One Night with Sole Regret 07 Tease Me (20 page)

“Yeah, well, that’s how I imagined them. So that’s how I drew them.”

“Mine are bigger than that, and this part isn’t that wide,” she said, matter-of-factly, pointing at the areolas. “And my nipples are larger.”

She shoved the pad into his hands and reached for the hem of her tank top. “I’ll show you.”

Adam probably shouldn’t have been shocked that Nikki was taking off her clothes outside in broad daylight—plenty of women had shown him their racks in public arenas—but they’d been bonding on a friendly level, so when her pink tank top went flying in one direction and her lacy bra in another, he could do nothing but gawk.

Apparently, he wasn’t the only one gawking. Several low wolf whistles came from the area of the semi-truck parked near the bus. The road crew was taking a break from setting up the stage. Adam hadn’t even noticed them until they’d directed their appreciative attention to the suddenly half-naked woman at his side.

“See,” Nikki said, cupping her breasts in both hands and offering them up for his artistic examination. “My boobs look way different than those.”

Well, he wouldn’t say they were way different. The general structure of breasts was similar in all cases. But the devil was in the details. And she was right. He hadn’t drawn hers properly.

He erased the nipples and the under curves of her breasts and took up his pencil to do a more realistic job.

“Take it all off, baby!” one of the road crew yelled.

Nikki gave them the finger. “Get lost,
baby
.”

The crowd of men staring at them had gotten uncomfortably large.

“Let’s take this inside,” Adam suggested. “I can’t concentrate with all the noise they’re making.”

“Okay.” Nikki hopped down from the table and retrieved her tank top. She held it over her breasts with one hand, located her bra, and tossed it over one shoulder before picking up her beer and heading for the bus.

“Go get her, Adam,” one of the road crew shouted. “Plow her good and hard for me.”

Adam rolled his eyes and shook his head. Just because he was following a gorgeous, topless woman up the tour bus steps did not mean he was going to
plow
her. He was just going to draw her breasts properly. He had no interest in sex with anyone except Madison. And maybe once the love of his life figured out what she really wanted, he’d go back to plowing
her
, but it wasn’t happening with Nikki. Nope.

“Where do you want me?” Nikki asked as she glanced around the interior of the bus.

“The bed.”

Nikki laughed. “So you
are
trying to seduce me.”

“If I was trying, you wouldn’t have to ask,” he said.

She shivered. “Mmm, I really do think I went after the wrong member of the band last weekend.”

“If you don’t knock it off, I’m going to draw a fifty-year age progression of your boobs.”

Her jaw dropped, and she cupped a breast in either hand, rubbing her thumbs over her nipples to make them stand erect. “You wouldn’t.” She pouted at him. “You said there should be a law about mocking something beautiful.”

“I wouldn’t be mocking them. Just giving you a glimpse of the future.”

He started when her tank top and bra slapped him in the face.

“You are so mean,” she said.

He brushed the clothes away, and they landed at his feet. “If you’re trying to insult me, you’re going to have to try harder than that.”

“I wasn’t trying to insult you. I just want you to make me look beautiful in your drawing.” She fluttered her eyelashes at him.

“Then go lie on the bed and stop playing coy. You know damned well I’m not trying to seduce you.”

“Jeez, I was just joking around,” she said and stomped into the bedroom.

She stretched out on the bed and tucked one arm under her head, shoving the pillows up against the headboard. Adam kicked off his boots and climbed up on the bed beside her to sit cross-legged. He examined her breasts closely. She trailed the fingers of her free hand over one pink tip.

“Do you want them hard for the drawing?” she asked, her voice low and seductive. “I think they look better hard, don’t you?”

If she didn’t knock it off, his dick was going to change his mind about not having interest in sex.

“Just lie still,” he said.

“They’d get really hard if you licked them.” The tip of her tongue traced her lip and then disappeared into her mouth.

“Do you even know
how
to have a nonsexual relationship?” he asked.

“I know how,” she said defensively.

“Then prove it.”

“It’s kind of hard not to get turned on when you’re staring at me like that,” she said.

“Like what?” He took the pencil to paper and restructured the under curves of her breasts so they no longer looked like Madison’s.

“Like I’m worth looking at.”

“We already established that you are. Now stop talking so I can concentrate.”

She smiled and went still, watching him draw and no longer doing her best to put his dick in charge.

He turned his attention to her nipples, careful to draw every detail in perfect likeness. The soft pink buds really would look better hard, he decided, but he was not going to lick them even for the sake of art. He was tempted to draw a second image of her with her chest intact and not marred by the gaping hole of her heart ripped out by the battling crows.

Maybe she’d allow him to draw her again sometime.

Adam yawned unexpectedly.

“I’m sorry you find my boobs so boring,” Nikki said, her lips twisted into a wry grin.

