"No more one-night stands, is what you're saying."
"No more two-or three-or four-night stands. No more two-week stands. No more two-month stands. No stands at all. Stop looking. Stop trying. Someday, probably sooner than you think, a guy will come along, and you won't be able to stop thinking about him. It will go beyond wanting his hot body--it'll be about him, the man. And when that happens, wait to have sex until you can't wait anymore. Until you feel like you're going to die if you don't have him right the hell now."
"Anna, I--"
I grabbed her hands and squeezed as hard as I could. "Shut up and promise me, Jamie."
"I don't make promises. They only get broken." She stared at the floor between her feet.
"Promise me."
She met my eyes. "This is really important to you?"
"Yes."
"Fine, then. But only because it's you. I promise."
"I'm serious about this."
"Yes, Anna. I said I promise. I'll go celibate. I promise."
"Okay, then."
"How did you come to this? I mean, it's not like you did it."
"If I hadn't found Jeff, I would have."
She frowned. "He was always right there."
"I know, but...I still found him. Found the real him, the one who'd been hiding from me until I was ready to really see him."
"When did you get so wise all of a sudden?"
I shrugged. "I don't know. I think it started with Chase. Realizing I was beautiful, and worth loving...it did something to me."
"You found your softer side."
I nodded. "Exactly. What I really want is for you to explore yours, and I don't think you will if you've got a boyfriend to distract you."
"I know what you mean. I will. I promise." She made a shooing motion with her hands. "Now, enough about me. Go plan your wedding."
*
My dress was ready a little more than two weeks later. It had fit almost perfectly in the store, so it hadn't needed much. I picked it up and brought it home.
Home. It hadn't taken much to move me completely into Jeff's house. I didn't have much by way of furniture, and most of what I did have was old castoffs and second-or third-hand items that I left for Jamie to keep or discard when she moved. The rest of my things had fit into the back of Jeff's Yukon in one trip.
When I brought the dress in, Jeff watched me hang it up in the closet, eyeing the white bag as if he could see through the opaque material.
"So it's done, huh?"
"Yeah. It didn't need much alteration, so it didn't take long."
Jeff leaned against the doorframe. "So I've been thinking more about our wedding. Since neither of us have much of anyone to come, except Jamie for you and Darren for me, we should just...be a little crazy."
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out an envelope and handed it to me. I opened it and pulled out two airline tickets to Las Vegas. I stared at the tickets, then back up to Jeff.
"I've got us booked to get married at the Venetian early next week." He grinned. "Jamie and Darren are both on board already. They've got rooms, flights, the works."
"Are you serious?" I examined the brochure. "You want to get married in Vegas?"
"I know it's not the traditional white chapel wedding with the works, but--"
"No, it's perfect. I've been trying to think about planning a real wedding, and my brain just freezes. This is...perfect."
"For real?" He let out a relieved breath. "I booked all this, deposits at the hotel and the tickets and the honeymoon and everything, but I wasn't sure if you'd be on board. I was kinda winging it and hoping."
"Where are we going on our honeymoon?"
He shook his head, grinning. "Nope. Not telling. It's a surprise."
I sidled over to him. "Sure you won't tell me?"
"No way. I've got everything arranged. Trust me."
I kissed his neck. "But I really want to know. Is it the Bahamas?"
He tilted his head back as I kissed his throat, unbuttoning his shirt and kissing my way downward. "Not telling. It's not the Bahamas, though."
I knelt in front of him and gazed up. "Sure there's nothing I can do to convince you to tell me?"
He laughed and tangled his fingers in my hair. "Not gonna work. I want it to be a surprise."
I unbuttoned his pants and pulled the zipper down. He was thickening in his underwear, bulging out against the cotton. "How about a hint?"
"You can do whatever you want, but I'm not telling. No hints."
I tugged his pants and boxers down, freeing his erection. "Hmm. Well, I'll have to try and change your mind."
His head thunked back against the doorframe as I licked his length from base to tip. "Anna, you're not gonna get anything out of me."
