by Alyson Hale
“Eddie, I’m your fan.” I twirl a lock of hair around my fingers until it’s tangled and tight. “You were always my favorite.”
Eddie turns slowly. He studies me for a moment. Then he charges me and lifts me up into his arms. Carrying me as if I weigh nothing, he sets me down on the bed and devours my lips like a starving man.
“Did you fantasize about me, little angel?” Eddie demands, moving his hands underneath my dress. He rubs up and down my hungry slit over the thin fabric of my black leggings, making me moan.
“Yes,” I confess. “All the time.”
“Did you dream about me fucking you right here in this bed?”
I hiss with need. “Yes.”
“Did you cream all over your sheets fucking yourself to me?”
My neck and cheeks heat to a thousand degrees. I nod and look into his eyes, knowing my next words are going to send him unhinged. “You were the first man I ever did that for, Eddie.”
Before I know it, my leggings have been torn in two right at the seam. I squeal in surprise. Eddie lunges for my center, swirling his tongue around my clit and pressing his fingers up into my channel. I’m so wet for him, his fingers make squishing sounds as they pump in and out of me. I arch my back and grip my pillow for dear life, my abdomen clenching with sweet anticipation. My breath comes in sharp gasps. I haven’t done anything sexual since the morning I sucked him off, and now my body is crying out for release.
Eddie slips his free hand up under my light cotton dress to play with my breasts. He pinches and rolls my nipples until my hips are leaving the bed, the intensity of his lips and fingers on me too much to take. He moves his hand back down to press my hips down into the mattress, not wanting me to move away from him. I imagined him in this very position so many times, and now he’s really here. It’s pure ecstasy, and my body can’t take it.
“Come for me, Elyza,” Eddie commands me. “Say my name as you cream into my mouth.” He switches his tongue and fingers and rubs gentle circles around my clit as he licks up and down the walls of my channel. My hips shake violently as my orgasm overtakes me. I obey him, moaning out his name as he sucks up every last drop of my juices. He licks me hungrily, as if he can’t get enough.
We help each other out of our clothes and stare into each other’s eyes as he drives his length up into me. My oversensitive walls pulse around his hard shaft. Eddie tunnels into me, over and over, leaning down to kiss me and let my own taste enter my mouth. I don’t even care where his mouth has just been. He tastes like me, and I love it. I don’t ever want him tasting like anything or anyone else.
I run my fingers over the stones on his stomach and feel a fresh gush of my lubricant coat his cock. I touch every ridge of his muscles, every line of his body art, every stiff hair on his chin and try to memorize him in all his glory. The man is hotter than life, and he wants to be mine. The thought of saying goodbye to him has me falling to pieces.
Eddie’s pace quickens as his girth swells inside me. Then he stills, shooting his pleasure in long streams up into my core. He keeps his thumb moving over my clit until I join him in paradise once again, screaming his name into the room.
Tears pour down my cheeks from the intensity of my pleasure. After our muscles stop pulsing and we catch our breath, I pull him down by the neck and suck him into a kiss, committing the curves of his lips to memory. Eddie cradles me in his arms, still thrust deep inside me, and cherishes me with his kiss.
“I’m going to call you every day while we’re on tour,” Eddie tells me between kisses. “When your term is over, I want you to join me and see the rest of the country and then the world. We can go wherever you want to go once the tour is over.”
I detach from him, searching his face. The light is turned on in his beautiful eyes. I’ve been waiting to see it, and now here it is, shining brilliantly for me. For the first time, I believe Eddie really wants me. Joy burgeons in my chest, but it’s tempered by fear.
“That sounds amazing, but...are you sure that’s what you want? I’ll be in college for at least another year and a half. You’ll have to deal with months of women throwing themselves at you when your girlfriend is nowhere to be seen.”
Eddie’s affection for me pours from his eyes into mine. I drink it in, unable to get enough. “As long as you’re my girlfriend, I won’t have a problem with that in the slightest.”