“Your boobs are perfectly tantalizing,” he assured her. “I just didn’t get much sleep last night.” And his brain had recognized that there was a bed handy for napping.

He returned to his drawing, moving faster now, because he suddenly wanted to finish as quickly as possible so he could catch a few Zs before the show.

“Once Melanie took me to bed with her last night, I slept great,” Nikki said.

Adam paused and glanced at her face. She was smiling dreamily and her nipples grew hard without her even touching them. Yep, Gabe definitely needed to be warned about the puzzling relationship between the two women.

“I thought she didn’t want you that way.”

Nikki sighed. “She doesn’t. And now that she knows I
do
want her that way, she probably won’t let me cuddle up with her when I sleep. I can’t sleep alone unless I take a couple of these.”

She shoved her hand in the pocket of her jeans and tugged out a small baggie full of bar-shaped white pills. Adam’s belly tightened. Yeah, he could use a few of those himself.

“What are those?” he asked, but he already knew.

“Bars. You want some?”

God, yes, he wanted some. He wanted the entire baggie full.

“I’m drawing,” he said. His hands were shaking as he pulled the tip of his pencil over the seductive texture of the sketch paper.

She popped several Xanax into her mouth and swallowed them with a chug from her beer. She set the bottle on the night stand and then returned to resting on her back. “Adam?”

He looked over the drawing, checking for anything he missed, and added a small mole to the under curve of one full breast. Hell, he might as well make the drawing as realistic as possible since he had a living model at his disposal.

“Hmm?”

“Will you hold me? Just until I fall asleep. And then I’ll be okay. I won’t dream on this stuff, so I’ll be okay.”

His first instinct was to refuse, but she was staring at him so hopefully that his resolve crumbled. “Yeah, okay. But just until you fall asleep.”

He set the completed drawing aside, and she smiled at it. “Now those are my boobs,” she said.

He chuckled and lay down beside her. “Glad you approve.”

Nikki shifted, resting her head on his shoulder, and snuggled into his side.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He didn’t mind. He kind of liked feeling that someone needed him. Even if it was as a pillow.

“For you,” she said and pressed one of her pills into his hand. “It will help you forget her.”

He stroked her silky hair with his free hand, and she relaxed against him. Soon her breathing became deep and regular. Even though he was exhausted, Adam didn’t have such an easy time falling asleep. He held the pill she’d given him pinched between his thumb and forefinger and stared at it. What could it hurt? It was just one pill. It wasn’t as if it would even make him all that high. It would just take the edge off, let him relax. Allow his mind to clear. Maybe even make sleep possible. A lot of power to do good in this little pill, he thought.

What could possibly be so bad about swallowing one little pill?

He should call Madison and talk to her about his thoughts, these undeniable urges to self-medicate. But she’d left him, and he had no one to turn to.

The drugs had always been there for him; they had never failed him. Fucked him up and fucked him over, oh yeah, but they had always given him exactly what he’d needed. Or so he’d thought. Through all the rehab and treatment, had anything really changed inside him?

He still wanted to live outside of reality. Reality hurt. It sucked.

So what harm could it do?

Just one little pill.

What harm?

Chapter Sixteen

Something hit Adam hard in the belly. He sucked a startled breath into his lungs and blinked open his eyes, trying to focus on whatever was hovering above him. Turned out to be Gabe’s chick glaring down at him looking entirely pissed off. Weird.

“How could you?” Melanie bellowed at Adam and slugged him in the stomach again. “How could you take advantage of her after everything she’s been through this weekend, you fricking asshole?”

Adam managed to catch her fist before she pummeled him again.

“What the hell?” he growled, not close enough to awake to put up with this sort of bullshit.

“Do you even have a conscience?”

Well, that was debatable, but in this case he didn’t have a clue what had the woman so riled up.

The warm body resting against his side groaned in protest as Melanie shifted her attention elsewhere.

“Nikki,” Melanie said, shaking Nikki’s shoulder vigorously. “Nikki, can you hear me?”

Nikki was out cold and considering the number of Xanax she’d swallowed, Adam wasn’t the least bit surprised.

“What did you give her?” Melanie said, her voice taking on an edge of desperation.

“Give
her
?” Adam said, his confusion quickly turning to annoyance. “I didn’t give her shit. Why don’t you ask her what she gave
me
?”

“Nikki, what did you take? Wake up. Talk to me!”

“Let her sleep, for fuck’s sake,” Adam grumbled. “She’s emotionally exhausted.”

Adam rolled out of bed and into Gabe’s fist. If Adam had had solid footing, the blow to the shoulder might have snapped his collarbone, but it merely knocked him back onto the bed. He wasn’t sure why he was being attacked. He hadn’t done a goddamned thing wrong.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Adam yelled and jumped to his feet, both hands fisted.

