Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen
Nico
J J pushed me almost as hard as Prissy did, and that was saying something. Though I don’t think she realized she was doing it. While the doc made me suffer through the pain of dredging up my past as she pried relentlessly into the road that led us together, the pain JJ inflicted was much more acute. The chemistry between us was undeniable. But more than that, she was smart and kind to a fault and she pushed buttons I didn’t know I had, making me think and feel and—most painfully—want. All things that made wearing that damned wedding ring a dangerous bargain because I knew it was temporary. A facade for the media to buy me time to heal... but try telling that to my needy heart.
Today, after an early morning session with Doc Priss where she dipped her toes into my childhood bullshit, I shook it off with a walk by myself around the resort. With a beanie and a hoodie, nobody seemed to recognize me, so I was able to trek undisturbed, other than my tumbling thoughts.
Do you like yourself, Nico? Or is it possible that you’ve taken on your father’s anger and are wearing it like a suit of self-imposed hatred?
Doc’s words roll around in my brain like thousand-pound boulders. I’d scoffed, my automatic reply that of course I liked myself. What kind of question was that? I had it all. The career I’d sought after my whole life. More money than I needed. Great friends. Still, my therapist had seen right through all of it, to the heart of the matter, and I hadn’t had to say a thing.
Did I like myself?
No. Why would I? I was an epic fuckup. The only things I was good for were banging on some drums and a few laughs—often at my expense. I wasn’t the serious guy. The one anyone asked his opinion or valued his insight because he didn’t have any. The good-time guy.
Ignoring and overriding any sort of feeling served a purpose... until it didn’t. Now I was running headlong into some painful shit and it hurt like a bitch, and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I’d given more than a passing thought to ditching this place for the bar down the road.
But I didn’t.
I pushed on because I’d promised, and I wanted to believe I could do better. Be better. If not for myself, then for the woman upstairs with the sparkling blue eyes who seemed to believe I could do it.
My feet crunched beneath me on the cold ground and I focused on the trees and the cold air blowing across my skin. A bird chirped above me as sunlight filtered down. It was a beautiful day now that the storm from last night had passed. Definitely not worthy of my emo thoughts.
“Did you do something you love yesterday?” Doc had asked me this morning.
I told her about my keyboard, and she’d smiled at me, her expression pleased if a bit surprised, as if she suspected I wouldn’t listen.
“How did it feel?”
“Good.” And it did. Even later, I found myself humming the tune I’d been playing as it fine-tuned itself in my mind. My fingers itched to get back to it, but also to get back to the book I’d been listening to with JJ. Not so much because I liked the story—it was alright—but because I was enjoying watching JJ enjoy it. Her furrowed brow as she tried to solve the mystery that was so damn obvious, her little gasps at the twists and turns, the way she wide-eyed me when something exciting happened. And the way she shared... I mean stole... my snacks. Adorable. I couldn’t wait for her to do it again.
I was whistling on the elevator ride up to our room, snacks in hand. I let myself in our room, ready to tease her again about that murdering husband, when I froze in my tracks and so did she.
Obviously, she hadn’t expected me back so soon because I caught her fresh out of the shower, still damp and wrapped in a towel, that liquid gold scent so strong it almost knocked me to my knees.
The door snapped shut behind me as we stared at each other. Her wide-eyed with a hand to her heaving chest, water dripping down her silky skin. Me with my heart jackhammering against my sternum like a freight train, all ability for speech ripped from my now dry throat.
“You brought Cheez-Its?” she finally said.
“I did.” I lifted my goodies. “And trail mix.”
She narrowed her eyes at the bags in my hand. “Is it spicy?”
I nodded, suppressing a smile because I knew from her airport binge it was a fan favorite.
“For me?”
“No. For me.” I sat on the couch and popped open a bag. “And for you to steal from me as per your wife privileges while we continue listening to your predictable freaking book.”
She stared at me for a long moment, then she burst out laughing. “Well, why didn’t you say so?” She spun toward the bedroom. “Give me a minute to get dressed.”
