“What?” I repeat, not knowing why the hell Bryn’s stopped, frustrated he’s no longer inside me. Bryn won’t change his mind. Will he?
“That feels fucking amazing but I want to control this,” he says huskily. Bryn gets to his feet and drags me to mine, picks me up as if I weigh nothing. One arm wrapped around my waist supporting me against his body, he turns around and my back hits the wall. As Bryn holds me there I panic, wrapping legs around his waist desperate for him back inside me again. My sex throbs with need for him and at this point, I don’t care what position we’re in as long as we keep going.
“Don’t drop me!”
Bryn rests his damp forehead on mine. “There is no way I’m going to drop you, you’re not heavy. Come on, you’ve spent months staring at the muscles on me.” I giggle and he sighs heavily. “You keep interrupting this with conversation.”
“Sorry,” I whisper. “Just one other thing…”
Bryn growls my name in frustration and closes his mouth over mine, tipping the rest of my thoughts from my mind. Lifting my legs higher, this Bryn time pushes into me hard. I gasp and grip onto him as he rocks against me.
“You feel fucking amazing,” he pants out, “so tight.”
I close my eyes, grasp his hair, and give in to the aching pleasure of Bryn’s uncontrolled thrusts, his mouth moving from kissing to licking and sucking at my neck, fingers gripping my hips and ass. Held against the wall, supported completely by a man whose strength is focused on us, I relax into a dizzying world, my body melded with Bryn as we move, his heart thumping against my chest.
“Avery,” he groans.
I open my eyes and the steady intensity in his dark eyes drags my soul to his, joining the way our bodies are as I see a reflection of the truth. This is us, in tune and meant to be. Bryn’s lovemaking becomes harsher, more frenzied and I grip onto him, as he pushes me further to the place I’ll lose myself in with him.
My orgasm hits suddenly, splintering my body as I swear out his name, clinging to him. The power of it takes me by surprise, a shockwave tearing into my heart and soul. Bright spots dance across my vision as I look at Bryn, who’s soaking up my pleasure with an open-mouthed smile, building to his own release. I hold Bryn’s gaze until his eyes close and he loses himself in an ecstasy of his own. Bryn grips my hair and buries his face into my neck, swearing loudly as he pushes himself to the hilt and comes.
For a moment, he remains with his head against my neck, kissing my damp skin with his hot lips. My legs shake where he holds them and I pray he’s not about to drop me to the floor because they’ll collapse if I try to stand.
“You're a bad man,” I whisper into his ear.
“Why?” he murmurs back.
“Because you're making me fall in love with you.”
Bryn looks up and pushes damp hair from my eyes. “I told you, I fell in love with you, Avery,” he says softly.
The world shifts sideways to a place I can only be with Bryn, locked in a moment that will live in my mind and heart for an eternity. The words fall from my mouth, “I fell in love with you, too.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
AVERY
“I can't believe you ripped my dress!” I mutter as I look in the mirror and attempt to smooth the torn seam.
Bryn looks over from where he sits on the nearby chair. “Should've taken it off quicker then.”
The rip is small, and having my clothes torn by a rock star is pretty damn hot, so I'm not complaining.
I purse my lips at Bryn, semi-naked, covered in muscles and ink, eyes glazing as I remember those inked muscles covering me.
“My eyes are here,” he says, mimicking one of my favourite phrases.
“You’ve had plenty of practice at being a sex object, and used it to your advantage in the past so stop whining.”
“Double standards!” he gasps.
“You’re the one half-naked!” He bites his lip in amusement. “Stop changing the subject! How will it look if I'm seen leaving a rock star's hotel room with ripped clothes?”
His mouth curves into an all too familiar smile. “Good for my reputation?” A cloud of a thought crosses my mind and spreads to my expression because he holds his arms out, beckoning me over. “You know that was a joke, right?”
I climb on Bryn’s lap and wrap my arms around his neck. He runs his fingers along my bare arm and looks at me with concern. “This isn't one night, Avery.”
“I know.” I push some of Bryn's hair away from his face and kiss his cheek, heart somersaulting at the fact he's looking at me the way I always wanted him to.
“I wish you were staying longer,” he says.
