All you’re good for, that evil little voice inside said.
I hated that voice.
I had been so alive on that stage. He’d pinpointed it with scary accuracy. It was as if I’d finally taken my first full breath after a lifetime of never truly opening my lungs all the way. As if I’d been asleep my whole life, and performing had finally woke me up. The greatest rush, the greatest high.
I felt it all in spite of the fear and the nerves.
God, standing at the front of that stage, watching fifty thousand people scream…for me. My name. For my music. My voice. Me.
It had been, legitimately, the greatest moment of my life.
And that evil little voice of doubt had stolen that fragment of joy.
From me. And from Myles.
And he’d still found the wherewithal to give me the raw, courageous truth of his feelings for me—knowing exactly how I’d react.
That cut me to the bone.
Yet I couldn’t penetrate my own emotional walls. I couldn’t fathom giving him that emotion back.
I couldn’t tell him my secret.
It was too painful. Too dark. Too horrifying.
I was sitting on a bench and massaging my blistered feet, not paying much attention to the people walking past.
“Lexie?” a small female voice asked in a thick accent. “You singer?”
I looked over, and a teenage girl was standing off to one side, phone in her hand, and a hopeful, joyful expression on her face. I had no clue how to react. I managed a small smile and said “Um. Yeah—yes, I’m Lexie.”
“Selfie?” She held up her phone. “Please? You take selfie?”
God, it was embarrassing—she knew more of my language than I did hers. I knew “Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto” and that was about it, and only a vague idea that domo arigato might mean thank you. Possibly.
She could communicate with me.
I smiled. “Um. Sure?”
She squealed, waved at a group of girls standing nearby, giggling and taking photos. They all hustled to stand near me and the girl snapped about fifty photos in several bursts. “Thank you!” she said, facing me and giving me a short bow.
“You’re…you’re welcome.” Baffled at the interaction, I almost missed the opportunity. “Wait!”
The girl, now in the ring of her friends, turned around. “Hai?”
“Um.” I had no idea how much English she’d understand, but I knew this was my only chance. “Can you tag Myles?”
“Tag?” She held up the phone. “Twitter?”
I nodded. “Tag Myles North.”
She lit up. “Okay!”
I pointed at the nearby intersection. “And a photo of the street signs?”
She was baffled, but agreeable “Okay?” it sounded like ohh-KEHH. She took a photo of the intersection. “Tag?”
I nodded again. “Thank you.”
She was thinking. “You lose place?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m lost.”
She spoke in rapid-fire Japanese, took me by the arm and hauled me to a nearby cafe filled with people. She was taking a video and jabbering rapidly, showing the cafe, the windows, the intersection, me, her friends, and then suddenly I had a pink drink in my hand and I was sitting with the group of Japanese teenagers who were all staring at me like I was someone, chattering to each other and giggling behind their hands, whispering. The girl who’d approached me sat beside me, showed me her phone.
Her social media stream was on the screen, and she tapped her latest posts—the photo of us, the street sign, and then her video—the likes, shares, and the retweet numbers were shockingly high considering how recently she’d posted it. I was impressed. And that was when I saw what she was pointing to: a comment under the video. A tiny thumbnail pic of Myles from one of his album covers, with his name and blue checkmark. “Thank you! And tell her to stay put!” This was in English on a feed dominated by her native Japanese characters.
I felt an absurd burst of relief, so powerful that I compulsively hugged the girl. “Thank you! Oh god, thank you so much!”
She was surprised by my hug, uncomfortable. Stiff, awkward. She shifted away from me, smiling and laughing, but obviously deeply uncomfortable. “Ohh…okay!”
I moved away. “Sorry.” I grinned sheepishly. “What’s your name?”
She nodded, looking anywhere but at me. “Okay, okay.” She finally met my eyes, my gaffe forgiven. “Emiko.”
“I just…thank you, Emiko. Thank you.”
She laughed. “Hai, hai.”