“Did you drug her so you could screw her?” Gabe said, his voice low and those bright green eyes of his narrowed to slits.

“What?” Adam glanced at the half-naked, unconscious woman on the bed and finally realized what it must look like to a couple of nosy jerks. “I didn’t screw her.”

“Then why is she naked?” Melanie screamed at him before turning her attention back to her friend. “Nikki? Nikki, open your eyes.”

“She isn’t naked,” Adam pointed out. “Just topless.”

“Melanie?” Nikki said in a slurred voice.

“Yes, it’s me. What did you take?”

“She took Xanax,” Adam said. “She said it helped her relax. And sleep.”

“How many did she take?” Melanie asked.

“I don’t know. I’m not her keeper.”

“You sure you didn’t take advantage of her?” Gabe asked.

“I was just drawing her.” He flung a hand out toward the sketch pad propped against the lamp on the night stand. “And we were both tired, so we fell asleep.”

“And how many Xanax did
you
take?” Gabe asked, a look of disappointment on his lean face.

“Not that it’s any of your fucking business, but I didn’t take any.”

Gabe scratched his eyebrow, drawing attention to the pair of dark bruises around his eyes. Bruises Adam knew he’d earned the night before when he’d provoked the guy who’d hurt Nikki. Gabe’s need to defend and protect the woman was a bit odd, but Melanie was the one truly freaking out. She had Nikki sitting on the edge of the bed, her naked torso swaddled in the covers.

“Did he do anything to you?” Melanie asked as she stroked the hair from Nikki’s ashen face. “If he did, I will fucking kill him, I swear.”

Nikki’s lower lip trembled, and her eyes filled with tears. She ducked her head to avoid Melanie’s imploring gaze.

If she lied and told Melanie that Adam had molested her just to gain sympathy and attention from the woman she was so obsessed with, he was going to lose it. He was barely holding it together as it was. He didn’t need more drama in his life.

“You can tell me,” Melanie said gently, wrapping an arm around Nikki’s shoulders and tugging her against her side.

“Fuck this shit,” Adam said. “I didn’t do anything to her.”

He grabbed his sketch pad from the nightstand and headed for the open door.

Gabe stepped between him and freedom, crossing his arms over his chest. “You aren’t leaving until Nikki gives us her side of the story.”

“Did you see what he drew?” Nikki said. Her voice was still slurred, but there was an emotional lilt to it as well.

Gabe took the sketch pad out of his hand and examined the drawing. “Kind of gory, but remarkable, as usual.” He angled the drawing toward Melanie.

“She’s naked,” Melanie pointed out, her nostrils flaring.

“N-not that,” Nikki said and touched the side of her head. “The butterfly. He drew a butterfly in my hair.”

Adam and Gabe exchanged startled looks when Nikki burst into body-racking sobs. While Melanie attempted to comfort her, the two guys rushed out of the room and closed the door to offer them privacy. Or avoid a scene. Whatever.

“That woman needs professional help,” Gabe said.

“Then why are you dating her?”

Gabe’s jaw dropped, but then he chuckled when he realized Adam was teasing him. “I meant Nikki. Give me that,” he said, jerking the sketch pad out of Adam’s hands. “Are these lyrics?”

Adam nodded. “The first I’ve written since we’ve been on tour.”

“Fuck yes,” Gabe said as he read the words. “Jacob was really starting to worry about you.”

“I was starting to worry about me,” Adam admitted.

“And this!” Gabe said, tapping the sketch of Nikki that filled in the rest of the enormous page. “This needs to be the album cover.”

Adam’s face went uncharacteristically hot. “What? No, I don’t think—”

“Dude, it’s brilliant.”

Adam gnawed on his lip and scrunched his brows together as he appraised the drawing. It definitely wasn’t good enough to be an album cover. But it wasn’t terrible.

Gabe pulled his phone out of his pocket and started thumbing in a text. “Jacob needs to hear these lyrics,” he said. “They’ll blow his mind.”

“They’re not finished,” Adam said.

“You have no idea how freaked out he’s been about your dry spell, do you?” Gabe said, still typing away on his phone. “And then when you asked Dawn for advice backstage, you had us all freaked out. The rest of us could try to write lyrics, but we all know they’d never be as creative as what you come up with in volume. Jacob even asked me if he thought we could get our hands on some of the stuff we tossed aside from the last three albums that you claimed wasn’t good enough.”

“It isn’t good enough,” Adam said. But he did have the notebooks in a box in his closet if they got desperate enough to use them. Not that he had to worry about his writer’s block anymore. He was so bone-deep miserable over Madison leaving that he’d have his new sketch pad full of ideas within the next twenty-four hours.

He pulled his phone from his pocket in case he’d somehow missed a call or text from her while he’d been asleep.

