Brina, however, had other plans.
She pulled his curtain to the side and said, “Morning.”
He blinked a few times, trying to focus. “Good thing you didn’t say good morning, because that’s debatable.”
She smirked. “I plan to change your mind about that.”
Holy shit. The rest of his body might have still been feeling groggy, but his cock popped up at that suggestion. “I might need a lot of convincing.”
Her eyes were still twinkling as she climbed into his bunk and closed the curtain behind her. It was a tight squeeze and there was more room width-wise than height-wise, so they’d have to be creative.
He didn’t think, with Sabrina, that that would be a problem.
Her hair was in his face until she turned around, filling his nose with the smell of her. Then her nose was touching his. “Oh, it’s kinda close in here, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“I guess I didn’t realize it last night.” She started kissing his neck, just under his chin. “I’m guessing we have about half an hour or so, and I don’t necessarily mind being watched, but I don’t want to scar any kids.” She started nibbling on his ear. “So I kinda think we need to keep it behind the closed curtain, don’t you?”
Nick’s thoughts weren’t grounded anymore. She could have told him they were going outside to fuck in front of God and everybody, and he would have been game. His cock was already standing at full attention, poking into her. “Whatever you say, babe.”
Oh, fuck. He said it again. She was probably going to rip his dick off. Instead, she said, “You’re lucky I’m horny as hell, Channing, or I’d tear into you for that.” She was already sliding her hand under the waistband of his sweatpants and wrapped her hand around his cock. “Just fuckin’ watch it, mister. I’m getting tired of telling you to not call me that.”
Now he couldn’t help it. “Yes, ma’am.” He knew lots of women hated being called ma’am, and he guessed Brina would be no different.
She surprised him, though. “That’s more like it. Respectful and deferent…just the way a man should be.”
If he hadn’t been out of his mind already, he might have been willing to debate all that with her, but right now, he just wanted to fuck the shit out of her. “So how we gonna do this?”
She grinned and rolled over, pushing her ass into his hard on. She started waving her hand at head level, and Nick saw the condom package in her hand. “Put that on and then give it to me.”
Shit. He didn’t have to be told twice. Monica had been right about one thing—Brina was a bossy bitch in bed. He liked it, though. He could see how it might grow old later on down the road, but in the meantime, not only did he not mind it, he also found it to be a bit of a turn on. Brina knew what she liked and what she wanted, and she wasn’t afraid to ask—or demand—it.
Within seconds, he had the condom over his shaft. He didn’t realize until he started touching her that she wasn’t wearing any bottoms or panties. She was completely naked underneath the t-shirt. That just made him that much eager, and he slid his hand between her thighs first. She responded by parting them and saying, “Get in there, Nick. I want to feel you now.”
He wasn’t going to wait for a written invitation, and he slid inside. Goddamn, did she feel good, and what made it better was he realized he was starting to feel more for this woman. Knowing that she wasn’t merely a cold, heartless, selfish woman helped. Knowing that she sometimes hurt and needed someone to lean on once in a while also made it an easy transition. He laid his hand on her stomach and then drifted up to her breast. As he touched her nipple, she arched her back away from his chest, and it changed the angle of her pussy, making him go from zero to sixty.
Oh, fuck.
So he glided his hand down, and he didn’t want to waste any time. He couldn’t afford to. If he didn’t get her there fast, he was going to explode beforehand. He started kissing her neck, resisting the urge to bite her, and then moved two fingers down her slit. Once he found the hard nub, he began massaging it and she responded immediately, making small cooing noises and grinding herself into him.
Yeah, it felt good, but sex always did…except there was something more. Something deeper. Something more meaningful. Something that would last beyond the ecstatic bounds of orgasm.
As Brina began crying aloud, almost singing her pleasure to him, the back of his mind told him what he was feeling couldn’t be real. It had to be because of the disoriented feeling of being on the road away from home. He hadn’t known her long enough to feel anything more than lust or gratification.
But as his body gave in to one of the most intense climaxes he’d ever experienced, he sensed that something was different. Heaven help him—he was falling and there was no bottom to the hole he was falling in…and he didn’t know that he’d care if the floor of that pit would be the death of him.
Chapter Fourteen
FIRST SHOW ON tour. Nick wasn’t nervous. He’d done this hundreds of times before. Val was feeling a little edgy because she hadn’t performed live in front of a big crowd in a long time (and no way was Nick going to tell her she’d never performed for crowds as large as they were expecting tonight).
Brina said she wasn’t nervous, but Nick heard her throw up in her dressing room once. When she came out, she was cool and collected like always, but Nick squeezed her shoulders twice. “You seem tense.”
“Yeah, okay, so I’m a little stressed. I’ve never played in this big a venue. Is it a full house?”
Nick nodded, grinning. “Just a few heads shy. Pretty damn close.” He knew a big part of that was because of Fully Automatic, but part of it might have also been because of the local band who opened for them. But people were already listening to Val Hella on the radio and the CD was selling well.
Brina shook out her arms and rolled her neck. Nick could barely hear her voice when she said, “I can do this.”
