Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2
James couldn’t even look at Lita. Not without feeling as though his stomach were being extracted through his throat. The jail-issued plastic bag containing her possessions was clutched in his right hand as they walked down the carpeted hallway of her hotel. On the way through the revolving glass doors, he’d caught sight of her reflection and knew it would be imprinted on the back of his eyelids for life.
Abandoned. She’d looked abandoned.
James drew a long, deep breath that did nothing to ease or fortify him. It had to be this way. This dysfunctional game between the two of them had gone on too long. He’d found a way to justify it, found a way to stay close by any means necessary, until last night. By simply being in her presence, he put her life at risk. Considering his life’s dedication had become the exact opposite four years ago, James had no choice but to get a safe distance away. He hadn’t fooled himself into thinking he could give her up completely, but his role in Lita’s life now would have to be…peripheral. Much as it would kill him.
Even now, his decision-making remained shoddy, as had been the case since their first meeting. With good-bye on the line, the least wise place James could be was inside Lita’s hotel room. Amidst her smell, her clothes… her . Always her.
The fucking jig is up. James wasn’t a band manager. Nor was he a decent man. The longer he kept the charade up, the harder it would be to walk away from Lita. And since the night he’d taken away any chance of normalcy between them—because once that particular beast was woken, it didn’t go back to sleep—he’d known this day would come to pass. His appetite had no business with a fragile girl, twelve years his junior. One who’d raced from one tragedy to another more permanent one. Him.
James didn’t question Lita’s intelligence. She happened to be the most astute person he’d ever met. A huge heart reserved for her friends and an accurate judge of character. When it came to him, however, she couldn’t see below the surface. Had no idea what moved in the shadows of his psyche. Lita wanted something she didn’t understand—and worse, James didn’t fully understand it either. How could he get a bead on something that constantly shifted and grew, wanting more?
Without thinking, James removed Lita’s room key from his pocket and dipped it into the metal reader. As natural as breathing, except it shouldn’t be. Lovers kept keys to one another’s rooms. He hadn’t laid a hand on Lita in four years.
James pushed open the door and set the plastic bag inside, refusing to take one step inside the room. He held out the card for Lita to take as she passed, eyes fastened on the air above her head, but so aware of her nearness his stomach muscles protested from being clenched so tight.
“Oh, god damn you.” Lita plucked the card from his fingers and hurled it back into the hallway with a muffled scream. “Four years leads to this, huh? You’re just going to dump me in this fucking…”—she waved her hands to encompass the hotel—“…rock star purgatory and bail? If you’re doing this to teach me a lesson, I will never forgive you, James.”
“I’m not.” He cleared the cobwebs from his throat. “That’s not what this is.”
Without looking at Lita, he knew she’d be chewing her bottom lip, leaving teeth marks that would take until nighttime to fade. “I guess we really meant a lot to you if it’s this easy. No notice. Just…peace out, suckers.”
James swallowed the urge to shake her. “I think you know this is the furthest thing from easy.”
“ No . I don’t know anything ,” she shouted before several silent beats passed. “Except that you’re a coward. You can’t even look me in the eye.”
He surged forward, pushing her back against the doorjamb. Going to break. Too much. I shouldn’t have come up here. He’d made the mistake of looking down into green eyes swimming with moisture, calling her bluff. “Does the thought of you hurting yourself to get my attention make me a coward? Yes? So be it , Lita.” His fingernails dug into the flesh of his palms. “If something happened to you, I wouldn’t make it to the next sunrise.”
Lita’s body deflated, head falling back. “You can’t say something like that and leave,” she said, lips hardly moving. “It’s cruel.”
“I’m a cruel man.”
“No.” Lita moved into the elegant room, booted feet dragging. A miniature hurricane in a gilded cage. He’d chosen the room himself, another sign of his madness, his need to control her surroundings. Have knowledge of everything she touched. His neck grew hot when she turned, sliding a gaze down his front.
Turning and leaving was imperative at that moment, but he couldn’t resist hearing what she would say next. Delaying the good-bye.
“Remember what you called me the first night we met?” She sat down on the edge of the bed. “Before you leave, call me that one more time.”
Panic spread dots across his vision. “ No .”
There was calculation in her expression, but a thread of desperation he’d never witnessed in Lita before. A hint of hysteria. Gone was the sarcasm and wit he’d come to rely on. The difference held him in thrall as she toed off her boots…and peeled the T-shirt over her head, leaving her in a black bra and jeans . Jesus Christ. The flesh behind his fly fought to be free of its denim prison. Needing her. Forever needing her. His lungs couldn’t find satisfaction, ripping at the air to no avail.
