Rock & Release

by Riley Edgewood

  And I will.

  Any second now.

  "No prob." After nudging me with her knee until I look at her, and with one more silent warning—there will be no discussion of what you saw, or else—she heads back to the bar.

  But even if I can't talk about her kiss, it doesn't mean I'm not thinking of it. Remembering what it looked like when she was held against the wall, the way her curly-haired boy toy's body pressed against hers… Again, I find myself noticing Gage's appealing fingers, now wrapped around his beer. He was so talented using them on his guitar. I wonder what other talents they have… I wonder again what they'd feel like teasing sounds out of me. And soon the tequila isn't the only thing heating my belly.

  "So why are you in here instead of out there?" he asks, gesturing toward the exit and the amphitheater.

  "You know the girl I was with earlier, the one with red hair? I mean, I'm not saying you noticed us or anything. There were a lot of people here." Get it together, Cassidy. I shake my head, to clear the jumble of words trying to force themselves through my mouth. "Anyway, my friend, Teagan, got mad at me and left me here without my ticket."

  "That sucks."

  "Not like I was dying to see Kylie VanHaven anyway."

  "No, missing Kylie's not a big deal—I meant it sucks that your friend's upset with you."

  I sip my drink. "She'll get over it."

  "Jared can get you into the concert," Vera says. "He just has to walk you over."

  "Oh really?" I stare pointedly at him. "Funny how this didn't come up earlier."

  "I didn't even think about it." He doesn't bat an eye. What a liar. I almost call him out on it, but change my mind at the last second. Out of respect for Vera's feelings.

  And maybe a little because I'd rather be here than there anyway.

  "I'll walk you over." Jared downs the rest of his rum and coke and starts to stand.

  I wave him back down. "I'm fine. Don't feel like dealing with Teagan anyway."

  "Oh is that all?" He baits me with a cagey smile.

  "Maybe." My eyes slide to Gage—and he's already looking back. He knows just as well as Jared does why I'm still here.

  And he's still here, too. Anticipation is a feather whispering along my lower belly.

  "I did, by the way," he says to me later, after Nicole's come by with another beer. "Notice you."

  Pleasure makes my cheeks warm, but then I remember: "Oh, right. When the waitress dropped her tray."

  "Yes—but the first time I noticed you, you were watching the kiss," he confides, lowering his voice, though Vera and Jared are lost in their own conversation. "I saw the way you blushed. The way you're doing now. I saw the way you bit your lower lip."

  "Uh…" My face grows hotter, half embarrassment, half something I can't quite name that's also sending little shocks down my arms and along my ribs.

  "It distracted me," he admits, leaning in a little closer. "Your reaction. It made me miss a chord."

  I clear the knot of air that seems to have tangled itself in my throat. "I didn't hear it."

  "Probably because you had something else on your mind—like now, are you thinking of them still?" He taps a finger against his mouth. "You're doing it again."

  Biting my lip, he means.

  "Oh." There must be a better response to this, but my mind's starting to jumble. And there's this heat sliding through me that has nothing to do with the setting sun.

  I push against the table to stand, needing to stretch my legs or walk around or, I don't know, do something to expel this sudden shot of energy, but when my feet hit the ground the world goes completely to a tilt. The first thing I latch on to is Gage. He steadies me, holding my arms, and I breathe out, "I didn't even do that on purpose."

  "I didn't think you did." The pressure of his touch is soft, but the skin of his hands around my arms is raspy, just like his voice, and under my skin, I melt into honey.

  "I thought I'd just stretch my legs…" I trail off.

  "Why don't I show you around?" He doesn't let go of me. Instead, his fingers move along my arms, strum strum strumming against me.

  I nod.

  Vera's wearing a secret little smile, whether for me and Gage or the fact we're leaving her alone with Jared, I don't know, and I don't care because all I can think about is how much I love the perfect pressure of Gage's fingers around my skin.

  "Let's go," he says. But it's another long moment before he releases one of my arms—like he's enjoying the connection as much as I am.

  "Bring another round on your way back," Jared calls as we walk away.