“I have the rest of today but I need to be home tonight. I have class tomorrow.”
“That’s good,” he murmurs, twisting some of my hair around his fingers.
“What are you doing?”
“Wasn't going to do anything. Why? Do you think I should?” He slides a hand up my bare leg.
“Bryn, I meant what are you doing today!”
“Oh. Right. Spending it with you, of course, if it's the last time I'll see you for a couple of weeks.”
“When are you back in England?”
“March 25th. Manchester then London. You coming to our concert?”
“I suppose. I've never seen Blue Phoenix play,” I admit.
“Really? I've heard we're okay if you want to risk it.”
“Maybe, I've heard the drummer's hot as hell. I wonder if he'd let me backstage?”
Bryn winds my hair tighter around his hand. “I'm sure he would but you'd have to be careful.”
“Why?”
“You can’t trust these rock star types; you never know what he might do to you.”
“Mmm?” I rest my forehead on his. “What would that be?”
“Very bad things,” he whispers.
“Such as?”
“Allow me to demonstrate.”
He effortlessly lifts and positions me so I'm straddling him, and I look down, holding his hair from his face.
“Again?” Sleep wasn’t on the agenda last night and I swear he woke me up early on purpose. Where the hell does this man get his stamina from?
“Again.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
BRYN
When I finish touring, my body takes time to find a routine and drag me back to my version of the everyday. My life is never everyday, hasn’t been since I was a teen and I missed out on more than I realised by experiencing more than most ever do.
This time when I parted company with the guys, I walked into a life I wanted and not a limbo until the next tour. This time, my new life begins, slow and steady with Avery.
The intensity of our early days continues and I persuade Avery to move into my place in London. She's intently focused on her final exams and decided to apply for her teacher training in London, not Wales, cementing us further. I fill my days with discussions over new projects with Darren from the record company, agreeing to session work, but only if I can stay in the UK. Now I have a girl who completes me, I'm not cutting myself off from her.
The reason for the obsession with Hannah becomes clearer the longer I'm with Avery and the greater the distance between me and the band. I spent my whole adult life with Blue Phoenix, in some ways like an intense love affair. We lived and breathed each other's lives, relying on each other for support. I put my energy into the band – emotionally and physically – and never stepped outside the world created with my teenage friends. We all refused to grow up.
Over the last couple of years, others have entered our world, real love that came between us, and the intensity has gone. As with any relationship, this stung and cast me adrift looking elsewhere for confirmation who I was. I saw Jem go through something similar – his jealousy over Sky was partly losing Dylan to her. At that point, Jem hadn’t grown up and moved away from our teen years. None of us really had, but now that’s changing.
Hannah was the only other person I’d cared about intensely, and as I lost the guys, I looked to her. In my mind, I was still the sixteen-year-old boy who was convinced he'd lost his soul mate and now I see what little sense that made. Perhaps we are soul mates, but in the way Dylan, Jem, and Liam are my soul mates too. Away from them, there’s a strange sense of disconnection but this doesn't mean those people should be everything to you.
Avery is a part of me in a way nobody has been before. There’s no daily need to tell each other what is implicitly true: we're in love. A touch, a kiss, a smile, or quiet moments in each other's arms closed away from the world into the place we created together say more than three words.
But I tell her anyway. Often. Why? Because the words are returned with a smile to capture and wear for the rest of the day, and when I see my love reflected in her eyes that is enough for me to hold onto.
Life moves on with a new purpose and with a contentment missing for years.
****
AVERY
Outside a small cafe near the college, I share a coffee with Bryn, but he's distracted. I am too. My last exam’s in a couple of days before a summer of freedom and then the step into my adult life. Other students sit with laptops or focus on their phones, one or two reading books at the glass tables in the spring sunshine.
“What have you been up to today?” I ask him, stirring my latte.
He blinks back to me. “Me? Not much. As usual. I’ve been thinking. I'd like to go away when your exams are over with.”
“Go where?” Bryn has taken me on weekends away over the last few months, ironically visiting many of the places he mentioned the first night in the restaurant when he lied to my friends about being my partner. Maybe he means further afield this time and I wait in anticipation.
