Skipped a Beat

by Salsbury, JB

He holds up last night’s dirty pajamas he snagged from my hands. His eyes spark as he lowers them to his nose and holds them there.

  My mouth drops open. That should be disgusting, shouldn’t it? And yet, what the hell, am I panting?

  “I’ll take these,” he says so low and muffled behind the fabric I can hardly hear him.

  “Tour souvenir?”

  His fist clenches around the cotton before he lowers them from his face to reveal a thoughtful frown. “This is new. I get that, so I’ll let that one slide.” He hooks me around the waist and jerks me to him, getting my attention. “If you ever belittle yourself around me again by implying you’re some temporary piece of ass, I will spank yours until it’s raw.”

  My ears perk up.

  He presses his lips to my forehead, kisses me, and groans. “Why do I get the feeling you’d like that?”

  I always assumed it was because I never knew my dad and my mom raised me as her friend rather than her child, but being bossed around in bed, given boundaries and structure, is a huge turn-on. One of the reasons I fell so hard for Steven. Father figure and all.

  It’s gross; I know, but that doesn’t make it less true.

  “Sa-weet!” Ethan says from behind us. “You guys gonna go at it again? Let me grab some lotion, and this time can I watch—ow!” He rubs his arm where Ryder just punched him. “Dude, that’s my strumming arm.”

  “Last night was a one-time event, asshole.”

  Ethan’s lower lip sticks out in an adorable pout. “Bummer. I really enjoyed it.”

  Chris’s hand shoots up into the air from his position at his computer. “Me too!”

  My eyes grow wide on Ryder, and he bursts out laughing.

  I bury my face in Ryder’s chest and groan. “So embarrassing.”

  His hands move up and down my back, firm and soothing. “We’re gonna need our own bus.”

  * * *

  We’re still hours from Seattle. Ryder got cleaned up while Chris made a delicious frittata. Ryder hardly looked at it, passing his piece to me and opting for a protein shake instead.

  “You don’t want it?” Is he crazy? “It’s so good.”

  “So you liked it?” He’s leaned back next to me in the bench seat of the kitchenette table, his eyes smiling as he drinks from his shaker cup.

  I stare down at the piece, salty bacon, spinach, and savory melted cheese. My mouth waters, and my stomach rumbles.

  Ryder chuckles. “Eat up. Before it gets cold.”

  “Your loss,” I mumble as I fork bite after bite into my mouth.

  The guys all shift around the bus, seeming restless, and I hop up to clean my plate and wash the few dishes in the sink. I watch the soap bubbles swirl down the drain, and my mind takes me to dark places. Don’t go thinking you’re special, Jade. Just because Ryder gave you two phenomenal orgasms doesn’t mean there will be a fairy-tale ending for us.

  There’s still so much I don’t know about him, and he knows virtually nothing about me.

  When he finds out, he’ll want nothing to do with me.

  All the more reason to keep my secrets close and ride out this too-good-to-be-true situation until the end.

  Ryder brushes past me from behind, his hand squeezing my hip as he passes. I’m shaking water off my hands when Ethan and Chris follow him to the studio in the back. I lean over to peek inside. Ryder climbs behind the drum kit, and Ethan and Chris pick up guitars. Grateful they don’t close the door, I continue putting things away as music pours from the narrow doorway.

  At first, I’m not sure what they’re playing, not sure if it’s a song or a jumble of sound as they each do their own thing. When Ryder plays harder, Chris joins, and Ethan follows on bass until what started as three separate sounds comes together to form a song that rings familiar.

  Ryder’s feet move fast on the pedals, and his hands just as quick with his sticks, but he hardly looks strained or even winded. He’s smiling at Ethan who’s doubled over, strumming his bass and hair hanging around his face as he bangs his head to the impossibly fast beat. Chris joins in, his fingers expertly plucking at the strings as he nods his head to the beat. I don’t realize I’ve moved into the doorway until Ryder’s gaze slides to mine and he smirks as if to say, You like what you see?

  I roll my eyes, grinning because yeah, I like what I see. It’s no wonder these guys play for someone as talented as Jesse. They’re all equally as talented as he is.

