Chapter 7 #2
“Then what the hell are you doing here? Don’t you have minions who can make sure your artists get to the airport on time?”
His lip quirked. “Minions?”
“You know what I mean.”
He nodded, pursing his lips like he’d tasted something sour. Jo reached across the space between them and captured his hand in hers, unsure what had caused the sudden melancholy in his face but wanting to soothe it all the same.
“Those guys are like my little brothers. If anyone is going to decide whether they go back out on tour or not, it’s going to be me. I’m not leaving that decision to… a minion.”
His teasing felt like a caress.
“Will you go on tour with them again?”
“I promised Chelsea this tour will be my last, but for now, if Storm’s on the road, so am I.”
The mention of his ex-wife pulled Jo back to the present, and she tugged her hand from his grasp on the pretense of a something—anything—urgently demanding her attention in the kitchen.
She needed to put some space between them, to remind herself that this wasn’t the intimate moment it seemed, no matter how long his eyes lingered on her lips.
Safely on the other side of the kitchen island, she held up the wine bottle still on the counter. “More?”
He dragged his hand over his jaw, fingers tugging at his lower lip and indecision flashing in his eyes.
His nod shouldn’t have sent a swirl of butterflies fluttering in her belly, but there was no denying the way her stomach flipped, the flush that crept over her skin as she refilled their glasses.
Fancy wine-fridge wine must be more potent than the cheap stuff.
It was the only logical explanation for the tingling sensation skipping across her nerve endings.
Returning to the living room, she sat beside him on the loveseat, her thigh brushing his knee as she handed him his glass and tucked her leg up under herself, turning to face him.
His hand on the back of the loveseat flexed and curled, knuckles brushing the ends of her hair.
Clutching her wine glass, she asked the question that had been nagging at her since that morning.
“What happened with you and Chelsea?”
Derek caught a lock of her hair between his thumb and forefinger, rubbing the strands between the pads of his fingers before letting them fall.
“Chelsea used to work in the same building as the label’s offices.
She’s an attorney. A very successful one.
At first, we would run into each other in the elevator in the morning.
Small talk about the weather. The annoying security firm on the fourth floor who thought everyone was stealing their mail. ”
He chuckled at the memory and Jo’s stomach sank. Jealous and babbling all in one day. She hardly recognized herself.
“One day I invited her out for a drink after work.” He shrugged. “It made sense. We both worked so much we didn’t have time to meet other people, and we made each other laugh.”
Another strand caught between his fingers, this time a gentle tug, sparks springing to life across her scalp.
“Mostly I think we were lonely and tired of being single. We had the careers, the success. Getting married was the next logical step.”
“And you loved each other.” The words were ash in her mouth.
“We did. But it was never a big love affair. No one writes songs about the people who get married because it makes sense on paper. We spent our honeymoon in the Maldives working side by side on our laptops on our hotel balcony. At the time I thought it was some kind of statement about how comfortable we were with each other, but now…”
“Now?”
He twirled that strand of hair around his finger, pulling it tight enough to sting. “Now I know loneliness doesn’t go away just because someone’s by your side.”
Jo’s heart thudded painfully with a recognition that ached like pressing on a fresh bruise.
He dropped her hair and drained his wine in one sip, his throat working as he swallowed. The clink of the glass as he set it on the coffee table echoed in the cavernous living room.
“We both knew it wasn’t right. We loved each other, but we’d never been in love.
Chelsea wanted to leave New York, move closer to her parents in the Boston suburbs, and I…
didn’t. We found out she was pregnant two weeks after the divorce papers were signed.
I considered following her to Massachusetts, but…
” He shrugged, his lips twisting up in a grimace.
“We’ve made it work. But Annie’s getting older.
She only has so many ‘firsts’ left. There’s so much I don’t want to miss. ”
“You promised Chelsea this was your last tour,” she repeated, the piece slotting into place, “so you can move closer to her and Annie.”
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, his hand landing just above her knee, warm and heavy. She leaned her elbow on the back of the couch, her chin resting on her hand, eyes locked on the movement of his thumb as it swept along the sensitive skin on the inside of her knee.