“Don’t go to any trouble on my account...” I waited until she shot me a look over her shoulder, then I gave her a wink. “Wife privileges include clothing optional.”
She shook her head and closed herself into the room while I huffed out a laugh and adjusted myself in my jeans because, well, I was a man with eyeballs.
Two hours later, we were laid out on the couch, her feet propped on my lap, all snacks demolished, as we hit the halfway point of the audiobook.
I sipped my Gatorade, then offered it over.
She accepted it without missing a beat and sipped, her attention focused on the narrator.
I bit back a smile, loving this. This easiness that had seemed to develop overnight between us. It didn’t feel forced. It just was. Sure, the sexual chemistry was enough to spontaneously combust us both at times, but when we kept things friendly? It was perfect. It was like nothing I had ever really seen between a man and a woman before, and definitely not my folks. And it dawned on me that was just sad. Had they ever hung out, shared food, and just... liked each other?
JJ’s gaze skated my way during a chapter break as if she’d sensed my mind wandering, and she hit pause. “You okay?”
“Yup.”
“We can turn this off,” she said, pulling her feet out of my lap and sitting up straight. “I can work if you have something else you want to do.”
“No, it’s not that...” I rolled my head in a circle and flexed my fingers on my thighs, debating what to say. I loved to live dangerously, but in this case, the truth seemed a bit too treacherous.
“Then what? You finally realizing it wasn’t the husband?” She tilted her head and smiled at me with those damn sparkling eyes that reminded me of the Caribbean Sea at midday when the sun hit it just right, creating a blue more brilliant than any sapphire.
Slowly, I shook my head, and the smile dropped off her face as I leaned her way, a feral instinct in my body taking over as the ‘fuck it’ attitude that had led me to become a famous drummer took over. “No,” I breathed, watching her lick her lips. “Just realizing that I really, really ...” I was so close I could feel her warm breath fan across the flesh of my chin. “...like my wife.”
“Nico.” My name was a whisper, a plea, as she gripped my biceps and stared into my eyes.
“I’m going to kiss you,” I said, more warning than promise, and definitely more than friendly.
She blinked, then nodded, her hands sliding up to tunnel through my hair as she tugged me closer the moment my lips met hers.
I wasted no time pressing her to her back and seating myself between her legs, leaving no room for question where I wanted to be as I ground my hardness into her core, making her moan into my mouth as I swiped my tongue along hers.
I kissed her like I owned her, ravaging her mouth, then dipping down to nip at her jaw, her throat, and collarbone. The way she responded, writhing and groaning, it was like she’d never been touched before, and that lit me up in all kinds of new ways.
I cupped one breast in my palm and ran my thumb over her nipple, feeling it respond even through the fabric of her hoodie and bra.
She cried out and dragged my mouth back to hers like she needed my kiss. Needed me. And that? That had me feeling things I had no business feeling. Sensations were swirling in my heart and in my head at the speed of light, making me dizzy and crazy in all the best ways, and I couldn’t get enough.
I tugged at the edge of her hoodie. “Off.”
I had my hands on the soft skin of her ribs as she moved to let me remove her sweater just as her phone began to ring from the table next to us, thundering through the moment.
I felt her freeze up beneath my touch, the warm, pliable woman disintegrating immediately as the moment died a cold death.
“That’s my dad’s ringtone,” she whispered.
I dropped my forehead to hers. “Fuck.”
She didn’t respond to that as I moved off her and adjusted myself while she answered the phone, remarkably calm, considering I was just about to have her naked.
“Hey, Dad.” Her gaze skittered my way. “What’s going on?” She listened for a beat, her expression growing pinched and angry.
“He’s doing fine. Why?”
I perked up, trying to hear what he was saying through the earpiece, but only hearing his garbled voice. It was clear by JJ’s body language, though, that something was amiss.
She squeezed her eyes closed and shook her head as she listened. “We came here for a month so he could take care of...” She sucked in a deep breath. “I went from fake girlfriend to wife—” He cut her off and her eyes slid open. “What more do they want? A baby?”