“ Enough .”
Shaking her head, Lita’s tongue danced across her bottom lip. “Maybe I’ll ask the new manager to call me that name.”
The world turned a dangerous color of red, blood pumping in waves behind his eardrums. James had traversed the room to tower over Lita without a conscious decision. Inside him, something shook, a rattle of chains against a cage, warning him to pull back, but he couldn’t. Couldn’t. Visions of another man’s hands on Lita’s skin were all he could process. James’s hands circled her biceps, lifting her off the bed and tossing her backward into the mattress’s center, finding perverse pleasure in the way her little figure bounced, green eyes widening.
James crawled over Lita, the bed dipping beneath his knees. “The new manager is a woman. Did you think for a second, after everything, that I would overlook a detail so important?” He planted his fists on either side of her head, every inch of his skin feeling raw, exposed. I’m starving . “I had no plans to manage a band. Not until you. Now I’ve spent the last four years deciding where you slept. Where you ate. It’s not normal. Not good for you.”
“James,” she whispered, falling back on the bed beneath him. “We?—”
“Stop.” He devoured the indentation of her belly button with his gaze, the slope of her ribcage. God, he would sell his soul for a single lick. To feel that shudder against his tongue. “These things I do to keep control, to keep you in places that allow me to sleep at night…that need only grows. Eventually I would stop you from being Lita and you would hate me for it. I would hate me, too.”
“I couldn’t.” She turned her head and laid her lips on his forearm, severing his heart in eighteen places. “I push you to it. I’ll stop. I promise I’ll stop pushing if you stay. If you just…kiss me, you’ll know that everything is going to be fine. Please? ”
Begging was so uncharacteristic for Lita, so unusual, that James wasn’t prepared for the pleasure that skated over his senses like a revelation. He loved hearing her pleas? God, what a sickness he had. “I want bad things.” Was that his voice? “ Need them.”
Lita pushed up on her elbows, bringing their mouths close. “Bring it.”
Her husky challenge untethered urges he’d held in check too long. Electric energy scratched at the insides of his veins, an unnamed force gripping him by the nape. If he didn’t release some of the mounting pressure, he would implode. What was left of his common sense twisted around, turned inside out, reasoning that if he exposed some of the need to Lita, she would make this easer. She would stop begging him to finally fuck her and start begging him to leave.
Too late to turn back . Coming to his knees above her, James curled his right hand around her throat, exerting just enough pressure to keep her still. Pink, teeth-marked lips popped open to suck in a breath. A breath James could feel being inhaled against his palm. So perfect. “There’s my little plaything.” He adjusted his grip. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”
Lita’s eyelids fluttered down to conceal her gaze, an acknowledgment of the pet name he’d growled in her ear so long ago in the dark. Just once. But it had been enough to remain poised on his tongue ever since, pleading to be uttered aloud.
James leaned down to inspect the curve of her cheek. “If another man called you his plaything, Lita, I would gut him.”
Beneath him, Lita’s stomach dipped and lifted, making contact with his abdomen and calling attention to the position of his ready cock. A few quick maneuvers of their clothing and he’d be seated in her look-but-do-not-touch pussy. And Christ , he’d looked. She’d paraded that sweet spot around him in every manner of thin material known to man. Spandex, ripped denim, threadbare cotton. Just for his eyes. His torment.
“You haven’t been fucked since we met. I’ve seen to it. Do you know how?” Damning himself, James dropped his hips into the cradle of her thighs, choking back the moan that emerged from his mouth, savoring the answering moan Lita let loose. “I put the fear of God into them. I paid them to fuck off. I’ve used my fists on a few that proved…overeager. Whatever it took.”
Craving the sight of her body, James released her throat and trailed fingertips down the center of her chest, tracing the front snap of her bra. His mouth turned to a desert at the idea of sucking her nipples, but no… no , that would be too sweet. Too pleasurable. She would like it. And his mission was to make her understand. This…him…was not what she wanted. With regret screaming in his head, James trailed his fingers lower, down her trembling belly, to tuck inside the waistband of Lita’s jeans. Not here, either. No touching here.
“Who’s going to stop them now?” Her winded—and somewhat hesitant?—
question interrupted his fevered thoughts. “The men. Who will stop them?”
Fuuuuck. The denim ripped inside his shaking fist, his rebelling mind demanding more of the satisfying sound. He yanked down the zipper behind her already tattered fly, giving himself a leveraging handhold before tearing the jeans down her body. It left the very tops of her thighs exposed, along with the little white triangle of her panties. “Stop provoking me.”
“No,” Lita breathed. “I won’t .”
