Chapter 34
LAUREL
I wait four miserable days before calling Beckett. Jenna wants a stable sample before I start using my voice like an escaped prisoner, and the promise I made in Studio B has grown alarmingly large now that I actually have to keep it.
I tell Nora first.
“Wear the red Ala?a—the one that makes your tits bounce and has the slit all the way up your thigh. You look hot as fuck in that dress.”
My mouth falls open, heat climbing my neck at the thought of Beckett seeing me in it. “What does a dress have to do with a vocal assessment?”
“Absolutely nothing. Which is exactly why your ass needs to be in it.”
I ban her from further participation and settle on jeans and a fitted black top. Common sense has to kick in somewhere, and letting your oldest friend put you in fuck-me Ala?a for a non-date with a hot man you definitely want to fuck feels like tempting fate.
Studio B is empty except for Beckett. He’s behind the console reviewing something on his laptop, sleeves rolled over thick, veined forearms, glasses sitting low on his nose.
Glasses.
Oh, fuck me.
My teeth catch my bottom lip as heat drops so fast between my legs it’s embarrassing.
He isn’t even doing anything, and that’s the problem.
He’s sitting at a freaking desk, fully clothed, one hand on the trackpad, brow pulled tight in concentration, looking so obscenely competent that my brain immediately strips him naked and puts him flat on his back.
Those glasses stay on.
Absolutely nonnegotiable.
I’m on top of him, knees planted on either side of his hips, sinking onto his cock slowly enough to feel every inch stretch my wet pussy open. His hands grab my ass and I knock one away the second he tries to move me faster.
No.
In my head, I make Beckett Vale lie there and fucking take it.
I ride him at my pace, slow and deep at first, grinding down until his jaw locks and his fingers dig into my thigh.
I want to watch that composure rot right off his face.
Want his glasses crooked, his head shoved back into the cushion, every controlled breath turning rough as I keep fucking myself on him without giving him a goddamn thing he hasn’t earned.
I’d hold his wrist down when he reached for me again, lean over him until my tits were in his face and tell him to stay exactly where I put him.
Then I’d ride him harder.
Until he moans. Until he fucking whimpers. Until he says my name like it’s the only word he remembers when I make him come.
My thong is soaked, and he hasn’t even looked up yet.
Goddamn. The universe took one look at my divorce and decided I hadn’t suffered nearly enough.
He looks up when I walk in, closes the laptop, and gives me his full attention. “How does it feel?”
“Way too good.” The word leaves my mouth before my brain gets anywhere near it.
One dark brow rises.
Oh God.
I’m an idiot.
“I mean, fine,” I amend, shifting my weight from one leg to the other like that can undo the last five seconds. “My throat feels better.”
I set my bag down and take the chair beside the guitar stand instead of the one directly in front of him. My nipples are already hard against the cups of my bra; the last thing I need is Beckett getting a front-row seat to every filthy decision my body is making.
“Not fixed,” I add. “Jenna says the response is meaningful enough that Dr. Levin will probably recommend moving forward with the scar procedure once the filler wears off and they confirm the pattern.”
Warmth moves across his face. “That’s good.”
“It is.” His eyes move to the guitar. “You said you wanted me to hear you.”
Hear me what? Moan his name?
Jesus fucking Christ.
What is wrong with me?
My pulse gives one hard beat. “I did.”
Beckett removes his glasses and sets them beside the laptop. “Do you still?”
“Yes.”
I reach for the guitar before courage has time to reconsider its involvement.
The song Nora and I have been working on sits open on the stand. Jenna gave me rules because she has correctly identified me as someone requiring supervision: one verse, chorus only if everything still feels easy, stop at the first sign of strain.
My fingers find the progression, and Beckett goes still, listening.
I breathe in.
The first line comes fuller than the rough harmony I managed last week. Texture still runs through it, a rasp the old me would’ve catalogued as damage because every sound had to survive comparison with the voice I lost.
Today, I hear something else. Possibility.
I keep the melody where Jenna told me to keep it, easy through the middle, no reaching for notes just to prove I can.
It was a honeysuckle summer,
fireflies tangled in the dark,
your mouth tasting like the peaches
we stole from somebody’s yard.
The next line settles easier. By the time I glance up, Beckett’s lips have parted a fraction, and I have to drag my attention back to the strings; watching him listen to me is doing dangerous things to my concentration.
