Taut Strings: A Rock Star Romance (River Valley Rebels)

by Gabrielle Sands

  At some point, we had acquired a blanket and pillows, but my back still screamed in protest when I tried to get up from under Silas’s arm.

  He appeared to be a heavy sleeper, unbothered by my movements, and I took advantage of this opportunity to study his features. His hair fanned out across his pillow, and he looked so peaceful that I immediately wondered if that had anything to do with our earlier activities.

  A shiver ran through me at the memory. This was insane. I had no idea what I was doing sleeping with three members of the band, but for once, I didn’t want to spiral down into thinking of all the ways this could go wrong.

  I padded over to the kitchen after pulling on my discarded shirt from last night and started to make coffee. When the smell wafted through the entire apartment, Silas finally awoke with a groan.

  “Please tell me last night wasn’t another one of those goddamn dreams,” he mumbled, cracking his eyes open and taking me in.

  Arousal crept up my thighs and settled between my legs as he very deliberately dragged his gaze up my body.

  “Dreams have never made me this sore,” I shot back, enjoying the satisfied smirk that appeared on his face.

  He got up from the floor, still completely nude, and walked toward me, his cock already at half-mast. I gulped my coffee down, burning my throat in the process.

  “Coffee?” I asked, my pulse speeding up.

  He shook his head. “I’m craving something else this morning.” His voice was still husky from sleep.

  I didn’t know what I’d expected from Silas, but the dominant way he’d claimed me last night had surprised me. It was different from my experiences with Cole and Ezra, which despite being intense, had been in many ways easy and fun.

  Sex with Silas was like an extreme sport. It was exhilarating and full of adrenaline, leaving you drained and content in its wake. Thankfully, I’d had a few hours of sleep to recharge.

  I curled my hand around his thick length, stroking him as he hoisted me up on the kitchen counter and pulled my panties off.

  “I want to taste you,” I told him. I wasn’t sure how well he’d fit into my mouth, but I wanted to find out.

  “Later,” he whispered into my ear as he pushed himself through my folds.

  We moaned in unison as he buried himself as deep as he could. I fell onto the counter, my back muscles screaming at me for the continual abuse, and flung the half-filled coffee cup off the surface, the shattering sound only seeming to encourage Silas to thrust harder.

  My release was building quickly, and I gripped the edges of the counter, trying to steady myself as Silas kept up his punishing pace. His hand drifted across my hip bone, and then his thumb was drawing circles around the hard bundle of nerves between my legs, making me see stars.

  “You’re so goddamn beautiful when you’re splayed in front of me like this,” he growled, pressing his thumb a little harder.

  I moaned in response, feeling a familiar tightness coil inside. I was so close, so fucking close to shattering.

  “Come on my cock, baby. Let me see you fall apart.”

  His words did me in. And my writhing, climaxing body must have had the same effect on him, because his pace grew frantic.

  “Fucking hell, Adeline,” he bit out, his eyes closing as he shuddered his own release.

  God, he was magnificent when he came.

  He continued pumping into me for a few more moments before offering a hand and pulling me up into a tight embrace. My fingernails dug crescents into his shoulders as I struggled to catch my breath, my body still humming with the aftermath of the orgasm.

  “I don’t know how I’m supposed to let you leave after this,” he said.

  I opened my mouth to say something witty, but a firm knock broke on the door.

  We froze, staring at each other. My brows shot up in a silent question, and he shook his head. He wasn’t expecting anyone.

  “Dude! It’s past twelve. Wake the fuck up!” Cole’s voice sounded. “We brought lunch for your sick ass.”

  His face spelled confusion as clearly as mine did panic. He pulled out with a hiss, and I pushed past him, looking for my clothes, picking up my panties from the ground and frantically trying to figure out how we were going to get out of this.

  “One sec!” Silas yelled before grabbing me by the shoulders. “Adeline, calm down,” he whispered. “It’s going to be fine. Just go get dressed. I’ll clean up here.”