Nothing.

Was she just being stubborn, or was she really over him that quickly?

Maybe he should swallow his pride and call her right then.

But he wouldn’t. Not yet. He didn’t want to seem desperate, even though he felt that way. In two days, he wouldn’t hold back, but he needed to give her the time she claimed she required.

While they waited for Jacob to make his way to the bus, Adam took his sketch pad from Gabe and sat at the table. He had another idea eating at him already.

Last Goodbye
, he wrote.

How could I have known it would be our last goodbye?

The hundreds before never counted for much

A word, a glance, a simple touch

He took you

Before I could let you go

Ashes to ashes

How could I know

That you would say our last goodbye?

Dust to dust

You were gone in the blink of an eye

Now I’m alone

Never to see you

Never to touch you

Never to hear you

Again

How could I have known it would be our last goodbye?

The hundreds before now mean so much.

Any word, every glance, each touch

You gave me

I won’t ever let you go

Ashes to ashes

Because now I know

A way to never say goodbye

Dust to dust

I’ll be gone in the blink of an eye

Just to see you

Just to know you

Just to love you

Again

Adam caught movement in his peripheral vision and lifted his head, his eyes taking a moment to focus on Jacob’s grinning face across the table from him.

“It’s back?” Jacob asked, nodding eagerly.

“Yeah, I guess it is,” Adam said. But at what cost? Did an artist really have to suffer for his work? Or did Adam just have to suffer for his?

“Any guitar music yet? I’m ready to harmonize,” Jacob said, reaching for the sketch pad.

“And I’m ready to bang out a new tempo,” Gabe said.

“And I’m ready to bang,” Owen said with a wide grin. “Where’s Caitlyn when I need her?”

Adam shook his head, but was grinning a mile wide on the inside at their enthusiasm. He’d forgotten how much fun it was to create. “No guitar pieces yet. I just started on lyrics.”

Jacob flipped the page to the previous verses and dropped the sketch pad. “What in the hell did you do to Nikki?”

“Isn’t that awesome?” Gabe said. “That’s the sketch I was talking about. It would make a fantastic album cover.”

“It’s sick,” Jacob said. “How could you draw a living person all torn apart like that?”

“She is all torn apart like that,” Adam said, pulling the sketch pad toward himself. “You’re just too blind to see it.”

Adam flipped to a new page and wrote
Torn Apart

They don’t see what I see when I look at you

A perfect outer shell that hides so many secrets

Scars so deep and

“What do you
mean
she’s all torn apart like that?” Jacob yelled, startling Adam into looking up from his work.

Gabe rested a placating hand on Jacob’s shoulder. “He doesn’t mean literally. She’s fine. Well, not any worse than she was the last time you saw her.”

“Don’t freak me out like that,” Jacob said. “I don’t need the nightmares. My life is enough of one already.”

Adam flipped the page and wrote
My Life, I don’t need the nightmares. My life is enough of one already.

“Are you turning my comments into lyrics?” Jacob asked.

“No one is safe,” Owen said and laughed.

Adam flipped the page and wrote
No One Is Safe, dark things reside deep in my thoughts. My greatest concern is if I’ll get caught

Owen fisted a hand in Adam’s T-shirt.

“Hey, stop that,” Owen demanded.

Adam turned to another blank page.

Hey, stop that
, he wrote, just to tease Owen.

Gabe chuckled. “I think we’ve created a monster.”

The monster I created
ended up scrawled on the next page. That idea had a bit more merit.

“Pencil dick the love machine,” Owen said.

Adam glanced up at him, an eyebrow lifted in question.

Owen laughed and patted Adam’s shoulder a bit too forcefully. “Just seeing if you’re paying attention or just writing down everything we say.”

Pay Attention
Adam wrote on another blank page.

I know a guy named Owen

A civilian who wears dog tags

And they call him pencil dick the love machine

“Pencil dick the loooove machine,” Jacob sang in his best impression of Barry White on a porn movie soundtrack. He even gyrated his hips for effect.

“That will be the first single off the new album for sure,” Gabe said.

Adam laughed when Owen launched himself on Gabe’s back and locked him in a choke hold.

“I wouldn’t mess with him,” Jacob said. “He’s used to getting his ass kicked by professional MMA fighters.”

“Semiprofessional . . . UFC . . . fighter,” Gabe said breathlessly, landing a fierce blow to Owen’s ribs with his elbow.

“Oh, my bad,” Owen said, wincing, but not releasing his hold. “I thought he got his ass kicked by the Pillsbury Doughboy.”

“You mean that was you?” Gabe taunted.

Owen squeezed harder. “Some of us have to work at perfection, chicken legs.”

Jacob laughed. “You two really need to work on your insults.”

“Gabe?” a soft voice said from the open bedroom door.