There was a commotion, then—people in the cafe responding to something going on outside—a crowd gathering. I tried to see, but the crush and rush was too thick—so I moved to the window.
Myles.
Stepping out of a blacked-out SUV, still in his jeans, boots, sweat-stained white T-shirt, and backward Dallas Cowboys hat, the outfit he’d worn on stage. He was ringed by people thrusting dozens of receipts and hats and photographs and scraps of paper at him, coming from all directions—there were four security guards around him, but they could barely keep the gathering chaos at bay.
Myles was absolutely at ease. Smiling, shaking hands, posing. Signing with a big black Sharpie. Never hurrying. I saw him glance over the heads of the crowd, lifting up on his toes—his eyes met mine, and I saw longing in them, relief.
Another slip of paper was waving in his face and he turned to give that person his attention—and for that moment, as he bent to listen, smiling, turning to pose for a selfie, that person had his entire attention. A genuine smile—not the megawatt magazine grin, but the real Myles smile.
I expected him to sign a few autographs, pose for a few selfies, and then escape.
But he didn’t.
The crowd grew, and the security guards did their best to keep him from being crushed, but he didn’t turn anyone away, even when the crowd continued to grow.
How long?
Half an hour? A full hour?
I wasn’t sure.
Seeing him in front of a sold-out crowd was one thing.
This was another.
And the way he handled it hit me hard, for some reason.
He cared.
He made eye contact with each person. Didn’t shy away from being clung to for a photo, and that photo becoming two or three, or more. He signed everything handed to him. Smiled for each person, wrote their name on the autograph. Not just a scribble of his initials.
Finally the crowd began to thin and his security was able to gradually move him away from the SUV and toward the door of the cafe where I was. I moved to the door, and a hulking American security guard in a black suit and mirrored Oakleys hooked his arm around my shoulders and hustled me into a walk. “This way, Miss Goode.”
“Uh, okay.” I halted. “Wait!” I went back in and grabbed Emiko by the hand and brought her to Myles. “Emiko, this is Myles; Myles, this is Emiko, the girl who helped you find me.”
He seemed to know hugging strangers was a cultural no-no, because he didn’t try, as I had. “Thank you so much, Emiko. I was worried sick.”
Emiko was over the moon, chattering in Japanese and jumping up and down. Finally, she settled enough to take several selfies and a short video with Myles, and got him to sign a scrap of paper.
And then she was waving at us with a huge grin, and we were finally alone.
“That’s us,” Myles said, gesturing at the SUV.
The bodyguard guided me to it, shielding me from the press of people with his own body. opened the door just wide enough to admit me, then closed the door and leaned over to whisper to Myles, who nodded and signed another hat, took another selfie.
Myles did all this despite the exhaustion I saw in his eyes, and in the lines of his body. He had just performed at a huge show, using all the energy that entailed, and then I put him through the stress of running away in a foreign city. I felt worse than I ever had in my life, but the worst of it was that I couldn’t control myself.
O
n top of that, I realized just how careful he had to be about going out in public. He rarely went out in public, knowing he would be inundated by the kind of thing I had just witnessed.
Knowing someone is famous is one thing.
Seeing the effect of it is another.
I had a lot to think about as I sat in the back of the SUV with Myles, alone with my thoughts.
Finally, after what had to have been an hour, he waved goodbye and slipped into the car.
I buckled up and silence descended on the hushed interior of the luxury SUV. The security guards were split between the front seat of this SUV and an identical one behind us.
He wasn’t looking at me.
I didn’t know what to say.
“Smart thinking, getting that girl to post that video.” He finally looked at me, and I could tell he was hurt, angry, and at a loss for words.
“She saw me sitting on a bench and wanted a selfie with me.” I laughed. “I was about to say how weird and awkward it was, but then I just watched you do it for an hour straight.”
He gave a sort of half laugh. “First taste of fame, huh? Get used to it. Before long, you’ll be doing that,” he said, gesturing behind us.