I trail my finger up his broad shoulder toward his neck. My eyes settle on a tattoo just under his collarbone of a snippet of lyrics he wrote:
Never gonna fall in love again
Unless she’s an angel
My mouth drops open. Those lyrics are some of my favorites out of the ones he’s written, but I didn’t make the connection until now. He’s been calling me an angel since we met. Does that mean…?
My heart pounds out of control. I decide to get real and see if the truth is going to scare him off. If he stays with me after hearing this, I’ll know is feelings for me are genuine.
“Eddie, I’ve been cheated on by every single guy I’ve ever gone out with.” A lump materializes in my throat. I try to swallow it down, but it won’t budge.
Eddie’s face registers shock. “Every one?” he asks, his eyes brimming with sympathy.
I nod, another tear skimming my cheek as it makes a quick descent. Eddie swipes it away with his thumb. “I want to believe you,” I say. “And I want to be yours more than anything. I just...I don’t know.”
Eddie goes quiet for a while, his expression hard to read. I knew hearing that would make him reconsider. After all, there must be something horribly wrong with me if every guy I’ve ever dated thinks he has to move on to someone else. One, two, maybe even three guys I could understand, but the twelve I’ve dated since high school indicates a pattern, and that pattern is me.
“Elyza, I know what it’s like to have your heart destroyed by a person who was supposed to love you more than anything in the world,” Eddie says, brushing my hair back behind my ear. The sweet gesture sends tingles from my neck all the way down to my fingertips. “My ex cheated on me. It fucked me up so badly, I thought I would never recover.”
I nod, remembering the headlines well. Eddie was all over the news after his first tour because his celebrity girlfriend cheated on him. She was the daughter of a British pop singer, so the tabloids had a field day with his heartbreak. I can’t imagine how hard that must have been.
“It destroyed my faith in women for a long time,” Eddie admits. “But I look at you and some foolish part of me wants to believe not everyone in the world is like that. I can see you’re not the kind of woman who would swear she was faithful to me and then go off and fuck some other man. In a twisted way, I admire the hell out of you for telling me up front you didn’t want anything to do with me before going to spend the night with...him.” Eddie spits out the pronoun as if it’s poison on his tongue.
I smile. I’ve enjoyed seeing him get jealous over me, maybe a little too much, but it’s time to spill the beans. “Eddie, Lance is my gay best friend. I spent last night eating madeleines and watching Supernatural with a gay man. Believe me, he was far more interested in Jensen Ackles’ ass than mine.”
A mixture between a scoff and a laugh escapes his throat. “You little devil, you let me believe—”
I cut him off with a kiss. Eddie pulls me tightly against him.
“From here on out, these lips…” Eddie traces the curve of my lips, then moves down my neck toward my chest. “These gorgeous tits…” He squeezes my nipple and runs his fingertips around the circumference of my breast. His fingers trail down my belly, over my navel piercing and down to my center, which is already wet for him again. “And this beautiful pussy are mine. I don’t share what belongs to me. If you’re going to be my woman, I’m the only man who gets to put his hands on you. Understood?”
“Yes, Eddie.” I let him kiss me again, finally surrendering to his pull on me. “I’m yours.”
Chapter 16
Elyza
I rub my temples as I wait for my ancient laptop to power up. Ever since I first came to college, I’ve been using Kyri’s old, clunky laptop from high school because we couldn’t afford to buy me a new one. All-in-all, it isn’t such a bad piece of machinery, but I am running out of disk space and it takes a damn year to turn on all the way. The wait is especially irritating this time because I’m finally about to receive my final grades from last term.
I glance down at my phone and feel an ache in my heart. I had to say goodbye to Eddie this morning. He has to stay in Atlanta because they’re using it as their home base here in the States. They’re recording a brand new album to promote as a pre-order on the tour, so he has to be available for practice and recording sessions all the time now.
