17. Chapter Seventeen
Chapter seventeen
Carter
“Dave, kill it a sec,” I throw over my shoulder, nodding at the camera pointed at my face. I wipe sweat off my forehead with the towel hanging around my neck.
“Sure thing, Carter.” He lowers the camera, red light blinking off.
“Thanks, man.”
I’ve gotten to know Dave and Mika pretty damn well.
Hard not to when they’re orbiting you all day with a lens six inches from your face.
I could’ve gone the tortured artist route and ignored them, but I learned early on in my career that working with cameras beats getting hunted by them.
After blanking Dave and Mika for the first few weeks on tour, I remembered the golden rule: Give them something.
Let them get their shots and do their job.
They’re more likely to give you space when you ask for it.
Press, paps, doco crew. They’re all the same. Work with them, not against them.
Waiting for the elevator outside the hotel gym, the sweat continues to bead on my forehead. The numbers tick down slowly. I’m wired and worn out at the same time.
Chris comes around the corner, head buried in his phone.
“Liam’s moved things around tomorrow so you can have a day off,” he says, eyes still squinting at the screen. “Anything I need to know about?”
He finally looks up.
I shake my head. “Nope. Just need a break before Paris.”
Damn, Liam moves fast. I was thinking we’d get it done in Paris, maybe even Milan. Scheduled downtime when everyone’s already on a break. Instead, he’s carved a hole in a city where every minute is already sold three times over.
Tours run like a machine. Every hour is accounted for, with very little slack or room to move. And Chris is the bastard with the wrench, making sure nothing jams. He hates changes. We get a proper break every six cities. This isn’t one of them.
“You need to keep me in the loop, Carter. Don’t shut me out. I can’t do my job if I don’t know what’s going on.”
He looks concerned, which is the last thing I need. This is exactly why I didn’t want to deal with this on tour. I already know something is wrong in my body. I don’t need everyone else wobbling around me while I’m trying to keep the show upright.
I grab his shoulder and give him a rough shake, pulling him in, our foreheads touching.
“I promise, everything’s fine. I mentioned to Liam last night that I was tired, and he overreacted. Some time to clear my head will do me good. And I know it’s shit timing before the Paris break. I know what goes into moving the schedule around. So . . . thank you. I appreciate it.”
Chris blinks, as thrown by the compliment as the sweat on my forehead.
“If you need anything, you tell me,” he says finally. “That’s what I’m here for.”
The elevator dings. I let him go and step inside.
He wipes his forehead with a grimace. “You better not go off the rails on my watch,” he calls. “I’m fucking serious.”
I grin and flip him off as the doors slide shut. His voice carries through the gap before it seals.
“Conference room in twenty!”
I enter my suite on the top floor, and for the first time, I wish Vi could stay with me. Would make everything so much easier. I wouldn’t have to go down to her room at stupid o’clock. I could just . . . reach over.
I’m jonesing for my next taste of her sweet cunt.
One night buried between her thighs did nothing but light the fuse.
It was too frenzied, years of emotional shit burning off.
Next time, I want slow. I want control. I want to drag every second out until she’s begging, to hold her on the edge because I can, and watch her fall apart because I said so.
I jump into the shower, hot water pounding my back.
One hand palms soap over my body; the other is already wrapped around my cock, stroking slow as I imagine her tight clasp pulsing around me.
I replay the entire night in my head, her spine arching when my piercing rammed her G-spot.
The sound she made when I told her she was mine.
It’s enough to push me over the brink. I come with a grunt, bracing my palm flat against the tile, watching it wash down the drain, knowing it’s barely taken the edge off.
It’ll have to do until tonight.
I towel off, drag on jeans and a T-shirt, and shove my feet into boots.
Before I leave, I grab my notebook off the nightstand, tear out a page scattered with scribbled half-finished lyrics, and fold it over.
Crease by crease, it twists into a rose.
One of the useless skills you pick up on tour.
Kai ripped into me the first time he saw me do it.
He still does. Then I watched him try to learn in secret. Poorly.
I take the elevator down to Vi’s floor, heart ratcheting up a notch the closer I get. I slip my keycard in, listen for the soft click, and step into her room.
It smells like her.
My dick goes from satiated to fully alert in a heartbeat.
Traitor.
I cross to the bed, lift her pillow, and breathe her in. My balls ache because they know that scent. And they want back in.
