Chapter Nineteen #2
Nobody stopped us going up on stage. We got a little applause, but out of the fifteen people in the room, two were bartending and a handful were too busy with their food to even bother.
“What song?” I asked as I helped her arrange two microphones side by side. Instead of answering directly, she stepped up to her mic with a mischievous smile.
“Hi, everyone.” She spoke into the mic but didn’t take her eyes off me. “We’re being spontaneous, so we didn’t bring any instruments. I hope you like a cappella music. My name’s Adriana, this is my future husband Brooks, and this is ‘Dreams.’ ”
My favorite song of hers. My new favorite version of that song was the way she’d struggled to get it across her lips while I was eating her out. But a cappella would do.
Addie started singing, and she really didn’t need an instrument to accompany her voice. It silenced the room within a single line. “Just the girl behind the blue door, in that apartment on the fifth floor, where people never climb.”
I listened. I watched. Her skin glowed in the flimsy spotlight. And she smiled. It wasn’t that big dazzling stage smile she’d worn on tour. It was small, but it made her eyes squinty and her chin tilt sideways in the cutest way.
For the chorus, I joined in, finding her harmony, and she gave that smile to me. My heart was ready to leap out of my chest.
Existing on this planet at the same time as Adriana Banks felt like a goddamn privilege and I hadn’t earned it.
She was about ready to end the song, and I only got her attention by clearing my throat.
And I sang the verse I’d written over three years ago after she’d sat in my living room and had played me “Dreams” for the first time, and she’d laughed and shaken her head and made a joke about the last pizza slice in the box afterward, as if she hadn’t given me full-body goosebumps with nothing but her voice.
A lost boy with an old guitar.
Doesn’t know one day he’ll find his star.
He has to bide his time.
He played his way into people’s cars,
But no song ever filled his heart,
Until he heard her rhyme.
And he smiles and sings for everyone, every day,
Then he goes home feeling lucky ’cause he gets to hear her play.
Addie blinked furiously, then joined in late on the last chorus.
It wasn’t my best work but that truly didn’t matter. I’d dabbled in the playground she’d built, had written those words down on a whim and had them memorized ever since.
The second the song was over, Addie grabbed me by the wrist and hauled me out of the bar in a beeline.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to overstep,” I said as I let myself be led away from the building.
She whirled around in the parking lot, checking all around for witnesses, grabbed her hair in both fists, and then she was on me.
Her arms were around my neck, her lips on mine, she pulled herself into me.
I barely had enough time to wrap my hands around her waist to keep her balanced on her tiptoes instead of letting her topple us over.
“Addie,” I gasped into her open mouth.
“Talk later, kiss now,” she grumbled and tugged on my bottom lip with her teeth.
Talk later, kiss now. I could do that.
I gripped her waist tighter, only for her to make a sound that shot a bolt of white-hot lightning through me.
It felt like too much and not enough all at once.
Addie was radiant. Her tongue was sweet.
Her vanilla scent tickled my nose. And I wanted more of her, all of her, wanted to consume her.
I let my hands roam down to her backside, where she’d given me the okay to get more physical, and I dug them in.
She moaned against my lips. For a flashing moment, I was hyperaware of her perfect, soft, beautiful, round breasts pressed up against my chest. It only spurred on the heat coursing through me.
With the tension in my jeans, I didn’t have to look down to know I was beyond going back inside.
Instead, I started walking. She tiptoed backward, most of her weight in my arms.
We hit my car. I balanced her up against it. Without prompting, Addie hooked her legs around my waist, letting me get closer, letting me feel the heat between her thighs. Balanced between the driver’s door and me, her arms dropped from my neck, only for her hands to find my belt buckle.
I froze, tilting my head out of the kiss. “Don’t.”
“Why?” she whined, pulling the word out over two syllables.
I couldn’t help but laugh at that tone. Needy girl. “I want you to have everything you want, but I can’t give you that.”
“What?”
“Parking lot sex. Car sex.” I wrenched her legs off my hips and lowered them back to the ground. “Between security cameras and possible passersby? We’d be making headlines by daybreak.”
“Oh. Right.” She nodded, but her gaze dropped to my groin. Her unabashed focus only increased the strain. She had zero qualms about looking at me however she pleased. “Well, it looks like I’m the one going back inside to pay.”