"Nothing?" I asked, sliding my palms around his girth.
"Well, nothing information-wise. Keeping doing that and you'll get something out of me, though."
I took him in my mouth, just the tip at first, my fist around his base and pumping slowly. "Hmmmmmm." I spat him out. "I can be very convincing."
He closed his eyes. "I know. But it won't work this time."
Still sliding my fist at his root, I moved my lips down his shaft. He groaned as I began to bob my head, working him with my hands in the same rhythm. Another groan, and his hips began to rock. When I could tell he was close, I slowed my hands to an imperceptible glide and took my mouth off him.
"God...damn. Not nice. Oh, god. I'm so close."
I laughed, and licked the tip of him in small circles. "How close are you?"
"So close. I'm gonna come...any second."
I stopped moving my hand. "So tell me." I wrapped my lips around the tip of him and sucked gently, not enough to bring him over the edge.
"You're impossible. Fine. We're going to an island."
I started pumping again and lifted my mouth enough to speak. "An island? The Caribbean?"
He hunched over, and I felt his cock throbbing in my hands, his fingers fisting in my hair. "I'm coming, Anna..."
I slowed. "Tell me!"
He huffed a laugh. "No! Not the Caribbean. Somewhere obscure. That's all I'll say. Now please..."
I felt his balls clench, and I nearly didn't get him in my mouth in time. He came as I was lowering my lips around him, and felt his seed hit my throat. I slid my hands on him, working his climax until he sagged against the frame.
He pulled me to my feet and held me against his chest, tilting my face to kiss me. "That was very underhanded of you," he said, a smile in his voice.
"Yes, it was. I told you I can be convincing."
He laughed. "But how much do you really know? An island that's not in the Caribbean. Doesn't really narrow it down much, does it?"
I frowned. "No, guess not." I shrugged. "But I really just wanted to see how much you'd tell me before you came. You can have your secrets. It'll be fun."
"You'd better start packing. Our flight leaves tomorrow afternoon."
"Tomorrow? I thought you said you had us booked for next week? It's only Thursday."
"Yeah, but we're gonna be in Vegas, baby! We can go the casinos and do touristy Vegas stuff, and then get married. An Army buddy of mine got married in Vegas, and he said it was a lot of fun. He gave me some tips."
I laughed. "How many 'Army buddies' do you have? It seems like I hear that phrase every single day, but I've never met any of them."
He chuckled. "Well, I use the phrase pretty loosely. Darren is my closest friend, he was my bunkmate in basic, and we were in the same unit all the way through every tour we did. He was one of the guys who pulled me out of the Humvee. He's the one with the property where I proposed to you. But I do have a lot of other guys that I know who are more acquaintances than real true friends, like people I see a lot or trust. We stay in touch, usually via email, and every few months we all get together on Darren's property and get wasted."
"And Darren is coming to Vegas."
"Yep. He's already got his ti
cket and a room on the same floor as Jamie."
"Is he single?" I asked.
Jeff frowned thoughtfully. "I think so. Why? You gonna try to hook them up?"
"Well, no. I was wondering if it would happen anyway, more than anything."
Jeff shrugged. "I don't know. It may, it may not. Darren is a good guy, but he's been through a lot, like me. He's hard to get close to."
I laughed. "You just described Jamie."
"Well, maybe they'd be good for each other."
"Maybe. I don't know. I made Jamie promise to stop having sex for a while."
Jeff chuckled. "And she actually agreed?"
"Says she promises."
"Why'd you do that?"
I shrugged. "Something just told me she needs to change her approach to things. She'll never find what she's looking for the way she's going about it."
Jeff kissed my cheekbone. "I agree. But until someone is ready to see things on their own, nothing you do or say, or even make them promise, will make any difference."
"I had to try," I said.
"I get it. You're a good friend." He turned me around and pushed me into the bedroom, smacking my ass. "Now get packing. I want to get to the airport early."