  The song ends abruptly, and Ryder points a stick at me. “Name that song.”

  Caught off guard, I stutter and regret getting so caught up in the playing that I didn’t focus hard enough on the song.

  “Come on, Agent Jay,” Ethan says, earning a scowl from Ryder. “That was a classic.”

  Ryder’s feet start up again, double bass filling the small room until—

  “It’s Metallica!” I yell.

  Ryder hits a quick da-da-da-tsss on the drums and symbol. “Yes!”

  “That doesn’t count,” Chris says. “She needs the song title.”

  I snap my fingers. “Oh, it’s the one about the guy… he was in the war… he has that thing over his face.”

  “Close enough,” Ryder says. “It’s called ‘One,’ babe.”

  My breath freezes in my lungs, and I stare stupidly at the beautiful man behind the drums. He called me babe. In front of his friends and band mates.

  Chris begins playing a different song, and Ethan and Ryder seamlessly join in, none of them fazed by what Ryder just said. While the song goes on, I slump against the doorjamb and give myself a moment to catch my breath. Chris rips out a loud and flawless guitar solo. Suddenly the melody hits me, and I shout, “Oh, oh! ‘Black Parade’! My Chemical Romance!” That song was on my jogging playlist. I’d heard it a million times while beating feet on the Boston pavement.

  Ryder throws his head back laughing, then nods at me and yells, “Two for two!” not once seeming to miss a single stroke while he plays the kick-ass drum part mid-song. I didn’t think it was possible for Ryder to get hotter than he already was, but watching him play so mindlessly, his expression light and unburdened, I want to straddle him again. His gaze tangles with mine, and he flashes his lazy grin that makes me feel like the direction of his thoughts aren’t much different than mine.

  He makes it impossible for my cheeks not to take on more color when he flicks his wrist and mouths, Come here.

  I shake my head, a quick and slight no way, not happening, while they maintain playing.

  Ryder lifts a brow as if to say, Playing hard to get? Two can play at this game.

  The song ends and Ryder sits back in his seat, his denim-clad thighs open. He nods toward his lap and says, “Come here, Jade.”

  Ethan and Chris don’t seem too interested as they fine-tune and pick at their guitars.

  I slip into the cramped room and step carefully around the other guys to get to Ryder behind his drums. My stomach is in knots, and I tangle my fingers in the front of my sweater as the man turns a quarter turn toward me. “You wanna play with me?” When my jaw goes slack, he shakes his head and chuckles. “Not like that. Remember? No more shows for these assholes.” He flicks his chin toward Ethan and Chris, then pats his right thigh. “Sit, come on.”

  Yep, my face is in full flame mode as I step between Ryder’s thighs and sit in his lap. He runs his free hand from my hip to my stomach where my hands are clenched. “Here.” His warm breath is at my ear. “Grab my stick.”

  “Ryder!” I feel more than hear his dark chuckle at my back.

  “Loosen up, okay? I need you limp.”

  “Said no woman ever,” I mumble.

  With a hardly there flex of his hips, he groans, his lips finding my ear. “Impossible to be limp around you.”

  I shiver at the combination of his warm words and growing stiffness under my ass. I’m grateful for the distraction when he slips a stick into my hand, then folds his warm, much bigger hand around mine. Acting as if I’m no more nuisance than a feather on
his thigh, he begins to play a song. His long, powerful fingers clench around mine as his wrist flicks, hitting different drums as if they’re an extension of his own body.

  After a few seconds, Chris and Ethan join in, and my responding smile has to be as goofy as it feels.

  So this is what it feels like to play music. My mom never had the money for music lessons, and my public school in Jacksonville where I grew up had axed music from their list of elective offerings. But music carried me through some of the darkest times in my life, and I’d always wondered what it would be like to be able to make it. Now I know.

  For the next several minutes, we play anything from Adele to Pantera. Ryder slips the second stick in my hand and uses me like some kind of ventriloquist doll on the drums. I drop the stick twice, laugh, tense up and miss a few beats, and by the end of it, he has his arms wrapped around my middle while I attempt to play myself.

