Mark was different, though. With him, I had no control or awareness. It was all him—my entire being focused on him—his touch, his taste, his scent, the fiery, strong emotions he produced in me.
Some people were waiting to go down the elevator as we stepped off. I didn’t take notice who they were because I was looking at him. We stepped off and they stepped on. He waved to someone, greeted someone else, but I was stuck in a fog from his kiss. Was this real life? Was this really happening to me?
He led me to a door marked 4701 and opened it to a party in full swing. People milled around, music blared. Some people sat on his couch while others helped themselves to drinks in his kitchen.
“Welcome to my place,” he said wryly.
I smiled and glanced around, memorizing every detail for the report Jill would surely want the next day. “It’s nice,” I said.
He shrugged. “Better be for what I paid for it. You want a beer?”
“Sure.” I followed him to his refrigerator. “Do you live alone?”
“Usually, yes, but I have houseguests for the next few weeks.” A woman with bleach blonde hair stood just beside it.
“Hi you,” she said, her voice throaty.
“Hey, Delilah. Excuse me.” He opened the fridge and she moved over about a half a centimeter. She ran her hand up his arm, and I felt incredibly uncomfortable as I stood a few feet behind him, my eyes focused on the fridge.
“Marky Mark, take me to bed.” Her lids were heavy and she was clearly trying for seduction. I had to wonder if this is the type of girl Mark normally went for, because that wasn’t me.
I knew what I was here for, and I also knew I had no claim to stake on him. Seeing another woman try to take him out from under my nose sent a shock of reality through me. What if he decided he’d rather be with her tonight? What would I do? Where would I go?
How was I even here tonight? How had he chosen me?
“Sorry, babe, I’ve got company.” He nodded back to me.
Company. Is that all I was to him—after that car ride where he wrote down those words and confessed his darkest secret to me? After the way he kissed me after he typed out A Little Like Destiny, kissed me like a starved man with all that raw, unfiltered passion?
He grabbed two bottles of beer from the fridge, opened both, and handed one to me, and then he took my hand in his and led me through the crowded living room, down a hallway, and into his bedroom.
His bedroom was sleek and, just like the rest of his place, black, white, and gray. The floors were a white, shiny tile, and a soft, plush, black and white rug covered the majority of the floor. The walls painted a soft gray with white panel molding. The bed was the centerpiece, a huge king with white sheets and a white comforter. Black, white, and gray pillows decorated the top of the bed, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he had a housekeeper who made his bed every day. I just couldn’t see Mark Ashton, rock star extraordinaire, making his bed.
His bedroom set was white and simple, and black and white framed pictures adorned the walls. The images were simple and musical—a guitar, a sexy image of just a microphone against the backdrop of a stage, Vail’s first album cover. They were all general photos—none of him, none of people. I wondered if this was his main residence, if he picked out those pictures, that dresser, or if he had a person who did those things for him. I wondered if he had another house somewhere else where he kept pictures of his family. His mom and dad. His siblings. If his parents had a house with his childhood bedroom still intact.
He didn’t turn on any lights—instead, the room was lit with the glow of the Strip right outside his window.
The bedroom was empty and quiet despite the music pumping just in the next room. “Soundproof walls,” he said, a smile tipping up his lips.
I looked out over the view as he walked over to a chair and collapsed in it.
“I’ve never met anybody who had a soundproof bedroom,” I said.
“Helps for when my parents are visiting.” He winked at me.
I wanted to giggle because it was funny, but it just reminded me how I was one of many. I wasn’t special. This night wasn’t special—not to him, anyway. This was something he did all the time even if it wasn’t something I did all the time.
He patted his lap, and I walked slowly across the room to sit on it. I faced the window, looking out over the lights of Las Vegas while I sat on Mark Ashton’s lap in his bedroom drinking his beer.
When Jill told me she’d be able to get us backstage at the Vail concert, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine this was how the night would go.
“Do you like being a teacher?” he asked me out of the blue, one of his hands holding his bottle of beer while his other rested somewhere between my hip and my ass as we both looked out the window at his magical view.
I nodded. “Finals are next week and then I’m out for the summer. If you’d have asked me that a month ago, I might’ve had a very different answer.”
He laughed, and something sparked inside me that I was the cause of that laughter. “What do you teach?”
“High school English.”
“That was always my favorite subject.”
“Did you prefer reading or writing?” I asked.
“Both. But writing was always my passion. I had a great teacher my sophomore year who made me see that lyrics are poetry. Without that base, I don’t know if I’d be a lyricist today. What about you? Reading or writing?”
“I love both, but I prefer to read what I want to read over teaching the classics.”
“What do you like to read?”
“Chick lit.”
“Chick lit?”
“You know, literature for chicks…women.”
“Are you a closet romance reader?” he teased.
“No. I’m open about it.”
He laughed again, and I felt that same spark in my chest. I liked making him laugh.
“What’s a teacher like you doing mixed up with me?” he asked softly.
“Because I’m a teacher, I can’t end up at a rock star’s house after the show?”