I flinched as she stood and paced. What the hell could this be about? I grabbed my phone and opened it up. A few texts and alerts, but nothing that seemed suspicious. I opened my social media accounts and looked for anything that could upset her like this. Tons of posts about our wedding, some puff pieces about my bride being a beauty queen, one story comparing JJ to Cohen’s lady, Georgia, and a couple things about Zero Energy’s upcoming album. Nothing crazy.
She glanced down at her phone screen, then shook her head. “It’s nothing. A fan at the resort asked him for a photo and an autograph. I was there. They photoshopped the picture to make it look like something more and are trying to make a story out of it. They have nothing. Tell them to go screw themselves.”
I frowned, vaguely remembering the lady who snubbed JJ in the resort restaurant. She was taking that photo and... what? I walked over and held out my hand, silently demanding the phone.
JJ glanced up at me, confused.
“Gimme the phone. I want to talk to Dave.”
“I—”
I pried the phone from her and hit the speaker button as her dad was mid-rant.
“Hey, Dave,” I cut him off. “What’s the story?”
Her father took a breath, clearly surprised I’d intervened on what was supposed to be a business call. Guess he forgot I was the business. “The office got a message regarding a photo of you and some woman. She claims it’s proof you’ve already been unfaithful to JJ. She’s demanding payment to keep it quiet or she goes to the press.”
“You have the photo?”
JJ nodded and showed me the pic her dad had texted over. She was right. It was the same woman from the resort, but the image had been altered to make it look like we were in a much more intimate setting.
“JJ’s right,” I said. “It’s a fake. Do you have someone who can prove it?”
“I do, but it’ll take time, and she’s threatening to go live with it in the next forty-eight hours if we don’t comply.”
“How much is she asking for?”
“Two hundred and fifty thousand.”
I lifted a brow. “That’s a whole lot more than she’ll probably get from the magazines for it.”
“She’s gambling.”
“Well—”
“Take me off speakerphone, Nico,” Dave said.
I glanced at JJ, who was frowning heavily at me, clearly irritated that this business call was getting hijacked as I took the call off speaker and pressed the phone to my ear. “Yeah?”
“You know I have to ask you. Is the photo really faked? Or did you fuck around with this woman?”
“Are you serious right now?”
“I’ll take care of it either way,” he went on, his voice neutral and all business. “But I need to know the truth so I can deal with it appropriately. So, did you or did you not break the rules and fuck around with a groupie?”
Heat unfurled in my chest and roared up my throat to my face. I should’ve told him to go fuck himself. But some of my anger was self-directed because I knew exactly why he was asking. I had a reputation. Hell, it was why I was there. “First of all, Dave, she wasn’t a groupie.” I tried to catch JJ’s gaze, but she was locked on to something out the window. “And second, between all the mandatory kumbaya shit you have me doing with Doc and my new acting role as husband of the year, I don’t really have time for fucking around.”
Dave released a breath. “Well, I just had to ask. I’ll figure something out.”
“Why don’t you start with the security cameras here at the resort, if they’ll let you see the footage? Should be easy enough to see us on there taking the photo and disprove her story, or at least call her bluff by telling her you have the footage.”
JJ’s eyes finally slid my way, and I winked. What? Were they surprised I was good for something else besides drumming and drinking?
“That’s actually a good idea, Nico,” Dave said. “I’ll look into it. Thanks.”
“No problem.”
I handed him off to JJ and made myself comfortable back on the couch while I waited for her to hang up. When she finally faced me again, I said the first thing that popped into my mind. “Go out with me.”
She tilted her head, confused. “Why?”
“So I can show off my wife.” I let my eyes slide over her from head to toe. “Shut down any bullshit stories that may come out about me wanting another woman. Ever.”
She sucked in a breath. “We’re supposed to be keeping this professional.”
I rose and sauntered her way, watching as her breath became stilted the closer I got, then stalling as I cupped her chin and ran my thumb over her bottom lip. “Admit it, JJ. We’re dying to get naked and consummate this marriage for real...” My gaze dipped down to her mouth as she licked her lip near my finger. “So I’m pretty sure that means we’ve blown way past professional.”