  The place is virtually empty of anyone other than staff, plus a few VIPers taking advantage of the air-conditioned bathrooms, and I'm pretty sure Kylie VanHaven's set is almost up. But I really, really don't care about the possibility of missing Demi Jade anymore. In fact, I don't want Teagan to come back at all.

  Gage introduces me to a few people whose names I forget as soon as I'm told. He shows me around—the bar (I order a water, and chug it; he has another beer and a shot), the little garden lining the patio in the middle of the space, the stage he'd been performing on earlier. Vera and Jared watch us, but I don't pay them any attention, spinning, instead, on the swivel stool Gage sat on for some of his set. I'm dizzy in a heartbeat though, and he helps me down, his hands resting an extra few seconds at my hips. The placement of his fingers sends sparks flying down my legs and through my stomach.

  I slide a little closer to him, and he gestures toward one of the food counters, asking if I want anything, one of his hands still lightly holding one of my hips.

  "I want… not food." I shake my head.

  "Another drink?"

  "A drink isn't what I want either." I mean to sound sexy, provocative, but my words barely come out intelligibly. I'm usually a much better flirt than this.

  I'm usually not multiple martinis deep.

  But he gets what I'm going for because his eyes darken and he pulls me around the corner where I first saw Nicole. "Here's a spot I think you know quite intimately."

  Not as intimately as I'd like to, I almost say. I nod instead.

  I wonder if he's going to kiss me.

  I hope he's going to kiss me.

  I try to convey the message with my eyes, but he's a little blurred around the edges and I'm not sure I'm even focusing exactly where I should be, much less able to send any sort of meaning through a glance.

  He keeps talking, talking, talking. Something about bands. Something about where he's from. Something, something, something, but I keep forgetting his words the moment they breeze through his mouth.

  He's asking me questions. I'm giving him answers, though I can't be certain of their accuracy. We're laughing a lot, so I must be keeping him entertained. Or maybe it's the other way around.

  It's quiet for a beat too long—he's waiting for me to say something else, to answer a question, but I've lost track of all our words again.

  And he's meeting my eyes and then gazing lower toward my mouth. I realize I'm biting my lip, but it's got his attention so I keep it between my teeth, tugging a little.

  "There you go distracting me again." His mouth parts into a wolfish grin. "But this time you're doing it on purpose, aren't you?"

  Maybe, I almost tell him, but Demi Jade's first chords strike through the air, interrupting the word before it has a chance to come out.

  "So much for the concert," I say instead.

  "So much for it," he agrees.

  We stare at each other for a moment that yawns out into eons. One second we're listening to Demi Jade sing about her lost lover and the next the world goes silent around me. There's an electric pause—like right after a violent thunderclap, when everything else is sucked away—and then my mouth is on his, or his is on mine, and he's teasing my lips with his tongue. I let him in, and he tastes like beer and like salt and like mint.

  Jesus, he's talented with his tongue.

  His hands wrap around my waist and he yanks me toward h
im and my hands are in his hair and I want to eat his fucking mouth, he tastes so good.

  I wonder if I taste like watermelon and I must accidentally ask out loud because somehow we're both laughing, coming up for air, but all I want is to lose my breath with him again. I lean in, and he hesitates. "You've had a lot to drink."

  "I also had a water," I counter, sliding my hands down his chest and then back up, wrapping them around his neck.

  "I'm pretty sure one water doesn't cancel out everything else you —" But he's interrupted.

  "You really fucking suck." Teagan's voice snakes out from behind me.

  The moment breaks, crashing down around me, and I turn to find her glaring, her arms crossed across her chest.

  "You came back?" I ask, stupidly.

  Then she's yelling at me, and I'm laughing again, but I don't know why. Maybe because she's got some freaking nerve to be the one yelling. She comes toward me, grabbing my arm and trying to drag me away. I yank myself from her grasp, and Gage holds my hand and tells her, way more politely than I would have, to calm down. She sneers at him and tells me I'm being dumb, and Vera appears, asking if everything's okay, and I decide on the spot, "I'm staying with Vera tonight, Teagan. You should just go."

