Page 87 of The First Chord

“Fuck no,” he snapped. “Why would you even ask me that?”

“Oi,” Elliot hissed, putting a hand up in protest. “Stop it.” He put a hand on Joey’s arm. “It is alright for you to take paracetamol, you know.”

Joey shook his head. “Nope. I’m not taking anything.”

“Joe,” Beau sighed. “It was hard drugs that you had a problem with, not pain killers that you buy at bloody Tesco.”

“Don’t care,” he snapped. “Drugs are drugs as far as I’m concerned. So, if it’ll shut you up, I’ll call Ali in the morning.” He looked at each of us. “Okay?”

Relief washed through me, but only momentarily because across the room Jimmy was talking to a record producer we’d worked with once. He had a hand on Amber’s back, too close to her damn arse for my liking. Beau must have followed my gaze because he nudged me.

“Stay calm. She won’t let him do anything she doesn’t want.”

Nodding I took a deep breath. “I know, it just makes my guts curl up.”

“I get you, mate. I felt the same every time I had to look at Dickie’s fucking face in court and he wasn’t even touching Sim.” He slapped a hand on my shoulder. “This will make you stronger, Ron. I promise you.”

I fucking hoped so because, at the moment, it was killing me.

* * *

Amber was finally alone, seeing as Fox had gone off somewhere during a break in the awards. They were sitting a couple of rows behind us and when he got up a seat filler had been about to drop into it, but I beat her to it.

“Ronnie,” she gasped. “What are you doing?”

“I noticed that Fox had disappeared. He’s been gone a while. Where is he?”

“He went to the toilet just before the break.” She heaved out a sigh. “He’s either shagging someone or doing a few lines.”

“Or both,” I quipped.

Amber gave me a small smile. I knew she wasn’t with him anymore, but it must have still hurt to see him acting up.

“How are you feeling?” I asked, my eyes searching her face, still feeling in awe of her beauty. “You look gorgeous by the way.”

She looked down at the black dress she was wearing and shrugged. “I’ve had this for ages. I didn’t really want to wear anything special.”

“Well, it looks amazing.” I quickly looked around to check if anyone was watching us, but everyone seemed to be occupied with the warm up guy on stage who was telling jokes. Confident that no one was finding us interesting, I put my hand down between us and found Amber’s, linking our fingers together. “I’ve missed you.”

“It’s only been a couple of hours.” Bright eyes looked at me with a hint of a smile on her lips. “But I’ve missed you, too. I hate being able to see you but can’t talk to you.”

“We can talk, baby. We just can’t bring attention to it.” I spotted a French rock singer we knew heading back to their seat, which was in front of the one next to Amber. “Hey, Michel, how you doing?”

“Ronnie, so nice to see you.” He smiled but thankfully didn’t want to expand on the conversation. Probably because of the blonde with her tits hanging out in the seat next to his.

Amber’s fingers tightened around mine. “Do you think he noticed anything?”

“Nah. He knows Blind Devil are touring with us. If he can think of anything past her double E’s then I doubt it.”

Amber giggled and I had to stop myself from kissing her, especially as her lips were ruby red and looked sexy as hell. Instead, I settled on rubbing my thumb backwards and forwards on her wrist. I saw her shiver and imagined her being spread naked on my bed later, shivering against my kisses and touches.

“I can’t wait until we get back to the hotel,” I whispered.

“Neither can I. Adjoining rooms was a genius idea.” I was treated to a view of the joy she was starting to feel daily and knowing that I was partly responsible made me feel proud. Yes, leaving Jimmy was the biggest contributing factor but the daily orgasms had to be helping.

“I’m going to leave straight after the ceremony, do you think you can get away, too?”

Amber opened her mouth to reply but instead cursed. “Shit, Hugo and Brandon are on their way back.”

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