Gabe
THIRTY-SIX
Ihaven’t slept well in six days. Because every time I close my eyes, another problem surfaces.
Another article, another video, another headline turning Willow into something consumable.
I’ve spent most of my life learning how to manage everything. Labels. Contracts. Public relations disasters. Addiction spirals. Ego wars. I know how to anticipate damage before it spreads. How to contain it before it becomes fatal.
But this feels different, because it’s not just business anymore, and that changes the math.
My office is dark except for the desk lamp cutting across stacks of papers and open laptops. Streaming analytics crawl across one monitor. Public sentiment tracking across another. Mentions and shares, with incredible engagement spikes.
The numbers are insane.
Objectively, this is working in our favor.
The label name is everywhere now. Redemption Records has gone from industry rumor to unavoidable conversation in less than two weeks.
Artists are reaching out again. Management companies are suddenly “very interested.” Executives who ignored our calls three months ago are pretending they always believed in the move, which should be a victory.
Instead, I might as well be standing in a room that’s burning while everyone congratulates you on how warm it is.
I drag a hand over my face and lean back in my chair.
Outside the office windows, the compound shines softly in the dark. Lights are still on in Studio B. Someone’s laughing somewhere downstairs. Movement carries through the halls.
Life continues.
Meanwhile, my brain refuses to stop moving long enough to breathe.
My phone buzzes again.
Unknown Number: Interested in commenting on rumors involving Willow Jameson?
Delete.
Another buzz follows.
Entertainment Weekly requesting statement regarding…
Delete.
Then another.
Then another.
I finally silence the damn thing and toss it onto the desk harder than necessary.
Control is slipping. That’s the issue. Not the publicity itself; publicity can be useful. Manufactured attention built half of this industry.
But uncontrolled narratives? Those destroy people.
And Willow was never built for this world.
I stare at the spreadsheet in front of me without actually seeing it.
The office door opens.
I look up.
Willow stands there barefoot, wearing leggings and one of Julian’s oversized hoodies, dark hair piled messily on top of her head. She hesitates when she sees me still working.
“You know it’s after midnight, right?” she asks softly.
“I’m aware.”
“That sounded aggressive.”
“It wasn’t intended to.”
She studies me before stepping fully inside and closing the door behind her. “You look stressed.”
“I am stressed.”
“Wow.” She folds her arms. “Look at you, embracing honesty and vulnerability.”
Despite myself, my mouth almost twitches.
“I thought you’d still be downstairs,” I say.
“I couldn’t sleep. Again. So,” she says eventually, wandering further into the office, gaze drifting over the whiteboards covered in schedules and rollout plans, “how bad is it today?”
I consider lying.
Instead I exhale. “Depends how you define bad.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“The label visibility has increased by almost four hundred percent.”
Her eyebrows lift. “That much?”
“Yes.”
“And that’s… good?”
“In theory.”
“But?”
I lean forward, resting my forearms against the desk. “But attention is unpredictable. Once people decide they own a story, it becomes difficult to redirect them.”
“Redirect,” she repeats.
I glance at her. “What?”
“What if that’s exactly what you do?”
I study her. “Explain.”
She moves closer now, thoughtful in a way I’ve started recognizing. Willow thinks physically, pacing when ideas begin forming. “The problem is everyone’s focusing on us,” she says. “On the scandal. The relationships. The gossip.”
“Yes.”
“But what if you gave them something bigger to focus on?”
I don’t answer immediately. I can already see where her brain is heading.
“The attention’s already here, Gabe. You can’t stop it now.”
“I’m aware.”
“So, use it.”
I lean back, my brain beginning to restructure the situation from a different angle.
Public scandal and curiosity are attention. Attention is traffic.
And traffic can be redirected.
“If we controlled the narrative ourselves…” I murmur.
“Exactly.”
I’m already moving before the thought fully finishes forming, grabbing a notebook and flipping it open.
Podcast appearances. Controlled interviews. Behind-the-scenes footage. Artist spotlights tied directly into the scandal cycle. People come for the gossip. Stay for the music.
I look up at her. “That could actually work.”
She grins, pleased with herself. “I know.”
My pulse kicks harder.
Because this is what she does without even realizing it. She cuts through noise, straight to instinct.
“You know,” I say carefully, “I might know someone.”
“That sounds dangerous.”
“It usually is.”
She laughs softly.
I continue before I can overthink it. “Friend of mine hosts one of the biggest music podcasts in the country.”
Her eyes widen. “Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“And he’d have you on?”
“He’d tear us apart publicly for an hour first,” I correct. “Then he’d have us on.”
“That sounds less fun.”
“It would get attention.”
I close the notebook. Stand up. Cross the distance between us before I’ve made any conscious decision to do so and kiss her.
She sways into the kiss as I slide her up against the wall, fingers trapping her jaw, her pulse hammering beneath my palm.
She tastes of mint. She tastes of exhaustion and hunger.
“I could get used to this,” she murmurs, lips ghosting my chin.
“What? Me being brilliant and innovative?”
She laughs, head thunking gently against the drywall. “I was going to say you kissing me at one a.m. But sure. Let’s go with yours.”
