The Rider List: An Erotic Romance (19 page)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Evan

It’s just after eleven in the morning here, so it’s just after nine in Denver. After my morning run, I call my mom and tell her I’ll be in town next week for the benefit concert.

“I heard about that. I wasn’t sure if it was true or not.”

I tell her the story and she says, “That wasn’t nice of Bruce.”

“Well, either way, it’s true now. I’ll be home.”

“For how long?”

This is the part I know she’s not going to like. “Two days. One night.”

“We haven’t seen you in such a long time. I wish you would stay longer.”

I’m sitting at the breakfast table, looking out at the beach. It’s overcast and a light drizzle is falling. “I’ve got so much going on here.”

“You know,” she says, “I’ve been asking your father to take me to the coast for years. Maybe someday we’ll get around to it. Speaking of which, when you get here, I know he’s going to want to talk to you about something. All three of you boys.”

“About what?”

“About the ranch,” Mom says. “Just an update on how things are going.”

This doesn’t sound good. I immediately think they’re going to launch some kind of intervention to try to get me to move back there and start a new career as a rancher now that I’m no longer pursuing my music career. At least, that’s what they think.

“We’re all going to be so glad to see you,” Mom is saying. “And don’t mind Dale’s attitude. You know how he can be.”

It’s a quick call, but one that gets my day off to a bad start.

. . . . .

Audrey shows up just before noon. She knocks on the door and I can’t get it open fast enough. I wrap my arm around her waist and pull her inside. She makes a little “whoop!” sound, like she’s surprised, and I love it.

I pick her up and she locks her ankles behind me.

She looks down at me, a huge smile on her face. “I like this greeting.”

I kiss her—a long, greedy, slow kiss, satisfying this need I have to feel and taste her mouth. When I’ve had enough—for a few moments, anyway—I release her lips and look at her. “I’ve been waiting for this all morning.”

“Easy,” she says in a whisper. “I don’t have much time.”

“What if I don’t let you leave?”

She pretends to think about it, her eyes flitting around and squinting. “I guess you’ll just have to tie me up or something.”

“Or something…”

I put her back down, even though I want to get her naked right here in the hallway and keep her here for hours, days…forever.

She walks toward the kitchen. “God, I had the worst night.”

“What happened?” I ask, right behind her.

Earlier, I wrote my list for her but left it attached to the notepad on the refrigerator. I tear it off and fold it, but don’t hand it to her yet.

She leans on her elbows on the counter and tells me about her little sister and her sister’s friend sneaking out of the house.

“Where’d you find them?”

“The pool,” she says. “Isn’t that crazy?”

“I guess so.”

She laughs. “You guess? Wait. Sorry. I forgot I was talking to a rock star. You’re all rebels, right?”

I step toward her and she stands up straight. “You never snuck out of your house?”

She shakes her head. “Not late at night, and not for anything interesting.”

“You waited.”

“Huh?”

“Sneaking around, doing something…interesting. You waited until you were older.”

Audrey rolls her eyes. “You’re not trying to say that’s the same as an twelve-year-old girl sneaking out of the house, are you?”

Shaking my head, I say, “No. Of course not. I’m just saying I’m glad you saved your sneaking around for me.”

I kiss her, just a quick one on her lips, and hand her the folded list.

She doesn’t even look at it. I think she enjoys the anticipation, the excitement, of finding out what’s on there at the last minute.

. . . . .

She gets back just after five o’clock, a bag in her hand. When I open the door, she hands it to me. “Just dropping off the items you requested.”

She looks disappointed, and I know why. She has no idea what the items are for, because they could easily be mistaken for something else. I can only imagine her reaction when she saw the list. Maybe a little disappointment that it didn’t contain something obviously sexual.

I look in the bag, then back at her. “Thanks.”

She nods.

I move to the side to let her by. “You coming in or have you changed your mind about spending a couple of hours with me?”

