Cherry Beats

by Vicki James

  “I’m good, thanks.” I chuckled.

  “In that case…” He turned and opened another blank door, revealing the band’s dressing room.

  Presley squeezed my hand, and I looked up at him with a smile on my face. “Want to grab a beer and suck my dick before I play tonight?”

  I smacked him on the chest, unable to help my laughter as I walked past him and into the room, looking around at the fairly bland walls and the sofas with the guys’ shit thrown over it.

  When Presley walked in behind me, he pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans and leaned back against a wall, crossing his feet at the ankles, simply watching me as I roamed around the room, touching the surfaces of the vanity tables, and running my hand over the backs of the chairs in there, too.

  It was the quietest it had been for hours, and despite the ringing in my ears, I found myself at peace while in one of the most bustling cities of the world. I came to a stop and turned to face him.

  “How long have we got?” I asked quietly.

  “About ten minutes.”

  “There’re a few things we could do in ten minutes.”

  “Anything in particular spring to mind?” He asked with a heated gaze before he ran his teeth over his bottom lip.

  I walked over to him slowly, making sure to swing my hips with confidence, the way I used to do when working at BB’s. Presley’s attention fell to the leather trousers I was wearing, and I saw the subtle tensing of his jaw and the way the muscles twitched there. Once in front of him, I hooked my thumbs through the belt loops of his jeans and tugged on them hard.

  “Let’s take these down and see what springs to mind, shall we?”

  I fell to my knees, feeding off his sudden ragged breaths, and the way his hands shook ever so slightly as he unfastened his jeans and slid them down his thighs. As always, he wasn’t wearing any underwear, and his dick stood large and proud in front of me.

  My fingers curled around it, squeezing with just the right amount of pressure to make his lips part in anticipation. I looked up at him through the thickness of my lashes and smiled.

  “You’ve got me falling, rock star,” I whispered, the very thing he’d written on post-it-note that day when he’d had his jacket delivered for me to sign.

  “No regrets,” he breathed back, lips parted. Presley’s hands found the back of my hair, and he twisted my ponytail around his fist, tugging it back so the sting of pain made my mouth fall open as I stared up at him. “Not one single fucking regret.”

  I gave him the best damn blow job of his life, making sure that he felt the after-effects of it every time he moved out there on the stage, the way I felt the after-effects of his adoration every time I breathed.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  I watched the show from backstage. Presley was in my direct line of sight the whole way through the concert, and his eyes always managed to drift my way each time he got enough of a break to drink his water or beer. Stage crew slipped on now and then to change his empty for a fresh drink, and Presley, covered in sweat and adrenaline, almost downed a full bottle every time he got to take a drink. Whenever the arena camera projected him doing that on the big screens, the crowd would go insane, and the screams of the women among them would pierce my eardrums.

  Rhett would periodically grab his microphone and boo down it when the women went crazy for Presley, which only made them scream louder and make Rhett laugh. He had everyone in the place eating from the palm of his hand. He deserved to have, too. For all Rhett could be weird in day-to-day life with me, he was damn good at what he did out there.

  Still, I found it hard to pay him too much attention when Presley was in action. The bounce of his knees and the way he lost himself in each strike of his sticks had me swooning hard.

  You’ve missed so much of this from him, I thought to myself. You could have been here from the start. But then the start was rougher, his eyes roaming to a million women—that much he’d admitted himself. Maybe neither of us would have been ready three years ago.

  Maybe the best moments of your life only exist because the timing was right.

  Because you got lucky.

  Were we lucky in the here and now? God, I hoped so.

  My thumbnail was being chewed down to the wick as I watched him. Out there on the stage, he seemed untouchable. Then he would flash me a look from behind his drum kit—a look that told me he would devour me when his set was over, and memories of his dick in my mouth would take over to remind me that, for now, he was mine.

  They performed my favourite songs: Wylde, Devil’s Doormat, Denim-Covered Lover, Project Halo, Destruction of a Gemini.

  Big D was drinking neat Jack Daniels straight from the bottle as Rhett did his bit to the audience in between songs. Presley would blast out a round of applause on his kit every time Rhett thought he was being funny, not having to do anything but smirk and shrug his shoulders when the crowd went crazy and Rhett turned around to give him a well-rehearsed middle finger.

  They were famous for a reason, and this was it.

  All five of them were born to do this.

  By the time they’d finished and were heading off stage towards me, I was a hot, horny mess, breathless and in desperate need to slam Presley up against a wall and fuck him senseless. The blowjob wasn’t enough. This was a new kind of desire. A desire amplified by respect for his talent.

  He found me, a rush of heavy breaths falling from him as he made confident strides and scooped me up in his hands, his palms cupping my cheeks, and he pressed his lips to mine harder than ever before.

  Presley was soaking wet, and all I could smell was beer, smoke, and testosterone that made me want to eat him alive. For once, I wouldn’t have cared who was watching if he’d asked to bend me over and screw me there and then. I’d have taken it.

  “God, that was amazing,” he gasped, pulling himself away.

  It took me a second to let my eyes flutter open, but when I did, he was smiling at me like he couldn’t believe I was real.

