No Chance by Lisa Suzanne

CHAPTER 22: BRETT

Holy fucking shit.

I’ve had a lot of sex in the last fifteen years. I’ve seen a lot of pornography, whether it was streamed, on a DVD, filmed by me, or watched on set. I’ve had twosomes and threesomes and foursomes and orgies. I’ve slept with famous women and unknown ones, with musicians and teachers and athletes and porn stars and barely legal ones. On a bus and in a car, backstage at a show or behind a bar. In a club and in a stall, right there in the middle of the fucking mall.

Yeah, I know...sounds like a song, or maybe a Dr. Seuss for adults book.

The point is I’ve seen a lot of shit in my life, but that...

Jesus Christ.

That was fucking hot.

I didn’t mean to sneak up on her, and I certainly didn’t mean to invade her privacy. I honestly thought she was in bed and had left a radio on here in the bathroom. The door wasn’t latched shut, and I was trying to be quiet, so I opened the door and there she was, seconds from falling into an orgasm.

I will never forget the way her face twisted with pleasure as she came.

My only regret was that there were so many bubbles, I didn’t get to see anything aside from her face. I could tell her hands were on her tits, but I couldn’t see what they were doing there. I could tell the water jet was pulsing between her legs, but I couldn’t see her pretty pink pussy.

I want to see it.

Fuck. I want to lick it. I want to dive face first into it and suck on her clit until she makes that face again. I want to stick my face between her breasts.

How the fuck am I supposed to share a bed with her now? I was already in trouble before when I hadn’t watched her take pleasure in a fucking bathtub. Now I will never not see that image when I look at her for the rest of time.

She’s too young for me. There are way too many complications involved. She needs to grieve. She doesn’t even like me, at least not that I can tell.

All good reasons not to get involved with each other, I guess.

Or excuses, maybe.

“Uh, sorry,” I mutter. “I didn’t know you were in here.”

I turn and bolt out of there, but as soon as that bathroom is empty, I’ll be taking a very long, very hot shower if you catch my drift.

It’s just because I haven’t had sex in a few days. That’s the problem. I should’ve hung out at the club with Tommy after our official obligations were over, but I couldn’t stop myself from coming back here to make sure everything was okay. It’s fine, obviously.

And, above all, I need to figure out a way to make her feel more comfortable with what I just saw. The way she reacted to my line of questions last night tells me she’s inexperienced, and certainly she’ll feel mortified that I caught her.

I’m right, for the record. When she comes out of the bathroom, she’s dressed in short shorts and an oversized sweatshirt, and she completely avoids eye contact with me where I sit on the couch as she dashes toward the bedroom.

“Goodnight,” she says.

“Wait a second,” I say before I can stop myself. It’s dumb. I shouldn’t be stopping her, but I’m not ready to say goodnight to her just yet. I want a little more time.

She halts in her progress, but she doesn’t turn to look at me. “What?”

“It’s okay, Hannah,” I say softly. “I didn’t mean to walk in on you.”

“It’s fine.” She finally peeks over at me. Her cheeks are stained with red. “I shouldn’t have done that anyway.”

“Yes, you absolutely should have,” I tell her with all the sincerity I can muster. “If you don’t use those parts regularly, they fall off.”

She offers a short, embarrassed chuckle.

I shrug. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m about to give myself a treat in there.”

She wrinkles her nose, and I hate how the little quirk turns me on even more. “No, that does not make me feel any better. I’m freaking mortified.”

“Please don’t be. Not on my account.” I stand, and I take a step toward her. I lower my voice. “For the record, it was one of the hottest things I’ve ever seen.”

Her eyes widen a little, and I’m not sure if it’s in embarrassment or disbelief. “Let’s just pretend it didn’t happen, okay?”

She disappears into the bedroom before I get a chance to respond, and I’m glad she didn’t make me promise that. There’s no way I’ll be able to pretend I didn’t see what I saw.

In fact, I’m pretty sure I won’t ever stop thinking about it.

I certainly don’t as I handle myself in the shower a few minutes later, and I really don’t as I stretch out on the couch to go to bed, a little more relaxed after blowing my load.

I’d join her in the bedroom, but I already made that pact with myself that we wouldn’t be sharing a bed for a few nights. This little turn of events tonight only solidified that choice.

* * *

Hannah is quiet as we share danish and eggs on the balcony with the kid strapped into a chair. She’s regarding me warily, and I think she’s either still mortified or she wants to ask why I never came to bed. Can I really admit the truth—that she’s too goddamn tempting to sleep in the same bed with her, that this is a complicated situation and I need to stay far away?

Probably not. It’s not really my mojo to have some deep and sappy conversation about feelings. Mostly because I usually don’t allow myself to actually feel them. I tend to go the route of numbing, but the last few days I haven’t.

I just haven’t figured out the reason why I haven’t.

I was up all night thinking it through. I didn’t just sleep like shit because I was on a hard couch in a hotel. I slept like shit because I couldn’t make my mind turn off. A little weed usually helps shut my mind off, but I skipped it last night and I paid the price.

The kid, the girl...I suppose I’m just trying to step up and do the right thing, but I feel like a fraud acting in a role.

So maybe it’s time to get back to myself again. A night out with Tommy, a smoke after tonight’s show, finding a chick to bang.

I don’t understand why those things don’t sound as fun as they did a few days ago. It’s all I wanted out of this tour, yet something has shifted.

I just feel sorry for her, I think. The kid isn’t her responsibility, but she’s stepping up for him despite her circumstances. If she can do it at the rock bottom worst moment of her life, I can do it, too.

Everything was fine. Not great, but fine. I was easily pushing away my attraction and my admiration and my want for her naked in my bed because of the complications involved. And then last night happened, and I watched her fuck a bathtub and now I’m hard as a rock all the time and I can’t get it out of my head.

