Play Me (Love on Tour #2) (7 page)

“Henry.” She tugged on the neck of my t-shirt to get my attention.

I looked down at her. “We should be quick.”

“I liked you first.”

“What?”

“I had the hots for you. I was afraid that I would give into that and we’d end up in bed, so I took shelter with Sean.”

She was talking about when we’d first met. We’d offered her a ride in our tour bus. And she’d chosen to stay in Sean’s suite, on his couch, rather than with me.

Before I could give this new revelation any thought, she continued. “I thought he was safe, and you were… you were temptation on legs.”

Jesus. I had no idea. Sure, I’d flirted with Baby when we’d first met. In those first few days I would’ve given anything to get her into bed. I’d put aside all my ambitions the moment I’d realized Sean had a thing for her. And I hadn’t looked back. Now she was telling me that she’d had the hots for me back them.

“Does Sean know about this?”

“Yes. But it doesn’t matter because I fell madly in love with him. I thought you should know. Henry, you are a great catch. I don’t want you to think that… I don’t know. I just didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

“I get it Baby. I’m a bad boy. That’s why you steered clear of me and that’s why you warned your friend to steer clear of me. But it’s not a reflection on whether or not I’m a good person. Thanks.”

I started moving her toward the door.

“Wait, I’m not done. Henry, I don’t just think you’re a good guy. I love you. You’re my big brother. You are so much more than a good guy.”

“But?”

“No but. I think you’re great. I just wanted to make sure you knew that.” She reached up and kissed my chin. “My advice to my horny friend is not a reflection of any of that.”

I smiled at her and kissed her forehead. “Okay, little sis. Let’s go check on your friends.”

When we walked back into the bar we found Sue sitting at our table downing a glass of water. Bell was on the dance floor grinding up against some scruffy-looking dude in a wife-beater. Damn it, I just taught her those moves last week.

8

I sat Baby next to Sue and shoved a glass of water in front of her. Then I approached the dance floor slowly. I watched as Scruffy moved his hand to Bell’s ass. I quickened my pace.

“Come on Bell, time to go,” I said, pulling her away from the dude and his roaming hands.

When she looked at me, I realized that the last shot she did had finally caught up with her. She was very drunk.

“Hey, I’m danc – Oh shit. You’re Hank Tolk,” Scruffy said.

Again, people telling me who I am. I tried not to roll my eyes.

“Yeah. Thanks for lookin’ out for my girl for a minute. See you later, man.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, releasing Bell.

I pulled her back across the room and over to our table. She was barely walking on her own.

“Henry, I was having fun,” she slurred.

I didn’t respond until I had her over to the table. Then I addressed all three of them. “Come on girls. This night is over.”

They didn’t argue with me. Baby and Sue got up, and all three girls followed me out to the rental car.

“Did you see that guy I was dancing with?” Bell asked Baby and Sue as I drove back.

“He was kinda hot, I guess,” Sue said.

“Mmmm, I don’t know,” Baby said. “He needed to shave.”

“You don’t like a little hair on the face?” Bell asked.

“Nope, it gives me beard burn.” Baby rubbed her inner thigh and grinned.

“That is so much more information than I wanted,” I complained.

Sue laughed. “Well, beard burn or not, I think it’s kinda sexy. Only Lyle never gets that five o’clock shadow thing. He goes from clean shaven to ZZ Top in like three hours.”

“What do you think Bell, facial hair or not?” Baby asked, leaning over her seat towards Bell, who sat directly behind her.

I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw that Bell was looking at me. She scrunched up her face in concentration.

I had a habit of going two to three days without a shave, but instead of looking like that moron in the bar when I did it, I got a full, thin beard, then I’d go back to clean shaven when I got around to it. It was apparently a big topic of conversation among my female fans. Right then, I was on day two.

“I like it all ways,” Bell said.

Sue giggled. Baby stayed quiet.

I managed to get the girls through the hotel lobby without incident. But they started another embarrassing conversation in the elevator.

“Boxers or briefs?” Sue asked Baby, pointing a finger at her.

“Sean wears boxers, silk boxers.”

“This is way more information than I need,” I grumbled. Though I did technically already know this. He’d answered the door in them more than once.

