Over the Hills and Far Away (NOLA's Own #1) (32 page)

“How many instruments do you play?”

“Um, I play guitar and bass, and I’m pretty fuckin’ decent on drums. I tend to go through kits pretty quick. I’m a bit heavy-handed, I suppose. I can play piano, but I choose not to. I think it’s a bit boring. And violin. I love the violin.”

I perked up at that. “Violin’s my favorite. I used to play as a kid.”

“Really? Why did you quit?”

“I found out I’m better at listening to music than trying to make it.”

“What’s your favorite music?”

“Well, I have an unhealthy obsession with this one band,” I joked.

“I can only guess,” he said with a smirk.

“But Led Zeppelin—”

“All hail fuckin’ Zeppelin. They’re the greatest,” he stated.

“Yeah, they are. All metal can be traced back to Zeppelin—and Black Sabbath, of course.”

He looked at me in surprise. “It can. I’m impressed, Baby Girl.”

“I was raised to believe that music is the language of the soul. It’s always been a part of my life. My mother listened to music nonstop. Led Zeppelin was her all-time favorite.”

“She sounds like she was badass.”

“She was,” I confirmed.

Phil nodded and looked back at his food. I thought he felt uncomfortable, not wanting to bring up sad memories.

“How did you start singing?” I asked, changing the subject.

“Well, X and I formed the band when we started high school. We met Jason in guitar class. He was a year ahead of us, and he was a genius—a prodigy, I guess you’d say. I think he started playin’ before he could walk. Anyway, the three of us would just hang out and play in my dad’s garage. He’s a pretty laid-back guy. He didn’t mind too much when we were makin’ a hell of a noise. And I think the guys thought my sister was pretty hot, so they didn’t mind hangin’ at my place…

“So, yeah, after a while, we started writin’ our own shit, and it wasn’t too bad. Then, we met Flipper at this chick’s sweet sixteen. X had heard him at another gig and said we had to check him out. He was the drummer for the band that was hired to play, and they were garbage—except for him, of course. He was phenomenal. So, we lured him back to my dad’s and had him check out what we were writin’, and that was how the four of us formed the band. At the time, I was the bass player. Back then, X had the better voice.”

“I can’t imagine that.” I laughed.

Phil grinned. “I guess, lookin’ at me now, you wouldn’t think so, but I was a bit of a late bloomer. I couldn’t string three words together without squeakin’ like a rusty hinge. But the problem with X was that he couldn’t sing in front of more than two people without freezin’ up. Even to this day, Jason has to do backup vocals. X hates microphones. Some sort of phobia.”

I was cracking up while picturing this.

“Then, what happened?” I took a sip of iced tea.

“I woke up one morning, and my balls had dropped—”

Now, I was choking, having sucked down tea into the wrong pipe. For the next three minutes, I was a coughing, wheezing, gasping hot mess, and Phil looked ready to go into panic mode.

“God, Kenna—”

“Fine!” I choked and coughed. “Just…need”—
cough, cough
—“a minute.”

“Are you okay?”

I nodded and covered my face with a napkin, hoping he couldn’t see my leaking eyes and nose. I was probably an unappealing shade of puce by now. My coughing fit turned back into a laughing fit, and I begged him to continue.

“Are you all right?”

I snorted, “How sexy am I now?”

“I couldn’t give a shit how you look!” he snapped. “I thought you were dyin’!”

I shook my head. “Go on! Your balls”—I snickered—“dropped.”

He watched me warily as though I would spontaneously drop dead.

“I’m fine!” I insisted.

“All right. So, yeah, after years of hell with the squeakin’, I woke up one day, went to have breakfast before school with my dad, said ‘Good mornin,’’ and this voice came out. Shocked the shit outta both of us.”

“No doubt. How old were you?”

