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“Why?”
The word pops out of my mouth before I can stop it. I feel like such an asshole. Why? I should be telling him … “Thank you,” I say quickly. He's still smiling at me, this sexy, sly little smile that says nothing at all about his personality. “Seriously, it means a lot.”
Deep breath, Lilith. Don't cry again. You're stronger than that.
But … there's nothing wrong with grieving, with tears. I need to remember that.
Dad died today.
Sharp breath.
“All your stuff is wet,” he says, glancing at something on the floor. My jeans, I think. “You want some clothes? I have a ton of extra shirts; you could have one. Maybe some sweatpants?” His smile twitches a little. “No bras or panties—I usually send those along with the girls who bring them.”
“How very kind of you,” I say, gathering the sheets close and watching him watch me. If I invited him, I think he'd fuck me right now. At least, he's looking at me like he would. “Yeah, if it's not too much trouble, I'd like a dry shirt.”
“Abso-fucking-lutely.” He tosses some stuff at me and I see that he already anticipated that I'd say yes. There's a huge black band tee with the words Beauty in Lies in pale pink; broken white hearts oozing red blood decorate the fabric in a random pattern. This thing, it'll be like a dress on me. The sweats are black, generic, definitely well-loved but clean and smelling of laundry soap.
My stomach grumbles again and Derek smiles.
“Want something to eat?” he asks me. I hate feeling so vulnerable, but … I'm starving right now. And it's not like I have a lot of money for food.
“If it's not—”
“No trouble at all,” he says, intercepting my words and disappearing down the hall. I have no idea what to do now, where the shower is, if I should try to get dressed under the covers. I'm sitting there thinking when I see Ransom again. He just pauses in the hall and stares at me with his dark chocolate eyes.
My heart almost leaps from my throat when he walks down it and puts a hand on either side of the doorframe, blocking out all the light, completely cloaked in his black hoodie and shadows.
“Just so you know, Paxton is back. If you want to beat the shit out of him, honey, I'll hold his arms for you.” Ransom speaks so quietly, I have to concentrate to hear him properly. My skin shivers and the aching warmth between my legs pulses, like I didn't just fuck two different guys.
“It's okay,” I say as I pull the covers closer and meet his hooded stare. Somehow, even with his lids covering half his eyes, it looks like he's putting effort into keeping them open. It's so beyond sexy I can barely breathe. He's the only person I've spoken to today that I told my secret to. It makes me feel stupidly connected to him, even though we just met. “I don't care about Paxton. Fuck him.”
Ransom laughs, and the sound … it's like a ribbon of shadow curling around my shoulders, making me lean forward. The sheets fall to my waist, exposing my breasts. It's an accident—or maybe a Freudian slip—but I see the darkness flash across Ransom's face.
He runs a hand across that tortured expression and glances away, moving to the side when Derek reappears with a plate.
“Okay, Cutie,” he says, crawling across the bed on his knees as I scramble to cover my breasts up. When he hands the plate over, I see a big fat sandwich brimming with something that looks like roast beef, a pile of potato chips, and a handful of cookies. He's even brought me a soda. “Here ya go. Eat up. Wouldn't want to lose all those juicy curves.”
“Leave her alone, Muse,” Ransom growls from the doorway and Derek Muser—Muse, I guess—glances over his shoulder.
“Cool it, Ran. What's your problem? Don't take your Pax hate out on me, man.”
Ransom shakes his head suddenly, shoving his hood off his dark hair and spinning on his boot, storming down the hallway and slamming the sliding door at the end of it, cutting all the light.
I feel my hand start to tremble and the sheets fall around my waist again.
Fuck.
I don't want to be in complete darkness right now.
“Shit,” I curse, suddenly very aware that there's some strange guy in the bed next to my naked body … that I fucked two other strange guys not all that long ago. “How long have I been asleep?” I whisper.
“Um, about a half hour after Cope came into the living room. Are you sure you're okay?”
