I press my mouth back against Dee’s ear, intending to warn her about all the things I’m going to do to her as soon as the set is over. But my brain is too fucking fried to even know what I’m going to do, so instead I curl my tongue behind her earlobe and nip at the soft skin. Her curled fingers tighten around my bicep, and a smirk touches my lips. I walk away from her and don’t look back.
When the song is over, I’m the first one off the stage. I unstrap my guitar from my neck, prop it against the first surface I find, and grab Dee’s hand. She makes a little noise and nearly trips behind me in those sexy stiletto heels she’s wearing, but she catches her footing and manages to fall into a quick step beside me. Next month, I’ll be leaving for a month-long tour to promote the album the band recorded this past week, but until then, I’m all hers.
“Where are we going?” she asks, but the fact that she’s following me instead of bitching me out for nearly tugging her off her feet tells me she already knows.
“Anywhere.” I push open the first door I find, relieved when it’s an empty office. I tow Dee inside, lock the knob behind us, and pin her against the heavy wooden door. My lips cover hers, and my hand sneaks under her skirt to see if she was telling the truth about not wearing any panties.
My calloused fingers brush over silky smooth skin, and when I find her bare little button and press, the gasp that tears from her lips makes me throb inside my jeans. Her hands are fumbling with my zipper a second later, and then I’m lifting her against the door and squeezing between her thighs. Her fingers scratch over the back of my T-shirt as I sink inside her, and I kiss the moan that sounds from her lips.
“I love you,” I say between thrusts. There was a time when the words made her stiffen, made her pull away from me. Now, she turns into putty in my hands. “I fucking love you,” I say again, and she melts against my skin.
She’s moaning, her ankles crossed tight behind my legs when someone jiggles the doorknob.
Her eyes get wide, and I stop moving for only a second. “Just a minute.”
“This is my fucking office!” the person outside yells.
I move Dee to another wall and go back to fucking the hell out of her. “Be. Right. Out!”
I can see the anxiety and desire warring in her eyes, but when I kiss her, the battle is easily won.
The person outside doesn’t stop jiggling or knocking, and I thrust into Dee until her moans in my ear are all I hear. When I finish giving her all I’ve got, my forehead resting heavily on her shoulder, she taps her fingers against my hands and I lower her feet back to the ground. She cleans up with some tissues from the desk, tosses them in a wastebasket, and takes my hand. I give the owner of Mayhem an exhausted, apologetic smile as we leave his office, and he mutters something about me being an asshole as we pass.
“You’re going to get in trouble one of these days,” Dee warns.
“Worth it,” I counter, and her giggle makes it that much more true.
On the bus, she and Peach talk about Dee starting fashion school next week, and even though Dee just blushes and tells me to shut up, I make sure to tell everyone how proud I am of her. She applied, she got in, and I know she’s going to be amazing. The shirts are great, but her designs are what she’s passionate about, and if she can learn to see in herself what everyone else sees in her, there will be nothing to hold her back.
At home, I give her a much more satisfying version of what happened in the office, and afterward, she lies snuggled against my side with her purple fingernail tracing invisible patterns on my chest. I watch her, breathing slow so I don’t bring her back from wherever she is. She’s so damn gorgeous, especially in moments when she’s lost in thought and showing me she loves me without even realizing that’s what she’s doing.
Her almond eyes slowly lift to catch mine staring, and I kiss the top of her head. She lets out a contented sigh and snuggles closer against me. “Why do you love me?”
With her silky brown hair spilling through my fingers, I tease, “That’d be like me asking why you love ice cream.”
“Because it tastes good,” she argues, and I contain a chuckle.
“You taste good.”
“Oh, you’re such a—”
I cut her off by digging my fingers into her sides, and she laughs hysterically while wiggling out of my reach. When she stops laughing and shoots a glare at me, I plant a surprise kiss on her lips and wrap her back up in my arms. She growls but lets me do it, and I smile because I can’t help it.
“I love you because I can’t not love you,” I say, and her fingers curl around my ribs to hug me close.
The night I almost killed Cody was the night I realized just how much she meant to me—more than any girl ever has or ever will. I don’t think I loved her yet, not like I do now, but it was the start of something, and I couldn’t have stopped it even if I tried. I spent the next few weeks falling—fast and hard, just like she and I do everything. I fell at the festival, at my birthday, during quiet nights at her apartment. I fell every time she smiled at me, every time she let me hold her.