Knox Brotherhood

by Knox, Elizabeth

  Evie starts to speak, and then slams her mouth shut, staring at Bellamy the entire time. I can tell she’s guilty, but of what, I’m unsure.

  “What did you do?” Bellamy asks her, horror evident in her voice.

  It doesn’t take me long to figure out that Evie had a hand in what happened tonight onstage. Figuring out the why is difficult for me, then again, I don’t understand the music industry. It’s uncharted territory for me.

  “I did what was best for you,” Evie answers boldly, face unwavering, eyes steady on Bellamy. You couldn’t cut the tension in here with a freshly sharpened steak knife.

  “What exactly did you think was best for me?”

  Evie chews on her bottom lip nervously before she speaks. “You were beginning to fade out of the spotlight. That isn’t good for several reasons, one of them being your impending record. Do I like Zac? Hell no. I fucking hate the arsehole for everything that he’s done to you, but him coming out on stage tonight was dramatic, it caused a scene and ultimately, this is your rise back to the top.”

  “You’re supposed to be my friend. How could you invite him to come on stage with me after everything that he’s done?” Bellamy asks, shocked.

  “I am your friend, but I have to be your manager before your friend. I have to make the hard decisions for you sometimes, and this was one of them. Now, I know you didn’t like it, but you handled it flawlessly, and the press is going to eat it up. Especially with how you ignored him and gave the audience a killer performance. They will LOVE it!” As Evie speaks, with every word her eyes get brighter and brighter. I don’t think she realizes what she’s done tonight.

  Bellamy glances back to me and then looks to Evie, I can see her facial expression, the hurt that is slowly dragging over her features. “You may be my manager, but you’re wrong, you don’t have to be my manager first. You need to be my friend above all else. I trust you with so much, and with one action you just destroyed every bit of trust I had with you.”

  The next thing I know, Bellamy is grabbing my hand and leading me towards the sign marked ‘Exit’. I stick close to her, reveling in the fact her hand is entwined with mine. Something about this girl pulls at me. I still can’t put my finger on it.

  We walk out into the cool late October air, a gust of wind blows, and Bellamy shoots off. I call out to her and she turns back to me, smiling, the lights lining the parking lot illuminate her features just enough, so I can see. “Catch me if you can.”

  ***

  Bellamy

  It’s taking everything inside of me not to cry right now, not to break down into a million pieces like I want to. Evie betrayed my trust, she brought that monster onto the stage with me…the person who has taken every chance that he could to hurt me in some way. She invited that onto my stage.

  The amount of pain that I feel right now is unreal, and the disappointment that follows is just as horrible.

  I feel nothing, and yet I feel everything. Every awful feeling going through my body is on hyperdrive, and even though I’m trying to distract myself being fun and dandy with Butch, it’s not exactly working.

  I play around, darting out of Butch’s sight as quickly as I can, hoping that making a fun game out of this will help me not focus on everything that I’m thinking right now. After all, I can think about this later – I don’t have to think about this right now.

  As I run and dart around I weave in and out of the tour buses and the tractor trailers, I giggle, and I know that I’m doomed the second it slips past my lips. I love to have fun, but I love to win even more.

  “Gotcha!” Butch laughs, grabbing me from behind and pulling me against him. I feel his beard scratching against the back of my shoulder, the chill of the cold weather making me regret my outfit choice – I suppose a short cocktail dress wasn’t the best decision for performing tonight. Butch flips me around to face him, pushing my torso against the cold metal of the tractor trailer behind me. “You can try to run away from me, Sugar. But we both know that you won’t get far,” he growls, peering over me with a cocky grin dragging across his face and the only thing I wanted to do was to bite his bottom lip and let him have his caveman way with me. Why couldn’t I, though? What if Butch was exactly what I needed right now?

  No, that’s silly.

  Or is it?

  “You think too much, you know that?”

  “Yep. Everyone tells me…all of the time, in fact,” I admit, I just can’t help it. I over-analyze everything, it’s just part of who I am.

