Take Me to Paradise (Sinners on Tour 6.5)

She grinned. “As much as I’d like to see that, you’ll just get us kicked off the plane as a terrorist threat.”

“Maybe later then,” he said.

“Did you let the guys know that we’re leaving the country?” Myrna asked.

The band was in a kind of crisis mode at the moment, so they would probably want to know where their lead guitarist had wandered off to.

“I called Trey. He threatened to join us,” Brian said with a smile. Part of him missed the good ol’ days of getting into trouble and under skirts with his best friend, but most of him was deliriously happy to give it all up so he could spend the rest of his life with the woman who’d stolen his heart, his soul, and his undivided attention.

“How did you talk him out of it?”

“I told him we were leaving tomorrow.”

“Brian.” She shook her head at him.

“Did you want him to tag along? I’m all for it. You know I’m still waiting for you to agree on another threesome.”

“When I’m off birth control?”

Brian’s body jerked. “Yeah, with my luck, he’d get you pregnant in an instant.” He scowled at the direction of his thoughts.

“I don’t care how good it feels, Brian. I don’t want him in our bed again.”

“Yeah, I heard you the first twenty times.”

He still didn’t understand why Myrna was so against another threesome. She was completely open to anything in the bedroom—anything—so that particular hard limit surprised him. It was almost as if she was jealous of Trey. But that made absolutely no sense to Brian. What did she have to be jealous of?

Hadn’t he proven to her time and again that she was the most important person in his life? Fuck, he’d been so wrapped up in her when they’d first gotten married that he hadn’t even noticed that Trey had gotten himself addicted to painkillers. Brian hadn’t recognized the danger until Sed had practically kidnapped Trey to dry him out in some sleazy hotel room. Brian was still pissed at Sed for strong-arming the situation instead of getting Trey proper professional help, but he was even more pissed at himself for being more interested in fucking his wife than supporting his best friend. Trey had needed him, and Brian had failed him.

Myrna had been perfectly fine with Sed being the one who’d helped Trey out while he was in crisis. Brian sometimes wondered if she truly understood how important Trey was too him. Other times he wondered if she actually wanted him to distance himself from his longtime roommate. Brian could feel the gulf between himself and his best friend widening with each passing day, and he didn’t know what to do about it. He understood that him being married meant that he and Trey would never be as close as they’d once been. Now that they no longer lived together, they scarcely saw each other when they were off tour. Especially since Brian ended up spending most of his time in Kansas City, where Myrna still worked.

He just hoped Trey found someone to love soon. The thought of Trey haunting their once-shared apartment alone made him feel guilty. Guilty enough to ask Myrna if Trey could move in with them. They planned to buy a house after Myrna quit her job and they settled in Southern California sometime within the next year. Brian was sure they could find a place large enough for the three of them. Yet she’d squelched that idea immediately. “He has to find a life without you at some point,” she’d said. “You hanging on like this isn’t fair to him. Let him move on.”

He still wasn’t quite sure what she meant by that. He wasn’t hanging on to Trey, was he? No, that was ridiculous. There was nothing to hang on to besides fifteen years of close friendship. It wasn’t like they’d been romantically involved or anything. Sometimes the way his woman’s mind worked completely baffled him.

“You should call Sed when we get to Aruba,” Myrna said, drawing Brian out of his turbulent thoughts. “Let him know where we are. You know Trey will forget to tell him.”

“Why Sed?” Brian asked. “Why not Eric or Jace?”

“Because Sed’s in charge, isn’t he?”

“No, he just thinks he is.”

“And everyone else thinks he is too.”

“I don’t,” Brian said.

“That’s because you, my love, are in denial.”

He laughed. The woman never withheld her opinion on anything, which was one of the trillion qualities he loved about her. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll call Sed. And Trey. I don’t want him showing up at our door in the morning with suitcase in hand only to find we’ve already left without him.”

“He wouldn’t really come with us, would he?”

Brian chuckled. “He loves the beach as much as I do.”

“Really?” Myrna said. “I figured he’d be more of a poolside lover.”

“I’m sure he’s done plenty of lovin’ poolside,” Brian said with a wide grin. “And beachside.”

Myrna worried her fingers, watching the motion of her hands instead of looking at him. “Has he ever had a serious relationship?”

Brian gnawed on his lower lip, thinking about the long string of women—and men—in Trey’s past. “Do you consider a weekend orgy a serious relationship?”

“No.” Myrna laughed. “Even though we started out that way.”

And what a weekend that had been. “Then, no, he’s never been in a serious relationship. I’m not sure he’s the type.”

“He’s the type,” Myrna said. “He has so much love to give. I think he’s just hung up on someone.”

“Who could he possibly be hung up on?” Brian couldn’t think of a single conquest of Trey’s that his friend would give a second thought to.

Myrna touched his cheek with gentle fingertips. “You are so clueless sometimes.”

“Apparently I am,” Brian said. “Trey never gets emotionally entangled with the people he puts his dick in.”

“Maybe he never put his dick in this particular emotional entanglement.”

Brian continued puzzling over Trey’s lovers. “There is that Mark guy we met in Portland. But I’d say he’s hung up on Trey, not the other way around.”

“Hopefully you’ll figure it out one day,” Myrna said. “So . . . What are we going to do in Aruba?”

He was glad she changed the subject, because her weird little hints about something he couldn’t decipher were confusing him. “Besides have lots of sex?”

She laughed. “We might have a couple of free hours on Thursday.”

“Lounging on the beach sounds like a good plan to me.”

“Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“I left it in my other pants.”

She produced a beguiling pout. “Darn.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I’ll think of something. Do you promise to agree to my crazy whims no matter where they steer us?”

His stomach tightened with a case of nerves as he envisioned cliff diving into shallow water and shark wrestling, but he highly doubted she’d put them in danger. “Your crazy whims haven’t steered me wrong yet.”

“So I’ll pick an adventure and you’ll pick one, something you’ve always wanted to do but never had the opportunity or the guts to try.”

Brian nonchalantly peered around the seat in front of him and eyed the bathroom door speculatively. There was this one thing he’d always wanted to do, and they needn’t leave the airplane to do it. “Deal,” he said.

She leaned close to his ear. “I already know what I want to do,” she said, her voice low and husky with desire.

His cock pulsed with interest. “What’s that?”

“Join the mile-high club.”