Devil's Angels Boxed Set: Bikers and Alpha Bad Boy Erotic Romance (43 page)

I let Sarah tug me into a taxi that whisks us a few short blocks away, to a smaller, dimmer establishment, where the oaken bar sashays around a bend and the rickety stools are placed the tiniest bit closer together. A bartender in a slick black suit clinks glasses together. The crew, Sarah and I included, scatters throughout the room. We sink into plush leather couches jammed into a corner.

I close my eyes and let the conversation wash over me. There are no thoughts behind my eyelids, just the placid post-show buzz. Sarah interrupts me with a laconic whisper and tap on the elbow. I glance at her through barely raised eyes.

“Yes?”

“It’s him,” she beams. “Aren’t you gonna say hello?”

I look up. Garret is standing outside the ring of couches. He looks freshly showered, his hair slicked back. A new silver stud is piercing one ear. He arches an eyebrow at me.

Sarah speaks up to the group. “Let’s all go grab drinks, yeah?” she says. They all murmur their assent and slouch away in the direction of the bar. Garret fills the vacant spot next to me.

I straighten my posture and stare down at my hands folded neatly in my lap. “Great show,” I offer. I steal a fleeting look at his face.
I love the way his lips meet
, whispers one voice.
Bills, school, work, Bellamy…
says the other. I ignore them both.

“Thanks,” he replies. His green eyes are locked on mine. “I really appreciate you coming, ya know.”

“Oh, of course! It’s nothing. You guys are great.”

“I wanted to make sure I thanked you especially,” he says.

I ask, “Why’s that?”

He grins sheepishly. “I was a little worried that I scared you away last time we talked. I got real serious, real quick,” he laughs.

I demure, “No, no, don’t be silly. I loved it.”

He replies, “Well, okay. I’m sure you’re just being polite but I’ll take it all the same.” He flashes me a toothy smile.

I watch his eyes sparkle and wonder just what those dancing lights mean. Is it the same shine as Bellamy? Or is it something different, something softer, warmer, more musical? I stare closely but I can’t quite decide.

Garret is saying, “…it’s great to have a real supporter. A true fan. Anyways, I didn’t really feel like coming out tonight, but I saw you in the crowd and I figured that if you were nice enough to come to the show, I should be nice enough to find you afterwards and thank you.”

I blush, smile, and demure again.

“So here we are,” he says. “This is me thanking you.”

His eyes flare again with something foreign, something I can’t read. I feel the brush of his fingers against the back of my neck – I hadn’t even realized his arm had been encircling me since he sat down. One finger entwines in an errant curl. Another hand lays to rest gently against the outer edge of my bare thigh. His gaze is focused, pupil to pupil with mine.

I gulp. Every thought has dissipated. I am completely here.

I only realize that he is moving towards me when the sharp edge of his chin blots out a light that had been shining in my eyes from the floor. His face nears mine. I am motionless. I am captivated. I am reeling.

Garret Lyons’ lips are millimeters away from mine. His hand is squeezing lightly on my knee and the back of my head. His scent is strong but not overwhelmingly so. He smells fresh but woodsy, leathery. I both hear and feel him speak.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

His mouth meets mine.

The temperature of our skin matches exactly, so that when his tongue parts my lips and slips probingly between my teeth, nothing feels out of place. Everything meshes. The lights from the bar are splaying over my closed eyes – at least, I think it is the lights from the bar. It could be sunlight, moonlight, or maybe just the light of the stars cascading through my skull and my body.

I am kissing Garret Lyons.
Like opening a floodgate, thoughts pour in. The two voices are shrieking at each other, so loudly that I can’t even process everything they are saying. Rather, like Garret’s voice over the music, I soar in and out of the stream, catching only pieces.

I am scared of him… of being alone… if he finds out about Bellamy!... if he hurts me!… the drugs … those stupid girls from class… the bills… the future… What happens next?

So many frequencies in my head, I cannot possibly control them all. Names and images revolve – Bellamy in front of me, pages after pages of exams and essays, the dull glare of a blank computer screen, the beautiful arch of Garret’s back as his voice pitches to a wail…

As my thoughts rage, Garret flicks his tongue over mine. They dance together, mingling and caressing. His hand continues to stroke at the nape of my neck.

