Play For Me

by Tam DeRudder Jackson

  Though we were alone in the elevator, I didn’t let go of her hand. As I talked, I gave her fingers a squeeze, trying to communicate physically what my words weren’t doing so well for me, judging from the skeptical look on her face. “I’ve been touring nearly nonstop since I graduated, so it’s been hard to reconnect with you, but I have tried.”

  The elevator stopped on my floor, and mercifully, Clio exited the car with me without a fight, so I could stop feeling like a caveman dragging her behind me.

  “Which must be obvious since you’re here right now,” I said, finishing my explanation.

  She said nothing as we walked to my door. I fished the key card from my pocket and let us into my suite, flipping on the lights as she walked ahead of me into the outer room.

  Clio stood in the middle of the suite looking like an angel even with her arms protectively covering her chest. “It seems you hit the jackpot, accomplished your dreams. Drumming in a big-time band, partying with all kinds of people, staying in fancy hotel rooms like this.”

  I watched her as she took in the high-end reproductions of fine art on the walls, the plush white couches, the minimalist black-and-chrome tables scattered conveniently around the room. When I caught her sneaking a glance at the partially opened door to the bedroom, I had to suppress a smile. Yeah, maybe I wasn’t the only one who’d thought about us together in bed.

  “Did you enjoy the show?”

  “At the risk of overinflating your ego, the show was fantastic.” A ghost of a smile crossed her face. “I’ve been a fan of Balefire since I first heard them my senior year of high school. The original band with Dave Brubaker behind the drums rocked, but when you joined them, you elevated their sound.”

  “Thank you.”

  She refused to raise her eyes above my chest as she gracefully seated herself on the edge of one of the couches.

  I stepped over to the minibar to pour us each a glass of ice water, handing her one as I sat beside her.

  “What happened, Jack? What did I do to make you walk away without a backward glance? Erase me from your life the way you did?”

  I caught the hitch in her voice even though she tried to cover it by taking a sip of her water.

  So, she didn’t know. Without risking my dad’s business, I wasn’t in a position to tell her. Fuck.

  “I was under contract. Part of the terms included walking away from my old life.”

  “Just like that?” The snap of her fingers rang in my ears.

  Beneath the anger, she sounded so forlorn, she cracked my heart wide open.

  “I didn’t have a choice.” I begged her with my eyes to hear the truth in my words. “After I won the audition with Rude Awakening, I headed out on tour almost immediately. I’d had my high school experience. I wanted to let you have yours. I couldn’t expect you to wait around for me when there’d be times when even I didn’t know where I’d be going next or for how long.”

  “Don’t you think that should have been my decision?”

  Oh, yeah, most definitely. Too bad your father didn’t agree.

  “I was trying to do the right thing, Clio.” My hand had a mind of its own, and it slid over the back of the couch. “You were talking Ivy League schools and medicine. I didn’t want to hold you back.”

  She white-knuckled both hands around her water hard enough to worry me. “Sounds more like the other way around, Jack. Sounds more like I was going to hold you back from your sex-drugs-and-rock-n-roll dream.”

  “You know what the guys in the band call me?”

  She shook her head.

  “They call me the monk. Wanna know why?”

  She shrugged, but the look she slid me told me she only pretended indifference.

  “They call me the monk because I don’t drink much, I don’t do drugs, and I haven’t been with a groupie even once since I joined them.” I set my water on the table in front of us. “One day after I’d been touring with them for a few months, I overheard Blu and Dakota talking, wondering whether I preferred guys. I burst out laughing, and that was the end of that conversation.”

  “Why don’t you do those things?”

  Leaning back into the cushions, I gazed up at the ceiling. “Rude Awakening was all about the party. The whole lifestyle came before the music, which is why they’ll always be a warm-up band and never the main attraction.” I glanced over my shoulder at her. She needed my eyes when I told her the truth. “They expected me to party with them, and being young and desperate to play, I participated.”

  Pain flashed across her face before she hid it behind a sip of water.

  I pretended not to notice and continued. “It wasn’t as much fun as advertised. In fact, my eventual lack of enthusiasm for the party grated on my mates in Rude Awakening.” Sitting forward, I sipped some water then set my glass back on the table in front of us. “The guys in Balefire may party hard, but Blu, Dakota, and Tron are dedicated to the music. Balefire replaced Dave Brubaker because he couldn’t separate the party from real life. Even though they nicknamed me the monk, the guys like that I put the music first.”

