Pulling her hair to one side, she bent over enough to blow out all twenty-one candles. When they had all winked out she turned and hugged me. “Thank you!” She kissed my cheek hard. “I love it.”
My hands tightened around her waist for a moment too long before I let her go so she could hug everyone else. When she had finally hugged Jesse she went willingly into Axton’s arms and let him kiss her on the cheek too. That was when I pulled my bottle of Patron back out and started chugging that shit.
“Okay, let’s see this new tattoo,” Shane commanded an hour or more later.
I raised my heavy head. “Yeah, let’s see.”
I regretted the words as soon as she started pulling her jeans down. All I could think was that Emmie was stripping in front of a room full of horny ass rockers. But my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and I couldn’t voice my protests. Instead, I was helpless to do anything but sit there and watch as she exposed her hip.
It was bandaged but she carefully pulled the tape back and exposed a black heart with demon wings. My heart constricted when I saw four names in red ink in the middle of the heart. Drake. Jesse. Shane… Nik. I skimmed a shaky finger over my name.
How did I get over the fact that my name was now on her beautiful body?
--
If you want the truth, I didn’t completely sober up after that night. I was half drunk for at least two weeks after that. As soon as the numbness of the alcohol would start to fade I would start drinking again.
We went through four different cities during that time. Today we had arrived in city number five and a whole day ahead of schedule, due to a snow storm in Memphis that had been bad enough to shut the state of Tennessee down. Of course we had arrived to heavy rain showers in Tampa, and I was sure that it was going to start thundering soon.
Emmie’s fear of thunder and lightning made me dream of her. I had lost count of the times she had climbed through my window when we lived next door to each other as kids because of her fear of thunder storms. Thunder always made me think of Emmie and her cuddled close to me as we would wait out the storms together. Of course I dreamed of her often anyway, but tonight the dream was particularly vivid.
I was stroking my dick when my tormenter appeared in the doorway of my hotel room. Fuck she was beautiful with the light from the bathroom highlighting her auburn hair and porcelain complexion. She was barefoot, which was just fine with me, but normally in my dreams Emmie came to me in thigh high boots and very little else.
I wiped a smear of my desire off the tip of my dick with my thumb and held out my hand to her. “I’ve been waiting all night for you. Come here, baby.”
She didn’t hesitate as she did as I asked. As soon as she was beside me I cupped her hand around my aching cock. The feel of her soft hands on my throbbing flesh was sublime. “Do you feel how much I need you?” I asked in a voice that didn’t sound like my own it was so full of desire.
“Yes,” was her husky answer that made me shiver with pleasure.
I loved that I had to teach her how to touch and stroke me. Emmie was innocent in my dream. So sweet and innocent. I had wanted to teach her all the amazing things about lovemaking for more years than I could actually admit to myself. I knew that she couldn’t be that innocent in real life, though. She and Jesse had gotten even closer lately and then there was Axton.
Not wanting to think of either of those fuckers at the moment, I kissed my dream Emmie. She tasted of toothpaste, which might have thrown me off for a moment if I hadn’t been drunk before I had fallen asleep. But under the taste of mint was her unique taste and it was so sweet. I was sure I hadn’t tasted anything so sweet in my life and I told her so.
Graceful fingers combed through my hair and tangled in the thick locks. Her eagerness delighted me and I grinned down at her. “I’m not going anywhere,” I promised.
“I need you, Nik,” she cried.
I cupped her face, trying to take in every line of my dream Emmie. “I need you too, baby.” She was so fucking beautiful it hurt to breathe for a moment. I kissed her, trailing down her jaw and neck, stopping only long enough to suck on her rapidly beating pulse at the base of her neck.
Stripping my dream Emmie was a treat in and of itself. I took my time, making sure that I licked every inch I exposed. When I got to the tattoo that had my name inside, I sucked and nibbled my way around the heart. “This is sexy as hell.”