“Almost seventeen. It was the end of my sophomore year. I was so embarrassed that I couldn’t talk to the guys at first. They thought I was messed up on somethin’. Then, at practice that afternoon, Jason got so pissed at me ’cause I wouldn’t speak. He tossed a glass of water in my face, and I was like, ‘What the fuck?’ They heard what came out, and X was so happy that I thought he’d weep. He resigned as front man immediately and picked up the bass, and I got the gig. Good thing, too, ’cause we never would’ve made it with his candy-ass on vocals.”

“Yeah, I can’t picture X as a singer.”

“What’s fuckin’ hilarious is that after that happened, I went from a runty five-nine to six-two in about three months.”

“Five-nine?” I gasped.

“Yeah,” he replied, laughing. “It was sick. When I went back to school after the summer break, no one knew who the hell I was. I was fuckin’ skinny, too. My dad freaked, thought I might have Marfans or some such shit. The doctor just told him to feed me more. I topped out at six-seven three years ago. I can’t imagine I’d grow any more. It has to have stopped by now.”

“And you’re what? Twenty-seven?”

He nodded, sipping on his iced tea. “Turned that on June sixth.”

“So, did the chicks start throwing themselves at you after your balls dropped?” I asked, teasing.

“Um, no, not really. I didn’t get laid until I was eighteen. I was pretty goofy-lookin’ for a long time.”

“How old were you when you guys played the music festival in ’96?”

“That was our first real gig,” he said, smiling. “I had just turned nineteen. Were you there?”

I couldn’t help but smile with the memory. “I was. I fell in love with NOLA’s Junk that day. You guys blew my mind.”

He had that heated look again. “That’s fuckin’ cool.”

“I remember your tattoos,” I said, reaching out and touching the side of his head. “The dream catchers. I thought they were so badass.”

He leaned into my touch, briefly closing his eyes, and sighed.

How wonderful.
My heart melted within my chest at that small display.

“Those hurt like hell,” he stated.

“I like your ink,” I softly told him.

“It’s more of an addiction. Sometimes, I just can’t help myself.” He grinned. “Your ink is pretty hot, too. Not many doctors have a half sleeve of Buddha on their arm.”

“The ones on your knuckles are pretty new,” I said. “I haven’t gotten a good look at them.”

He blushed a little, but he held up his fists all the same. My eyes went wide with shock, and my mouth dropped open as I read,
BABY GIRL.

“When did you do that?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

“The night of the Rio concert,” he replied. “I told you, Kenna. It’s you and me. It’s always been you and me.”

“Well, damn,” I said.

“So…how old were you—the first time you had sex?”

“Fourteen.”

“
Fourteen
?” He said sounding shocked.

I cracked up. “Yeah, I wasn’t a late bloomer.”

I watched him quickly do the math in his head. “Fuck, you lost your virginity before I did! By a whole fuckin’ year!”

“Does that matter?”

“No. But fourteen’s pretty young. How old was your guy?”

“It was about a week after he turned fifteen.”

“Well, all right. At least he wasn’t some skeevy perv.”

That made me laugh.

“You were with him a long time?”

“Almost four years. We broke up before Christmas our senior year.”

“How come?”

“We just grew apart. It wasn’t a nasty breakup or anything. We were really different people.”

“That won’t happen to us,” he said, his voice forceful with his conviction.

“How can you possibly know that?” I asked.

He shrugged. “I just do.”

We decided three hours of sitting at the Crab Shack was plenty and that we should probably head out. We got two large iced teas to go, and Phil refused to hear of me paying my share or even leaving the tip.

“I pay for my woman, Kenna,” he snapped at me. “And that’s fuckin’ final.”

Hand in hand, we strolled to the truck.

“Where do you want to go now?” I asked him.

“How about your place?”

“Not yet.”

He stopped and turned. “Why?”

Damn, but he wears angry well.

“Phil, if you knew where I lived, I’d never know another moment of peace.”

“Is that what you really want?” he demanded, sounding hurt.

“No. It’s really down to the fact that this is new and really intense, and I just need to be able to have a refuge for a little while longer, okay? It’s not forever. I doubt I’ll make it through the weekend. Can you try for a little patience and give me some time?”

