Chapter 10
Derek
My toes catches on the lip of the threshold as I stumble inside.
“You good?” Drew asks. Tonight, since we went out in a group, Drew and Samson tagged along.
“Yeah, man.” I wave him off and shut the front door. Splaying my hand against the wall, I keep myself upright.
Fuck. My head spins and my vision blurs. I blink to clear my eyes.
Fucking Flip and his parties. The drugs are always pure as hell. The women, so goddamn sexy, they look photoshopped. Smooth skin, glittering eyes, curves that beg to be rocked. Grasped. Bodies meant for fucking.
I drop my head back against the wall.
And none of them get under my skin, mentally work me up, the way Allegra does.
None of those girls hold a fucking candle to a little star like you.
It was true four years ago and it’s still true now.
Jesus. I smack a palm against my cheek, as if I could slap the deranged, wayward thoughts from my mind.
Do not think about Allegra Rousell.
She’s a fucking kid. She’s Levi’s sister. She’s good and authentic and fucking perfect.
I make my way toward the kitchen, toeing off my shoes as I go. I toss my phone and wallet onto the butcher block island and nearly have a heart attack when I look up.
“Jesus!” I wheeze, a hand coming to the center of my chest. “What the hell are you doing in here? In the goddamn dark?” I bark.
Allegra stands quietly beside the stove, her hand wrapped around the handle of a mug. The kettle is heating on the stove and she’s waiting patiently, quietly, for the whistle to wheeze.
“Just making tea,” she replies softly. She turns her attention back to the kettle, dismissing me and my anger.
I frown, trying to figure out what’s wrong, what’s off, in this scenario.
Allegra, recently clad in clothes that highlight her tight body, is swimming in baggy pajama pants and a T-shirt that hits her mid-thigh. Her long hair is damp in some places, gently curling in others.
“Allegra,” my voice is hard.
She drags her eyes to mine, slowly turning her neck.
I swear when I note the puffiness of her eyelids, the red that rings her chocolate irises. “Were you crying?” I sound accusatory.
She sighs, flips off the gas, and pours steaming water into her mug. “Good night, Derek.” She picks up her mug and makes to move past me.
“Wait.” I snatch her wrist. She fumbles the mug and places it on the island, shaking out her fingers as a droplet of hot water lands on the back of her hand. My eyebrows pull together. “Are you okay?”
She snorts and shakes her hand again. “Fine. It barely got me.”
“Not the tea,” I growl.
She gives me her eyes and the melancholy in their depths is crushing. I feel it to my core, a quiet pain, a desperate hurt, a kind of lost I’ve spent most of my life existing in.
But Allegra isn’t supposed to experience that.
Allegra is too big, too good, too fucking special for the jaded world I know.
“What happened?” My voice sounds half-strangled.
She shakes her head. “Nothing. What would happen in your beautiful home to the most inexperienced woman you know?”
I rear back at the glint of anger in her eyes, at the crack of her words.
But I’m too drunk to sort out her meaning. Fuck, am I blitzed. I hang my head, trying to shore up my defenses, trying to formulate something half intelligent to say.
Her wrist feels delicate in my grasp. Flimsy. Fragile.
Her scent, light and soft and natural, messes with my cognitive abilities. Her presence tosses me off-balance. The heat of her skin soaks into my palm and I want to feel it everywhere. Want to hold her, press my body up against hers, bury myself inside.
Fuck. I shake my head. What the hell am I thinking?
She moves to pull away and my neck snaps up, my eyes finding hers.
Allegra pauses, gasping at whatever she reads on my face.
Can she see the desperation I feel whenever she’s near? Can she tell I’m losing my fucking mind, knowing that she’s down the hall from my bedroom, her soft breathing a lullaby I never knew existed?
“Do you have any idea what you do to me?” I voice the question aloud. Too intoxicated, too tired, to care that I’m crossing the line I drew in the sand.
She lets out a shaky exhale and her breath, warm and sweet, trails over my chin. Her eyes hold mine. In their depths, a question swims and a challenge sparks.
I reach out. Drag my fingers through her silky strands, gently push them behind her ear, trace her delicate earlobe with the pad of my thumb.
Allegra shivers and I feel it travel through my veins like an electric shock.
“Allegra.” Her name is a moan on my lips. “Stellina.”