“I haven’t changed my mind. Actually, Sophie is going to a movie with her friend Kendall, and Kendall’s mom is picking them up. So I have more than a couple of hours.”

“Good, then come on in.”

I had spent the better part of the afternoon putting dinner together. I’m not a chef, I’m not even much of a cook unless it involves grilling. But I can boil noodles, heat up store-bought spaghetti sauce, and put prepared garlic bread in the oven for a few minutes.

Most of the conversation during dinner is about the situation with her sister. Audrey struggled over whether to tell Kendall’s mom, finally deciding not to, only after she had a talk with the girls and told them they might lose their phones if either of their mothers found out what they did.

“It’s the perfect threat,” Audrey says. “They’d be lost without their phones.”

When we finish eating, I put the plates in the sink and rinse them off.

Audrey tries to help me clean up, but I stop her.

She says, “Can we go somewhere? I mean, just for a few minutes. I want to show you something.” She’s already walking toward the front door.

I follow. “Are we walking or driving?”

“You’re driving,” she says, turning and heading down the steps.

It turns out we could have walked where she was taking me. It’s not far, just down a few streets. She directs me to park in front of an old house. It’s white, small, and looks like it was built well before I was born.

“Come on.” She gets out of the car and I follow.

The lawn is overgrown. There’s a For Sale sign in the yard. It’s just before sunset and there’s not much of a breeze here on the banks of the Intracoastal Waterway.

It’s a one-story white house on stilts, with a long set of stairs leading up to the front door. The wrap-around porch is overgrown with vines. Not enough to make the place look abandoned, but enough to make it obvious that it hasn’t been taken care of in a while. No wonder it hasn’t sold.

I know little about real-estate, but I know enough to say that in terms of curb appeal, this house practically warns you to keep going if you happen to be out driving around and looking at property for sale.

Audrey takes us around the side of the house, to the backyard. She has a huge grin on her face and her eyes are wide with wonder and excitement, like a kid wanting to show a friend something she loves, something amazing she’s discovered.

We walk along the edge of what little property there is behind the house, down to a dock. It’s old and rickety, probably not sturdy enough to hold two adults, but Audrey is undaunted in her enthusiasm as she leads me out to the end.

“Sit,” she says, dropping down into a cross-legged position.

I sit beside her, legs stretched out, arms behind me. She’s looking out over the waterway and the marsh. I’m not.

She glances at me out of the corner of her eye. “You’re supposed to be looking over there.” She points.

It takes me a second to follow her direction. It’s not easy tearing my eyes away from her. The expression on her face, illuminated by the soft golden light of the sunset.

But I do as she wishes and I look out there to the horizon with her. We watch in silence for a few minutes.

“I used to come here when I was mad,” she says. “I’d ride my bike over and just look out there until I calmed down. This was when I was a kid and I was usually mad at my mom, or about something that happened at school.”

“Who are you mad at now?”

She laughs a little. “Nobody. This place became my favorite spot around town, and then when I started taking pictures, when I got serious about photography, I would come out here and take hundreds of sunset pictures.”

Looking away from the sunset, my gaze lands on her again. Her eyes are trained on the landscape, a light breeze plays with her hair, there’s a look on her face of longing and wonderment, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen her as beautiful as she is right now.

“The guy who lived here before the last family used to drop crab cages off the end of the dock. One time I was out here and he came out of his house, yelling and accusing me of being part of a group of kids that stole his crabs. I didn’t come back for a while. Then the house sold and a family moved in. I asked permission to come out here. That’s about the time I started taking pictures.”

I watch her as the story winds down, then say, “So what did you do with all the crabs?”

Her head turns quickly to face me and she slaps me on my leg with the back of her hand. “You’re ruining a good moment here.”

I love her sense of humor, I love her playfulness. I love that she’s sharing this with me.

“How long has it been up for sale?” I ask.

“A long time. Two years, at least.”

“Strange.”

