I was walking into a suite my dreams used to be made of.
The porter delivering my luggage was already there, stacking my bags against a wall. I tipped the guy, thanked him, and closed the door behind me.
“This is what I’m talking about,” I muttered, pulling my phone and wallet out of my pocket and throwing them down on the couch as I crossed the room to the windows. It felt like I was on top of the world looking out at the city from here.
I was so high up, I could hardly make out the bustling sidewalk, feeling like I was almost in the clouds. The suite had its own lounge, bar, balcony, and separate bedroom. The furnishings were sparse and modern, the view incredible. Heavy curtains framed it, and I bunched the material between my fingers, leaning forward to appreciate the city.
We’d traveled so much over the last few years but only recently started staying in places like this. We’d let it go to our heads on tour and nearly fucked it up, but it looked like Gerry, or maybe the network airing the interview, was giving us a second chance.
People would never say it, or even see it in me, but I appreciated every second of places like this, traveling like this. We’d worked hard to get to this point in our careers, and despite what most thought, I didn’t take it for granted.
An unexpected knock at my door brought me back to the present. Hell, yeah, Alicia must be ready for another round too.
Leaving the view behind me, I smiled and walked back to the door, mentally making a list of all the places in this room I was going to fuck her. Starting with up against that window.
I yanked down on the door handle, ready with a quip about how she just couldn’t get enough. It died on my lips when I saw Caleb standing on the other side, not Alicia.
“Miss me already?” I joked, more disappointed than I should’ve been that my surprise visitor wasn’t Alicia. I didn’t know what to think about it, so I was chalking it up to being travel-horny.
It was a real thing. Being away from home always got me going.
Caleb shot me a glare and brushed past me into my suite. “Not even a little.”
“Then why are you here? We’re all meeting downstairs in a couple of hours.”
“I’m aware,” he replied dryly, making a beeline for the bar. “Beer?”
“Sure.” I sank onto one of the four bar stools, twisting the cap off the bottle Caleb handed me. “What’s up?”
Elbows on the counter with the beer between his hands, Caleb’s dark eyes were serious on mine, a deep line between his eyebrows. “I know what’s going on with you and Alicia.”
“What are you talking about?” I kept my gaze on his, feigning confusion as I sipped my beer.
“Quit acting all innocent. You’re fucking her.” His accusatory glare told me trying to play it off wasn’t going to work. It was worth a shot anyway.
Tilting my head, I gave him my best shit-eating smirk. “Am I?”
“You are.” He didn’t return my attempt at humor. “Stop trying to play me.”
“It’s nothing, okay?” Caleb was no stranger to my ways, but this was the first time he was acting like this about it.
“It’s not nothing, Jared. Has no one ever told you not to shit where you eat?” Exasperation rolled off him as he chugged half his beer.
“We’re just having fun.” Both of us were perfectly clear on that. “No harm, no foul. Or to answer you, no shitting. Two consenting adults enjoying each other’s company, nothing wrong with that.”
“There’s more to it than that.”
I shook my head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about you fucking our public relations agent on our plane,” he spat. “You’re going to screw this up, and then what?”
“I’m not because there isn’t anything going on I can screw up. It’s fun, Caleb. Don’t know if you remember the meaning of the word, but look it up. Calm down, would you?”
“We’ve seen leadership in her that we need, whether you like it or not. What she’s been doing for this album is huge. Maybe you’ve been too busy thinking with your dick to see it, but she’s blowing this thing up. We need her.”
“And she’s still around, isn’t she?”
“Sure. For now.” He took another long sip and slammed his bottle down on the bar. “Sooner or later, you’re going to do what you always do and turn this into a fiasco, and then she’ll be gone. Mark my words.”
“Fiasco?” I echoed. He didn’t know what he was talking about when it came to what Alicia and I had agreed to. I wasn’t going to go around letting him ream me over things he didn’t understand.
Caleb’s jaw twitched, and he had a white-knuckled grip on his beer. He was getting angry.
