Riot (10 page)

“What are you talking about?” I ask, combing my fingers over his buzzed hair while I wait for my heart to stop pounding out of my chest.

He turns his face into my neck and kisses the spot under my ear like he can’t keep his lips off me. “I wanted to get to know you.” His tongue slicks over my skin and makes me hold him tighter. “I just don’t think I can keep my hands off you anymore.”

“So don’t,” I say, tilting my head back to give him better access to my neck. He kisses a trail lower and exploits the spot above my collar bone. My back arches, and he returns the pressure. “I missed you,” I breathe.

Joel pulls away to study me. He searches my eyes and then my lips like he’s not sure where the words came from or if I’m the person who said them. I start to feel self-conscious—like I’ve said too much with three quiet little words—but then he kisses me again and makes all my worries disappear. He kisses me until I’m completely, utterly lost.

“We need to get to the bus,” he says, and I nip at his moving lips.

“Okay.”

He sets me on my feet, and the whole way to the bus, he keeps turning around to kiss me and touch me and devour me with half-lidded eyes. By the time we actually get there, my bra is unclasped, the button of his shorts is undone, and my lips are tingling from his unforgiving kisses. On the bus, we fall onto the bench seat, and Joel settles between my legs. I’m moaning against his mouth when his lips drop to my neck. The leather bench is sticking to every inch of my exposed skin, and his hand pushes under my shirt, and he’s so heavy—God he’s so heavy—and the air is too thin, and my lungs are too thick, and I can’t breathe, oh my God, I can’t breathe—I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe!

“Dee?” Joel asks, his voice muffled by the blood surging in my ears, threatening to make my vision go black. He yanks me into a sitting position, and I bend over while sucking in useless breaths that go straight to my head instead of my lungs.

“Breathe,” he coaches, increasing the pressure of his hand on my back so I’ll bend even lower and place my head between my knees.

Air enters me in a gasp and leaves in a sob. Tears sting my already watery eyes, and I stay bent over just so Joel won’t see them.

“Are you okay?” he asks me, quietly like he knows I’m not.

All I can do is shake my head, hating myself for falling apart in front of him. Again. But Cody’s face was in my head, and his hand was under my shirt, and—

“I’m sorry,” Joel says, rubbing my back soothingly. “I didn’t mean . . . I shouldn’t have—”

When I sit up, he looks even more broken than I feel, which makes me hate myself even more, which shouldn’t even be possible.

“We don’t have to do this,” he says, his hand still glued to my back. When I stand up, he lets it fall away.

“I can’t believe he ruined sex for me,” I say, too upset to keep my thoughts to myself. Cody has stolen sleep from me. He’s stolen my appetite. He’s stolen my confidence. Last Wednesday, I saw a guy that looked like him on campus and ended up throwing up in a bathroom stall.

He’s stolen everything.

“Dee, if you’re not ready, we don’t have to—”

“I want to!” I spin around and wipe an angry tear from my eye. Just one, and then there are no more tears to cry. “I want to, but it’s like he broke me, Joel.”

As I stare down into Joel’s concerned eyes, my heart aches with how much I miss him. I miss being more than friends with him. I miss having him in that way that makes me feel like I know him better than anyone else could ever possibly know him.

“Do you know what I want more than sex right now?” he asks, his fingers reaching out to curl around mine. “I just want to hold you.”

Another tear escapes the corner of my eye, and then another.

“Come here,” he says, gently tugging me onto his lap.

I straddle him, and his arms wrap firmly around me. Our chins tuck into the crooks of each other’s shoulders, and I hug him close, quiet tears dripping onto his golden skin.

“You’re not broken,” he assures me, and I wonder why he’s still bothering to stick around. Why he’s holding me closely when he should be pushing me away. There are plenty of girls outside who wouldn’t end up crying when he tried to take their clothes off.

“I hate this,” I confess in a whisper that sounds as defeated as I feel.

“It’s not a big deal. We don’t need to do anything.”

I pull away and stare hard at him. “Doesn’t this even matter to you? Don’t you even care?”

“Of course I care—”

“Then say ‘I hate this too, Dee.’ Tell me how much this fucking sucks because you want to be inside me right now. Tell me how we can fix it. Don’t just tell me it’s not a big deal. Because it’s a huge fucking deal, Joel.”

His eyes slowly darken, his voice firm when he says, “Stand up.”

“Huh?”

“Stand. Up.”

I slide off his lap, and his big hands capture the sides of my legs, holding me in front of him. He stares up at me and says, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

It sounds like a warning, but whatever he’s planning on doing—with his hands on my legs and him looking at me like that—yeah, I want him to do it. “Yes.”

