We made sure her mother—may her soul forever burn in the deepest bowels of Hell—had a proper funeral for Emmie’s sake and nothing more. That was easy compared to having to fill out all the paperwork the social worker, Miss Hill, made Jesse handle. When he kept stumbling, Emmie took over and did the paperwork herself, giving it back for him to sign his name at the end.
Of course there was school to worry about, but I found an alternative for that. She could be homeschooled via internet while we were on tour. I bought her the best laptop and made the tech guy put all things she would possibly need on there, and a few things just for fun. I wanted to make sure that she didn’t get bored while we were on the road.
Instead of packing up her clothes in that disgusting trailer, we took her shopping. She didn’t want us to buy her anything, but she needed it. Deserved it. The only thing she ended up taking with her from her room was a backpack full of pictures. All of them were of us. Pictures of us when we were all younger. Things she might have gotten out of magazines or tabloids. She had started a scrapbook, something to help her when she missed us the most.
I was convinced we were smothering her by the last day before we were due to rejoin the tour in Oklahoma. We hadn’t really let her out of our sight to do more than use the bathroom. I think we all had an irrational fear that someone was going to barge in and steal her away from us if we didn’t have our eyes on her at all times. Emmie, however, didn’t seem to mind it at all. She was just as glad to see us. For the first time since I had met her, she was smiling more often than not. There wasn’t any fear in her big green eyes. With her mother gone, she had no one to fear.
Of course that didn’t mean that people didn’t have to fear her. As soon as we rejoined the tour, our manager, Rich Branson, ripped into us. As soon as greedy eyes landed on the newest addition to our group, his eyes narrowed on her. “You are nothing but trouble, you know that, princess?”
Green eyes burning with fire, Emmie said, “Don’t call me princess, fucker.”
“Nice. What a sweet little girl you are.” Rich threw his arms in the air. “I can already see this is going to be fun.”
“Back off, dude,” Jesse told him. “Mess with Em, I’ll fuck you up.”
Rich walked away after that, muttering under his breath.
Chapter 4
From Baby Doll To…GODS, She’s Beautiful!
It took us a while but we settled down. We got a new bus, one that didn’t smell like Jack Daniels and sex so much. The guys and I had already agreed that there would be no sex on the bus. Emmie wasn’t to be exposed to that at all. She had witnessed shit like that all her life with her mother. Our lifestyle wasn’t going to be another whore house for her to have to deal with.
For the first few months we didn’t let Emmie meet any of the other bands that were touring with us. The tour that we had been doing when her mother had died was already over and another one was just starting when Axton met Emmie again for the first time. To say I was on edge when Axton Cage hugged her close, like she was another one of his groupies, was an understatement.
“Little Emmie is growing up,” Axton told her with one of his shitty grins that I knew got him laid on a daily basis. “Someone is going to be a hottie when she’s legal.”
My hands fisted at my sides. He didn’t have to tell me that she was beautiful. Fuck, now that she had gained a little weight, she was even more stunning than when she first came to live with us. I hated how much I noticed the little things that made her so beautiful. So… female.
Thankfully Emmie took Axton’s praises in her stride, putting him in the same category as the rest of us. Friend. She was just as comfortable with him as she was any of us. It was almost funny how she teased the rock god at times, and even I found myself laughing at it. Of course they were the times I could actually stand to be in the same room with Axton and Emmie.
By the time she was sixteen, none of us could deal with how gorgeous Emmie was. She was becoming sassier and that, on top of being beautiful, had guys coming out of the woodwork to just get her to notice them. Of course, she didn’t. She was immune to any attention, good or bad. That didn’t mean we didn’t stress over it.
Jesse was the worst of the four of us. When he caught one of the sound guys talking to her, the guy’s eyes eating up the sight of Emmie in her tight Demon’s Wing tank top, skin tight jeans, and stiletto boots, Jesse had made sure the guy knew just how dangerous even thinking about Emmie like that would be to his health. A few loose teeth later and everyone that worked with us knew that she was hands—and eyes—off.
I was slowly going out of my mind. I was fighting my reaction to Emmie, which had only grown stronger and stronger with each passing month. I was a sick fucker. I hated myself in almost every way because I was feeling things that I had no business feeling for the girl that had once been my little baby doll.
It was a struggle to still be close to her, but the alternative was to give up the friendship—the connection that for me went soul deep. To do that would destroy me, so I learned to hide my sickness. To try and curb my needs, I found girl after girl and got lost in her, trying my best not to let Emmie sneak into my mind.
Seventeen came and slowly went by. I was sure that my desire would fade soon.
Right?
Wrong. So, so, so wrong!
--
“Happy birthday, Emmie!” Drake exclaimed.
“What is the one thing you want more than anything in the world?” Jesse asked.
We were all sitting in the back of the tour bus, which was parked in the parking lot of the arena we would be performing at tonight. But that was hours away, and we had dedicated the entire day to Emmie. Legal, eighteen Emmie.
She was cuddled between me and Shane, her head on my chest as Shane rubbed her feet that he had put in his lap. It was a bittersweet hell for me having her this close, smelling her shampoo and lotion that was subtle but no less seductive to my senses.
“I have everything I want right here,” she told Jesse with a grin.
I tortured myself by running my fingers through the ends of her silky soft, auburn hair. “Don’t be rotten, baby girl. What do you want to do?”
She shrugged, making her breast brush against my bicep. “I don’t know. Can’t we just veg out? Watch movies, eat junk food? I want pizza and Chinese food, and lots of ice cream and a cake. A huge cake.”
“I’ll have to run a marathon to get all of that off later,” Shane laughed. “But if it’s what you want, it’s what you’ll get.”