Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Not long later, after a hot bath that had turned into an even hotter makeout session, Jamie had to stop himself from going a few more rounds with Brinton. He needed to conserve energy for his last surprise.
He led her into his small recording studio downstairs and flipped a switch, triggering a set of dimmed lights in the ceiling.
Custom foam soundproofing panels were built into the walls, and from the ceiling, silver moonlight spilled from two huge skylights onto a patchwork of patterned rugs.
In the center of the room, there was a sleek black desk with an imposing computer setup that included two curved monitors and an intricately rigged microphone.
And along the walls, more than a dozen mounted guitars of all shapes and colors.
“This, as they say, is where the magic happens,” Jamie quipped. He strode toward the desk and sat down in the blue velvet wingback chair.
“Here I thought the bedroom had seductive powers,” Brinton said, gleefully falling onto a matching blue couch across from his desk.
He shamelessly enjoyed the way her breasts jiggled underneath his orange University of Tennessee T-shirt.
It definitely looked better on her.
“I started putting together this space a while ago, mostly to work out ideas on my own. I didn’t have the nerve to actually do it, until…”
He smiled shyly at her.
Knowingly, she grinned back at him. “Well, I’m happy to be of service. Every cowboy needs a muse.”
He smirked, then leaned back in his chair. “You do realize I sing country music, but I’m not, like, a cowboy, right? Couldn’t be more different.”
She pouted her full lips. He wanted to graze them with his teeth, then suck away the sting.
“Yeah, I don’t know about that. Cowboys and country boys both have an affinity for boots, wide-open spaces, and outlaw behavior. Oh, on occasion, honky-tonk badonkadonks. That’s according to my thorough Wikipedia research.”
“Ah, America’s most trusted news source.”
“It’s basically the U.S. Constitution at this point.”
“Can’t argue with that.”
She rolled onto her side, adorably propping her head against her bent arm. “How does it feel knowing that, this time next week, the album will be out? And you’ll be on a new path?”
“It feels like the start of forever,” he said, smiling fondly back at her.
“I like how that sounds.” She beamed.
“Can I—um…”
He shook his head and laughed, then tapped a few strokes on his illuminated keyboard. “Do you wanna hear something?”
Jamie spoke slowly, carefully working through what he’d practiced all day in his head. However, she’d never know it by how dramatically his brain glitched each time he opened his damn mouth.
“I wrote it…It’s—um—about you,” he stammered. “What you mean to me. It’s very different from anything you’ve heard from me before. But this is who I really am as an artist.”
“You…wrote a song about me?” she asked, sitting up now, her expression open and curious. His heart hummed at the sight.
He nodded. “It’s pretty rough. Actually, I finished it this morning, after I left you. I think it has great bones, but if it’s bad, you can tell me—”
“Jamie,” Brinton said earnestly, looking straight at him, truly seeing him, as she always did. “Nothing you do—or write—could be bad. It’s impossible.”
How did he get so damn lucky to find her?
He nodded, injected with the courage to keep going. “All right, then. It’s called ‘Eyes on Me.’”
She tucked her legs beneath her, clasped her hands, and smiled at him like she’d waited for this moment her entire life. It felt like he had.
He pressed play.
The demo was raw but felt more real than anything he’d ever recorded. Her expression shifted from surprise to something more delicate as his stripped-down vocals and mewing guitar enveloped them.
He stared at one of the computer monitors to give off the illusion that he wasn’t losing his damn mind, wondering if she liked it. Or hated it so much that she’d run out of his house in disgust. After what felt like the longest three minutes of his life, the music faded out.
He’d never written a song explicitly about a woman he was committed to, because this was the first time he’d committed. To make Brinton the exception felt right. More than right. It felt inevitable.
Jamie’s attention shifted back to the couch, but she wasn’t there.
Now, she stood directly in front of him.
She nudged a tear from her cheek, a little puffy and glossy in the low light, his shirt a little rumpled as it inched up her thighs.
Her braids hung loose, tumbling over her shoulders and chest with reckless abandon.
She never looked more beautiful.
“Jamie…I love it,” she whispered. “I can’t believe you did this for me.”
That’s all she could get out before he pulled her into his lap. Her thighs straddled his hips. Jamie wrapped his arms around her, like he’d rather be struck down dead than ever let her go.