“Then take off your shorts.”

When I hesitate, he commands me with one word. “Now.”

My fingers undo the button of my shorts, and Joel releases my legs and sits back.

“Take them off. Then your shirt.”

A shiver dances up my spine, and I slowly pull them down. I step out of them and pull my shirt over my head, tossing it to the side. My bra, already unclasped from our wanton walk to the bus, slips over my arms and falls to my feet, and I kick it to the side.

Joel’s eyes never leave mine as his hands slide behind my thighs and his face draws closer to my stomach. His lips connect with a sensitive spot next to my navel, and he stares up at me as he licks the salt from my skin.

My eyes flutter closed, and his strong hands slide up the backs of my thighs to squeeze my ass in his palms. My fingers clutch his warm shoulders, tightening when his wet lips trace soft kisses along my panty line. The way he kisses me is sensual. Dizzying. A finger hooks into my silky waistband and tugs it down over the hollow of my pelvis. His lips connect a second later, devouring the sensitized dip in my body that drives me crazy with want.

“Joel,” I pant, and he stops kissing me.

When he stands up, my eyes open, and he kisses me fiercely, breaking away only long enough to order me to take my panties off. As I wiggle out of them, he kicks out of his shorts and boxers, and then he stretches out on the bench and pulls me on top of him, lacing his fingers with mine and using them to pin his own hands next to his head.

I know what he’s doing. He’s giving me control, relinquishing all the power. And it’s working, because I drop my lips to his and kiss him ravenously. Throbs from between my legs beg to be touched and soothed, and I pull away from his mouth, parting my lips to say something. Before I can, his mouth presses against my throat and my words get lost behind the bottom lip I have to bite between my teeth.

“Do you have a condom?” I breathlessly ask as he licks, kisses, and nibbles.

Joel’s response is low and sexy, breathed against the wetness he leaves on my skin. “Upstairs.”

Upstairs seems so far away. Too far away. His hands are still pinned to the bench seat, and he’s naked beneath me. All I want is to have him. To keep him.

“I’m on birth control,” I offer. He already knows that, but right now, I’m suggesting it as a solution instead of a backup plan.

He parts his lips from my collarbone and stares up into my eyes, answering my unspoken question with a single word. “Okay.”

With one of my hands still pinning his next to his head, I slide the other between us and wrap my fingers around him, positioning his tip firmly against me. Joel’s free hand threads into my hair, and he pulls me to his lips as I lower myself onto him. I moan against his mouth, and our clasped fingers squeeze tight together.

When he’s all the way inside me, I catch my breath, throbbing all around him.

“God, that feels so fucking good,” he says, his eyes closed and his lips parted like all of his concentration is devoted to feeling me pulse around him.

I remove his hand from my hair and pin it back against the leather, using my weight as leverage as I lift myself off of him and lower myself back down.

Joel moans, and I chew on my lip to keep from moaning even louder. Without the condom, he feels warm and hard and so,
so
smooth. I’ve never had sex without one before, and I always assumed guys were lying when they said it felt so much better.

“Dee,” Joel says, and I kiss my name from his lips, building a slow and steady rhythm. He kisses me back until my entire body is on fire, and then he breaks his lips from mine. My tongue curls behind his earlobe, and I nip at the soft, flushed skin. The way his fingers tighten around mine encourages me, so I’m nibbling at his neck when he pants, “You’re going to need to slow down if you want me to last.”

“That’s not what I want,” I purr against his neck.

“What do you want?”

“I want you to come in me.”

A low growl rumbles deep in Joel’s chest, and he stretches my arms out higher, bringing my breasts to his mouth and sucking my nipple between his lips. I gasp a moan in surprise as his tongue flicks over me, wet and firm, slicking over one pink tip and then the other. When my hips stop moving, his start, and he sinks into me over and over again as every muscle in my body coils with tension.

“Come for me first,” he orders from below me. “I want to feel you do it.”

His words pull a thread somewhere deep inside of me, and I unravel all around him. My white-knuckled grip on his fingers goes slack, and Joel’s hands fly to my hips, holding them in place as he rockets my orgasm into uncharted territory. My fingertips dig into the gray leather beside his head, and his dig into my hips as he pours himself into me on a powerful thrust that nearly makes me collapse on top of him. I manage to stay on my hands and knees, letting him pump into me until he has nothing left to give, and then I rest my weight on top of him with my ear pressed against his chest and my fingers brushing over the damp sides of his head, the buzzed tips of his hair prickling my fingers. His heart is beating loud and fast, but his hands are the total opposite, soft and gentle as he runs them over my back.