He faced her and lifted her chin with his index finger so she looked him in the eye. “Hell, yes, you can. You’re one of the best bassists I know.”
She scowled. “Stop flattering me, Nick.”
“I’m not flattering you. It’s true. Some of the funky shit you do…you know, dancing to the beat of a different drummer? That’s you. And they might have mixed the fuck out of the CD and homogenized it like they always do, but that’s still you on there. A good bass blends into the background, becomes part of the whole, helps make a song perfect. A great bass—it does all that shit, but it does more. When you’re laying in the dark and all you can hear is the music, when each part seems to jump out and speak to you? Your bass is the kind that is easily identifiable—it blends with the guitars, sure, but it’s also its own thing. You do that, Brina. You. Not every bassist can or will do that. You’re precise, too, and you don’t always go with the easy riff. There were so many times after you joined us when we were writing songs that one of us would suggest something and you’d jump all over that shit. You didn’t say, ‘That’s too hard’ or play something else that would have been a million times easier and still worked. Instead, you worked your ass off and made it yours—made it better, no matter how hard it was to play. You are a hell of a bassist, Brina, and you’re just feeling nervous.”
She nodded, but Nick could tell she wasn’t quite convinced. “These people out here? Most of them have heard one or both of our singles on the radio already. They’re excited to sing along with those songs and to hear new ones. Some of them have already bought the album and the rest of them are going to after tonight. Hell, I can’t wait to see how much merch flies from our booth tonight.”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.” Yeah, it was pretty much an afterthought for Nick these days. It wasn’t like his days as part of an indie band where each one of them had to man the booth on occasion. No, they had staff dedicated to that job now. They had staff on the road for everything, and that was why, even when there were glitches, shows ran smoothly. It boggled the mind how many people were a
ctually along with them, many of whom they would never see but who kept the band and the shows looking and sounding professional and made sure they were where they needed to be when they needed to be there.
He stroked her cheek. This side of her, the one he hadn’t seen until yesterday morning, made her feel more human, more real, more three-dimensional, and Nick felt himself falling for her in a way he never had anyone before. He loved that she was hard and tough and wouldn’t take shit from anyone, but that hard-as-nails exterior was covering up a vulnerable side that he’d never seen. It made him realize that there was so much about her he didn’t know. Time could change that and he was willing to take the slow path, but he was beginning to know this much: he wanted to take that journey with her if she’d let him. “We’re gonna rock their socks off, Sinna. Let’s go kick some ass, okay?”
She nodded but there was no smile, no confirmation that she believed it. He was wondering if there was something else he should say, but she brought her mouth to his and engulfed him in a passionate kiss. His thoughts shut off then as the blood rushed from his brain through his veins, warming him up before flooding his cock. Ordinarily, he’d try to fight it, but this woman ignited something in him he could no longer deny. Up until Brina, he’d had a take-it-or-leave-it attitude with women. He loved women, yes, but none of them stood out in the long run. Sure, there’d been the occasional chick who’d been worth a second round, but none of them had hooked him hard…until now. Something about her made new emotional rivers run inside him, made foreign emotions stir, made his brain work in strange ways. And he wasn’t going to question it any longer. He was hers—she could have his everything…not that he’d had any say in the matter anyway. His heart had already made up its mind.
* * *
Finally. Song number four on the set list and they were hitting a stride. Nick often felt helpless sitting at his drum kit, because there was only so much he could do when they were flailing. He’d been feeling like the kicker for a high school football team who’d made it to playoffs, but the offense was blowing it.
The first song felt off—nothing he could put his finger on, but even he felt a little out of whack, and he was the guy who was supposed to be keeping time. When Brad grabbed a swig of water between that and the second song, his eyes connected with Nick, and Nick nodded. Yeah, Brad felt it too. The second song was slightly worse, and Nick felt like it was because of the first one—they were all feeling some weird energy and their nerves were becoming frayed, and—looking back—Nick saw that it was a pivotal point. One more wrong move and it would quickly become the worst show any of them had played. He took a deep breath and decided that, for song number three, their first single and the one the crowd would likely be singing to, his drums were going to be precision perfect. He was going to help the band as much as he could. That involved two things—one was completely ignoring them so the shit they did wouldn’t mess him up, but the second was paying close attention so he could make any necessary adjustments and possibly cover up any flub ups. Yeah, it was impossible. The hardest part of making music was being able to do two entirely contradictory things at any given time, and what made it worse was that, loving the music and being a part of it, it was hard to be objective about any of it. It was a visceral feeling, something that was deep and primal—Nick could rarely be cold or analytical about it.
What he felt helped was he was able to actually make eye contact with both the women before they started playing the third song. He smiled and nodded to them, hoping they could feel that he had the utmost faith in them and knew that they were going to blow this audience away from here on out.
Did it work? Hell if he knew, but something did, because—even though that song wasn’t perfect—it was what the other two songs should have been: precise, tight, and together. Now it felt like they were playing as a band and not like four people with different missions. And, after the song, he could tell they were all feeling relief based on the looks on their faces. Then Val took a few moments to hype the crowd up, and Nick himself took a long drink of water. He was beginning to appreciate the fan blowing on him. He knew some of the venues would be cooler considering it was mid-January, but some of them, like here in good old Texas, would be plenty warm, and that fan would be all that would keep him from turning into a human waterfall.
