Chapter 7
IAN
Light pressed against my eyelids like a weight. Typically, I didn’t even feel like opening my eyes in the morning, preferring the absolution of sleep, but this morning a different feeling pricked my consciousness. I peeled one eye open, and memories and feelings flooded my senses as I pushed the reddish-brownish hair out of my face. Ivy.
I'd had just about the best sex of my life last night, fueled by my craving to make this woman all mine. I did a quick check under the covers just to make sure the mermaid on my pelvis hadn’t come to life in my arms. Or, wait, I’d called her a fairy, not a mermaid. God, she must think I’m a right git.
All I knew was the minute I saw her grappling with that cardboard hunk with the flowing blond hair, I’d had an overwhelming urge to meet her, talk to her, kiss her. I couldn’t explain it, even to myself. I’d examined the feeling yesterday—I’d become an expert in examining my feelings lately—and faced the harsh reality that maybe I just wanted to fuck her.
I hadn’t lied to her. It had been a while since I’d had sex and a long while since I’d had sober sex. But as the day wore on, and we talked and spent time together, I knew my desire ran deeper than a quick smash. I hadn’t even planned to make any moves on her, but God, those lips cried out to be kissed, those tits begged to be shaped by my hands, that wild hair demanded to be tamed by my fingers.
Now I had a problem. I didn’t deserve someone like her, especially after what she’d gone through with her father. My therapist would dub her a co-dependent, someone with a scarred childhood intent on recreating that childhood and fixing it with another addict. Dr. Lyman would warn me away from someone like Ivy. But did Ivy even know about my...issues?
She didn’t seem to know that much about me beyond my days with Five2Go. But what was there beyond my boyband days to know? I hadn’t seemed able to move past them, myself, except in the most destructive and detrimental ways.
Just one more day with her. I was returning to England tomorrow. I could spend another day with her, and then go back to...what? Back to making an uninspired record with no motivation or vision behind it. Back to threats from my record label. Back to my feelings of shame around my daughter.
One more day. I brushed Ivy’s tangle of curls to the side and kissed the back of her neck.
She sighed and wriggled her bum against my cock, making it harder than it already was waking up beside her.
I curled an arm around her and rolled one of her nipples between my thumb and forefinger. She squirmed some more. I wanted to explore every inch of her body, part by part. I wanted to find all her hot spots and tease them just to watch the ecstasy play across her face.
Reaching back, she hit me in the nose before she found the top of my head and ran her fingers through my hair. She murmured something indistinguishable, but it didn’t sound like no.
I pulled away from her for a second to grab the condoms I’d thrown onto the nightstand. I didn’t need them—clean and sober in rehab meant clean and sober, abstinence from everything. Last night had been the first time I’d had sex in about six months, not that I was keeping track. And not that I'd expected her to believe me. Hell, I wouldn’t believe me.
When I rolled back toward her placing my hand on her hip, she scooted away from me, almost to the edge of the bed. I bit my lip. Maybe she’d fully awakened and changed her mind. Maybe she regretted last night.
Closing my eyes, I took a shaky breath through my nose. Would be tough to come down from my arousal, but she’d probably thought twice about getting involved with me any further. I couldn’t blame her there. I could knock one out in the shower.
Then she put her hand on mine and pulled my arm around her waist. She sighed. “I can’t help myself. I want you so badly.”
I didn’t want any misunderstandings, so I asked, “Is that a green light?”
“All systems ready for takeoff, baby.”
I smiled against her back. She said the craziest things sometimes, but she’d called me baby and any part of my hard-on I’d lost came roaring back. She also hadn’t turned around, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t make her come.
My hand skimmed down her belly to her smooth pussy, and I slipped my finger inside her foof, already wet and warm. She uttered a perfect little cry and closed around me. With the pad of my thumb, I stroked her clit, and she rocked against my dick with a soft moan.
Replacing my finger with my cock, I entered her from behind, stroking the same rhythm as my thumb. Her legs trembled, and she curled her toes against my shin. In a jerky movement, she pushed back on me, and then she lunged forward and froze, as if suspended. When she crashed, she slammed her bum against my pelvis and came unraveled.
