Wild Open (16 page)

He moved his hand, then, to slide over the peak of her breast, her pointed nipple grazing his palm. Her breasts were soft and warm and just the right size, a perfect handful for squeezing. She drew in a noiseless gasp of air; he felt her chest move as her lungs expanded. He could tell how difficult it was for her to keep quiet, could feel the strain in every muscle and tendon, and he couldn’t wait to get her in a hotel room where she could be as loud as she liked.

He lingered there for a while, stroking her nipples and listening to her shallow, ragged breathing. His aching cock demanded immediate action, but he knew he wouldn’t be getting off tonight, unless he went and jerked off in the bathroom. The bunk was too small, with too much potential for a mess, and not enough room for maneuvering. So he contented himself with focusing on driving Leah wild.

He bent down and kissed her neck and her collarbones, the warm flat skin of her upper chest, and then he worked her tank top upward to expose her breasts, and finally got his mouth on her hard little nipples. She arched against him and grabbed two fistfuls of his hair and
tugged
.

He pulled back and clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “None of that,” he breathed against her ear.

“Sorry, sorry,” she whispered, feverish.

If anyone was pulling hair, it was going to be him; but not now. That would _really_ make her wail.

He bent to her breasts again, and then kissed his way down her soft belly, feeling his way in the darkness, tracking her reactions through each minute shudder. He stroked his hands along her sides until he found the elastic waistband of her underpants. They were cotton, generously cut, boring, and somehow more erotic to him than the flimsiest scrap of lace. Leah hadn’t been planning to seduce him; this was her, authentic, unprepared. Leah who slept in underpants she bought in a six-pack. He wanted to ruin her.

He trailed his mouth along the waistband and moved his hands lower, tracing the seam at the leg opening over the ridge of her hip and down into the warm hollow of her groin. The crotch of her panties was damp, and she squirmed away as he touched her there, embarrassed or aroused.

God. He couldn’t get enough. She was wet for him—for
him
.

He slid back up the bunk to lie beside her and whisper in her ear. “Can you keep quiet?”

She nodded instead of replying. He felt the movement of her head, her hair brushing against his face. He skimmed his hand over her body, her bare breasts and bare belly, and slid his fingers inside her underpants.

She tensed. He felt her legs shifting, restless. She was slick and hot against his fingers. He moved his hand in a slow glide, pushing his fingers lower between her legs, until he cupped her with his palm and felt the waistband of her panties constricting his wrist.

The darkness heightened every sensation. Each of her inhalations sounded like a pornographic moan. Each flutter of her heated flesh was a tight clutch he felt like she was pulsing around his cock instead of his fingers. And when she began rocking her hips against his hand, asking for more friction, well—that was just about all he could take.

But he held back. He took his time with her. He stroked her slowly, paying careful attention to the speed of her breathing, the way the muscles of her belly clenched beneath his forearm. When it seemed like she was getting too close, he backed off, changed the rhythm or direction of his movements to keep her on the edge. Once, he took his hand away entirely and waited for her to calm down, while she emitted a low whine and tugged at his wrist, desperate for his touch.

Even his best efforts couldn’t stave off her orgasm forever. She was too responsive, too open to sensation. She turned her face toward him, blind, whispering, “O’Connor,
please
.”

A man could only bear so much. He leaned in to kiss her and gave her what she wanted, his fingers moving in fast, tight circles. She drew in a sharp breath, bucked her hips against his hand, tensed further. Her back arched off the mattress. He felt her flesh flutter against his fingertips, and then a steady pulsing as she tipped over the edge.

He stroked her through it, waiting until she clamped her thighs together around his wrist, too sensitive to bear his touch any longer.

He drew his hand away and kissed her face, her slack mouth. He fished her phone out from where he had stashed it and brought it out of sleep. She blinked at him in the dim light, dazed, one hand still clapped hard over her mouth.

He would have laughed, if he weren’t still afraid of waking someone. So that was how she had kept herself quiet.

He kissed her again and stroked her sweaty hair out of her eyes. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered. “I’m going back to my own bunk.” But first, a stop in the bathroom, to deal with his aching hard-on.

Leah turned toward him and threw one arm over his waist, snuggling in, pushing her face against his bare chest. “Not yet.”

He smiled and bent to kiss the top of her head. Okay. He could stay for a little while longer.

CHAPTER TWELVE

But the next day was Monday; they were in Boise; they wouldn’t have another hotel day until Thursday, in Las Vegas. And maybe Leah wasn’t the classiest person on the face of the planet—she couldn’t
believe
she had let him get her off in her bunk, what had she been
thinking
—but she didn’t want their first time to be in a dim corner of an arena, or even worse, the back lounge of the bus. She told O’Connor as much, when they had a moment alone before soundcheck.

“Well, of course,” he said, looking surprised. “I agree. It’s going to suck, and I’ll probably have a hard-on non-stop for the next three days—”

“O’Connor!” she exclaimed, laughing.

“—but it’s going to be worth the wait.” His eyes darkened. “Don’t you agree?”

Did she ever. Their encounter on the bus was already the best sex of her life, and they hadn’t even gotten fully naked. So she was definitely looking forward to the full experience.

Waiting wasn’t easy, especially when they were together all day every day, and when they were on stage together every night, which was a little bit like sex already. And to be fair, there was a certain amount of opportunistic groping when no one was looking. But for the most part, they kept their hands to themselves.

She texted Luka:
Dying of sexual frustration.

??? I didn’t need to know that, and also, who are you screwing around with on tour?

A different groupie every night
, she responded.
I’m swimming in men.

Okay.
She could
hear
the skepticism in that one word, and she was trying to come up with a snappy retort when her phone buzzed with another message.
Call mom soon, she wants to make sure you’re eating your vegetables.