“I was going to take my bike to Europe. Go camping.”
Okay, not the response I was expecting.
“Camping? In a tent?”
“Yeah. That's the normal method, right?”
“Not hotels?”
He tips his head. “I don't think they'd let me put my tent up in a hotel.”
“You're a sarcastic bugger sometimes.”
“I want to get some practice in before I go on
I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here
.” He gulps from his coffee cup.
“You’re going on that? You never told me!”
The annoying smirk appears on his face. “Avery, teasing you will never get old,” he says. “Of course, I’m bloody not!”
Refusing to show him he succeeded, I drink too.
“Do you like camping?” he asks.
“Sometimes.”
“You look doubtful.”
Something interrupts my response. “Hang on; did you say you had a motorcycle?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you know you suddenly went ten levels up the hot guy meter?”
“Impossible, I’d be off the scale if I had.”
I run my finger across the back of his hand. “You are a surprise sometimes, Bryn. Where are you planning on going?”
“We.” Bryn stretches his long legs out, crossing his ankles. “And I don't know. I just decided five minutes ago.”
I shake my head at his lopsided smile. “That isn't a surprise, Bryn Hughes’s five minute decisions. I’ll make sure I never go to Las Vegas with you and get drunk.”
“Why?”
“God knows what bright idea you’ll come up with if we do!”
Bryn’s brows shoot up. “Oh, really? What are you suggesting?”
“Nothing.” My cheeks heat at the connotations, in case I sound like I want to marry him. “I mean you might gamble away your fortune.”
Regarding me, he sips his coffee, the amused look on his face indicating his enjoyment at watching me squirm. “Sure you did, cariad.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
AVERY
If I had a fantasy checklist about Bryn – okay, I did –, the last few months I've ticked a lot of those boxes. When I discovered he owned a motorcycle too, one of my all-time fantasies of spending time with a hot guy on a bike – slightly rough at the edges, great in bed – came true.
Several weeks travelling on the back of that motorcycle, and those fantasies have switched to hot guy with large, comfortable car – but still rough at the edges and great in bed.
The day I ice skated with him was weird enough, but I'm currently sitting in a small bar on a French campsite with Bryn. Parked nearby is the chrome and black BMW motorcycle we've toured France and Italy on over the past few weeks.
We're cut off from the band. I confiscated Bryn’s phone and we only use mine in case he's tempted to switch back into his mothering mode. The freedom from life has blown away the tension in Bryn I never noticed fully, but then in the past, he never opened fully.
We’re alone in the small café bar apart from a family with young kids eating a meal nearby. The wood-panelled walls and dark slate floor darken the café, and we choose a spot in a corner, beneath the dim glow of a shaded light bulb.
The barmaid watches Bryn as he heads back to the table with two glasses of beer; he shuffles along the bench next to me. I rest my head against him, listening to his heartbeat through his soft shirt. The scent of leather lingers on his clothes despite the shower fresh smell that evokes images of sex. We spend a lot of time in close physical contact because of our travel mode, and the fact we're alone twenty-four hours a day. I can’t imagine ever getting sick of it.
The darkened clouds hovering on the horizon break and the rain splatters on the dry ground outside the building, pushing the earthy scent of a dry summer into the air.
“I hope our tent pitching skills have increased enough that we don't get flooded,” I say to Bryn, remembering our disastrous first attempts where a gentle breeze uprooted half the tent pegs.
“I guess rain had to happen sooner or later.” Bryn rubs my hand with his thumb. “I haven't slept in a tent in the rain since I was at Scouts.”
“You were a Scout?” I fail to hide my disbelief.
“My camping skills were learnt somewhere.” He flicks my nose.
The vision of Bryn in a Scout uniform won't leave and I fight back my amusement. “Did you get lots of badges?”
“Are you teasing me?”
“No, I'm interested in the skills you learned.”
Bryn gives me a slow smile and leans closer. “Would you give me badges for any of the skills I use on you?”
“I don't think you learnt any of those in the Scouts!”
His fingers play at the hem of my shirt and he slips his hand beneath, running fingers along my skin. Despite daily sex, Bryn's hands on me continue to addle my brain and he knows it.