“One of the perks of being part owner is I can choose where I work from. I don’t need to stay in New York.”
“It must be hard. To leave the City,” she said.
He looked up at her through his eyelashes, and she had the strongest urge to press her lips to the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. “Speaking from experience?”
“I only lived in Manhattan for a few months. I couldn’t hack it.
” He tutted his disbelief, but she shook her head, barreling on.
“I was barely eighteen and living in a model apartment on Fifty-First and Second. Eight of us in a six-hundred-square-foot two bedroom owned by a club promoter. We paid our rent by going to the club a few nights a week, looking hot to draw in a bigger crowd of paying customers. When I got mono and couldn’t keep up with the schedule, the promoter gave me an ultimatum: fuck him or get out. So I got out.”
His hand tightened on her thigh, a low rumble sounding his chest. “He took advantage of you.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time a rich man used his money to get laid.
And I knew what I had signed up for. But I also knew the next face of Maybelline wasn’t being chosen from the girls dancing on a bar in the Meatpacking District.
I thought if I built up my portfolio with local gigs back home, then I’d be ready to go back and try again—without the sleazy club promoter. ”
“Did you?”
She swallowed down her bitterness, all the dreams she kept locked in a box at the bottom of her heart that she’d never see come true.
“There was always a reason not to. For a while, I was booking steady work in Providence and Boston, and I had my friends, the bar… I guess I thought I’d have more time, but then I turned around and suddenly I’m pushing thirty—”
He squeezed her thigh. “You’re twenty-seven.”
“For a model, I might as well be fifty.” She met his eyes and let the confession she’d held back from her friends tumble from her lips. “I haven’t booked a new modeling job in over a year. It’s too late. It’s not going to happen for me.”
He lifted his hand from the back of the couch to capture hers, bringing it to his lips.
The soft brush of his mouth and tickle of his beard against her knuckles lodged a lump in her throat that she struggled to breathe around.
She appreciated that he saved her the platitudes, the apologies and half-hearted encouragement. She didn’t want that from him.
And she didn’t want to talk anymore, didn’t want him to look at her and see someone who’d failed. She wanted more of his lips on her skin.
“Derek…”
He set her hand down gently against the couch cushion. “It’s late,” he said. But she heard the rejection he didn’t voice all the same.
Fine. Jo was used to rejection. She knew better than to expect that a man like Derek would have any interest in distracting her from her avalanche of bad decisions.
Men didn’t want to sleep with women who whined about their problems. They wanted the fantasy.
The stiletto-wearing, red-lipsticked blonde they met at The Bay Breeze, not whatever raw nerve in too-small pajama shorts had shown up in her place. Her mistake.
Derek swept their wine glasses away to the kitchen, putting space between them, and she curled in on herself on the loveseat. His eyes softened when he caught the movement, but he didn’t leave his post by the sink.
Maybe she was a sucker for punishment, but she couldn’t help herself. “Can I ask you something?” He leaned against the far counter and nodded. “You said you don’t date much since your divorce.” Another nod, this one tighter. “Doesn’t that get lonely?”
He looked away, lips parting in a silent sigh. “Lonely is better than hurting Annie.”
“How can you be so sure you’d—”
“Because I already did.” Jo’s heart clenched in her chest at the pain slashed across his face.
“A few years ago I met a woman. A choreographer.” She waited as he searched for the words, avoiding eye contact with her.
“Things got serious. Faster than I expected. I introduced her to Annie. We were making plans. And then...” He shook his head.
“I don’t know. It fell apart. It took six months for Annie to stop asking when she was going to come back.
” He curled his fingers around the edge of the counter and, when he met her gaze, his eyes blazed. “Lonely is better.”
Jo considered him, the coiled strength and regret tensing every muscle as he warred with himself. “I’m not sure you really believe that,” she said softly.
“I have to.” Silence settled between them, the air growing thick and heavy with it, until at last, he tilted his chin down the hall. “Why don’t you go to bed so you can get up for your masochistically early yoga class?”