Only after I had my fill of her front did I turn her onto her stomach, the tattoo she had gotten shortly after she had turned eighteen spread across her back. The demon wings that Drake had designed specifically for her never failed to make me stop and stare. The words portraying her as ours—Property of Demon’s Wings—said it all for me. Only I wished it said “Property of Nik” instead.
When my dick skimmed over her perfect ass, I grew twice as hard. I wanted in that sweet ass. Had dreamed of taking her there a dozen times over the years. When she eagerly spread for me, offering me whatever I wanted, I had to turn her down. I was harder than I could ever remember being in my life, and it was because it was her that I was making love to tonight. Even if it was just my dream Emmie, my body was getting what it wanted and my dick was nearly double in size in my need to have her.
To avoid temptation I turned her over and buried my face between her sweet smelling legs. If I had thought her kiss was the sweetest thing I had ever tasted, I had been severely wrong. How could a woman taste of such sweet nectar? I lapped it all up, smearing her liquid desire all over my face as I felt her come all over my tongue.
I wanted her to taste the sweet treat and kissed her without wiping her desire from my face. She stilled under me when she got that first taste, but then I felt her melting for me again and knew that she enjoyed the flavor of herself. Her teeth bit into my bottom lip, sucking her release from my mouth.
With an agonized groan, I rolled us so she was straddling my waist. This was what I liked… to have her on top while I watched those perfectly formed tits bouncing while she rode me hard. But I needed the words first, needed to hear what I was too much of a coward to ask for when I was awake.
“Tell me you are mine.”
“I’m yours. All yours, Nik!”
I didn’t think about a condom. The only sex I was having was with dream Emmie and I didn’t need them so I stopped carrying them. So when she took all of me into her incredibly tight, agonizingly wet pussy I was bare. If I wasn’t already asleep I was sure that I would have passed out from the sheer pleasure of feeling her stretching to fit me.
I hit a barrier and paused for only a moment before thrusting deep. My heart flipped at the realization that I was dream Emmie’s first. Tears burned my eyes, but I blinked them away as she took me to the very hilt.
My fingers gripped her hips as she started to move. “Don’t. Please don’t move. I’m going to embarrass myself and blow in that sweet pussy way to soon if you move.”
She leaned forward, kissing me while those tits that I loved so much skimmed over my chest. I cupped one with my left hand while the other held her firmly in place. Gods, she fit so perfectly in my hand. It was almost as if she was made for me, but I knew it was just my dream giving me an imagined form.
Her pussy grew slicker, wetter with need. When she whimpered my name I gave her what she needed. Her little clit was super sensitive as I rubbed it in tight little circles. She screamed my name as she rocked back and forth. She felt like pure heaven as her walls clenched around me with each glide up and down my shaft.
I knew she was close and I thanked all of those gods that she prayed to because I was holding on to my control by my fingernails. I increased the pressure on her clit and felt her body convulse at the same time her pussy flooded with her release. It was too much, too fucking much!
I came harder than I had in my entire life. Nothing could compare to how incredible making love to my dream Emmie was.
Dream Emmie was fading now that my body was spent. Darkness was rushing up to consume me and I w
as helpless to escape it.
The next morning I had a hell of a headache and I promised myself I wasn’t ever going to drink like that again. Emmie was waiting for me downstairs in the hotel’s restaurant, ready to have breakfast. I had to push down my urge to kiss her on the lips, knowing that I only had that privilege in my dreams.
While we waited for our meal to arrive I watched as she added more sugar than normal to her coffee. When she overdosed it with too much cream I realized that she wasn’t even paying attention to what she was doing.
“Wake up, baby girl.” I grinned when she muttered a curse and pushed her ruined coffee away.
“Sorry, I have a headache. I didn’t sleep well last night.”
My grin died. The storm the night before must have kept her up. “Sorry, Em. Did the storm get that bad?”
