Track 06: Shame on Me
“Fool me once, shame on you.
I knew you were trouble yet twice I fell.
So shame on me now,
I knew you’d pretend not to see me drown.”
I NEVER TOOK SHOTS. I’D taken two in the past thirty minutes. Brilliant.
My head spun like a merry-go-round that was anything but merry as Zach pulled hard on my arm, tearing us away from the rest of the group.
“Christ,” I heard him swear as I stumbled into the back of him.
“You’re going too fast.”
“Do you want to be mobbed by the paparazzi right now?” He sounded so angry. And annoyed. And like he needed to be kissed.
Two drinks and ten years disappeared. I was fifteen again and he was the gorgeous boy who was treating me like a foolish little girl.
And maybe I was.
I shouldn’t have left the hotel without security, but I just wanted to water that seed. I just wanted one night where I was off-duty. That feeling was always the worst right after spending time at home and then being thrown back into the twenty-four-seven fame game.
I’d walked off stage to learn that Zach and the band had gone out for pizza and celebratory drinks. Because they could. Because they didn’t have to worry about getting mobbed by the press or stalked by sincere and crazy fans alike.
“Zach, I need a break,” I pleaded softly, my stomach rolling with the alcohol and the Big Mac—which was turning out to be more like a Big Mistake.
“You can have a break when we get back to the hotel and you are safe,” he said roughly, pointing ahead of him to One Miami that was just a block away.
There were no gray areas with him. All black and white. Harsh. Definite. Decisive.
And reading into his protectiveness would have definitely been another mistake. A familiar and harsh one.
Like drinking coffee that’s too hot. I got burned every time, but that still didn’t stop me from doing it and expecting a different result. Some would remind me that that is the definition of insanity.
I wouldn’t disagree.
I’d always been a little crazy when it came to Zach Parker.
I tripped over crack in the sidewalk, stumbling again. “No! Stop!” I insisted, yanking my arm back out of his hand. I took an unsteady step backward and my vision wavered, his harshly handsome, albeit aggravated, face coming back into focus.
And then I saw it.
Heard it.
The waves crashing in the darkness just beyond him. The beach was right there. Completely empty. All mine.
This was what we’d left the hotel for. I’d bribed Taylor into my plan for burgers and then a stroll on the beach. For the past two days, all I wanted to do was put my toes in the ocean that I could see from my tower—even if it was for just a second.
But being on tour is like driving a Ferrari—everyone loves to look at it all nice and shiny; everyone wishes they could go that fast. What they don’t realize is that it doesn’t stop to let you out to enjoy the sights that are flying by.
My eyes stuck in his honeyed ones for a split second before I was off. Adrenaline was the only answer for how my feet carried me so surely and steadily across the boardwalk and down the stairs, Zach’s heavy footsteps just behind mine.
“Blake!” he yelled hoarsely after me.
I ran from him like my life depended on it. It didn’t. But my sanity did.
The water was so close. I tore off my shirt, turning to throw it back in his face, hoping it would slow him down, only to realize he was right there.
I’d have a better chance of outrunning an airplane than I would him. Or, you know… how much I wanted him.
A strong arm locked around my waist, hauling me back against him—and even my long legs couldn’t touch my feet to the ground as he held me like I was nothing more than a ragdoll with my back to his chest.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Blake?” he demanded in my ear.
I whimpered, “Please, Zach…” In a blurred blink, I’d gone from angry and defiant to sad and lonely, topped with intense longing. “We snuck out so that I could come to the beach,” I admitted quietly in defeat. “I just wanted to go in the ocean… once… while we were here. Without the crowds and the people and the drama.”
The last thing I needed was another beach trip invaded and then ruined by the press. When I was dating Xavier, we’d gone out to his house in the Hampton’s and had been photographed in the ocean. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t insisted on making a fashion statement, wearing an “I heart my #Blay” t-shirt. Of course, I thought it was cute at the time. I also thought he was cute at the time. And just like the shirt, he—and all his feelings for me—had just been for show.
“Please, can I just touch the water…” I trailed off, no longer caring if he thought I sounded like a whiney, drunk baby. I just wanted to feel something real because everything around me—the show, the fans, the attention, Zach—they were all fake. “Just for one minute and then we can go…”
He didn’t budge. My chest still heaved from the full-on sprint that I hadn’t done in years. Even though I couldn’t move, there was no slowing my racing heart—not with him pressed flush against me, his firm fingers gripping into my now-bare stomach locking my hips against his. In the stillness, I listened to the ocean, feeling the crash of each wave in the ragged, humid breaths that he exhaled against my neck.
