One Kiss from the King of Rock (The One Book 2) Read online

  He uncapped his water. “Evie, I have no idea what you’ll do. Seems like I never did.”

  Could he manage to sound more weary and put-upon? She’d offered him no-strings sex that he’d already tasted tested and knew he liked. This just wasn’t going to work. Why had she thought it would? He’d lust drugged her with his rangy body and ruffled hair, with his low, deep voice and his raging jealousy over nothing.

  She crossed her legs and her arms. “Looks like we’ve hit a wall.”

  He shrugged. “Sorry we couldn’t do a deal here.”

  She swiveled the chair so she didn’t have to watch him leave, forgetting the wall behind her was all mirror. There was a damn good reason she’d spent a decade avoiding any sight or mention of him. That didn’t account for why she thought she could trust him to work with her in a deal where both of them would benefit. How could she have forgotten he was driven by rampant self-interest and if he didn’t get his own way, it was the highway?

  Seething, she watched him chug the remains of his water and place the empty on the counter. The sooner he left the room, the sooner she could start forgetting about him all over again.

  But he didn’t open the door. He stepped up behind her and put his hands to the back of the chair. His lips looked wet; his eyes looked hot. She rammed her folded arms harder against her body.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said. “Under the terms of this deal of yours, I can touch you everywhere, kiss you anywhere except your lips.”

  “That was the proposition.”

  “You don’t think it will work for you without my cock’s participation.”

  “I’m an all or nothing kind of girl.”

  He harrumphed. “So I remember.”

  “Then we’re done here.” She really needed him gone, like ten years ago.

  “I’d like to test your theory.”

  “No.” But he wrapped his hand over her messy bun and she stopped breathing.

  “I’m going to kiss you now, Evie. Stop me if that’s not on.”

  Options. Two. Stop him or show him how little his kiss affected her and send him off to regret his decisions. She angled her neck to give him access. “Bring it.”

  He lowered his head and put cold lips to her neck, making her flinch at the contact. Up so close, his scent filled her senses. He made an approving sound, and in the mirror, she saw him smile, right before he kissed her again, using her hair to move her head where he wanted it, sliding his kiss up her neck to a sensitive little place behind her ear, where he sucked for a second before doing that sequence again. Lip contact, slide, suck. Oh my God.

  She unfolded her arms and gripped the chair and he did it again, this time, biting her earlobe lightly and then moving to the other side to repeat the routine. Lip contact, wet slide, suck, bite and a tug on her daith hoop which zinged right through her body to her clit, making her gasp. Back to her neck, but now his hot lips slid across her collarbone, moving her baggy boatneck T-shirt out of the way to kiss her shoulder, soft and so tender.

  Her eyes rolled up. She groaned. Couldn’t help it. It was an agonized, pent-up sound of longing. No one kissed like this. She was a fool for forgetting exactly how devastating Jay’s attention could be. If she let go of the chair to touch him she’d give everything away.

  His eyes came up in the mirror, they were laughing at her. Kisses all over her shoulder and up and down her collarbone. She waited for him to call her on her bullshit and all he did was grind her into a mushy paste of wet longing by kissing, nipping, sucking and licking every inch of her neck, using her hair to aim his attacks on her most sensitive spots, and drawing waves of pleasure from every nerve ending to the surface of her skin.

  He traced her hairline and kissed her eyes, he nudged her nose and smoothed his lips over her temple. In one moment of complete surrender during the raid on her sanity, because that’s what this was, she offered him her mouth, open in a gasp and he tugged her head further back, bent over her and kissed her throat instead.

  She’d made a grave error. She’d let hot and dirty wishful thinking out of the box. It was running wild. Unrecoverable.

  If she died right here, in a hairdresser’s chair in a TV studio makeup room while work waited, with Jay’s kisses dancing, glancing, making her shake with need, it would be an epic death, worthy of a legendary, chart-topping love song.

  And she could live with that.

