Wishing on a Dream
Table of Contents
Synopsis
Acclaim for Julie Cannon’s Fiction
By the Author
Acknowledgments
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Epilogue
About the Author
Books Available from Bold Strokes Books
Wishing on a Dream
Tobin Parks has been described as a cross between Janice Joplin, Aretha Franklin, Joan Baez, Reba McIntyre, and a little bit of Elvis thrown in for balance. She’s at the top of every chart, and with her sultry voice and bad girl image, she has no trouble attracting screaming fans to her concerts, women to her bed, and paparazzi to her doorstep.
Kiersten Bradley is riding the wave of her dream. The inventor and CEO of ICE, a popular energy drink, Kiersten is having a phenomenal year of success. When Tobin Parks comes knocking on her door asking ICE to be the sponsor of her next guaranteed blockbuster tour, Kiersten passes. Linking her company’s name to Tobin’s is a public relations nightmare waiting to happen. Both professional and personal sparks fly when the two strong-willed, very public women meet. Kiersten will not risk everything she has worked for, even for the chance to make millions, and Tobin is determined to have ICE has her sponsor.
Acclaim for Julie Cannon’s Fiction
In Smoke and Fire…“Cannon skillfully draws out the honest emotion and growing chemistry between her heroines, a slow burn that feels like constant foreplay leading to a spectacular climax. Though Brady is almost too good to be true, she’s the perfect match for Nicole. Every scene they share leaps off the page, making this a sweet, hot, memorable read.”—Publishers Weekly
Breaker’s Passion is…“an exceptionally hot romance in an exceptionally romantic setting. …Cannon has become known for her well-drawn characters and well-written love scenes.”—Just About Write
In Power Play…“Cannon gives her readers a high stakes game full of passion, humor, and incredible sex.”—Just About Write
About Heartland…“There’s nothing coy about the passion of these unalike dykes—it ignites at first encounter and never abates. …Cannon’s well-constructed novel conveys more complexity of character and less overwrought melodrama than most stories in the crowded genre of lesbian-love-against-all-odds—a definite plus.”—Richard Labonte, Book Marks
“Cannon has given her readers a novel rich in plot and rich in character development. Her vivid scenes touch our imaginations as her hot sex scenes touch us in many other areas. Uncharted Passage is a great read.”—Just About Write
About Just Business…“Julie Cannon’s novels just keep getting better and better! This is a delightful tale that completely engages the reader. It’s a must read romance!”—Just About Write
“Great plot, unusual twist and wonderful women. …[I Remember] is an inspired romance with extremely hot sex scenes and delightful passion.”—Lesbian Reading Room
Wishing on a Dream
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Wishing on a Dream
© 2017 By Julie Cannon. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-62639-590-9
This electronic book is published by
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.,
New York, USA
First Edition: February 2017
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Editor: Shelley Thrasher
Production Design: Susan Ramundo
Cover design by Sheri (graphicartist2020@hotmail.com)
By the Author
Come and Get Me
Heart 2 Heart
Heartland
Uncharted Passage
Just Business
Power Play
Descent
Breakers Passion
Rescue Me
I Remember
Smoke and Fire
Because of You
Countdown
Capsized
Wishing on a Dream
Acknowledgments
Everyone has a dream. Whether it be win the lottery, take a vacation somewhere exotic, find inner peace, or something as simple as pay off a bill. Everyone that I’ve worked with to produce this book is, in some aspect, living their dream—producing quality lesbian fiction. To all of you, I continue to say thanks. If not for them and you the readers, we would not be doing what we love for those that love it.
Dedication
For everyone who has a dream
Prologue
I am not a needy person. I own my own home and a year-old Jaguar, and I singlehandedly restored a 1972 Ford Bronco and built a thriving business. I don’t need to be surrounded by people, take a plus one to a party or a pal to the movies. I can eat out alone, take a walk alone, and sleep alone. But I do need one thing—desperately, anxiously, almost frantically. I need to get laid.
I need hands, fingers, lips, and tongue caressing every inch of my body. I need to feel the touch of a woman, inhale the scent of arousal, feel the pulse of desire. I need to get lost in sensation, shut out the world around me, and be swept over the edge in waves of release. I need to bury my hands in thick hair, touch soft skin, travel over curves and valleys, and sink into warm wetness. I need to remember to breathe, forget my name, and lose my inhibitions. I don’t need to know her life history, her favorite color, or even her name. Actually, I would prefer not to know her name. That’s all I need. Pure and simple. But there’s nothing simple about it. Not at all.