I didn’t want to argue, so I said nothing in response to that. “Thank you for coming to get me. I’m so sorry to have put you through that.”
“Yeah.”
Silence.
Finally, after forty-five minutes through brutal traffic, we arrived at the hotel.
That had been the worst, most uncomfortable silence of my life.
The silence continued as we took a private elevator up to the suite .
We arrived directly into a massive penthouse with a multi-million-dollar view of Tokyo spread out below. Ultramodern, all stark lines and contrasting black and white and chrome with pops of color and muted shades of gray.
There was food waiting—a huge spread of food. Seeing it made me realize how hungry I was.
Myles made up plates for us and we ate…in silence.
I had no clue what to say, or how to break the silence without bringing up questions and creating more arguments. Myles didn’t deserve that. So I kept silent and Myles seemed content to let it be, as well.
For the first time since I met him, we went to bed without sex.
Awkward, tense. The knowledge of so much unspoken between us.
So much he wanted that I had no clue how to give.
So much he deserved to know that I couldn’t tell him.
So, he went to bed, and I sat in the bed beside him, exhausted and utterly unable to sleep.
I heard him snoring, and hated myself for everything.
Myles
I woke somewhere near dawn, for reasons unknown. I didn’t have to pee, I wasn’t thirsty, wasn’t hungover. Just…awake.
At 5:01 a.m. local time.
Jet lag, maybe, but I was used to that, and I could generally fall asleep whenever I needed to. And god knew after the show, the hours of hunting Tokyo for Lexie, and then signing autographs and posing, the awkward silent drive, the tense silence in the penthouse here—I should have been dead beat. But I was wide awake.
And that’s when I heard it.
Lexie—singing, playing a guitar.
I saw her, on the balcony off the master suite. Sitting in a chair, leaning back on two legs with the chair back resting against the corner and her feet on the railing. Guitar across her thigh. City light bathed her in a dozen shades of glowing shadow. She was nude, under the guitar, from my angle, I could see the swell of her breast pressed against the guitar, the curve of her thigh as it rounded under on the chair. Her eyes were closed, her head tipped back, and she was singing the saddest song I’d ever heard.
There were no words, just a haunting aria of loneliness and brokenness, laced through with a low delicate melody on the smaller, higher strings—no fancy chords or finger work, just a slow melody that carved a hole in your heart and left the bitter taste of sadness its place.
I grabbed my phone, brought up the external camera, no flash, and hit record. I could just make out her outline; see that she was naked without seeing anything except her and the guitar.
I recorded until she stopped, hands squealing on the strings, and I heard her sniffle. She was playing my first guitar, an old Yamaha I’d gotten thirdhand; I could tell by the sound of it. It was old and battered and hard to keep in tune, but I’d written some of my best songs on it, and still liked to play it when I was feeling melancholy. Interesting that she’d chosen it—Betty-Lou was with me, unlocked at the moment, as I’d spent a few minutes playing before I went to bed; Na’ura was here in the hotel, too, also unlocked as I hadn’t gotten a more protective case for her yet.
She opened her eyes, perhaps alerted by that sixth sense that told her she was being observed—looked over and saw me sitting up on the bed.
“Hi.”
“Hey.” I wasn’t sure if I should tell her I’d recorded her and decided against it. I would figure out what to do with it later.
For now, I couldn’t take any more awkwardness. I left the bed and went out onto the balcony—it hot and humid outside. I was naked, like her; we were both habitual nude sleepers, and had established that early on.
She watched me, holding the guitar in place across her torso. “You heard?”
I nodded. “It was beautiful. Haunting.”
She shrugged. “I wrote it when I had some things to express, but no words for what I wanted to say.”
“Well, you said it loud and clear.” I hesitated. “And I guess I just…I’m sorry for whatever happened to cause you to feel that way.”
She shrugged. “Thanks, but it’s just life, I guess.”
I was leaning against the railing, facing her. “Couldn’t sleep?”
Shook her head. “Not a wink.”