“I’m sorry.”
She held her hand out. “Money.”
I chuckled. Her short commands were becoming one of my favorite things.
She was shamelessly asking for things that she knew wouldn’t bother me, and I would indulge her even if she asked for a yacht.
For now, I dropped my card in her palm. She twirled it through her fingers.
“Do you think they have any fun merch I can buy? I’m suddenly in a shopping mood. ” She wiggled her shoulders.
“Addie baby, I know you’re teasing, but you can buy the whole bar for all I care. What’s mine is yours, right?”
“Not yet.” She laughed and waved her ring through the air as she bounced back toward the bar. “But you better not expect me to sign a prenup. Your Amex is half the reason I’m marrying you.”
“Hadn’t even crossed my mind,” I called back.
Fifteen minutes later we were back en route to Wild Fields, a huge bag of Rock’n & Roll’n merch in the back of the car, and a matching baseball cap on Addie’s head.
She was waving her phone through the air, telling me all the oh-so-expensive things she would buy with my card details.
Her definition of expensive wasn’t even close to what I’d seen others spend in a single day.
So far, we were up to a keyboard, so she could learn how to play at home, some kind of designer heels with red soles, an espresso maker that was cheaper than the one I had at my place in Nashville, and a bouncy castle with multiple bounce areas.
The latter had been prompted by me saying she should at least try to go big or go home.
She was going on about buying herself a car—and, gasp, even getting leather interior—as if I hadn’t contemplated buying one for her multiple times.
At least now I knew what kind she liked, because she hadn’t even tried to tease me about buying herself a Porsche or a Lamborghini, just a good old Jeep.
Her musings about sound systems were cut off when I took a right turn, the headlights barely illuminating the gravelly country road.
“Are you lost or just taking the scenic route?” She twisted in her seat to look back at the street we’d just exited.
“I know exactly what I’m doing.” I halted the car on the side of the road, letting it idle to keep the lights of the dashboard on.
“And what’s that?” She raised both brows at me.
“I’m making the most of living in the middle of fucking nowhere now, and betting on the fact that no one will drive past to see me eat you out.”
I reached across, Addie’s eyes following my every move, as I unbuckled her belt. It snapped back but Addie didn’t move. Only her chest rose and fell rapidly, betraying how she felt.
“You know, I’m totally fine with not having car sex, right?”
I took my own seat belt off and held a hand out for her. “Wanna come over here and tell me to my face?”
Addie chuckled. She tossed her phone into the glove compartment, took my hand, and climbed over the center console.
Other than steadying her, I let her find her position.
She slid into my lap, her legs tucked in on either side, and wiggled closer until she was right on top of me.
The wiggling made her skirt ride up, bunching it around her hips.
“Hi, handsome,” she whispered and leaned in to kiss the corner of my mouth.
“Hi, Addie baby,” I replied and slid the cap off her head, carefully detangling a curl that got stuck in its clasp.
“Had you already written your verse for ‘Dreams’ when you asked me to sing it to you in your bedroom?” Her voice was low, barely audible over the running motor, as if asking for secrets in the car’s liminality.
“Yes.”
Addie bit her lip but didn’t respond to my admission.
Not verbally, at least. She took both my hands in hers and placed them at the apex of her bare thighs.
Hips relaxing, her legs fell open just a little farther than before.
Her thong was barely more than a tiny lace triangle and a few thin straps keeping it in place.
A flimsy excuse for underwear. Spreading her legs around my hips was enough of a stretch for it to ride sideways, giving me an almost unobstructed view of her glistening pink pussy.
God, the things I wanted to do to her until she was swollen, raw and red.
I tugged the last bit of fabric aside, baring her clit to me, and ran my thumb down her slit to her entrance.
“Fuck, look at how pretty you are. You’re already wet without me having to lift a finger. ”
“Oh god.” She shuddered as I sank my thumb into her, her eyes falling shut.
“Do you need me to go slower?” I pulled my thumb back and brushed it over her clit, causing another full-body shiver.
“God no.”
“How many fingers do you think I can fit into your tight little pussy without warming you up first?”
Addie bit her lip, looked down at my hand. “Two?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
She squirmed, tilting her hips forward, desperate to get my touch back on her, so I drew back an inch. I got the cutest annoyed huff in response. “Fuck you. Three.”