WILDER: A Rockstar Romance (11 page)

Fuck.

The second I realized it, the floodgates opened. The sides of my skull started closing in, crowding my brain, crushing my thoughts.

There were stages to suffering a migraine, just like grief. First came acknowledgment. Once I cleared that hurdle, it was time to jump and land knee-deep in denial.
If I just breathe, it won't happen. I just need to breathe, have a drink of water, relax. If I don't make a big deal of it, it won't be a big deal.

No one has to know.

I am okay.

Keir was watching at me. I could feel it. His eyes were like two hot pokers searing the flesh on my nape. "That's an ominous fucking sky,” he said, though I was afraid to open my eyes and look at him. Already I could feel the tears of pain gathering in the corner of my right eye, ready to weep the second I stopped being strong.

I didn't want him to think he made me cry.

Instead, I yawned, feigning tiredness as the reason my eyes were tightly closed. "I don't think I've ever seen a hurricane sky before," I mused casually.

"Yeah, me neither. Bunch of blizzard skies, though."

I grinned, eyes still closed. "Lake effect, too. I don't miss Buffalo winters...at all."

"Not even a little? What about white Christmases?"

For a second, I opened my eyes. "Palm trees strung with Christmas lights are just fine with me," I said, then cringed. The pain felt like a spike driving deep in my right eyeball. I grabbed a sip of water and shut them again. Breathing deeply made the gathering pain ease its grip for a second.

Why the fuck hadn't I learned to keep pills in my purse by now?

Because I was always convinced each migraine would be my last.

When the pain used to come when I was young, my mother would scoff at me. "You have a headache? Give me a break from your drama for once in your life. A headache, she tells me. You have no idea what pain is." Then she'd turn all the lights on in the house and crank the volume on the TV, leaving me in agony.

I learned to say nothing. To minimize. If I told her nothing, I had a better chance of enduring it without her adding to the misery.

It's nothing. Don't be a baby.

I took another sip of water, though it sat like a leaden ball in my stomach. Outside of the window, the landscape was blurred. From the signs, I guessed we were on I-4 now, but visually, there was little difference between it and I-75.

Until suddenly, we were in a city.

Up ahead was a towering glass building, the closest thing I’d seen to a skyscraper in a while, half-finished and looking very out of place. It jutted upward out of the landscape like a living thing.

"That building, what is that? It looks almost like a mailbox."

Keir grabbed his phone and started reading. “Google tells me that’s the Majesty Building,” he read. “Eighteen stories of wasted potential, better known as the ‘I-4 Eyesore.’ Been under construction for fifteen fuckin’ years." He glanced out the window over my shoulder. "Looks like it’s giving us the thumbs-up. Or the finger. Welcome to Orlando, I guess?”

As if on cue, lightning shattered the dimness, seeming to strike the curl of the interstate, rising into the air. Then the rain came, pelting us at such a steep angle it was nearly perpendicular to the ground.

Traffic ground to a halt and the road lit up in a big, red glow—brake lights as far as my bleary eyes could see.

“Good to know some things don’t change,” Keir chuckled. “America the Beautiful, the United States of bad drivers. From Orlando to LA, everyone forgets how to drive the second it starts to drizzle.”

But this wasn’t a drizzle. This was a downpour. The sound was so loud in my ears, like a hammer between my eyes. I closed my eyes again.

That's when I felt Keir's hand snake around mine.

"Scarlett." His voice was almost inaudible over the din in my head. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

"No, you're not," he said. "What's wrong?"

I grimaced. "Just a headache."

"You don't look like it's 'just' anything."

"I'll be fine."

"Scarlett." His voice was low and hurt. "Will you please let me help you?"

I swallowed. The pain stole the words out of my mouth, so I could only mewl like a newborn kitten. "Okay," I yelped. "Yes, please help me."

"You have a migraine, don't you?"

I nodded mutely. I didn't know how he knew. I didn't remember telling him I suffered from them. But Keir seemed to know.

And he seemed to know what to do.

He got up. "I've got this," he told me. And with a deep breath, I searched my heart and realized...

I believed him.

Chapter 23

Keir

One minute her eyes were open, and she was smiling and joking with me. The next minute her eyes were closed, her face a mask of pain.

My mother got migraines. Wrenching, painful, days-long ones that would have her laid up in a dark bedroom, sometimes retching blindly into a bucket. We had to tiptoe around the house then. The slightest noise would bring howls of pain from behind the closed door.

When she left, the first thing I asked my father was if she had a headache and we weren't quiet enough.

Watching Scarlett go through the same stages of pain as my mother was strange. She was trying to hide it, trying to suffer silently. But that shit, it stays with you.

So does what to do.