“Why have we never done that before?” Joel asks, and I giggle against his chest, giddy with relief that I’m not completely broken, and high off of the best sex I’ve ever had in my entire life.

He brushes my hair away from my face, and I tilt my chin to stare up at him, a contented smile on my face.

“Do you know how many other girls have tried to convince me they were on birth control?” he asks, and my smile fades away.

“I wasn’t lying,” I assert in a voice devoid of all the warmth I felt just a few seconds ago. I try to push off of him, but his stubborn arms keep me from budging.

“I know. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” He brushes his thumbs over my skin and says, “I’ve never been with anyone like that.”

“Never?” I ask, studying him.

His eyes lift to the ceiling, his voice thoughtful when he says, “Never.”

I should let him keep avoiding eye contact. I should keep my mouth shut. I shouldn’t pretend any of this means anything.

“Neither have I,” I confess, and Joel’s eyes drop to mine.

He stares at me for a long moment, and I know he’s wondering why him. Just like I’m wondering why me. But neither of us ask. Instead, he says, “I don’t want you being with anyone else like that.”

“I won’t be.” Sex without protection with Joel was amazing, but with anyone else, it would be terrifying and not worth the risk.

“That’s not what I meant,” he says. He exhales a long breath toward the ceiling. “I don’t want you being with anyone else period.”

My brain flickers into static, his words lost in the noise. “Are you asking me out?”

“No.”

“Then what are you saying?”

He closes his eyes, his chest rising and falling on a sigh. “Hell if I know.”

I can’t help it. I laugh. And eyes closed, a smile forms on his face.

“You’re not making any sense.”

“I know.”

“If I’m not supposed to be with anyone else, who am I supposed to be with?”

“Me.”

“So you
are
asking me out . . .” I say, heart pounding, palms sweating, thoughts racing. If he is, what will I say? If I turn him down, where will that leave us?

“No,” he says, opening his eyes and fixing his cobalt gaze on me. My chest deflates, and I try to convince myself it’s with relief. “Don’t take me at more than face value, Dee. I’m not asking you out. I’m just a guy without a house or a car or anything worth offering, telling you I don’t want you fucking anyone but me.”

Something must be seriously wrong with me, because in that moment, I don’t think I’ve ever wanted him more. My eyes drift to his mouth. “Okay,” I say, and then I press my lips to his.

The kiss is soft, brief, and it ends too soon when he breaks away to say, “Okay?”

“Okay, I hear you,” I clarify, and then I kiss him again, unwilling to make any promises I can’t keep, even if they’re promises I want to.

Chapter Twelve

“W
HAT THE
HELL
is WRONG with him?” Rowan says as we walk through the vast lot next to the buses while the guys take their morning showers. Last night, I fell asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow, and for the first time since Saturday, I didn’t dream. I didn’t have nightmares. I didn’t wake thinking of Cody—I woke to Rowan hissing at me and pointing toward the stairs. She reluctantly let me shower and get dressed before dragging me outside, but then she pounced on me and made me tell her everything that happened last night, covering her ears when I tortured her with details.

“Do you know what the weird part is though?” I ask.

Rowan glances my way, stepping over a discarded beer can.

“Him refusing to ask me out was part of what made it so hot.” Her face contorts with confusion, and I can’t help but laugh. “Seriously. Any other guy would have told me whatever he thought I wanted to hear. He would have asked me out and then gone and cheated on me or something if I stayed with him long enough.” Rowan flinches, and I rush to get her mind off her scumbag ex. “But Joel was honest with me. And he said he doesn’t want me to be with other guys, and God, Ro, it was just so fucking hot.”

“Wouldn’t it have been better if he
did
ask you out though?” she asks, and when I don’t answer, she adds, “Wouldn’t you have said yes?”

I pull the length of my hair over my shoulder to detach it from the sweat beading on the back of my neck. “What would be the point? We’d just break up in a few weeks anyway. You know we would.”

She can’t argue, so she doesn’t. Instead, she lets out a hopeless sigh and says, “I just want you to be happy, Dee. This thing with Joel . . . yeah, he makes you happy sometimes, but he also makes you miserable. What happens if we go back home and he starts messing around with other girls again?”

It’s not like I haven’t thought about it. When I was lying on top of him with him still hard inside me, all he said was that he didn’t want me with other guys. He never said anything about him with other girls.