“My dad died,” I blurt, setting the plate down on my lap, cracking the top on the soda just so I can hear the sound of it fizzing. “Today. He died. From cancer.”
I swallow huge mouthfuls of the soda and it feels too sweet running down my throat. I just want it to stop. I reach back, looking for the shelf on the headboard I saw earlier. I set the can down with the click of aluminum.
“I'm sorry,” Muse says quietly, his voice a sort of strange brightness against all the dark around me. “So that's why you look so sad then. And here I was feeling bad for you about the car. I mean, not that that doesn't suck, too.”
He pauses, like he's rethinking his words.
“Sorry, sucks isn't the right word.”
“No, sucks is exactly the right word,” I say with a small sniffle.
“Where's your dad now?” he asks, like he can tell I wouldn't have come to the concert if I could get to my dad.
“In New York. I found some extra tickets in my purse, so I came here to sell them, to get gas money for the trip.” I pause and think of Paxton, sitting on the hood of a car, smoking a cigarette. My cheeks flush and my body feels warm all of a sudden. But seriously, what a fucking prick. “Then I somehow managed to win the backstage pass thing and … I never should've gone inside.”
There's a long stretch of quiet, and I tentatively place a chip in my mouth, closing my lips and letting it melt there for a second.
“So now you have no car, still have no money, and I'm guessing … all that stuff …”
“I was moving there, to be with him, to take care of him.” Tears spill down my face in fat, hot drops, but I don't make any sound, eating the chips slowly, one by one. “The stuff in that car was everything I had.”
“Fuck.”
I seem to make these guys say fuck a lot. Not sure what it is. My life is just screwed-up and weird, I guess. Maybe I attract unhappiness? Maybe there's something wrong with me? Either that or I was just a complete and total bitch in my past life.
I reach up and run my fingers through my hair. It's still wet in some places, tangled as fuck. It'll take me hours to comb it all out. I shift and the blankets rustle loudly in the sudden quiet.
“What are you gonna do?” he asks me. “You have family around here or something?”
I don't answer that, choosing instead to take a bite of my sandwich. It is roast beef, and thinly sliced cheddar, tomatoes, lettuce. He even took the time to put mayonnaise and mustard on it. And I'm so damn hungry that it's good. Like, really, really good.
“Guess not or you wouldn't be here, huh?” he asks, and then I feel his hot hard body leaning across mine. I go still for a second, but then light blooms from a lamp on the side of the headboard. It's got a red shade, so the color is muted, bathing the small bedroom in this hazy, sexy sort of glow. “You have a plan?”
“Not really,” I say, blinking and trying to let my eyes adjust to the light. That's when I remember that I dropped the blankets and that my tits are hanging out, but at this point, I honestly just don't care anymore. I hope Muse looks; I want him to look.
I keep eating my sandwich as he leans back into the pillows and puts an arm behind his head. Cope was nice; Ransom was interesting to talk to; Paxton was hot. But Muse is the only man I've met today that had the decency to think about basic human needs. Well, besides sex.
“You want a plane ticket?” he asks suddenly, and I look over at him. I thought he'd be staring at my breasts, but his eyes are closed. I notice then that he's wearing a set of sweatpants that are exactly the same as the ones he gave me. I can't remember what he was wearing onstage
. Jeans, probably.
“A plane ticket?”
“Sure. I could buy you a plane ticket, so you can go and see your … family.” I'm glad he doesn't say the word dad. I just don't want to hear that word spoken aloud again right now.
I finish off my food and then set the plate on the same shelf as the soda. In the red light from the lamp, the little room is even cooler, even more hip. I could live here.
“I'm sure they're expensive …”
“I'm loaded,” he says, like it's no big deal. I glance at his face and he cracks one eye, the color mysterious and shifting with every micro movement that he makes. I decide that they're definitely hazel in color, blue and green and brown and copper all at the same time. Beautiful. “Here.” He takes his phone out and hands it to me. “Go online and find your ticket and I'll buy it for you.”
“Why?” I ask, and yet again, I feel like a complete bitch. I should just be saying thanks.
