Chapter Twenty-One
Gwen stared out the window of Alex’s Porsche as he drove them up to Massachusetts. He navigated the Manhattan streets with ease and let her sulk in peace, accepting her explanation that she had had a fight with Mabel and didn’t want to talk about it. She dozed on and off, waking up to remember the way she’d screamed at the person who was the closest thing she had to family.
When she was awake, she watched Alex. She wondered if he was her family now, if he would stay in the way that others hadn’t. She stared at him while he drove. He wore his Ray-Bans and drummed his long fingers on the steering wheel as the Porsche purred underneath them. He played with the speed limit when the highways were open, and cursed in the stop-and-go traffic.
Gwen took his hand when it was free. She felt so raw from crying, and she just wanted to stay close to him today. And he looked outrageously good in a simple white v-neck, dark jeans, and black leather jacket. Every rumble of the Porsche under her sent vibrations into her thighs, and she considered several times if she should ask him to pull over. She’d never had sex in a car, but this car, this man…it felt so right. It was only the threat of being caught that helped her resist the temptation.
By the time they reached the hotel, Gwen was itchy, her skin hot. Alex was still giving her space from the morning, but it was enough space. Too much space. She wanted zero space.
“What time is sound check?” she asked as he held the key card to the hotel room door. She could hear the husky quality to her voice.
“Six. Do you want to rest?” He carried their bags over the threshold, and Gwen barely got the door shut behind them before backing him against the wall.
Alex hummed in surprise when her mouth connected with his. His hands held her waist, slipping down to squeeze her ass. She pushed her tongue into his mouth and threaded her fingers into his hair.
“You good?” he asked hoarsely, staring down at her with dark eyes. “Is this what you want?”
“No,” she said with a smirk. “This is what I want.”
She slid down to her knees and reached for his belt. Alex breathed harshly. “Gwen.”
Nodding up at him, she unbuckled him and started on his button and zipper. Alex ran a hand over his face, eyes locked on her movements.
She tugged his jeans open and quickly pulled him out of his briefs. Her core throbbed to see him after hours of pressing her thighs together in the passenger seat. She wrapped her hand around him loosely, teasing him with gentle pulls of her wrist.
Glancing up at him for permission, he nodded at her when she pressed a soft kiss at the head of his cock. She peppered soft kisses along the length of him, feeling him twitch against her lips.
“What brought this on?” he said through thick breaths.
She let go of him and reached for the hem of her shirt, whipping it over her head and off.
“I like your car,” she said mischievously. “And I like you.”
He watched her as she knelt before him in her bra. And when she reached for his cock again, he closed his eyes, laughing. “My car.”
“Yes,” she whispered against his head. Her tongue flicked out, and his hand tightened into a fist at his side. “I wanted you to pull over so I could do this.”
She opened her mouth and let him slide in against her tongue. His hands immediately went to her hair, not forcing her anywhere, just cradling her. She only had a few inches of him, but she bobbed her head slowly, letting her tongue caress the underside of him.
“Gwen,” he moaned. “Gwen, you’re amazing.”
She hummed in thanks, and he gasped. She took a little more of him, starting to hollow her cheeks and suck. His head tilted back to rest on the wall, and his fingers tightened in her hair.
Her lips popped off of him, and she used her tongue to tease the head, swirling and applying pressure. The column of his throat was exposed, and she watched him swallow, his breath coming in tight gasps.
“Alex,” she said softly. He tilted his face down to her, and she ran her fingers over the length of him before letting him disappear into her mouth again. She took him slowly, watching him watch her, letting his cock fill her mouth until there was nowhere for him to go. She tightened her lips around him.
His eyelids fluttered closed. “You’re…you’re gonna make me—”
He hit the back of her throat. His voice came out strangled, and she felt his fingers press into her scalp for a moment before pulling out of her hair.
Gwen’s underwear was drenched. She wanted him so badly. She was seconds away from slipping her hand into her jeans when he suddenly pulled back, sliding out of her mouth. He pulled her to her feet in a swift movement, kissed her like she was air, and then lifted her from her waist.
He carried her to the bed and dropped her on it. His eyes were black as he quickly worked her jeans off. Her pants were hanging from one leg still as he pulled her hips down the bed, rolled on a condom, and pushed her underwear to the side. He entered her with a quick thrust that had them both groaning for different reasons.
“Gwen. Gwen, you’re so wet.”
He stood tall next to the bed, holding her hips down, and she clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out. She felt like she was floating right at the top of a climax, ready for the crash.
“I love you,” he said, pumping into her.
