Encore: A Reverse Harem Romance

by Lane Hart

And I didn’t think that Clarke had any physical interest in me until I saw the tenting behind his towel. Realizing that he was getting turned on by just looking at me lying naked on the table was the end of my restraint.

  I shouldn’t have let him put his hands on me. I knew, when he asked, that it would lead to this. Well, maybe not this exactly, him bending me over the massage table and taking me in such a naughty way in public that I should be ashamed of myself.

  Tomorrow, or maybe in a few hours, I will try to talk to Davis, but before then, I’ll have had at least two orgasms that left me floating. Maybe more, since Clarke is kind enough to reach around underneath my body to play with my pussy while he fucks me.

  “Goddamn,” he mutters from behind me, his face buried in my hair as he works himself in and out. When he’s in, I feel so full I that can barely breathe. “You’re so fucking perfect, I may never leave your tight little ass.”

  Hearing his words about wanting to stay inside me has my stomach clenching and my thighs tightening in warning. I grab the sides of the table to hold myself up when my legs give out, and I get thrown headfirst into the clutches of an orgasm that goes on and on for what seems like hours.

  When I start to scream his name, Clarke slaps his hand over my mouth and then with one last pump of his hips, I feel the pulses of his release that are so powerful it begins to immediately drip down my thighs before he even pulls his cock out of me.

  “That…was…amazing,” he says, as he presses kisses down my spine.

  “Amazing enough…to do it…again?” I ask through panting breaths.

  “Yes,” he replies without hesitation, making me smile. “I want to do it over and over again,” Clarke begins to say when he moves away from me. My heart drops when I hear the pause that tells me a but is coming. Sure enough, he says, “But I’m so stressed out over the work it’s gonna take for the new album to get done, can this just be…”

  “Fuck buddies?” I supply for him, not meaning those two words to come out so harsh, but unable to help it. Within just a few days, I’ve had sex with two men, neither of which want anything more from me than naked romps. It’s my own fault for not being able to separate amazing sex with actual feelings for them, though, not theirs.

  “Yeah,” Clarke says. He moves away to grab some tissue and then comes back to clean me up between my legs. While doing so, he tells me, “Maybe after the album’s done…”

  “After it’s done, you’ll be on the road again, and I’ll be back in San Diego,” I remind him before I slip away from him, hurrying over to my pile of clothes on still shaking thighs, and start dressing.

  “Fuck,” Clarke mutters from the other side of the room where his clothes are. “I’m sorry, Tess. That’s not fair of me to ask you.”

  “No, it’s fine. It’s great,” I say, hoping the words are more convincing to him than they are to myself. “Being fuck buddies is awesome,” I start, and then pause for my own but. “But just to warn you, I have other fuck buddies.”

  “You do?” Clarke asks. When I look over, he’s frowning as he turns his shirt a million different ways before he finally gets it right to pull over his head.

  “Yeah, I do. So, see? Just fucking is best for both of us,” I say, when I slip on my shoes. “Oh, but what’s with men like you not carrying any condoms? It’s irresponsible!”

  “Dammit. I’m sorry,” he apologizes as he runs his fingers through his hair. “I know better with groupies, but with you, I guess I trust you, which is stupid because you have no reason to trust that I don’t have some shit.”

  “That’s exactly right,” I agree.

  “I get tested and use condoms ninety-nine percent of the time,” he says. “This was the only one percent time. Okay?”

  I give a nod that I believe him.

  “Next time, I’ll be prepared,” he says.

  Next time.

  At least he’s telling me he wants to be with me again. That’s more than I got from Davis after our incredible afternoon together.

  It’s stupid, I know, but now that I’ve been with Davis and then Clarke, I’m addicted to them and will take whatever they will offer, even if that means getting hurt when things inevitably end.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Ford

  I’m sitting on the roof, chewing on a pen top since I gave up smokes, when Tessa pulls up in her rental car back from who knows where.

  Apparently, it wasn’t a good place.