Her orgasm brought me to my own brink, but as I pumped her from behind, I felt a sense of frustration. This feeling had come over me last night, too, the sense that I had to get closer to her, deeper.
I eased her onto her stomach, while she was still writhing from her climax. When I fully entered her, she grabbed the headboard with both hands, her knuckles turning white. I needed to go deeper now, now. “Now.”
Every muscle in my body seized, and then I shattered. My release washed over me, and my arms, braced on either side of Ivy, shook. I felt as if I’d transferred every bit of my power into her, and I collapsed on top of her, too weak to move.
My thundering heart pounded against her back, and her delicate frame trembled beneath me, my hot breath stirring her hair. Our sweat mingled, making us one, and I felt our connection with every fiber of my being.
As my cock twitched inside her, and a sucked her earlobe between my lips, Ivy let out a little squeak. “You’re squishing me.”
I flipped onto my back and patted her nice, round bottom. “Sorry, baby. Good morning.”
Still gripping the headboard, she turned her face toward me, her hair covering one eye. “That was the best wake-up call I’ve ever gotten. Can I turn you into an alarm clock and keep you next to my bed? Instead of hands on a clock, it can have cocks on a clock. Get it?”
Her whole body shook at her ridiculous joke, and she actually snorted into her pillow.
“You are silly.”
I ran over the knots in her spine with my knuckle. “I just thoroughly fucked you, and you’re making dumb jokes.”
“C’mon. That was funny.”
As she rolled over onto her side, I disposed of the condom on a coaster on the nightstand. Better than tossing it onto the floor.
I lay back beside her, and she pressed her body against me, entwining her leg around mine. She dabbled her fingers on my chest and planted kisses on my shoulder as I buried my hand in her wild hair, massaging her scalp with my fingertips.
“That bit of mighty almost didn’t happen. I thought you were going to change your mind. Y-you pulled away from me.”
Drawing a circle around my nipple, she said, “I almost did change my mind. I was just thinking about how you’re leaving tomorrow, and how this was just a one-night stand—a very nice one, but yeah.”
She had a catch in her voice, and I kissed her temple. “Did this feel like a one-night stand to you?”
“Doesn’t matter what it felt like, does it?”
She screwed up one side of her mouth. “You’re a famous popstar, and you’re going back to England tomorrow, back to your real life.”
“My real life.”
I didn’t even know what real life was, anymore. I’d squandered opportunities and relationships and had fallen so far from my dreams, I had a hard time remembering what they were.
She studied me from beneath her long lashes, her lips parted, as if in anticipation. Did she expect me to tell her how wonderful I had it? Money, fame, adoration. Bitches and watches, as my bandmate, Charlie, once said. I had all that...and nothing at all.
I didn’t want to go back to England tomorrow. I didn’t want to leave her. I felt a cavernous ache at the thought of walking away from Ivy and never seeing her again. But if I did want to see her again, I’d have to be honest with her.
I met her hazel eyes, still assessing me, and then looked away. I opened my mouth once. Snapped it shut. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath.
“I’m at a bit of a crossroads right now in my life.”
I stopped and chewed on my thumbnail. She waited.
“I...umm, I was in rehab for three months. Got out about two months ago. I’m an alcoholic.”
I held my breath and slid a quick glance at her.
She hadn’t moved a muscle. Didn’t recoil. Didn’t blink. Didn’t pull away.
“Made kind of a disaster of things and don’t really know where I am right now.”
Her chest rose and fell. “I know.”
Her words punched me in the gut, and I pulled away from her. “You know? You knew I was in recovery and offered me your roommate’s wine yesterday and suggested I get a beer with dinner? That’s fucked up.”
I bolted from the bed and searched the floor wildly for my jeans. They lay in a heap at the foot of the bed, and I grabbed them. I was so sick of this shit. So tired of the users and the hangers-on and the exploitative nature of people. Ivy seemed different. They all seemed different. Until they weren’t.
