Page 78 of Creed

I laugh as I pull him into a hug, slapping him on the back once before releasing him. “I’ll always take care of her. I hate that I let her down before, but I’m not letting that happen again.”

“I know, Creed. Me, too.” A car honks a few rows down and Asher rolls his eyes. We both glance over to see the pink haired girl smack Camdan’s arm with the back of her hand and I see him mouth the word sorry to her, and a smile pulls at her mouth. “I gotta go. Camdan and Millie need to get back to the city for her sister’s fashion show this evening and she’s my charge tonight.”

I pat his bicep twice and shove him towards the awaiting SUV with an impatient Scot in the front seat. “Go. I’ve got her. It was good to see you, Ash. You look good.” And I mean it. He looks like a different man than the one I dragged to rehab years ago.

“Thanks,” he chokes out but clears his throat. “Good to see you, too, bud. I’ll call you soon.”

I nod and he turns and leaves with a wave over his shoulder. I watch for just a moment before climbing into the Range Rover, the sound of Riley and Collins’ laughter hitting me as I slide behind the wheel. I meet Collins’ eyes in the rearview mirror and they shine with so much happiness it nearly physically hurts. “You good, Stardust?”

“Yes,” she smiles and answers without hesitation. “Thank you for this surprise trip, Creed.”

The last of the anxiety and tension over this little trip leaves my body. I also try to ignore the way my brain reacts to the sound of my name on her lips. “You’re welcome.” I turn onto the highway, heading south and making my way to the studio to meet Bear, Ayla, Ritz, and Steve for a final meeting before loading up on the buses and heading to our first tour destination. “You open your gifts yet?”

“No!” She laughs out, elbowing Riley in the ribs and he fakes a dramatic injury with an oomph and a hand clapped over his side, “Riley practically pinned my hands down and told me I had to wait to open them. It became a battle of the wills. Which, apparently he has in abundance because clearly, I lost.” She rolls her eyes, but I don’t miss the glimpse of her tiny smirk when I glance back to her again.

“Oh, Stardust,” I tease, “Haven’t you ever heard of the saying, ‘Good things come to those who wait’?”

She scoffs and folds her arms over her chest but her silent tantrum is short-lived when Riley starts tickling her and cracking jokes and telling stories of our previous tours and the after parties we’d host during the rest of the trip.

She listens intently, her eyes alight with amusement and joy. Meanwhile, I’m lost in my own thoughts of just how good things will come to those who wait. Like how long I’ll wait before finally claiming Collins as mine. I don’t know why I’m so fucking cliché in getting over that mental barrier that I put up after Asher practically gave me his blessing, but I am. The last thing I’d want to do is to put a rift between any of the three of us.

I don’t think I’ll be able to keep my hands to myself much longer around her. Every inch of her is fucking begging for me to touch, to tease, to taste. And god, will I fucking taste her.

My mind slips into thoughts of that first night when our paths collided by an odd miracle and seeing her body in that strappy green outfit. The way my cock stood at attention over the way she moved in perfect sync with the music, the way she hypnotized me with every undulation of her body. Fuck, and later that night when I took her home, when she’d climbed into my lap and kissed me, I’d nearly lost my mind. I couldn’t believe that I had this perfect, stunning woman giving herself to me. The feeling of her soft, full lips claiming mine had me ready to fucking nut in my pants.

The memory of that tiny whimper when she ground down on me—you know, that perfect moment of pleasure before I was an idiot and stopped it—is enough to make my cock hard now. I can only imagine the other sounds I can ring from between those sinful lips of hers when I have her choking on my cock or when I’m buried so deep inside her pussy that she’ll feel me there for days after.

Collins may be tiny in many ways, but she’s far from fragile, and I can’t wait to find out just how much she can take. I don’t want to hurt her, but I have a feeling that she’ll give it to me just as good as she gets it, and fuck if I don’t love the mixture of pain with my pleasure.

I have to stifle a groan that so desperately wants to escape my throat by rolling my lips together and clearing my throat. I don’t bother to readjust the hard on in my pants because luckily Riley’s passed out in the back seat, his head propped against the window, but when I glance at Collins, her bright green eyes are trained on me.

“You okay, Creed? You look a little…I don’t know, bothered. You nervous about the tour?”

I smile at her concern because fuck yes I’m bothered, but not about the tour. Singing and performing on stage is just the norm for me after performing onstage for almost ten years. No, I’m fucking bothered by the fact that I’m hard as fuck over the beauty in the back seat and there’s nothing I can do about it at the moment. I’m fucking bothered because I need to make her mine.

There’s an order of operations I should follow, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to follow by the minute.

Get the girl, then ravage the fuck out of her.

Then a thought hits me. She may hate me for it, but I need every fucker in the world to know she’s off-limits.

“Nah,” I tell her, my smile tugging upward on one side and she smiles back, “I’m excited because I’ve actually got a few surprises up my sleeve for the first show of the tour.”

“Yeah?” Her eyes light up at that. “I’ve never been to a concert before.”

“No shit?” she shakes her head, her white-blonde waves shaking in her face as she flushes the prettiest shade of pink. “Well, how would you feel about performing one of your routines during our encore on Friday?”

Her eyes go wide with shock and her full lips part. I try so hard not to imagine my cock sliding home between them. ‘Try’ being the operative word.

“Wait, what—really?”

God, she’s so fucking adorable.

“Yes, Stardust, fucking really.” I glance back at her again, my eyes meeting hers for a moment so she knows I mean every word. “You have a true talent when you dance with those aerial ribbons,”—and without them—“When I saw you perform, I couldn’t look away.”

“You couldn’t?”

“Never.”

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