The Rider List: An Erotic Romance (17 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Evan

Audrey has to leave shortly after our talk.

Part of me wishes she could have stayed. The make-up sex would have been amazing. But part of me is glad she had to leave. It will give both of us time to anticipate living out the fantasy she told me.

And it’s going to happen tonight.

This delayed gratification is good for getting worked up, but bad for getting work
done
.

The urge to write hits me hard. The emotions of the last couple of days have sparked a new hunger I have, a need to write songs.

It’s not just an idea or a wish or a hope that I’ll write a new song—it’s literally a physical need I have to create. Like if I don’t, I’ll be a bundle of raw, agitated nerves. I’ll be on edge until something gets written, until a new song is born.

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this way.

Putting Audrey out of my mind is impossible, so I don’t even try. Instead, I take a pen and my notebook and just start writing.

Words come out. Some are good, some suck. Some work, some don’t. Some have potential, others deserve to be crossed out and forgotten forever. I let the stream of consciousness continue, the pen sliding across the paper smoothly. There are rhyming couplets, which I usually avoid, but I let them flow to free my mind. It isn’t long before I abandon them and move easily back to the usual style of lines that I write.

There’s a half of a page with a collection of lyrics that I love, and I stop writing. I read them again, getting the rhythm of the words and I start to hear chords and a beat, followed by a bass line, and it all comes together. I’ve written the chorus to something that will be a song.

It’s there. It happened again. The rush is something that’s hard to describe. Maybe like the feeling of a first kiss, or the sound of your name being spoken by someone close to you. It’s a warm, comforting, surrounding feeling of contentment.

This is the thrill that started it all for me. The excitement of writing words and music that no one has ever heard before.

None of this would have happened if it weren’t for Audrey. With all that’s happened over the last couple of days, there’s no way I want to be away from her for a few days next week just to play that benefit show in Denver.

Even if she could come with me—and I know she can’t, between work and family responsibilities—I don’t think I would go.

I feel like I’ve taken the next step, and putting myself back in the very environment that literally made me ill would be going backwards.

I’ve gained too much ground to give it all up now.

I pick up the phone, ready to call Bruce and tell him I won’t be back. Just as quickly as I pick it up, I put the phone down again. I’m too focused on writing, and looking forward to tonight with Audrey to have a conversation with Bruce that’s sure to be nothing but a drag. Fuck it. I’ll let him know tomorrow, or whenever I feel like it.

. . . . .

The afternoon drags on slowly, more than any other day so far this summer, and there’s no mystery as to why.

It wasn’t difficult to get Audrey to tell me one of her fantasies. She was surprisingly open about it. I had anticipated her telling me something relatively mild, maybe because she’d be too shy to reveal something explicit, or maybe because of the fact that despite her enthusiasm for sex, she still has a strong innocent streak about her.

When she told me, I knew exactly what I was going to do, and when, but I didn’t tell her.

Planning such a thing might be the smarter, safer move. But it would also remove some of the excitement—not only for her, but also for me.

It would be a first for both of us.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Audrey

It’s a good thing I got a few hours of sleep at Evan’s bungalow this morning. I end up busy the rest of the day, taking Sophie to a friend’s house, which is all the way across town and when we arrive we almost get lost in the giant, maze-like neighborhood trying to find the pool, which for some reason doesn’t show up on my GPS.

Back at home, I do some laundry. I think about taking a short nap but worry that it’ll just make me groggy for work tonight.

Stacy calls and I tell her about Wyatt showing up at work last night. She’s pissed, calls him a stalker, and says that she and Trent are going to come watch fireworks with me from the clubhouse deck rather than go to a cookout that one of Trent’s friends is having.

“You don’t have to do that,” I say.

“I know I don’t have to. I want to. You know he’s going to show up.”

I laugh. “I can handle it, Stacy. Thanks, though.”

“Okay, then, but you call me if that fucker shows up.”

“I’ll send up the bat signal.”

She laughs and says she has to get going. “Either way, I’m calling you later, so answer.”

Mom gets home and says she’s going to try to get a couple of hours of sleep before going to work.

“Sorry about throwing us all off,” I say. “We just had a little mix-up at work and had to change my schedule a bit.”

“No worries. Sophie will stay with Kendall again tonight. Just be prepared, though.”

“For what?”

Mom’s voice trails off as she goes up the stairs. “Payback. You’ll have Sophie and Kendall here the next few nights.”

Later, I do a Google search for Tuesday’s Fault.

The first result is their official website. I click through it, scanning articles about their previous albums, looking at pictures of them in concert, others taken during recording sessions, more of them in different cities, several of them boarding their tour bus and a private jet.