Pulling the covers up to her chin, she watched me with wide eyes, her cheeks pink. “I-I didn’t know you were in recovery when I offered you the booze.”
I tilted my head back and laughed at the ceiling with a harsh, strangled cry from my throat. “So, what? You learned about my situation overnight, whilst you slept, through osmosis or something?”
I practically ripped my jeans apart, trying to turn them right-side out.
Ivy scrambled across the bed on her hands and knees and grabbed me around the waist, pressing her soft breasts against my back. “Stop a minute and let me explain—please.”
I stood frozen as she splayed her hands across my chest, placing one over my bruised heart. She pressed her nose between my shoulder blades.
“I didn’t know any of that, yesterday. I was a fan of Five2Go when I was a teenager, but I think I mentioned that I hadn’t really followed your solo careers, just heard some songs here and there from all of you. I don’t read celebrity gossip. My social media, when I remember it, is mostly about my books and other people’s books.”
She had mentioned that. I dropped my tangled jeans on the floor.
“But when I saw you with your fans yesterday on the pier, I felt kinda stupid. They knew more about you than I did.”
Her voice softened to a whisper. “I remembered you had a daughter, but I didn’t know anything about your career or your struggles.”
Now she knew about Thea and about my issues, and she’d see me for what I was—a terrible father.
“Sit down. If you wanna leave after I speak, then whatever.”
She pulled me back toward the bed, and I sat on the edge, next to her, elbows on my knees, hands clenched in my hair. “After we...had sex and you fell asleep, I looked you up on my phone. I saw everything then.”
Talking to the floor, I said, “That’s why you pulled away from me this morning. You’d already made one mistake sleeping with a loser and didn’t want to compound the error.”
“I don’t think you’re a loser.”
She traced a finger over one of the tattoos on my arm. “I think you’re incredibly strong. You’ve been sober for five months. That’s a huge accomplishment.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. God, if I cried in front of her, I’d lose my man-card forever. “But your father was an addict—different kind, same mindset. Don’t tell me you didn’t have those thoughts when you read about my fuckups.”
“I did, and you’re right. That caused me some hesitation this morning, but you’re not my father. He never tried to recover from his addictions. Never tried to be better.”
She rested her head on my shoulder. “If you don’t mind my asking, when did you start drinking to excess?”
Without raising my head, I answered. “Probably about the time we started touring, I mean the big tours. We were still underaged, and management really didn’t know what to do with us, so they locked us in the hotel rooms, but they didn’t bother to clear out the minibars. I must’ve tried every kind of booze in the minibar in hotels all around the world. It was also a way to unwind after a concert. We’d be all hyped up on stage, performing for 60,000 fans, and then the lights would go out and the crowd would go home, and we had to go back to the hotel...and silence and loneliness.”
“Do any of the other guys have issues with alcohol? Let’s see if I can remember. Charlie, Sam, Javeed, and Conor.”
She tapped my arm as she mentioned each of my Five2Go bandmates.
“Not really. We all dealt in our own ways. Had our own issues.”
Truth was, I didn’t know how the boys were doing these days. I sat up and thrust three fingers in the air. “This is number three for me. I’ve tried rehab twice before. What do you Yanks say? Three strikes and you’re out?”
“We also say, third time’s a charm.”
She grabbed my fingers and kissed the tips. “I’m sorry I offered you that booze. Are you still upset with me?”
“Why didn’t you just tell me this morning that you knew?”
“Didn’t want it to ruin the moment, honestly.”
She clambered into my lap, straddling me. “And I wanted you to tell me yourself. Why didn’t you mention it yesterday? Would’ve been the perfect time when I offered you the wine.”
“To echo you, I didn’t want to ruin the moment. I don’t want to put any pressure on you, but for the first time in a really long time, I didn’t have any cravings yesterday. The only craving I had was for your body.”
As I kissed her mouth, I dropped back onto the bed, taking her with me.
She stared into my face, her nose almost touching mine. “All this doesn’t change the fact that you’re leaving tomorrow, right?”
I placed my hands on her bum and squeezed her soft flesh. “Do you want me to stay?”
