by Cherrie Lynn
“You did?” She hadn’t known about it.
“Yeah.” He smirked. “Apparently, he has a crush on someone. He’s seen her on Facebook hanging out with some other boy. But don’t tell him I told you. He’s embarrassed.”
“Poor fella.”
“I know, right? I told him to feel what he’s feeling, just don’t unpack and live there. Love fucking sucks.”
The pronouncement threw ice water on every last shred of desire she’d been feeling. He would know better than she did. “If we don’t work out for whatever reason, I’ll have given up everything and gotten nothing for it.” He opened his mouth to retort, but she laid her palm against it. “You don’t have to worry about this, Elijah. I do. This fear and risk are mine alone. No promises you make me are going to make it go away.”
He gently clasped her wrist to move her hand, planting a kiss into her palm before lacing his fingers through hers. She loved when he did that. God, she loved when he did everything. “I know that, baby. I know. If I could take it away, I would.”
“Let’s just . . . try to make it through. Keep seeing each other when we can. If we still feel the same after some time, then yes. I want to be with you. But I’m too scared to go all in yet. I’m sorry.” Somehow, saying those words gave her a rush of strength she hadn’t known she possessed when it came to him. She drew a deep breath. It cleansed her.
“I respect that,” he said softly, watching her face. “Goddamn, I hate it. But I respect it.”
“You don’t hate it more than I do,” she told him. “That’s a promise.”
Thirty-three
He thought she was wrong about that. As city after city passed by outside the bus windows, he became more and more certain of it. Iris wasn’t only a fixture in his kids’ lives. She’d become a fixture in his.
Day after day it got worse. When she was relaxing on the couch up front, one leg crossed over the other as she read a book on her tablet, he wanted to be beside her. Wanted to be touching her. It was almost a little game they played, where they tried to see who could keep their eyes off each other the longest. Of course, there was no way to keep score. But rarely did he ever meet her clear blue gaze when it wasn’t skittering away from his, and a little smile would curl her lips, and he wanted to leap across the space between them and kiss that mouth breathless. His hands ached to be on her body. Always. Always.
They stole moments when they could. A caress here, a kiss there. Those brief touches were almost more painful than complete abstinence. But he couldn’t stop himself, when he had to pass by her in the narrow hallway between bunks, from brushing his fingertips along any length of skin she might be showing.
Lately, she showed more. Her cardigans were a thing of the past, and whether that was from the summer heat or to drive him insane, he wasn’t sure, but the latter was certainly a side effect. Now she was all glowing bare shoulders, graceful neck, slender arms. Her soft skin was completely enticing when her hair was up, but somehow even more so when the dark strands were down. He only wanted to lift it away, put his mouth to her throat, and breathe his fill of her sweetness.
Sometimes, all he could do was stare, to hell with whomever might be watching.
The lyrics he often sat down to scratch out on yellow legal pads came more easily than usual. She’d shone her light into the twisted dark corridors of his mind, the places he went to pull the emotions that fueled his creativity. Ruin could never do a love song. He could never write a love song, or at least, he’d never thought he could. Heidi had pestered him for one, but the inclination had never been there, and he couldn’t force it. After their separation, though, he’d had plenty of shit to say on the next album. All of it driven by her betrayal.
The only kind of love song he knew how to write was one that explored the devastation left smoldering in its wake. The pain and bad blood, the mangled lives.
But at this very moment, Iris sat across from him, Dylan snuggled beside her engaging in his mandatory reading, and the sunlight filtering through the bus windows was casting its halo in her shiny black hair as she helped him with the word duplicitous. Eli could tell him a thing or two about it, but it wasn’t anything the boy needed to hear. Tearing his gaze from the angelic sight in front of him, he put pen to paper.
You’re digging me out of my grave
But I was safe there
When he glanced up after staring at the two lines for a moment, Iris was smiling at him, sky-blue eyes alight with happiness. While Dylan continued reading, she picked up her cell phone and typed something. A few seconds later, Eli’s phone vibrated silently beside him. He couldn’t grab it fast enough.
You’re hot when you brood.
Smirking, he wrote back: Only then?
Well, when it’s all you ever do . . .
You’re hot when you exist.
He watched as she read, specifically to observe the pink radiance rising in her face. Fuck, he needed her. It had been too many days already, and the tour schedule coming up was hard and fast.
Eli was still pondering it when Iris pronounced reading time over, and Dylan jumped up to entertain them with his lightning-quick celebratory floss dance. If there was anything as lovely as Iris doting on his kids, it was her laughter. Loud, heartfelt, appreciative. Solely to hear more of it, Eli slapped his pad face down on the table and jumped up to challenge his son in a dance-off. Somewhere in the middle of their shoot dance, Iris fell over laughing, wiping tears from her eyes. Once Seger heard the commotion and came to investigate, he turned Scarlxrd up so loud the bus windows rattled and proceeded to school them all. The little dude was agile.