His body realized just where he had me as his length grew harder against the curve of my ass. Biting my lip, I held back my retraction; I didn’t want to go in the ocean anymore. I wanted to stay right here where the desire crashing over us was all too real.
A groan ripped from his chest before I was practically shoved forward.
“Two minutes,” came his gruff reply, yanking my shirt from my hand.
If I couldn’t drown in him, the ocean was the next best thing.
My shorts dropped into the sand and then with a delirious smile that I could only attribute to the intoxication of freedom, I ran towards the dark, glistening water.
So cold.
Freezing.
Freedom.
I let out a yelp, but didn’t stop until the water was up to my chest, the tiny waves cresting just over my shoulders.
That was the thing about the cold—it always brought you back to reality. It made every cell—every molecule—in your body contract with the reminder of life. More and more, I began to feel like I was trapped in my own world and reality orbited around me. I was a fixture in space as the real world—real people and real feelings—circled just out of my reach.
It was beautiful up there. It was breathtaking. It was awe-inspiring to feel like the center of the universe.
But it was lonely.
And sometimes, I didn’t want my breath to be taken away. Sometimes, I just wanted to breathe. I wanted to inhale emotions—good, bad, and ugly.
Sometimes, I wanted to feel the sting of the cold, real world.
“Blake!”
My eyes jerked open at Zach’s voice. If anyone could break through to give me that sting, it was him.
“Come in!” I shot back, knowing I was going to be turned down.
I was surprised his disapproving glare didn’t part the seas, demanding my exit, as he stood at the edge of the water, holding my discarded clothes.
Goosebumps ran down over my body, chasing the water from my skin. My nipples poked out against my bikini top, the wet fabric clinging to their upturned peaks. It was even colder getting out of the water, but my body’s reaction had nothing to do with the temperature and everything to do with him.
Who needed the sun when those eyes were staring at me like that?
I felt the cold evaporate off of me under the heat of his gaze. He was drunk and hungry. Ok, maybe not drunk like me, but his guard was momentarily not sky-high.
I stopped, still standing in the water that was mid-calf.
“Remember the one time you and Ash had a mud fight outside your house?” I asked, the memory suddenly vivid in my mind.
“Blake, we need to go,” he said, holding my clothes up.
“Do you remember?”
“Yes, of course I remember. Mud fight. We were boys. We played in dirt,” he ground out in annoyance. “Let’s go.”
His eyes told a different story. Pure longing. For me—all length, legs, and pale limbs. He stared at me like I was a nymph or a siren that had just appeared out of the depths of the ocean to draw him to his doom.
And maybe tonight, I would.
“I watched you guys the whole time. You wouldn’t let me play because Ash said that mom was going to yell at me if I got any of my clothes dirty.”
His jaw ticked as I let out a small laugh—a laugh that was cut short when he spoke again, “So, you went inside, put on your best Sunday dress and then came back out, picked up a huge handful of mud, and to our horror, slathered it all over your front.”
I bit my lip, taking another few steps closer to him, but it didn’t do anything to stop the smile that spread over my face.
“Then you had no choice but to let me play. I was already a mess,” I said triumphantly, reliving that moment of success as though it were yesterday. “In fact, I think you were the first one to tackle me and make sure I got exactly what I was asking for.”
“What kind of girl wants to be covered in mud?” he growled. “We. Need. To. Go.”
The kind of girl that just wanted to play with you.
I bristled at his tone, my next move decided in those last words.
“What kind of boy doesn’t want to go in the ocean?” I returned just before I stepped completely out of the water and launched myself at him.
“Blake! What the—” His words cut off with an ‘oomph,’ my weight knocking the wind from him as we fell into the sand.
In most other worlds, he would have been too big, too strong, and too determined to fall under my sloppy attack. But this—tonight—was a rare world. A unique reality where stars walked on Earth and the only thing that made them shine was the electricity in the air between us.
Wonderland.
“Why the hell did you do that?” he grunted, coughing to catch his breath.
I was surprised at the lack of anger in his tone. Maybe because he was in too much pain. Belated guilt washed over me. Those shots weren’t using training wheels when they took my inhibitions for a ride.
“Payback,” I answered with a breathless grin, tacking on, “And I wanted you to come in…” My heart was now racing again. I couldn’t look away.
My breasts were small, but even they felt squished in the lack of space between us. I lay sprawled on top of him, one of my hands buried in the sand, the other in his chest. His arms both lay out at his sides and one of his legs rested between my thighs.
