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Aggie gaped at her. “Gary? Loser Gary?”
“He’s not a loser. We got married a few weeks ago. He’s taking me on a honeymoon. To Hawaii.”
“You got married?” Aggie sputtered. “How come this is the first I’ve heard of it?”
“I didn’t think you’d approve,” she said quietly.
“Congratulations,” Jace said and squeezed Aggie’s knee. Hard.
She glanced at him in question, and when she met his eyes, he gave her mother a pointed look.
Aggie sighed. “Congratulations, Mom. I hope you have a long and healthy relationship with Loser. He was one of my most well-behaved slaves.”
Jace choked.
Mom lifted her gaze to Aggie’s. Aggie was surprised to see tears on Mom’s clumpy lashes. “I know I don’t make good decisions.” Mom sighed, looking defeated. “I do love you, Aggie. You must know that. I’m sorry I wasn’t a better mother.”
Aggie stared at her. At least she was admitting she hadn’t been a good mother. Never the mother Aggie had wanted or needed. It was a start. Aggie took a deep breath and clung to Jace’s hand. “Apology accepted.”
Mom took a shuddering breath. “All things considered, you’re doing okay, kid.” She glanced from Aggie to Jace and back again, a slight smile on her thin lips. “You have a great guy at your side who loves you. You know who you are and what you want out of life. That’s more than anyone can say about me.”
Mom climbed to her feet and kissed Jace on the forehead. “Thanks for looking after my baby girl. Welcome to the family, Jace.” She kissed Aggie’s forehead next. “We okay?”
Aggie nodded. Yes, the woman drove her insane, but she loved the crazy broad. What could she do? “We’re okay.”
“I don’t know when I’ll be in touch. When we get back from Hawaii, Gary wants to buy an RV and see the country. I’ll try to make it to your wedding.” Her blue eyes darted from Aggie to Jace apprehensively. “I’m invited, aren’t I?”
“Of course,” Jace said.
Mom hesitated, looking as if she’d been struck by lightning. “Wait a minute. You two aren’t planning on having kids, are you?”
“Someday,” Jace said without hesitation.
Aggie’s heart stuttered over a beat. Kids? She glanced at him. Again with the warm, melting, fluttery heart thing. A baby Jace to shower with affection. What could possibly be more wonderful than that? “Yeah, someday,” Aggie agreed.
Mom’s nose crinkled. “Hold off on that for a couple decades, if you would, please. I am in no way ready to be a grandmother. I’m a newlywed.”
Aggie rolled her eyes. “You know, not everything is about you, Mom.”
The front door opened. “You guys home?” Eric called from the foyer.
“We’re in the living room,” Jace yelled.
“I’m going now,” Mom said. “Gary is waiting, and I have the only key to his cock cage.” She twirled a key ring on the end of one finger.
Aggie’s eyes widened. “Too much information, Mom!”
Mom chuckled and kissed Aggie on the top of the head, before taking her chin in one bony hand and staring her hard in the eyes. “I love you, baby girl.”
“I love you too, Mom.”
Mom cuffed her cheek with one knuckle and smiled warmly before turning to go. She passed Eric as she left the room.
“Yo, Aggie’s mom,” Eric said, and saluted her with two fingers.
Mom looked at his strange haircut and pursed her lips together. “Yo, freak.”
Aggie heard the door close behind Mom a moment later. Aggie figured the next time she saw the woman, she’d be in trouble again. She hoped she was wrong, but some things never changed. They just had to be accepted.
“I don’t think she likes me much,” Eric said as he entered the room. “You two ready to go see Dave?”
“Yeah, we’ll follow you over on the Harley.” Jace stood.
“You guys go,” Aggie said. “I’m going to stay here.”
“Are you okay?” Jace asked. “She begged me to tell you about her getting married, but I thought it was something she should tell you herself. That’s why I asked her to stop by. Are you upset?”
“Not really. I’m glad you had her come over. I just need a little time to adjust to the idea that I used to kick butt plugs up my stepfather’s ass.”
Jace bit his lip and stroked her hair behind her ear. “If you need me to stay home—”
“What’s this?” Eric said, lifting a drumstick off a pair of hangers on the wall. He inspected it closely.