She opened her mouth to say it back, but a reedy sigh came out instead. He was brushing right against that place inside of her that liquefied her. She tumbled over, spasming around him and moaning. He fucked her through it, not slowing down or changing angles until the entire orgasm was wrung out of her. Only then did he let himself come, dropping heavily over her with a gasp.
They caught their breath against each other, running fingers over skin, hair, lips.
“We should take road trips more often,” Alex said with a laugh.
She grinned into his shoulder.
Once they’d gotten themselves together, they headed to the venue for sound check. Dominic greeted her with a hug that lifted her off the ground, and Gwen laughed and said her hellos to the rest of the band as they trickled in. Their tour manager was a short, quick woman named Sophia, Lorenz’s eyes and ears at the venues, making sure all contract terms were met. Sophia was not impressed to hear that Gwen would be watching backstage, and even less impressed when Alex tasked her with finding out from the crew where Gwen was supposed to stand.
Gwen watched a sound check for the first time, enthralled by the many moving parts that went into it. Alex seemed bored with the whole process, while Dominic kept getting distracted with showing off tricks on his violin for Gwen. Carlos, the drummer, never showed, which was unsurprising to the rest of them.
They went with Jaden and Dom to a quick dinner before heading back, and Gwen could hardly believe how much the guys ate when only an hour away from a performance. She could never eat before a Pops concert.
“How did you all meet?” Gwen asked when she and Alex were walking back to the venue.
“Lorenz found them. He created the group.”
Gwen looked up at him, feeling her stomach turn unpleasantly.
“Oh. Do you all get along, though?”
“Yeah,” Alex said, guiding her across the street. “Forrest had a problem with me from the beginning, though.” And just before Gwen tried to ask which one Forrest was and why she hadn’t met him yet, Alex said, “So Lorenz replaced him. We found Mac.”
He pulled the stage door open for her, and as she walked through, blaring sunlight switching abruptly to backstage dimness, her mind worked quickly.
“So, if they don’t get along with you, they’re fired?” She laughed. But when he pulled off his Ray-Bans and glanced at her, she realized it wasn’t a joke. It was a fact.
He looked down a bit guiltily. “Well, it’s called Thorne and Roses. I’m Thorne.”
She nodded, not wanting to press it.
The concert was an evening of three groups, each playing a forty-five-minute set. When Thorne and Roses joined a few days before, ticket sales skyrocketed, selling out the rest of the auditorium, so the venue put them as the final act.
When it was time for their set, Alex brought Gwen to the stage manager to tell her where to stand. He held her face in his hands and kissed her as the rest of the band entered the stage in the dim red lights. She heard people starting to scream as Alex’s lips parted from hers. He gave her a wink and a smile, and when he turned around and strolled onstage, the noise thundered. The lights flashed, Carlos counted them in, and when the sound boomed from the speakers, she watched as Xander Thorne slid his bow across the strings of his thin red cello.
“Back in Black” soared through the auditorium. Xander played the riffs in the opening with his bow, his fingers moving dexterously over the strings. Dominic did most of the connecting with the crowd, creeping down toward the edge of the stage, touching the fingers of the audience’s reaching hands. Jaden and Mac played keyboard and bass, respectively, holding down the accompaniment as Xander took lead on most songs.
She shivered with the thrum of energy. Gwen had never been to a rock concert before, only classical music in auditoriums with padded seats. She peeked out the curtain and found hundreds of people standing at the edge of the stage, jumping and dancing. She almost wished Alex had gotten her cleared for the floor, just so she could watch from the front. She’d certainly dressed the part: ripped black jeans and a ribbed band T-shirt.
Looking back out to him onstage, she smiled. Alex was electric, a different person. He was Xander Thorne. He flipped his hair at the end of a phrase, and she laughed, knowing the movement so well. He was overconfident, overtly sexy, and he didn’t give a fuck about anything happening on that stage.
The speakers vibrated her entire body, and the lights flashed across her face in their automated pathways across the stage. She watched the band wind their way through a U2 cover, the entire crowd singing along with them. At the end of it, he looked over to her with a smile that made her stomach flip in circles.
As the crowd cheered for them, and Dominic riled them up with a call and repeat, Alex crossed to her, exiting the stage to drag her face to his. She squeaked, laughing when he kissed her, biting at her and running his hands over her breasts and hips.
“What are you doing!” She laughed. “You can’t just take a break to kiss your girlfriend!”
“Watch me,” he growled, grabbing her ass.
An amplified voice caught her attention.
“And once Xander is done humping his girlfriend, we can get back to it.”