“Yes, Jared. A fiasco. That’s your superpower. Just do me a favor and get this under control. Leave Alicia alone. There’s a whole city out there full of exciting new skirts to chase. Let this one go.”
I lifted my beer to my lips, letting it hang there as I watched the sun dip below the horizon. Caleb was right about one thing. We did need Alicia. Yes, I’d been thinking with my dick a lot when she was involved, but I wasn’t blind. She was great at her job, and she was positioning this album to be our biggest one yet.
I also wasn’t going to deny that one or twice, I had caused what Caleb so eloquently named a fiasco. We’d had to replace a marketing girl, a photographer, and a backup dancer on a video or two because they’d thought we were more than we were.
But things were different with Alicia. Besides, Caleb telling me no just made me want her that much more.
CHAPTER 35
ALICIA
The air conditioning in the conference room lifted the loose tendrils of hair on my neck, causing goosebumps to rise on my arms and shoulders. I’d changed and pulled it into a loose bun just before coming down for the meeting, but my hair wasn’t playing along, and some tendrils had already escaped.
Hugging the jersey I had on tighter around my arms, I tried to forget the chilly room and focus on whether I was ready for this meeting. Based on previous experience, I doubted the band would open the folders I put together for them, but I’d done it anyway.
Each of them had a full list of tips they could study before the live interview, personalized to what I’d picked up from that particular band member during interviews before. They also each had a list of talking points for the interview, topics to avoid and how to handle it if those topics were mentioned.
I’d arranged for the hotel to have a projector ready for me and had my laptop hooked up to it. As part of our final interview prep, I was going to show the guys some of their more disastrous old videos and compare it to interviews given by other bands. In their genre. In this age. It should show them they could be all rock n’ roll and whatever and still do what I needed them to do, which was to promote and not sink this album.
“Hey, Alicia,” Dom said, opening the door to the conference room and entering first. Caleb and Matt came in after him. Glancing at my watch, I was surprised to see they were right on time.
“Hi, guys.” I motioned to the round conference table, gathered up the folders I made, and handed them to the boys as they passed me. “Have a seat anywhere. Thanks for being on time.”
“No worries,” Jared piped up cheerfully, walking into the conference room not a second after the rest. He kicked out a chair beside the one my folder and pencil case were resting in front of, sinking into it as if he hadn’t noticed, even though he immediately grabbed one of my pens and started sketching on the front page of the folder I handed him.
Dom opened his, paging through the information inside with keen intere
st. He was generally the most serious of them all, but this was the first time I’d seen him as focused. Caleb flicked through his, too, which was a little more surprising since he usually just asked what he wanted to know.
Even Matt seemed more focused tonight, though, turning my laptop toward him to scroll through the videos I had lined up. He grimaced, telling me he remembered some of what they were about to watch and flipped open his folder.
“Anyone seen Nick?” I asked, eager to get going while I had their attention on the work to be done. For the most part, anyway. Jared was still sketching, but he was also skimming through his tip page.
“Not since we got here,” Dom offered, looking around at others. They shrugged and nodded in agreement.
“Only one no-show,” I noted. “I’m impressed, but I’m going to have to go get him before we get started.”
“Gerry not joining us?” Caleb asked absently, still reading whichever of the documents he had open in front of him.
“Not tonight. He’s going over some last-minute details on his end,” I told him, digging my phone out of my purse in case it rang while I went up to Nick’s room. The thing had been going off every few minutes since we’d arrived in New York.
Word was leaking that the band was here, and everyone wanted a piece of them. It started buzzing in my hand as I was thinking about how busy it’d been, but I silenced it. I had a band member missing in action and this wasn’t a meeting I was letting any of them off the hook for.
“I’ll be right back. Please keep reading through the information I gave you, and whatever you do, don’t leave. The hotel will be sending in drinks and snacks in a minute.”
Jared pushed his chair out and stood before I could get to the door. “I’m coming with you. Might help.”
He didn’t say anything more but closed the conference room door behind him and gestured for me to lead the way down the hall and to the elevators. He walked close to my side, smelling like man and soap with just a hint of beer.
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