Shane grunted his agreement. “Worse. I never put on tiaras and played princess tea party with Emmie when she was Mia’s age.”

“You didn’t just admit that,” Wroth snorted. “Are there pictures?”

“None that you’ll ever see, bro.” Shane took his seat once again and crossed his legs. “Better watch out. You spend more than ten minutes in the same room with Mia and you’ll have a sparkly tiara, plastic clip-on earrings, and lipstick too.”

“Lipstick!” I giggled at the picture that Shane had just put in my head. It was hard enough to imagine big, beautiful Shane Stevenson playing dress-up like that, but now to picture Wroth in the same position? I laughed so hard tears slipped from my eyes. “What color?”

“Mia’s favorite color is peach,” Nik commented. “It makes Shane’s eyes sparkle.”

“Shut up, fucker.”

For the next hour that was how our night went. The Demon’s Wings guys tossed out snarky comments about each other, calling each other names, but you could tell that they loved and respected each other. The four Demons were more brothers than bandmates. They had always had each other’s backs, no matter what. There was more love in their strange family-by-choice than I’d ever seen in one that was family by blood.

During that time, I could feel Wroth’s tension. He was waiting for a sign from me to leave. I was torn between wanting to stay and hang out with our friends and leaving so that we could have some alone time. Thoughts of our morning together made me squirm a little as I sat there beside him, feeling the heat that was burning the entire left side of my body where it brushed against his.

Eventually I couldn’t stop from yawning and Wroth jumped up, taking me with him. “Time for bed, sweetheart.”

“Goodnight, Rissa,” the guys called as I silently waved goodbye.

“Don’t forget that movie night is at my bus this weekend,” Lana called after me.

I made a face at her. “Nothing in the horror genre, if you please.” Lana and Harper both had a thing for scary movies, but I couldn’t stomach them. And being scared was my least favorite emotion to feel.

Lana pouted. “You’re no fun.”

“I’ll bring a few to choose from,” I told her, ignoring the pout. “How about Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?”

“No!” Lana shook her head adamantly. “No way. You want to talk about scary? Nothing freaks me out more than seeing that sexy-ass man like…that.” She shuddered. “Anything but that.”

I laughed and waved again before following Wroth off the bus.

The air was humid but there was the hint of rain on the soft breeze. I inhaled deeply as I walked down the row of buses, enjoying one of my favorite scents. If I’d been back on the farm with the promise of rain in the air, I would open my bedroom window and wait for the rain to come before letting it lull me into a deep, peaceful sleep.

Strong arms suddenly wrapped around my waist from behind, making me gasp in a mixture of surprise and delight. My shyness came back twice as bad and I leaned my head back against Wroth’s chest. His jaw was deliciously rough with his evening beard as he kissed my neck, making me shiver.

“I love our friends, Mari, but you were starting to kill me in there,” his sexy voice rumbled against my ear. “And if you let Nik Armstrong put his arm around you like that one more time, it’s going to be your fault when Emmie suddenly has a one-armed husband.”

I couldn’t help the giggle that escaped me at his threat and turned in his arms, my shyness fading as I wrapped my arms around him and buried my face in his chest. “Poor Nik,” I laughed. “But I doubt that having only one arm would distract from his sexiness.”

Wroth tensed and I knew I’d just woken up the jealous rage monster that had been simmering for the last hour while I’d sat next to another man who had teasingly flirted with me. I wanted to laugh at the idea of Nik ever having romantic or sexual thoughts of me. His ice blue eyes only saw Emmie and that wasn’t likely to ever change. But that didn’t matter to Wroth right then.

I had to admit that I liked that he was jealous. That he hated the mere idea of someone else touching me…or that I considered another man sexy. It was adorable, really.

“You think Nik is sexy?” His voice was low, but would have been no less powerful if he had roared.

I smirked up at him, my eyes twinkling with amusement. “I think a lot of guys are sexy, Wroth.” A growl escaped him and I lifted my hands to cup his face. I couldn’t see his eyes in the faint glow from a distant street light, but I could tell from the way his forehead was scrunched up that he was glowering down at me. “That doesn’t mean I want them. I only want one sexy rocker touching me, honey.”

“I love you, Marissa.”

My heart melted at those words. When he’d first said them to me just the morning before, I’d been stunned by them, unable to believe I was actually awake and hearing those treasurable words that I’d always hoped to hear from him. But I’d never imagined that he would say them again. Wroth just wasn’t the vocal type. I’d figured that he had said them once and that was most likely all I would ever get. To have him say them again, to have those three little words that could heal or cripple a person spoken by this man was truly a miracle in his own right.

And I didn’t know how to respond to them. I knew instinctively that he wanted me to say them back. We both knew that I loved him more than anything; it wasn’t a secret that I’d ever tried to hide from him. But I couldn’t utter them. They wouldn’t even come when I opened my mouth to speak.

The pause was a short one, but it felt like it went on for eternity before he lowered his head and brushed his lips over my own in a kiss so soft that it brought tears to my eyes. “I love you, sweetheart,” he breathed against my lips. “Let’s go to bed. I need to hold you tonight.”

Swallowing around the lump of tears clogging my throat, I nodded and let him take my hand as we continued on to the bus that was our home for the next few months.

Chapter 13

Marissa

“If one more person says the words ‘milk jugs’, I’m going to do bodily damage.”

My eyes widened and went straight to Natalie who was sitting across from me at the sound of Dallas’s angry voice just outside of our bus. She grimaced and shrugged. Tonight was our girls’ night in and we were going to watch a movie while the guys went out and drank a few beers. Normally it was all the girls but tonight our group was going to be smaller since Lucy had a cold and Layla didn’t want to leave her, and Emmie had to deal with a few issues with the venue for tomorrow night’s concert. Kenzie had volunteered to help Felicity out with the children and they were watching their own G-rated movie on Emmie’s bus tonight.