  “You were phenomenal, king,” I told him with all the sincerity I possessed. Unexpected emotion arose in my throat, and my eyes glazed over. “Presley, I—”

  “Fucking love you being here,” he pushed out, cutting me off before I could give him a declaration better suited for another time.

  Or was it?

  I wanted to say it there and then.

  “Fucking love being here,” I said brightly.

  The crowd were yelling for more, and I knew there’d be more, too. Youth Gone Wild were known for putting on a lengthy show. They wanted the crowds to get their monies worth, and they were sure as shit going to deliver what they promised.

  “Get back out on the stage, rock star.”

  “Come out there with me,” he said quietly.

  “What?” I pulled back and stared up at him like he was crazy.

  “On stage. Come and stand by my side while I play.”

  “No, no, no, Presley.” I laughed nervously. “No way!”

  “Come on, Cherry. Do it for me.”

  “Are you insane? They’ll eat me alive out there. I don’t need that kind of attention. I don’t need those kinds of haters in my life.”

  “Haters?”

  “Yeah, haters.” I swallowed hard, not wanting to piss him off. “You’re adored, and you know it. Whether we like to admit it or not, I’ll always get hate for loving you.”

  Presley froze, his mouth parting as he stared straight into my eyes. “For loving me?” he asked in a whisper, the crowd growing wilder behind him and the noise becoming unbearable.

  You’ve scared him.

  You idiot!

  What have you just done?

  But no words came, and I swallowed, feeling like I could barely breathe.

  “Come on, Pres, it’s time to get back out there,” someone yelled over his shoulder at the same time they slapped him on the back. But Presley was unmoving, unwavering, his hold on me never loosening.

  “Tess?” he
breathed.

  “Yeah?” I croaked.

  “You love me?”

  I swallowed again and nodded once. “I love you,” I admitted softly, not knowing what else to say.

  His face fell, and he paled, his eyes falling to my mouth and staying there.

  “Repeat what you just said,” he demanded.

  “I love you.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “You’re asking me if I’m sure if I love you?”

  “Yeah. I am.”

  I narrowed my eyes and shook my head. “You’re killing me here.”

  “Just one more time, please,” he said, as a sexy smile crept into place. “One more time.”

  “I love you, okay?”

  “Thank fuck,” he sighed heavily and placed a hard kiss to my lips, his warm tongue stealing my breath and any coherent thought I had before he began speaking against my mouth, “I thought I was going fucking crazy over here, needing you like I need you. Being this hooked on another soul.”

  It killed me, but I pulled away, needing to see him, needing to take a breath before my legs gave in.

  “You’re okay with that?” I asked, bringing his hands down between us and holding them tight.

  He laughed softly. “Fuck, yeah, I’m okay with that.”

  Then say you love me, too.

  I waited for him to say more, but when he looked over his shoulder and back out onto the stage, I knew it wasn’t going to happen. Even though I shouldn’t have let it bother me, a small part of my heart broke off at the realisation that I could be two steps ahead of him here. Maybe even ten. That left me vulnerable.

  I wasn’t comfortable with being vulnerable.

  I took a step back and let go of his hands. “Get back out there already. They want you.”

  He looked back at me, then back out at the stage, repeating the movement several times before he eventually locked eyes on mine.

  “Go,” I mouthed.

  He turned to leave, and I was about to put my head into my hands in embarrassment when my world was tipped upside down all of a sudden. Presley had turned back, picked me up, and thrown me over his shoulder. Before I could say a damn word to stop him, he marched back out onto that stage with my body draped over his—the bright, burning stage lights an inferno on my skin.

  “Presley!” I squealed, hitting his back, my eyes scrunched tight against the light.

  He ignored me, continuing with confidence. The crowd roared to life, the whispers and confused words too loud for me to miss.

  “Looks like our drummer just found a brand new tambou-fucking-rine to play.” Rhett laughed into his microphone.

  “I am going to fucking kill you, Presley West,” I growled, my cheeks flaming with embarrassment. The entire arena will have seen my leather-clad butt cheeks before they’d even seen my face. I’d never been so mortified in my life, and my body overheated as every bone I had rattled inside of me.

  When I was dropped back down to Earth on shaky feet, I reached out to grab Presley’s shoulders to hold myself steady. My knees trembled, and my hands shook.

  I was on the raised platform behind the drum kit, the big screen right behind us focusing on Presley and me, meaning I had a giant version of the both of us directly to my right.

  “I’m going to literally kill you,” I told him with all the anger I could muster, which wasn’t very much considering he was staring back at me with a shit-eating grin that could make any woman’s underwear fall off her without warning.

  Presley winked, grabbed my hand and swung it between us before he sat down on his stool and patted his knee for me to go to him.

  “No,” I mouthed, planting my feet in place, but Presley being Presley just laughed, rolled his eyes, and reached out for me, grabbing my hips and forcing me to sit down on his knee and face the crowd.

  The crowd I couldn’t see. Everyone was a faceless silhouette, their voices washing over me like waves, and their phones flashing above their heads, different spots of light going off in every direction you could imagine.

  “Holy shit,” I breathed.