  When she gets out of the car, she slams the door, and I’m pretty sure I hear her muttering curses to herself on the way up the sidewalk. Her blonde hair is messy, which is unusual. If I didn’t know any better, I would think Miss All Business was out taking care of some very dirty business.

  “Welcome back, Tessa,” I call out, rather than keep spying on her without her knowing it.

  Her neck turns this way and that before I add, “I’m up here.”

  Finally, she tilts her head back and finds me on the roof.

  “You!” she says through clenched teeth.

  “Me?” I ask, wondering what I’ve done.

  “Yes, we need to talk.”

  “Then come on up,” I suggest.

  “I’d rather you come down,” she says.

  “And I would rather that you come up here,” I tell her, when I remove the pen cap from my mouth.

  “Are you smoking?” she exclaims indignantly.

  “Ah, no. It’s a pen top. Don’t get your panties in a twist,” I reply with a grin as I hold up the object between my fingers for her to see.

  She mutters something under her breath, but doesn’t say anything more to me before she goes to the front door.

  It takes several minutes before she figures out which room in the house (that would be mine) leads to the balcony that I use to hop up on the roof.

  “Okay, I’m not coming up there,” she says.

  “Then talk from there.”

  “Fine,” she huffs, crossing her arms over her chest. “Have you had any progress on lyrics?”

  “Ah, no,” I reply, as if that’s so obvious I don’t even know why she’s asking.

  “Then you need to get moving. I don’t know how much more of this band I can take!”

  “Why? What happened?” I ask in confusion. Since Ben and I have been here, it must’ve been the other half of our group. “Something happen with Davis or Clarke?”

  “Huh? No,” she answers, way too fast, telling me that something is going on with one of the two. “Please, could you just try writing something?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” I grumble.

  “Sitting on a roof.”

  “Yes, and this is where I wrote most, if not all, of our songs for the first album.”

  “Oh,” Tessa mutters, her stiff shoulders visibly deflating some. “Then keep trying.”

  “I will,” I assure her. “You’re not the only one who wants me to get this done. I don’t want to be a failure.”

  Letting her arms fall to her sides, she says, “You’re not going to be a failure. You’ve just had a few setbacks, and I’m sure you’ll be coming up with a ton of ideas soon.”

  “Right,” I drawl sarcastically since I have serious doubts.

  “How’s Ben?” she asks, more softly.

  “Seems to be doing pretty good. He’s bored, like I am, sitting around after we were moving nonstop for so long.”

  “Yeah, I bet,” Tessa agrees. “Maybe the three of us could go out and do something together. As long as it’s somewhere without cigarettes and booze.”

  “What exactly does that leave us with?” I ask seriously, since those two things pretty much encompass everything I’ve been doing for several years.

  “Well, let me think about it,” she says. “And I’ll go talk to Ben, see if he feels like going out. If so, maybe he has some ideas.”

  “Sure,” I tell her, a little disappointed that she’s walking away from me so soon. I haven’t seen her much today since she was out, and yeah, I thin
k I missed her, even though most of our conversations are about what to watch on television or what to eat. That’s all I’ve been doing, eating and sitting. My ass is gonna get so fat if I don’t get up and start moving.

  “I’m glad you’re home,” I tell Tessa, without really thinking about the words. As soon as I say them and see the shock on her face, I want to take them back. “I know this isn’t your home, but you’re staying here, so it’s like a temporary home,” I ramble.

  “I’m glad to be home too,” she says with a small smile.

  “Sorry you had a shitty day.”

  “It wasn’t shitty. It was great,” Tessa replies. “Just not what I expected, and maybe I’m blaming myself a little.”

  “Where did you go?” I ask.

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “Come on,” I encourage. “It can’t be top secret or some shit. Were you doing personal errands or ones for the label?”

  “Ah, I guess you could say both.”

  So, she was probably with my bandmates.

