Authors: Callie Harper
“We have time.”
What I had planned would happen hot and fast. Then later, after the
show, we could go slow, see how far I could take her before she
screamed in pleasure like she’d never known.
Baseball cap pulled
down low, collar of my jacket up high, we entered into a small,
gourmet warming hut without too much notice. No angry mobs, just a
few eyes following us, but I was used to that. I got Ana her hot
chocolate with whipped cream on top—I’d like to lick some whipped
cream off of her top—and myself a cappuccino.
She’d fallen silent,
and when I looked down I saw why. Underneath the counter ran a long
display of magazines.
Us Weekly
had leapt first into the fray, but
People
and
Entertainment Weekly
and followed suit, and pictures of the two of us took space on all of
their covers. The Rock Star and the Librarian. The press loved it.
But there were also a couple of rags, the type that claimed alien
abductions and paired celebrities with fake long-lost children. They
weren’t as kind to Ana. One had somehow found an unflattering photo
of her scowling and wrapped in a long, bulky coat. “Short, fat and
ugly!” Their headline yelled. “How did she get Ash? Is it black
magic?”
She turned tail, fast.
I paid almost as fast and ran after her, catching her marching toward
the street.
“Ana, wait. You can’t
pay attention to that crap.”
“I know.” She
nodded her head, but she avoided my eyes and her cheeks had turned a
deep, embarrassed shade of pink.
“Come on, tomorrow
they’ll be saying that I had a baby with the ghost of Audrey
Hepburn.” That brought out a smile, but it looked weak. “I’ll
get us a car and we’ll head up to my place.”
The ride was short, not
much traffic mid-day on a Thursday, and we weren’t going too far. I
wrapped my arm around her and tried to keep her mind off it, telling
her about all the outrageous stories I’d seen printed about me over
the years. I’d been romantically linked to people I’d never met,
accused of parenting children with people I’d never touched. One
rag had even declared that I was the secret love child of Sean Penn
and Madonna. I kind of liked that one.
I’d learned to laugh
it off, but just then I felt like an asshole. I’d dragged Ana into
this, exposed her to those hyenas, offered her up on a platter
knowing full well the kind of shit that would get thrown around. And
I’d never considered, not even once, the effect it would have on
her. I wasn’t a good person.
“You know it’s not
true,” I murmured into her hair, silky and smooth. “You’re
gorgeous.”
She gave a puff of a
laugh, more like a fast exhale. “I’m burning that coat.”
“I don’t know.” I
lifted up her hair and dropped my lips to her neck, kissing her light
on her warm skin. “I can see some appeal. If you showed up on my
doorstep wearing that coat and nothing underneath.” Dipping lower,
I licked her neck, giving her a kiss, a teasing nip and suck. She
tilted her head back, so natural at surrendering, her instinct to
give herself over to the pleasure. I’d do everything I could to
give her ample opportunity to experience it.
Starting now. The
driver pulled up, we got out and climbed up the stairs of my home. A
classic San Francisco Victorian, it was smaller and less modern than
what I could afford, but I’d loved it the second I’d seen it.
Built in 1920, it had withstood earthquakes and fires and the living
room overlooked the bay, golden in the morning and flushed red at
sunset. It couldn’t be beat.
And now I’d get Ana
to myself, for a least a couple of hours before our show.
I let her into the
entryway, high-ceilinged and bright with light. “Would you like a
glass of wine?” It had to be around three o’clock. Regular people
started drinking that early, didn’t they?
“Sure.” She
followed me in, taking in the details in the woodwork, the framed
rock memorabilia. I’d had someone decorate it for me, of course. I
wasn’t going to take the time to line shit up and mess around with
a hammer and nails. But I’d personally collected each and every
piece.
“You like Joni
Mitchell?” She stopped in front of a framed, signed copy of
Blue
from 1971.
“Yeah, that’s a
great album. James Taylor plays guitar on it.”
“Oh yeah?”
“And Stephen Stills.
They used to live here, you know. Crosby, Stills and Nash.” I was
rambling now, sharing nerdy rock history facts. How did this girl
make me nervous?
“They lived here?”
She looked around my place, surprised.