Jace’s eyes widened, and he strode across the room to snatch his treasured drumstick out of Eric’s hand. “It’s nothing.”
“Why do you have an old nicked-up drumstick hanging on your wall?” Eric asked. “Do you play drums too, tripod?”
“No, I don’t play drums. It’s something I caught at a live show.” Jace carefully set the drumstick back on the pegs he’d installed to display his most prized possession.
“Did your favorite drummer throw it to you or something?”
Jace smiled. “Yeah, something like that.”
Aggie could not resist the opportunity to meddle. “That’s your drumstick, Eric.”
Eric glanced at Jace, who was doing his best impression of a cranberry again. “Mine? Why did you steal one of my drumsticks?”
“I didn’t steal it. You threw it at the end of a show, and I caught it.”
Eric’s dark brows drew together. “How did you manage to catch a drumstick while on stage?”
“No, dumb ass. It happened ten years ago. I was in the audience.”
“Oh.” Eric grinned. “So does this mean what I think it means?”
“What do you think it means?” Jace asked.
“That I’m your favorite drummer.” Eric picked up the drumstick again and twirled it in his right hand.
Jace rolled his eyes. “Uh, no. You’re a dipshit.” Jace grabbed the drumstick in mid-twirl and placed it back on the wall.
“You don’t keep a dipshit’s drumstick for ten years and then hang it on your wall like it’s a Grammy award or a platinum record.”
Jace bit his lip.
“Tell him the story, Jace,” Aggie prodded.
After a bit of hesitation, Jace told him. About seeing Sinners for the first time. How he didn’t think Jon was good enough. How he caught the drumstick and knew he was destined to be a part of the band. How he’d become a bassist to join Sinners. Eric’s smile widened with each revelation.
“So I’m responsible for inspiring the creation of the best bassist on the planet,” Eric said. “Is that what you’re telling me?”
“The best bassist on the planet…” Jace mumbled. “Well, I don’t know about that. You inspired me.”
“Yeah, that’s what I said.” Eric beamed with pride. “Holy shit. I can’t wait to tell the guys that you wanted to join Sinners because of me.”
“I didn’t tell you that story so you could get all gloaty.”
“I’ll get all gloaty if I want, tripod. I don’t have much to gloat about, you know.” Eric appraised the empty wall above the drumstick. “You know what you need? You need a giant, autographed poster of me to hang over your drumstick. I’ll sign it, To Tripod, My biggest-slash-shortest, secretly obsessed, mega-fanboy.”
Jace rolled his eyes and shook his head. “You know what you need?”
“A smaller head?”
“No, an embarrassing, smiley-faced daisy tattoo on the top of your foot.”
Eric grinned and nodded. “Only fair.”
Jace smiled and laughed. He gave Eric a one-armed, tough-guy hug and pounded him on the back. He was happy. And well loved. Just how Aggie wanted him. Always.
Read on for an excerpt from Trey’s book in
the Sinners on Tour series
Double Time
by Olivia Cunning
Available now from Sourcebooks Casablanca
“Trey.” The sound of Brian’s deep voice tugged at Trey�
��s heart. His soul. His will. Brian comprised Trey’s hopes. His dreams. Embodied his love. His desire. Represented his past. His present. His future. Everything Trey had ever been or ever could be, he associated with the man. Trey knew Brian would never love him. Not with the same all-encompassing, soul-wrenching possessiveness with which Trey loved him, but they maintained a close friendship. It wasn’t nearly enough for Trey, but was better than nothing.
“Trey?” Brian whispered against his ear, his bare chest pressed against Trey’s naked back. “I want you.”
The flood of lust that coursed through Trey’s body was punctuated with an inrush of breath. Yes… “Now?”
“Shh,” Brian breathed. “Quiet. Or someone will hear us.”
Trey was naked. Had he gone to bed naked? He didn’t remember. It didn’t matter. In the darkness, Brian pressed him facedown on the mattress of his bunk on Sinners’ tour bus. Trey felt Brian’s weight over his back. His warmth seeped into his skin. The scent of leather, Brian’s sweet aftershave, and male surrounded him. Trey closed his eyes and relished the sensations. The texture of Brian’s skin. The raspy quality of his breath.