  “Were you with Davis or Clarke?” I ask. When her jaw drops, and her cheeks turns red, I’m completely fucking shocked. “Holy shit. Are you fooling around with one of them?”

  I try to imagine Tessa with Davis, but that’s so impossible that I immediately discard the idea. Which means that Tessa is…messing around with Clarke? That’s almost just as hard to believe. He’s quiet and shy, wouldn’t ever make the first move with a woman, and Tessa is so…uptight. She turned me down, so there’s no way one of my boys would have a chance with her. Except…she’s got messy hair and blushed when I asked about the guys.

  “Come on, you can tell me,” I say, since I’m curious.

  “No.” That one word leaves no room for argument, so I give up, at least for now.

  “Fine,” I tell her. “You and Ben decide what we’re gonna do and I’ll be down in a few.”

  All I have to do is make a phone call to Clarke and ask if he was with her today. Then it’ll be mystery solved.

  Tessa nods and leaves, giving me the chance to do just that. Doesn’t she know how easy it will be for me to find out what’s going on? I’ve known these guys for so long that I can tell when they get laid or when they lie.

  Pulling up Clarke’s contact on my phone, I hit the “call” button and then put it up to my ear, waiting for him to answer.

  “Ford,” he says cheerfully. “What’s going on?” The usual anxiety is absent from his voice.

  “Son of a bitch. You got laid,” I say in disbelief.

  How the hell is this possible? What does he have that I don’t? Tessa was attracted to me; she wanted me on the bus, I could see it in the way she was checking me out.

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Clarke replies. His normal response would be “Yeah, right” or something to that effect.

  “Yeah, you do,” I tell him. “I can’t fucking believe it. How…why…”

  “I’m not telling you shit,” he says.

  “You don’t have to. I’ve already figured out the conclusion. What I don’t know is the why, or how it happened with you and not me.”

  “Are you actually jealous of me?” he asks in surprise.

  “No.”

  “Hot damn! You are. Does the rejection sting, Ford? Oh, I bet it does.”

  “You would know, right?”

  “I stopped wanting the groupies you bang a long time ago, once I saw them for what they were. We’re nothing but bragging rights to them.”

  It’s true, I know. Still, it sucks.

  “How did you do it?” I ask, needing to know.

  “It probably helped that she didn’t see me getting my dick sucked on the first night.”

  “Really? That was the final nail in my coffin?” I ask, and the sentence hangs in the air with the notes I can practically see right in front of my face. “Shit! I’ve got to go!” I tell Clarke, ending the call before I lose it.

  Since all I have up here with me is a pen cap and no paper, my fingers start typing into the notes section of my phone.

  You were, you were the final nail in my coffin,

  Beating me down, beating me down,

  Over and over again.

  If I had known, if I could have seen you coming,

  I would have tried; I would have tried

  To keep you from prying me open.

  But now you’ve taken me, taken me

  Swallowed me, swallowed me whole.

  Holy shit. It’s rough and raw, yet in my gut, I know that it’s definitely the start of a new song. Clarke will have to figure out the rhythm of the instruments, since he’s the musical genius, but I can already hear it playing in my head on a loop.

  “Nail in the Coffin” could be the title of a song that ends up on the Billboard charts. And I guess I have Tessa to thank for it. It looks like I’ll be thanking her rather than fucking her, like I wanted.

  Wow. And just like that, another lightbulb goes off, the words dancing in front of me, so easy that I can practically grab them out of the air.

  On another note section, I start entering the words as fast as my fingers can go.

  Help me decide how this story will go.

  Ask me to stop or just tell me no.

  Because I want to fuck you to thank you

  Or thank you for fucking me ohhh-ver.

  You can slap me on the way out the door

  But before you go, baby, I guarantee, I guarantee

  I’ll have you begging for more.

  “Ben!” I yell, as I get to my feet and jump down to the balcony. “Ben!” I say again, as I wander through the house looking for him. I finally find him and Tessa in his bedroom; she’s only sitting on his made-up bed next to him, but still, the sight causes a fist of jealousy to ram me into my stomach so hard I nearly crouch over.

