CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The crowd was one of the largest we’d ever played in front of; the club was packed, even the balcony area stuffed so full of people that it seemed like a potential fire hazard. I’d stopped even thinking about the sweat pouring down my body under my clothes twenty minutes into the set; thinking about it wasn’t going to make it stop. In between one song and another, as Alex was saying something to the audience, I bent over to grab one of the open beers from its perch on one of the monitors. I glanced over at the sidelines; Olivia was there, and I gave her a little smile.
Instead of my original plan—which had been to white knuckle my way through the set, gritting my teeth and just going through the motions—I was determined to play as well as I ever had in my entire life. I knew what Olivia liked; I knew there was a very good reason why she hung out with musicians that had nothing to do with a love of a good party and fun companionship. As I set my beer down again, turning to watch Mark sketch out the beat for the next song on the list, I remembered something from a couple of weeks before, when Olivia’s scandal hadn’t even been something I considered possible.
We’d been tangled up in each other, sprawled as much as my bunk would allow, drenched in sweat. We’d finished fucking for the night—at least, unless one of us suddenly had a burst of new energy—and were just laying together, enjoying the afterglow. Olivia had taken one of my hands in both of hers, and examined it in the overhead light, peering at it until I started to feel uncomfortable. “What?”
“Your hands fascinate me,” she’d said. She brushed the pads of her fingers along the calluses at the tips of my left hand fingers, then slid them along the digits themselves. “Not just because you can get me off with them in like, three minutes,” she’d added, giving me a little self-conscious grin.
“What about them?” She’d shrugged, but hadn’t stopped her examination, making me shiver at the sensation of her fingertip following the lines on my palm.
“I can see the skill in them,” she had said. “I love watching you play. I could never do the things you do—it’s like an instinct for you—but every time I watch you play a song, I feel like I can almost understand what you’re doing, why it works.” She’d blushed then, letting my hand drop to the blankets. “Then there’s also the fact that it’s really, really easy to understand how you can get me off in three minutes, watching you play guitar.” I’d laughed and somehow managed to get the energy to pull her closer to me, to get her off with the hands she liked so much, before we finally fell asleep.
I came back to the present just in time to start into the next song, pretending like I didn’t feel Olivia’s avid gaze watching my every move. I turned just enough to let her see my hands in the lights flashing their way across the stage, sweeping one way and then the other. I threw myself into the melody, nodding my head and tapping my foot in time even as I swayed to the beat. I opened my eyes once or twice just to meet her gaze, just to let her know I knew—and then I closed them again, turning more towards the audience, or towards one of the other guys in the band.
It wasn’t much of a strategy, but by the time we played the last song, I thought it might be working—at least a little bit. Olivia hadn’t been able to tear her attention away from me for more than a few seconds at a time; long enough to grab pictures of the rest of the guys every so often, or of the crowd, but not so long that she risked forgetting about me, or thinking about anything other than me.
As we walked offstage, heading for the green room, I made sure I was in the back. I grabbed Olivia’s hand as I walked past her, pulling her along with me. When I heard her startled yelp, I turned to grin at her. “What? Everyone knows, right? What’s there to hide?”
I stopped in the green room long enough to snag a couple of beers and a fresh pack of cigarettes, never letting go of Olivia’s hand the entire time. “We’ll be back in a bit,” I told Ron, who hovered around the rest of the guys, waiting for the party to start so he could monitor it.
“Nick, what are you doing?” I paused for a moment on my way to the bus outside. I looked around; there were a couple of techs at the far end of the hallway from us, but no one was really paying attention to me or to Olivia.
“I get that you’re afraid and you’re worried and there’s this big scandal,” I said quickly, “but we’ve been seeing each other for two months steadily, right? I deserve at least to have a part in your decision to stay or go.” I continued on, and Olivia barely hesitated, following in my wake as I led her towards the exit and the bus.
We got on and I locked the door behind us—as much as it could be locked, anyway—and then plunged through the bunks to the lounge. I propelled Olivia towards a seat at one of the tables and took the chair opposite her, setting down the beers and my pack of cigarettes. “Okay,” I said, pulling the tab on the plastic and quickly opening the pack, tugging the foil free. I pulled a cigarette out and lit it, pushed one of the beers towards Olivia, and met her gaze. “We need to talk about your choices.”
“My choices?” Olivia laughed bitterly. “My choices are to be humiliated by people calling me a slut while I’m continuing to cover the tour, or be humiliated by people calling me a slut and a quitter when my editor fires me or forces me to resign.”
“He’s not going to fire you,” I said, taking a drag of smoke into my lungs. I cracked one of the beers and took a sip. “Ron is going to tell him that if he takes you off this assignment, we’re not working with anyone else. Record Spin is just going to have to eat the scandal and hold its nose.”
“And then he’ll fire me right after, pretending that it’s about something else,” Olivia said.
“Open your beer,” I told her. I flicked ash into the ashtray and took another lungful of smoke. “If Record Spin fires you, I’ll get Ron to hire you as one of our PR people. The point is: I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going to abandon you. Hell; if it wouldn’t be completely insane, I’d ask you to move in with me when the tour is over.” Olivia stared at me in shock, even as her fingers finished the work of opening her beer.
“What?”
“Look,” I said, licking my lips and tasting a mix of my own sweat, the hoppy beer, and the smoke from my cigarette. “I know you’ve always had one foot out the door because you think I’m never serious about anyone and you’re right about that. I’ve never been serious about anything other than my family, the band, and…” I stopped short. “That’s pretty much it.”
