Revelry (Taint #1) (37 page)

I had ended up telling them that the video coming out was the most humiliating thing I’d ever endured. But when they’d asked why, with these genuinely blank faces, I knew I wasn’t going to be able to talk sense into them. They were young and impressionable, and to them it was an accomplishment to get two rock stars to want to sleep with you. No doubt that seemed like an accomplishment to a lot of females. Women my age and older threw themselves at Taint as if they were gods, and in many ways, in and out of the bedroom, they were. But they were also human, just like me. They made mistakes. We all had. And in the end, I’d run from that bathroom like a coward.

I sigh and snuggle under the duvet. Levi picks up a strand of my hair and plays with it. “What’s up, Red?”

“Nothing.”

“Liar.”

“I’m just restless.”

“I can help with that,” he says, and I sigh again. “Or not.”

He pulls me closer to him, and I expect him to kiss me or to slip his hand beneath the covers and
convince
me to want to mess around, but he doesn’t. He flips me onto my side and pulls me hard against his body, wrapping me up in his arms.

We practically have the bus to ourselves. Coop and Zed had agreed to several radio interviews, and Ash had gone along with them. We all would have gone, but Deb had vetoed me and Levi being anywhere near the radio jockeys. They had a reputation for being ruthless. Cooper was smart; he could be mad as a cut snake, but his rage would simmer beneath the surface and he wasn’t prone to rash decisions. Levi? Not so much. The band had temporarily vetoed Levi from all publicity to keep him from losing his cool.

Oddly, the second that Vanessa got word in Australia about what was going on, she hadn’t fired me. Instead, she’d tried to encourage us to be more vocal about our relationship. None of us wanted that, and we all saw it as a ploy for the record company to make money. Sales of Taint’s newest album had gone through the roof; the problem was that no one was talking about the music. Not when there was a risqué little rock star ménage à trois to talk about.

Coop had been pissed when he’d left early this morning. I wasn’t sure what that had been about, but it had left me with this wicked ache in my chest all day.

Deb had taken advantage of the shopping in Atlanta, and had been gone since early this morning. James was asleep on his bunk, getting in as much rest time as he could before driving through to Charlotte tomorrow, where the boys would play an intimate show to only forty exclusive ticket holders.

For the most part, Levi and I were alone. We should be making the best of that time, but it just felt … off. Instead, I pick up the remote and switch on Netflix. I’m behind on
Game of Thrones
, on account of me not having owned a TV—or a bed to sleep in—before we came on tour. I select the episode I want and we watch. Ten minutes later, Daenerys Targaryen is bathing onscreen with a heavily muscled actor in a bad wig.

“Christ she’s hot,” Levi says.

“I know, right? It’s sickening.”

“Babe, you’re easily that gorgeous,” he says, tenderly kissing my shoulder.

I can’t help it. I laugh. “Oh my god you’re such a liar. You’d say anything to get a woman to sleep with you, wouldn’t you?”

“What the fuck does that mean?” he asks, and I know by his tone I’ve hurt him.

I roll over in his arms and look at him. “Levi, everyone knows you’d sleep with anything that moves. I’m nothing special; I’m just a girl who got really lucky. Or really unlucky, when you consider all the shit that’s happened since I said yes to this job.”

“You’re special to me.”

“Why? Because I let you do anal?” I say, tracing my finger along his lips.

He pulls away, his brow creased, and those pretty hazel eyes of his hard. “I’m serious.”

I frown as I look up at him. “You really mean that.”

“Yeah, I really fucking do. You think I tell everyone that shit? I know you think I’m a heartless douche, Ali, but I’m not. I’m just better at hiding my feelings than Coop is.”

“I don’t think you’re a douche. A cockhead maybe, but not a douche,” I tease.

“A cockhead, huh?” He grins, and rolls me over onto my back, leaning down to kiss me. “Well this cockhead’s cock wants inside you.”

“Can we just … not, right this second?”

“Yeah.” He frowns and a muscle in his jaw tightens. He pushes up on his elbows and shifts, flopping back down on the bed beside me.

“I feel like you and I never get to just … be together, you know? Like we don’t do anything but fuck.”

I expect him to pout over that, but he doesn’t. He pulls me into him and we tangle our legs together. We’re both fully dressed beneath the duvet, but it’s nice to be close like this without it being sexual. Don’t get me wrong—if there’s one guy you want things to turn sexual with, it’s Levi … or Levi and Coop, considering they’re both fucking incredible lovers, but I get things from Coop that I don’t get from Levi.

There’s always this disconnect between us. We come together and we feed off one another’s pleasure, but even when our bodies merge, I won’t give him all of me. I can’t. Because there’s a part of me that belongs to another man, and deep down I suspect that all of us know it.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t care for him, though. I don’t know whether all the cock has made me extra specially stupid when it comes to these boys, but the idea of being without either one of them hits me like an anvil to the chest. There’s something innately vulnerable about Levi. He hides behind his rock-star swagger and that enormous cock, but there’s so much more to him than that. It’s not even buried very far beneath the surface, but I suspect that before me, nobody had even bothered to look.

I see it now, though—how tender hearted he is, how carefully he holds precious things. I feel it in the way he’s holding me now. Our bodies are as tangled and as close to one another as we can get without him being inside me. Even through our jeans, the hard length of him is pressed against my inner thigh. Desire stirs within me, but I simply press a soft kiss to his lips and let out a contented sigh as I snuggle deeper.