  I nodded, rushed to the bathroom, and locked the door. My reflection confirmed my fears. Everything about me screamed that I’ve just been thoroughly fucked.

  There was no time to shower, so I quickly wiped the wetness off my inner thigh and got dressed. My hair was hopeless, but I washed my face and rinsed my mouth with the Listerine I found beneath the sink.

  When I heard the guys come in, I took one last look in the mirror, took a deep breath, and went back into the living room.

  Cole’s and Ezra’s chatter stopped when they saw me. Abel wasn’t with them, which lessened my stress somewhat, and I mustered a casual smile.

  “Hey! Welcome back. How was your trip?”

  Ezra shot Silas a look, but the tall guitarist didn’t react in any discernible way.

  Cole came over and gave me a warm hug. “Great, until the forecast changed, and we had to leave a day early to avoid getting rained on in the middle of nowhere,” he said. Taking a step back, he scanned my appearance, as if trying to work something out.

  Actually, I knew exactly what he was trying to work out. I just hoped he wouldn’t.

  “Seems like you took my request to make sure Silas would be okay very seriously,” Ezra said with a teasing grin.

  I flushed. “Yeah, I kept him company when I wasn’t at the bar.”

  “Uh-huh.” Ezra gave me a pointed look before turning away and pulling out wrapped breakfast sandwiches from a big paper bag. “Want lunch? I got extras since Silas eats like an elephant.”

  I’d never felt more awkward in my entire life. They both suspected what had happened, and that, rather than Silas, was the elephant in the room.

  I shot Silas a desperate look, and he returned it with a barely perceptible shrug. He was leaving it up to me to decide if we wanted to lay it all out in the open.

  As we dug into our sandwiches, I stole nervous looks at Ezra and Cole, searching for signs of resentment. I didn’t find any. They kept their faces mostly neutral, sending amused looks in Silas’s direction and in mine, as if waiting for us to break. Maybe they really didn’t mind sharing me. After all, Silas knew I’d been with his friends, and he didn’t have a problem with it. Wouldn’t it be easier to lay it all out in the open right now?

  No. I wasn’t ready to face this head-on. The thought of having that conversation made me clam up. And anyway, what was there to discuss if they were leaving in just one week?

  “So tell us more about the trip,” I prompted, attempting to end the silence that was starting to feel much too loaded. I was eager to know if they’d been able to convince Abel to keep going with the band, but I didn’t feel comfortable asking that outright.

  “Abel fell out of the canoe at one point,” Cole said immediately. “Easily my favorite part.”

  He told us a few other funny incidents from the trip, including when Ezra’s sleeping bag almost caught on fire, and when Cole thought that a bunny rustling in the bushes was a wolf.

  After we stopped laughing, Ezra took on a more serious tone. “It was good to get away from the town,” he admitted. “I think being here for so long has been hard for Abel. There are too many places that remind him of our visits with Charlie.”

  His words were like a knife to the gut. Did I need any more confirmation that they would be out of here as soon as the recording was done? Suddenly, I was no longer hungry.

  I stood up to throw my half-eaten sandwich into the garbage. “I’m glad you had a good time. I should head home and get some chores done before my shift starts. See you on Monday?”

  Ezra tur
ned in his chair to look at me. “Hey, how did your band’s practice go?”

  If there was one thing I didn’t feel like doing, it was replaying that sad tale all over again.

  “Silas can bring you up to speed,” I said, casting the guitarist a preemptively grateful look. He nodded in response, an unspoken promise in his eyes.

  Ezra’s forehead creased, but I was already clutching my bag and walking toward the door.

  “See you Monday, Adeline!” Cole yelled, and I raised my hand in a wave without looking back.

  SILAS

  “Spill it,” Cole demanded as soon as Adeline was out the door.

  I gave him a blank look. I wasn’t going to tell them what had happened between Adeline and I when she’d just held back from saying anything.

  That’s not to say I thought her decision was the right one.