She gasped, seeing Dominic giving her a shit-eating grin from the stage. Alex huffed against her neck and turned back to glare at him. He held her face in his large hands and kissed her one last time before returning to the stage.
Jaden and Mac were holding each other close, mocking them, running their hands all over each other. Gwen blushed and pressed her fingers to her lips.
As Alex grabbed Ruby again and prepped for their next song, a humming of noise caught her ear.
“Gwen!”
“I love you, Gwen!”
“It’s Gwen!”
She frowned, peeking out from behind the curtain to see who could possibly—
And the noise slammed against her ears. So different from the acoustics of Carnegie Hall with its three thousand pairs of sophisticated hands clapping together. This noise…This noise was electric. She waved and smiled from where she stood at the edge of the stage, and five hundred young people screamed.
Gwen laughed. She looked over to Alex. The look he was giving her was intoxicating, so pleased and proud, but also riding that line of animalistic and predatory and mine.
She winked at him and looked back to the audience, giving another wave before turning to disappear back to her spot behind the curtain.
Gwen!
Gwen!
Gwen!
Gwen!
Gwen!
She laughed and waved again, unsure what they wanted. Until she turned her smiling eyes back to Alex, and found Dominic extending his electric violin to her.
They screamed.
It had to be a joke. She shook her head at Dominic, shouting at him over the noise, “No!” Then she turned to Alex and mouthed, “I told you, no!”
He smiled and gestured to the audience that was still screaming her name.
Gwen felt the thundering in her chest. And she stepped out from behind the curtain.
The light hit her as she accepted Dominic’s violin. He squeezed her arm and gestured for her to take the stage. Gwen looked to Alex. He grinned at her, eyes flicking down to the violin.
I wanted to play electric violin—her excuse for why she’d gone to his apartment that day.
And now she would. In front of a crowd.
“What do you want to play?” Dominic yelled over the noise.
Gwen had no fucking idea.
Did Alex want to play Fugue No. 1 with her? Here? She couldn’t imagine Lorenz would be happy about that. A smile crossed her face. She could think of something Lorenz would be even less happy about…
Gwen looked down at the set list on the ground. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was next.
And suddenly all those years listening to Thorne and Roses—playing along with Dominic in her room, watching videos of Xander Thorne flipping his hair…
She looked back to Carlos, the drummer, and he twirled his sticks at her, ready to go.
Biting her lip, she glanced at Alex, and lifted the bow to the electric violin. Dominic always started “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” and everyone else joined in. She knew this already. So, when she pulled the bow and the opening melody shook the auditorium, she watched Alex’s eyes soften in surprise, before blazing passionately as Carlos came in with the drum fill.
Dominic was laughing, staring at her in awe.
Gwen winked at him, and returned her focus to Alex, who was sitting center stage, dragging the melody across Ruby, as the song dropped into the first verse. That look was back, like he could fuck her right now, in the middle of this stage with the entire audience watching, and not give a damn.
The chorus escalated, and she knew that Dominic normally took lead on that, while Mac and Alex supported him. She hit the entrance strong, playing the melody she’d memorized years ago. She had to block out the screaming and the flashing lights and just focus on the band and the music. It was so much easier to do exactly that when the crowd was so loud. Her body wasn’t tense. Her playing wasn’t stiff. Everything was low stakes and fun.
Before she could even process it all, the song was over, and Alex was moving toward her as the crowd screamed for her, sweeping her up and kissing her in front of them all. She wrapped her legs around his waist as her feet left the ground, and let the noise and the feeling of his body lull her senses.
He pulled back long enough to whisper against her lips, “I’m gonna fuck you until you scream tonight.”
“Back atcha.” She grinned as he pressed into her mouth again.
Dominic was on the mic, making jokes about packing his bags and getting out of everyone’s hair so Gwen could officially take his place. Alex lowered her down, and Gwen extended his violin back to Dominic, ready to wave to the audience and head backstage to cool down. But Dominic shook his head at her, and grabbed his second violin, which he used for the classical songs.
“Come on, princess,” he said, winking at her. “Let’s see how many of these you know.”
She smiled. She knew all of them.
The rest of the night was a blur.
She played the next six songs with them until she finally got self-conscious about stealing the spotlight and refused, handing the violin back to Dominic. Her heart didn’t stop pounding for the rest of the set, and she couldn’t stop smiling either. They forced her to come out and take a bow at the end and play the encore with them, and when she bowed she couldn’t help but think that this kind of bow was different than the one she got at the Pops. This bow wasn’t about respect for craft. This bow was pure joy and giddy terror—being the center of the universe for five seconds.