“I said I didn’t want to,” he growled, the vibration I felt all the way down to my core. “And then I said that we needed to go.”
It was all well-intentioned—the tone of his voice, the way his free hand slid from the sand, tiny clinging particles pressing into the skin of my waist as he gripped my hip to push me up. But good intentions don’t stand a chance against demanding desire. Even as he spoke, his eyes drifted down to my mouth, parted and breathing heavily. His hand stilled, his skin just as hot as my own.
I didn’t move, taking in every granite-hard and Miami-hot inch of him that lay taut underneath me. Our breaths in sync, I wished he was wearing as little as I was. From the water and my little stunt, my swimsuit had bunched and shifted, revealing far more side-boob and ass than originally advertised. But it was the growing hardness against the top of my left thigh that seared off any last vestige of cold or water from my skin.
I swallowed a small moan as moisture seeped between my thighs. There was no way my bottoms were going to dry anytime soon.
It would be so easy to just slip them…
I bit hard into my lip as my hips unconsciously flexed, rubbing my aching sex against his leg. I gasped—the slight movement causing an avalanche of tension inside of me. Everything was in the extremes tonight.
“Blake,” he rasped, his eyelids heavy. “What are you doing?”
“You should have come in,” I mumbled. “It might have helped alleviate this.” My leg pressed ever so slightly against his arousal and I felt it jerk against his shorts.
The next thing I knew I was pinned beneath him. I’d have sand in my hair for days after this. His hips slid and landed right between my legs—right where I needed him.
“Doesn’t work that way. Not for you,” he admitted with a tortured voice.
My breath tripped and fell out of my lungs like a drunken college girl leaving a frat party would.
I watched regret for his words war with his desire. And that was his seed, I realized. His desire for me. Always drowned out by that unwavering obligation. His fingers flexed into my side and I felt it coming—the shutdown, the push-back.
“We need to go, Baby Blake,” he repeated and I wasn’t sure for whose benefit. Even the nickname didn’t have the usual petulance to it—like he tried, but just couldn’t find the feeling to back them up. “Please. I’m trying to keep you safe.”
“Doesn’t work that way,” I whispered raggedly, “Not tonight.”
My fingers speared sand through his hair as I pulled my lips up to his—or maybe I pulled his lips down to mine. Either way, it was awkward and clumsy and a little off-center, but eagerness made up for the imperfect execution; I needed to kiss him before he forced me away.
His body jolted against mine like I’d just tased him. I felt him pull back for a split second, but I held on, darting my tongue out along the seam of his lips.
I’d always heard that the tongue is the strongest muscle in the body, but tonight, I believed it because the strength needed to get past Zach’s defenses was something I wasn’t sure that I possessed. And with just that one touch, all of those stone-cold defenses began to crumble.
The growl that erupted from him seemed inhuman, but I didn’t have time to dwell as his mouth claimed mine. Scolding me was typical from his mouth, scolding me with his mouth wasn’t—but that’s what he did.
Angling his lips, his tongue speared inside searching for mine, seeking to punish it for pushing him over the edge.
There may be a lot of fake things going on between Zach and me for the tour and my reputation, but this wasn’t one of them.
His mouth tore into mine. Licking, sucking, exploring every corner like it had completely changed in the past ten years. He kissed me like he needed to make up for every day that he hadn’t. And he kissed me like he needed to make up for every day in the future that he wouldn’t.
My arms wound around his neck, pulling myself tighter to him. Those firm fingers of his cinched into my waist as he rocked his hips into mine. Just once. I gasped as my body shuddered violently. Warmth seeped out from my core with the need to orgasm.
“Is this what you want, Baby Blake?” he rasped into my mouth, rubbing the hard length of his dick against me again.
I whimpered, nodding jerkily as I tried to push back. I needed more… and I needed it now.
My hands scored over his shirt. I wanted to feel him. Why was I always the one laid bare—physically and emotionally—in front of him and he always managed to keep all his shields and layers intact?
His mouth was on mine again as the hand on my hip slid higher between us. I tried to force myself from arching against him—from being that needy—but I couldn’t stop myself as his fingers reached the edge of my suit.
My teeth tugged his lip into my mouth and I sucked hard. It earned me a punishing grind of his ridge into my sex, the material of my suit now rubbing directly on my clit. And then his hand closed over my breast and spots flashed behind my eyes.