  “It’s not like we can’t put together what happened here this weekend, but a confirmation would be nice,” Ezra added.

  “Well, you’re not getting one,” I retorted. They’d held their tongues pretty damn well about sleeping with her, so why the hell would I play it differently? I stood up from the kitchen stool and collapsed on the couch. Damn, it smelled like Adeline.

  Cole let out a long breath. “Okay, we’ll work on our assumptions then.”

  “Hold on,” Ezra butt in. “What happened with Through Azure Skies?”

  I told them what had gone down on Thursday, and by the end of my retelling, they both wore thoughtful expressions. I could guess what they were thinking.

  “How did the talk go with Abel?” Before leaving for the trip, they had told me all about their plans to convince him to stay together after we were done with the album. I was onboard with that plan as quick as lightning and was pissed that I couldn’t be there when they spoke to him.

  That is, before Adeline had came by to play nurse.

  “We got him to agree to consider it. I think we really have a chance,” Cole said with a hopeful expression.

  This was incredible news. Everything was slowly coming together in my head. I gave Cole a hard look. “We should ask Adeline to join Bleeding Moonlight.”

  Cole’s face broke out into an enthusiastic smile. “Fuck yes.”

  “Do you think she’s ready?” Ezra asked.

  I scratched my beard at his question. “In terms of skill or mentality?”

  “Mentality, of course,” the redhead clarified. “We all know she’s got what it takes in terms of skill.”

  It was a hard question to answer. Adeline still didn’t strike me as a risk-taker, but then again, this weekend had showed she could go out on a limb when she wanted to.

  “She’s afraid of believing in herself,” I mused.

  “Question is why? And can we change that?” Cole added.

  “If we’re right about the events of this weekend, we’re getting through to her,” Ezra said, looking for any reaction on my face, which of course he didn’t get. “Let me guess, she didn’t want to tell us about you two because she’s worried about our reaction. I thought you hinted to her that we’d be fine with it, Cole?”

  “I did. But you’ve got to admit, this is an unusual arrangement. We’ve all had more time to come to terms with it,” Cole added.

  Ezra sighed. “Who would have thought it’d feel so fucking right.”

  Even though I was keeping my mouth shut, I couldn’t help but agree with Ezra in my head. My initial hesitations had all but disappeared by now. Somehow, all of us being with her felt organic. Natural.

  And what about Abel? a voice cautioned inside my head.

  If she got through to that salty motherfucker, it would be a miracle.

  “Part of getting her to agree will be making sure she’s comfortable with this whole thing,” Cole said, making a circle with his arms to emphasize he was talking about our relationship.

  “I agree.” Ezra stood up to pace the room. “There’s also Abel. He seemed a lot better this weekend, but who knows if he’ll be back in one of his moods now that we’re back.”

  “He told me he wrote a song with Adeline,” I offered, remembering what the singer had told me before they left.

  “Whoa,” Cole exclaimed as Ezra stopped his pacing. “That’s huge. If that’s not a sure sign she’s perfect for us, I don’t know what is.”

  “It’s funny, because between all of us, I think she and Abel are the most similar.”

  Ezra and Cole waited for me to continue.

  “They both want something so badly they’d rather give up instead of risk failing. Adeline wants to be a career musician, but instead, she feeds that intense desire with crumbs, and it can’t do anything but start to eat her from the inside. Abel wants Bleeding Moonlight to be successful, but he’s terrified we won’t be able to without Charlie, so he wants to break up.”

  We all pondered that for a minute.

  “I think you nailed it on the head,” Ezra said after a while. “The crazy thing is that they can each be the solution to the other’s problem.

  “Hmm,” I nodded. “We need to talk to Abel about asking Adeline to join the band before we hint at anything to her, but in the meantime, I was thinking we do something to cheer her up.”

  Cole sat up straight, his eyes shining with excitement. “I know the perfect thing. I just got four tickets to a Mastery concert on Thursday. I can call my contact for a fifth, and we can all go together with Adeline. It’s in Philadelphia, so we could record during the day and leave after six for the drive.”