  “This is a lot harder than you make it look.” I bite my lips and focus on doing separate things with each hand and each of my feet.

  He nuzzles the back of my neck, pressing secret kisses against my skin that no one else can see and making me shiver over and over again.

  Eventually Chris leaves to go FaceTime his family and Ethan follows him out, I assume, to escape my awful playing. When he closes the door behind him, I realize he’s doing his friend a solid, or maybe Ryder managed to sneak a little nonverbal demand for privacy while I was focused on my lesson.

  Ryder taps my thigh. “Up.”

  I stand only to have him turn me to face him, then pull me back onto his lap in a straddle. With the drumsticks still in my hands, I cross my wrists behind his neck. “Funny, I imagined us in this very position when I first peeked in here.”

  “Did you?” He buries his face in my neck and runs his lips against the sensitive skin below my ear. “We should be at the hotel in…” He pulls away long enough to check a nearby clock. “Two hours. I’m not giving up my room to stay with Ethan this time.” There’s a dark promise in his voice that also sounds a lot like a warning.

  I arch my back and press my torso in tightly to his, making him groan and grip my ass. “So I guess that means I have to room with Ethan or Chris.”

  His fingers dig painfully into the softest flesh of my backside. “Not unless you want me to kill them both.”

  Who knew the blond rich kid would have a possessive streak?

  I tilt my head, opening my neck as he licks and tastes my skin. “That would be bad for the band.”

  “Mm-hmm…” He nips at the corner of my mouth, and I go after his lips, but he deprives me of his kiss and lavishes my jaw with attention.

  “You’re mean,” I whisper.

  “Patience.”

  The only thing softer than his lips is his tongue as he alternates between the two in endless torture.

  “I suppose I could stay with you. Take one for the team.”

  His big, strong hands slide up the back of my sweater, splay over my upper and lower back, holding me to him. “The only thing you’ll be taking is me.” Finally his mouth covers mine, and I sigh in sweet relief when his tongue licks into my mouth. This isn’t a kiss filled with heat and urgency like last night, this is a slow seduction, a deliberate tease with a promise of unimaginable ecstasy to come. I drop the drum sticks at Ryder’s back so I can slip my hands through his silken hair, anchoring my mouth to his in a searing kiss that leaves us both breathless.

  His forehead presses to mine, his pulse racing against the thud of my own throbbing heart. “I can’t get enough of you.”

  “We’ve had one night, and you’ve already gotten more than I ever planned to give.”

  He brings one hand from my back to cup my jaw. “I’m not giving up until I have it all.”

  I swallow hard. “And then? After you’ve taken everything I have to give?”

  A little of the lust that was swirling in his gaze disappears, and his blue eyes lock onto mine. “Then I’ll take more.”

  I close my eyes and shake my head. “Ryder.”

  “Tell me what it is. What are you thinking about that makes you shut down like this?”

  I keep my eyes closed because I can’t bear to watch the disappointment when I say, “Once you know everything, you may no longer want me.”

  “Try me.”

  He sounds so sure. I open my eyes to look into his and ask, “And you’ll share all of you with me?” I run a hand over his shoulder to rest over his heart, the same place where he has a woman’s name inked on his skin—the only bit of ink I’ve yet to see on him at all. Someone so important he had her name scarred into his flesh and yet he refuses to speak of her.

  “She’s not someone I share with a lot of people.” The way he says it sounds like an apology. I’m sorry, Jade, but this is one thing you’ll never get from me.

  “You got the tattoo. You had to assume people would ask.”

  “Just because they ask doesn’t mean they get to know.”

  “Did Rachel ask?”

  “Yes.”

  His quick answer has me leaning back and blinking. “And you didn’t tell her?”

  His expression remains cold as he shakes his head. “People make their assumptions, and I don’t find the need to correct them. The only people who know are my family, and they don’t tell stories that aren’t theirs to share.”

  With that confession, an invisible wall slides up between us.

  “If you’re allowed one part to remain only yours, am I not allowed the same?”