As if Eli hadn’t been feeling old enough lately. Grateful for the reprieve, he dropped next to Iris to let Seger and Dylan take each other on, winded from exertion and laughter. It felt so natural to be here beside her. The only unnatural thing was not being able to put an arm around her shoulders and pull her close while they watched the boys’ antics. Talk about a damper on his rare lightheartedness. She glanced at him with a shy little smile, and he could practically see the same need reflected in her eyes. His kids probably wouldn’t even notice if he acted on his urge, but he couldn’t risk it.
It majorly fucking sucked.
She thought the early days on tour had been torturous, but nothing prepared her for these. Hiding her presence had been a hundred times easier than hiding her feelings in front of the boys.
When she wanted to take his hand, she couldn’t. When she wanted to flirt, she couldn’t. She was afraid to even look at him when other people were around, afraid someone would see blatant adoration in her eyes, but most of the time she couldn’t help herself. Everything about him left her spellbound.
His pad rested face down on the table where he’d left it, the one he used to jot down ideas for lyrics. He’d been carrying it with him for the past couple of days, something she found endearing. Most people would probably make a note on their phones or tablets, but he’d told her the blank sheets made him focus.
She knew she shouldn’t snoop. But he’d written something on that pad earlier, then looked up at her with an expression that tore at her heart. An unaccustomed gentleness, a longing, as if she were something rare and priceless just out of his reach. He looked at her that way when he was inside her. She couldn’t abide that emotion on his face when she wasn’t able to touch him, to soothe him.
So, when they pulled in to the next venue early that afternoon, she couldn’t resist flipping the pad over to peek once he’d taken the boys outside. After all, she told herself, it wasn’t as if he’d taken great pains to hide it from her.
You’re digging me out of my grave
But I was safe there
The two lines stood out stark black on the page in his elegant block capitals. They sank into her heart and twisted something there as she put the pad back down. I would keep you safe, she thought, staring into nothing until her eyes ached and burned.
Footsteps on the bus steps jerked her from her funk, and sh
e blinked rapidly, realizing too late that she had only placed the pad on the table, not turned it over like he’d left it. Eli paused when he saw her, then sighed and ambled forward, stuffing his hands in his jeans pockets. He was by himself.
“Where are the boys?” she asked too brightly.
“Riding scooters with Russell’s kids.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Came to see if you wanted to grab something to eat.”
She would actually love more than anything to jump in a car and go somewhere with him, but it wasn’t a possibility. “I’m not very hungry.”
Eli’s mouth turned down. “You haven’t been eating much, babe.”
He wasn’t only hot when he brooded. He was hot when he showed concern for her, the way his brow furrowed and the lines around his mouth deepened. The way he was someone completely different as he sat next to her, and his gaze fell to the words on the page in front of them. She didn’t dare speak as he gathered his thoughts, only remained still and absorbed the warmth of him at her side.
“Seems I got comfortable there,” he finally said.
“You can stay,” she replied softly, “if that’s what you want.”
“It isn’t.” A breath of relief left her as he went on. “It’s safe, but it’s dark, and it’s cold.”
“Eli.”
Fluidly, he turned and captured her face with one hand as his mouth sought hers in a desperate but tender kiss. Iris shook apart inside, arms going around him, fingers sinking into his hair. He’d brought the summer warmth in with him, and she basked in it, drinking in his taste, starving for it. His tongue was sweet and teasing in her mouth. She whimpered at his thoroughness, at the way he kissed her every time as if it might be the last.
“If we could stay here and do this—only this—for hours,” he murmured, “I would be good with that. What I wouldn’t give to have you all to myself, somewhere no one knows us, for days. Weeks.”
“Months?”
“Years.”
Really? Her heart sang as he pulled her closer, and she could still hardly believe this was real, that he felt this way.
The boys’ approaching voices flung them apart, Iris jumping to her feet to put fast distance between them before they could be seen. She fled to the back before any of them could see her turmoil.
For the rest of the evening and throughout the show, she felt the heaviness of Eli’s gaze on her, the smoldering arousal deep in her belly responding wildly to it, nearing a breaking point she feared was fast coming. She didn’t know how much more of this she could be expected to take.
Even worse was after the show, when he closed his bedroom door, shutting her out, leaving her to face her cold, lonely bunk for yet another night. But at least in that small space, she could take a breath and collect herself from the torture of the day. Read, binge watch something, or just lie still and think.
The latter didn’t appeal of late. Thinking invited imagining the catastrophe that potentially awaited them.
Some time well after two a.m., her cell phone vibrated.
Hi
Iris chuckled. He was a goofball. But his next text wiped the smirk off her face.
Come back here
She closed her eyes for a moment as her heart fluttered up into her throat, and even more places on her body fluttered down below. It took several tries before her clumsy thumbs could tap the correct letters. The boys.
They can sleep through an earthquake. You know that.
Was he suggesting that what they did together didn’t rock the very earth? It always did. She shouldn’t go. But oh, how she wanted to. And oh, how wrong it was.
I want you, he said, another text bubble popping up immediately, so fucking much.
Eli.
Come say that in my ear and I’ll be okay. I’m so fucking hard for you that I hurt all over.
She lowered her phone to her chest and drew a deep breath, trying not to imagine what his words were showing her. It was no use. Warmth bloomed between her legs, soft and aching. She would touch herself, but she knew her own fingers would be a poor substitute for his.