“No.” I realized
what I’d said. “Not here here, but near here.”
“You’re such a
rhymer,” she teased me.
I smiled down at her,
forgetting all about the wine. She made me feel like such a kid. No
one teased me. They sucked up to me, too aware of my power and
wealth. Ana didn’t seem to care. I loved it.
“Rhyming is my secret
weapon,” I agreed, pulling her closer to me, hands along her lower
back. “You’re so pretty. Not all gritty.”
She burst out laughing,
bringing a hand up to my shoulder. “That’s so bad.” But she
didn’t take her hand away. She left it there, caressing my muscle
as if she’d been wanting to do it for a while now.
I eased my hands
underneath her shirt, wrapping them around her waist, her soft skin
finally underneath my hands. My fingers were calloused from playing
guitar all day every day, and when I trailed them across her
sensitive stomach, she caught her breath. Her shirt was a thin cotton
and I could see her nipples start to pebble underneath the fabric,
pushing out, asking for my attention. Tracing a finger along the
waistband of her jeans, working my way over to the button, I drew my
lips down again to her neck.
“You’re so sweet,”
I murmured, trailing my way down, on my way to her breast, down to
her peaked point. But I had to make her laugh one more time, once
more before I turned everything into panting, moaning, begging. I
loved the way her laugh rang out, unstudied, real and true. “You’re
so sweet. Feel my heat.”
She burst out laughing
again, bringing her hands to my hair. “Oh, Ash.” I loved that
sighing quality to her voice, as if she were amused but also
something more. “That’s going to be your new hit song. I just
know it.”
I smiled, too, Just
before I brought my mouth down on her stiff nipple and she cried out.
“Starting the party
early, are we?” Connor’s voice came from behind me in the
hallway. I swore, I hoped under my breath. It hadn’t even crossed
my mind that he’d be here, but it really shouldn’t have come as a
surprise. We were like brothers. We didn’t actually live together,
but he had a key. Mi casa es su casa and all that.
“Ashley, is it?”
Connor approached us, a lecherous gleam in his eye. “You’re a
tasty thing, aren’t you?”
“It’s Ana,” she
corrected, looking at me nervously. I cleared my throat and scratched
my head. This wasn’t going to go well.
“Ever had a
two-for-one?” Connor rested his hand by her head, standing next to
me. “We’ll let you pick which of us you suck first.”
“Back off.” My hand
shoved Connor away hard before I even had the conscious thought to do
it.
“The cameras aren’t
around, mate.” He rubbed his shoulder, looking at me confused.
“Might as well have some fun.”
“That’s not how
this works.” I shook my head. I’d never had the possessive urge
before, but now I had it, strong.
“Then tell me how it
does work. I want in.” He turned his attention to Ana again,
fixating right on her luscious breasts. My breasts. “We’ll get
you off, we always do,” he assured her.
Aw, fuck. It was true.
I’d shared girls with Connor before. I preferred the two-to-one
girls-to-me ratio, but some girls liked it the other way around, one
guy fucking her pussy while she sucked another man off. You take an
18-year-old guy and give him that option. I’d like to see even one
who’d turn it down.
But I hadn’t done
that in a while, now that I thought about it. Connor had kept it up
as always. He liked a group, watching, pushing boundaries. He seemed
to get off as much on what he could get a girl to do for him in front
of others as the sex, itself. Me, I preferred the sex
“I’m going to go.”
Ana backed away from us like the freaky, nasty creeps we were. Just a
minute ago she’d been in my arms, my mouth sucking on her nipple,
my hands inches away from her slick sex. Now she had her back toward
me and headed fast toward the door.
“You don’t need to
go, luv.” Why did Connor sound so amused by the mess he’d
created?
“Ana, wait.” I
caught her at the door, my hand under her elbow, but she shook me
off.
“I’m heading back
to the hotel, Ash. I’ll be there for photos before the show.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s a
good reminder.” She looked up at me, all the glow and admiration
blown out of her gaze like a flame in a brisk wind.
“It’s not like
that.” But it was. Connor was and I was and our world was exactly
like that. She wanted no part of it.