  He mulls it over for a minute, his beautiful lips twisting slightly making him look like a masculine version of his mother, hard yet beautiful. “All right. That’s fair.”

  Disappointment washes over me. I was hoping the ultimatum would force him to confess whatever Rosie means to him. I was hoping then I’d confess all my secrets too, and he’d want to be with me anyway.

  I remind myself again there are no fairy-tale endings for us.

  Just one inevitable end.

  17

  Ryder

  “Damn, that’s a lot of horny women,” Ethan says from his perch in the front of the bus as Charles navigates through a maze of Seattle PD officers holding back rows of our fans in front of the Seattle Four Seasons.

  Handmade signs that say anything from Welcome to Seattle to I Want to Have Your Baby are held up by screaming women who, if they actually got their hands on Jesse,4 would probably kill him.

  “How’d they know you guys would be here?” Jade asks, her face glued to the window.

  Chris shrugs. “They usually figure it out by process of elimination. They know roughly when we’ll be in town and pick the nicest hotels around the arena. Once one bus shows up, they blast it on social media and it’s a fucking circus.”

  “I just saw tents,” Jade says, turning toward me in awe. “Do they sleep out here just to get a chance at seeing Jesse?”

  “Yeah.” I watch as a teenage girl launches herself at an officer’s back like a violent game of Red Rover.

  “It hasn’t always been this bad,” Ethan says. “This last album brought us to some next-level shit.”

  Chris mumbles his agreement.

  “Why don’t you guys have a band name?” Jade asks as Charles continues to stop and go through streets crowded with cars and people. “Why is it just Jesse Lee?”

  Chris, who has been with Jesse the longest, answers. “He started as a solo artist but then decided he wanted a band to write with, other musicians to inspire him. We had a few guys who came and went, but Jesse was a train wreck for a long time, so no one really stuck until Ethan came along. At that point Jes had already become a household name, and it would be stupid not to capitalize on that.”

  The bus makes a sharp turn to the front of the hotel, and security guards wave us through.

  “Manager of the hotel says the lobby is full of fans,” Charles hollers, stating what we’d already figured out.

  Our team of personal assistants and Brent got here hours ago
and have checked us in and put our things in our suites. I grab a baseball hat and my Ray-Bans, and when I see Jade isn’t moving, I snag her hand and pull her to her feet.

  “Where’s your stuff?”

  She blinks at me. “My suitcase is in the closet, and I have a few things in the bathroom I need.”

  “Grab it. I’ll wait for you.”

  She scurries off and Ethan follows Charles off the bus, but Chris hangs back. He stuffs his laptop into his bag, then checks where Jade is before he whispers, “You sure you know what you’re doing?”

  I crack a smile. “If you’re talking about the birds and the bees, yeah, I’m up to date on how it all works.”

  He stares at me, bored and unimpressed.

  I chuckle and slap him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry so much. I’ll take care of her.”

  “It’s just…” When Jade steps out of the bathroom to shove things in her suitcase, Chris steps closer. “We have no clue who she is. She was homeless ten days ago, and since then, she’s given us nothing.”

  “I know her.”

  He lifts his brows.

  “Okay, I don’t know everything, but I plan to know more really soon.”

  “Think about it, Ryder. What if you find out she’s fucking crazy, or she’s run away from three dead bodies, or she’s on a last trip cross-country because she’s dying of some kind of sexually transmitted super virus. And if things go bad here and you get rid of her, then we’ve made a young, vulnerable woman homeless again.”

  I sigh and shake my head just as Jade rolls her suitcase down the bus hallway. “It’ll be okay. I promise.” I clap Chris on the shoulder and then take Jade’s bag for her and guide her toward the front of the bus.

  A roar of female screaming explodes all around us. Jesse’s bus must have pulled in.

  Brent frowns at me from behind his aviators, his chin dipping as he notices me holding Jade’s hand. I half-expect him to make some shitty comment I’ll have to smooth over and assure Jade it’s just Brent being his usual asshole self. “You have press interviews in one hour. I’ll send Security for you in forty minutes.”