“I—” She glanced towards the bedroom, then back to the handsome man gripping the counter behind him so hard his knuckles had turned white. “I’m not taking your bedroom. I’m fine out here.”
“Jo, take the bedroom.”
“You are already paying me a small fortune to hang with your cool as shit kid. I can sleep on the sofa bed. Besides, this thing is more comfortable than my bed at home. See?” She launched herself at the sofa bed, landing on her knees and bouncing on the high-end mattress.
His eyes darkened further, jaw clenching, as her bouncing slowed.
She’d forgotten she wasn’t wearing a bra.
“Take the bedroom, Joelle,” he growled—and good Lord, her full name in that gravelly tone was a thing of beauty.
“Why?”
He shoved off from the counter behind him, landing with his hands flat against the island, the only thing standing between them.
“Because I can see your nipples through your top, little menace. I need doors between us, locked doors. I spent half the day watching other men flirt with you and the last few hours doing my damnedest to keep my hands off of you, and if you don’t go to bed right now and lock that door behind you, then I can’t promise I won’t tear off your flimsy little shorts and vent all this frustration on your perfect pussy.
” He slapped his hands against the counter again. “And that cannot happen.”
It wasn’t often that Jo found herself speechless, but her mind was too busy conjuring the scenario he’d described to think of anything even remotely eloquent to say in response.
Need pulsed between her legs, that coil in her belly now directly connected to her core and tugging.
She squeezed her thighs together and shivered as her nipples furled into unbearably tight peaks.
His eyes focused on the sharp points through her camisole, a low sound rumbling in his chest. She felt that sound like the scratch of his beard on her most sensitive parts, and she wanted more.
“Bed. Now, Jo.”
Her legs were unsteady beneath her as she got to her feet, determined not to give in to the instinct to run down the hall, to see if he’d chase her.
Christ, since when did she want a man to chase her?
But she did. She wanted him to chase her, to catch her, to make her pay for running from him in the first place.
When she reached the bedroom door, she looked back at him over her shoulder, gratified to find his eyes glued to her ass.
“Whatever you say, daddy fox.”
He rounded the island like a man on a mission and she scurried into the bedroom, shutting the door behind her.
Flipping the lock as she’d been instructed, she leaned back against the door, her heart pounding in her chest. The sound of his pacing at the end of the hall sent tendrils of heat curling around her thighs. She wished he’d come pound on the door.
But she needed this job.
She could hold out for a few more days. Even if Derek looked at her like he wanted to eat her alive and the memory of how good he was at doing exactly that was still fresh in her mind.
Even if they had spent the last hour cracking themselves open for each other in ways she’d never done with a man, and he’d just admitted how much he wanted her too.
He also said it can’t happen.
A few more days to play by his silly rules and keep her hands to herself, and then he’d go on tour with the band and she’d go back to her life in Aster Bay.
She needed to remember that no matter how much they shared or how much he looked at her like he wanted to swallow her whole, it was all coming to an end in three days.
The footsteps at the end of the hall drew closer.
Maybe she couldn’t touch him, but he’d never said anything about touching herself…
She slapped her hand against the door, listening for the pause in his footsteps and slid her other hand inside her shorts.
Her fingertips rasped over her clit and she moaned, just loud enough for him to hear.
She pictured him on the other side of the door, listening.
Would his cock get hard if he knew she was playing with herself?
That all that stood between them was a flimsy hotel door?
She slid two fingers inside herself, whimpering as she drove herself closer and closer to release.
Would he jerk off to the sounds she made?
Would he picture the way she looked with her hands down her pants and her head tipped back as she raced towards her climax?
Would he punish her for teasing him, for getting him hard and making him think about fucking her, when he’d sworn not to touch her?
Her orgasm took her by surprise, her thighs quivering and knees buckling as her hips drove up into her hand, and she imagined it was him—his hand between her legs, his mouth on her neck, his weight pressing against her as he whispered the filthiest things.
When her climax receded, she slumped against the door, her head falling back with a soft thunk.
She could have sworn she heard his ragged exhale on the other side of the door.