Feeling the remaining threads of his control begin to fray, James slipped a hand over her mouth to silence her. Show her. Show her you’re an animal. “Don’t make a sound,” James rasped into her hair, rubbing his open mouth over the soft strands. He shoved her thighs apart with his knees and bore down hard, pumping dry against her barely covered pussy. “If you scream or try to fight me, you’ll only make it worse for yourself.”
Lita’s body went still as death beneath him. This was it. Finally over. Four years of trying to be someone she could count on, someone she could feel safe with against all odds, and he’d ruined everything. Even though that had been his goal, the reality was like razor blades?—
She began to struggle, hips jerking in an obvious attempt to buck him off. James’s head flew up, horror puncturing his sternum. Oh God, but there was more. More. An urge to pin down her writhing form that swarmed his head, buzzing like a colony of bees. His girl wanted to be free of him? Wanted other men to call her pet names? Didn’t she know his sanity would bleed out through his ears?
Get off her. You have to get off.
Lita’s knee came up and dug into his ribs, making him grunt. Why were her eyes closed? If she would just look at him—what? Would he reassure her as always? No, it would be false. This was the man she’d been sharing oxygen with, and it was time she knew. He’d been picturing this scene since day one. Seal the deal.
James released her covered mouth, wincing when her breath emerged labored, her hands flying to his shoulders, fingers digging in hard . “James, please .”
“Did you think I was being noble? Simply giving your body a chance to mature?” He pinned her flailing wrists on either side of her hips, trailing rough kisses between her breasts, down her stomach to end at her mound. His hungry lips hovered there a moment to pay homage, to warm the sacred flesh with a release of breath. “Jesus, Lita. When we met, you barely looked old enough to have your driver’s license. And still— still —I did those bad things to you in the dark. Didn’t I?”
Above him, Lita whimpered. Again, she attempted to free herself, but he held fast. “Wait, I…I?—”
“You should have known back then I was an indecent man.” He licked her pussy through the white cotton panties, groaning when his cock throbbed. Inflicting pain on himself, he licked Lita’s covered perfection again and again, like she was a fucking ice cream cone. Dragging himself away from her taste made him crazed. Mine. It tastes like mine. “All this time, you’ve treated me like a protector.” He pushed her thighs open. “But I was the one you should have been afraid of.”
“N-no, I’m not.”
Liar . Her quavering voice was a dead giveaway. That was her stubbornness talking, her inability to lose a battle. Finish it. James widened his jaw and dropped his teeth down over her pussy, covering as much as his mouth would allow. Which due to her petite body was—fucking hell— all of it. He didn’t bite right away, wanting to feel her reaction. Wanting to feel her realization of James is going to bite me between my legs . Her limbs were shaking in his hands, tiny gasps sparking in the air around them. In degrees, he closed his teeth, tighter and tighter until she screamed.
“ James! ”
At the desire brought flooding forth by Lita’s panicked cry, shame rocked him. Hard. What am I doing? What am I doing to this incredible girl? She’d trusted him. She’d let him be a part of her life. He’d caged her brilliance and since walking into this room, he’d dragged her into his twisted mind, kicking and— screaming .
James was off the bed and across the room in seconds. “I’m sorry. Goddammit .” Hands braced on his hips, he faced the door. Couldn’t look or her disgust, fear, disappointment, would haunt him the rest of his life. “I never want to hurt you, Lita. No one should ever hurt you.”
“Don’t you dare leave now,” she sobbed behind him. “Don’t you dare .”
He almost laughed, but it would have ruptured the organs left functioning inside him. The girl was too fearless for her own good. Did she think she could talk him through this and fix him? Yes, she likely did. Likely thought he just needed a mental ass kicking to pull his shit together. And then…God, she would forgive him for what he’d just done—holding her down and acting out his darkest fantasy. No way he’d ever be able to live with her apology, the added self-hatred that would follow. “I know it’s hard to believe a word I say after what I just did. But until this morning, everything I’ve ever done was in your best interest. Please believe that. You’re going to be better—safer—without me.”
“ No. Don’t?—”
“Good-bye, Lita.
Feeling as though he’d been submerged in water, James staggered from the hotel room, sweat breaking out along his forehead and upper lip. It hurt leaving her, hurt to increase the distance. Every. Step. Hurt. Felt wrong. Knowing Lita would follow him, James skipped the elevator and took the stairwell. His phone began buzzing before he’d even left the hotel. Knowing it was Lita and he couldn’t answer, James nonetheless pulled out his phone just to see her name on the screen. But it wasn’t Lita at all, the actual identity of the caller slowing his step. After a slight hesitation, he answered.
“Mother.”