“I thought so, too,” she says, “but there are several houses on the island that haven’t sold in a long time. Maybe someday.”

“And they’ll have to knock that house down and rebuild. No way anyone wants to live in that.”

“I hope they don’t,” she says. “It’s part of the charm.” Then she quickly changes the subject. “Guess what?”

I look up at her, eyebrows inching up my forehead.

“I just shared something really personal with you. Something close to my heart. Now it’s your turn.”

“What do you want to know?”

She shakes her head, eyes closed. “It’s not what I want to know. It’s what I want to hear. I say we go back to your bungalow and you play some music for me.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Audrey

There’s an oddly nervous feeling in my chest and stomach. It’s not a bad sensation, it’s all about my eagerness to hear him play his guitar—this time while I’m actually in the room and not outside on the front porch with the sounds coming through the door.

I dismiss that unpleasant memory and focus.

Evan is sitting next to me on the couch. I lean forward so I can see him as he gets ready to play.

“Why don’t you sit here?” he says, reaching forward and tapping the edge of the coffee table.

I move and now I have a straight-on view so I can see everything he does.

Evan got us each a beer from the refrigerator before we came into the den. I sip mine, more out of a need to cure this dry mouth I have from being eagerly nervous to watch and hear him play.

He starts off strumming, playing a few notes, then mixing them together, and I begin to recognize the tune: it’s one of his band’s older songs. He plays for a few minutes, fingers gliding along the strings, his shoulders alternately rising and falling as he gets more into it. I can hear the lyrics in my head as the song progresses.

Looking up from the guitar, I watch his face instead—the concentration, lips pressed tightly together, his eyes squinting a little. At one point, he looks at me and smiles.

A thought crosses my mind. Under any other circumstances, I’d be amazed that I’m sitting here getting a private concert from the guitarist of a very successful rock band. But that’s not how I’m thinking of this at all. To me, this is just Evan.

The Evan who captivated me on day one, the Evan who told me he’d fantasized about me from the moment he met me, the Evan I’ve been sharing a secret relationship with for many weeks now, the Evan who has been breaking down my walls of protection, the Evan who I’m starting to feel strongly about more and more every time we’re together.

That’s who is playing guitar for me. Not just some rock star.

He finishes the first song and as he stops, he’s looking at me.

“That was amazing,” I say, and as soon as the words slip from my mouth I realize that description is simplistic, probably sounds hollow, and it’s nowhere near adequate to explain what I’m thinking and feeling. “I’m….” I struggle to find a word that fits here.

Evan shakes his head. “I’m glad you liked it.”

And before I can say anything else, he starts playing again. It’s a faster song than the last. He plays it harder, the guitar moving more with the rhythm of his strumming. I’m just getting used to the sound of this song I haven’t heard before when he surprises me by singing.

My eyes dart up from his hands and I watch his face as he looks down at himself playing, the words coming out of him soulfully. I know he sang backup vocals with the band, and I’m beginning to wonder why. He has too good a voice to be in the background. It’s rich, deep, and there’s a rough edge to it that softens when it needs to. It’s unlike any other voice I’ve heard.

He looks at me during a stretch of the song that doesn’t have any lyrics. I mouth the word “Wow” and he smiles, finishing the song.

“I wrote that one the other day,” he says, reaching for his beer.

I want to jump on him like I’m one of the groupies he disdains, but I collect myself and tell him what I think. “You just wrote that?”

He nods, as he swallows the beer. “Two days ago.”

“Two days ago,” I say. “Just like that.”

“Yeah.”

I chuckle in disbelief. “That sounds like it should be on the radio. Like right now.”

He just shrugs. Is he being modest? Is this just the way he is about his own work? Or is some of his seemingly dismissive attitude about the song due to the all the issues he’s dealing with about the band?

Those are all questions that are sure to touch a nerve, so I don’t dare ask them. He’s doing this for me and I’m going to enjoy it.