“I would not have guessed that,” Sue said.

“Lyle?” Baby asked.

“Briefs, but not tighty-whiteys. They’re high cut and in different colors. I buy them for him.”

“Jesus Christ,” I murmured.

“What about you, Hank?” Sue asked.

Then, thank God, the elevator opened. I started walking all three of them down the hall. But Sue stopped and folded her arms over her chest.

“I’m not going any further until you answer the question.”

Baby and Bell lined up on either side of her. They mimicked her stance. They looked like a deranged army of drunk midgets.

“Seriously?”

“Boxers or briefs?” Sue asked.

“Neither,” I said.

“You go commando?” Sue asked.

I nodded.

“Why am I not surprised,” Baby said, rolling her eyes.

“Don’t you worry about the zipper–”

“March,” I ordered, pointing down the hall.

They did, though Bell was a little wobbly, so I threw an arm around her waist. We got to Lyle and Sue’s room first. I pounded on the door and Lyle came quickly.

“Take your wife off my hands,” I said.

Sue moved toward him and put her arms around his waist. “Hi, dear.”

“Hi,” he grinned.

She started kissing his neck.

“Goodnight,” I grumbled.

“Thanks, Hank,” I heard him say as I shut the door.

We walked three more doors down to Sean and Baby’s room. I didn’t have to knock. Sean must have heard us coming, because he was in the doorway when we got there. Baby fell into his arms.

“Hi, honey,” she said softly.

“Here’s your drunk wife.”

“I’m not drunk,” she said into his chest.

“She give you any trouble?” Sean asked.

“I’m not five!”

“No, just Bell.”

Bell was completely leaning against me now. She moved her head a little and said weakly, “I’m not trouble.”

“She was grinding against some douchebag.”

“Sean,” Baby said, looking up at him, “I love you.”

“Okay, I’m out. Goodnight,” I said, closing the door on them.

I tried to move, but Bell nearly fell down. So I picked her up and carried her back toward the elevator for the ride up to where her room was.

The elevator ride seemed to take forever. Bell didn’t weigh anything. But she was so soft and warm in my arms that I was dangerously close to getting turned on. And just when the ding sounded and the doors opened, her mouth found my neck.

There was really no way to move her away from me. I was carrying her with her head at my shoulder, her legs draped over my other arm. I was going to have endure her moist, warm mouth against my neck until I got her to her room.

It was an eternity, the walk down that hallway. She didn’t stop kissing me. In fact, her tongue started swirling around my earlobe. I was in deep shit by the time I reached her door.

“Bell, where’s your room key?”

She stopped what she doing just long enough to whisper, “in my back pocket.”

“Hold on.”

She tightened her grip on my neck with both arms. I moved my hand from her back to her ass and felt the sharp square plastic. I pulled it out and managed to get the door open.

“Here you go, sweetheart,” I said, laying her gently on the bed.

She rolled onto her side and let out a little groan.

“Don’t pass out on me yet. You need to drink some water and take a couple aspirin.” I walked to the sink.

“Don’t want to,” she pouted.

I filled a glass of water and located a bottle of over-the-counter pain killers in her toiletries bag that was sitting next to the sink.

“Believe me honey, I know all about how to reduce a hang-over. This won’t kill it altogether.” I sat on the bed next to her. “You drank too much for that. But it will take the edge off.”

She groaned, but sat up.

“You’ll thank me in the morning.”

She took the pills and water and handed me back the empty glass.

“Good girl.”

Then she flopped back onto the bed.

“Okay, sleep tight, Bell,” I said, getting up.

“Wait, take off my pants Henry, please.”

She was wearing a very well fitting pair of designer jeans.

“I don’t think that’s necessary.”

“Ugh, please,” she pushed at the waistband uselessly. “They’re bugging me,” she whined.

Fuck my life.

I tried to be as quick and efficient as possible. I rolled her onto her back, deftly worked the button and zipper on her jeans, and tugged.

Unlike her good friend Baby, this girl had a bit of a fashion sense, that went all the way to her underwear. Like the bra I saw the other night, her panties were small and lacy. Her legs were short, but smooth and muscular, and gorgeous. She started to roll over, so before I could get a good look at her ass, I pulled the sheets down, right out from under her, and threw them over the top of her.