  Butch wraps his arm around my neck, gently rubbing his thumb over the center of my throat. Inching his face closer and closer to mine until our lips are almost touching, I look up into his eyes as he speaks. “You better stop doing that, Sugar, especially about all this nonsense. Save that beautiful mind for stuff that matters.”

  “Why are you always so nice to me?”

  “You damn well know the answer to that,” he grumbles, pressing his lips to mine as he sucks my lip into his mouth and bites down slightly. When a moan slips out, he’s putting his knee between my legs for me to open up, and I do. I can feel his breath hot in my mouth, and as his free hand pulls up the front of my dress I feel the cool air exposed to my heat.

  I hear him slide his zipper down and feel his hardened cock against my thigh, I can’t help but hitch my breath at the contact. I always do when it comes to him. He has a way of making me feel exhilarated and nervous beyond belief at the same exact time. In all honesty, I’ve never felt that ever with another man.

  Butch moves my panties to the side and slides himself inside me in one movement. I moan as my body adjusts to his size. He is the full package with the full package, length and girth, enough to give any woman a long night of multiple orgasms, and boy do I plan on benefiting from that as much as possible. The man knows his way around the female body, that’s for sure.

  “Oh, fuck!” I scream as he slams his cock again and again inside me, rubbing my G-spot over and over again. He’s just found the quickest way to make me come in record time. “I’m-. Jesus Christ….”

  “No, you’re my Sugar,” he chuckles, sliding his tongue into my mouth and kissing the daylights out of me, rocking his hips, sliding his member inside me again and again until I meet his pace rolling my hips. I want to come so bad, and the bastard is teasing me repeatedly with his magic cock.

  “Butch,” I moan, grabbing onto his vest, clenching the leather hard before the inevitable happens.

  “No. You call me Abe when you come. Not Butch, Abe.”

  I nod my head in understanding, biting my bottom lip so hard that I might bleed. He rams himself inside me yet again, and I’m a goner, screaming his name so loud that people could hear us from miles away.

  Butch leans against me for a few minutes afterward, kissing my neck, face, and lips softly. He may be a gruff man, yet he knows how to make me feel cherished after he does the filthiest things to me. We hear The Stones starting their set, and with one last kiss to my temple, he pulls out of me, adjusting himself and then fixing my panties and dress.

  Butch leads me to the tour bus and directs me to put some “real clothes” on. When I ask him what he means by “real clothes”, he simply tells me that it needs to be something I won’t freeze my ass off in.

  “What do you mean by that?” I ask, curious…thinking I may know where he’s getting at.

  “I’m telling you to put that lovely ass of yours in some jeans, and a sweater, and grab a fuckin’ jacket, woman,” Butch huffs, rolling his eyes as he waits for me. “Oh, and change those shoes.”

  I glance down at my four-inch black pumps. “What’s wrong with my heels?”

  “You’ll be complaining within the hour, just fuckin’ change them.” Instead of arguing, or even asking why I just listen and walk back to my old room on the bus. Can I even call it that? My “old” room? It’s only become “old” because I’ve been sleeping in the same room as Butch every night.

  Quickly, I do as he says, changing out of my
cocktail dress into a pair of skinny jeans, a black cami, and a long sleeve t-shirt because I can’t find a sweater. I do find a light hoodie to toss over myself and some converse to slide into. At this point, I think I’m good to go.

  “Does this make you happy?” I ask him, sarcasm evidently laced in my tone.

  He looks up from his phone, dropping it the second his eyes land on my body. I laugh as he mutters curses and grabs his phone. “I stunned ya there, did I?”

  “Shit. Yeah. You look good in everything you put on, Bell.”

  I smile slightly, following him as he leads us off of the bus and down into the parking lot. My guess was right, and I was dead right.

  “No,” I tell him, looking at his bike, my nerves shooting up. The second I get on that thing I am roadkill.

  “Yes,” He responds. I look to him, then to his bike, and back to him.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t do it.”