I set the paper rose in the indentation where her head would lie, a stupid little marker that I was here, thinking of her, and force myself back out before I do something idiotic like whip my cock out.
The conference room is already full when I walk in. Long tables, stacks of glossy posters and vinyl records, black markers lined up military neat. The guys are each at their own station, heads down, hands moving on autopilot, signing their lives away.
My eyes find her first. They always do.
She’s in her usual gear: tight T-shirt showcasing those gorgeous tits, black boots, black jeans. Her hair falls in a dark sheet down her back, and I miss the feel of it in my hands, the smell of it—it’s burned into my brain. Jesus Christ, I could almost come in my pants from the memory alone.
Our eyes meet, and my heart fucking melts.
Whatever’s on my face makes her widen her eyes and snap her focus away, lifting the camera to shoot Theo instead. I catch the slight curve of her mouth a second before she schools it straight again.
Mika’s got a camera trained on me from the other side of the room. Megan stands near him, tablet in hand, watching everything.
I give the guys a chin-lift. Kai salutes me with his marker. Theo doesn’t look up, pen already flying. X nods.
I drop into the chair at my station, the table already laid out. Chris materializes at my elbow and slides the first stack of posters in front of me.
“You’ve got two hours to get through two thousand. Then an hour interview with Megan. A full hour.” He gives me a pointed look.
“Can’t wait,” I mutter under my breath. I was a dick to her the first time. I’m trying not to make a habit out of it.
“You know what would make this more bearable?” I call out a little louder. “A bottle of Macallan.”
“Fuckin’ aye,” Xander hollers from his table.
Vi shoots me a look that could strip paint. I bite the inside of my cheek and shut up.
“Or some groupies,” Theo adds. “Can we get some groupies in here?” He looks at Chris with way too much hope.
“No distractions,” Chris says. “Get to work.”
“She could sit under the table; she wouldn’t be a distraction,” Theo persists. “We wouldn’t even hear her, apart from the occasional gagging.”
X barks out a laugh. “It’s funny you think she’d gag on your dick. Nobody in the history of the world has had that problem.”
The room dissolves into laughter. Megan rolls her eyes. Vi turns away, shoulders shaking a little.
“Don’t make me separate you,” Chris warns.
“Come on, Daddy, don’t be mad,” Kai teases from the other end of the room, scrawling across a poster without even looking.
I chuckle and drop my head, letting my pen move as fast as I can without shifting my wrist. Chris slides another poster under my hand the second I lift it. We’ve got it down to a system. Machine mode.
Talk flows around us. The cameras capture it all while we get high off the Sharpie fumes. Vi circles the room, doing her thing. It’s torture, having her this close and not being able to look at her for too long in case someone notices.
Every few minutes, my gaze flicks up anyway, tracking her in my periphery. What she’s doing, who she’s talking to, watching her bend to get a shot. How she tucks her hair behind her ear with the back of her hand, camera still glued to her eye.
A couple of times, she catches me, her eyes snapping to mine while I’m already staring. She gives me this small, reluctant smile, and it damn near knocks the air out of my lungs.
Her smiles are rare. They feel earned, and I want more of them. All of them.
“Carter,” Chris snaps.
Shit.
I drag my eyes back down to the poster in front of me. He slides a fresh one under my wrist, and I sign my name.
***
The final lyric tears out of my throat and leaves me raw on the inside. It rattles through my teeth, down the neck of the guitar, and straight into the boards under my boots. The crowd detonates, a solid wall of sound that hits my ribs before it reaches my ears.
The floor vibrates.
One of our best shows this tour. Easy.
We were tight tonight, almost possessed. The guys were locked in, every riff, every breath was one body moving instead of four. I don’t know what lit them up.
But I know what lit me.
Vi.
She was in every verse, laced through every chorus. Knowing she was close, that I’d get to bury my face in her hair and slide back into her in a few hours, kept my blood running hotter than the spotlights overhead.
The crowd starts chanting, “Pulse! Pulse!” The sound swells until it has nowhere left to go but to absorb straight into my body.
I step back up to the mic, chest still heaving, sweat running down my face and spine.
“Thank you, Madrid,” I growl into the dark.
The roar spikes again.
I don’t stay to soak in it.
I’m already moving, legs carrying me offstage. Every step takes me closer to the only thing I’ve been thinking about since we walked into the stadium.