I wake with a start, and kick off the covers. My skin prickles with sweat. Levi’s body is still wrapped around mine, and I snuggle deeper. Then I jolt out of the sleep haze, my eyes widening at a very pissed-off Cooper at the end of the bed.

“Oh my god, you scared the bajeebus out of me.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb the two of you,” he says that with so much restrained anger in his voice, I find myself flinching.

“You’re not disturbing anyone.”

“Yes, you are. Quit talking or fuck off,” Levi growls. Cooper makes a beeline for the door.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says. He’s facing the door, and his shoulders slump as he throws his head back, staring at the ceiling.

“Coop … stay,” I say. He turns and faces me, and the look in his eyes is so desolate it takes everything I have not to go to him. “Please?”

He sighs and shakes his head, and then he retraces his steps to the bed and toes off his boots and socks.

“Move over, Quinn,” he says.

A sleepy smile spreads across my face. Levi groans and shifts farther across the bed, but his arm is around my waist, and he pulls me back against him. Coop climbs onto the mattress. As he lies down and faces me, he grabs my hips and pulls me closer to him. Levi presses in against my back. His hand cups my breast from behind and squeezes, then he kisses my neck until I’m arching back into him. Cooper bows his head and reverently takes my nipple in his mouth, T-shirt and all, biting down hard and pulling a gasp from me.

Levi’s hands tug at my hips, but Cooper grabs my thigh and hoists it over his, effectively pulling me closer to him.

“Now, now, boys, there’s enough of me to go around.”

Was there though? Or will their constant push and pull wear me too thin?
At some point all three of us will have to face the reality of what we’re doing here.

Coop makes a derisive sound in the back of his throat, pulling me from my thoughts. Levi bites down on my earlobe, snagging it between his teeth, then he trails kisses over my jaw. His hands tilt my chin towards him and he kisses me, slow and deep, until I feel as though I can’t breathe.

When Levi releases my mouth, I turn back to Coop. He’s watching me with hard blue-grey eyes. I know he’s not happy. I felt it this morning when he kissed me goodbye, but I didn’t know what it meant until now. He’d been studying us since the second he walked through that door. It all becomes clear as day: he thought Levi and I would fuck without him, and the idea scares the shit out of him, if his expression is anything to go by. His eyes seem to bore into me. He looks so tormented, but I know Cooper—he’s stubborn to a fault, and I know this is one question he can’t bring himself to ask.

Infinitesimally, I shake my head, and the tension just drains out of him, replaced instead by a fierce swell of possession. It’s so odd how you can barely know someone and yet know their thought process exactly, and feel all too keenly what him or her are feeling. There’s more than just connection and our bodies joining at play here. I don’t know what it is, but the three of us are supposed to be intrinsically intertwined. I feel that more deeply than I’ve felt anything else in my entire life. I can’t explain it, and it’s far too early to feel anything but lust and affection for either of them, but in many ways they both own pieces of my heart. It’s making them fit together that’s the challenge.

“You’re thinking again.”

I laugh softly. “Yes, I am.”

“What about?” Levi says, his palm splayed across my stomach.

I sigh and swallow down the lump in my throat. “I don’t—”

“Talk to us, Ali,” Cooper demands. There’s so much there in that one look, so much lust and pain and challenge. It’s as if he wants my pain, because he hurts too, so why shouldn’t I? What he doesn’t know is that I already feel it, from head to toe, with every fibre that makes up my body. I feel everything he does and more, infinitely more because I don’t just feel for him, but for both of them, and for me.

I’m the bridge that connects us all, and it scares the shit out of me that a strong wind could come and blow it all away—that’s how tenuously I’m holding onto both of them. That’s how fragile we are. At any given moment, a breath, a harsh word or a mere look could tear it all apart. Tear us apart, and I don’t have a clue what comes after that storm, but I never want to be standing in the desolation left in its wake.

I’m losing my mind. I’m sinking, drowning, and on fire all at once. I’m split down the middle, torn in half by two different men, two different bodies pushing and pulling me in all directions, breaking me down and then lifting me up again, shoving me into the fire and soothing my scorching flesh with their kisses that act as a balm.

When it becomes apparent that I can’t say anything, that I can’t make sense or put into words exactly what I’m feeling, Coop seizes my face with his hands and kisses me tenderly, so softly it brings tears to my eyes. I turn and bring Levi’s lips down to mine, and those wretched tears track down my cheeks.

“Hey, did we hurt you?” Cooper says, but I just shake my head.

Did they hurt me
?

No, not physically. Not in any way that will show on the outside, but it hurts, so much, because I know this won’t end well. I know better than anyone that we’re walking on shaky ground, and that we’ll likely all get hurt in the fall, and that after the dust has settled maybe we’ll be okay, maybe we won’t. A part of me never wants to find out. The rest of me knows that I will be walking away with a broken heart. It’s foolish to believe anything less.

“No,” I whisper when I have words again. “I think I did that all by myself.”

“Red—” Levi begins, but I turn so I can see his face too and I silence him by pressing a finger to his lips.

“Can we just sleep here tonight?”

“Yeah,” Coop says, trailing his fingers along my hip.

“Why are you crying, Red?”

“Because I know eventually this has to end.” I stroke his cheek and then turn and do the same to Cooper. “And I’m not ready to face that yet.”

“Why does it have to end?”

“Come on, Levi. You know why.”

“There are plenty of polyamorous relationships that work out,” he says. “Look at Hugh.”