Evan plays one more song that’s equally as good as the last, if not better. And then something occurs to me. Just days ago, he told me he was here because he was basically in a rut.

He didn’t want to go back with the band. He didn’t want to be on the road. He hadn’t been able to play or write any new music. But he’s just played me two songs he’s just written. Does this mean he’s got his mojo back and he’ll be rejoining the band, which means he’ll be leaving Charleston?

I can’t
not
ask him, but I don’t want to raise a touchy subject, so I try gently. “What are you going to do with the two new songs?”

“I sent them to the band.”

A wave of relief washes over me.

“They can have them,” he says. “They need something for the recording session. And I guess we’ll play them next week at the benefit show.”

The relief vanishes, replaced by a sick feeling. I can’t let him know I’m worried about him leaving because of the possibility he won’t come back. That would be selfish. Maybe we’ll have that discussion when he’s about to leave for the two-day trip. I’ll wait and see.

Evan puts the guitar down. “Show’s over.” He leans toward me, his hand on my leg. His face is so close to mine, our noses are almost touching. “Thanks for listening.”

“Thanks for playing for me.” My voice comes out in a whisper.

“I, uh…normally don’t do this,” he says, dragging the words out and running the tip of his finger from my knee up to the hem of my shorts, “but would you…” His voice trails off as he kisses me lightly, his lips so gentle on mine. “Would you like to come to my dressing room?”

He kisses me and it’s hard to kiss him back because my mouth isn’t doing anything it should do while kissing. It’s just a big smile, as I’m charmed by the little act he just put on and also impatiently anticipating what, exactly, he means by his dressing room.

. . . . .

Evan leads me upstairs, this time to a different bedroom than the last one we were in that only held the chaise-lounge. This bedroom is larger, with a king-size canopy bed and accompanying furniture. It’s also on the ocean side of the bungalow.

He walks over to the French doors that lead out to the porch and swings both of them open. There’s a storm gathering on the horizon, the breeze is strong and relatively cool for this time of the year.

Before coming upstairs, Evan grabbed the bag of items I had bought this afternoon. I hadn’t looked at the list when he’d given it to me. I’d waited until I got in the car, and when I saw what he’d written on the paper, I figured he was making something to eat. The list said:
coconut oil, honey, your favorite flavoring (extract).
I’d picked almond.

I admit there was some disappointment when I saw the list. I had anticipated something dirty, something daring, something that we would use in the bedroom that I had never heard of. So I had gone into the grocery store a little let down.

But now, as Evan steps into the bathroom and turns on the sink, I see that my disappointment was unfounded.

“Come here,” he says.

I go into the bathroom and see that he has a small bowl. He must have put that in the bag and I hadn’t noticed it.

“I’m just warming this up.” He’s holding the bottle of coconut oil under the faucet. “Ever done body-to-body massage?”

I shake my head, my eyes widening at the thought of it.

“Me either.” He looks down at the bottle for a few seconds, turning it in his hands, then looks back at me. “But I’ve always wanted to try it.”

“I’ve never even thought about it.”

“Good. Another first for both of us.” He stops the water, opens the bottle, and tips it to the side a little so he can feel the temperature. “Will you get the honey?”

I get it out of the bag as Evan pours the coconut oil into the bowl.

“How much?”

“Just a little,” he says, “until it gets thick.”

“Where did you get this idea?”

He looks at me and smiles. “Courtesy of YouTube.”

I laugh a little as I drip the honey in and stir with my finger. It starts to form a gel, and Evan tells me to drip a little bit of the almond extract in. The mixture is warm and slick, and smells so good. There’s so much of it, too, that I can’t imagine us using it all. Who am I kidding? Of course I can.

He turns the light off and we go back into the room. He places the bowl on the bedside table.

“Now, I know you’re an employee here and you’re obligated to report any damage done by guests, so I’ll just go ahead and tell you we’re going to fuck these sheets up and you can put it on my final bill.”