I’m obsessed with sex. Okay, maybe obsessed is too strong a word, but I think about it all the time when my mind wanders, which, uncharacteristically, has been a lot
lately.
I look at people on the street or in the office and wonder if they had sex last night. Or an hour ago. Was it wild and passionate or routine and perfunctory? Did old people still do it? I see a couple in their fifties just about every morning at the Coffee Klatch and just can’t imagine them doing it missionary, or any other style, for that matter.
When I see couples, gay or straight, I wonder how they can be that intimate, then sit across from each other and discuss the latest episode of Scandal over a BLT at Denny’s like it didn’t just happen. All I see when I look at people is how they look naked, writhing in ecstasy, sucking on some very private body part, or thrusting deep and hard, exploding in orgasm.
Like I said, pretty simple, right? I’m really good at bullshit and covering up the real truth. I’ve had lots of experience.
Chapter One
“Oh my, she’s hot.” Courtney’s voice somehow penetrated the music pounding from the massive black speakers thirty feet in front of us. “I’d do her in an instant.”
Courtney Saber was the closest thing I had to a BFF. We met in grad school when she saved me from a potentially very nasty situation. I was at a party and she saw a guy drop something into my beer when my head was turned. I’d taken two or three big swallows when she came up to me, pretending to be an old friend. She gave me a big hug and whispered in my ear, “The guy in the red shirt put something in your beer,” then released me and grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the bar. I was already starting to feel a bit woozy so I followed her without protest.
“Come on. Susie and Maxine would love to see you. Excuse us,” she said, and hustled me out the door and straight to the hospital.
I didn’t remember anything after that, but according to Courtney, they drew blood and called the police. The guy was arrested and after a two-day trial was found guilty of aggravated assault. He spent five years as a guest of the California penal system. Courtney was also one hundred percent heterosexual.
“What would Tom think?” I had to scream to be heard over the noise, referring to her husband of eight years and father to her three toddlers.
“I’ll tell you tomorrow after I fuck his brains out when I get home.”
I pulled my attention from the woman on the stage to look at Courtney.
“What?” she asked, exasperated. “Just because I think she’s hot doesn’t mean I want to do her. You should, Kiersten. I bet she’d rock your world.”
The “she” Courtney was referring to was none other than Tobin Parks, hottest musician of the last few years. Tobin was a mixture of Taylor Swift, Madonna, and Janis Joplin. She was often described as a seductress on stage and a heartbreaker off. She was recognized all over the world, and this was another sold-out performance.
She had no less than eight songs in the last year that had hit the number-one position in every list that meant anything and sellout crowds in every city on her world tour for the past three years.
How do I know this? Because Courtney recited those facts
and several more when she was trying to convince me to cough up two hundred and forty dollars for prime seats in the middle of row six.
“Come on, Kiersten. It’ll be fun. We’ll go out to eat at some trendy little place by the arena, then scream and swoon like we did when we were kids. I guarantee we’ll have a great time. Besides, you need to get out more.”
Little did Courtney know I had never screamed and swooned as a kid. Cried and sobbed, yes. Screamed and swooned, no. “And you’re sacrificing yourself to help out a friend?” I asked skeptically.
“What are friends for? It’s the least I can do.”
“You just want to get away from your kids.”
“Well, there is that, too,” she admitted, not seeming the least bit guilty.
So, here we were, two closer to forty than thirty somethings almost within touching distance of the hottest woman I’d seen in a long, long time. I tried not to drool or stare as Tobin moved around the stage. She could shimmy, shake, bump, and grind like nobody’s business. She was tall, with a thirty-inch waist and thirty-four-inch inseam, information again supplied by Courtney. And my lord, she didn’t hesitate to use every inch of the stage as her playground. She seduced the crowd with romantic ballads and jolted us out of our seats with hard rock and roll. Every woman in the arena wanted to be her, and every lesbian wanted to be with her.
I had stumbled on an interview with her and newswoman Megan Caldwell on 60 Minutes last month. They were outside in a park, the camera shooting over Megan’s left shoulder.