He lifted a shoulder. “It just seems like teachers wouldn’t do that.”
“Teachers are people just like everybody else. I make mistakes and grow from them. I have a life outside of school. It’s not like I publicize what I do on the weekends to my students.”
“Thank God for that,” he muttered, and I laughed.
I expected to feel in awe around him, which I did when we first met, but he had this way of making me feel comfortable around him—so comfortable that I forgot I was sitting on the lap of a rock star in the lap of luxury while I drank his beer in his penthouse suite on the Strip.
“You intrigue me,” he said.
“Oh?” Butterflies hammered against my stomach. I turned to look at him. “Why?”
He was silent for a moment, as if pondering my question as he looked out over the blinking lights below us. His puzzled eyes met mine. “There’s just something riveting about you. You seem like you have depth. Everyone’s so shallow these days.”
“You intrigue me, too.”
“Oh?” he mimicked. “Why?”
“Because you’re a rock star. And someone once told me that being a rock star is fucking awesome. So I guess that makes you fucking awesome.”
He chuckled at my reference to our conversation in the car on the way over. He set down his beer on the table beside the chair and then took my bottle from my hand and set it next to his.
“Yeah, it is pretty fucking awesome,” he said, and then his hand cupped my neck and he pulled me down until my mouth covered his.
We kissed in his chair with Vegas on one side and his bed on the other. He shifted me so I was straddling him, our kiss heating up as he bucked his hips toward me. His hands settled on my ass for a few beats. He guided me up and down over him, giving me a preview of what was to come. His hands left my ass and trailed up, always moving, always working, and my body responded to his touch, seeki
ng pleasure and moving in rhythm with him. I broke from the kiss because he was overwhelming me with his mouth and his hands. I needed to see him, to look at him—to know that this was real and not just some fantasy I dreamed up.
His eyes flashed from the glow of lights outside the window forty-seven stories down. He was animalistic, his eyes so heavily laden with lust that I wanted to alleviate it—the need I saw there, the passion and the ache. His hand moved to the back of my head, and he pulled me back down with him. We kissed some more as the need between us became this tangible thing we could hold in our hands, this sphere of ache and pain, and then we threw the sphere aside as clothes flew in all directions. My shirt, my bra, at the work of his deft fingers. His shirt as I fumbled clumsily.
My fingertips ran along the cuts of muscle hidden beneath that shirt—cuts of muscle I’d ogled in pictures online for ten years. The tattooed body I’d seen in magazines was real, and it was mine for tonight. My fingertips gave pause over a tattoo I’d never seen before. It stood out from the others. It must’ve been newer. It was a small scripted letter F enclosed in a circle.
I was about to ask him the meaning, but then more clothes started coming off. He kicked his shoes off and pushed mine off, too. He lifted my ass so I was kneeling on either side of him on his chair, and then he unbuckled his belt and unbuttoned his pants. My jeans were eye-level for him, and he popped the button and lowered the zipper. My damp black panties peeked out the top, and he ran a finger along the band.
I shivered, and his hands trailed up to my breasts. He massaged and kneaded, pinched and rolled, and then he leaned forward and took one in his mouth while he worked the other with his fingertips.
I sat back on his lap and his hand trailed to the elastic band of my panties. He dipped a finger inside, difficult to do at this angle, and brushed against my clit. I nearly fell apart on top of him. He leaned back to give himself better access, and then he slipped a finger inside, his mouth still working my breast.
I dug my fingernails into his shoulders where my hands rested. He bit down on my nipple, sending a shot of need straight through me. That need only pressed harder upon me as he worked me with his hand. He pushed another finger in, and I threw my head back with a low moan. He grunted before he pulled his fingers away and let go of my breast.
“Stand up,” he commanded, and I did because you always do what Mark Ashton tells you to do.
He pulled my jeans and my panties down my legs. I stood in Mark’s bedroom completely naked, lit only by the gleaming glow of lights from below.
A carnal, guttural growl rose up from his chest, and then he shifted out of his jeans and his boxers. I panted at the sight of a naked Mark Ashton sitting in a chair in his bedroom. Need lit inside of me, a painful need so strong I thought I might die if I didn’t get to quench the thirst. He’d fingered me halfway to an orgasm, and just the naked sight of him was almost enough to push me there.
If I’d imagined his naked body a million times as I rubbed myself to pleasure, I’d have needed a million and one to get it right.
He pulled a condom from the back pocket of his jeans before tossing them on the floor. He tore the packet open and rolled it on before patting his thighs, indicating that I should get back on. I wanted to taste him first, to fist him in my palm, to stroke him and make him fall apart just from my touch, but I wanted him inside of me so much more.
I crawled on top of him, settling my legs into the space between his legs and the arms of the chair, and he guided himself into me.
My body was ready for him, warmed up from his fingers and his kiss and his biting teeth and just him.
He stretched me, so big I could hardly take him all the way in. His hands came under my ass, and he lifted me up.
“Jesus, that’s good,” he muttered on a grunt.
