Blessed Fate (14 page)

"What do you say we go kick some ass out there tonight," Jon shouted as he did every other night. The difference was, tonight Rain and I had found a way to meet in the middle and there was an element of peace mingling with the nervous, excited energy in the air.

By the time the lights went dark after the last song in our set, I was thankful I had a guitar in front of my body at all times. It didn't matter that I was used to seeing Rain dressed from head to toe in leather most nights, knowing that she was mine and that I would soon be able to see and feel what the fabric barely concealed made it hard to concentrate.

If I didn't know better, I would have thought Rain put a little extra sway in her step as she teetered through the back hall on her impossibly high fuck-me heels. It only took a minute to remind myself that I no longer had to hold back and admire the scenery before I lengthened my stride, so I could hold her.

"How long do we have to stay tonight?" I asked as I leaned in to run my tongue along the hollow behind her ear. She stopped in the middle of the hall and leaned back into me, a soft moan escaping her lips.

"Having to walk through the doors at all is too long for me," she responded with ragged breath. If she was this responsive to me holding her and kissing her neck, I couldn't wait to see what was in store for me when we were in private.

Unfortunately, we had agreed to a post-show party one of the local radio stations had organized. Since we weren't the headliners, there likely wouldn't be many people there yet, other than the two bands before us in the line-up. If I thought I could trust myself to not tear the clothes from her body, I knew we had enough time to sneak back to her dressing room for some alone time.

I slid my fingers beneath the bottom of her black leather corset, needing to feel her skin against mine. She sucked in a deep breath, pressing her body harder against mine as I strategically moved my hand from her belly button to her side and then up as far as the body-hugging top would allow.

The fact that we were in the middle of the hall and anyone could walk up on us didn't faze me a bit. She turned her body in my arms, flinging her arms over my shoulders. "I think I could get used to this," she whispered. She pushed me back until my body pressed against the wall, yanking the tieback out of my hair. She threaded her fingers into my sweat-drenched hair and pulled my head down to meet hers.

Our tongues tangled and teased as we kissed one another with more passion than any kiss before. I didn't know how it could be that each kiss got hotter, but I wasn't about to complain. We pulled out of the kiss when a flash went off down the hall.

"Fuckers," I mumbled, pushing on Rain's shoulders to put some distance between us. "I'm going to talk to him, make sure he deletes that shit."

I felt her fingernails digging into my shoulder as I turned to confront the asshole who now had the first picture of Rain and I officially together. There shouldn't
be
a first picture of us together unless we wanted there to be, but such is the life when you're in a band that is finally getting noticed.

"Colt, stop. You're not going to be able to kick the crap out of everyone who takes a picture of us." This was not the reaction I expected from Rain. I was already steeling myself for her to tell me it wasn't worth it, and she was standing here telling me to let him have the picture. "Just let it go, but we'll have to be more careful from now on."

My inner-child started throwing a temper tantrum. I didn't
want
to be more careful. I wanted everyone to know that this beautiful woman standing in front of me was mine. "You know he's probably going to sell that, right?" I asked, giving her another chance to drop her hand from my shoulder, so I could follow him.

"Yep. But do you really think there aren't others out there already?" She was right. This guy was just the one who happened to have a real camera instead of a high megapixel smartphone camera.

Rain laced her fingers through mine and started pulling me down the hall. "Let's go get this over with, so we can get to bed." The wry smile she threw over her shoulder told me she had no plans to sleep once we got to the bed.

It never ceased to amaze me how the smell of cheap perfume could permeate the night air. As Rain and I walked out the back stage door, I was able to smell the groupies before I could see them. It was as if they thought bathing in perfume would somehow make them attractive enough for us to pull them over the fence and throw them on the bed. In some cases, that might work, but all it did for me was give me a killer headache.

"Ohmigod, it's Colton Bradford," I heard one girl squeal as soon as we'd taken two steps away from the building. I looked over to Rain and saw her scowling as the fans went crazy. It wasn't the 'why are you such a big deal' scowl that she had been known to give me from time to time, it was the 'these bitches need to back the fuck up' scowl. For a moment, I was concerned she was going to hurl herself at the first person who made the mistake of propositioning me. It was a regular occurrence, and we both knew it, but things were different now that we were together. I doubted she would have the same sense of humor about it that she used to.

We stood at the fence line signing autographs and deflecting questions about our relationship beyond confirming that we were a couple. When the first person asked if we were together, I couldn't help but laugh at Rain's smug response. "Yes, we are a couple. Tell your friends he's off the market." I kissed her temple at that, and I swear the groupies melted into a puddle.

As the crowd started to thin, Rain leaned into me. "We
really
need to get to the bus," she purred into my ear before gently tugging on the lobe with her teeth.