  A moment passes before Vera lifts a shoulder, as if to say sure, why not? Teagan gives her a dirty look and there's more yelling, mostly at me, and Jared arrives, telling her to leave—so she does, furious. There's some conversation about it all with Vera and Jared… And another drink. Or two. And Gage is giving me water and I'm spilling half of it on the ground and then time's flashing forward somehow and it's back to just me and Gage, and I'm wrapping my hands around his neck, dragging his face back toward mine. He protests again, but I lick the words from his mouth, and he lets me.

  And he lets me.

  And he lets me.

  Later there's more laughter and more people whose names I immediately forget and I never make it out of the patio to see Demi Jade on stage.

  There's a cab ride.

  A door unlocked.

  A wall at my back and Gage's hands under my shirt, strumming my skin again until I can't keep quiet.

  Another door opens and then closes behind us. I whisper what I want to do.

  And he lets me.

  And he lets me.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  We fall together into a bed that isn't mine, tumbling into cushiony sheets and twisting, turning, curving our way toward the pillows. I crawl on top of him and kiss his mouth, his face, his neck. I burrow my nose in his skin, inhaling the clean, soapy scent that clings to him, and I run my hands through his hair and over his shoulders and arms. His skin is warm, so warm.

  How did we get here?

  I can't remember and I don't even care because all that matters is right now.

  Nothing from the past. Nothing pending in the future. There is no weight across my shoulders, no anxious tug in my gut—it's all been replaced with a hunger that's growing, roaring, rushing, with each stroke of Gage's hands against my skin.

  There's only right now.

  And right now, my skirt is around my ankles, my shirt on the floor. His shirt lost buttons in our haste, and his pants are long gone. He's in boxer briefs and even those are too much. I tug at his waistband, but he grabs my wrist, holding it above my head, feathering kisses along my jaw, pausing to whisper in that whiskey-stained voice, "There's no rush, Cassidy. We have all night. Let me discover you."

  You're wrong, I want to tell him. There is a rush. I have this…this thing…building in my blood, pounding underneath my skin, begging to ignite. I can't find the words, but I'm writhing against him, below him, showing him what I don't say.

  He coaxes me onto my side, his hands traveling my body, up and down and up and down, kneading and pulling and twisting and stroking, and then he's leaning over me, pushing my shoulder until my chest is pressed against the sheets and I'm biting the palm of my hand against the onslaught of sensations that ripple down my skin with every move he makes.

  The wetness of his tongue trailing across my lower back. The nip of his teeth along my spine, growing sharper and sharper all the way up to the space between my shoulder and my neck, where he lingers.

  Lingers.

  Lingers.

  The weight of him sliding up over me, the heat from his broad chest melting into the skin of my shoulder blades. His arms covering mine, his breath in my ear, my moan against the sheets. The arch of my back as I press my body harder into his, needing to sate the growing ache between my legs, I press, press, press until there's no space left between us.

  The raspiness of the growl that grows from deep in his throat, and the way he hardens against me, sledgehammer solid. I lift onto my knees and slide my thighs apart, inviting him to—

  The one fluid motion in which he flips me onto my back without his lips ever leaving my skin.

  And then my tongue is in his mouth and my nails are digging dragging clawing across his back until he forces my arms above my head, holding them captive with one hand while his other trails across my breasts and teases down my belly and slowly,

  too slowly,

  so slowly I almost beg,

  caresses his way between my legs.

  His thumbnail skims along the crease of my thigh and his fingers are strumming me like a guitar and my breath is hitched in my throat.

  "I want… I want…" The words jumble together, indecipherable. The liquid velvet need roaring through me is making it impossible to derive a single ounce of precision in my words or in my thoughts.

  He pauses to look at me—to really look at me, his eyes sweeping up and down my face—and slides his hand away. My mumbled words have broken our spell somehow, and he sits up, the bed dipping in his shift of weight. There's too much space between us now, and I immediately ache for him. For his hand. His fingers.