From that point on in the set, they were on. Every song after that point was perfect—they were in sync, almost like they were one organism with different parts, and they were playing like they should have been all along. It was moments like those that made Nick continue to love playing live, because then he was able to feel the audience’s energy. They were loving the show too, and their energy was now feeding the band and the band was giving it back tenfold. Yeah, that was the way every show should be. That was what Nick lived for. There was no other feeling like it.
* * *
After the show, behind the stage and on a lower level, they were back in the dressing room area of the auditorium, and a couple of press people were talking with Val and Brad. Nick and Brina could have easily become part of it, but she shook her head, indicating that she wasn’t in the mood for an interview. Nick could tell it had been pretty overwhelming for her, and she was probably instead looking forward to the champagne waiting for them in a room somewhere down there. They had a small celebration planned for the first show to kick off the tour, and there might be more press people there, too, but it would be fun.
A little champagne would be good for them all.
It had turned out to be a great show, but it had also been exhausting. He knew he’d sleep like the dead tonight, and good thing. They were traveling tonight, and he usually found it even harder to sleep on the goddamned bus when it was moving. But sheer fatigue and a little alcohol would make sleep come easily.
Brina wrapped her hand in his and he looked down. She was still wearing the fingerless black leather gloves she’d worn onstage and they were damp. Yeah, turned out they’d all been perspiring onstage. It was no wonder, because they’d worked their asses off. Still, Nick felt euphoric, just like all good shows made him feel. This was an early victory and one they needed. The rest of the tour would be great, because they’d just proven to themselves that they could and did work together as a band—cohesive, able to read each other, able to sense the problems and work through them.
They were one.
When Nick looked up from her glove to her eyes, she had on that cocky smirk she often wore, and he couldn’t quite figure out why. She said, her voice barely louder than a whisper, “Trust me?”
She grinned then. Hell, no, he didn’t trust this woman, no matter how badly his heart was entangling itself around her, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try. So, instead of answering, he grinned back and raised his eyebrows. She was able to read him like a billboard, and she started walking away from the small crowd in the giant hallway. Earlier that evening, when there hadn’t been many people down there, her boots on the tile would have echoed against the walls of the cavernous place, but the sound was drowned by all the buzz and excitement of all the people ready to celebrate Val Hella’s first night on tour.
She turned into what at first appeared to be an alcove and it was, but it led to bathrooms. She pushed on the door to the women’s room, still holding Nick’s hand. He had a feeling he knew what she was up to, but he said, “I can wait out here.”
“Like hell you are.” He willingly let her pull him inside. There were six or seven stalls inside and the lights were low. Brina said, her voice raised, “Are you in here?”
Oh, clever. She didn’t feel like bending over to see if she could see feet, so she was just calling out for anyone. He saw that she also looked in the mirrors over the sink, probably to inspect the bottoms of the stalls in case she could see anything, but just as that was registering in his mind, she pushed her free hand on his chest, slamming him up against the door.
Her tongue in his mouth signaled his cock to grow hard before his brain even knew wha
t was going on. He was ready right this second, and he could easily fuck her right then and there and walk away in four minutes flat, but Brina wasn’t some groupie he wanted to give it to after a show and then just walk away. No, she meant way more to him than that. So, even though her fingers were on the button of his leather pants, he asked, “Bri, we’re both sweaty from the show. You wanna shower first, maybe find a bed?”
She smirked. “You seriously want to wait? I want you to fuck me, right here, right now, Nicky Sticks. You think you can do that, or should I find one of those guys out there to do it? I saw one of the roadies checking out my ass toni—”
That was all the shit he needed to hear. No. No other guy was gonna fuck the woman who was beginning to feel like his. No other monkey was gonna paw his girl. She wanted dirty, nasty sex in a place like this? He could and would deliver.
It wasn’t long before she was crying aloud, making music and calling his name for the first time ever in the heat of the moment, and all the people outside seemed to melt away, because his heart decided to believe that maybe she too was feeling the same way about him.
When they joined the party, Nick could have sworn that no champagne had ever tasted any sweeter.
Chapter Fifteen
NICK WASN’T SURE what time they’d arrived at their next stop somewhere deeper in the heart of Texas, but when he awoke, they were already there. They had a radio show that afternoon with a local station that wanted to interview them, and rumor was that they wanted the band to perform an acoustic version of one of their songs live.
Val hadn’t quite decided yet, but Nick thought Brad was trying to talk her into it.
He stretched as much as he could in that snug space, wishing Brina had been with him. But he knew that wouldn’t be such a great idea. He didn’t want to have to explain anything to Chris if the little guy asked, and he also didn’t want the eyes of Gracie, Brad, and Val on them—he didn’t want the questions, heard or unheard, or the stress that often went with worries about a band relationship.
Bullet Series Box Set Books 1-8 Page 152