  EIGHT

  Jay wanted Evie’s mouth fiercely. He wanted to lock the door, haul her out of the chair and into his arms, sweep the clutter from the countertop and take them both beyond kisses, out to the place where only pleasing each other mattered and the world and all its demands could go fuck itself while they got busy making stars rain down.

  When he’d kissed, licked, sucked all over the smooth, caramel-scented warmth of Evie’s neck, shoulders, and face, he pulled the band from her hair, shook it out and raked his fingers over her scalp. Then he gathered it up in his fist and started all over again.

  This time around, he slipped his other hand down her body to cup her breast over her shirt, fondling, using his thumb to tease her nipple. She slammed her feet on the floor and arched against the chair back, surging into his hand.

  Her reaction made him bite down on her shoulder a little harder, change hands and do it again on her other side. He circled a finger over her piercing, making her groan and bump against his hand, seeking something more. He pinched the metal edge and pulled gently, got a hiss of pleasure-pain out of her before cupping her whole breast.

  He couldn’t get enough of her. High on her taste, on the soft noises of surprise and wonder she couldn’t contain and the way she undulated in reaction to his touch. Had no idea how much time had passed since his lips first touched down on her silken skin. He’d been steamed up, worried about whether he’d played it right with Abel during the interview and intending to show Evie how wrongheaded she was about what they could do to each other, even with barbaric restrictions hanging over them.

  But the idea of punishing her into submission, if it ever really existed outside of his imagination, long got lost in the want to make her breath get short and her muscles soften, her whole body offered up for him to devour.

  It was brutal not being allowed near her mouth, not tangling with her tongue. He’d had to hold his own reactions in check so not to ruin it all by taking advantage of her arousal, her trust in him. He was just as into this as she was, maybe more because he had control. The illusion of it anyway. Evie was the boss here. He was a servant to her sighs and gasps, and the way her eyes fluttered closed and her head got heavy on her neck, as he relearned how to touch all the secret sensitive places that turned her on.

  Beside her left eye, his whole mouth against her ear, the place where her collarbone met her shoulder and right along her hairline at the back of her neck. He remembered other places on her body that she’d loved him to kiss. Her left nipple, the one not pierced, was more sensitive than her right, kissing the ridge of her hip bone made her jerk, kissing her belly made her laugh.

  The piercing in her ear was new. She liked his tongue there. He almost got her hands to leave the death grip she had on the arms of the chair when he caught it between his teeth and tugged lightly.

  If she let go the chair, he’d kiss her fingers, learn the notes inked between them. If she let go the rules, he’d be a real king instead of wishful.

  He took a moment to simply breathe against her skin. There’d be other new things to discover about her body and ways to encourage her to give herself entirely up to him that didn’t involve his lips on hers or his rigidly hard cock inside her. She might think she was all or nothing, but he was nothing if not inventive. He’d reinvented himself because of her.

  He rubbed his cheek against hers and pushed his hand down her body and right between her legs, where she radiated heat through her skinny pants. She hissed and clamped around his fingers, hips shifting.

  Neither of them was getting what they truly wanted ou
t of this, but it was a glorious feast anyway. Teeth sharp to Evie’s earlobe made her legs open and he withdrew, first his hands, then his lips, then stepping away from the chair and looking at her reflection.

  Her cheeks were flushed, her nipples pebbled, her pupils blown out, her hair wild and tangled around her shoulders. She was slumped in the chair as if her bones had liquefied.

  Neither of them had said an intelligible word. If he spoke it would be to gloat, so he kept his mouth shut, bent forward, kissed the back of her head and turned to go.

  At the sound of the door opening, he got the prize he’d set out to win. “It’s a deal,” she said, voice hushed like whispering in a church. “But if you kiss my lips we’re done.”

  Patience was a virtue, restraint a civilizing force. It wasn’t all but it was a long way from nothing.

  It wasn’t till he got to the car and collapsed in the back seat that he realized he was so in his head, he’d never answered her. His stuff was on the seat beside him. He fumbled in his bag for his phone, only to remember he didn’t have a number for her and he couldn’t ask easily anyone for it without tipping their hand.