“And having a good time,” Olivia added, raising an eyebrow.
“Yeah,” I admitted. “But I’m serious about you. And until you tell me that you don’t want to be with me—not because there’s a scandal, or because you might get fired, or anything other than just your feelings towards me—I’m going to stay serious about you.” I smiled. “Fuck, Olivia—you know, kind of at least, how many girls I’ve been with. You’re the best damn lay I’ve ever had. I’d spend time with you even if you never wanted to have sex with me again. You’re smart and fun and a million fucking other things.”
“Why me?” she held my gaze steadily. “What’s so different about me? You could feel that way for—dozens of girls.”
“I could, but I never have,” I said with a shrug. “You’re just…you. You don’t try to ‘tame’ me, you don’t try to be something you aren’t just to get my attention, you’re genuinely just…” I shrugged again. “I love being around you. I love talking to you.” I swallowed a gulp of beer. “I think I might just love you.”
Olivia had been in the process of bringing her own beer up to take a sip; it slipped out of her hand and I barely managed to catch it before it toppled on the tabletop and spilled everywhere. “Say that again,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I can’t be completely sure,” I said, licking my lips again. “But I think I love you.” Olivia stared at me in complete silence for a full minute. She took the beer from my hand and drank what had to be about half of it all at once.
“If you ever break my heart, Nick, I am going to kill you the slowest way I can figure out,” she told me. I smiled slowly.
“You’ve been killing me all day, sweetheart,” I said. “My cock feels like it’s going to fall off if I ignore it for much longer.” Olivia snorted, shaking her head.
“The bus is empty,” she said, glancing around.
“It is,” I agreed. “Race you to the bunks?” Olivia’s tongue darted out between her lips and I shuddered. Feeling her watching me all night had been such a fucking turn-on; I couldn’t think of anything hotter than watching her staring at me, knowing that in spite of the fact that she was thinking of ending things, she wanted me.
Before I could react, she was up, darting towards the bunks. I abandoned my beer and my cigarette both in pursuit, nearly tangling my legs in the pole that held the table up as I hurried to catch up to her. I lunged forward and managed to grab her waist with my outstretched arms, snatching her back, pulling her body against mine. In minutes, we were in my bunk, our clothes coming off, our hands wandering. “You can’t tell me this doesn’t feel just…exactly right,” I said, barely breaking away from Olivia’s lips as I tugged her panties down over her hips and along her legs.
“It—mmm—it feels good,” Olivia murmured, slithering on top of me and straddling my hips. I cupped her tits in my hands, kneading them. I’d spent the whole day, ever since she’d sent me out of her bunk, thinking about her, thinking about what I’d be losing when she made the decision to break up with me.
“If your editor takes you off the assignment,” I said, my breath catching in my throat for a moment as Olivia rubbed the hot, wet folds of her pussy against my cock slowly, “then you should post to our site instead. I’ll get—I’ll get Ron to give you a log-in.”
“That sounds good,” Olivia murmured. “But let’s…let’s not even think about that right now.” I nodded my agreement and then I was thrusting up into her, pushing past the tightening of her muscles to slide deeper and deeper inside of her body. We fell into a rhythm together in the span of a few heartbeats, and my hands wandered all over her body, touching and teasing her. Olivia pulled herself up and began riding me, balancing on her knees, her hands on the wall over my head, giving me the view of a lifetime. I lifted myself up to bury my face against her tits as she rose and fell on me; I reached down between her legs to find her clit with my fingers even as I thrust up into her, pushing deeper and deeper.
I don’t know how long either of us lasted; I knew from the beginning that I’d barely be able to hold myself back. It felt like it was only minutes before I felt every muscle in Olivia’s body starting to tense, little spasms of her inner walls clenching around me like her pussy itself didn’t want me out of it. I held back as she started to come, but within seconds I couldn’t stop myself anymore, and I felt my cock twitching inside of her as white-hot pleasure lit up my nervous system. We kept moving until we both finished, and then I wrapped my arms around Olivia and cradled her body against mine as soon as she collapsed on top of me, panting and gasping and trembling. “You’re still twitching inside me,” she murmured, giggling.
“Woman, that’s the hardest I’ve come in…days.” I kissed her sweaty forehead and pressed her body against mine even more firmly. “Feel better about things?”
“Oh, is that the reason you wanted to fuck me again?” Olivia pulled herself up enough to look down into my eyes.
“Everything is better when we fuck,” I told her. “I kind of want the cigarette I left behind though.” Olivia rolled her eyes, shaking her head.
“It’s a damned good thing you love me,” she told me, looking around the bunk. She grabbed the throw blanket I kept around in case it got colder than normal and draped it around herself as she climbed off of me. As Olivia darted out of the bunk, I thought about what I’d told her; every bit of it was true. I smiled to myself. God. Someone should have put money on me losing my damn mind and falling in love. They’d’ve made a killing on that betting pool. The Olivia was climbing back into the bunk with my cigarettes and the ashtray in hand, and I stopped thinking about anything but having a cigarette and then convincing her to fuck again. I lit a cigarette and Olivia cuddled close to me, letting the throw blanket fall away from her sexy little body, and I smiled to myself. This time last year I would never have believed that I’d ditch an after party to have tons of sex with someone I’ve had tons of sex with at least fifty times. It felt way, way better than I would have ever imagined it would. I wanted more—and I was pretty sure Olivia would oblige.