Clicking on the message board, I see the first topic is about Evan. People are speculating about whether he’s left the band. Some offer theories about his sudden and mysterious departure.

A few argue that if he doesn’t come back, it will be the end of Tuesday’s Fault, and one person says it should be the end because Evan started the band and he writes almost every song anyway.

Another discussion thread is nothing but girls posting their favorite pictures of the band members. There’s an entire sub-thread about Evan. They’ve posted pictures of him they’ve found on the Internet, and there are lots of semi-blurry photos that appear to have been taken by the people in this thread.

There are numerous pictures of Evan with his shirt off, and most of the girls agree that he’s the hottest one in the band.

There’s a discussion among many girls that goes like this:

Why doesn’t he have a girlfriend?

Because he can have any girl he wants.

And he probably does! I’d be one of them if he’d let me!

Skanks.

Who’s a skank?

Not you. I just bet he’s like most musicians. He fucks skanks.

Get off here, TROLL.

I heard Evan has never had a girlfriend.

Who has the picture of him where he’s all sweaty and you can see that bulge?

LOL. I have it somewhere. I’ll look and post it.

He’s way hotter than that guy who filled in for him.

He’s hotter than all of them!

I’d fuck him.

I’d let him do anything he wants.

It goes on like that for a few pages. I just skim through, growing more bored with each post. I wonder how old these girls are. And I wonder what they’d think if they knew the real Evan and what he’s like in the bedroom. Reading it from that perspective just makes it funny.

It also makes me think of how people view celebrities. They don’t know Evan at all—only what they’ve learned from the media, combined with rumors they’ve heard, and topped off with their own assumptions.

I guess maybe that’s why they find it so easy to say things like that publicly about him. I wonder if he ever reads them and if so, what does he think? That makes me instantly think just how much worse it must be for female celebrities getting comments from male fans. God, the objectification must be brutal by a factor of a million.

. . . . .

I watch the fireworks from the clubhouse deck, alone.

Evan texted me earlier and said he was going downtown to the Battery to watch fireworks and see a band he’d never seen before. When I got his first message—asking me how my evening was going—I thought he might be getting in touch to see if he could see me tonight.

The disappointment was heavy when I found out that wasn’t the purpose of his texts. After telling me his plans, he told me he’d like to see me tomorrow, which led me to believe he would be out late.

I settled in for a long night alone, hoping Wyatt wouldn’t show up.

After the fireworks end and the crowd disperses, the beach quiets down, the band packs up, and the mosquitoes are starting to get bad. So I go back inside. And do nothing. I turn on the TV and find nothing of interest, probably because it’s not what I want to be doing. It’s just boring enough for me to drift off into a light sleep.

Knocking on the glass wakes me up. The clock says 10:23 p.m. I get up and walk down the hall, barely peeking around the corner so I can see the entranceway.

My fear is that it’s Wyatt again.

But it’s Evan.

My heart trips as I move quickly to the door. I unlock it and swing it open.

“Hi,” he says, “I’m sorry to bother you at this hour but I’m all out of fresh towels and light bulbs.”

I fight back a smile. “We’re all out. You’ll have to come back in the morning.”

He laughs and steps inside. “I’m not waiting that long for you.”

“I thought you were out for the night,” I say, following him into the open area of the clubhouse.

“Stayed in.” He’s looking around the place. Looking at the walls, looking up at the ceiling.

When I reach him, he turns and I can see something in his eyes. It’s that burning, glaring look he gets when we’re having sex.

“Surprised?” he asks.

I nod.

“Good.”

And when he takes my hand and leads me down the hallway, I know Evan has come to the office to fulfill the fantasy I told him about. It wasn’t specific to this place, but this is where I work now so this is where it’s going to happen.

I don’t know where it started or why, but for the last several years I’ve had a fantasy of having sex in a dangerous place. Maybe out in public somewhere, anywhere we might get caught. But usually my thoughts involve the workplace.

When I told Evan about it earlier this afternoon, he seemed to be equally as eager about it. He told me he’d had the same fantasy but had never lived it out. What he didn’t tell me is that tonight would be the night for both of us, and this would be the place.

He walks us to the room with the pool table. There are stools lined up along the walls. The entire back wall of the room is windows that provide a view of the swimming pool and tennis courts.

He flips a switch on the wall and the hanging light just over the pool table turns on.

“You can’t be serious,” I say.

He looks at me. “I am. Very.”

“Evan, I—”

“Trust me,” he says, interrupting me. “This is going to be good.”

I know it’s going to be good, but I’m not quite prepared for this—having sex in the office, in a room like this, with windows like those….