  “Yes, you can, and you will,” Butch says to me, as encouraging as he can. He grabs a helmet off his handlebars and adjusts it on my head, tightening the strap until it fits me perfectly. Next, he grabs a leather jacket, pulling it over my arms and zips up the front. He yanks the hood from the back of my hoodie and tugs it over my helmet, drawing the strings in and tying them in the front.

  “I look ridiculous.”

  “You look warm.”

  Butch walks me over to the bike and mounts it, tugging me on behind him. As he puts the key in the ignition and turns it on I notice he’s just in his vest and a t-shirt. “Where’s your jacket?” I ask him.

  “On you!” he yells as he takes off, leaving me to wrap my arms as securely as I can around him. I know one thing, and one thing only. Tonight is going to be a long one.

  CHAPTER 20

  In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take. -Anonymous

  Butch

  She rode with me all night long in the cold like a real trooper. I’d expected to hear her moan, bitch, or complain and not exactly in that order. Did she? Nope. She tightened her arms around me a little bit near the end, and that was my indication that she was getting tired.

  By the time I could tell she was at her crashing point, we’d already rode a good seven hours. We were deep in Virginia and would be home in just a few hours. I pulled into a motel right off of the highway and got us a room, carrying her in there like some coming of age Romeo and Juliet shit. I held her securely to me as the girl behind the counter led us to the only available room they had left for the night. Normally, they’d require payment right then and there, but she told me to not worry about it until the morning. There was no way I could get to my wallet anyhow with Bellamy in my arms like this.

  The girl opened the doorway for us, and I laid Bell down on the bed before going back to grab the key out of the door, shutting and locking it behind me.

  She looks like an angel, spread across the bed clad in my shit. Fuck. Damn. Right now, here in this moment, it’s hitting me that she isn’t the kind of girl I can fuck and get away with. This girl…right here, she is the real deal. Maybe at first, I just wanted to fuck around with her, but now I know that there’s no way I could just fuck her. I want more than that from her, and I’m the selfish bastard who always gets what he wants.

  “Abe,” she mutters, stretching her arms out across the bed. I get a good look at her shirt rising up and exposing her stomach. Dammit to Hell, but I already wanna take another bite out of her.

  I go over, sliding off my cut, my boots, shirt, and pants. I unzip my jacket and unbutton her pants, take off her converse and toss them off to the side of the bed. Bellamy sits up, grumbling and pulls off her hoodie, reaching behind her she unclasps her bra and pulls the contraption out one of the sleeves to her shirt, tossing it in the direction I’ve tossed my clothes, and lastly, she yanks off her pants and we’re both sitting there, exposed and exhausted as all Hell.

  “I can’t believe she did this to me,” Bellamy mumbles, pulling her knees back to her chest, wrapping her arms around them.

  “I know, Sugar, I know.” I don’t know what could’ve gone through Evie’s head to make her think that doing such a thing was okay, but it wasn’t. Nothing about what Bellamy had to experience tonight was okay. I hardly knew anything about the guy, but what I did know wasn’t good, and the fact that Evie knew more? Or, no…the fact that she knew mostly everything that he’d done…that pisses me off. She openly invited someone who hurt Bellamy to her show. I don’t fucking like that one bit. Evie has just gotten herself on my permanent shit list.

  Bellamy shuts her eyes, and before I can say something to calm her down the tears start flowing. Flowing is such an understatement, pouring is more like it. She’s been holding all this shit in since it happened. My poor, poor Sugar.

  “Bell…” I coax, her eyes open gently, and her lip is trembling.

  “He sold photos of me to the press, to Summer Poole, and she blasted them out everywhere. He tried to ruin me, they deemed me as some status hungry whore. Evie knew every awful thing people said about me. She was there when I cried myself to sleep a few times. She…I just don’t understand how she could have thought this was okay. It was everything but okay!” she cries. I move and sit behind her on the bed, tugging her against my chest, holding her as close to me as I possibly can. My heart is breaking for her right now; seeing her emotions unraveling before my eyes is making me furious. She shouldn’t be feeling anything that she is right now. The only thing that she should be doing is getting a decent night of fuckin’ sleep.