"Here," I told her. I had run back to my bunk and grabbed a pair of shades. "Cover your eyes." I nodded when she did what I said. "Now. Give me your hand."

The bus wove sharply in the dense traffic. She moaned and lifted her hand to mine.

Her fingers, so small and elfin, trembled a little. I cupped her hand in mine for a moment—a moment, I'll admit, that was more for my own benefit than hers. "This might hurt a little. Breathe, okay?"

She nodded, swallowing. Her hand was cold and clammy in mine, but her skin was as smooth as ever. I resisted the urge to press my lips to her knuckles.

Instead, I dug my thumb into the meat between her thumb and forefinger.

"Ow!" she cried, and tried to wrench her hand back.

I closed my hand around her wrist. "This will help," I told her. "Just breathe. Trust me, okay?" I looked at her, needing to know. "Do you trust me, Scar?"

Her eyes were open behind the sunglasses. I didn't want to look at them, didn't want to see if indecision lived behind them. I didn't want her to be unsure...about me.

But there was nothing but trust. "I do," she breathed. "Just...go slower, okay?"

The layers of meaning weren't lost on me.

I pressed the tip of her index finger to my lips. "Trust me," I repeated.

Her chest rose in a little hitching sigh. "I trust you," she said, sounding a little more sure of herself.

Reluctantly, I moved her fingers away from my lips and settled her hand onto my lap. I ignored how close her hand was to my cock and instead, I pressed my thumb into the muscle between her thumb and forefinger again.

My mother, the hippie, had taught this to me when I was five and creeping terrified outside of her closed bedroom door, crying softly for my mother. "Keir," she called from inside. "Come help me."

I sat at the edge of her bed, as still and quiet as possible, but ramrod straight with the pride that came from knowing I was helping. "Press here—feel that dent? It shouldn't be there. Press and move your thumb in circles for Mama."

I did that now, as gently as I could, pressing the point in Scarlett's hand. She hissed, eyelids fluttering, body stiffening, as I gradually sank my thumb deeper and deeper into the knotted muscle.

"Other hand now," I said gently.

When she swung her other arm eagerly over to me, I smiled a private, relieved smile.

"You can kiss this hand, too," she croaked. Some of the color was returning to her cheeks.

"You want me to?"

"Isn't that part of the treatment?" She turned to me, a slight smile on her face.

"Only for you," I confessed.

"Oh," she said, a little shy. Then another smile. "Lucky me."

"Lucky
me,
" I corrected, moving her hand just an inch closer to my crotch as I massaged it. My thumb sank a millimeter deeper....

"Holeeeeee shiiiit," she breathed. She lifted her other hand and lowered the sunglasses, blinking. "Fuck, how the hell did you do that? Are you a wizard?"

I shook my head. "Keep the shades on. You're not out of the woods yet. But yes. I am a wizard. Thought you already knew that."

"I could kiss you." Her eyes went wide when she heard what she said.

"So kiss me."

"Keir...I..." Her lashes fluttered a second. Then she leaned forward. I didn't grab her. I didn't cup her face and press my lips to hers. I didn't slide my thumb across her lips or trace the line of her jaw. I didn't do anything but hold still, frozen in place, while Scarlett brushed my cheek with her lips.

"Thank you, Keir," she said.

"Anytime," I said.
And I mean it. Anytime you need me, I will be there,
I didn't say. Instead, I took her hand again. "Now, lie back. We're almost at the hotel and I want you to rest. Listen to Dr. Wilder."

"You're a doctor
and
a wizard?"

"Yup. And you're a pain in my ass. Stop talking and let me help you. You need a nap."

"Right now?"

"Yes, right now. Close your eyes, you stubborn little thing."

"Okay," she said. She leaned her head back and exhaled, then shifted in her seat.

"Uncomfortable," she complained. She rolled her head to the side, her cheek just brushing the meat of my shoulder.

She sighed at the same time I did.

Slowly, she melted, turning her face to bury it in my shoulder. "Hang on," I murmured, moving my arm.

When I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her tight, she sighed again, content like a cat. Then she rested her head on my shoulder. "Good night, Keir Bear," she said, brushing a little kiss across my bicep. "I..." She caught herself. "I'm glad you're here."

"Me too," I said. "Me too."

Chapter 24

Scarlett

There was something about waking from a migraine that always made me feel brand new. Like a cool breeze was blowing through my body from the inside out.

I opened my eyes, marveling at how easy it was. The light did not pierce my eyeball like it had before. In fact, the room was dim and oddly green tinted. The silence was nearly deafening—the absence of ventilation systems and buzzing light fixtures and groaning pipes. The symphony of hotel rooms everywhere was silenced.