But I don’t have time to back out. I don’t even have time to utter another word of doubt or protest to him.

Evan moves to me swiftly, lifting me up and setting me down on the pool table.

He grins. “I’ve thought about this all day.”

He runs his hands up my thighs, his fingertips slipping just under the hem of my shorts, then moving down to my inner thighs. Any thought I had about putting a stop to this vanishes and I’m suddenly at his mercy. I don’t care what bad thing could happen. I just want
this
to happen.

He’s unbuttoning my shorts as his lips touch mine, barely grazing across them. He teases my mouth with the tip of his tongue.

Evan looks down as he works my shorts down my hips and I rise up a little to help. My eyes flash over to the window. I see our reflection, but I can also see outside a little. I see no one. It’s just late enough that we might avoid passersby.

My heart is beating hard, rapidly, my blood like wildfire coursing through my veins. We’ve barely started and this is already more thrilling than I ever imagined. Part of that is the fantasy itself, but it’s also due to Evan’s desire to fulfill my fantasy with me.

He kisses me as his fingers play with me. The sensation of him touching my clit reverberates up through my body to my nipples, as if connected by a taut string and he’s playing it.

“I want to hear you come before I fuck you,” he says, one finger slipping inside me and I respond with a sharp gasp.

His tongue sweeps through my mouth and I can’t resist closing my lips around it, sucking on it.

The physical pleasure is magnified a million times over by the thoughts running through my head: I’m in my workplace, pants off, legs spread, and the hottest and most intense guy I’ve ever known is fingering me and telling me he wants to hear me come.

He slips another finger in, working me deeper and harder, the heel of his hand against my clit. I shake as heat streaks through my body.

My arms are wrapped around his neck and I bury my face into his chest as I start to lose control. I feel like I could fall right off this table, but he’s holding me tight. My thighs tighten as the pleasure rises and I cry out, “I’m gonna come….I’m coming.”

“That’s it, Audrey,” he says, his voice low and hoarse. “Come for me.”

It’s only when I start to calm down that the thought of getting caught comes back to me.

I lean back a little. Evan is looking at me, wide-eyed and wild, like he has to have me. That’s when he pulls my shirt from the bottom and I raise my arms so he can slide it off. I watch as he lifts his hand to his mouth, licking his finger, then saying, “I thought I might never taste you again,” while his other hand goes around my back and swiftly unhooks my bra.

And here I am, completely naked in the clubhouse. The light above me shines down, no doubt making me visible to anyone who might walk past the window.

Evan doesn’t get naked. He doesn’t even take his shirt off. He just unzips his pants, and I watch as he works his rock hard, thick cock through the fly.

This is how he’s going to do it: me naked, with just enough of him exposed to fuck me.

“Touch me,” he says.

I reach down and feel him. Big. Stiff like steel sheathed in soft velvet. Warm. And wet at the end.

His lips are on mine again, ferociously kissing me, sucking on my bottom lip, biting gently on it. I give him my tongue and he sucks it like I sucked his just moments ago.

“It’s in my pocket,” he says, barely breaking away from my mouth long enough to say it.

I start to go for his left pocket, and he says, “Other one,” so I slide two fingers into the other pocket and pull out the condom. I lift it, and he says, “Take it out and put it on me.”

This is a first for me. I fumble with the foil packet a little before just tearing it open, looking down as I place it on the head of his cock. I roll it down a little, feeling myself getting worked up all over again as I do this—preparing him to enter me.

His cock pulsates in my hand, like it does before he’s about to come. I look up at him, surprised.

“Too fucking hot,” he says. “This is gonna be quick.”

And I don’t care. I came. This is so thrilling, better than I imagined. Way outside anything I had pictured the times I fantasized about it.

Holding him, I guide him toward me, and I decide to tease him a little by rubbing the head along my clit. I watch his face, slack-jawed, tongue running along his lower lips, eyelids fluttering, his eyes seeming to roll back in his head. I love seeing him like this. Like an animal in need. In need of being inside me.

The teasing is over as he pushes against me and I’d be hopeless to stop him even if I wanted to, which I don’t, because I’m practically begging him to do it. He’s going so slowly, easing himself in. Then, with a hard thrust, one he seems to do on instinct and pure lust, he pushes all the way into me with one long stroke.

I fall back on the pool table. Evan is moving his hips fast and hard, looking down, watching himself slide in and out of me. “So fucking good.” His words come out with an exhale.

I’m looking up at him, then up at the light, again thinking what this would look like to someone walking past the big window. Somehow, I simultaneously don’t care if someone sees us, and I’m mortified by the thought of it. Those two conflicting notions clash and heighten the excitement of what we’re doing.