One Kiss from the King of Rock (The One Book 2) Page 18

  “I’m considering it.”

  “That’s fair. I fucked up mightily.”

  “Everything about you is large scale, Jay, and I deserve you.”

  He went to ask if that was sarcasm and she shut him up with a gesture. That hand on his chest moving to wave in his face. “I deserve to be happy. I deserve to be loved and have a job I choose, and other things too.”

  “Other things?” Hope might slice open his throat.

  “Music. I deserve that, but in my own way.”

  She deserved more focus, attention and understanding than he’d given her. His Evie was about hide and seek. About kissing in dark corners and making out in public but somewhere they’d never get caught. He’d always known that grand gestures were the opposite of the way to love her. He’d let starlight blind him to the truth.

  “I’m sorry, Evie. I made it about me, what I was feeling, what I wanted for you, for us, and that’s fucked up.”

  “You’ll have to do better.” She sighed. “I have to forgive you and I’m not happy about it.”

  He aimed for light because he could do better and she was still standing there, and any flavor of forgiveness was palatable. “Because you don’t want to be responsible for Mum quitting and my insurance premium skyrocketing?”

  She made a scoffing sound. “That’s on you. I never asked you to let everyone else in your life down.”

  “I’m hoping I don’t have to let them all down, because I think I just heard you say you had to forgive me.” It was one grade up from considering it. It was one more clean, deep breath.

  “I have no choice if I want Layla Flowers to sing my lyrics.”

  “What?” He yanked at his hair as if that would help him make sense of what she’d said.

  Evie shrugged. “She made me an offer. She gets my words. I get paid and get to keep my privacy and my sanity and my business.”

  Layla Flowers was one of those hot indie pop singers. She was good. She’d be better with Evie’s lyrics. “Wait. You have to forgive me because of that.”

  “I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t.”

  No, no, no, no, no. That wasn’t forgiveness, that was nothing but resentment, compromise, not a valid second chance.

  Evie shifted her weight impatiently to one hip. “I have to forgive you because of that and because I know you screwed up. I know you didn’t think it all the way through. Didn’t intend to hurt me. I have to forgive you because you’re the king of rock, because you can’t disappoint your fans, because you’re the only man I want to kiss and wake up beside, because I love you, I need you, you gave me back my music. If you do anything like that again, I will mess you up and my life would suck without you.”

  There were a lot of reasons packed into those sentences. It took him a second to sort them. the chorus was a strong refrain. She loved him. She had her music back. They weren’t going to repeat their history. They were going to be okay. It wasn’t very rock and roll to cry but he had to wipe the back of his hand across his face. “Do you want to come in?” He had a lot of making things up to her to do starting now.

  “I do and I don’t.”

  What kind of a reunion response was that? “This is our room.” He opened his arms. He needed her in them.

  Evie’s mouth quirked. “I know.” She touched a finger to the water on his cheek. “And I know what will happen if I come in.”

  “A whole lot of lip action.”

  She stepped into his arms. “And nakedness.”

  Top to toe his body untensed. “And make-up sex.”

  “We’re making up,” she said, her head resting on his chest.

  “We deserve each other, and we deserve the naked sex part.”

  “I want to, but you have a plane to catch.”

  A charter on standby. “If you’re coming with me?”

  She had her hand in his back pocket so when she said, “Sticking to you like glue,” he smiled so hard he felt his skin stretch.

  “Sexiest thing anyone has ever said to me.”

  She tipped her face up to his. “It’s up there with I don’t feel like barfing when I’m with you.”

  He laughed. A million stress molecules dropped from his body and died wriggling on the floor at their feet. “Marry a woman who stops you chundering.”

  She rolled her eyes and then fixed them on his. “Marry?”

  “That’s where we’re going. I don’t care if you don’t want anything official. If you don’t want to call it married. But I’m officially yours forever from the moment you kiss me.”

  Evie’s brows shot down and the corners of her mouth kicked up. “That’s a big commitment.”

  He smoothed a hand over her forehead and gathered her hair behind her head. “Nope, it’s as easy as breathing.”

  “One kiss from the king of rock.”