I want to call him already. I want to hear his voice and see his face and let him tell me everything is going to be okay. But he’s in the recording studio right now, and his phone is in a soundproof booth. He couldn’t hear my phone call even if I did try to reach him.
Finally, I see my desktop background and click on my Internet browser icon. I log in to my school website, my palms growing slick with sweat as I click on the link to my transcript.
Please, please, please let me have passed Anatomy…
My stomach churns when I see my grade.
C-
I toss my laptop toward the end of my bed and wrap my arms around my knees. My eyes sting with unshed tears.
A fucking C minus.
I passed, but it was only by the skin of my teeth. After all those hours of studying, the multiple all-nighters I pulled cramming for quizzes and tests, I barely passed the class. It’s not a failure, but it feels like one. It also feels like a sign. If a basic anatomy class is this hard for me, maybe this is not what I’m supposed to be doing after all. Maybe college itself isn’t even right for me. I retain information okay, but I test horribly. I get nervous and as soon as the test starts, everything I learned flies out the back of my head.
Staring unseeingly into a corner, I ponder my life decisions, which is something I should have started doing a long time ago. When Mom and Kyri lovingly coerced me into going to college two-and-a-half years ago, I settled on being a nurse because I wanted to be sure I would always have a steady income. I wanted to know that if I got screwed over by a guy, I would always be able to support myself financially. I’d seen the way Mom and Kyri struggled for years to keep our family afloat, and I didn’t want that for myself.
If Eddie decides he doesn’t want me anymore, I have to have a backup plan. I can’t be without one. If I quit college and then Eddie dumps me, I’ll be alone, rejected and penniless, living with Mom and working in some retail store just to make ends meet.
I shove my phone into the pocket of my hoodie and stand from the bed. “I’m going on a walk,” I tell Maria. She looks up from her own laptop for only a moment, not bothering to remove her Bluetooth headset, and gives me a thumbs-up. Maria is one of those type A personalities who gets most of her homework done at the beginning of the term. I watch her in awe every semester as she aces each and every one of her classes. The girl is an absolute force of nature. She’s going to be an amazing lawyer, no doubt about it.
Meanwhile, I can’t even handle a nursing major, which is what half the girls in my senior class said they were going to study in college. I bet none of them have failed Anatomy. Everyone else is moving on with their life. The only feather in my cap is Eddie, and I can’t even call him to talk to him about things. I’m basically his girlfriend in name only until the tour starts, and even then he probably won’t have any time to talk to me. Lance and Maria don’t even know about us going out yet because I’m afraid Eddie’s going to call it off, and I don’t want the embarrassment if he does.
As I walk down the wet sidewalk, flanked on each side by dirty snow, something pulls me toward the two-story brick music building. Maybe playing the piano again will help me feel connected to Eddie, or to the part of me that has some future outside of living in Eagleston my whole life. Ever since Christmas night, I’ve been aching to feel that smooth ivory against my fingertips again. I’ve tried to be strong and resist the part of me that wants to sit at a piano all day long, but now I find myself needing that music, more than I’ve ever needed it before.
I walk into the practice wing and find an empty room with a baby grand piano. As I run my fingers over the smooth polished wood, something stirs in me that I haven’t listened to in a long time. When I was just a kid, I used to dream about performing for a living. I never wanted to tell anyone about my music dreams because I knew what they would say.
“You’re not good enough.”
“There’s too much competition out there.”
“You’ll end up a starving artist, working at Starbucks to make ends meet.”
I was mostly afraid of what Mom and Kyri would say. But as I ease down onto the bench, pushing up the lid and running my fingers over the glossy keys, I feel my heart tugging me toward my music dreams again. Is this who I was meant to be all along? Have I just been running scared, like everyone else in my family seems to do?