You held me underneath the porch light,
said you’d love me when we’re old,
and I never thought to doubt you.
I didn’t know I was supposed to.
My fingers carry the progression another measure, and I know I could stop there. Instead, I give myself four more lines.
Sometimes summer comes back to me
in the strangest little ways,
honey on somebody’s fingers,
heat still rising after rain.
I finish the last line and stop exactly where Jenna instructed. The final chord fades.
Beckett looks down at his hands.
Oh, shit. Was it bad?
His silence scares the shit out of me. “Say something.”
He raises his head, and every thought in mine disappears when I realize Beckett Vale’s eyes are bright with tears. “I’m trying.” A breath leaves him through his nose. “You sound like you.”
My chest tightens. “I don’t sound like I used to.”
His jaw shifts, whatever careful answer he meant to give me losing the fight. “I didn’t say you sound like you used to. I said you sound like you.” His eyes hold mine. “You sound fucking incredible, Laurel.”
I stop breathing, emotion choking off every word before I can get it out.
“Not because you sound like the old records. You don’t.
” He glances at the guitar, collecting himself for half a second, then looks back at me.
“There’s more weight in your voice now. More grain.
It sounds lived in.” His expression hardens into the one I’ve seen across conference tables, except his eyes are still giving him away.
“If you walked into my office tomorrow and I had no fucking idea who you were, carrying that voice and those songs, I’d fight everyone in the building for the meeting. ”
Tears sting my eyes immediately. “Are you trying to make me fall for you?”
His mouth shifts, almost a smile. “No. I’m trying not to make it obvious how far gone I already am.”
The air between us changes, thick and heavy enough to need a butcher knife, and he doesn’t take it back.
Beckett eases back in his chair, gray eyes still on me, and every indecent thought I’ve been politely filing away starts kicking at the cabinet doors.
“I’m also trying very hard,” he continues, “not to take something this important to you and turn it into what I want.”
My fingers stay curled around the neck of the guitar; putting it down feels like a poor decision right now. “And what do you want?”
His eyes darken. “You know.”
“I want you to say it.”
“I want to kiss you.” Not an ounce of hesitation.
“I want to take you to dinner without discussing chain of title, your husband, your larynx, or the possibility one of your enemies is sitting outside in a parked car. I want to know what you’re like when nobody is suing anybody.
” His eyes hold mine. “I want you when you’re pissed off, when you’re impossible, when you’re laughing so hard you snort and threaten me if I ever mention it again.
I want you in my bed, in my house, in every part of my life you’ll let me into. ”
My pulse is beating so hard I can feel it everywhere.
His gaze drops to my mouth. “I want to hear every song you write, and I want entire nights where I don’t hear a fucking note because your mouth is busy doing something else.”
Heat floods me so fast I almost lose my grip on the guitar.
God, I’m wet again.
Beckett’s eyes flick down to it, then back to mine. “And there are several things I’d like to do to you that I refuse to say out loud while you’re holding your father’s guitar.”
I swallow. “That’s where you draw the moral line?”
His mouth finally curves. “Laurel, at this point, I’m grateful I still have one.”
Why is he so perfect?
I’m so hot I feel like I’ve been thrown headfirst into a fire made entirely of Beckett Vale, and he’s burning me alive without even touching me.
With far more care than the task requires, I put the guitar back on the stand. My hands are shaking now for reasons Dr. Levin would find medically irrelevant.
My heart is beating hard enough to make me resent anatomy when I start toward him, and Beckett doesn’t move. Neither of us looks away, not through the first step or the second, not when I reach him and curl my hand around the back of his chair, turning it slowly until he’s facing me properly.
I end up between his knees, the inside of one brushing my thigh, and the dark, expensive scent he wears blends with the warmer smell of his skin until one breath has me drunk on him.
His head tips back to keep my eyes, and every filthy image I had of him earlier comes rushing back so hard my pussy clenches—Beckett underneath me, my knees bracketing his hips, his hands on my ass, my mouth at his throat, all that impossible control finally fucked clean out of him.
“Laurel.”
The way he says my name is so low my eyes nearly roll back. “Yes?”
“Can I kiss you?”
Every cell in my body screams yes; my mouth says, “Not yet.”