Page 115 of Cherry Beats

“Looks like our drummer just found a brand new tambou-fucking-rine to play.” Rhett laughed into his microphone.

“I am going to fucking kill you, Presley West,” I growled, my cheeks flaming with embarrassment. The entire arena will have seen my leather-clad butt cheeks before they’d even seen my face. I’d never been so mortified in my life, and my body overheated as every bone I had rattled inside of me.

When I was dropped back down to Earth on shaky feet, I reached out to grab Presley’s shoulders to hold myself steady. My knees trembled, and my hands shook.

I was on the raised platform behind the drum kit, the big screen right behind us focusing on Presley and me, meaning I had a giant version of the both of us directly to my right.

“I’m going to literally kill you,” I told him with all the anger I could muster, which wasn’t very much considering he was staring back at me with a shit-eating grin that could make any woman’s underwear fall off her without warning.

Presley winked, grabbed my hand and swung it between us before he sat down on his stool and patted his knee for me to go to him.

“No,” I mouthed, planting my feet in place, but Presley being Presley just laughed, rolled his eyes, and reached out for me, grabbing my hips and forcing me to sit down on his knee and face the crowd.

The crowd I couldn’t see. Everyone was a faceless silhouette, their voices washing over me like waves, and their phones flashing above their heads, different spots of light going off in every direction you could imagine.

“Holy shit,” I breathed.

“It’s the second-best view in the world.”

“What could possibly be better than this?”

“Looking down on you when I’m inside you.”

Well, I’ll be fucked.

Presley squeezed my hips in his grip, not giving me time to respond, and he planted a soft kiss to my exposed shoulder before he reached over and grabbed the mic over his drum kit.

“Hey, guys,” he called to the crowd.

Two words; that’s all he had to say for every single one of them to scream and take the roof off the place. It was the loudest noise of the night. I’d never heard anything so powerful and pure in my life.

“Shit,” I whispered to myself.

“Has my girl gone pale?” Presley asked the crowd, and once again, they cheered at him. “Yeah, she does that a lot.”

They answered him with an eruption of laughter, their cheers and cries to him sounding more positive than I could ever imagine.

“That’s because you make her feel sick, bro,” Rhett hit back over his mic.

“Fuck you, Ryan.” Presley laughed.

I turned to face him, unable to stop myself from smiling, even though my eyes were wide, and I was silently begging for him to stop. It was obvious the arena was Team Presley. Every time he spoke, the cries shook the ground beneath the venue’s structure.

“I know I don’t speak a lot at these things. That’s Rhett’s gig,” Presley announced. “That prick needs the adoration more than I do.” The fans laughed, and cameras flashed in every direction, but all I could focus on was the man behind me who was currently making my heart beat so fast, I was convinced it was about to break through my chest. “Truth is, I don’t normally have a lot to say. I’d rather you guys be entertained by someone who is good at keeping you guys pumped. Me? I’m just here to play the damn drums, man.”

Even more cheers rolled over us in a gigantic wave of adoration.

Right there on the stage in Paris, with the whole world watching me, and the man I loved squeezing my hip, I suddenly felt an overwhelming need to cry. Presley turned away from the crowd and gazed up at me adoringly, his bedroom eyes in place as he spoke into the mic.

“I guess tonight is a rare night for me. Tonight, I have a lot to say. See, I’ve been secretly chasing this girl for a while now. Way before she even realised I was chasing her, actually.”

I scowled, my smile growing bigger as I looked at him.

“This girl on my lap thought I fell in love with her after one night we spent together, years ago, just before the guys and I headed to London to record our first ever tracks together. This girl used to serve me really shitty pints in this local bar I went to.” Pushing against his chest in warning only made him laugh—the kind of throaty laugh that came from those happy places that can’t be conjured or faked. “And I was an arsehole who used to take different women in there every single week to make her jealous. Every damn week, I’d take someone in there, hoping to God that this girl on my knee would give me a sign—show me something that told me she was interested, because she never seemed interested inanybody,no matter who gave her some attention. That only made me want her more.”

My face fell, my lips parting as I sucked in a sharp breath. There wasn’t anything but truth there in his eyes.

“I waited, and I waited. I waited a long motherfucking time, guys, and then one day she finally got jealous, and I fed off of that like the egotistical prick I was. I loved it.” He smirked up at me. “Eventually, after alotof playing around, she finally gave in, and I got my one night with her. One night that she made count more than she ever even knew.”

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