Angling his jaw toward her, she kissed him hard, scorching him to the core.
“I’d do a lot for you, Bee,” he murmured through quick, desperate moans, unsatisfied with every second her taste wasn’t on his lips. His hands gripped her upper back, and her nipples grazed his bare chest through the well-worn T-shirt.
“I know,” she said urgently. When she tipped her head back, exposing her neck, he grazed the edge with his teeth until she rumbled against him.
Jamie was overwhelmed with gratitude. The song revealed to her, in the most intimate way he could, how she made him feel. How much he needed her in his life. And she had accepted him. He’d successfully carved out the rotten parts of himself.
He could still be a good man.
Pulling back, he cupped her face. “I wanna be yours. I wanna be so good to you.”
“Yeah, Jamie, you’re mine. Mine, mine, mine,” she affirmed, punctuating each word with a dizzying kiss. “And I’m yours.”
It was all he needed to hear. He dipped his hands underneath that threadbare shirt. He was eager to feel her supple skin, up and down her torso, but stopped beneath her breasts. He reveled in her frustrated whine.
She bunched the shirt over her head and flung it across the room.
“That’s my favorite T-shirt, you know,” he said, generously laving one peaked nipple with his tongue and rolling the other between his fingertips, just how she liked.
“Collateral damage,” she said, giggling.
She arched her chest forward, braced her hands against the arms of the chair behind her, and slowly rocked her body against the solid column in his shorts.
Head tossed back and lips parted, she unleashed a succession of rolling moans.
It made him shudder so hard that, for a second, he thought he’d come all over himself.
Apparently, old habits and such.
She pulled one of his hands from her ribs and slid it between her thighs.
His breath hitched.
“Oh, honey—fuck,” he groaned, the scalding heat and effortless glide amounting to a sexy sledgehammer to his frontal lobe. He cupped her like she was the most precious gift he’d ever received. But not so precious that he wasn’t eager to fuck her until there was nothing left but sensation.
Right in that ugly-ass armchair. His interior designer had once praised it like it was the Second Coming.
Her hips moved to their own soundtrack against him.
“I aim to please.” She laughed.
“Yeah? Me too.”
In about two seconds, he rolled her off his lap and onto the chair.
“Oh,” she gasped through broken laughter.
Kneeling on the floor before her, he nudged her knees wide, hooking each over the arms of the chair. His cheeks flushed at the sight of her, so open to him, but Jamie embraced the magnetic desperation, as if he didn’t have her a few hours ago. As if he might never again.
Entranced, he inched his pointer finger down her center and back up again, spreading her wetness as her hips rocketed forward.
He’d never witnessed a better sight in his life.
“Before I do this—and I can’t fucking wait to do this—I need you to know that if you can’t…” he stammered.
Shit, why was talking so hard?
Probably because her body, glistening and ripe for him, had hypnotic powers. He pressed both hands into her thighs, tried to focus on something other than twisting his tongue over her like a damn cyclone.
There was an unspoken question in her eyes.
“I don’t need you to come if…it’s hard. Or if you feel scared,” he said, remembering how stressed Rich’s email had made her earlier in the meadow.
“Everybody’s different. Every time we make love, it’s different.
If your anxiety means you need something else, I’ll give it to you. Let me please you the way you need.”
“You are incredible,” she whispered, pulling him into a decadent kiss not meant for this world. Slowly, she pulled away. Brinton snaked her hands down his shoulders, chest, and stomach, leaving a blaze of tingles across his skin.
“But if you don’t lick me or fuck me right now, I’m going to explode.”
Welp, that settles it.
He smiled coyly then slid down her body, right where she wanted him. With one hand, he parted her, and with the other, he pressed a finger inside. He moved slowly, greedily exploring, adjusting for what made her teeth drag across her bottom lip or shudder against him.
She was so hot and supple it almost felt too good.
But she begged for more, and he obliged like a good Southern gentleman.
He flicked his tongue steadily and pressed another finger inside her, this time moving harder and curving his fingertips to stroke her deeper.
Brinton’s fingers sifted through his hair, and when she tugged, pleasure spiraled across his scalp and down his chest. All he could do was revel in her magic, licking firmly until her hips bucked against his face in a way he fucking loved.
He pulled away only to lavish her with the downright filthiest praise he’d ever uttered.
And it didn’t make him blush one bit.