CHAPTER 6
We spent the first few days being tourists. It was a kind of combined bachelor/bachelorette party, as in Jeff, Darren, Jamie, and I spent much of those first two days in varying states of inebriation. None of us were big on actual gambling, so we spent a lot of the time exploring various attractions, playing slot machines with handfuls of quarters. I stood next to Jeff and cheered for him while he played blackjack, winning a couple thousand dollars before folding.
I could see Jeff being a top-notch poker player, since the entire time he was playing, at one point with almost three thousand dollars on the line, he never cracked a smile or broke a sweat. His face never changed expression. The only sign of stress was a slight narrowing of the eyes and thinning of the lips.
Jamie and Darren seemed to hit it off as friends, but I never saw any evidence of attraction beyond that. Maybe she was merely trying to keep her promise to me. Darren was the kind of guy she usually went for, tall, muscular, rugged, with pale blue eyes and buzzed blond hair. He and Jeff were cut from the same cloth, it seemed. Both were quiet men with slow tempers and deliberate gentility. There was a darkness to Darren that Jeff lacked, however, a sense of his personal demons lurking ever just beneath the surface.
Then, on Monday, the day before our wedding, Jeff told me he had somewhere he was taking me. He refused to say anything whatsoever about where or what, though, no matter how I pleaded with him.
I'm not very good with surprises, it seems.
I dressed in a button-down shirt and a knee-length skirt with bright purple tights, and he took me to dinner just off the Strip, and then had a cab bring us to a small casino. It was a little place, faded, a ways away from the bustle and brilliance of the main Strip.
"What are we doing here?" I asked.
"You'll see in just a second," Jeff said, leading me through the casino floor to the theater area.
Music pounded, muffled. I saw signs for a music festival of some sort, a list of band names, none of which I recognized as I scanned the list. Jeff pulled me away from the sign and through a pair of doors. He already had tickets, and we were led into a concert area bustling with tattooed, pierced, spike-haired, ponytailed rock fans. The band on stage was loud, fast, and hard, rough vocals being growled into a mic by a thickset man with a braided beard down to his chest.
"Jeff, what is this?" I yelled into his ear.
He shook his head, pulling me with a firm grasp on my hand through the crowd until we were near the stage, off to the right and close to the edge of the crowd and only feet away from the VIP entrance.
The band on stage finished their song, played one more, a hard-driving instrumental number. When they exited, a metal song blared through the house speakers as the stage crew reset for the next band. In a surprisingly short time, the lights went down and the house speakers went quiet, and an MC brought a mic and stand out. A spotlight bathed the MC, who waited for the crowd to quiet.
"Our next band was a last-minute addition to the festival," the MC said. "I personally had a chance to see these guys play in New York a few months ago, and I was just blown away by their relentless energy and simply phenomenal talent. Please help me welcome, all the way from Detroit, Six Foot Tall!"
The MC swept an arm at the stage, on cue with the stage lights exploding to life. My heart stopped, my stomach clenched, and my blood went cold.
I turned in place to glare at Jeff. "What the fuck is this?"
"This is your last chance," he answered.
Further conversation was pointless. The drummer kicked a fast beat, and then they were off, a hard, driving number full of angst and anger. I couldn't make out much of the lyrics, but I had a feeling they were about me.
Chase was on fire. He wore nothing but leather pants and heavy black boots and thick, spiked leather cuffs on his forearms, spanning from wrist to elbow. He gripped an old-fashioned square handheld microphone in both hands and bounded from one side of the stage to the other, eyes blazing, thick muscles rippling on his bare, oiled torso.
I couldn't tear my eyes off him. I hadn't expected to ever see Chase again, yet here he was, in Las Vegas, the day before I was set to get married. Between numbers, I forced myself to turn and face Jeff.
"What is the meaning of this, Jeff Cartwright?"
Jeff's eyes were hard and serious. "I found out they were playing here the other day. I didn't plan this. But when I saw it was him, I had to know."
"Know what?"