I rolled over to my side. I was lying in the center of a king-sized bed, the first bed I had slept in in three nights. My head was clear, my migraine gone. Stretching out for the sheer joy of having enough room was the best feeling in the world.

"There she is."

His voice came out of the darkness, and the cool relief I was feeling slid into warm anticipation. "Were you watching me sleep?" I wondered, smiling at his shadowy form in the corner.

He stood up and came over to me. "At the risk of sounding like a complete creep, yeah," he explained. "They've got us on lockdown, waiting for the evacuation order. You were...kind of out of it. So I stayed."

The rush of affection was so strong that I had to move and sit up, lest I throw my arms around him and kiss him until we both were breathless. "Whoa," he chastised me, "slow down. How's your head?"

"I'm all better," I said. "It wasn't that bad."

"Bullshit. I saw how much you were hurting. Don't minimize it, Scar." He stood up. "You need more water and another Tylenol," he declared, walking over to his bag.

I laid back down. It was an odd feeling, allowing him to care for me like this. I felt helpless, but more than that, I felt...undeserving. Every instinct I had cried out to tell him to stop, that I was fine, that he needn't go to the trouble. That was how I was wired, but there was also no denying how nice it felt. To let him take care of me.

He was the only one who ever had.

"Here." He extended the pills in his open palm. The warmth of his skin...I wanted him to close his fingers around my wrist and pull me closer. He was a dim shadow, but that made his nearness so much easier, so much more...welcome.

"Can you walk?"

"Yeah."

"Come with me. I want to see something." He closed his fingers around my wrist. Just like I wanted.

The hallway outside of the room was pitch black but for the eerie glow of the exit signs. "They cut the power," Keir explained. "I don't think the elevators are working. Can you make it up the stairs?"

As long as he held my hand, I could make it anywhere. "Yeah," I said.

"Hold on tight."

"Okay," I smiled.

He led us up two floors. "I think it's over here. Right, here we go. We've stayed here before; I remember this view."

"Are we allowed up here?" I asked breathlessly.

He shot a grin over his shoulder as he pushed the conference room door wide open. "No, probably not. But who's stopping us?"

I looked over my shoulder, certain that at any moment, some nameless authority figure would appear around the corner and catch us. "I don't see anyone," I said warily. "But they probably have cameras, motion sensors…"

"Everyone is busy hunkering down before the hurricane, Scar." He grinned widely and held out his hand. "Everyone just assumes we have more sense than this."

"Do we?" I asked as he closed his hand around mine. It was warm, strong, dry.

He looked down to where we were connected. "No." He shook his head. "Does that bother you?"

I couldn't help it, I licked my lips. Each atom in my hand, my skin, seemed to reach out towards his, wanting to cross the nanometer of space that separated us.

Keir nodded at my unspoken agreement. "That's my girl," he said.

My girl.

Was I his girl? Had I
always
been his girl?

The conference room was dark, just like the stairwell, but strange, greenish light seeped in through the barricaded windows. It was enough to light our way past the folding chairs and tables.

"Here's a good spot," Keir called. I saw the shadow of his arm, then felt him pull me closer. I inhaled sharply as he pulled me down to where he crouched. Only his face was lit by the light that seeped in through the crack in the shutters, but it was enough for me to see that his eyes glowed with wild, gleeful light. "This is why," he said, watching the storm intently.

"Why what?"

"Why I insist on taking a bus." He drummed his hands against his thighs. "We could totally take a plane now, do a hub tour, just fly out from the hotel to our show and fly back." He shook his head like a metronome. "But then you don't get to see shit like this. You stay in one place, only seeing the inside of a fucking hotel room, and never get out to see where you are. You could be anywhere and nowhere at once. Everything is beige and hygienic and you miss out on
this.
" He gestured, taking in the storm, the coast, the dark of the conference room...and me. "The wild, different parts of the world. This is such a goddamned big country, and I finally have an excuse to see it all."

As he spoke, I was acutely aware of how close I was to his body, how simple it would be to just turn my lips towards his cheek, brush them against his stubble. It didn't even have to be deliberate; I could swear up and down that it wasn't.

But it definitely would be. That night, after his show, I had been drunk, wild, with rock music pulsing through my veins. Now, I was stone cold sober and hollowed out by a migraine. Right now, even breathing felt like a conscious choice.

Kissing him would be no accident.

I realized in that second that he had trailed off from talking, but I could not have told you when he actually stopped.

He was looking at me.

"You know," he said. His voice was lower. I felt myself stretch closer, not wanting to miss a single word. "We've been on that bus for two weeks now, but this is the first time we've been alone."

Why was I biting my lip?

"Not true." I couldn't stop staring at his lower lip. It wobbled slightly, like he was ready to smile. Or laugh. "There was this morning." I was so close to him now that I couldn't see his entire face in one glance. I could only catch it in snatches, the angle of his jaw, the flick of his tongue.