“Bad enough…”
Chapter 7
…Emmie…
Nik and the guys were on stage when I got the call I knew was coming.
My fingers trembled as I pressed the connect button on my phone and pressed it to my ear. I swallowed hard as I listened intently, my eyes were focused on the man singing one of my favorite songs to at least five thousand fans. Blinking back tears, ones that were more for the man I loved than myself, I told the person on the other end of the phone to start making the appropriate arrangements. Arrangements I had set up a year ago when Nik’s mom had started going downhill in her fight with Alzheimer’s.
While the guys finished up on stage, I got busy taking care of the other million and one things that would have to be done by morning. First I called Rich Branson and what a lovely conversation we had. Gods, I hated that fucker! While talking with him I surfed the net and found plane tickets for the five of us to get to California by dawn.
When the concert came to a close, I stood directly on the sideline of the stage and made sure that Shane didn’t run off with the salivating groupie skanks that had been eye fucking him all night. Seeing my expression, he handed his guitar off to a stage tech and headed toward me along with his three band brothers.
Drake and Jesse reached me first, and I just squeezed their hands. They could guess what was wrong by the look in my eyes and they stepped behind me as I reached for Nik. Those ice blue eyes turned stormy as I grasped his hands. I had to swallow twice before I could get the words out. “I’m so sorry. She’s gone, Nik.”
The agony on his face at my words nearly crippled me, but I had to be the strong one here. Nik needed me and I’d let him lean on me for as long as he had to. Those eyes that haunted my dreams as well as my waking hours filled with tears, and he pulled me against him. No sound left him. He just held on to me and didn’t let go.
My arms held him close, rubbing my hands up and down his tense back. His pain soaked into me, making it hard to breathe for a moment. Jesse squeezed his shoulder as Drake and Shane surrounded us. “I’m sorry, bro.”
Nik sucked in a deep breath, his hold on me easing as he took half a step back. “What do I need to do?” he whispered brokenly.
“Nothing,” I assured him. “I made sure that everything was set up when she had the feeding tube put in. I told the administrator to follow the plan we talked about …” He really didn’t need to know all of that. We had argued about it for several weeks before he had finally let me make the funeral arrangements for the future event of his mother’s death. I had hated myself, but I knew that he wouldn’t have been able to make the decisions that needed to be made when the time did come and Sarah passed on.
“I have to tell Rich that we are leaving the tour.”
I gave him a tiny smile. “No, Nik. I’ve already taken care of all of that. Everything has been arranged from the flight to the car that is going to be waiting on us when we land. I even called Tommy and told him we were going to use his house while we are in town.”
I had hated talking to that old pervert nearly as much as I had hated talking to Rich. Tommy Kirkman wasn’t exactly my brand of rocker with his taste for overly young girls, but my guys respected him and looked up to the old rocker who had taken them under his wing and shown them the ropes. So I tried to keep the peace.
I was lucky to get a flight that had room for all five of us. Of course we were spread out. Drake and Shane were all the way in the back by the bathrooms and Jesse somewhere in a middle aisle with a few business men. The only two seats beside of each other that I had been able to get were close to the front of the plane and Nik asked me to sit with him.
I tried to stay with him as much as I could in between going to the bathroom because of the air sickness I always got. There had been no time to get a prescription for the patches that normally eased my discomfort, so I struggled through. Being close to Nik, knowing that I was helping even a little bit, soothed something inside of me. I tried to rub his back, but he just wanted to hold my hand.
It was only a three hour flight, but we were all exhausted by the time the plane touched down at LAX. Aunt Sarah, as we had all called her, except for Nik who called her Mom, was the only decent female I have ever came into contact with. Drake and Shane’s mother had been nice, but she had worked all the time and I had rarely seen her the few years I knew her.