They split a bottle of whiskey backstage afterward, and despite Alex’s best efforts to go immediately back to the hotel with her, the rest of the band convinced them to come to the bar for an hour.
Carlos found the video on Instagram first, reposting it to his own account. Someone had filmed Gwen playing “Smooth Criminal” with them.
#GwenJackson #violinKaween #steponme #SHE #ThorneandRoses #XanderThorne #burymewiththis
“Is this okay?” she asked Alex as Carlos found two more Instagram videos and one YouTube video of the entire performance of “Highway to Hell.”
Alex swallowed his scotch and said, “Of course. Why wouldn’t it be?”
She nodded into her glass, trying to shake off this feeling that she’d gotten a free gift that could be taken from her at any moment.
When Dominic tried to buy another round, Alex stopped him and all but dragged her from the bar and into a taxi. His fingers danced along her thigh in the back seat. In the elevator up to their suite, Alex pushed her up against the wall and angled her head so he could kiss her while his thigh slid between hers. She moaned all forty floors up.
Getting the key card to open the door was a huge ordeal that Alex didn’t seem to have the patience for, so Gwen took it from him and let them in. He carried her in, hugging her body tightly to his as he kissed her.
“You were remarkable tonight,” he murmured into her neck. “The way the lights hit you…” A kiss against her throat. “We have to watch those videos so you can see yourself. You were so free. So much more alive than you’ve ever been.” His tongue was against her skin, and his hips rolled into her. “Fuck, I wanted to fuck you all night.”
Gwen still wasn’t sure how Alex was able to leave her breathless with just the words that came out of his mouth. Sinful, sinful words. She could do nothing but smile into his shoulder.
His hands slid up her ribs, tracing the grooves in her T-shirt. She chuckled, a weightless feeling filling her head. “What?” he said, pulling back to smile down at her.
“Just thinking of eighteen-year-old Gwen,” she said, “if I told her she’d get to see Thorne and Roses live, play onstage with them, and then go back to Xander Thorne’s hotel room.”
She grinned and leaned up on her toes to kiss him softly.
“Mm. Eighteen-year-old Alex wouldn’t have believed it either, if I told him he’d get to take someone like you back to his hotel room,” he mumbled against her lips.
“Eighteen-year-old Alex could get it.”
“He could not.”
She laughed, and he lifted her up, grabbing at her thighs as they wrapped around him. He walked her to the king-size bed in the middle of the suite, dropping her to bounce on the mattress with a yelp. Scrambling up the bed, she kicked off her boots and pulled her shirt over her head.
A humming sound reverberated from somewhere.
Alex stood from unlacing his boots to pull his phone from his jeans pocket. Frowning at it, he silenced the buzzing and placed the phone on the bedside table with his room key and wallet. Before she could ask if he needed to answer it, he’d grabbed her ankles, pulling her down to him and unbuttoning her jeans.
Gwen giggled, breathless and grabbing for the back of his shirt to pull over his head. His hands were frenzied on her hips, rolling the tight denim over her ass and down her thighs. He left them hanging from her knees, reached for her waist, and as easily as if she were a doll, flipped her onto her stomach. He pulled her up on her knees, ass in the air.
Kisses against her backside, and Gwen gasped when he pressed his lips over her black lace underwear.
There was a quick buzz of a voicemail notification.
But Alex ignored it, pulling the lace to the side and starting to lap at her. Long, flat strokes that made her thighs quiver and pulled the breath from her lungs. It wasn’t long before he had her groaning into the mattress, squirming to do anything but just kneel with her hips in the air.
He pulled away and encouraged her to undress as he did the same. Gwen peeled her jeans the rest of the way down her legs and tossed her shirt across the room. The whiskey and tequila were making her brain happy, and her body thrummed as Alex crawled over her.
A buzzing from the nightstand again.
Gwen turned her head to his phone.
Lorenz.
Her stomach plummeted, and suddenly she was very sober, and not even the kisses over her neck and chest could distract her. She watched as the call went to “missed call,” and she saw on his lock screen that he had seven missed calls and twelve texts.
She pressed her lips together. It wasn’t Alex’s fault. If anything, it was Dominic’s idea to let her take his violin, and the audience’s cheering didn’t help either.
“Alex, your phone—”
“Ignore it.”
“Are you sure it’s not important?”
He dropped a kiss between her breasts and looked up into her eyes. “Absolutely. Nothing is more important than what we’re doing right now.” He smirked at her, and pressed his mouth to her breast, teasing her nipple with soft brushes of his lips. “Now, if I remember correctly,” he whispered, moving to her other breast, “you owe me a screaming orgasm.”
