Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Keannen
THE SECOND I SEE him in the hall, something dark stirs in my gut. Tim leaves his hotel room, but freezes the second his eyes lock with mine. Damp hair straggles onto his face. Combined with his wide eyes, it leaves him looking like a gopher popping his head out of his burrow to spot a predator.
I certainly stalk toward him like I’m about to devour him, so I guess he’s not that far off the mark.
Tim blinks, but stands stiffly before his hotel room door as I saunter over. I plant my hand next to his head, just like I did backstage. I’m not a fool. I noticed his reaction then, and I’m noticing it now as well, the way his Adam’s apple bobs, the way heat darkens his cheeks, the way his eyes skitter around like he isn’t sure if he wants to examine me more closely or look away entirely. He’s terrified of me, and the rush of that goes right to my cock.
“Hey, Freckles,” I say from way too close.
“What?” he says between clenched teeth.
I could laugh. He’s every bit that nervous straight-A nerd who found me under the bleachers. Time and stardom haven’t changed that about him whatsoever. He blanches as I grin at him, his trademark freckles standing out more boldly on his cheeks.
Twenty-seven. There are twenty-seven of them. I shouldn’t remember that, but I do, and I also know without counting that they’re all exactly where I left them.
“How’d the show go?” I say.
“You know how it went,” Tim grits.
“Sure, but I want to hear you say it.”
“Why? So you can rub it in even more?”
I shrug. “Yeah, kind of.”
“Ass,” he mutters, but when I narrow my eyes at him, fear replaces his annoyance.
“That’s not very nice,” I say. “You’re supposed to be my mentor on this tour, aren’t you? You’re the big superstar. I’m some loser playing local dive bars. Have some compassion for the little guy.”
“You don’t need my compassion, Keannen.”
I pretend to think about that, making a show of leaning back and rubbing my thumb along my lips. “Hm, I guess I don’t, but that’s not what everyone else thinks, is it? They don’t know. You haven’t told them anything, have you? Not that you know me. Not that you left. Not that you’ve known this whole time that I’m the better drummer and you’re a pretender.”
I wait, staring into his eyes to make it clear this question isn’t hypothetical. When Tim replies, his voice can barely squeeze between his teeth.
“No,” he says. “I haven’t told them.”
“Weird, I thought you were close with your band.”
“I am.”
“Not close enough to tell them about your ex-boyfriend, though?”
“Keannen…”
He might be preparing to point out that we were kids or that eight whole years have passed, but I don’t let him. I slam my hand on the door beside his head. Tim flinches from the thud, cowering in on himself, but the soft brown eyes that meet mine aren’t so soft the next time I look. There’s something harder there now, something angry. Maybe time has changed him a little after all.
“Keannen,” he says, “the rest of the tour doesn’t have to be this way. We’re going to be together for the next six weeks, but we don’t have to make ourselves miserable over it. I get that I fucked up, but it was a long time ago. Can’t we attempt to get through this?”
I scoff, and any hope remaining in his face fades. “That’d be nice for you, wouldn’t it? Just move on and pretend nothing happened.”
“It was eight years ago, almost nine. Are you really still angry?”
Yes, incredibly so, but I slap on a curling grin when I respond. “Angry? No, I’m not angry. Not at all. I moved on a long time ago. I moved on many, many, many times over, Tim. If you think a chaste kiss under high school bleachers is all I’ve done in the past eight years, you’re very wrong.”
This time, the heat flushes through his face in a rush he can’t quell. His freckles swim atop reddened skin, the heat dancing in his eyes.
I’ve always loved this look. Red-faced, floundering, burning up for me. It’s different now that Tim’s grown into his boyish features and has stubble shadowing his jaw, but the effect on me is the same.
I lick my lips. Tim’s eyes follow my darting tongue. I lean even closer, but don’t let our bodies touch, merely allow my presence to loom over him, to drape him like a shadow.
“Don’t tell me you’ve spent all this time pining after me,” I say.
“I-I haven’t,” he says, not quite convincing.
“No? Then why are you blushing like a scared virgin?”
Tim’s jaw goes even tighter. He grinds his secret between his teeth, but it’s so pathetically obvious that I bark a laugh right into his face.
“Holy shit, you’re actually still a virgin,” I say. “You really are pining after me all these years later. Jesus.”
“Just because I’m a virgin doesn’t mean I’m pining.”
“No, then why are you trembling the closer I get?”
“Why don’t you still reek of cigarettes?”
It’s a cute attempt at a jab, but it doesn’t save him. “I quit. Didn’t need their help getting boys anymore. They come to me more easily these days.”