He let me fall back down over him, and this time I took him almost all the way in before he lifted my ass again. We both grunted at the feel of his body claiming mine, and then he let me fall over him again. Up and down, up and down, until he let me fall down and he pushed himself in completely.
We were connected, and while this was just one night, we were connected in far more ways than just body to body. His eyes found mine as we settled into stillness, and a quiet and intimate beat passed between us. This wasn’t just sex to either of us, it was something more, something deeper than I’ve ever felt with another human. We were connecting on some cellular level. We were imprinting on each other’s hearts. I knew he felt it, too, I knew he did, but despite that, I also knew it wouldn’t matter in the morning.
I refused to think of that as my eyes bore into his, though. Morning would come and this would end, but we’d always have this moment. We’d always share this heat, this connection, this fleeting passage of time, and he’d ruin me for any other man. I could only hope I’d ruin him for any other woman, but in my heart, I knew that wasn’t true.
He grunted and closed his eyes, ending the beautiful, fleeting moment, and then his fingers dug into my hips and he ground his pelvis up into mine. Even his grunts were hot—these primal sounds like he couldn’t hammer into me fast enough or hard enough, and I moaned back with some carnal noises I couldn’t control. I didn’t even have to move—he did all the work, spearing me and driving into me over and over until my body broke and swells of pleasure washed over me just as he hit his own wall of bliss.
We tensed and shouted through our orgasms together, coming and coming like it would never end. He grasped onto me as my body shuddered and the waves started to subside, wrapping his arms around me and hugging me close as he stayed inside me. I clung to him, my hands linked around his neck, never wanting to move from him or break this dynamic connection we shared.
Nothing lasts forever, though, and this moment was meant to end, too.
Eventually he cleared his throat and whispered to me in the dark as he lifted me gently and slipped out of me. “I think we should do that again.”
I giggled.
“There’s a bathroom through that door,” he said, nodding to a door across the room. He fluttered a kiss to my cheek before he helped me up.
I walked wordlessly across the room to the bathroom. I gazed at myself in the mirror. I was the same woman I’d been before I’d left the house I shared with my best friend earlier this evening, but everything had changed. I didn’t look any different, but I certainly felt different. I felt high from his kisses, like I was flying from the way he made love to me.
I gave myself a sad smile at that thought. Made love.
He didn’t make love to me. It was amazing, yes. It was the best sex of my life—without a doubt, by far. But it wasn’t love. How could it be when we didn’t know each other…when I was just one in a long line of many who came before me and many who would come after me?
He was in his bed when I exited the bathroom. I snuggled in beside him, and he held me as we whispered in the dark. Eventually, sleep took us. I woke to his mouth working against my most intimate skin, driving me to another orgasm before I finally treated myself to the taste of him in my mouth.
I couldn’t sleep after that, so I sat in the chair and alternated between staring out the window and staring at his sleeping form. If I turned to just the right angle, I could see both. Even after he called me back to bed, I couldn’t go. He was sleeping, and I didn’t want to wake him. I wanted to be here with him. I wanted to enjoy my time, and sleeping it away would make it end sooner.
He woke once more and we had sex in his bed. He moved over the top of me, his body moving in perfect sync with mine, and tears leaked out of my eyes as I came. I was grateful for the darkness and his sleepiness, because he didn’t notice—or if he did, he didn’t say anything. Devastation took over as the first rays of daylight peeked over the horizon. Night was over. The magical glow of the lights from the Strip were buried with the night, just like the memories I’d always have of this night.
He was still sleeping when I left. If morning came and we talked, if I got to know an
ything more about him than I already knew, if he started in with the lines about how I was different and intriguing, it would all just be that much harder to move on from what would only ever be one night of passion.
I dressed quietly then opened his bedroom door and shut it silently behind me. The party from the night before was long over, but evidence remained. Cups, cans, and bottles littered the kitchen’s many surfaces. Ashtrays were full, food had been spilled and attempted to be cleaned, crumbs remained. It looked like a good time.
It was more than a good time.
The kitchen and family room were empty, devoid of the many people who’d been here the night before. I stood in the kitchen and contemplated my next move. Should I leave my number? No, leaving my number would seem too desperate. Wouldn’t it? Had we shared something more? Was he sincere when he said I was different? I had to believe it was just a line. Rock stars didn’t give up their rock star lifestyles for random English teachers who showed up backstage at their concerts.
As I stood and contemplated, I heard a noise down a different hallway. Mark had mentioned houseguests—it could even be one of the other members of Vail. I wasn’t in the mood to get caught sneaking out, so I beelined it for the door, opened it quickly and quietly, and called for the elevator before I had a chance to rethink what I was doing.
Chapter Seventeen
How did Brian manage not to tell me he’s related to one of the biggest rock stars in the world?
I’m not sure whether to feel betrayed by the lie or impressed with his ability to keep a secret.
Probably the former, but my emotions are such a mess right now that nothing I feel can possibly be real. If he could so easily keep this from me, what else is he keeping from me? The thought terrifies me.
Love Triangle: Six Books of Torn Desire Page 55