Luka was sixteen minutes older than Leah: a short span by any normal reckoning, but an eternity when it came to the familial pecking order. When they were kids, Leah had hated the casual way Luka wielded the authority of his extra sixteen minutes, like they somehow made him an expert on everything under the sun, but as she grew older she found it comforting. Life was complicated and mysterious; sometimes it was nice to be told what to do.
Yeah yeah, I’ll call her today before the show. Happy?

Thrilled. Bryce says hi.

Hi Bryce
, she said, and added a winking, leering smiley face, just to gross Luka out.

They had a good show in Boise, a good crowd and a good set, and then they boarded the bus after load-out and drove to Salt Lake City. It was only a few hours; they slept the rest of the night in the parking lot behind the arena, and when Leah woke in the morning, the high brown mountains of the Wasatch Front crested the horizon to the east, hazy through the summer smog.

She was up earlier than usual, and the front lounge was deserted aside from Andrew, who was watching television on the couch, wrapped in a blanket. They hadn’t interacted much since that first morning in San Francisco, and she felt a little awkward around him, especially after witnessing his meltdown in Vancouver; but she said good morning anyway, and asked if he wanted any coffee.

“Sure,” he said. “I already had a pot, but I’ll drink a little more.”

Leah shook her head and dumped the used grounds out of the filter. “How do you drink that much coffee? I get jittery if I have more than two cups.”

“Practice,” he said. “And I don’t sleep a lot.”

She looked at him closely. He didn’t
look
too sleep-deprived; maybe he was just one of those people who could get by indefinitely on four hours a night. Her father was like that, and she’d always had trouble sneaking out to parties as a teenager, because he would often be awake before she got home.

If Andrew was aware of her scrutiny, he didn’t show it. He was watching the news: war somewhere, human suffering, talking heads debating the merits of American intervention. Leah did her best to avoid knowing anything about current events. It was definitely an ostrich-in-the-sand approach, but it worked for her. But Andrew was rapt, nodding in agreement as one of the talking heads spoke, then scowling as someone else interrupted.

What an odd person. He seemed better, though, or at least somewhat functional.

It was like O’Connor had said: the show must go on.

But something went wrong with their show that evening. Leah couldn’t even identify a specific cause, but something was off the whole time. The crowd didn’t seem into it, and all of Andrew’s attempts to get them engaged seemed to backfire. Backstage, before the encore, James said, “This is
fucked up
,” and they all nodded, but nobody had any ideas. They would just have to get through it.

Andrew melted down afterward, standing in the middle of the dressing room and screaming at all of them, even the hapless roadies who were eating dinner and waiting for the fans to disperse before they started load-out. He accused Leah of sloppy playing, James of deliberately setting the beat too fast, and O’Connor of overall poor musicianship. Rushani came in partway through the tirade, took in the situation with one quick glance, and immediately hustled the roadies out the door. When just the band was left in the room, she approached Andrew and set one hand on his arm, close above the elbow.

He stopped screaming and glanced down at Rushani. Some silent message passed between them. Andrew shook his shoulders like a racehorse and slumped onto a nearby armchair. It was over.

A ringing silence followed. Leah was afraid to move.

“The show was bad,” Rushani said. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault. I watched from backstage. You all did fine. It was just the audience, the—who knows. Sometimes this happens. Let’s have a bottle of wine. We’ll have a day off tomorrow, because James wants to see Zion.”

Andrew ran both hands through his sweaty hair. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled.” He looked up at them, and Leah was struck by the open misery on his face. “Sorry.”

James and O’Connor exchanged a glance. “We’ll all feel better after we eat,” James said, not quite accepting Andrew’s apology, but Andrew nodded. It was good enough.

They left Salt Lake City at dawn, when everyone was still asleep, and drove south to Zion. Leah woke when the bus slowed at the park entrance, and she sat in the front lounge with Rushani and James as they drove down the winding road into the canyon, all three of them peering out the front window and exclaiming until the driver told them to calm down and stop distracting him. But it was hard not to exclaim; Leah had never seen anything like it. The high red cliffs to either side of the road rose higher and higher as they descended into the canyon, the scale of them unimaginably huge, more than she could wrap her head around.

“Rushani lets me have one National Park on each tour,” James told Leah. “Last time it was Yosemite, and the tour before that we went to the Grand Canyon. I asked the fans where we should go in Utah, and Zion won.”

“James is living an imaginary alternate life as an old-school mountain man,” Rushani said.

“Look, I never got to go anywhere as a kid,” James said. “My parents worked all the time. We went back to South Korea once so I could meet my grandparents. That was the only vacation my parents have taken since I was born. And they
still
won’t go anywhere, even though I keep telling them I’ll pay for it—”

Rushani was laughing. “The immigrant work ethic strikes again.”

“Yeah, and you know
exactly
how it is, so don’t lecture me,” James said. “You’re up here staring at the rocks just like I am.”

“My parents also own a restaurant,” Rushani explained to Leah. “We also never went anywhere.”

“So let’s go hiking,” Leah said.

James grinned. “A woman after my own heart.”

But James wanted to hike some incredibly technical trail along a ridge that made Leah’s head spin with vertigo just looking at the pictures on his laptop, and she begged off once she knew about his plans. He convinced a couple of the roadies to go with him, and they set off with their backpacks and sunblock and what was probably not nearly enough water. O’Connor was up by then, sleepy-eyed and yawning, and he said he needed an hour and some coffee before he was willing to go anywhere. So Leah, Rushani, and Rinna took the shuttle bus back up the canyon and hiked a short trail to an overhang where a thin trickle of water ran down the rock. On the way back they played “spot the European,” which was hardly a game at all, because you could just look at the shoes and tell.