I let my voice dip lower as I stab this most recent dagger into his chest. Tim stands more stiffly, but all that does is put us nose-to-nose. My arm cages him in on one side, my body leaning close so my presence envelops him. One avenue of escape remains open to him, but Tim stands frozen instead of taking it.
It makes me want to touch him. I know the merest brush of my hand would shatter him. The truth trembles in every over-taut line of his body, a body that has definitely grown up and filled out since this scene first played out under the bleachers. I let my eyes drift down, appreciating his broadened shoulders and sturdy chest. I never saw him naked when we were kids; he was timid and shy, and we ran out of time before things got that far. But I felt his body a whole lot, and I know if I touched him now I’d find him more solid, more masculine, thicker in all the best places.
Imagining it is having more of an effect on me than I’d like, but I hold my ground. Of the two of us, he’s definitely faring worse. Heat washes off him. Tim presses his back flat against the door. He keeps swallowing, like he can shove down his reaction, bury it in his gut and forget about it.
Not this time. No way. He’s not running away like he did in high school. At least not for the next six weeks.
“Keannen,” Tim says plaintively.
He sets his hands on my chest, but instead of shoving me away, he holds on, fingers curling in the fabric of my shirt. The desperation shivering through him makes me want to slam him against this damn door and kiss him until he’s hard and aching. A bare sweep of my tongue would probably ruin his pants right here in the hallway, and I want to see that for so, so many reasons.
I lean in, letting him think I’m about to kiss him until the very last second. He doesn’t resist or dodge out of the way, but just before I reach his lips, I pause.
“No,” I say so the word brushes his mouth. “You don’t deserve me. You didn’t then, and you sure as shit don’t now.”
Tim groans, hands tightening in my shirt.
I breathe in deliberately, letting the air I take from him skim his parted lips. Then I turn my head and sink to his neck. Not with my mouth. That’s far more than I’m willing to give him. Rather, I use the tip of my nose to trace a long line from the base of his throat to his ear. At the top, I pause as though I might take his earlobe between my teeth. Instead, I exhale, and shivers erupt on his skin as my breath ghosts over him .
Tim sucks in a breath, his body arching toward me. I don’t let him touch me, however, remaining barely out of reach. But every breath I draw, I draw from so close to his skin that he feels the rustle of air. Every breath I exhale, I exhale against his throat, his ear, his collar, all the places covered in goosebumps. Even the suggestion that I might touch him has Tim squirming against the door of his hotel room, his body so burning hot the heat laps against my skin. Still, I give him nothing but the hands fisted in my shirt, allowing him no touch but that.
“Keannen, this isn’t … what I wanted,” Tim says.
“Oh? Isn’t it?” I breathe hotly against the shell of his ear. “Strange reaction from a guy who doesn’t want it. How hard are you right now?”
Tim groans, but doesn’t respond. I let him squirm, let him suffer, but in truth, the teasing is turning me on more than I’d like. I might hate him for leaving, but I love the way he crumbles for me. I’ve loved it since the day I met him. The second I laid eyes on that scared little boy under the bleachers, I knew a single kiss could ruin him.
It’s too bad it ruined me too.
I won’t let it this time. This time, I’m in control. Tim can have only what I want from this, and not a drop more. And what I want is to torment him right up to the fucking edge.
“I asked you a question,” I say into his ear.
He groans again .
“What was that?”
“Very,” he says in a burst. “Very, okay? Very fucking hard. God damn it, Keannen.”
I chuckle. “Well, I’d expect a virgin to get worked up pretty easily. I mean, you’ve lasted, what? Twenty-five years? It’s gotta be tough not fucking for that long.”
“Shut the hell up.”
“If you say so.”
I draw close to his jaw, open my mouth wide and let my tongue stick out. I barely brush the coarse prickle of hair on his cheeks, coming so close the heat of my mouth tickles his skin. I know it does, in fact, because Tim whimpers like an injured animal and clutches my shirt like he’s going to tear it off me. I could ruin him with a breath, and part of me desperately wants to see that. For all that I’m teasing him, my cock is anything but silent on the matter. I’m glad I changed into looser pants than what they put me in for the show, but pretty soon the extra space isn’t going to matter.
“You’re so desperate,” I say, almost mouthing the words against him. “I bet I could turn you around right now, slam you up against this door, and—”
A door opens somewhere in the hall. The click is as loud as thunder, crashing through this hallowed space we’ve constructed. Or unhallowed, as the case may be. There’s nothing sacred about where I planned to take this, but I never get the chance to enact my wicked plans. The second Tim hears that click, he’s gone, ripping himself away from me before I have time to react. He opens his door and throws himself into his room so quickly I stumble from the sudden movement of the door I’d braced myself against.
I want to laugh, to grin, to revel in my triumph, but as cold, filtered air replaces the heat I built up between us, I feel anything but triumphant.