  They had a final PoP rehearsal tomorrow, he’d see Evie there but with everyone else around it wouldn’t be easy to get her alone. He pushed his hair back from his face and caught a whiff of her scent. He’d find a way to get near her if only to claim her skin again, to see if there was any convincing her to renegotiate terms.

  When he turned his phone on, it filled with messages. Mum, his publicist, the head of his road crew, a dozen or more messages he’d need to read and respond to, but not now. For now, he wanted to sit with the idea that in the next day or two he’d have Evie naked in his arms again.

  He rode all the way back to the hotel with the hot blur of that filling his vision. She might still hate him, but she didn’t hate how he could make her feel, at least physically. Mentally was another story. Was it right to make her come without understanding why he hadn’t been doing that for the last decade of their lives?

  “Huh,” he said aloud.

  “Sir,” his driver said, “Is there something you need?”

  He eyed the line of waiting fans in the hotel’s driveway. He simply wasn’t ready to touch other people yet, have them touch him. “Any chance you could drive around the block again?”

  The driver pulled through the driveway, confusing the doorman and making the waiting fans go from excited and expectant to deflated and bored.

  On the dashboard was a tag. Exclusive Transport. Your driver is Hassan Jaber. “Ever been in love, Hassan?”

  Hassan’s eyes came up in the rear-view mirror. “I’m engaged to my best friend.”

  “Can you imagine losing them?”

  “I can. It’d be a horror story and somehow I’d be the author.”

  “I lost someone here a long time ago, and today I kissed her again.” He made explosion fingers. “Blown my mind. I need a few more minutes before I’m ready to talk to fans.” Ready to have other people want him to make their day more unreal.

  “She forgives you?”

  “You think I’m to blame?” Jay laughed. “Yeah, I probably am. And no, she doesn’t forgive me. I don’t understand what happened between us and it seems like I should.”

  “So you ask her.”

  He laughed again. “You make that sound easy. You don’t know Evie.”

  “Evie Tice? Yeah,” Hassan said. “I do. Evie recommended me to your tour company.”

  “No kidding.” Jay yanked at his seat belt so he could sit forward. “Got any advice about how I play this?”

  “Know what you want, respect what she wants, and don’t mess her around.”

  That was sound. Also a problem. Kissing Evie like time had no meaning was one thing, but he had no idea what the endgame was. He’d be in New Zealand and then Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai and then on to Europe after Australia. After the tour, there was a new album to record. And what did Evie want? He’d never really known.

  “Oh shit. You were driving earlier when I was in the car with Mum.”

  “I don’t listen in on clients’ conversations.”

  Maybe not all of them. “Come on, man, you heard that one.”

  Hassan dropped his eyes. Jay got a view of the top of his head for a second. “Yeah, I heard. I don’t know what to tell you except Evie works hard and makes it look like she doesn’t. Her business is expanding. She’s hiring more people.”

  “Evie has a business, with people. She’s a boss?” He’d thought she was the wardrobe person. He’d called her Tiny Dancer as if she was groupie who only lived for other peoples’ fame. Christ. He’d been aiming for humorous and landed hostile. There was a husk of him that’d wanted to hurt her for cutting him out of her life. Grip had corrected him, but he’d failed to ask the right questions about what Evie really did besides take pictures and he’d failed to check himself.

  She must despise his arrogant arse.

  “You need to talk to her,” Hassan said, sternly.

  “I don’t think she wants me for talk.” He should’ve made it a condition that they talked it out before they got naked but to what end? “She’s never said she’d rather be doing something else?” He should be asking Abel this. Errol, anyone but the driver he was making work overtime.

  “Not to me.”

  “Did you know she sings?” Has a voice you can hear frost and fire in. You could hear mountain streams and bellbirds and the crash of the sea in Evie’s notes and tones.

  “I didn’t know that. We’re coming up on the hotel. Do you want me to go around again?”