I am scared of so many things. There is so much uncertainty, so much fear. It is pervasive in everything that I do and everything that I have and everything that I am.

But this, this kiss, this hand on my neck – this feels right. Garret makes me forget about the things that are frightening me. He makes me feel sexy. He makes me feel wanted. He makes me long for his body pressed against mine.

So much is whirling in front of me. I open my eyes and place a hand on his chest. Our lips break apart quietly, unwillingly. He stares at me.

I talk slowly. “I need to go home, just for now,” I say. “I hope you get that. I’m just feeling a little overwhelmed.” He nods without a change in his expression. There is a depth of mystery in him but also of understanding. He absorbs everything – my words, the tremble in my voice, the quiver in my hands – without any outward commentary.

I start to stand, but he grabs my wrist. “Before you go…” he says. He sticks out his other hand, palm facing upward.

“I want you to have this. I think you need it more than I do.”

I look at his hand and see the bright red guitar pick. I touch it, hesitantly, running a finger along the warm plastic and savoring it.

Glancing back up, I see his eyes flash. This time, though, I know it is right – it is the good light. It is warm, not cold; embracing, not demeaning; music, not fear. Inwardly, I feel a wall fall down and my resistance dissipates. I squeeze Garret’s hand gently as electricity races between us.

We are humming at the same frequency, him and I, and every blink of his eyelashes strums another chord. I feel a subtle melody emerging. It is physical, emotional, ultimately intangible, but it sweeps me up nonetheless.

I watch Garret’s green eyes dance and wave and sing. I want to sing with him.

CHAPTER EIGHT

I crash inside the door of my apartment, drunk on delirium and the endorphins coursing through my body and thrash around my tiny cell of a room. My hands wander aimlessly. I pick things up and set them down without any intent to use them. I start to undress then stop, try to sit and breathe but fail miserably.

It feels like every cell that comprises me, Jodie Sutton, is quivering uncontrollably and that if I don’t stop shaking then I will sublimate and drift through the air conditioning unit out onto the city street below, just a haze of emotionally roiling mist where there used to be a person, a woman, me.

I am a mess.
Is this what I’m supposed to feel like?

After what seems like hours, my heartbeat slows, down to a persistent thud that is marginally better than the panicked timpani clattering it had taken up when Garret first kissed me. I drop onto the foot of my bed.

The kiss.
My reaction to it has been more physical than mental. To be honest, I haven’t formulated a single coherent thought since Garret’s lips first touched mine. I seriously doubt I am even capable of it. My skin, however, is aflame with intention, though I haven’t calmed down enough to decipher exactly what it wants. I am burning up. I need to cool down.

I strip off my dress and chuck my heels into the corner. I pace over to the mirror and stand in front of it, clad only in the black lingerie, exactly as I had done before I left, before he kissed me. Back then – years ago, decades, lifetimes prior – I had occupied this exact same space and wondered if Garret Lyons would ever want me. Now, I stand here with the taste of his tongue still lingering on mine and wonder instead what it would be like to take him inside of me, to bend over before him and spread myself so he could slip in and quench my…
Fuck.

That gesturing voice, the beckoning one, the one that wanted him so badly, is sickeningly good at stealing my thoughts away and turning them onto vivid images.

I can’t succumb to it. I need the foghorn, the order, the safety. I need it to steer me off the rocks that are looming in front of me.
Garret is dangerous!
it roars.
Don’t go near him!
With a decisive blast of willpower, I jerk my mind back to the physical realm.

I slide the straps of my bra off my pale shoulders and reach behind to unclasp it. As soon as its tension is released, my breasts sigh forward. A tiny blue vein wanders from the crest of one shoulder and is whisked away between the two mountains of flesh. I trace its path with one finger, quietly admiring the smoothness of my skin.

He wants me
, one whispers.

Stay away!
says the other.