“Lex, I…”
She carefully set the guitar aside. Set the chair down on all fours. Sat up, hands on her thighs, naked, gazing up at me. “Myles, can you just, please, for right now, just don’t––”
I knelt and tipped the chair back up on the hind legs and balanced it as she’d been; she squealed in surprise, and then found her balance. I slid my fingers around one dangling ankle, lifted her foot, and draped it on my thigh. Then the other. Held her eyes. She understood what I was offering: distraction. Another avoidance of the topic. I ached to know the source of her pain, but I knew she had to offer the story on her own terms.
When—or IF––she would ever be ready.
Until then, I could offer her nothing but myself. My patience. My understanding.
And this.
A distraction.
An escape, if only for a moment, from everything.
I was going to give it to her on my terms, though.
I didn’t plunge right in and devour her. I took my time—kissed her calf, her knee. Lifted her leg and licked the tender underside of her knee. The inside of her thigh. So close that my nose nuzzled her soft warm seam, and then I kissed over it. I kissed my way down her other thigh, and now she was breathing slow and deep, watching me.
“Myles…”
“Lex?”
“I…”
I knew it was going to excuses and prevarication, so I slid my tongue up her slit. She was distracted, as I knew she would be. She gasped, and I teased her clit with the tip of my tongue, and then went back to kissing the insides of her upper thighs as I dragged a fingertip up her seam and down, up and down, teasing in, and in, and deeper, until I was sliding through her wetness and she was hiking her hips up in a silent request for more. I flicked her with my tongue, and then delved my finger deep, and she cried out. She was usually quick to come the first time, and I was determined to draw her out, this time. Once, but so hard she wouldn’t know what hit her.
So I drew her out. Teased and tickled, licked and kissed, never settling into a rhythm, fingers sliding in, curling, withdrawing—but slowly. When I gave her my tongue, it was as slowly as I could move it; fat fla
t licks to her slit, upward and inward, ending at her clit. She gripped my hair and groaned, held my head between her thighs and thrust hard against my face, legs splayed apart with her heels locked together around the back of my neck.
“Myles, god Myles, I need to come.”
I kissed her clit, a soft wet suckling of my lips. Backed away to grin at her, three fingers penetrating her in a slow arrhythmic squelching slide. “Nope.”
She growled, pushing her pussy against my hand, needing what I refused to give her. “Please.”
Slower, then, fingers moving in and out millimeters at a time. I flicked her clit with my tongue and she flinched, hips flexing helplessly. “God, oh god Myles—please, I’m so close. I need it so bad.”
“Mmm-mmm. Not yet.”
I continued to tease her until her hips were flexing wildly and she was gasping and growling like a trapped wildcat, trying desperately to grind hard enough against my evasive tongue to take the orgasm I wouldn’t give her.
“You want me to beg? Is that it?” she snarled. “Fine, I’ll beg. Please, Myles—please!”
I kissed her clit again, made out with her pussy until she was on the verge. “Nope, not really turned on by begging.”
She mewled in frustration as I left my mouth inches from her and went back to teasing her with my fingers sliding in and out in no set rhythm. “Then what, Myles? What do you want? You want me to suck your cock and swallow all your cum? Is that it?” She tried to reach for me, but I wouldn’t let her move, held her in place and dove in, twirling my tongue around her clit until she cried out raggedly, sobbing. “Oh god oh god oh god, Myles, please—what? What the fuck do you want? Do you want me to let you fuck me bare? What? Tell me what you want!”
What I wanted was her to make love to me.
I wanted her to take me inside her, and cling to me, come around me, and whisper my name as we came together, bare or not. I wanted to hear her come apart and tell me she wanted me and needed and loved me. I wanted her arms around me, her legs scissoring around my hips, and her breath in my ear.
I wanted what she could not and would not give me, and she was so hung up on the no condom thing that she was missing the truth of what I really wanted: her, the real true raw bare vulnerable Lexie Goode, given willingly and openly.
Goode To Be Bad Page 20