Emotion washed over Trey. His only regret was that they weren’t face to face, so he couldn’t stare into Brian’s intense brown eyes, bury his hands in his messy, shoulder-length hair, and kiss his firm lips as he took him. Whenever Brian visited him, it was always like this. Face down. Total surrender.
Trey felt Brian’s cock against his throbbing ass. He relaxed, opening himself to possession. Brian surged forward, filling him with one deep thrust.
“Ah,” Trey gasped brokenly as a mix of pain and pleasure pulsed through the core of his body. He loved that Brian’s cock was huge. That it stretched him to his limits. Loved how Brian clasped his hands on either side of his head to pin him down. It made Trey feel helpless. Fucked. Used. Exactly how he needed to feel, because he knew this wasn’t right. Brian loved another.
Trey lifted his hips slightly in an attempt to get his own attentive cock into a more pleasurable position.
“Don’t move,” Brian growled. “Take it.”
Trey took it. No pain now. Just intense, pulsating pleasure. Brian fucked him harder. Harder. Until Trey wanted to scream I love you, I love you, I love you at the top of his lungs. He didn’t dare. He knew Brian would disappear the moment he said anything that remotely stupid.
Trey bit his lip and struggled to lift his hips off the bed. He wanted Brian’s hands on his cock as he fucked him. Stroking him from base to tip. Giving him pleasure. Making him come. Come by his hand. In his hands. The hands that created the guitar music that was as much a part of Trey as it was of Brian.
“Brian?” he whispered. “Please.”
“No.”
Trey groaned and rocked his hips, rubbing his cock against the mattress. He needed to come so bad. Oh, please. I need it. Need you.
“Hold still, Trey. You know how this works.”
Trey stopped moving. Brian had been visiting him like this more and more frequently. Especially since Brian had gotten his wife, Myrna, pregnant. It was pretty much a nightly occurrence at this point. Trey wanted him. Not just in bed. In his life. Each moment, he felt Brian slipping further away and Trey didn’t know how to hold on to him.
Brian. Stay with me. Please.
“Trey?” A hand grabbed Trey’s shoulder and gave him a hard shake. “Trey! Wake up. It’s time.”
Trey opened his eyes. The Brian of his dreams vanished and was replaced by the real Brian. This one was not fucking him good, hard, and selfishly up the ass. This one was fully clothed and grinning at him from just outside the curtain of Trey’s bunk. Trey’s balls tightened unexpectedly and he reached down to pull off his sock. He buried his cock in the soft, warm cotton. His belly clenched. Muscles at the base of his cock gave a hard spasm. He came with a tortured gasp.
Goddammit. He ruined more socks that way.
“Sorry to interrupt your wet dreams, dude,” Brian said, “but we’ve got to catch a plane. Like immediately. Get dressed.”
Still disoriented, still trembling with the aftereffects of his unexpected orgasm (while Brian watched—he’d undoubtedly relive that in his fantasies for weeks), Trey forced himself to sit up on his bunk. Feet dangling over the edge, he bent his back at an uncomfortable angle so he didn’t whack his head on the tour bus’ ceiling. “What time is it?” Trey rubbed his eyes and blinked in the overly bright cabin lights.
“Three.”
“In the morning? What the hell, Brian? I need sleep.”
“Myrna’s in labor.”
Trey’s heart twisted unpleasantly. “She’s not due for…”
“Two weeks. I know. It’s the real deal though. She’s already at the hospital.” Brian grabbed Trey’s arm and jerked him out of his bunk to the floor. “Hurry up. I will not miss the birth of my first child.”
“I don’t understand why I have to go,” Trey said.
Brian looked a little hurt and Trey immediately wanted to take that comment back.
“You have to go because I need you there,” Brian said.
“Fine. I’ll go. Whatever,” Trey said as if his heart wasn’t singing with delight. Brian needed him? There was a first time for everything, he supposed.
Trey rearranged his boxer shorts and located his jeans on the floor next to their new soundboard operator’s empty bunk. Rebekah’s bunk didn’t get much use. She and the band’s drummer, Eric Sticks, spent most nights in the back bedroom claiming they were still on their honeymoon. Seven months of honeymooning was a bit much by anyone’s standards. Even Trey’s. Trey hopped into his pants, tugged a T-shirt over his head, and began his search for a spare sock.