It’s safer to keep her laughing, safer to keep everything on the surface. But before I can muster another retort, she yanks me closer and kisses me again.
Before I can catch my breath, she’s already kneeling, drawing anticipation down both our spines.
She’s barefoot and so small in that hoodie, hair messy and skin flushed. She looks up at me with pupils blown out and already, already, the way she’s breathing makes me want to consume her whole.
She sits back on her heels, reaching up for the waistband of my joggers, not breaking my gaze as she slides both hands underneath and tugs me out.
The first brush of her palm is hot, unhesitating. She gives an experimental stroke, then another. Testing the weight of me, learning how to make me twitch just to see it happen. I brace one hand hard on the edge of my desk and force myself to watch her, to let her set the pace.
She gives me an exploratory lick, tongue flat and pointed, dragging from base to tip.
Sometimes she plays shy, but when she wants to, Willow is a fucking menace and she knows it. I can see her deciding to go for it, emboldened by the dare.
The next swipe is firmer and wetter. She circles her lips around the head and slides down, deep enough that I feel the catch, the precision of her wanting.
Her tongue works me expertly, playfully, a hot coil of pressure that stutters my breath and knocks logic out of my head. She moans a little, and the vibration nearly takes my knees out.
“Fuck, Willow,” I manage, almost embarrassed how quickly she’s unraveling me.
She smiles around me, lets spit slacken out over her fist, and strokes with purpose now, heat building between us, obscene in how good it feels and how she refuses to break eye contact.
The urge to fuck her mouth rises, greedy and unstoppable, but I hold myself still, fingers digging into the wood of my desk, because the only thing I want more than being inside her right now is to watch her enjoy this, to watch her fall apart for me while she takes me apart.
She pulls away with a gasp, wipes the back of her hand across her lips, and gives a little satisfied, almost greedy, shake of her hair.
Then she spreads her knees just a fraction wider on the hardwood.
Her left hand slips under the edge of the hoodie, then under the waistband of her leggings, and she doesn’t break eye contact as she cups herself, working circular pressure into the soaked center of her body.
The visual of it, her small hand moving insistently under dark fabric, her mouth shiny and red, is a live wire shot straight through my chest.
She jerks my cock, once, twice. Her breath shudders and so do I. I stare down at her and pump into her fist just to feel her grip tighten.
She watches me, dark and unblinking, while she hums in her throat, all the while working herself under the hoodie. Her hand speeds up in time with my pulse. I can see the tension in her neck and shoulders, every inch of her body straining for closeness.
“Fuck, Willow.”
She smirks, lips swollen and slick, and kisses the head of my cock, tongue darting over the slit.
“Gabe,” she whispers, voice trembling, “I need you to come first.”
The command obliterates me. My vision tunnels to a point, everything else in my world reduced to her mouth, her hand, the wet heat of her tongue and the obscene glint in her eyes. I fist her hair and brace for the end but she pulls off again, grinning, and strokes me with an excruciating grip.
She opens wide, bracing one hand against my thigh, taking me in until she’s choking and proud.
She’s still touching herself, fingers working in tight, desperate circles, and the sound she makes as I pull out of her mouth does something irreversible to me.
I look down at her. Flushed jaw, wet chin, hoodie slipping off one shoulder.
I fist myself once, and then completely lose it, knees locking, hips bucking into her fist.
She takes the first pulse with her mouth, swallowing without hesitation, not even blinking as I spill across her tongue and her chin.
I hang there, heart stuttering, the whole world whiting out. Willow strokes through the aftershocks, warm and almost affectionate, even as she’s streaked with me, mess dotting her throat and knuckles.
She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, eyes glinting up at me.
My brain resets, an old computer coming back online. I drop to my knees in front of her, catching her face in my hands.
I tip her chin up, and I can’t help but kiss her, even with the taste of myself still smeared on her lips, locking us together in a spiraling, sticky heat.
There’s no confusion or hesitation in her now, just a molten, undiluted want. I reach under the hoodie, and her whole body pushes forward, urgent and greedy, her mouth opening on a gasp that ends as a snarl when I hook her leggings down enough to get at her.
She’s soaking, sticky wet and pulsing in my palm, and she arches her back to press herself against my hand.
“Look at me, Gabe,” she grinds out, hips fighting against my fingers. “Need you to keep watching me. Need it so fucking much.”
I do. I watch her.
I watch the hunger and the ache and the shine of sweat breaking at her hairline. I dig my thumb in circles just below her clit, and she sucks air through her teeth and clamps her knees on my wrist, hard enough to leave marks.
The taste of her arousal is everywhere but more than that is the satisfaction of knowing she’s all in, trusting me, greedy for me, letting herself be seen when she’s this undone.
She’s sensitive now, skin flinching away even as she drags my hand harder against her. I curl a finger inside and she keens, fist tight in my shirt.
I think she’s going to stop me, but then she bites down on my shoulder, half sobbing, half laughing, and then shatters, shaking around my hand, her forehead pressed to my collarbone, riding out the aftershocks with an animal growl that would be funny if it wasn’t the hottest thing I’d ever heard.
Hot damn, I will never get enough of this woman.