23. Chase
They ended up getting so invested in songwriting that it continued as they made it back to the room. Zak brought out her guitar. Chase took ten minutes at a time to produce single lyrical lines, and she took seconds to scratch them out and write better ones.
Promises of seduction were forgotten as the effort of creating music brought soberness crashing down on both of them.
Instead of anyone getting bent over the bed, the post-alcohol grease cravings kicked in, and they ordered a smorgasbord of Chinese food. An hour later, Chase and Zak were sprawled out on the pristine white linen bedding—surrounded by a buffet of oil-spotted white takeout boxes.
“So how does it work when you’re writing the instrumental parts?” Chase licked the sauce off his lips. “Do you write the music first, then the lyrics? The other way around?”
Zak batted his chopsticks away with her own to nab the last dumpling. She grabbed her guitar off the foot of the mattress and laid it over her lap, picking at the guitar riff she’d hummed to him in the taxi. Then, on the thickest string, testing out what he could only assume was a rough idea for the bass line.
“I don’t know,” she answered while playing. “It depends. Sometimes the music comes first, and I spend weeks, months, years, waiting for the right words. Sometimes I hear the words in my head, and they inspire the music. Sometimes one of the guys comes to me with an idea and I build on it. Sometimes we’re all just fucking around and it sticks.”
“Like ‘Shag’?” Chase couldn’t even say the title without busting a laugh, thinking back to the eight-hour ride from Alabama to Florida, wherein Zak, Dallas, and Edge had freestyled their latest bus-carpet-inspired masterpiece.
On my hands and my knees for ya
Can’t find my cash or my keys in ya
But you’ve got dirt and disease don’tcha?
Looks like I’m stuck
In some crusty old gunk
Won’t you please
End my misery
That shag stole my shit
It’s got me in a twist
Zak launched into the bluesy guitar part she had improvised for it. “What do you think, should it go on the next setlist?”
He was still laughing. Wearing the world’s biggest dumbstruck grin as he watched her play, as she tried to explain how to write music to him.
Eventually they passed out in an overstuffed, sexless pile on the mattress, and had to wake up an hour and thirty-three minutes later—reeking of soy sauce and Sichuan chili—to get back on the bus.
It had been Chase’s favorite night on tour yet.
Good enough to make him forget all about the way he had teased her in the taxi, until Zak showed up backstage for their next show. Wearing those samefucking tights he’d ripped a hole in beneath the world’s shortest pair of shorts.
What was supposed to have been his revenge, came back around and kicked him in the ass.
She met up with him, guitar slung over her shoulder. Behind her lips, she ran her tongue over the front of her teeth. “Might want to mind your stare. You’re a taken man after all.”
Chase slowly shook his head. “You win.”
“Wha—?”
He spun her around and dragged her into the smallest dressing room—the one no one used because it wasn’t climate-controlled, and so they’d filled it with empty instrument cases and spare sound equipment. Chase locked the door behind them and waved his arm around until he found the pull for the lightbulb and yanked it down.
Zak blinked back at him, her chest straining against her top, as he closed the space between them in the small, dimly lit room. Painted floor to ceiling in pure black.
“Shouldn’t we—”
“We still have an hour before the show. The guys are in the green room. No one saw”—he kept talking as she opened her mouth—“No, I’m not sure, but fuck it if anyone did. And now you can answer my question.” He toyed with the hem of those ridiculously short shorts, snapping the thin lines of the fishnets against her thigh. “Are these the same ones?”
Zak leaned against the wall, biting her lip. “I guess there’s only one way for you to find out, isn’t there?”
Her leg fell to the side, her knee knocking the door. He could see the beginning of where he’d torn them before he touched the soft, bare skin of her inner thigh.
“So much for bending me over the foot of the bed and fucking me in them, huh?” she taunted, as though it had lingered at the back of her mind ever since he said it.
He kissed the hollow of her throat. “I think songwriting gets you off, too, in a weird sort of way.”
His nerves were so frayed that her responding shiver, alone, felt like it could be his undoing.
Her laugh, low and breathless, vibrated against his lips. “Nothing gets me off like you do, Chase.”
“Let’s keep it that way.”
The throb started at the bottom of his stomach. A rush of blood. And he was hard, painfully hard against her as he tasted her mouth, her tongue, with his own.
As if she could read his mind and knew exactly what he needed, she kissed him back. Deep and pliant. She pulled him closer, harder, by his belt loops. Her guitar bumped against his stomach. Her fingers knotted in his hair.
“What were you going to bend me over in here?” She pulled away.
Her heels set a leisurely beat against the unfinished floor as she dragged a finger over the instrument cases. The coffee table piled high with office supplies. A broken hydraulic chair.