“No, but I'm good at what I do, cariad.”
My breath disappears from my lungs at the quiet words, the tone he uses when he whispers dirty words into my ear when we're alone pulling me back there and triggering the familiar ache.
“You don't need me to tell you that,” I say, curling my hand around his.
“True.”
“Don't look so smug!”
He drains his beer. “Let's go.”
“Back to the tent in the rain?”
“I need to practice my skills if you're going to give me a badge.” He stands and pulls me to my feet.
I hover in the doorway watching the rain hit the ground, puddling on the path leading to the campsite. “I must really love you.”
He halts. “What makes you say that?”
“Sleeping in a field in the bloody rain! Most rock stars would take their girls to five star hotels! Now you've trapped me in your god-like spell, do you think you don't need to impress me anymore?”
Bryn pulls me out of the door into the darkness and leans against the wall. “I'm not most rock stars, and you're not most girls.”
“I am perfectly aware of your uniqueness, Bryn.”
Bryn shuffles down the wall, so he matches my height then pulls me close. “I love you.”
In the dim light, his deep brown eyes shine, the confusion he held behind the words in the early days have disappeared along with my doubts his heart still belongs to another girl.
Tracing my fingers across his angular face, I relish the words and the multitude of butterflies that swarm inside when he tells me. “I love you, too.”
Bryn's mouth meets mine, a gentle buzz when our lips meet, the familiarity of his kiss offering the love he's talking about. I press into him as he winds his hands into my hair and our kiss deepens. Until Bryn, I'd never been kissed with the passionate tenderness he manages to blend. Sometimes more on the passionate, such as now as his hands slide beneath my clothes, firing heat along my skin. I delve my hands beneath Bryn’s t-shirt and hold his waist.
“Come on,” he says and pulls his face away. “You can't undress me here! We're in public!”
“I was only kissing you!”
“I know you, you're insatiable. I hardly get a break before you're trying to rip my clothes off!”
I smack him in the chest. “I do not!”
He tips his head. “Really? So if I take you somewhere private, you won't try and get my clothes off?”
“If you tease me, you won't be getting mine off.”
Without another word, Bryn drags me into the rain and we run across the muddy grass in the direction of our tent. The sky lights up, followed by a crack of thunder echoing through the quiet site.
“Holy fuck!” Bryn stops and his grip on my hand tightens. “Storm.”
“Yes, and rain. A lot of rain. Move!” I shove him as the water flattens my hair.
“I'm not staying out here in this.” A second flash and clap of thunder instantaneously and Bryn jumps. “Fuck.”
“It's close.”
“I know! Why are we standing here?” He drags me back in the direction we came. “Quick!”
Bemused, I run after him and, when he ducks at the next crash, realisation dawns. “Mountain man, are you scared of thunder?”
“Shut up and get inside!”
The bar has filled with other visitors escaping the storm, including a little boy crying with his mum. Water drips from us and I shake rain from my hair.
“Bryn?”
His face is pale and at the next crash, he backs away from the door. “What?”
“Are you scared of thunder?”
“I don't like storms.” He frowns. “I hope you're not about to laugh at me.”
“No. It's kind of funny in a not-funny way.”
“I bet you have a phobia, too.”
“Not really.”
“Spiders? All chicks are scared of spiders.”
“Don't be so sexist! And I'm not.”
Lightning flashes outside, the sky filled with a bright light. Bryn sits at a nearby table. “I need a drink.”
“I'll get them.”
Pushing damp hair from my face, I order the beers and return to a still startled Bryn. My man, the gentle guy beneath the rough exterior exposing his vulnerability.
“I guess being so tall there's always a risk you'll be struck by lightning,” I say as I place the glasses on the table.
“That's not funny, Avery.”
“Sorry.”
We sit in silence for a minute, Bryn warily watching the storm outside. Eventually, he slumps back in his seat.
“Five star hotel, did you say?”
We share a smile, laughing at the weird situation. I wipe the water that's dripped from Bryn's hair onto his face and kiss him. I'm sheltering from a storm in a small bar in rural France with a member of the most famous rock band in the world. Nobody looks twice at us; out of context, he's an average guy and I'm his girl.