I stretch my fingers out and start playing one of my original compositions. I stumble a little at first, being so long out of practice, but eventually my memory kicks in and I start playing as if I never stopped. The music pushes and pulls me. I move my body in response. I’m not even aware that I’m smiling until the final chord, when a warm thrill passes over me.
Closing my eyes, I inhale a deep breath through my nostrils and breathe out through my mouth. I don’t know what the next step is, but I know what I have to do. It’s a scary thought, stepping into a field where nothing is a guarantee, but I don’t want to be a nurse or a doctor. I want something more than the ordinary. I may not succeed, but I have to try.
The magical feeling of finishing one of my own piano pieces is interrupted when my phone goes off in my pocket. My body tingles with excitement when Eddie’s name populates on the screen. I answer the call and find him sitting in a luxurious-looking restaurant at a table, alone.
His smile melts me into a helpless puddle of goo. “Hello, beautiful.”
“Hey, sexy,” I reply in what I hope is a low, sultry tone of voice. “I miss you so much already.”
He groans and drags his hand down his face, leaning his head on his hand as his elbow rests on the table. “I miss you too. You have no idea. This day has been a drag so far, and all I can think about is your face. I had to at least see you during lunch so I wouldn’t lose my fucking mind.”
“Aw.” I’m torn between feeling bad for him and wanting to giggle like a schoolgirl talking to her first crush. “Well, my day has been interesting so far.”
Eddie looks behind me and sees an artist’s rendering of the sheet music to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony on the wall. “Are you in a practice room?”
“Yeah. I came in here to play piano for a while to clear my head.”
“What are you playing?”
My cheeks redden slightly. “One of my original compositions.”
Eddie’s mouth drops wide open. “You compose your own music? Why didn’t you tell me?”
I smirk at him. “Well, we haven’t exactly been doing a lot of talking yet, Turner.”
“Touché,” Eddie says with a grin. “May I hear your music?”
“Ugh, no. Don’t do this to me.” I shake my head and stray wisps of hair flutter all around my face.
Eddie’s gives me puppy eyes. “Please?”
He has to beg me for a solid minute before I finally relent. I set my phone on the music shelf on the piano so he can see me. Inhaling a deep breath, I ease into one of my more melancholy pieces, feeling a little self-conscious in front of him. As the emotions behind the song come back to me, I gain confidence and lose myself in the music, feeling it instead of just playing it.
I stop at the end of the song and wait for his reaction. The pause feels neverending. His face remains expressionless. I knew it. He hated it. I never should hav
e let him talk me into this—
“You really are my soulmate,” Eddie breathes.
Joy erupts in my chest. “You liked it?” Then a second thing registers. “You think of me as your soulmate?”
“Yes to both,” Eddie says with a gentle smile. “You don’t even need further training, in my opinion. Your song was brilliant. You’re not going to believe this, but that piece you just played goes perfectly with a song I’ve been writing for the new album.”
“You’re kidding.” I giggle, incredulous. I knew the songs Eddie wrote for the Filthy Bangers had probably influenced my music somewhat, but I never dreamed they would be this compatible.
We sit and smile at each other like idiots for a long time. It’s my second sign of the day, and I’m not about to ignore the universe this time.
Chapter 17
Eddie
The thunderous roar of the crowd rattles the stage beneath my feet. Smoke swirls around us, creating a bright fog as it meets the glare of the stage lights. I squeeze the neck of my guitar in response to the angst swirling inside me. If my fingers weren’t so calloused, the strings would be slicing through my skin. After months of preparation, we’re starting our first ever American tour here in Atlanta. The sound rocking the stadium, not coming from us, makes it seem like we should have done this a long time ago. I knew we had fans here, but I didn’t know they would threaten to drown us out with these rabid screams.
I should be thrilled, but Elyza’s face is clouding my mind. She wasn’t able to get away from school to be here tonight. There was a required performance by a classical artist she had to attend. Ironic that we’re both at concerts, and yet there are three hundred miles between us.