I start to laugh, but he grabs me around my waist and the moment turns from humor to serious in a half-second.

Evan pulls my shirt up and over my head and arms, reaching around to unclasp my bra. He cups my breasts as he bends his neck down just enough to get his mouth on them. He hungrily licks and sucks each nipple, breathing in deeply and saying, “I’ve been thinking about these all day.” He licks each one more time. “Fuck, Audrey. You make me crazy.”

Evan grabs the comforter and yanks it off the bed, tossing it on the other side along with the decorative pillows.

I touch one of the thick posters of the canopy bed.

Evan notices. “No tying up this time. I want your hands all over me.”

He pulls his shirt over his head as I unbutton my shorts, and within seconds we’re both naked on the bed.

Evan hovers over me as I lie on my back, his arms on either side of my head propping him up. He looks at me for a moment, raises one arm and touches the side of my face with the back of his hand, then touches my bottom lip with his thumb. “You’re so perfect.”

Words fail me, which is fine because his lips are on me the next second. He kisses me hard, greedily, his tongue diving into my mouth.

Evan sits up and reaches for the bowl of massage gel. He scoops out a huge handful and holds it over my stomach.

I expect him to lower his hand, but instead he just turns it over. The warm gel spills out and pools on my stomach. His hand is there next, spreading it around my stomach and up to my chest. He puts the bowl down on the far side of the bed.

“Look at you,” he says, both hands cupping my breasts and plumping them up. I look down my body and watch him squeezing.

My nipples are as hard as they’ve ever been, poking up, almost begging for his mouth.

Evan seems to see it the same way. He lowers his head, tongue sticking out of his mouth, tracing around the edges of both nipples.

The way he’s sitting between my legs, I can feel how hard he is already. It’s a heavy presence on my thigh, and it’s all I can do not to beg him to fuck me. Immediately. I don’t just want it. I need it.

I slide my hand down to my stomach and gather some of the gel. Shifting a little so I can reach farther down, I’m able to find the head of his cock. I grasp it gently at first.

“Harder,” he says.

I wasn’t expecting that. I give it a good squeeze and feel him throbbing between my fingertips. He moves and I lose him from my hand.

He drags his tongue down my body as he reaches for the bowl again. This time he holds his hand up over my thighs, makes a fist, turns it upright, and lets the gel drip on me.

Before I know what he’s doing, he’s rolling onto his back and pulling me on top of him. “Your turn.”

I get the bowl and tip it a little, letting the gel drizzle in a thin stream all over his chest. Moving down his body, I cover him in it, then put the bowl to the side and lay down, my head right at his knees.

Slowly, I work my way up. Slipping and sliding up his long, muscled body, feeling his cock against my neck, my breasts, my stomach, as my tongue leads the way up to his face.

The gel is warm and tastes amazing, like the perfect dessert after our dinner. I decide to tease him a little by scooping up some gel with my lips, then letting it fall out, like I’m drooling over his body, which isn’t such a stretch.

Up and down, I slide along him, finally stopping when I’m straddling him.

He’s so hard his erection is pointing up his body, and I’m sitting on it. I start to move, our flesh warm and slippery together. I could come like this if we do it for a few minutes longer.

His mouth opens a little, and I realize mine is too. We stare into each other’s eyes as my rocking hips move faster. It would take just a little bit more of a move down for him to slip inside me.

And that’s what I think he’s doing when he moves his hand from my breasts to my shoulders. He pushes down on them, like he wants to feel me grinding on his cock harder. The bucking motion of my hips is almost involuntary now. I want it. I want him. I need him to fuck me like this.

“Not yet,” he says, as if somehow he knows we’re both thinking the same thing.

My voice hitches in my throat but I manage to get the words out. “No condom.”

Evan sits up, kisses me, his arms wrapping around me and holding me tightly in place. “I’m not done with this yet.”

He rolls me off of him. I’m on my back again. “Turn over.” His voice is low, rough, almost hoarse.