  “One of many for as long as you want them.”

  She stood on her toes to get closer. “I want them all.”

  His hands were trembling, so he held her tighter. “Sounds like forever to me.”

  “How long have we got before we need to bug out?”

  Long enough, as it turned out, to kiss thoroughly. Long enough to get very naked, for Jay to get very hard, for Evie to get very wet, and for them to make each other very happy.

  And the rest as they say, is rock and roll.

  I hope you enjoyed One Kiss from the King of Rock.

  If you’d to help another reader out, consider leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads.

  The other books in The One series are:

  One Night with the Sexiest Man Alive

  One Wicked Lick from the Drummer

  Read on for the first chapter of

  One Wicked Lick from the Drummer

  One Wicked Lick from the Drummer

  Shock made Mina halt mid-stride, lose her breath and her balance, take a step back and collide with the heavy glass door as it closed. It boosted her forward, forcing her to take an awkward little jump. She wobbled as her stiletto-clad ankle rolled and everything she’d been balancing on the flat of her laptop went flying; phone, notepad, pen, business card holder.

  Thank Mary Magdalen she wasn’t carrying coffee. Thank the Pilates she didn’t land on her arse, legs over her head, date-ready Agent Provocateur underwear on show. But it was a close thing.

  Ow, her ankle hurt, but wow, this could not be happening. She wasn’t supposed to walk into a new client briefing in the boardroom and meet her number one score. The music idol who gave her a night of nights to remember, secured her permanent retirement as a good time girl and set her on the course of being in the offices of Swire and Yallop Investments.

  She especially wasn’t supposed to find that the past fifteen years had been enormously kind to him, and he was sexier than ever. And it was total bullshit that seeing him again had made her knees go weak, her mouth fall open and her whole body flash hot.

  He could still rock her, and he hadn’t done anything but glance up as she’d staggered in.

  “Mina, oh hell. Are you okay?” Caroline wrenched her eight months and nine days pregnant self out of her chair to help Mina and the two of them almost collided, grabbing onto each other to steady themselves.

  “I’m fine. Goodness.” Shit, no she was not in any way, shape or form fine. “Please sit down, Caroline.” If he recognized her, everything she’d worked for, the partnership offer she expected to receive, the amazing life she’d built herself could come to a crashing halt.

  Swire & Yallop did not promote former groupies who’d slept their way around every concert venue in Australia to half-million dollar salaries.

  “Mark Grippen, this is Mina Grady,” Caroline said with a smile towards their guest as she eased into her seat. “She’ll be taking over my clients while I’m on maternity leave.”

  Caroline had said they were meeting a new client, MG Holdings, and the last thing Mina thought MG would stand for was Mark Grippen, the drummer from Lost Property. Grip had been at the top of her list o
f drummers, always and only drummers, she’d wanted to sleep with. He’d been so incredibly aspirational that she’d promised to quit the groupie lifestyle and get on with her real adult life if she could bag him.

  And bag him she did. One glorious night that had lasted well into the next day, a full sixteen hours of food, sex and fun that had been goodbye to her rock and roll life and hello to using her finance degree and becoming her own rock star.

  More than a decade later, she was one successfully managed maternity leave support stint for her managing partner away from achieving her goal and she wasn’t about to jeopardize that because of the inconvenient reflex action of damp underwear.

  She put her laptop on the wooden table and scooped to collect her notepad and cardholder, her pen wasn’t in sight and her phone was, heck, where was it—uh, under the table.

  “Excuse me just a moment,” she said to the room at large, not yet prepared to look at Grip and going to her knees. Only to find herself crawling toward him as he was on his knees reaching for her phone from his side of the table.

  “I’ve got you,” he said, laughing sea green eyes meeting hers, big hand grasping her phone and disappearing it in his palm.

  Oh, he so did.

  He’d had her in those sixteen hours all the ways it was possible to have a person you’d plucked from a lineup of random hopefuls, and it had been glorious. There was a good reason, Grip had been her Mount Everest. Those massive hands, the deep chest and muscled arms, the ripped abs and thick quads. The way he played those wicked licks, effortlessly as he lived in the beat and it returned the favor by gracing him with the superpower of raw talent, explosive energy and extreme sexual attraction.