  “What’s up? You okay, man?” Ben asks, while I stand there, staring at the two of them.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I say as I shake myself out of the green haze. “You won’t believe this shit. I came up with the start of two songs!”

  “Fuck yes!” Ben says with a grin when he gets to his feet to wrap me in a hug that ends with us slapping each other on the back. “I knew you’d come up with something!”

  “You wrote something just now?” Tessa asks with her brow furrowed. “I thought you said you couldn’t think.”

  “I couldn’t, but then I was talking to Clarke, and the lyrics just hit me like lightning bolts, one right after another.”

  “Y-you talked to Clarke?” Tessa asks, wrapping her arms around herself protectively while her cheeks go back to that rosy shade of pink.

  “Fuck!” I exclaim as I spin around in a circle, looking for a pen and paper. There’s none in Ben’s room, so I jog down to the kitchen and grab the pad with a pen attached that my mom used to write grocery lists on, and start scribbling.

  You’re so damn beautiful in every single color

  But my favorite is that rosy shade of pink

  You know the one I want, the one on your face

  The one that always makes me think, makes me think

  Of your dirty mind when it strays, when it strays, to the gutter.

  I want to keep you there, down in the dark depths with me

  Baby, you and I alone together, I never want to let you leave

  Not until I see that pink, see that pink turn to red

  The shape of my hand on your bare, sexy flesh

  You know what I want, what I need.

  It’s written all over your face

  “Wow,” Tessa says, as she looks over my shoulder. “Is that another song?”

  “Ah, yeah,” I say, picking the pad up and moving it before she has a chance to read the words over my shoulder. For some reason, I’m self-conscious about her seeing something that I’ve written about her. I’ve never written about a woman before. Hell, I had barely touched a woman before we went on tour with the album I wrote when we were still in high school. Most of those songs were about
the isolation every teenager feels, along with the usual angst, fuck the rules and everyone else, themes of adolescents. This—words about a woman who is standing in front of me, looking so innocent and naughty at the same time because I have a pretty good idea about what she was doing with my friend a few hours ago—seems so much more…intimate. And a helluva lot more personal.

  Will everyone who hears the words to these lyrics, especially the last ones I wrote, know I’m pining for a girl who doesn’t want me?

  “Let me see,” Tessa says, when she takes a step closer. Close enough that I can smell the sex on her, taunting me with the visions that pop into my head of her and him. Jesus! More lyrics are springing up from God only knows where.

  “Not yet, they’re not finished,” I tell her. “I need to get Clarke to work on the music and make sure it comes together first.”

  Again, the mention of Clarke makes her cheeks flush red. Fuck me, but I want to know what they did while at the same time, I hope I never find out.

  The part of me that needs to know says to Tessa, “Tell me what you did with Clarke, and I’ll let you read them all.”

  Sure, it’s gonna suck to share, but it’ll be worth it to hear about how little Miss Professional lost her panties to the tamest rock star ever to walk the earth.

  Tessa bites down on her bottom lip for a second as she watches me. I can see the wheels churning in her head as she weighs the pros and cons.

  “I really want to see what you wrote,” she eventually says. “I loved the first album, and to see something so raw, fresh, and new that could turn out to be so influential at this stage, well, I would do anything.”

  Shit. Why didn’t I ask her to fuck me instead? Probably because I know she would turn me down.

  “So, it’s a deal?” I ask, transferring the pen and pad to my left hand to hold out my right to her. “Tell me all the dirty details, and I’ll show you everything.”

  After a heavy sigh, she shakes my hand. “Fine, but this stays between you and me. I don’t want you to say anything to Clarke, or bring it up with him again since you obviously asked him already.”

  “Deal,” I agree.

  She walks over to check the stairs, likely to make sure Ben isn’t around before coming back up to me in the kitchen, standing just inches away.