Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 60750 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 304(@200wpm)___ 243(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60750 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 304(@200wpm)___ 243(@250wpm)___ 203(@300wpm)
The crowd screams with cheers and applause. Alyssa lets out a riotous laugh, before going into an acapella version of the first verse of “Edge of Disaster.”
And by the time she reaches the chorus, I’m leading her into it with each note, my attention fully on her undulating frame as I wonder how the hell I’d gone so long without seeing her for the superstar she really is.
“Was I bad?” Alyssa mumbles the question, almost as soon as we’re backstage. I look around the room, scanning it to make sure she’s actually talking to me, and once I realize we’re somehow by ourselves, I find the words to answer her.
“Uh, no. You were amazing,” I reply with a huge grin. “Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect. You were so different in rehearsals—”
“I just try to match the energy of the crowd,” she says, while nervously tapping her fingers against her waist. She looks so impossibly fragile right now, nothing like the woman who’d just been performing on stage. “I didn’t really know what to expect out of me either, since the biggest gigs I’ve ever played have been to bored people at dive bars and coffee shops.”
“Well, you had total command of the stage, Alyssa.”
“Thanks.” She lets out a sigh of relief. “Hey, um, so I saw Rhys talking to you earlier in the parking lot—”
“Hey now, I don’t want to be involved.” I hold up my hands as if in defense. “Whatever you two have going on, I’d rather be left out of it—”
“We don’t have anything going on,” she clarifies. “That’s all I wanted to say. I didn’t want him making us out to be something that we weren’t.”
“You sure about that?” I press. “Because most girls who hook up with Rhys start following him around like lost puppy dogs.”
Alyssa laughs before she replies, “Yeah, well, I guess I’m not most girls. Don’t get me wrong. He’s a great guy. But I don’t know if he’s worth the risk.”
“The risk?”
“…Geesha Riley,” Alyssa reveals. “She pretty much threatened to end my career before it even begins if she hears anything about me and Rhys, ever again.”
“Ouch.” I suck in a breath through my teeth. “Well, that sounds like the price of fame. Besides, how else will you know you’re on the right track if someone isn’t threatening to end your career on a regular basis?”
“Is that how you measure your success, too?”
“Pretty much,” I joke. “You should see how many emails I get from other pianists threatening to cut off my fingers if I don’t stop banging all their dates.”
Alyssa laughs again, this time much louder than before. “You’re pretty funny, Cameron.”
“I like to think so.”
“You shouldn’t keep it all to yourself.” She smirks, her nervous tapping coming to an end. “It’s nice seeing this side of you.”
“It’s nice seeing this side of you too, Alyssa.” I return her expression.
And for a moment we just stare at each other, her eyes traveling down my frame, mine traveling up hers in response. The moment is interrupted when Rhys and Van finally make it backstage too, with Rhys clutching his guitar in his grip and Van holding onto his drumsticks. Just as they step inside the room, Alyssa and I take a step away from each other, almost like we’d never been having a private conversation at all.
Fuck.
I still can’t get to sleep. And while I always imagined that performing at a high-energy concert was going to fill me with high energy too, I also imagined that the energy would’ve left my body by now. And yet here I am, staring at the clock on my desk that’s blinking 3 a.m.
I groan in frustration, tossing and turning in my bedsheets, unsure of how to fix the problem. I’d already tried downing a few glasses of milk, listening to parts of a boring audiobook, and letting the TV drone on in the background as a form of mildly entertaining white noise. I then stare up at my apartment ceiling, completely out of ideas, my mind going off to places on its own as sleep continues to evade me.
Alyssa.
Alyssa. Alyssa. Alyssa.
It’s like a heartbeat.
I don’t know why, but images of her performing on stage come rushing back to me, her hips shaking in time to the music, her hair wildly moving back and forth to each song. I remember the way she looked at me backstage too, like she’d gone back to being a much smaller version of herself, nervously asking me if I thought she’d done okay tonight.
Unthinking, I lower a hand toward my boxers, my palm lightly adjusting my cock underneath the fabric. A few seconds later my hand slips underneath the fabric itself, my palm soon wrapping around my hardened shaft. I idly stroke myself, as images of Alyssa continue to dance through my head, the images seeming to always cap off with the way she laughs, the way she smiles with her entire face.