He pulled me into his arms and kissed my Third Eye.

“Yes,” he sighed.

We drove around for a bit and then picked up some iced coffees. We headed to a local fishing spot along the river, and we just sat in the bed of the truck, listening to classic rock music and shooting the shit. There was a lot of laughter and hand-holding, making it a very sweet experience, one I didn’t think I’d had in over ten years.

It wasn’t something I’d ever let myself experience with Brian.

When the sun started to go down, we drove to Sushi Point and picked up an obscene amount of sushi, and then we took it back to his place. Alys, Lili, and I had never ordered this much.

We ate in the living room on the couch, opting for a hedonistic level of comfort after such an amazing day together.

As he chowed down on the last bite, he tossed the box onto the coffee table and leaned back, rubbing his washboard flat stomach. “That was awesome. I fuckin’ love sushi.”

“Right?” I said in agreement. “I think I could eat it for every meal.”

He reached out, snagging a stray strand of my hair and began twirling it around his fingers. “Your hair is stunnin.’ You stood out like a beacon that night at Bougainvillea. It was hard to concentrate on the set when all I wanted to do was stare at you.”

“Seriously?”

“Mmhmm,” he replied softly. “You were the prettiest thing I’d ever laid eyes on, Baby Girl. You still are.”

I stared at the empty take-out boxes as I told him, “That’s how I felt about you the first time I ever saw you. When you came out on the stage at the music festival…it was weird. It was like the rest of the world no longer existed for me. And when I heard your voice…”

“What?” he asked, his tone husky and thick with emotion.

I felt myself blush. “It touched my soul. It’s the sound my soul listens to more than any other.”

He let go of my hair and gently rested his hand on the back of my neck, pulling me toward him. With his other hand, Phil tipped my face to his with soft pressure from his fingertips beneath my chin, then pressed his lips to mine. It started out light and sweet, but the undercurrent of raw lust we possessed for each other surged to the surface, and the kiss quickly turned scorching.

As if I weighed nothing, he lifted me to straddle his hips, his mouth never surrendering mine. His hands slipped around to grab my ass, grinding me against his swelling cock. The friction of it robbed me of breath, making the pressure that had been simmering between my legs all day—
fuck that, for
six years
—increase into a poignant ache.

I unleashed my inner porn star and moaned into his open mouth. In response, he thrust his hips up and pulled me against him again.

“I’m dyin’ to make you come,” his voice rasped. “I’ve dreamed about what you’d look like when you do. I fuckin’ want to hear it, see it on your face…”

Hearing that made my nipples harden painfully, and the heavy throbbing built up deep inside. Pushing me onto my back, he settled between my legs, grinding into me hard. I arched up against him, wrapping my legs around his narrow waist, pulling him into the ache. His hands slipped through my hair, pulling back my head to press soft wet kisses along my jaw, the column of my throat, and back to my mouth. One of his hands then snuck up under my shirt, under my bra, and palmed a breast and squeezed before plucking at the nipple, making it spike.

“Let me make you come,” he begged, his lips against my ear. He rimmed the shell of it with his tongue. “I
need
to make you come.”

“Yes…” There was no way I could say no. I wasn’t even thinking with my brain. My vagina reigned supreme with that decision.

Rolling his body to one side, he moved the hand on my breast and slid down my torso to the waistband of my shorts. He popped the button and fly with amazing quickness and finesse, and I didn’t want to know how he’d gotten to be so deft at that. Then, his fingers slipped under my panties.

“Holy fuck,” he breathed, the air of it caressing over my temple. “You’re
so
wet,” he groaned.

I
so
was embarrassingly wet. I’d soaked through my underwear already, and I couldn’t really care. It was all his fault anyway.

Dying to feel him, too, I wanted him in my hands—at the very,
very
least. He was as hot and bothered for me as I was for him. I tugged at his belt buckle until he took pity on me and helped. Finally open, I snuck my hand down the front of his pants.

“Fuck.” Air hissed through his clenched teeth when my hand made contact with him
.