“I don’t know,” I confess. “It’ll bug me, yeah, but I’ll just have to get over it.”

“How?”

“Bury myself in school like you do?”

She barks out a laugh, and when I push her shoulder, she nearly trips over a guy passed out on the lawn. We both end up laughing hysterically, and she chases me all the way back to the bus.

Upstairs, I root out a white The Last Ones to Know T-shirt and butcher it with scissors. The shirt I wore last night was a big hit, but I modify this one differently, cutting peek-a-boo slits in the front and slashing the shape of a heart into the back. I wear it with a lacy bright red bra that shows through the sheer material and cuts.

Joel looks me up and down when he emerges from the bathroom downstairs and spots me sitting on a bench. He’s shirtless, with low-slung shorts and his hair dark with water.

“Remember what I said last night?” he asks, pulling me up by my hand and spinning me around.

“Uh-huh,” I say.
I don’t want you being with anyone else.
I let him ogle while I do a slow twirl.

“Yeah,” he says, “
that
.”

I giggle, but he cuts it short by twirling me the rest of the way around and catching my lips with his. My fingers grip his shower-warmed biceps, and I lose myself in the scent of masculine body wash clinging to his skin. It makes my head spin, and when Rowan interrupts us by asking if we’re ready to go, neither of us acknowledges her.

She clears her throat, and when that doesn’t work either, Shawn punches Joel in his sore shoulder.

“Fuck,” Joel barks, releasing me to rub the pain away.

Shawn shoots him an unrepentant smile. “Time to go, lover boy.”

Joel quickly does his hair in the bathroom, and then he pulls on an oversized tank and big Timberland boots. He’s a mismatched mess, and all I want to do is whine about how he’s so fucking hot I can’t stand it. All I can think about is last night, and each time the memory of his hands trickles back onto my skin, my heartbeat picks up and my cheeks flush red. I blame it on the sun, and Rowan offers me more sunscreen, but I bat it away and ignore the confused look she gives me.

After spending the morning rocking out in crowds and causing irreversible damage to our eardrums, all six of us are standing in a horizontal row at the side of the main stage. We’re waiting for Cutting the Line to perform, and Joel’s fingers are sneaking into the slits in the back of my T-shirt to trace the line of my bra. My breathing turns slow and steady in an attempt to keep my lungs functioning at all. I don’t know what it is about his hands, calloused from years of playing the guitar, and more precise and skilled than any hands I’ve ever had on me. Those long fingers brush over the lacy fabric, weave over the tiny hooks . . . and my bra suddenly springs wide open. I gasp and clamp my arms to my sides to keep it in place. Everyone looks at me, but I smile and pretend Joel didn’t just unclasp my bra. One-handed. In public.

He moves behind me and pulls my back to his front, and I bite the inside of my lip, getting his message loud and clear.

I’m about to turn around and drag him back to the bus when Van sprints toward us from behind the stage, and screams fly out from the crowd as soon as the fans see him. The noise stops him dead in his tracks, and he gestures for us to join him backstage before backing out of sight.

“Wade is fucking hungover,” he complains when we meet him in the back. He strangles thick locks of his hair between his fingers like he’d rather be wringing someone’s neck.

“Like too hungover to play?” Adam asks.

“Like too hungover to fucking stand,” Van growls, looking back and forth between Joel and Shawn. “Can one of you fill in? I’ll give you my firstborn child, I swear to God.”

Before Shawn can respond, I nudge Joel forward. “Joel can play.”

Playing with Cutting the Line will get him more exposure. Once people see and hear him, they’ll want to know who he is, who his band is. It’s a good career move, and I don’t want him to miss the opportunity.

Joel glances at me before returning his attention to the pleading look in Van’s eyes. “Yeah . . . sure. Which songs are you playing?”

“Which ones do you know?” Van asks, leading Joel to where his two band mates are getting ready. The rest of us go back to our vantage point beside the stage, and I buzz with anticipation, waiting to see Joel perform with one of the biggest bands there is.

When they appear onstage, the crowd screams just as loudly as they would have if it would have been the original lineup. Van removes his mic from its stand. “How are you motherfuckers doing?!”

The crowd goes wild, and Van shouts back at it, making everyone scream even louder to be heard over the roaring speakers. He laughs and says, “Wade isn’t feeling so hot, so we’ve got a special treat for you today. This sexy motherfucker over here is Joel Gibbon from The Last Ones to Know. The rest of his band is standing right over there,” Van points toward us, and the guys lift up their hands in a wave at the crowd, “and all of you are going to know who they are real soon, trust me. They’re one of my favorite bands, and it’s an honor to have this asshole up here on the stage with me tonight.”