“I have a band meeting to get to. You need anything?” I stand and set my napkin on top of my plate.

She shakes her head as she sets a piece of scrambled egg on Chance’s tray. He tosses it to the ground immediately. She avoids eye contact with me as she sighs. “No. We’re all right.”

“I’ll only be an hour or two tops, but if you want to go somewhere, grab an Uber.”

“I won’t go anywhere,” she says softly, and it clicks then that she doesn’t have the access to just grab an Uber the way I do.

I grab my wallet out of my pocket and set my credit card on the table in front of her. “Set up an Uber account and whatever else you need. I don’t want you to feel stranded here. Use the card and go enjoy Denver. Get lunch. Buy souvenirs. Have fun, all on me. Get out of this hotel and take a deep breath of some air that isn’t a hundred and ninety-seven degrees.”

She offers a small smile at my reference to her hometown. If she’s still here when I get back, I’m taking her somewhere. I don’t know where yet, and it’ll be a short window before we have to be at the venue for sound check, but I’ll figure something out.

She’s just lost so much, and I want to give her something. I want to be the reason that small smile widens into something beautiful across her lips.

I head over to Tommy’s room where we’re having our late morning band meeting. He’s ushering a girl out as Dustin and I show up at the same time to knock on his door, and he doesn’t look the least bit apologetic about it—neither to the girl he’s getting rid of or the fact that he literally just rolled out of bed and we have a meeting that starts now.

He flops onto the couch in the living room area of his suite. Tyler and Karl show up right behind us, and we all find seats in the room except Karl, who tends to stand at our meetings.

He reads from his phone. “We’re burning through merch faster than we’d expected. Projecting forward with the numbers from Phoenix and SLC, we’ll need to place an order within the next two weeks to have enough pieces by the time we get to Georgia on September first.”

We all react positively to that. There’s nothing bad about selling more t-shirts to rabid fans than we were expecting, and a huge chunk of revenue from touring these days comes from the merchandise booth.

He delivers numbers from our club appearance last night and our show in Salt Lake City, and he fills us in on a few other news bulletins.

“And the final item on my agenda is just for Tommy.” We all glance in his direction as we wonder what piece of news this is. A ripple of fear travels down my spine, the same way it does every time news is just for one of us. It’s either because we’re in trouble or because there’s a job offer that doesn’t include all four of us. Trouble I can deal with. That’s standard in this line of work. But the thought of something breaking up the four of us is my literal biggest fear.

I hold my breath as I wait for Karl’s announcement.

“You were tagged on Instagram last night sucking on some woman’s tit in the middle of the club after the appearance. Can you please, for the love of God, try to do that behind closed doors?”

I let out that breath on a laugh. “Dumbfuck. Everybody knows you do that in the alley, not in the middle of the club.”

We all have comments for Tommy on that one, and then Karl asks if any of us have anything to add.

“I do,” I blurt. Everyone turns toward me, and I let a beat of quiet pass as I try to figure out how to propose this. And then, bypassing eloquence completely, I just get to the point. “Hannah snapped a few pictures of me in Salt Lake from backstage. She’s got some crazy raw talent. We need to hire her as our official band photographer.”

“Oh come on,” Tommy says, rolling his eyes. “First you let her onto our bus and now you want to let her into band business? Fuck that noise all the way to the bank, dude.”

I’m not quite sure exactly what that means, but Tommy likes to pepper conversations with witty little phrases.

I knew if anybody would oppose the idea, it’d be him. “Look at them,” I say, pulling them up on my phone and passing it to Tyler first since he’s closest. “It’s just those five in a row. I wouldn’t scroll past those.”

Tyler laughs, but as he checks them out, his brow furrows. He zooms in on one and flips to the next one before passing the phone to Dustin without a word. Dustin does the same, and I find my chest prickling with anticipation as I await some response from them.

Dustin whistles through his teeth. “Damn,” he says. He and Tyler glance at each other and both raise their brows before he passes the phone to Karl, who takes a look, and then it goes onto Tommy.

“She’s got some talent,” Tyler says. “We could get some great shots for promo.”

“Album artwork, too,” Karl muses.

“And centerfolds for fucking Teen Beat,” Tommy mutters. “I don’t like the idea. We don’t need a band photographer.”

Dustin shrugs. “We don’t have one. Why not give her a shot? Amanda would be happy to watch Chance while Hannah does her thing. She’s already got Maya and Luna, and she loved having all three kids on the bus the other night. Said it was like looking into a crystal ball showing the future.” His face blanches a little, and Tyler laughs.

“What’s wrong with the shit we get from media and fans?” Tommy asks.

“This would give us a new perspective,” Tyler argues. He starts to get passionate about it, and it’s nice having him back on my side after it feels like we’ve been at odds more than we’ve been on the same side lately. “Someone on the inside. You know Mark Ashton’s wife handles all their social media? She takes photos backstage and she’s an amateur. Imagine the content we could get if we had someone around even right now, taking pictures here at this meeting, or on the bus, or at the club last night?”

“You mean of Tommy sucking a tit?” Dustin asks. He looks at me. “You think she could’ve gotten a better angle on that?”

“No comment.” Tommy purses his lips and flips Dustin the finger.

“She took these on her phone,” I add. “Imagine if she had a decent camera.”

“She could borrow mine,” Dustin says. “Let’s give it a shot. See what she can do.”

“All in favor?” Karl asks, and this is the way we always settle band debates.

Tyler, Dustin, and I raise our hands. Tommy does not.

“Passes with seventy-five percent majority,” Karl says. We get into some finer details including what we’ll pay her to take these pictures for us, and I leave the meeting excited to run back to our room to give her the news.