“What’s one thing no one knows about you?” Megan asked, as if expecting Tobin to actually divulge something secret, something really juicy.
Tobin laughed and my knees went weak. Her smile was radiant and her eyes sparkled with mischief. I had to sit down.
“Thanks to the media, present company excluded, there’s not much people don’t know about me, Megan,” Tobin replied, dodging the question.
Megan prodded her. “Even more reason to tell us something.”
“I don’t understand the fascination people have with me. I’m just a singer.”
It was Megan’s turn to laugh. “Tobin, saying you’re a singer is like saying the president of the United States is just somebody’s boss. You’re far more than just a singer.”
The interview cut away to a segment on the early years of Tobin’s career. Several videos of her onstage in dark clubs with harsh lighting and bad acoustics preluded more recent ones of her at Madison Square Garden, the Superdome, Central Park, and several venues in Europe. Megan’s voice narrated several facts, including that Tobin still traveled in a large tour bus when she could very easily afford her own private jet.
“What about your love life?”
“My love life?”
“You have a pretty active social life.”
“Is that what they call it?”
“They say you have a girl in every city,” Megan said a little more seriously.
Tobin squirmed in her seat. “Well, don’t believe everything you hear,” she finally said.
“And what part is that?”
“I don’t kiss and tell, Megan.” Tobin held up her hands as if to say, “And you’ll never get it out of me.” When she winked at Megan I stopped breathing until the commercial began.
I have to admit that Tobin Parks was, in fact, hot. However, I’m a bit more verbally creative than Megan so would describe her as incredibly hot. She was in her mid-twenties and wore her dark hair short and spiky. Tonight she had on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that showed her midriff every time she lifted her arms. Her boots looked like she wore them often, not just for show. Other than a leather bracelet on her left wrist, she had no other jewelry and probably weighed no more than a hundred and twenty pounds and didn’t have to kill herself at the gym six days a week to stay there. Whereas most performers had that carefully costumed casual look, Tobin Parks looked like she’d wear those same clothes to the grocery store. However, I seriously doubted she’d have any idea where to find the powdered sugar on aisle six. From this angle her long legs looked like she was much taller than the reported five feet nine inches.
So here we were being jostled by women at least ten, some twenty years younger than us. Courtney danced and sang while I felt completely out of place. I was not a rock-and-roller. Never have been and never will be. I was too self-conscious to move my body like the women around me, and even if I could, I had very little sense of rhythm. So while sixty-two thousand, four hundred, eighty-nine screaming fans sang, danced, and acted crazy, I prayed my eardrums wouldn’t burst while I lusted after the woman onstage.
The women in the rows in front of us looked no older than twenty—maybe. How in the hell did they afford the price of the tickets? When I was their age I was eating Ramen noodles and drinking store-brand soda. They were doing everything they could to catch Tobin’s eye. If they did, they could claim they had joined the ranks of the Tobin Parks fan club. That was just a euphemism fo
r “I had sex with Tobin Parks.” And how did I know that? Courtney, of course. And how did I know Tobin would pick one of these women? Well, besides the fact that she was a very publicly out lesbian—it takes one to know one.
Chapter Two
“Hello, Chicago! I’m Tobin Parks.”
The roar from the audience pushed me back a step. We were performing at an outdoor venue, and I could only imagine the roar if we’d been inside. Sweat dripped into my eyes, and I blindly reached for the towel hanging from the mic stand. I took the opportunity to grab a swallow of my special concoction of chamomile tea, honey, and cinnamon to soothe my throat. We were only four songs into the show, and I needed to keep my voice strong. I’d been on this tour for seven months and had another three before it was over.
On my signal Russ started the heavy beat of our next song. We opened big and closed even bigger with a mix of heart-pumping, raunchy lyrics with a little bit of rhythm and blues thrown in for balance. The song Take Me was one I had written several years ago as a ballad but with minimal chord changes, a heavier bass and faster beat I had bumped up to pure, raw sex for market appeal. It had rocketed to the top of the charts in record time and stayed there for months. When I sang it alone in my coach, the words were the same, but accompanied by only a classical guitar it was as emotionally raw as it got. No one had heard that rendition, and no one ever would.
When the song ended, I asked my stage manager to raise the house lights so I could see better. I hated singing into blackness, and having the lights up pulled the crowd even closer.