She bites her bottom lip and I audibly groan. She looks at me with naked curiosity, with a bite of hunger, in her gaze. A sweet face, a soft mouth and pleading, begging eyes.
And I fucking snap.
I step into her space, forcing her to shuffle back a step.
“Do you know that every woman I looked at tonight, I saw you?” I growl, advancing on her.
Her mouth drops open in a surprised O.
I snort. “Want to see that face for a different reason.”
Her eyebrows bend, confusion etched in her expression, before they lift in surprise.
I laugh. “Fuck, you’re sweet.”
Her back collides with the kitchen counter, and I step into her, drop her wrist to grasp her hip. Wrap my hand around her body and sink my fingertips into the extra material of the most hideous fucking pajama pants I’ve ever seen.
“Why’re you dressed like this?” I ask.
She shakes her head, as if she doesn’t understand my question.
“Doesn’t matter. I still want you, fucking crave you,” I admit.
“Reign,” she starts, and I hate that she doesn’t call me Derek. Especially when she never calls me Reign.
But she’s adding the distance we both know we need.
“You mad at me, Stellina?” I tip my head, studying her face, memorizing the shape of her mouth.
“I heard you. And Levi.” Her voice is scratchy, uncomfortable with the memory of her eavesdropping.
“You should’ve kept walking.”
“You shouldn’t have said it in the first place.” She swats my hand off her hip and straightens her spine.
The movement presses her breasts, soft swells I want to touch, to hold, to test the weight and rub circles around her nipples, into my chest. I lean into her, desperate to feel those pebbled peaks through the thin fabric of her T-shirt.
She gasps and I grin.
“None of those girls hold a fucking candle to a little star like you,” I slur, a memory, a reminder, a promise.
Then, I kiss her.
I take her parted lips between mine, press my arousal into her abdomen, dig my fingers into the dip of her waist, and kiss her.
She melts under my touch, and I groan in satisfaction. Stellina still harbors something for me. And fuck if I don’t want to devour her.
In a moment of weakness, lost in her softness, I kiss Allegra Rousell like she doesn’t have the power to upend my fucking life.
Like I won’t destroy her.
I kiss her hard, taking her mouth, nipping at her bottom lip, plunging my tongue into the depths of hers to tangle and taste and take.
Her fingers find my shoulders and curl into the material of my shirt, gripping.
I bend her like a bow, curving my body over hers, wanting to possess every fucking part of her.
Our kiss is sloppy. My mind is all over the damn place. My blood runs hot and my limbs buzz. Desire burns through me, burying reason and destroying logic.
Rational thought flees the kitchen and debased, desperate lust takes over.
Our kiss is passionate and wild. It’s heady and confusing and wrong on so many levels.
I drag my hand up her body, my thumb swiping over her right breast, until I cup her cheek and angle her face.
Allegra turns her head quickly, so my mouth lands on her cheek.
“You taste like whiskey,” she accuses me.
I snicker. “You taste like want, my little star.”
I watch her swallow travel down her throat.
Then, I turn her head back to me. I search her eyes. I don’t fucking blink as I lower my mouth to hers. Again, I kiss her.
But this time, it’s gentle. It’s sweet.
It’s so fucking reverent, it scares the hell out of me.
Allegra scares the hell out of me.
Her eyelids flutter closed. Her body slackens against mine. Her chest rises quickly, her heartbeat erratic against my torso.
The front door bangs open.
“Fuck, what a night!” Levi announces his arrival.
Allegra rips her mouth from mine and dips her head, hiding her face.
I swear and step away, letting her go and turning to block her from her brother.
Levi stumbles into the kitchen with Mav close behind.
“That was fucking epic!” He raises one fist in the air.
“He had the Jensen twins,” Mav explains, laughing. “You remember them? You fucked them after the concert in Amherst.”
I nod, recalling a blurry night with two blondes and too much coke.
Too late, I remember Allegra.
Spinning around, I frown at the empty kitchen.
She’s gone.
I glance at the island. So is her tea.
Allegra vanishes and I blink.
My mind clings to the image of her dark eyes and the taste of her mouth.
My palms tingle to feel her curves again.
“Fuck,” I mutter.
I want to plunder every part of Allegra’s body.
Then I want to shape her whole again.
And that is a big fucking problem. One I need to rectify in the morning, when I can see straight. Think rationally.
Remember my commitment to the band. My promise to myself not to snuff out the brightest star in the sky.