“We could head out
for an early dinner? Before the show?” Now I was standing out on my
steps, calling after her like a dumbass. And even as I said the
words, I knew she was making the right decision, putting distance
between us, rejecting me. I shouldn’t care that she kept right on
going, hopping into the car I still had waiting outside my place. I
should head back inside and laugh it off with Connor, do some shots
and maybe call up a few girls to get the party started right before
our show tonight. We were playing Levis stadium down in Santa Clara,
and the limo ride down there could get pretty wild when Connor was on
board.
But I didn’t want to.
I wanted to take Ana to a little Italian place I’d discovered a
couple years ago. It wasn’t trendy and it wasn’t cool. It was the
kind of place that got left out of tourist blogs. The murals were
faded, the framed paintings of the leaning tower of Pisa cheesy, but
the homemade pasta had just the right amount of chew and the pizza
had that slightly burned edge you got from a wood fire oven at
exactly the right temperature and I really wanted to go there with
Ana. I wanted a long, slow dinner with a bottle of Chianti and
candlelight and no cameramen in sight.
But who was I kidding?
Even if I didn’t have a show tonight, I’d have a mass of
paparazzi following us around. It would be like sending a plague of
locusts down onto a little hole-in-the-wall mom-and-pop restaurant. I
couldn’t really have a romantic dinner out with Ana, not the
mega-celebrity Ash Black.
Not for the first time
in the past few weeks, I found myself wondering, was all the fame
worth it? Because right now, it didn’t feel that way. The car with
Ana disappeared around the corner.
“The bird has flown,”
Connor observed from the doorway. Yup, he was right. No use standing
outside like an idiot, holding out a cage and hoping she’d somehow
fly back in.
Ana
Sitting in the back of
the car, my entire body hummed with electricity. First, Ash had my
panties melting straight off of me with practically just one touch.
Then, his creepy friend had come on to me, too, and my body had
jumped straight into alert for a whole different set of reasons.
I didn’t think of
myself as a prude. I liked sex a lot. I just didn’t like having it
with random people I didn’t know. You got a lot less STDs from book
boyfriends and your own trusty fingers than strange men.
But I thought of my
roommate, Liv. She treated sex, like most everything in life, as an
experience to be lived to the fullest. She’d had threesomes and
more, with tons of random people, and then told me all about it in
explicit, objectively removed detail over cups of tea in our tiny
kitchenette.
It wasn’t that I
morally objected to it. In a way, I admired Liv and her
devil-may-care attitude, her total liberation and lack of concern
over consequences.
But when it came to
messing around with both Ash and his freaky little buddy Connor at
the same time, it wasn’t some Puritanical set of values holding me
back. It was the fact that the proposition didn’t turn me on in the
least. Connor had a weird, angry vibe running through him. I tried
not to judge people too quickly, but I also believed in gut
instincts. He had a greedy, aggressive gleam in his eye and I didn’t
trust him at all.
So what did that mean
that he was Ash’s best friend? It sounded like they’d shared a
lot. Including women. Did Ash want to do that with me? He’d pushed
Connor away, but was that only because of my reaction? I’d been
starting to feel like I was getting to know him, like we were
connecting in some kind of a real way apart from his crazy celebrity
reality. Then this happened, forcing me to realize I really didn’t
know Ash at all.
He lived in a world I
knew nothing about. We might connect during random moments together,
but if he weren’t staging a PR comeback, he wouldn’t be out
strolling along the coastal shoreline and buying me hot chocolate.
That was the kind of boring, mundane, simple way I liked to spend a
day. How did I know what he typically did with his time? Maybe it was
snorting coke off some girl’s boobs and then doing her with his BFF
Connor?
I needed to treat this
all more like the business arrangement that it was. Tomorrow, I’d
fly back to New York and spend a few days apart from Ash, back in my
real life. That would help. Tonight at his show I’d simply have to
keep my distance. Forget about the way he looked at me like he was
memorizing my features and how he touched me like it was all just the
beginning and he couldn’t get enough. That was silly.
Tonight, we were
supposed to do a few photos backstage, displaying our whirlwind love
to the world. It was the last item on my tightly-scheduled agenda,
compliments of Lola. Then I was off the hook for 72 hours.