Jeff pointed at the stage. "I'll never be him. I'll never be like him. I can't do that, I can't look like that. I can't be that. Can't, and won't." He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a VIP backstage pass on a lanyard. "I have to know if this is really what you want. If I'm really what you want."
"I chose you--" I started, but Jeff held up his hand, pushed the backstage pass into my hands.
"Like I said, last chance to get out. To get that," he said, with a gesture at the stage, and then he turned and made his way through the crowd, away from me.
I watched Jeff disappear, and then turned back to the stage. At that moment Chase was standing in the spotlight as the guitarist plucked a mournful intro melody. His eyes roved the crowd and found me. Shock rippled through him, so potent he almost dropped the mic. His gaze moved down to the VIP pass in my hands, and then I saw hope blossom on his face, quickly shut away.
Why would Jeff do this?
I couldn't figure it out. I thought I'd made my choice. I didn't think I'd ever have to feel Chase's eyes on me, waiting, ever again. But yet, there I was. I felt a presence beside me, smelled Jamie's familiar perfume. She didn't say anything; she only watched as Chase lifted the mic to his mouth, his eyes never leaving me. The look on Chase's face was haunting, full of longing. If I didn't know better, I might think all this had been scripted or arranged. The song was clearly about me, and now, by my sudden presence, sung directly to me.
"This next song is...special. It's brand new, you guys are the first live audience to hear it played. I wrote it during a time of...heartbreak and loss. Just listen, you'll see what I mean." Chase paused, and it was obvious he was struggling with emotion. "I hadn't planned this, but the person...the woman I wrote this song about, is in the audience today. Makes this performance especially personal. Anna, this is for you."
The guitar picked up volume and tempo; Chase closed his eyes, breathed deeply, then his eyes flicked open and focused on me.
He lifted the mic to his mouth and began to sing:
"I found you
floating between the pores of time
I found you
a dream of pale flesh and bright eyes
a fever dream
The moment our eyes met
I saw the gleam of need
and I couldn't resi
st
I found you
and I pulled you close
I found you
and I fell for you
but you walked away
I found myself
lost in the long dark night
watching the stars burn
watching your image fade
I found myself
dreaming in the dark
loving a ghost
a vision of you
not dead but gone all the same
I found myself
broken by you
blooded by you
I found you
a dream of pale flesh and bright eyes
a fever dream
I found you
nothing but a dream
I found you
nothing but a dream."
The song began as a haunting lullaby, sprightly and sweetly melodic, but always beneath there was a low, thrumming bass line weaving around the guitar chords and lyrics. When the words changed from "I found you" to "I found myself," the tempo picked up and the rhythm guitar started to chug, the bass began to pick up volume and discordant power, and the drums started to sprint, deep pounding bass drums and galloping snares. By the end of the song all was raging, the words no longer sung but screamed, and his eyes, god, his eyes, locked so laser-bright on me, until the crowd near me turned to see who he was singing to, screaming at with such pain and anger rife in his expression. He pointed, kneeling, when he began the last chorus, he pointed at me. The spotlights found me, frozen in place, eyes wide and terrified, heart pounding as loud as the bass drum.
Guitars went silent, drums faded, Chase's powerful voice quieted. All was motionless, a statue-still tableau, Chase's eyes fixed on mine. Jamie was next to me, her fingers gripping my arm in painful vise grip.
"Do something," Jamie hissed.
What could I do?
"You bastard." I wasn't sure if I meant Chase or Jeff.
I ripped the lanyard off my neck and shoved it at Jamie. The silence held, so profound that each shuffle of a foot, each clearing of a throat, was loud as a gunshot.
My words, spoken loud to carry to the stage, were audible to everyone. "I made my choice, Chase. I didn't want--I didn't come here on purpose. I'm sorry."
I turned and ran. The crowd parted for me. The double doors leading out to the casino floor stood in front of me, and I pushed them open.
Chase's voice froze me, raw and deep, amplified by the mammoth sound system. "Are you happy?"