Consumed(34)

“I thought I never wanted to see another Four Seasons again, but this is heavenly,” she sighs.

Fuck.

Since I’m on the other side of the hotel room and her eyes are squeezed together, she doesn’t see my muscles tighten up at the mention of what happened in the Atlanta hotel. I’d treated her like shit. By the time she sits up, raking her fingers through her hair, I’m back in control. I cross the room slowly, allowing myself a little grin as her chest rises and falls faster and faster with each of my steps.

“It’s a good break from Sin’s goddamn drumming, huh?”

“The guy makes a drum set out of everything he sees.” But she’s smiling. She pulls her knees up to her chest, and I let my gaze follow the path her red toenails make up the bedspreads, imagining how they’ll look on my shoulders a little later. “How long are we staying for?”

“Tomorrow morning. Next city is only a few hours away.” The need to be inside of her is a second away from trumping everything else I’ve got planned, and I know I’ve got to leave this room before that happens. I’ve already told Tyler that I would stop by his hotel for a meeting, and even now my phone is going off in my pocket. “Get some rest. I’ve got some band shit to take care of and then I’m yours.”

She starts to protest, but I bend my face to hers and cover her soft lips. “Here I was thinking I’d managed to break that annoying habit of yours.”

It takes her a second to answer, and when she does, she traces her tongue around my lips every couple of words. “Isn’t my”—she clears her throat and when she continues, her voice is a few octaves lower—“habit of being infuriatingly compliant to everyone but you what drew you to me in the first place?”

She starts the rotation of her tongue once more, but I pull it into my mouth. I lean in to her, my hands cupping either side of her head. She moans softly, pleadingly as our mouths crush together. The moment her fingers touch my thigh, I jerk away.

“Get some rest,” I tell her again. The look she gives me is just about enough to break through my thin layer of control, but I turn abruptly and make a quick exit.

Because Tyler’s staying in a different hotel, Wyatt and I walk over together with David following several paces behind us. The Embassy Suites is about five blocks away, and Wyatt bitches all seven minutes of the trip how Cal and one of my sister’s friends have been keeping him awake with their loud ass phone sex.

“I’m just waiting for the really weird fetishes. Balloon popping bullshit or—” he pauses when a woman pushing her kids in a double stroller turns and glares him down. “I know what you’re thinking,” he says to me more quietly.

"Why would I think you have too much time on your hands?”

“Fuck you, Lucas.”

I go inside of the hotel lobby with my head down. Even though it’s only just after two, women are already mulling around the lobby, earning pissed-off stares from the hotel staff. With one of the tour buses stupidly parked at the side of the building, it doesn’t take a goddamn genius to figure out what they’re here for.

Luckily for Wyatt and me, Brady Callahan, Wicked Lambs’ lead guitarist is already in the lobby signing boobs, back dimples—whatever he can without getting tossed out of the building by hotel security.

Once we’re far away from the fray and almost to the elevators, I speak to Wyatt under my breath, “If it’ll help, I’ll buy you some earplugs. Then you won’t be able to hear Cal and Heidi about balloon popping or whatever and I won’t have to hear you bitch and moan about it.”

His eyes are lowered to the floor too but when I take a glimpse in his direction, I can tell he’s grinning. “Nah . . . but I do feel bad for Sin. Has to f*cking blow living with the king of ropes and cuffs. ” Before I can respond he makes a face at the crowd at the elevator. “Taking the stairs. See you lazy f*cks at the top.”

Almost immediately after he turns the corner in the direction of the staircase signs, the elevator doors open and the line starts to die down. Figures. I wait until there’s nobody left to catch a ride.

The moment David and I step inside the elevator, we get company.

A couple of women—both dressed in little black shorts and tight T-shirts—trip all over themselves to come inside. They look like their minutes away from lining up outside the venue. They also know who I am. That much is obvious by the flushed skin and the fumbling for cell phones.