Her phone vibrated to life again. She lifted it to see.
Worst of all is my heart.
A sound tore itself from her throat before she could stop it. She’d never thought he would be such a wounded romantic, and his pain bled through everything he said to her, even those letters on a phone screen.
My heart hurts too, she told him. I don’t know what to say.
We don’t have to say anything. Or do anything, if you don’t want. Or I could lick your pussy all the way to Miami. Your call.
She would have barked laughter if all this didn’t require she stay utterly silent. Her face was hot. She wiped a hand across her brow, feeling the dampness there. When she didn’t reply to him, he said, Making me fucking beg. You cruel, beautiful thing.
He was the cruel one, the gorgeous man. Iris bit her lip and drew a deep breath. I don’t think I could be quiet, she told him. I don’t think you could, either. So far Heidi’s words to Talia had been proven true several times over, not that thinking of him and Heidi together didn’t turn her stomach.
I can if I have to be. For you I can do anything.
She wasn’t sure she believed him.
As quietly as she could, she climbed from her bunk. She didn’t even know herself anymore. All was silent in the boys’ own beds as she crept past them and slipped into the back, closing and locking the door behind her. Her heart beat so loudly in her ears as Eli looked up at her from his bed, it almost drowned out the road noise beyond the bus walls.
The mirrors. God, she’d nearly forgotten the mirrors.
Thirty-four
She swallowed thickly and took the hand he reached out, gasping as he pulled her on top of him.
“I can’t stand thinking of you outside my door,” he whispered. “All by yourself while I’m back here. It doesn’t seem right. If nothing else, you should take the bed, and I’ll sleep out there with the boys.”
“You know we can’t do that. You’re the star.”
“You’re my star.”
She laid her head on his chest while his arms went around her, hands stroking her back. God, she missed that caress when she couldn’t have it. “I shouldn’t be here,” she said, tracing patterns across his naked skin. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“You’re here because you’re tired, and you’re stressed, and my kids are a handful, and so am I. I’m not the easiest motherfucker to deal with day in and day out. You’re here because you need this as much as I do, and I’m here because I want to give it to you. Nothing more and nothing less.”
Iris pushed herself up so that she sat on him, staring down at him sadly as his words had their desired effect, weaving her heart in that dark spell only he was capable of. Taking his hand, she lifted it to the top of her shoulder, where he could slowly pull the strap of her pajama top down her arm. As he took it upon himself to take care of the other strap, Iris raised her eyes to the mirrors, watching the progression with a sort of numb breathlessness. Had she known, somehow, from that very first day, that she would end up here?
No. Never. Surely not ever.
She swallowed thickly as he revealed the upper swells of her breasts, slipping lower, and then her nipples were exposed the cool air and to her sight. And his. She shuddered.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured, leaving her shirt scrunched around her waist and lifting his hands to cup her. Iris could both watch and feel him touching her body. “So fucking beautiful.”
It took all her restraint not to contradict him. Why was that? Why had she always been so hard on herself? She was beautiful. She licked her lips, watching the woman in the mirror make the same sensual gesture.
Holding his dark head to her, she took in her fingers sifting through the sinfully soft strands, the way they lifted and fell back into place. The muscles of his bare back enticed her, the tattoos shifting as he moved, pulling her closer. Between her legs, she fe
lt evidence of his earlier words, felt how hard and hot he was for her.
It was easy to go from straddling him to wrapping her legs around him. He gripped her ass and held her tight, keeping her from rocking against him the way she needed. “Greedy,” he cajoled as she whimpered.
Iris couldn’t help it; she’d remained in a state of heightened arousal since that first night in the hotel. He’d done this to her, and now he took arrogant pleasure in prolonging her agony. “Kiss me?” she asked, even her whisper coming out shaking and ragged.
Their mouths collided with all the repressed hunger of the past several days, unleashed in this place where no one could walk in on them. She sighed her relief as his hands explored her body with feverish intent, reigniting any nerves lying dormant since the last time she’d had him.
“Iris,” he said in that half-teasing tone he had that she’d come to realize meant he was about to say something delightfully dirty. “I want you to watch yourself when you come in my mouth.” He dragged that mouth across her skin, avoiding the rosy flesh that wanted his attention the most. “I want you to see what I see.”
Helplessly, she nodded. Whatever he wanted. But how did he plan to . . .?
It didn’t matter. She’d given the reins over to him, and he hadn’t led her astray yet. But when he lay back and pulled her hips up his body, arranging her thighs on either side of his head, she bit down hard on her lip. Even though her shorts and panties were still on, she could feel the warmth of his breath gusting over her dampness. All he did was pull the fabric aside, and suddenly, devastatingly, his mouth was on her.
Iris had to clap both hands over her soft cry as his tongue fluttered across her clit before he sucked at it gently. If she continued to remember the kids sleeping only on the other side of the wall, it would be a miracle.
“Take these off,” he ordered gruffly after a moment of blinding pleasure, and it was surely some ploy to torture her because her legs were so heavy and her movements so uncoordinated she could barely accomplish the feat of dragging her shorts and panties off. But she’d do anything to get his hot mouth back on her.