I wriggle out of my panties, hips swaying side to side. My ass and thighs tremor with the motion. Fully naked, I step into the shower and yank the handle to full blast, icy cold. It hisses, coughs, and erupts with a needle spray that sizzles against my flushed skin. I close my eyes, soak in it. I can almost see the steam rising from my churning thoughts like a cloud of words, images, colors, and tones.

I heave a heavy sigh. It starts from the balls of my feet and gathers the tension in my body into itself as it rises through my knees, kneading between my thighs, up in the moist slit between my legs. It draws the strain from my waist and abdomen, sucks it from my breasts and fleshy arms, pulls pressure from my neck and jaw and the fine creases around my eyes. The worries coalesce and are breathed out between the pink plumpness of my lips in a heady fog. Although my shoulders droop and my hands unclench in its wake, I can still feel the wires of my nerves trembling subtly underneath ivory skin. They refuse to be still.

I sink into the sensation of the water shimmering against me, though it isn’t helping as much as I wanted or needed it to help. All the cold can do is numb the edge of the hot confusion, but the bulk of the heat remains lurking beneath everything, the undertone of every thought and every twitch of eye and limb. Entropy inside me – everything is falling apart, collapsing around the core of this sun that has intruded so chaotically and yet so blissfully into my life.

Garret, Garret, Garret. His heat and his kiss and his smile and his hand twirling the curls on the back of my neck. The blood pounds behind my ears every time that I say his name in my head, but I can’t help myself, I can’t help the way it slides off my tongue so flawlessly and I can’t help that I am addicted to every syllable and every contour of him and in him.

Shut up, shut up, shut up!
the foghorn blares, over and over again. It has crumbled from didactic advisor and dispenser of cautious advice into a ceaseless alarm that shrieks because it doesn’t have anything left that can dissuade me on a conscious level anymore.

I am in too deep.

I am too heated, too enraptured.

I am boiling over with Garret Lyons.

I snap off the stream of water and stand still for a moment as the drumbeat in my ears subsides. Gradually it does, though not completely. I wrap a towel around myself and step out into my bedroom.

Has nothing changed since before I left, or has everything? There is a different tone layered over the entirety of the room and the objects within, as though someone swapped out the air but left every item exactly where they had always lain. I can’t figure it out. I am so deep in the physicality of my sensations that I can’t really feel anything anymore, like how when you stare at the sun too long, all you can see is light when you close your eyes. I towel off, shrug into a clingy pair of boy-shorts, and collapse into my bed.

I shove my face into the pillow. I doubt that sleep will come easily tonight. Dancing behind my eyelids is a mirage of Garret, bizarrely kaleidoscoping images of the inner crease of his jeans and his lips lowering towards mine. Every time I roll over or contort into a new position, the visuals shift into another arrangement of our limbs intertwined together, but his grin and his scent are constant.

The blankets are unbearably stifling. I toss them off, exhaling hard, feeling like I am still burning up, even after the arctic shower. I can’t even tell if the heat is real or a figment of my imagination, a product of the thoughts spiraling in my head.

I lay back and stare at the ceiling for a long time. The clock tolls, ticks, chirps as I focus my eyes on the mutating watermarks and splotchy paint. My brain whispers the same thoughts: Garret, Garret, Garret. The foghorn sounds so far away.

Eventually, I fall into an agitated sleep.

***

I recognize the curly insignia printed on the skin of the bass drum. I am at a Lying Lyons show. Judging by the dimming of the lights and the hush that descends over the crowd, the band is about to perform. To my right and left, in front of me and behind me, seas of unfamiliar faces look expectantly towards the stage, eager for the oncoming spectacle.

Right on cue, Garret strolls from stage right, laconic and unburdened. His gait is long, his face relaxed. In his eyes, something ethereal glistens. He strides behind the microphone stand and opens his mouth to begin his usual amping up of the crowd. However, instead of roaring out a question, he pauses for a moment, as if he were reconsidering. Something else has crossed his mind.

He grins and shifts gears. He extends a hand forward, towards the crowd – towards me. Suddenly, everyone pivots to stare at me with blank eyes. The crowd in front of me parts and forms a human tunnel that leads up to the center of the stage and Garret’s beckoning fingers. I can feel the whole weight of the room fixated on me.