While Aunt Sarah had been kind, she had still been distant with me. I didn’t hold it against her. I knew that she thought I would one day turn out like my mother, and that she hadn’t wanted her son to get pulled into that type of lifestyle. I had made myself a promise at the age of five that I was never going to let myself become my mother. If I was ever lucky enough to have a child I would devote my life to being the best mom. My kids would never have to wonder if they were going to get fed that day, or sleep with one eye open just so they wouldn’t be taken by surprise by a midnight beating.
The limo was waiting and we all climbed in for the trip to Tommy Kirkman’s house in Beverly Hills. Tom was out of the country for the next year or so, business or pleasure I still wasn’t sure. He tended to mix the two anyway. It made relaxing in the man’s house that much easier. I hadn’t told the guys but when I was seventeen Tom had tried to seduce me. One try and that was all he needed to know not to fuck with me again.
There were still several hours to go before we had to go to the nursing home to make sure that everything was in order. I hoped that Nik wouldn’t want to go, that Jesse or Shane could just go with me to sign the papers that needed my attention. But when I suggested Jesse go, Nik went a little crazy and stormed off toward the room he normally claimed as his when we stayed with Kirkman.
Jesse’s big hand touched my shoulder gently and I covered it with my own, comforted just having my friend so close. I wasn’t sure what it was about Jesse, maybe the fact that he was the one that had always played the role as my mother and father, but I always needed him close or I began to feel anxious. I had an odd connection to all of my guys. Shane was like my best friend while Drake was just like a brother to me.
And then there was Nik. I needed him in my life just as much as I needed the other three, but with Nik I was always being pulled in two different directions. He was my friend. He was the man I loved. I couldn’t have it both ways and had learned early on that he only thought of me as his little sister. The girl he had spent the majority of his life taking care of.
I was okay with that. Really, I was. And for the most part I could handle the skank groupies that warmed his bed on a nightly basis.
Oh, who was I kidding? It was driving me crazy.
Leaving Jesse and the others in the living room, I followed after Nik. His door was unlocked and I barely knocked before opening it and glancing inside. My heart broke for him when I saw that he was sitting on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands. I shut the door softly behind me and went to him.
Dropping to my knees in front of him, I touched his hands gently. I had such wonderful memories of those hands on me from just a few weeks ago, but I put those thoughts out of my head as I wrapped my arms around him. He buried his face in my neck and I felt his tears falli
ng onto my skin. His hands caressed down my back and then I felt his hot, rough hands touching my bare skin under my T-shirt. Being skin to skin with Nik was like being offered a glimpse into paradise. It was enough for me because I knew it was all I would ever have from him.
How long I sat there on my knees just holding onto him, I wasn’t sure. My legs had long since fallen asleep when Nik raised his head. “Will you stay with me until we have to go?”
“I’ll stay as long as you need me, Nik,” I promised.
I thought I saw a flash of something intense cross his face but was too tired to question it as I stood. For the next few hours I lay in bed with him. One arm was under his head while the other wrapped tightly around my shoulders. His fingers played with the ends of my hair like they always did, and I wondered if the action was just as soothing for him as it was for me. Neither of us spoke and I let myself relax to the sound of his steady heartbeat under my ear as I rested my head on his lean, muscled, hard chest.
The sun came up but we stayed where we were. It was after eight before he finally moved around, trying to work some of the kinks out of his stiff body. When he left me to shower, I took a moment to make a few necessary phone calls before going to shower in my own room.
Over the next two days I stuck to Nik’s side like glue. It was where I wanted to be the most, and I was so thankful that it was where Nik wanted me too. It was like a dagger shredding my heart as I watched him silently cry while his mother was slowly lowered into the ground.
Aunt Sarah was the last of the family we had, except for Drake and Shane’s dad and sister back in Ohio that they didn’t acknowledge. So now it was officially just the five of us. We only had each other, and that was okay with me. Those four guys were all I had ever had anyway.
We returned to the tour and everything began to get back to normal.
Until I started getting sick.
Chapter 8
What’s Wrong With Em?