  He's speaking, but the words fall to me in splashes and puddles. Something about me having had too much to drink and not wanting to take advantage and a soft sigh and that maybe he's had too much to drink, too, for it to have taken so long to realize these things… I mean to pout and tell him he's wrong and to take his hand and show him exactly what it was I wanted. But when I reach for his hand, I miss by a mile, and the look on his face tells me I've only confirmed what he's saying.

  All that buildup, that rush of pleasure, deflates in the most unpleasant of ways. The sharpness zinging across my nerve endings slowly loses the edge of its pressure, and I'm left empty, frustrated.

  I push myself up to scowl at him, but the room starts to spin. He grabs a shoulder to steady me—and somewhere, in the back of my mind, the teensiest tiniest part of me wonders if maybe he's doing the right thing. Even if the wetness between my thighs says otherwise.

  He makes as if to leave, but I grab his wrist and manage to get out, "Stay," right before my head hits the pillows and the weight of sleep claims me.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A pair of drumsticks with leaden tips beats the inside of my skull like a snare drum. My head feels so paper-thin, it's a wonder they don't puncture right through to the outside.

  My mouth is a desert and sand lines my throat. Somewhere underneath all the sand is a dead animal. I can taste the carcass when I try to swallow. I can smell it when I exhale. It makes me gag.

  My eyes have been covered in cement while I slept. They're impossible to open. I rub them, gingerly, and try again, halfway finding success.

  The world is blurry, and as I wait for it to come into focus, something in my stomach twists unpleasantly. The combination of dread and soured alcohol. Thoughts slowly unwind from my subconscious. The concert. Okay. I was at the concert. What else… Oh. Teagan ditched me and… Gage.

  I made out with Gage.

  Oh God.

  Panic drops into the mix in my belly. I glance to either side, finding myself in a bed that's definitely not mine, but at least I'm alone.

  Yep. Alone, and in nothing but my underwear.

  I spent the night next
to Gage wearing nothing but my underwear.

  I kind of remember it that way, at least.

  So much of the night is too jumbled to remember clearly, but one thing's certain: I did a lot more than make out with Gage.

  I…can't even think about all that right now.

  Except how can I not, considering I'm still in the bed we fell into last night. Is it his? This king-sized bed with white sheets looping around my arms and legs and stomach.

  If I squint, I can see the rest of the room a little better. Dark wooden furniture rests along pale gray walls. Two dressers and a desk, offset by stark white accents, candles and vases and small framed pieces of art. A freestanding mirror by the closet—draped with a handful of necklaces. Maybe they're Gage's ex-girlfriend's. Maybe she left them here.

  But they're all glitzy and shimmery, even in my un-fully-focused view. Too nice to just leave behind. Maybe they aren't really broken up, and last night made me a home-wrecker.

  Okay, Cassidy. Let's stick to one freak-out at a time.

  My gut tells me Gage isn't someone who would cheat. He has morals. He stopped us last night when I was ready to keep going.

  He stopped us last night.

  More specifically, he stopped me.

  I was so drunk. I was so reckless, so sloppy.

  I cringe and curl into a ball on my side and wait for the fully charged volts of embarrassment to pass.

  When I can breathe again, I look for my skirt. I need to get out of here. I lean over one side of the bed, there's my shirt, but no skirt. It's not on the other side, either. I twist through the covers, my fingers searching for the cotton fabric with no luck.

  Shit.

  I can't just walk out of here in yesterday's underwear. I slowly, gingerly, sit up and roll forward onto my hands and knees, to search under the covers, sliding all the way to the foot of the bed. Relief floods me when my fingers close around my skirt, balled between the mattress and the footboard.

  It's nice beneath the sheets. Dark, and comfortable. Maybe I'll just hide here for the rest of my life. Except I really, really need to find a toothbrush. My breath is ricocheting around my face, trapped with me under the covers and…just…gross. I wiggle backwards out of the covers, holding my breath until my ass hits the headboard, and I shove the sheets off my head, exhaling so hard I fear I may throw up. I close my eyes and rest my forehead on the sheets between my hands, breathing deeply again.