Hung Out: A Needles and Pins Rock Romance (67 page)

She smiled her thanks and zombie-walked into the elevator. Glancing down at the sleeve the card was in, she punched the correct floor number and sagged against the wall as the car began to move.

Rest
. Maybe she would do just that. Mix her own sleeping potion and snooze from now until her phone alarm went off for the next entry on the itinerary. According to today’s schedule, they were in Milan. Italy! However, she’d learned better than to sightsee on her own after becoming lost on foot in Austria. It had been a Google-Maps, Google-Translator, no-taxi-in-sight disaster, and she never wanted to feel that helpless again. Asking Gage to go with her was out of the equation for a while.

He would stew angrily for a few days and then act as if nothing happened. Gage couldn’t stay mad.

“Gage, tell your sister you’re sorry.”

“No. It was her fault.”

His father hadn’t convinced him to apologize for shoving her when unseen by their parents, she’d slapped him first. But despite being grounded for the weekend, by the time Monday rolled around, he’d surprised her with a poster from the newest Marvel movie given to him by a friend who had a producer father. He’d even helped her hang it, grinning and chattering the entire time.

Coming back to the present, she picked up the room service menu. While scanning it for her own rumbling stomach, she habitually created a text of foods advisable to the diet Landon and Gage were trying to maintain on tour. Before hitting ‘send,’ she backed Gage’s name off.

After unsuccessfully trying to play guitar, watch television, choose anything for herself to eat, take a nap, she gave everything up when she couldn’t stop thinking of the condoms. She was in the wrong just as she had been years ago in the slap/shove incident. She was an adult now and should be acting like one instead of waiting for Gage to forgive and forget. Standing before the mirror, she used her fingers to comb her hair into a ponytail and dabbed at the dark circles beneath her eyes with concealer. She sent a text to the tour manager, and the reply to her inquiry came back immediately.

Gage was just a few doors down from her. Staring at the four numbers in the text, she waited for courage to miraculously rain like manna from the heavens, but it didn’t. With the room number etched into her mind, she pocketed the phone. Her legs felt like weighted sandbags as she stepped into the hallway and carried herself past one, two, and then stopped before the third door with the matching four numbers. Lifting a shaky hand, she knocked.

She had rapped three times over a five-minute period when she decided he was either sound asleep or out. Equal parts relief and depression overtook her when she turned away. The elevator pinged open down the hall and Gage stepped out.

His attention was on his phone screen as he walked. She drank him in as he closed the distance between them, unaware of her presence. Putting the device closer to his lips, he spoke, seemingly dictating a text.

“Haven’t decided. But I’m really in no position to say no. Not like anyone else is beating my door dow―” And here, he cut the end of his sentence off when he suddenly locked eyes with her.

His arm fell. The text appeared forgotten as his long legs, encased in the sexy straight jeans that looked so good on him, slowed their stride. He wore a belt today, which was rare for him, and she had a split second fantasy of it looped around her wrists.

What the hell?

She and Gage had never been straight vanilla, but neither had he ever restrained her with more than a grip of his long guitar picking fingers.

“Wassup, Sis?” His casual tone sounded recovered from his fury of a couple of hours ago, but his features were still stony instead of relaxed.

Stop calling me that!
“I have a confession.” Across the hall, a door opened, and one of the faces she recognized as a tech on their tour nodded at the two of them before departing toward the elevators. Unnerved at the interruption and their lack of privacy, she lost what focus she had. “Can I come in?” He’d made no move thus far to unlock his door, and she chewed at the inside of her lip while waiting for his ruling.

Without a word, he jabbed the keycard into the slot, flipped the latch, pushed the door open with one arm, and motioned with his chin for her to go ahead. After crossing the threshold, she hovered near the door when it clanged closed behind him. He flicked his phone to one of the tightly made beds and turned to face her, hands resting on his hips.

When she was quiet too long, he repeated, “Wassup, Sis?” And this time she was sure he’d stressed the ‘S’ word.

Shifting her weight, she forced the words out. “I was counting them.” Her throat constricted, refusing to say the word condoms. His brows drew together, clearly not yet understanding what she was blabbing about, and she tried again. “I was going through your bag to count them. Not take them. See, when you left your bag with mine the morning of the festival—was it Budapest?” The towns were a blur. “It was the time you stayed in my room. I looked in your bag to make sure you had everything before our guys took the luggage. Anyway, I started folding the clothes that looked clean, and by the time it was all said and done, I noticed there were eight.” She braved a look and found his intent gaze roving her face. “Condoms. Eight. I don’t know why it stuck with me.”
Yeah you do…
“But this morning… This morning I just wanted to know if there were still eight.”

“Why?” His look had softened, and the borderline pity lurking in the depths of his dark eyes suggested he knew exactly why she’d felt the need to count condoms the morning after he’d had gorgeous women draped on his lap and rubbing against him on the dance floor.

She felt one of her shoulders lift in the barest shrug, and her reply was mumbled to the carpet fibers. “I don’t know.” There was no way she would say it aloud—would give a voice to the wondering if he’d banged one or more of those women against a bathroom stall. When she thought about it, despite the gentleness of his question, ‘why?’ had been a kind of asshole thing to ask her. Boldly, she lifted her gaze to his and tacked on, “
Bubbah
.”

She’d put up with ‘Sissy’ for the better part of a week, but ‘Bubbah’ was his undoing. She saw it in the set of his jaw and felt it in his fiery glare.