She pulled the guitar over her head and set it gently on the makeup counter, and Chase watched the guitar strap dangle off the side. Saw the unused garment rack to the right.
“What if I did something else instead?” he murmured as he went to her.
Chest to chest, he felt her nipples harden through his shirt thanks to all those barely-there bras she owned. He reached one hand to brush over them as he unhooked the strap from her guitar with the other. Then pulled her shirt over her head.
She was so preoccupied with his touch, panting into his kiss, that she didn’t seem to catch onto his idea until she felt the leather tip of the strap graze her back.
He kissed her harder, taking her tongue in his mouth, taking her bottom lip with his teeth. Restraining her wrists with one hand as he pulled the sheer cups of her bra to the sides and admired the curves of her breasts popping out of it.
“Okay with you?” he asked.
“Fuck yes.”
He brought her hands forward and kissed the inside of each wrist before wrapping the strap around them in a figure-eight. The ends, he tied in a knot around the bar of the garment rack, her back turned to him as she faced the dusty mirror.
“I know you love to watch,” he said as he let his hands roam her body.
But he loved to watch, too.
He loved to watch the way her lips parted when he took her heavy breasts in both hands, her nipples between his fingers. He loved to watch the way her eyes trailed his touch as it dipped into her shorts. The way she held her breath in anticipation as he undid the button and zipper and pulled them off, leaving only the tights he’d destroyed and the high-heeled boots.
The way she gasped as he knelt for her, holding her still by her ass as he licked her pussy from clit to hole, then dipped his tongue inside.
The ends of her hair brushed his forehead as he worked her, thumbs hooked into the waistband of the tights as he guided her over his mouth until her legs trembled. He wrapped both hands around her ankles and ran them up her calves. Steadying her.
“You already know you’re the hottest fucking thing in the world,” he managed to tell her as he made his way back up, leaving a tender bite on the center of her perfect ass cheek. Kissing his way up her spine. “Couldn’t wait any longer.”
“Made me wait all night.” She angled her body for more of his finger as he pushed inside of her, curving to hit the spot that would make her brows crease with pleasure in her reflection.
“Didn’t see you putting the guitar down.”
She smiled at him over her shoulder. “Didn’t know you were going to tie me up with it.”
“God, honey, that mouth of yours.” He pulled her hair to the side and kissed the base of her neck as he placed a gentle palm over her throat, his other hand continuing the constant pump inside of her.
“God, honey… those hands of yours.”
And his own words of endearment, thrown back at him like that, made him so dizzy with need that he suddenly regretted his choice to stand. It turned out she could knock him off his feet with both hands tied above her head.
“Funny how you make being mean nice, and you make being nice so fucking mean.” He caught the flare in her eyes as she heard the sound of him undoing his belt buckle. Felt the needy arch of her back as he placed his hand flat on her lower stomach and brought her in. Her ass cushioning his cock.
“Take the shirt off, too,” she said. Tacking on the sweetest “please” afterward.
But he wasn’t going to tease her with a no when he wanted to feel all of her pressed up against all of him as well. She was watching him, in the mirror, after the shirt crossed over his vision and landed in a pile on the floor. Watching him like she had to have him or she was going to die. A feeling he knew better than any other.
It hit him over the head again, like it did every time.
“I love you,” he whispered in her ear. “You know that? I love you more than anything. Everything.”
He loved her dirty and demanding and spread-out backstage. Soft and slow and appreciative between the sheets. He loved her when they were so wrapped up in making music they forgot about how amazing making love was.
He loved her laughing as she and his sister ganged up on him playing Uno on the living room floor. He loved her facing his parents unapologetically proud of him and unapologetically herself.
He loved her with a guitar in her hands, a smile on her face, a sharp joke on her tongue, and all those incredible ideas swirling around in her brain.
He couldn’t say it enough because it wasn’t a steadfast feeling. It was ever-growing. Taking up more and more space and making him halfway sure that one day every cell in his body would be devoted to loving her.
Her expression went from dreamy to rooted in reality, and her smile softened. “I don’t know how I’m ever going to get used to hearing you say that.”
“Oh, I’m going to say it so often you get sick of it.” He kissed her shoulder, her shoulder blade. Any bare sliver of skin he could reach. Whispering the words as he did so.
“I’m not going to get sick of it.” She turned her head back to kiss him again. “I love you.”
It wasn’t the quickie it should have been. It was his hands on her waist, guiding her back. Aligning her perfectly to him as he sank into her, hips digging into her ass as she took every inch of him with a hushed sound of pleasure. It was slow and easy for a few moments as they each caught their breath at the sheer shock of ecstasy.
For the first few seconds, every time was like the first time. No recollection of how perfect it felt to be inside of her and how difficult it would be not to lose his shit.