  Those people waiting paid for Jay’s success with hard-earned cash. He was being a jerk, hiding out in his luxury air-conditioned limousine. “One more.”

  He needed to think and once he got out of the temporary bubble of this car, his reality would come crashing in again. He’d thought the world had ended when Evie let him go. That’s not the story that got told about the band’s name, but it was the truth. Everyone thought it was a comment on the current state of the planet, randomly nihilist, like The Handmaiden’s Tale.

  Hassan interrupted his musing. “Tries to hide it, but she has a big heart.”

  “And I broke it, even though I didn’t mean to.”

  “You’re in a tough spot.”

  Wasn’t going to be tough to love Evie’s body and that’s all she was offering. Take it or leave it. What was her logic about not kissing on the lips? She wouldn’t survive it. What if wanting sex without emotion wasn’t part of her hustle?

  A better man would recognize this was a problem and leave it.

  He’d left her last time to be a better man.

  “Yeah, rock and roll and a hard place.”

  He got through the wall of fans making them feel he’d been worth the wait, but didn’t make it through the foyer without incident. Errol, who he’d been keen to avoid being alone with, was on his way out. It was the dodged eye contact that told him Errol was just as keen to avoid him that did it.

  He stood in the man’s path. “We should talk.” It wasn’t that they hadn’t been talking. Errol had made sure Jay felt welcome without having to work for it in a way his sons had. But it was time for answers.

  “Anything you need about the tour?”

  “Not the tour. I leave that to Mum.”

  Errol rubbed his hand over his bearded face. No idiot, he must’ve known a showdown was overdue. “I was hard on you. Harder than I should’ve been.”

  “You were right about me.” Mostly. “I had the enthusiasm but not the skill. Wasn’t fit to string Abel’s guitar back then.”

  “I should’ve known you’d put the work in. I should’ve been more supportive.” Errol put his bag down. He wasn’t dodging now. “I failed you.”

  That was too easy. The puzzle of it sat in Jay’s gut, undigested anger and frustration. There had to be more to this. Before he managed the band, Errol taught kids who thought Chopsticks was playing the piano to get their E
lton John on.

  “You thought I was a flake.” The king of wishful thinking. “A dreamer who’d never put the work in,” he said.

  “I was wrong, and I can only apologize for that.”

  Errol was uncomfortable and he wasn’t faking sincerity, but that wasn’t the apology Jay needed. “You wanted to break Evie and I up. You wanted me out of the band.”

  “No. I wanted the best for Evie. I wasn’t trying to break you up, just cool things. I wanted Evie to have her shot. Exactly as I told you. She was young and absorbed by you and her brothers. I only wanted her to have space to make her own way. She could be one of the truly greats.”

  It hurt to agree. Errol had gotten his way. Time for answers. “What happened?”

  Errol frowned. “You haven’t talked to Evie about this?”

  “Evie can’t forgive me.” Despite saying she did. He wouldn’t be forgiven until she kissed him willingly because she wanted to, not because hormones and endorphins tricked her into it. “You told Evie I was going to let her down, that she couldn’t rely on me.” That’s why she reacted the way she did, all or nothing. “You primed her for me to bail on her. And I walked into it. It was the same with the boys.” Mum was right. How had he never seen it like this before? He felt like taking a swing at Errol. Knocking the man off his feet might ease the useless ache he felt. “You wanted me out and you helped it along.”

  Errol looked away. “I only wanted what was best for my family.”

  The worst part—the part that churned and spat inside Jay is that it was true.

  “I loved Evie. I still love her. Your sons were my brothers. You were the closest thing to a father I had. I trusted you and you sold me out.” He’d not wanted to believe that had happened and now he felt evil drunk on it.

  “It was a mistake and I’m sorry.”

  Now that was a dodge. “It wasn’t a mistake. You didn’t wake up one day and decide I was no good for your family. You sowed seeds. You created doubt. You manipulated us all. I want to know why? I deserve an answer.”