  She could not get her tongue to work. He could probably see right down her top to the lace of her bra from this position.

  “It’s all good,” he said, looking directly at her, making everything below the waistband of her pencil skirt pull tight.

  She got the words lucky and carpet out of her mouth but he’d already moved and all she could see of him was his shins in denim and his no doubt wildly expensive collector’s edition trainers.

  Lucky carpet. Dear Mary M. She had to give this man solid investment advice, ensure he made money from his existing fortune, and she couldn’t manage her legs and forgot what words were around him.

  Pull it together Philomina Elizabeth Grady. It was one night, a million years ago and you were a different person with a different name, and he’s probably slept with a hundred million women. He is not going to remember you, and you have a date tonight with a very eligible lawyer.

  She got to her feet and smiled at Caroline. She could rescue this with a witty quip and scream into her pillow about cosmic injustice later. She’d focus on the business at hand and once they got into the facts and figures it would all be suitable for work and she could sit back and enjoy the not so suitable for work secrets she had exclusive knowledge to.

  The fact that she knew where Mr. MG Holdings liked to be touched, what he sounded like when he came, how he liked to fuck long and hard, what his tattoos meant and exactly how much fun you could have with his cock piercing.

  “Despite that memorable entrance, clumsy is not the brand of my investment advice. I promise I’ll only ever offer you elegant solutions. Shall we get down to it?” she said, hiding her wince in pulling out a chair, sitting, rolling it toward the table and opening her laptop, because getting down to it sounded like an invitation to something not appropriate for a boardroom.

  Performance appraisal D minus. At least her heart had stopped trying to make a hussy out of her by opening the buttons of her silk shirt and her mouth appeared to be in rough working order.

  She risked looking at her new client and her brain superimposed an image of Grip shirtless, drenched in sweat, maniacal grin, arms flying over his rims, on top of the one of him leaning back in his chair, one sleeve-tattooed arm lying on the table, wearing a plain dark blue t-shirt that made his eyes pop and a bemused expression that made her suck in a deep breath before he stood and slid her phone across the table to her.

  As she reached for it their hands grazed and she felt color flood her face. “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Christ, he shouldn’t be allowed to say that. She dropped her gaze to her laptop keyboard and pulled on her professional reserves to say, “Why don’t you tell us what your priorities are, er, Mark?” only just catching herself from calling him, Grip like his fans did.

  She was no longer a fan in any real sense. She didn’t go to gigs, didn’t read everything ever written about him and his band, didn’t follow him on social media or burn brain cells plotting how she might meet him, sleep with him, end up friends with him. She’d put all that aside along with dying her hair black, flashing her tits, drinking till she didn’t care what anyone thought of her and wearing the most revealing clothing she could get away with and still have all her vital parts covered, most of the time.

  That’s not to say she hadn’t been aware of his rise to stardom from the drummer in a scrappy but promising pub band to global success. She’d have had to be dead not to have known Lost Property had hit the big time.

  She’d always known he was the bomb. The best of the best and that’s why he’d been at the top of her drummers to fuck list and why she’d retired after their time together. It wasn’t ever going to get any better than bedding Mark Grippen.

  Although managing his investment portfolio was a nice upgrade given the circumstances.

  As he tapped his tablet and pulled up scribbled notes, she could see he was focused on the matter at hand and she was in absolutely no danger of being discovered, until he looked up, quirked his head to the side, studied her across the table and said, “Mina, I have the strangest feeling we’ve met before.”

  About the Author

  Ainslie Paton always wanted to write stories to make people smile, but the need to eat, accumulate books, and have bedclothes to read under was ever present. She sold out, and worked as a flack, a suit, and a creative, ghosting for business leaders, rabble-rousers and politicians, and making words happen for companies, governments, causes, conditions, high-profile CEOs, low-profile celebs, and the occasional misguided royal. She still does that. She also writes for love, and so she can buy shoes, and the good cat food. More at: http://www.ainsliepaton.com.auand on Twitter @AinsliePaton.