Joel laughs and flicks Van off, and Van grins in approval. Joel goes back to testing his pedals and getting a feel for his guitar, and Van goes back to priming the crowd.

“For real though,” he says, “go to their website. Buy their album. If you’re in Virginia or anywhere they’re playing, go to their shows. And if you see this guy later tonight,” he adds, gesturing to Joel, “suck his dick nice and good because we wouldn’t have a show to put on right now if it wasn’t for the huge favor he’s doing us.”

The crowd cheers, and some random girl in the crowd shouts, “I’ll do it!”

“I bet you will,” Van teases with a laugh. I’m already scanning the crowd, itching to punch her teeth out.

“Are you fuckers ready for a show?!” Van asks, and fog wraps around his ankles, lit by red and orange lights suspended around the stage.

The crowd screams, and then Joel’s guitar starts the show and all I see is him. Other girls are seeing him too, screaming and reaching for him as he plays as effortlessly as he does when he’s with his own band. The guitar is like an extension of him, something he’d know how to play even in his sleep.

I sing along with the lyrics, thrumming with energy that crashes through my body like rapids. When I jump up and down with the beat, I’m reminded that my bra is undone, and my laughter causes Rowan to give me a strange look.

“Can you clasp my bra?” I yell to her over the music. Her eyebrows pinch together, and still laughing, I turn away from her and lift my shirt in the back so she can re-clasp it before I turn back around.

We watch the show until the set ends, and the entire crowd screams until voices are lost and eardrums are bruised. The guys and I head backstage, and Joel barely has time to brace himself before he has to catch me in midair. My arms wrap around his neck and my knees bend as he holds me. “You were so fucking good!”

“Come back to the bus with me,” he says in my ear. His voice is low, seductive, and when I pull away to look at him, his eyes are full of unspoken promises that make the rapids in my veins boil.

I drop to the ground toe by toe when the rest of our group catches up with me, and Van joins us from the other direction and claps Joel on the back. “You guys have to come with us to the meet and greet.”

“Dee has a headache,” Joel says without taking his eyes off me, and Van laughs and gives me a wide smile.

“Meet and greet is in fifteen minutes. Joel can take care of your headache later or you guys can find a Porta-Potty and take care of it in there, but then he needs to get his ass to our tent.”

Fifteen minutes later, after Joel tries and fails to sweet-talk me into a Porta-Potty, Rowan and I are sitting at the back of Cutting the Line’s merchandise tent. Van and his two non-hungover band mates are busy signing people’s stuff and introducing them to Joel and the rest of The Last Ones to Know.

“Networking,” I muse, swinging my pointer finger back and forth between the two bands.

Rowan nods and blows a big bubble with her gum. “Sometimes it makes me nervous.” I gaze over at her, and she sighs. “Did you see how big that crowd got today?”

It was impossible not to. Once people realized Cutting the Line was playing, they abandoned other stages to join the frenzy. A mob of people manifested out of thin air, and I realized where the festival got its namesake.

“It was like the girls in the audience suddenly developed an allergy to clothes,” Rowan complains, and a single chuckle escapes me. There were topless girls crowd surfing and sitting on shoulders, and it didn’t escape me that one of them was probably the girl who offered to suck Joel’s dick. I don’t doubt that she would if given the chance, and then I’d have to kill her.

“Adam loves you,” I assure Rowan, but I understand why she’s worried. Relationships require a lot more than just love, and a relationship with a rock star is going to be tested. A lot.

My gaze drifts to Joel, and as if he can feel my eyes on him, he looks over his shoulder and flashes me a pearly white smile. I try to return it, but it feels weak.

When he turns back around, chatting up a group of girls clamoring for his attention, I turn back to Rowan. She’s glancing back and forth between us like she’s trying to figure us out. Like that isn’t impossible.

“What is it about him?” she asks sincerely, and I brush off her question.

“He’s hot.”

“What else?”

“He’s a rock star.”

Rowan narrows her eyes on me. “I think you’re lying.”

“You also think aliens built the pyramids.”

Her eyes remain narrowed, and I smirk at her. She blows another obnoxiously large bubble and pops it at me, and then we both stare out at the long line formed in front of the tent.

In our silence, I think of all the reasons I didn’t give her.

I like Joel because he makes me laugh. Because he doesn’t put up with my shit. Because he breaks down doors and convinces me I’m not broken. Because he tells me he cares about me. Because I’m starting to believe it.