  “It’s the second-best view in the world.”

  “What could possibly be better than this?”

  “Looking down on you when I’m inside you.”

  Well, I’ll be fucked.

  Presley squeezed my hips in his grip, not giving me time to respond, and he planted a soft kiss to my exposed shoulder before he reached over and grabbed the mic over his drum kit.

  “Hey, guys,” he called to the crowd.

  Two words; that’s all he had to say for every single one of them to scream and take the roof off the place. It was the loudest noise of the night. I’d never heard anything so powerful and pure in my life.

  “Shit,” I whispered to myself.

  “Has my girl gone pale?” Presley asked the crowd, and once again, they cheered at him. “Yeah, she does that a lot.”

  They answered him with an eruption of laughter, their cheers and cries to him sounding more positive than I could ever imagine.

  “That’s because you make her feel sick, bro,” Rhett hit back over his mic.

  “Fuck you, Ryan.” Presley laughed.

  I turned to face him, unable to stop myself from smiling, even though my eyes were wide, and I was silently begging for him to stop. It was obvious the arena was Team Presley. Every time he spoke, the cries shook the ground beneath the venue’s structure.

  “I know I don’t speak a lot at these things. That’s Rhett’s gig,” Presley announced. “That prick needs the adoration more than I do.” The fans laughed, and cameras flashed in every direction, but all I could focus on was the man behind me who was currently making my heart beat so fast, I was convinced it was about to break through my chest. “Truth is, I don’t normally have a lot to say. I’d rather you guys be entertained by someone who is good at keeping you guys pumped. Me? I’m just here to play the damn drums, man.”

  Even more cheers rolled over us in a gigantic wave of adoration.

  Right there on the stage in Paris, with the whole world watching me, and the man I loved squeezing my hip, I suddenly felt an overwhelming need to cry. Presley turned away from the crowd and gazed up at me adoringly, his bedroom eyes in place as he spoke into the mic.

  “I guess tonight is a rare night for me. Tonight, I have a lot to say. See, I’ve been secretly chasing this girl for a while now. Way before she even realised I was chasing her, actually.”

  I scowled, my smile growing bigger as I looked at him.

  “This girl on my lap thought I fell in love with her after one night we spent together, years ago, just before the guys and I headed to London to record our first ever tracks together. This girl used to serve me really shitty pints in this local bar I went to.” Pushing against his chest in warning only made him laugh—the kind of throaty laugh that came from those happy places that can’t be conjured or faked. “And I was an arsehole who used to take different women in there every single week to make her jealous. Every damn week, I’d take someone in there, hoping to God that this girl on my knee would give me a sign—show me something that told me she was interested, because she never seemed interested in anybody, no matter who gave her some attention. That only made me want her more.”

  My face fell, my lips parting as I sucked in a sharp breath. There wasn’t anything but truth there in his eyes.

  “I waited, and I waited. I waited a long motherfucking time, guys, and then one day she finally got jealous, and I fed off of that like the egotistical prick I was. I loved it.” He smirked up at me. “Eventually, after a lot of playing around, she finally gave in, and I got my one night with her. One night that she made count more than she ever even knew.”

  I brought a hand up to his chest, holding it over his heart and feeling the way it pounded heavily against my palm, a private solo for me.

  “Back then, I wanted her. Now? Now, I love her, too,” he told an arena filled with people. “And I thought the whole fucking world should k
now that. Especially you, Tess.”

  The lingering silence lasted a tenth of a second before the entire place erupted into hysterics, their cheering beyond anything it had been all night.

  “You love me,” I sighed dreamily.

  “That’s right, baby.”

  My eyes filled with tears, and I didn’t care that the world was watching.

  I didn’t care who would use it against us, my family included.

  I didn’t care how much hate I’d get for loving him from people I’d never meet.

  “One more time.” I grinned as a single happy tear fell freely down my cheek. “Just for me.”

  “I love you, Cherry.”

  That’s all it took for me to finally crumble and press my lips to his. I held his face in the palms of my hand, letting another tear fall, and hoping with everything I had that Presley West would forever look at me the way he had done tonight.

  My heart was his forever now, and I couldn’t find a single reason not to be elated by that very fact.

  “Let’s close this motherfucking show out!” Rhett roared.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “How bad is it?”

  Julia and I were standing backstage, watching the guys have their post-performance photographs taken against Le Zenith’s promotional backdrop. She was biting her bottom lip when I glanced her way, her amusement obvious.

  “That bad, huh?”

  “Fuck it. We’ll deal with it later. It’s an important night for him. Probably more than you understand. Let him have it.”

  “Planning on it.” I grinned at her.

  She walked away, pulling her phone out of her pocket before taking a call.

  Presley was standing in the middle of his bandmates, his usual moody stare at the camera gone, replaced by a bright, white smile.

  “Le Zenith!” the photographer cried, and the guys all followed, their arms rising high as they shouted out the venue name with joy, while the camera flashed away in their faces.

  When Presley’s eyes met mine across the crowd, he winked and held my gaze, and my whole body heated under his stare. There were men who made you feel special, and then there was Presley West who made you feel like a deity.