“You remind me of me,” he says which is weird because I don't feel like we have anything in common at all. His other eye cracks open as I take the phone in my hand and lay back. Sitting together like this, though, I feel like we could be friends. Muse is easy to talk to.
Silence falls again and I hear raucous arguing from the front of the bus; I ignore it.
I search for Phoenix Sky Harbor airport on a travel site and then try to set up a trip to New York. The more I search, the more depressed I get. Either everything is sold out, or grounded from the storm. I make a frustrated sound under my breath and drop the phone in my lap. My first streak of luck today and the weather—and some stupid awards show happening in NYC—are destroying my chances of getting home.
“No luck?” he asks and I toss the phone his way. “Fuck.”
See, there it is again.
“There's nothing—nothing—until next week,” I whisper, and even though I can wait, I feel like I'll die if I do. I have to find some other way to get home.
“Book it for next week; I'll pay for a hotel.”
I sit up suddenly on my knees. It's a move that quite literally flashes the whole of my naked body to Muse, but it's over and done with, so I just sit there and stare at him.
“Stop that,” I say as he sits up and gives me a weird look, raising an eyebrow that's pierced with four black metal balls, spaced horizontally above his left brow.
“Stop what?” he asks, but his hazel eyes rake my body with a sudden fervor and he sucks in a sharp breath.
“Fuck.”
Third time's a charm, I guess.
“I should go,” Derek … Muse … whatever, says and acts like he's about to get up from the bed.
“Please don't,” I say, reaching out a hand, curling my fingers around his muscular arm. He glances over at me, staring at me over the rims of his glasses. When he pushes them up his nose with his middle finger, I lean in and kiss his mouth. I'm not even sure why I'm doing it, but it just happens and then there's this spark that ignites between us. He reaches up with both hands and takes hold of my face, kissing me long and deep, drawing me forward on my knees.
When I swing my leg over his, he reaches out and helps me straddle his lap, still kissing me, hands still on my face even though I can feel his cock beneath the fabric of his sweatpants.
Oh my god, Lilith, what the fuck are you doing?
Didn't I just screw two other guys? A third one … that would be crazy, wouldn't it?
I'm such a slut, I think as I put my palms on his pale purple wifebeater, digging my fingers into the fabric. I realize in the back of my mind that this probably isn't the healthiest decision in the world. Dad just died and I'm not thinking clearly, not even close.
I keep thinking Muse is going to push me away, ask me what I'm doing, but he doesn't. Instead he reaches down and pushes his sweats out of the way, freeing his cock. I don't even look at it, just keep kissing him as he takes my wrist and guides my hand down between us. My fingers wrap his shaft, gripping hard, working him as I lean in close and push my breasts to his chest.
I think about maybe giving him a blow job, but my mind's just not there; I need oblivion.
I copy what Cope did and reach up to a drawer on the nightstand. When I dip my fingers in there, I find a lot more than just condoms. My cheeks flush, but I don't care to analyze what else these boys have stashed on their bus. I just take one of the little packages out and break our kiss long enough to open it and slide it down Muse's body.
He groans as my fingers trace his shaft, letting his head fall back against the headboard. He lifts his muscular arms up and crosses them behind his head, eyes closed, thoroughly enjoying himself. He's not cruel and desperate like Pax, not sweet and attentive like Copeland, but relaxed, easy, willing to go wherever the flow takes us.
I stare at his face in the hazy red glow, at his glasses, his silver-black hair. He has one sleeve of tattoos, all in black, just a whole flock of bat silhouettes that explode from the fingertips of his left hand, fly in a burst up his arm and onto the back of his neck where they disappear into his hair. I wonder if he has them on his scalp, too?
He opens his eyes and looks back at me.
“You don't have to fuck me for the plane ticket or anything,” he says with a slight shrug. “That stuff's just free.”
“I know,” I say and then I almost smile. Not quite. Almost. “I wouldn't fuck you to get any of that. I'm not a whore.”