"This morning you were essentially comatose. Doesn't count."

"It doesn't?"

"No. I like you upright, Scarlett Sawyer." His lip trembled again, and this time I knew he was about to laugh.

"Do you now?" I teased.

"Well…" His voice was even lower now, full of dangerous promise. I knew exactly what I was doing when I agreed to come up here with him. There was no pretending anymore. There was no pretending I didn't need this more than I needed light and air. There was no stopping what was about to happen.

And I didn't want to stop.

"Maybe I should rethink that statement," he murmured.

His lips were there, right there, just a tilt of my head and…

I startled like I had been touched with electricity, the searing jolt traveling down my spine and curling like a fiery serpent around my core. I felt my stomach drop away as tendrils of fire sizzled among my skin. He was kissing me. My God, how he was kissing me. My whole body broke out into a simultaneous hallelujah chorus because Keir Wilder was finally kissing me the way he always should.

Five years. Five fucking
wasted
years.

I heard a sound, high and keening, and realized it was coming from some deep place within me. Keir made a sound of his own, the sound of someone barely holding it together.

Then he was moving—over me, his arms around me, his knee prized between my legs, nudging them apart as he laid me back onto the conference room floor. Shafts of green light pierced the gloom, tiger striping his torso as he tore his T-shirt over his head and flung it somewhere into the dark.

"I can't, I'm not… Fuck…" He trailed off into a series of guttural curses as his fingers delved under my shirt, marking places that had been claimed as his so long ago. I felt my back arch upward, wanting his hands everywhere, needing, needing so badly.

When his lips crashed into mine again, I sighed and screamed at the same time. If it were possible to have an orgasm just from sheer relief, I would be having multiples of the most earth shattering, mind melting kind.

"Slow down, Scar," he said. His voice was a gruff order, and I couldn't help but yelp in dismay.

"I don't want to be slow," I whined. "I don't want, I need…"

"Did you think I took you up here just for a quick two-pump high school fuck?" His tone was teasing, but his eyes were not. "Five years I've waited to have you again. I still remember every single part of that night. You know that, right, Scarlett? I fucking memorized you. Your body is my goddamned Bible. And I mean for this to be a fucking religious experience."

I started to say something, or tried to, but my words were lost in a long guttural moan as his fingers moved down below the waistband of my jeans. "You're so ready," he said, and I could hear but not see the smile on his face. "Have you been wet and ready for me this entire tour?"

"I can't… When you do that," I moaned as his thumb found my clit. One thing I could say about waiting so long—Keir had definitely learned a trick or two the past five years.

"Because I'm not too proud to say that I've had a raging hard-on this entire time. Put your hand right there, you feel it? You've got me like a fucking diamond."

He wasn't lying. The length of him, pressed tight inside of his jeans, was impossibly hard, and frighteningly familiar. I knew what it would feel like. Just as I knew how his breath would sound if I took it into my mouth. I knew exactly how his cock would feel, sliding it across my lips, circling my tongue around the head. I licked my lips, already tasting him as I closed my fingers around his length.

He groaned and swatted my hand away impatiently. "What the fuck did I just say about making this last, woman?" he growled. The light caught the smirk on his face, and I laughed, then let out a small moan as his thick finger slipped inside of me.

"Are you laughing at me?" he teased. I heard the stitches popping in my seams as he yanked my jeans down over my hips. "Keep laughing, I want to see how long you can keep it up."

I laughed again as he tickled my ribs then moaned again when his tongue found my center. "You're a goddamned sadist," I gasped, then rolled side to side, laughing hysterically as he tickled me some more.

"I've got to get my revenge somehow," he murmured into my clit.

Any regret I would have felt when he said that dissolved away when his tongue found me. The wind hit the side of the hotel like a freight train, but I was caught up in a hurricane of my own. Arching my hips to meet his tongue, I tried to hold back my screams, but he only moved faster.

He was right, he knew my body like his Bible, and he turned the pages with expert fervor, wrenching me headlong into screaming mindlessness after seemingly seconds. From somewhere outside of myself, I heard his cries—delighted growls and gasps that were becoming more and more animalistic the harder and faster I came. I closed my hands around his forearms, desperate to keep from falling, positive that I could start flying away at any moment. Keir grumbled something unintelligible—cry, a grunt, a curse—and suddenly I heard the jingle of his belt buckle.

I reacted just like Pavlov's dog at the dinner bell. Shooting upward, I aimed to take him into my mouth, but instead, he covered my lips with his. I could taste myself in his stubble, glistening on his lips. His fingers were still moving down there, slow and fast, slick and slippery.