Brian chuckled at him when he tossed his ruined sock in the garbage. “That must’ve been some dream. What was it about?”
Trey raked a hand through his long bangs. “These three really hot chicks,” he lied without missing a beat. “I had three cocks and each of them was sucking one.”
Brian quirked an eyebrow at him and Trey’s heart skipped a beat. The man was so fucking gorgeous, it was a sin. “Weird.”
But not as weird as having homoerotic dreams about your best friend. Your married best friend who was about to become a father.
“Did you get plane tickets already?” Trey asked.
“Your brother’s jet is meeting us at the airstrip. It’s already on its way. Should be landing by the time we get there.”
“So Dare’s coming with?”
“Nope. Just you and me.”
Alone on a private jet. Trey was pretty sure they wouldn’t be initiating each other into the mile high club. Bummer.
By the time they reached the hospital four hours later, Brian was in a panic. When Trey hesitated on the threshold of Myrna’s delivery and recovery room, Brian grabbed his arm and hauled him inside.
“I didn’t miss it, did I?” Brian asked the doctor who was between Myrna’s legs with his bloody surgical gloves trying to ease a black-haired head out of something Trey wished he had never ever seen. Oh fuck. That had to hurt.
Trey’s eyelids fluttered, the floor disappeared from beneath him, and everything went black.
The squall of a baby and the declaration, “It’s a boy!” flittered around Trey’s semiconscious mind. That and some strange ammonia smell just beneath his nose.
“Come on, gorgeous,” a soft feminine voice said nearby. “Open your eyes for me. The messy part is all over now.”
Trey regained full consciousness with a sudden intake of breath. He instinctively knocked the offensive smelling salts from beneath his nose and sat up.
“There, he’s back with us,” someone said from the opposite side of the room. The doctor maybe? Trey couldn’t get his eyes to focus.
“Did I pass out?” Trey asked.
“Out like a light, buddy,” Brian said from beside Myrna’s bed. He chuckled much too gleefully.
“You cannot tell anyone about this,” Trey said, struggling to climb to his f
eet. He leaned his back against a wall to steady himself. He hated hospitals. He’d spent far too many hours in them as a child, including one entire summer when his father had been serving his residency and his mother had decided to ride a bicycle across the country. Just the smell of a hospital made his skin crawl.
“Yeah right,” Brian said. “I’m having T-shirts made. I wanted to wait to cut the cord, but you refused to wake up in time to watch.”
Trey’s stomach did a summersault. Cut the cord? Yuck. “Sorry I missed it.” Not.
“That’s okay. I got it on film.”
“Great…” Trey ducked his head to hide his crinkled nose.
A stunning brunette dressed in pink scrubs bent down to enter Trey’s field of vision. She stroked his hair out of his face. The slim brows over her striking blue eyes drew together in concern. “Feeling better now?”
He grinned at her and she flushed. “I think I’ll live,” he said.
Her hand slid to the back of his head. “You bumped your head.” Her fingers found the scar that ran beneath his hair in a wide arch over his left ear. She traced the ridge with her index finger. “What’s this?”
Trey captured her hand in his and pulled it away from his scalp. “Old war injury.” If getting hit in the back of the head with a baseball bat during a bar fight could be considered war. That little incident had landed him in a hospital for days. Not one of his better memories. “You have really pretty eyes,” he told the nurse, still holding her hand.
Her breath caught, pupils dilated slightly as she focused on his interested gaze. “Thank you,” she whispered, lowering her lashes to hide her deep blue eyes.
Trey released her hand and she sagged against the wall. He turned his attention to the bed, glad a blue drape cloth concealed whatever the doctor was doing between Myrna’s legs. Trey was pretty sure the doc was giving Myrna stitches and he did not want to know why that was necessary.
“So where’s this baby we’ve been waiting to see for nine months now?” Trey asked.
Brian waved him over to the bed. Trey approached cautiously. Myrna looked exhausted, and he knew better than to tick her off. He was prepared to make a run for it, if necessary. Brian wrapped an arm around Trey’s shoulders and they gazed down at the bundle in Myrna’s arms. A miniature, red-faced Brian jabbed his fist in his mouth and sucked earnestly. Trey’s heart skipped a beat before melting inside his chest. Brian’s son was the most perfect thing Trey had ever seen in his entire life.