Chapter 20 Roxie
Roxie
But she mostly rambled on about cooking. Little tips and tricks she had learned in the kitchen across decades. “The most important lesson I can teach you,” she said one Thanksgiving day, “is about the greatest spice of all. The one which enhances every single dish in this kitchen. Time.”
“Thyme?” I asked, reaching for the bottle in the cabinet and holding it up.
Nana gave a full-chested laugh. “Not thyme, darling. Time. When did I tell your mother I was serving dinner?”
“Four o’clock.”
“And what time is it now?” she asked.
I stood on my tip-toes so I could see the oven clock above a pot of boiling potatoes. “Almost five.”
“Exactly! Time is the greatest spice of all. If you make your guests wait a little while, smelling all the delicious smells from the kitchen, they’ll get hungrier. And when they do sit down to eat, the meal will taste twice as good because they had to wait.”
That lesson was true in cooking, and it was also true in romance.
Riot and I had been waiting for so long, sharing secret kisses and desperate touches wherever we could, that we were ravenous for each other by the time I walked into his hotel room. He threw me onto the bed, covered me with his warm body, and finally gave me what we’d both been waiting for.
It was raw and intense. Moving by instinct rather than thought, tearing at each other’s clothes and kissing wherever our lips touched. And as soon as he sank into me, I closed my eyes and surrendered to the mindless drive of our bodies.
Riot seemed distant as we cuddled afterward. Like he was lost in thought, staring up at the ceiling while his fingertips strummed along my back like I was a guitar made of flesh and bone.
“Whatchya thinking about?”
With my cheek against his chest, I felt him grunt more than I heard it. “Whether we should swap our opening song.”
“You don’t like the setlist?”
He shrugged. “I do. Just wondering if it can be improved.”
I lightly kissed his chest then looked up at him. “I think you’re overthinking things.”
“Hah. Probably.” His hand slid lower. “Right now I’m overthinking that ass.”
He gave my cheek a little squeeze, and I shook it for him.
“It’s yours to do whatever you want with,” I told him.
Suddenly he slid out from under me. I sat up and watched him walk across the room to retrieve his guitar, admiring the way his tattoos decorated his sinfully sexy body.
“Feel free to keep walking around naked.”
“Sorry. Gonna cover myself up in a second.”
“Boo!”
Riot pointed a finger at me in warning. “I don’t like being booed. Not even as a joke.”
“I find it hard to believe you’ve ever been booed before.”
He sat on the couch and draped the guitar across his lap.
“Six years ago. When I was still performing solo. It was a dive bar on Sixth Street in Austin. There must’ve been a convention in town or something, because everyone in that bar was wearing a cowboy hat.
The moment I started playing my guitar and they realized it wasn’t country music, they turned on me.
” He smiled. “I got to throw a glass at someone that night.”
“What!”
“Redneck prick threw something at me on stage. So I tossed back the rest of my whiskey and fastball’d it at the sonofabitch. Caught him right in the chest. Didn’t even break, just pissed him off. Had to flee out the back door. Hold on a second.”
He concentrated on the guitar, plucking a few notes and twisting the frets.
“I thought of this,” he said. “While squeezing your ass.”
Riot began playing the guitar, and I was immediately entranced. It was a slow, ballad-like melody that made me swoon like a superfan.
Then he ruined it by singing, “Beautiful ass I want to squeeze, beautiful ass I want to please, beautiful ass that brings me to my knees.”
I burst out laughing. “It was a sweet song until you started singing.”
“I’ll change the lyrics later.” He continued playing, just the notes this time. It was a simple tune, but hauntingly beautiful.
I clapped when he was done. “I didn’t think I’d get a private show tonight.”
“I’ll give you a private show whenever you want.” He stood up and struck a pose.
“That would be sexier if your dick wasn’t sticking out of the bottom of the guitar,” I teased.
“You mean that doesn’t make it sexier?” He frowned and looked down at himself. “This is an X-rated show that most fans don’t get to see.”
I rose from the bed and strolled toward him, swaying my hips just enough to make his eyes widen. “I’ll give you an X-rated show.”
He tossed the guitar back on the couch as I kissed him, pressing my entire nude body up against his so he could feel my warmth.
“You should probably head back down,” he whispered. “To your room.”
I groaned. “I was afraid you would say that. But you’re probably right. I told Vi I had to get some Skittles from the front desk. She bought it, but she’ll get suspicious if I’m gone for much longer.”
A distant look appeared in Riot’s dark eyes, like he was doing complex math in his head. Then he smiled and kissed me again, warm and passionate.
“Next hotel room is in Boston.”
“I’ll look forward to it,” I breathed.
“Oh, and you’d better take this.” He reached into the mini bar and handed me a crinkly package. “To, uh, maintain your alibi.”
I took the bag of Skittles. “Our room doesn’t have a mini bar. Just a coffee machine.”
“It pays to be the frontman,” he said with a wink.
Back in my room, Violet was sitting up in bed with a laptop and headphones on. When she saw me, she removed the headphone from one ear and said, “Was beginning to worry about you.”
“Oh, yeah, you know. Went down a rabbit hole with the guy at the front desk.”
“Totally.” She put the headphone back on and resumed watching her show.
She seemed skeptical of my excuse. But I was probably just being paranoid.