“Didn't think you were,” he says as I put one hand on his shoulder and lift up onto my knees, straddling his cock and using my other hand to guide him where he needs to go. Derek settles his hands on either side of my hips and helps ease me down the length of his shaft.
I breathe out sharply as I settle myself onto his lap, my skin prickling with new sensations, the brush of foreign hands, the feel of a foreign body buried deep inside of mine. Somehow, knowing this is the third guy I've slept with today … excites me. It stirs some deep, primal part of me that wants to mark all of these boys as my own. The thought's as foreign as it is different; I've always strictly been a one man sort of a girl. Other than that guy I slept with twice as a kid, it's just been Kevin, Kevin, Kevin. I devoted myself to him and look where that got me?
I'd much rather have a menagerie of men.
I giggle—stupidly and inappropriately and randomly.
Muse smiles at that.
“Nice to see you've still got a sense of humor,” he says as I drop my right hand onto his other shoulder, right over a sea of bats, and start to move. His smile doesn't last long as I rock my hips, slow at first, and then faster, faster, faster.
Sweat drips down the sides of my face as I push the emotions aside with sex. It really is the best drug. I'm surprised because the alcohol I downed earlier in the lounge didn't seem to do nearly as much to take my mind off my problems. This … with Muse's cock inside of me, there's no room for anything else.
I bite my lower lip to keep back a barrage of sounds, but my teeth slip and I end up letting them all fall out anyway. I groan and sweat and grind against a man that I don't know, looking up to find him with his head tilted back, his hands guiding my hips. As if he can feel me staring at him, Muse drops his gaze and leans in close, taking my lower lip between his teeth, sucking it into his mouth.
I groan as he slides his hands up my back, soothing my heated skin with his fingertips. He smells vaguely of cigarettes and something pleasant and smoky, like a fragrant incense. As I ride him, I listen to the soft creaking of the bed, the rough gasps of his breath. I'm surprised he lets me go as fast and frenzied as I am, that he doesn't come right away. I work him hard, too, pressing my pelvis into his, rubbing my clit with each thrust.
My head drops to his shoulder, but I don't stop, biting one of his bat tattoos. Muse tastes like he smells, smoky and spicy. Maybe like cloves? I'm not sure.
We don't talk as I grind myself into him, feel my orgasm catch, and gasp again, biting his neck this time. Muse clutches me close, wrapping an arm around my waist as I arch my back and let my head
fall back, wet hair clinging to the sweaty, sticky surface of my skin.
His mouth meets my nipple, sending me crashing completely over the edge and before I know it, I'm on my back again and he's fucking me hard, finding his own release with a sigh and a deep, masculine groan.
When we've both had a chance to catch our breath, he sits up and looks down at me, adjusting his glasses with a single finger. That, too, has bats on it. I try to remember if I saw him wearing glasses earlier and decide that I didn't; he must wear contacts onstage then.
Muse opens his mouth to say something—hopefully to offer to stay in here with me because I think I might need more, more, more. His mouth, his hands, I don't care.
“What the fuck is going on in here?”
I glance up past Muse's shoulder and find the guy with the leather jacket, the one with the violet eyes. He's not wearing his jacket now, standing there shirtless and glaring. Muse makes an annoyed sound in his throat and rolls off of me, fixing his sweatpants.
“We're just playing around,” Muse says, still breathing pretty hard as he gets rid of the condom and the guy … Michael, I think it was … scowls down at him. He's covered in tattoos, too. Not a whole layer of them like Pax, but he has two full sleeves and a big chest piece. Also like Pax, he looks like a complete dick.
But I'm attracted to him, too. Maybe there's something wrong with me tonight? Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and realize this was all a dream, that there was no way I was surrounded by five hot guys on a bus … or that I had sex with three of them.
“You could play around, too,” I say and I hardly recognize the sound of my own voice. Who is this person, this woman that's confident enough to invite yet another man into her bed? But then, it's not really my bed is it, and maybe I'm not this woman? Maybe I, too, am playing around?