  “He’s threatening me, and she fucking brought him here!” Bellamy sobs, hiccupping over and over again as she speaks.

  “What do you mean?” I ask, not sure what she’s talking about.

  “He sent me a text a couple weeks ago,” she mumbles, her tears falling onto my arms. “He threatened to leak an adult video to everyone.”

  “A sex tape?”

  “Yes, a sex tape.” She cries again, lurching forward. I pull her back against me, trying to think of whatever I can to help calm her down. No way in hell is this bastard going to get away with this, with what now seems to be the constant harassment of her, or with trying to hurt her again. No. No way am I going to allow this to happen.

  “You don’t worry about a damn thing, alright, Sugar? I’m gonna take care of it.”

  Bellamy’s red, tear stained face turns towards mine. “How?”

  “I just will, sweetheart. I promise.” I press a soft kiss to her lips and pull her with me as I lean down on the bed. She’s gonna get all the snuggles she fucking needs tonight.

  Zac is going to regret ever fucking with Bellamy. I’m a man of my word, and boy do I keep my promises. My brothers and I will make damn sure of that.

  ***

  I let her sleep in all morning, we didn’t have to be out until eleven and luckily for me, she woke up a little after ten. I paid the girl at the front desk for the room and took Bellamy to a diner down the street for some breakfast. Overnight I’d gotten a couple of texts from Slash asking where we were, and I told him. He made a smartass comment how Elena was gonna have my head for splitting from him, and she probably would. The orders were that two of us were supposed to be watching Bellamy, not just one. I’d deal with that when I had to. Right now, I was focused on one thing. Making sure this girl had a good day.

  After breakfast, we headed straight for my bike and back out onto the road. I loved riding this time of year, the weather was perfect – a little chilly at times, but it wasn’t anything that I couldn’t handle. The way the crisp air would brush against your face through every turn, it was exhilarating. The first time I’d gotten on a bike I knew that I wouldn’t stop. It was like a man finding his first love. When you find her, you never want to leave.

  In my case, a motorcycle was my first love.

  I drove until I turned onto the little pebbled drive taking me to the one person who’s been biting my ass for not visiting her the past couple weeks.

  My momma.

&
nbsp; “Where are we?” Bellamy shouts over the engine, I drive up slowly to the cabin until we park just out front. My momma’s old beat up Subaru is sitting out front which tells me that she’s home.

  “Home,” I respond back, kicking my stand and turning off my bike. I stand up and wait for Bell to get off the bike first, and once she does I follow.

  “Home?” she asks, a confused look across her face, she removes the helmet and sets it on the seat, looking around into the woods that surround us and then onto my childhood home.

  “Well, I’ll be! Abraham Warren, is that you?” I hear my momma screaming the second she darts out the door, this little old lady has my heart and dammit…she knows it. The guys back at the club used to give me shit for coming up every week, making jokes that I’m a momma’s boy – and I am – but when Enzo and Reed came up one time for dinner, they didn’t complain. They always demand we have plenty of banana pudding for every club party, and boy does my momma make sure that happens. “And lord have mercy, did you bring a girl with you?” She’s in a pair of cutoff daisy dukes and a dark blue t-shirt. I’ve told her time and time again she can’t be wearing’ this type of shit being her age and all. The woman just shakes her head and tells me to mind my own damn business. One time she threatened me with no food, so I stopped that shit right there.

  The woman knows the way to my heart, it’s straight through my stomach.

  “Abraham, ay?” Bellamy giggles, elbowing me in the arm.

  “Yeah, she has a weird kind with the dude on the cash.”

  Bellamy busts out into laughter and my momma shoots me a glare that could stop me dead. “No, he’s named after his father sweetie. I’m Malinda, Mal for short! Now, where on Earth did he pick up a good lookin’ girl like you from? No way you’re just some bar bimbo.”