How could anyone be as lucky as he was? To have known the woman he loved for most of their lives. To have memories dating back to childhood. To be able to look back at being sixteen years old and remember the night he almost had the guts to kiss her for the first time, and to look at her now and see an infinite well of that affection.
“Stop being so sweet.” She slammed her body against his.
His eyes almost rolled back in his head. “Shit, Zak. I’m not trying to be sweet. I’m trying to get used to how fucking tight you are. Can you give me a second? Please?”
She moved her hips again.
He let out a groan that he could tell bordered on too loud, and his hands clenched tighter as he pulled her in with each thrust. Finding a faster, harder rhythm that he hoped would occupy her long enough to keep her from doing whatever the hell she’d just done again.
His right hand found her clit. His left found her tits—after ripping a few seams along the way. His lips found her neck as he nipped and kissed. Trying to stifle his own sounds as her muted ones flooded his senses.
Chase had never been a public guy, but right then he didn’t care who heard. Who knew that she was his and that—with much effort and willpower—he could make her feel good enough to scream. Good enough to shake and stumble, and squeeze her eyes shut as she came all over his cock and kept riding those waves of pleasure.
Kept riding him, as he held out until she could come again.
“What are you doing?” Soft whimpers escaped her lips as she tried to press them tight.
“I’m doing exactly as you asked, angel.” He threaded his fingers through the base of her hair and gave a tug as he fucked her in hard, deep strokes. “I’m not being sweet.”
“Fuck that’s too much,” she whispered.
He slowed, sticking his index and middle fingers in her mouth against her tongue, his thumb curled beneath her chin. And she sucked on impulse, sending a phantom sensation below that triggered memories of every mind-blowing blowjob she’d ever given him. Which had been all of them, naturally.
“Good too much?”
She nodded, focusing her efforts on the distraction he’d provided. Fullness in her mouth to detract from the fullness between her outstretched legs.
He anchored himself at the sight of her pleasure, at the sight of her taking all of him, over and over again. Her lips wrapped around his fingers. Her breasts bobbing from the force of their bodies slamming against one another. Her hands clinging to the strap he’d bound them with.
The garment rack rocked as he fucked her harder. Her moans traveled from his fingers through his veins. The metal bars squeaked as he slowed to a stop. Taking his spit-soaked fingertips and swirling them over her nipples.
“Take me how you want me,” he told her. “Show me all the ways you torture me with those hips out there.”
Not that he needed to ask anything of her when she was already sinking onto him, refusing to part with the hot, erotic friction. Her hips swiveled and undulated. True to form, the way she moved them when she was jamming out to a repetitive guitar riff. Her breathing staggered as her orgasm built again with every pump.
He could pin it down to the second, most of the time, based on the way Zak lost her breath and seemed like she was begging him for air.
This time, there was no holding out when he felt the tight clench of her pussy around him. He came inside her so hard, it hurt.
So hard that, as they both lost the strength to stand upright, the garment rack broke in half with a resounding snap.
He caught and held onto her as he slipped the restraint off the warped metal of the rod. And he was cussing or saying her name or telling her he loved her as he came down from the rush, but he wasn’t sure which.
Chase’s first intelligible words, though, were, “Are you okay?”
Zak laughed as she leaned back into the kiss he placed on top of her head. “Yeah, I’m good.”
He supposed they should get back out there to play for the sixteen-thousand-person crowd that would fill the arena tonight. But he still lagged to get dressed and to help her with her own clothing.
They had to look decent and presentable when they came out, and they both put every effort into doing so. She fixed her makeup. They both fixed their hair.
They even double-checked each other’s clothing and concocted a staged conversation before opening the door.
“I don’t know, it’s pretty unpolished compared to some of the others,” Zak started off as she readjusted her guitar strap.
“But it’s also catchy. I think it might have good single potential.”
“I don’t think so. We have better options for singles.”
“Oh really? Like what?”
He was feeling clever and uncatchable, until Scott came barrelling down the hall with a few members of his team. “What the fuck was that sound? Did you guys break something in there? Please tell me it wasn’t expensive.”
“Uh, no.” A blush invaded Zak’s cheeks. “Or, I don’t think so. Are garment racks expensive?”
“You broke the garment rack?” Confusion layered on top of confusion as Scott looked down at where his daughter rubbed the redness around her wrists.
“We were fighting?” she provided.
“With clothes hangers?”
“Yes?”
“You don’t sound so sure about that.”
This was a disaster.
“I’ll pay,” Chase cut in. “To replace it.”
For the first time, Scott gave him a stare that bordered on fatherly. One that was admittedly pretty unnerving, coming from a retired rock star who had lived a life filled with hard drugs and somehow made it to the other side in good health. “Yeah. I think you will.”