"Soon," I responded. While I was so hell-bent on waiting until we were done with the tour because I wanted our first time to be special, there was also a twisted part of me that was looking forward to torturing Rain for a few days. After all, she had tortured me for five years; isn't turnabout fair play?

The moment the bus doors closed behind us, I turned to face Rain, cupping her face in my hands. After kissing her again, my new favorite pastime, I reached behind her to free the deep red curls from her ponytail. I needed to weave my fingers through her hair, see the damp curls framing her face as I looked into her eyes.

"Do you have any clue how sexy you looked up on stage?"

"You can send Tanya a thank you note. She's the one who insists I wear this crap." I felt my body tense at the sound of Tanya's name. Rain was still clueless, thank everything holy, but hearing the name of the woman I had used to try to forget Rain filled me with guilt. I wondered if these feelings would ever go away. I began to worry about whether or not Tanya would tell Rain what we'd been doing, in a bitchy attempt to cause problems now that there was no chance I'd be anywhere near her again.

"Yeah, probably not. I'm pretty sure she's going to be pissed about us." Pissed was the understatement of the century. I had experienced the woman's psychotic tendencies when I tried to pull away from her; I could only imagine how she would react knowing there was someone else in my life now. Someone who had everything I was unwilling to give her.

"So, you really thought I was sexy up there tonight?" Rain asked as she reached for the hem of my shirt. I sucked in a deep breath at the feel of her delicate fingers against my heated flesh as she lifted the shirt over my head.

"Every night," I said through ragged breaths, fumbling to untie the laces on her corset, freeing her pert breast from their restraints. If we didn't slow down, not only would our first time be on the bus, we would be in a naked heap, tangled on the floor when the rest of the group returned from the party.

She pulled my hands away from the laces, guiding them to the back of her top. "It'll work much better if you just use the zipper." My broad fingers struggled to grab the zipper pull hidden in the back seam of her top. When I pulled her top away from her body, the most beautiful dark pink nipples pebbled and begging for my lips to taste them greeted me.

I started pulling her through the bus without releasing her from my embrace. Every few steps, we would stop and kiss again, sometimes sweet, gentle pecks, other times heated, passionate kisses intense enough to make my already throbbing cock harder.

I felt her reach for my belt buckle as we crossed the threshold into the bedroom. If she got her hands on me, I was certain I would explode. "We'll be home soon," I whispered, wrapping my hands around her wrists pulling her hands to my neck. I needed those hands to be as far from my jeans as possible. "I'm not going to have our first time together be on this bus. For one thing, it's not really my style. And another thing, I'd rather not have six pervy men sitting out there listening to us."

She looked at me, stunned. "You really are an asshole, you know that?" The tone in her voice told me she wasn't pissed at me, but she was beyond frustrated at me putting on the brakes. Hell,
I
was pissed at me for putting on the brakes, but I had to do it.

"Wasn't it just this morning when you thought this was all a very bad idea?"

"Yes, but you were quite persuasive." She laid down on the bed, one arm draped seductively over her head, and I started to rethink every romantic gesture I had planned. "Sue me. I had a very different image of where tonight was going."

In a move I knew I would regret, I flopped onto the bed next to her, laying on my stomach so I could look into her eyes. When I moved so my thigh was resting between her legs, I could feel the heat through her leather pants. "And you can counter-sue me for wanting to make the first time special. Trust me; I plan on making it worth the wait."

Her skin drew my lips like a magnet. Every kiss I trailed along her jaw, down her neck and across her collarbone compelled me to have just one more taste of her skin. I stopped myself when I reached her breasts, knowing that no matter how much I was aching to draw them into my mouth, flicking my tongue over the hardened tips, I couldn't.

"Comfortable?" She laughed, her hand stroking my hair.

"Mmm, very. Everyone likes sleeping on new pillows." I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her body closer to mine. Along with kissing her, feeling her flesh pressed against me was a close second for my favorite sensations. With her continuing to caress my hair, I felt myself drifting off to sleep before she lifted my arm and pulled herself out from under me.

"If we're not going to get hot and sweaty back here, I'm going to head back into the venue to take a hot shower. I have to get some of this funk off me." She propped her head up on her hand, not seeming any more motivated to get off the bed than I was.

"Save water?"

"Yeah, probably not. But we need to hurry if we're going to get back on the bus before they assume we're holed up back here and head to Pensacola without us."

"You're no fun."

Placing one hand behind her back, I lifted myself so I was hovering over her body. "Just because we're not doing
that
doesn't mean we can't do other things."

"Nope. You're the one who wanted to wait, so now you wait." After pushing me away, she walked across the bedroom, still topless. Torturing her was going to be the death of me if she was this comfortable sporting a pair of tight leather pants, heels that had to be over four inches high and nothing else. The way she looked back at me, she knew
exactly
what she was doing to me.

"I'm an idiot," I grumbled, falling back on the bed as Rain walked away from me. There was no other explanation for what I had just done.