Book 1: Echoes Of The Past

Chapter 8 - **Shannon's POV**

When I saw her for the first time the other night at Bossy's, I didn't even recognise her. All I heard was a load of cheering and a whirlwind of blonde hair.

She was wearing this short, black sequined miniskirt that kept riding up a bit and this tight, red, corset top that she was in danger of spilling out of.

At first, I wasn't sure if it really was her, and I remembered those years back when I used to tease her for being flat-chested, but she clearly wasn't now from what I could see. I had to force myself to tear my eyes away from her.

I was secretly pleased that Jared hadn't been able to make it tonight after we landed earlier this evening in LA. She wasn't my brother's type, but I knew that wouldn't stop him from at least flirting with her if he had been here, and no doubt she would have been all over him once she realised who he was; they always did.

I suddenly spotted Jess. She was a nice enough girl. We'd only spoken a handful of times and skyped maybe once to do with arrangements for our video shoot for 'Hurricane'. I usually left all that stuff up to my brother to deal with. After all, he'd written the script for the video and was going to be playing Director.

Jess waved at me once she spotted me in amongst the throng of the crowd. So much for me trying to keep a low profile tonight. I edged my way through the packed nightclub, saying my 'hellos' and making some small talk, until I reached the roped off VIP area. I still wasn't entirely sure if it was her, but by now she had plucked the champagne bottle that Jess had been holding, from Jess's hand and I saw some froth erupt from it, spilling down her arm.

The next thing I knew, the girl was licking it up from the neck of the bottle and it was like I was watching a badly scripted porn movie. I felt my dick twitch from down in my jeans and hadn't even realised I was turned on until then. It had been a while since I gotten laid, which was fairly unusual for me. But for some reason I just wasn't into that side of things this past tour. It was getting a little old to me.

I hadn't come to the club this evening with those intention, but my dick clearly had other ideas. I was too tired for anything like that tonight. I'd just landed back in LA a couple of hours earlier after a 7-hour flight from New York, after a finishing a month-long tour around the US with the band.

To be honest, I hadn't wanted to come tonight at all. All I'd wanted was a bed and some sleep, but once we landed at LAX, Jared's phone instantly came to life like a fucking Christmas Tree and he told me he'd got a business conference that he was going to need to attend -honestly, I don't know how he does it and not manage to get burnt out.

I knew I'd have to go tonight to show my face and represent the band to an extent. It wasn't the first time I'd had to step in and do this, and I knew it also wouldn't be the last. We'd departed from our other band member Tomo at the end of the tour, in New York, and he had gone his separate way, catching a plane to Detroit where he lived with his wife Vicki, so it all came down to me.

Once I'd finally made it to the VIP area, I took the bottle from the blonde girl on the table who had been busy drinking some champagne from it-she looked pretty far gone by now, so I thought I'd save her from embarrassing herself even further.

It was only then when she looked up at me with a hunger in her eyes, that I knew I recognised those emerald eyes from somewhere. I still couldn't quite place them, until I noticed the small beauty mark she had on her left cheek and that confirmed it for me that it really was Ivy.

I knew she recognised me too, but I couldn't read her reaction. She looked at me with those big, wide, clear emerald eyes and her pert rosebud shaped mouth.

I couldn't blame her for still being mad at me. I was a complete dick to her back then, I'd been angry at myself on reflection many years later as I had gotten older, for how I had treated her.

If Jared had ever remembered any of it, he had never talked to me about it, so I just tried to burry it under the rug and carried the burden with me for the rest of my life like a torch.

Jack had never told me the reason as to why they had split. He told me it was something to with them being on two different pages, which I knew was bullshit because I had used that excuse many times myself with girlfriends when I hadn't wanted to face the facts or take the blame for a relationship failing and I could tell from her reaction later on when I had finally confronted her later that evening, that what he had told me was a crock of shit.

I was dying to find out more about her and her life now, so I invited her to have dinner with me and hoped she'd accept the offer, although I knew I wasn't owed anything from her, but surprisingly she accepted.

She turned up wearing the sexiest red ruffled dress that I'd ever seen on a woman, and I've seen a lot of different women during my time touring with the band. The dress hugged her curves in all the right places, and I did my best to try and keep my eyes focused on her face as she talked to me from across the table, but I found it incredibly hard to every time she leant forward slightly to pick up her wine glass from the table, which caused her breasts to be pushed up against the edge and nearly spill out of their fabric tomb.

I could tell she was nervous around me, and it hurt me to think that just my presence alone caused her to feel like that. She angry at me when I told her that I didn't know what to say in response to her challenging me about my actions towards her in the past; I couldn't blame her.

Then she managed to knock her wine glass over, spilling it all down myself. She was mortified about it, I could tell from the way her cheeks were blushing crimson and I wanted to wrap my arms around her and tell her it really didn't matter; I had another five shirts like it, I wasn't going to miss one.

She wouldn't stop going on about it and said she wanted to wash my shirt for me. I didn't want to embarrass her any more than she already was, so I agreed to go back to hers and we talked. It was nice to just stop and relax, even if my bed was calling out to me.

I was brought my sense though when she suddenly kissed me! I didn't know what to do or how to act. I mean, being a red-blooded male, I knew what I wanted to do, but there was no way I was doing that with her after only meeting her two days ago and not seeing her for 7 years!

Part of me couldn't get out of my head the image of her as that goofy teenage girl who tried to hand around with her older brother Bryce and us all the time, wanting to snitch on us when she caught Bryce and I in their treehouse smoking weed one time.

I was so fucking mad at her. She was always there, always interfering. I guess maybe she had been lonely the whole time; Bryce and Ivy didn't have the best home-life, I knew that from snippets Bryce had shared with me. He was more Jared's friend than mine as they were closer in age and in the same grade at school, and I used to bunk off school so much that I never really formed friendships in school, so Jared's friends also became mine, even though I was a couple of years older than the both of them.

Now she was going to be in the music video for our new single, 'Hurricane'. It sounded as though Jess had somehow dragged her into it and Ivy innocently had no idea what she was getting herself into. My brothers' mind could wander to some very dark places; this time being one of those times. I didn't know if she had read the brief or transcript yet, but from what I gathered, she was so innocent that the inner workings of Jared's mind would see her run a thousand miles before she would be seen dead filming any of his kinky, erotic shit with me.

To be honest, I was quite anxious about it myself. Don't get me wrong. I'm not prude and I'm certainly not vanilla in the bedroom, but even some of my brothers' expectations went way above and beyond for me in this video. I'd had to draw the line at nipple clamps, that definitely wasn't my jam, and so he had rewritten my part for me, toning down much of it.

I was looking forward to spending more time with Ivy and was hoping that by the end of things, some of the bridges I had burnt in the past could somehow be mended.