She smiled at the ceiling and ran her fingers through his hair. Pushing at his shoulders, she got him to lie on his back as she straddled him and kissed down his chest. He was already hard, and she pumped him slowly before guiding him to her entrance.
His hands were on her hips, her thighs, her clit. Alex could never just lie there and enjoy. He always had to be touching her. When her hands reached for the headboard in front of her, his head angled up and sucked on her nipples as she pumped her hips on him. She sat up tall and changed the position. He groaned in the back of his throat and grabbed her waist, fully lifting her up and dropping her back down on his cock. Gwen squealed, bracing herself on his chest and trying to help, but he moved her up and down on him with ease, muttering curse words and love-yous until his hips started meeting hers.
His phone buzzed again.
Her eyes jumped to it, and she felt her orgasm drift away.
“Ignore it,” he moaned, grinding his hips up to hers.
“Alex…”
He sighed and stopped thrusting. He reached for the phone, lifting it to his ear and snapped, “What.”
Gwen…didn’t expect for him to still be inside of her when he talked to Lorenz. She tried to move away, but his hand reached up to her hip, holding her there.
“I’m busy, so if you could cut to the chase,” he hissed. She watched him worry his lip between his teeth. “Yes, she’s here too. You’re interrupting our night.”
Gwen’s eyes widened, but before she could try to end the intercourse portion of this phone call, his palm had slid up her waist to tweak her breast. His eyes were unfocused and he licked his lips as he rolled her nipple. The sensation shot straight to her core, and she tightened around his cock. She slapped a hand over her mouth and watched as Alex’s eyes flashed dangerously at her.
He rolled his hips slowly, sliding in and out barely an inch each time. She smothered a laugh, like a teenager trying to sneak his girlfriend in through the window. He’d responded to something Lorenz said with a noncommittal noise, his eyes drifting down her stomach to watch his cock disappear into her.
She pressed both hands to her mouth, desperate not to make a sound while Lorenz was on the phone, but also…the way Alex was fucking her slowly, like they could get caught any moment…Gwen started moving her hips with him. His eyes fluttered, and his head dropped back against the pillow.
And then suddenly, Alex was sitting up, his eyes wide.
“Say that again,” he said into the phone. His eyes looked up at her, and she held very, very still, hoping to hear some snippet through the phone.
“When?” he said. The corner of his mouth lifted. And then abruptly, “You are not representing her.”
Gwen blinked, still in his lap.
“I don’t give a fuck,” he hissed. “She’ll find someone else. She isn’t signing with you.”
She felt her heart flutter. There was something big happening.
“Tell them yes,” he said. “We’ll talk more in the morning.” He ended the call and looked up at her.
“What is it?” Her voice was airy and tense.
“U2 is going on tour again. Their people saw the video from tonight.” He reached up and pushed her hair back, holding her cheek. He smiled. “They want Gwen Jackson and Thorne and Roses to open for them.”
She felt tight everywhere, like her skin didn’t belong to her. There was a lot in that one sentence.
Gwen Jackson and Thorne and Roses.
U2.
Tour.
She didn’t know how long it took her to process everything, but when her brain had returned to normal speed, Alex was kissing her neck, whispering words about “perfect” and “future” and “ours.”
“Alex,” she breathed, feeling him thrusting in and out of her again. “Alex, I can’t leave New York. I have the Pops.”
He pulled back to look at her, his lips bruised red against his pale skin. “What?”
“We have the Pops,” she said, reminding him.
He stared at her. “Gwen. This is U2. This is international.”
“Alex. I’m first chair in the Manhattan Pops. I have a full-time position there. A career.” A paycheck, she thought to herself. She shook her head, her brows coming together, trying to figure out why she needed to explain this. “We’re not even halfway through the season. When does the U2 tour start?”
“December twenty-second in Los Angeles.” He said it so simply.
“The Christmas concert is on the twenty-fourth.”
Alex stared up at her, like they were speaking different languages. “The Manhattan Pops will still be there. This tour won’t be.”
She thought of Nathan and Ava, the financial difficulties that caused them to reach out to Xander Thorne again. And now their two most effective sources of publicity were leaving for the rest of the season?
No.
“What about Ava and Nathan?”
His thumb brushed her cheek. His eyes burrowed into hers, searching for her meaning. Then he said, “What about them?”
She felt his hands on her skin, his cock still inside of her, and his breath on her face. And she’d never felt further away from him.