“Fuck.” I heard his tortured curse as he palmed my flesh. It was followed swiftly by an angry growl before the bunched triangle of fabric was yanked to the side. The large, warm hand that had slung mud at me all those years ago closed over my bare breast and it was more than everything I’d imagined.
“Perfect,” he whispered, kneading what was—in my opinion—an all-around-average tit.
I tried to hold onto the word and his voice as he said it. But it was like trying to hold onto the wind.
His mouth trailed along the edge of my jaw, biting and kissing towards my neck. And then his thumb rolled over my nipple before pinching it between his fingers and whatever opinions I had about my boobs were lost.
I rolled my hips against his, blindly searching for what he’d given me all those years ago.
“Zach… please…” I begged. I was so close, but I didn’t know how to get there. I couldn’t get there without him.
“Just let me taste you, Blake, baby,” he whispered close to my ear, the switch-up of my nickname melting through my body like fire on ice. “Let me taste you and then I’ll take you there.”
The half-moan, half-whimper was the best that I could manage as I felt him begin to slide down my body, kissing along the length of my neck as my head pushed back further into the sand. Those fingers pulled on my nipple and my body arched against him, feeling how impossibly hard he’d become against his pants.
Bright flashes appeared behind my eyelids.
God, what was he doing to me?
The flashes appeared again, but this time, the only thing that he did was freeze. My eyes shot open and, like a bucket of ice water had been dumped over us, I realized that the flashes weren’t figments of my desire-fragmented mind.
They were camera flashes.
’She’s over here!’
‘Holy shit! This is going to be great!’
‘She’s with the opening act!’
The breeze carried their every word over from the boardwalk.
I looked to Zach in horror, every expletive that he didn’t say flitting through his eyes. He stayed perfectly still, his hand working swiftly to pull the material of my suit back over my bare breast, lifting off me slightly to make sure that all my necessary parts were covered.
He stood, pulling me up with him so that his back was to the paparazzi, using himself as a shield. He pushed my clothes into my hands, and I quickly yanked them on over my suit.
Even though they’d caught onto our little charade and managed to double back and find us, the cameras stayed on the boardwalk as Zach wrapped his arm around my shoulder and we began to walk swiftly towards the hotel.
I knew from experience that they didn’t need to be closer. They had lenses big enough to see the sand particles trapped in my hair—and other unmentionable places—if they wanted to. And I was sure that they wanted to.
“Are you happy now?” Zach bit out as we walked swiftly through the lobby.
“I-I’m sorry,” I said thickly, trying not to let the tears start to fall.
I had no idea whether or not this was going to be a good or bad thing for the tour, but I had a feeling that this was definitely going to be a bad thing for the two of us.
He punched the elevator button even though the door was already opening.
A really bad thing.
“I told you we had to go. Fuck, Blake,” he swore running his hand through hair that showed no indication that it had gotten a sand-shampoo. “This was not part of the plan. Not part of the deal.”
I winced, not so much at the sting in his words, but at the anger in his eyes. We stared at each other in the reflective metal on the back of the elevator doors as it carried us up to the top.
“It will be ok. It’ll be fine,” I repeated dumbly, unsure of who I was trying to reassure.
“Will it?” he demanded angrily. “You don’t fucking know that. If you knew that, you wouldn’t have picked up and discarded your last dozen boyfriends like you were playing a goddamn card game. The whole point of this was to show that you’ve acquired some semblance of control over your emotions—to give them the fairytale that you seem to think they crave, not just one more fling.”
I stared, speechless and suffering at his outburst. I was surprised he didn’t crack his jaw the way he was clenching his teeth.
Ice-cold reality. Just what I’d asked for.
“Even if—” he broke off with a harsh laugh, “Even if this isn’t taken that poorly, do I really have to bring up the fact that having naked photos of you engaged in sexual activity is probably not the best way for this fake-fucking-fairytale to break. Christ, Ash is going to fucking kill—” He groaned and slammed his fist in the elevator wall behind us, the metal rattling against my back.
“B-but that was real…” I whispered softly. I’d heard the rest of what he’d said, but that last part was the only thing that stuck; what just happened wasn’t fake. It wasn’t.
It was at that moment his eyes tore from mine, glancing down at the floor just as the elevator dinged its arrival.
“No.” The doors opened to the floor where his room was, on level below mine. “That was a mistake.”
I winced, the words ripping back open one more wound that I thought all these years had finally bypassed. I was wrong. Raw and wrong.
And then he walked me to my door, waited until I crossed the threshold, and then retreated before I even had the chance to turn and slam the door in his face.
He always did this so flawlessly—the part where he put another scar on my heart.