She sighed, rolled onto her side, and closed her eyes. “Thanks, Henry.”

“Night, Bell,” I said, turning off the light and heading to the door.

****

I was having a shitty night. My drummer, Tommy, was sick as a dog and he’d called in some buddy to sit in for him. The guy sucked, and it threw it me off my game. The concert was shit. I was lucky I didn’t get booed off the stage.

Sean did better, once he got on stage, that is. For some reason he was almost ten minutes late. His band was sitting there doing instrumental shit and dicking around the whole time. I had to go out there and stall. Even the encore went badly, because we lost power halfway through the second-to-last song.

By the time I left the venue I was tired, pissed, and I really wanted a damn drink. I wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone, so I’d taken a cab back to the hotel. The cabbie was a fan. He talked my damn ear off the whole ride. When he dropped me off at the back door I practically raced inside.

I wasn’t in the mood to wait for the elevator, or deal with whoever might be on it, so I took the stairs. The quickened breath and slight ache in my legs from running up the seven flights of stairs felt good. I was feeling a little better by the time I pushed out into the hallway. I stalked down the corridor toward the opposite end, where my room was, and came to a dead stop in front of room 756.

Bell was pressed up against the door, her hand fumbling with the keycard. It must have been tough to operate, since her face was being swallowed by the infamous roadie Jon.

I took it all in. One of his hands was behind her head, holding her close, so he could shove his tongue down her throat. The other hand was inside her shirt, squeezing her left breast.

I wasn’t entirely aware of my actions as I made them. My hand clamped down on the back of Jon’s neck and I pulled, hard. He let go. He was not holding onto her anymore, and that’s when I got rough. I pushed him against the wall opposite Bell’s door.

He tried to fight back. He lifted up his hands and put them on my arm. I grabbed his left hand, the one that had been touching Bell’s tits, and yanked back the fingers.

He screamed like a little girl. I laughed.

“Henry, Jesus! What the hell are you doing?” Bell was screaming at me.

I looked to my right. There she was, cute as a button… and severely pissed off. “Bell, do you know who this piece of shit is?” I turned back to him. “I thought Sean had your ass fired?”

He couldn’t talk real well with my hand on his throat, but he tried. “I got re-hired by the new guy. He didn’t know about that.”

“What is going on, Henry?” Bell demanded.

“Why don’t you ask Baby if she thinks this guy is a good choice for taking into your room, Bell? And she can tell you how he tried to feel her up and got his ass fired.”

“Shit,” she said. “Okay, fine. Let him go.”

I waited a little longer. Then I let him go and backed up a step.

“Jon, get out of here,” she said.

He was an asshole, but he wasn’t stupid. He took off.

I turned on her. “What the fuck, Bell?”

She looked nervously down the hall. I followed her gaze. Doors had opened and people were peering out, some had cell phone cameras trained on us.

“Come on,” she grabbed my hand and pulled me into her room.

I was so pissed. I needed to calm down, so I paced. I kept moving to give that energy a release. I walked in a tight circle in the center of her room.

“Jesus Christ, Henry,” she said, leaning against the door she’d just closed behind her.

“What the hell were you thinking? You just pick up any fucking creeper and take him to your room?”

“I didn’t know!”

“That’s the fucking point. You didn’t know who the hell that guy was, but you were about to drop your pants for him!”

Her eyes narrowed. “That’s quite an assumption.”

“Oh really? Because it looked to me like you were going into your room with him.”

“That doesn’t mean I was going to sleep with him.”

I grabbed her upper arm and leaned down so that I was just inches from her face. “Sweetheart, you probably wouldn’t have had a choice by that point.”

She sucked in a deep breath.

I let go of her and continued my pacing. “Fuck.”

“Fine, I made a poor choice.”

“This whole thing is stupid.”

“Well it would be a lot easier if you’d just have sex with me, Henry!”

She was pissed. And so was I. I stopped in front of her. We stared each other down. Oh shit. I could see it coming. But I couldn’t stop it.

“It’s Hank.”

“What?”

“Call me Hank. Do it.”

Her eyes softened. She bit her lip. “Hank,” she said softly.

It was all over.