Her eyelashes fluttered. “Could you?”
“Would you want me to if I could?”
“If I wanted you to, would you want to? If you could?”
“This is getting confusing.”
I smiled as I kissed her kissable lips. “I could stay for another few weeks, and I want to. Stay. Here. With you.”
“Good.”
She held my face in her hands and kissed me back.
I felt a surge of excitement that had nothing to do with her naked body lined up on top of mine—well, almost nothing. I just hoped I hadn’t made another big mistake in my life...in a long line of big mistakes.
***
When I got out of the shower, I put on my clothes from yesterday. I didn’t have a choice, but Ivy planned to drive me to the hotel to pick up my bags. Before agreeing to an extra few weeks in LA, I’d made sure I could stay with Ivy. There’s no way I could stay at the Beverly Hills Hotel with Jack gone. I hated staying in hotel rooms, had been in too many of them.
My manager had not been thrilled to learn that I’d decided to spend the next two weeks in LA with a woman I’d just met yesterday. Jack knew my pattern with women all too well—dive in deep, fast only to wake up months later with the realization that I didn’t even know these people, didn’t have anything in common with them, was bored in their company, and worse, I’d been functioning as their personal piggy bank and prop for clicks and likes on social media.
Meeting Ivy had sparked something different in my soul. Yeah, the sex was out of this world, but maybe it had been so hot because I felt this special connection with her—or maybe because I was sober.
I tied my shoes and looked for my T-shirt, then remembered Ivy had ripped it from my body in the other room. I poked my head out the bedroom door and heard Ivy singing in the kitchen. She really did have a nice voice, even if she wasn’t singing one of my songs.
I made a beeline for the chair where I’d draped our shirts last night.
“Oh, looking for this?”
Ivy danced forward, holding out the hem of my shirt that fell to her mid-thigh. “You can have it back when I take a shower.”
“Looks a lot better on you, anyway.”
I stepped into the kitchen and took her in my arms, kissing her sweet lips. “You taste like strawberries.”
She held up one finger. “There’s a reason for that. I made you a smoothie—strawberries, bananas, pineapple, spinach, and some other healthy stuff. Hope that’s okay. It’s what I usually eat for breakfast. I’m making toast, too, so you don’t starve.”
“You shouldn’t have gone to any trouble.”
I pivoted in the small kitchen. “I can make my own toast.”
“Sit down.”
She tapped the kitchen table set with placemats, a green concoction in a glass at the corner of one of the placements, and a vase of pink flowers in the center. “This kitchen is too small for multiple cooks. Coffee? Tea? I don’t drink coffee, but Chloe has a single-serve Keurig.”
I stood behind one chair and picked up the smoothie. “Tea, please.”
Ivy flitted around the kitchen and a few minutes later, she set a yellow plate in front of me with toast and handed me a mug of tea. “Sugar or...”
she gave a shudder “—milk? Both?”
“Black is good.”
I dredged the teabag in the hot water a few times before taking a sip and then sat down once I did. “This is all very domestic.”
She jerked her head up from her smoothie, a green moustache on her upper lip. “You don’t like it? You would’ve preferred to go out for breakfast. You probably wanted to eat breakfast at the Polo Lounge at the hotel.”
“No, no. Stop. This is fine. Thank you.”
I tapped my lip.
“What? You want a kiss now?”
She leaned forward and closed her eyes.
I kissed the smoothie from her mouth and licked my lips. “I was just telling you that you had some green sludge on your upper lip.”
Squealing, she grabbed her napkin and swiped it across her mouth. “You must think I’m a total idiot.”
“I think you’re adorable, and I wanted to kiss you, anyway.”
I crunched into a piece of toast. “What are we going to do today after I pick up my bags?”
“It’s a surprise. I get the feeling you didn’t see much of LA when you were living in Calabasas, so I’m going to give you an, I love LA tour for the next few weeks. How does that sound?”
She slurped some tea from her mug, her green eyes sparkling above the rim.
I didn’t need the tour. I’d decided I already loved LA.