I gulp and shrink nervously, unprepared for the unexpected attention. I don’t know what to do. I can’t move. Someone pushes me gently in the back and I stumble forward a pace or two. More hands join in, softly propelling me forward. Before I know it, I am a couple of feet in front of Garret, looking up at him. He beckons again, crooking a finger in the shape of a question mark and grinning. He sticks out his hand to help me up.

Numbly, I reach up and grab it. He hoists me onto the stage effortlessly as his biceps bulge under the tight white t-shirt he is wearing. I stand next to him and turn to face the crowd. Hundreds of pairs of eyes look back at me silently.

Garret lays a soft hand on my shoulder. He pulls me towards him and cups my chin in his fingers. His grin stretches a notch. I can’t help but grin back, though I am confused and borderline terrified by everything that is happening. Beneath the hem of my dress, my knees shake.

He leans in and scrapes his lips over mine. His tongue probes, plunges, retreats. The kiss between us is wet and sensual; I can feel myself becoming the same. I squeeze my thighs together to capture the emanating heat.

Garret’s hands caress my chin and the back of my neck, tracing delicately over the smooth skin. The kiss deepens further. Our tongues jostle and writhe. One of his hands slips down past my ear, along my neck, and catches the shoulder strap of my dress. Slowly, he tugs it over the crest of my arm, then does the same on the other side. With a whisper, the top half of my dress above my cinched belt collapses forward.

I am not wearing anything underneath it; my breasts are exposed. I had almost forgotten about the crowd until they gasp appreciatively at the sudden nudity. I hadn’t noticed that the band on stage had begun to play, either, but the people below me are bobbing along with the music as they admire the plump curves of my naked torso.

Garret grabs around my breasts and pushes upwards, savoring the weight in his hands. He rubs my nipple tenderly between two fingers. The sensation tremors up and down my spine like sexual electricity. His mouth drops down and suckles on my neck. I arch my back and let the feelings wash over me, let my nerves tingle with pleasure. A whimpered moan escapes my mouth and floats upwards towards the ceiling. The band gets a little louder.

His fingers fondle with the belt buckle around my waist and loosen it, gently tug it off. He gathers two handfuls of fabric on either side of my waist and pulls down slowly.

My whole body is revealed – not a scrap of clothing remains. My curves are out for everyone in the crowd to see and revel in. Garret breaks the kiss, steps back, and sweeps his eyes up and down my figure. He drinks me in, from hair to neck to breasts to waist to the shaved pussy that glimmers wetly in the stage lights, down my thick thighs and the bloated teardrop of my calves. The shine in his eyes effuses warmly towards me, enveloping me. 

He steps towards me and once more kisses me deeply. I feel him grab one of my wrists and pull it towards him. I let it go obligingly. He takes my fingers and wraps them around something thick and hard and riddled with veins.

I realize what is happening: I am grabbing Garret Lyons’ erect cock on stage as hundreds of people I don’t know are watching.

I couldn’t care less.

I am delirious.

The slit between my legs grows wetter.

I pump up and down slowly. Garret’s hands are roaming over the expanse of my back, cupping my dangling breasts, stroking handfuls of my thick waist and ass.

I clutch his manhood and pull him towards me. I want him so badly. I want him in me. I want him to fuck me.

“Jodie,” he murmurs. “Dance with me?” I can hear the grin in his voice.

I whisper, “Please fuck me, Garret.” He frowns and repeats his question.

“Jodie, will you dance with me?”

I am lost and helplessly overwhelmed. With Garret’s member in my hand, I try to revert to what I am used to doing with Bellamy. I begin to turn around and bend over for him, but Garret catches my elbow.

“No, not like that.
Dance
with me, Jodie. Let me love you, you know?” he says.

The crowd coos.

I shudder. I don’t know what to say to him, how to respond. I don’t know if I can believe the words coming out of his mouth. The erection in my hand is strong and insistent, but the gentle roaming of his fingertips, the soft caresses of his lips on mine, and the light pouring from his eyes all add up to something different than what I’ve done before.

This isn’t fucking – this is music.