  I knew Adeline liked Mastery because we had played one of their songs earlier. I grinned at Cole, “I think this is going to be a ton of fun.”

  Abel opened the door with a scowl on his face. Obviously, his improved mood hadn’t extended past the camping trip.

  “You’re not sick anymore,” he concluded after giving me a once-over.

  “I had a good nurse,” I responded gruffly.

  “Hmm, Adeline to the rescue once again.” His voice was laced with sarcasm I really did not appreciate.

  “We have something to discuss, sunshine,” Cole said, pushing Abel aside and walking into the house.

  We crowded around his kitchen island, waiting for Ezra to make our case. He was always best equipped to get through to Abel.

  “Her band broke up this week,” he started. “We’re almost done with the album and I think we can all agree that she knocked it out of the park. We need a guitarist, and we’ve got a brilliant one. We all think we should ask her to join the band.”

  Abel didn’t react immediately, which only set me on my guard. He zeroed in on me.

  “What happened to her being a lead guitarist? You don’t want to give her a chance to find a band where she’ll be the star of the show?”

  I shrugged, the answer coming to me easily. “She’ll play whatever parts she wants to play. We’ve worked together long enough for me to know there won’t be any issues with that.”

  “You’re all fucking her, aren’t you?”

  It was like he’d pulled a string and made us stand up straighter with that question. “This isn’t about that,” I said.

  “Like hell it’s not. What happens when she grows bored with you or vice versa? Or when you all start fighting over her? How fucking great is that going to be for the band?”

  Seeing Cole’s face morph into a furious smirk made Abel take a step back.

  “If you’d give her a chance instead of sulking about everything in your goddamn life, you would know how idiotic that question is.”

  “This thing between us is not a fling,” Ezra stepped in, keeping his tone carefully cool. “It’s real. It doesn’t make sense from the outside, Abel, but once you’re in it, it’s the only thing that makes sense.”

  He glared at Ezra, but didn’t say anything back.

  “So?” Cole prodded. “Do you want her to fucking audition or something?”

  “No,” Abel growled. “I know she’s good. It’s not her skills I’m worried about. It’s the whole ba
nd dynamic.”

  “Look—” I let out a long breath, “—without her here, there won’t be a band dynamic, because there probably won’t be a band. If we start auditions, you’re going to compare everyone to Charlie and find something wrong with them. You’re still doing that to Adeline, even though she’s been playing with us for three weeks and has more than proven herself. There’s no downside to this, only a potential upside.”

  “And honestly, what the hell is wrong with the dynamic?” Cole interjected. “We gel like fucking peanut butter and jelly. You could be part of the happy sandwich if you’d only give her a chance.”

  Abel rolled his eyes.

  “You wrote a song with her,” I reminded him. “You can’t tell me that didn’t mean anything to you.”

  That struck a nerve in him. He looked at his feet, hiding his face with his long blond hair, his hand gripping the counter. When his eyes met mine again, there was pain and longing in them. For Adeline? For Charlie? Both?

  “Fine. Let’s ask her to join. She might still say no to us.”

  I hadn’t noticed the tension in my shoulders until they sagged in relief at Abel’s words. We were all in.

  Ezra smiled. “Okay. Let’s plan to do it the day of the concert, near the end of the week. In the days leading up to it, we’ll do everything we can to ensure she’ll say yes.”

  21

  ADELINE

  “Mastery backstage passes?” My voice was incredulous. “Is it Christmas already?”

  “I mean…for Ezra and me, Christmas came just over a week ago, so looks like Santa’s all over the place this year,” Cole said with a grin on his beautiful face.

  I blushed, immediately picking up on what he meant. His smile grew at my reaction, and he looked around the parking lot before pressing me up against the side of his car. It was Monday morning, and we were waiting for the rest of the band to arrive.

  The chill of the morning disappeared as soon as his hard body pressed up against mine.