Pivoting away from her, he bent, jerked his bag from the floor, and slung it onto the bed. The grate of the zipper was loud in the silence that had settled. He upended the bag, letting the clothing free-fall to the bed. A charging pad and an electronic tablet bounced onto the mattress. His shaving kit skittered to the edge of the bed. Grabbing the foil packets as they appeared, he placed them together in a haphazard pile. But they were easy enough to count. Six. He seemed confused and frantically rummaged some more. When one of them fell to the floor, he stilled. Seemingly, they’d both remembered at the same time the two left on the bus floor.

With a quick bend, he picked it up and turned back to her. She shivered at his closeness and the contact with his skin when he pressed it into her hand.

“I told you, I didn’t really want one…”

“You know what we need, Scar?” He cut off her protest and tipped his head down to hers. “We need closure.”

“Closure?”

“I miss you. I miss
us
. The way we used to be.” He continued to hold her hand, and his whisper stirred the fine hairs against her hairline. “I fucked up. And you know I’m sorry about that. I wished for so long we could find our way back. But if we’re not going to… We need to make a better last memory.”  

Her thoughts shifted to the barn, wondering if he was referring to sex, and before she could wonder too long, he confirmed it.

“One thing I hate, I mean really hate, to the point of obsessing about it constantly, is that the last time—our last memory of us
together.
It was hot. But shit, I was fucking fuckin’ you like a beast. And then it all went bad from there.” He dropped her hand but ran his fingers up her wrist, up her arm to her elbow and then down again. “I think I could deal a lot easier—we both could—if the last time was not a wall bang in a barn.” And then his thumb brushed her lips in that old familiar way, sending a jolt of lightning down to her belly and then farther. “If it was as sweet as it was hot…”

Could she do it? Bang Gage, knowing it was for one time only?

Yes!
Her body screamed, and acting on no will of her own, her tongue darted out, tasting his thumb.

T
he intimate caress to the tip of his thumb caused a shiver to wrack his frame, yet at the same time, liquid fire lapped every cell of his body. Fuck, he had missed her tongue.

Just as much, he’d missed the look in her eyes when he touched her like that, when he kissed her… His chin instinctively dipped, but he curbed the instinct, waiting.

What he’d suggested was either the smartest proposition of his life or proof how much of a self-indulgent ass a former rock star could be. Later, when he looked in the mirror and reflected his intentions, he never settled on a clear answer. Not that he cared.

All he cared about was possessing her again. And in the process, getting Scarlette fuckin’ Conterra fantasies out of his system once and for all, so they could be best sibling-like friends. Her blues were partially hidden beneath her thick lashes for the longest as she evaded his eyes in favor of her slide on sneakers. Her lids lifted, but she stared beyond him, and he rubbed his dampened thumb into her lips. Finally, her eyes met his gaze, and she tongue lashed his thumb again, this time drawing it into her mouth with a suckle and holding it with her teeth for a moment.

He jerked his thumb from the heavenly ministrations of her mouth, and his lips crashed to hers, eager to replace his digit with his tongue. His fingers splayed the sides of her head, forking into her hair as he slanted his lips across hers and a guttural groan escaped the recesses of his soul when their tongues clashed.

The kiss was as wild as it was sweet. The force of it sent her stumbling backward, but he held her steady and groaned yet again when she clutched his shoulders for support. Her back hit the door and then her head settled into the groove of one of the panels. They fed and fueled on one another’s kiss. Her head was still in his hands when he drew back just far enough to ask, “So, yes?”

Her breathing was as labored as his was, and he drowned in the beauty of her flushed cheeks and passion-steeped eyes. A flicker of impatience crossed her expression, and unable to reach his lips, she kissed his throat. The heavenly slide of her lips and tongue made it to the hollow above his collar bone before he lost it and used her ponytail to tip her face back to his, capturing her mouth again. His fingers worked her shorts, and he hooked her panties, dragging until both garments hit her ankles. Inhaling the scent of her as he nipped at her neck, he pushed at his jeans when he felt his belt part under her hands. His fingers dug into her fine ass, reacquainting with the curves and valleys. Tracing the heat of her slit, he swallowed her whimper into their next kiss, and then her yelp when he plunged his fingers into the warm wetness that was all his. “So wet for me.”

Unable to wait, he knelt a bit and in one smooth movement replaced his fingers with his cock. Gripping her, he pulled her up with him, and cursed with familiar satisfaction when her legs wrapped him. When their rhythm had her wedged to the wall, her shoulders and head bumping, he managed some sort of thought process, enough to swing them around and still locked together dump her onto the tall bed. She released her arms from his neck, but not the grip of her legs and he straightened, maintaining his hold as he continued to rock her. Strands of her hair had escaped the ponytail and lay in wild disarray on the bed and clothing around her face. Beneath the sleeveless blouse, her tits bounced and he wished he’d taken the extra half a minute to rip the garment from her body. His mouth watered, missing what he hadn’t taken the time to taste.

Her head bumped his bag enough to send it over the opposite edge of the mattress, and her fingers curved, reflexively clutching the cord to his charger. Her eyes held his, the lids half closed. Hiking her legs up a bit higher, he angled his thrust and growled in satisfaction when those blues rolled back into their sockets and she screamed his name. Again, and again she shrieked, mixing his name with unintelligible syllables of gibberish. And then she was simply screaming. His ears thundered with his own pulse and he bit the tip of his tongue to hold himself back until he felt her legs tremble for the second time. With a roar of his own, he slammed himself to her as he came, and it was then he noticed as if in an alternate reality, the condoms settling from their bounce all over the bed.    

The multi facets of irony in what had just happened didn’t escape him.

The condom he’d placed in her hand was unopened on the floor behind him somewhere.

Once again, they’d fucked like animals.

And he was no closer to giving her up as a lover and having her back as a sister.