  She whispered, “I wasn’t as important as the music.” Her pretty mouth turned down in sorrow. “You could have told me that. It would have hurt, but not any more than your silence. Ironic. You dumped me for your music and left me without a sound.”

  “Clio, baby. It wasn’t like that.” When I reached for her, she flinched, and I dropped my hand to my knee.

  “Yeah, Jack, it was. I was there, remember?” She closed in on herself. “And don’t call me baby.”

  I smiled. Harrison Barnes may have stolen almost five years from us, but Clio still had some fight in her. Good. “You used to like it when I called you baby,” I said, coaxing her with a grin.

  “I used to like a lot of things.” She took another sip of water before carefully setting the glass on the coffee table in front of us.

  I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She’d changed from the pretty girl who rocked my world into a beautiful woman whose gorgeous curves made my hands itch to touch her. I wanted to shove my fingers into her hair, mess up her careful styling, and let all that auburn fire lick and flow over my hands. I wanted to trail kisses along the long smooth column of her throat, listen to her moan at my touch, feel her pulse race beneath my lips, taste the sweetness of her skin with my tongue.

  “Stop looking at me like that.”

  “How am I looking at you, Clio?”

  “Like I’m the center of your universe.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “You used to be good at making me feel like I was. Now I know better.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She laughed, but there was only pain there. “One day you were looking at me like you are now. The next day you weren’t looking at me at all.”

  She stood and wandered over to the floor-to-ceiling windows, turning her back to me as she gazed out at the lights of the city below. I’d schemed too much for this chance to reconnect to let her walk away from me now. In two strides, I stood behind her, close enough to touch.

  Chapter Six

  Clio

  What was it about Jack Whitehorse that made me lose every last vestige of reason and common sense? Why did I let him drag me up to his hotel room? Oh, yeah, because masochist that I am, I couldn’t walk away from a few minutes alone with him. What did I expect him to say? I fell in love with him for precisely who he was. A smile tugged at my lips as I remembered playing the part of groupie when I stood at the front of the crowd while his high school band played for school dances. After five years, not much had changed.

  As I stared out at miles of twinkling lights, I didn’t hear Jack as he padded across the sumptuous white carpet to stand close behind me. Instead, I felt his heat radiating over me, goose-bumping my skin. I shivered and rubbed my hands up and down my arms. When he skimmed his hands along my arms, internally, I rejoiced that I already held myself, or I might have flown apart into a million pieces.

  “I’ve never stopped lo
oking at you Clio. You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known,” he whispered.

  “Right,” I said, dragging the word out. “’Cause you haven’t met any supermodels or actresses or pro athletes since you became a famous rock star.” I snorted.

  “Doesn’t matter who they are or who they know or what they do,” he said quietly. “For me, no other woman has ever come close to you. Seeing you again after all this time is a dream come true.” Gently, he pulled me back into his chest and wrapped his arms over mine. “You’re shivering. Are you cold?”

  “N-no.”

  “Ah.”

  I don’t know what he thought, but it didn’t matter when his lips butterflied the skin where my neck and shoulder met. I tightened my arms over my chest and tried to quell the sensations his touch demanded from me. Had always demanded from me. When he flicked his tongue out and tasted me, I couldn’t hold back the tiny moan that escaped my lips. It was as though time and life and experience hadn’t happened at all. Being held in Jack Whitehorse’s arms was so natural, so right. Experiencing his kisses was like coming home, or what I imagined coming home would be like.

  Without my permission, my body responded to his touch, melting back into him, my head dropping to one side to give him easier access to my neck. He took advantage, trailing soft kisses along my pulse to the sensitive spot behind my ear where he licked and sucked my skin. When he did that, my knees gave way, but he held me so close I didn’t fall.

  Carefully, he turned me and wrapped his arms around me. “I dream about you all the time, Clio. And when I dream about you, I dream about this.”

  Lowering his head, he set his lips on mine, sipping me, tasting me, enticing me to join him. He’d disappeared from my life for five long years, only to reappear in it like a summer storm. God, I wanted to resist him so damn much, pretend he didn’t matter, pretend I hadn’t thought about him every single day since he walked out of my life.

  But I wasn’t that strong.

  Leaning into him, I kissed him back. My response did something to him, and he groaned deep in his throat before he opened his mouth and slid his tongue over the seam of my lips. Accepting his request, I opened my mouth and met his tongue, firing the soft kiss into an inferno that burned away all the years since the last time he’d kissed me.

  No one could kiss me like Jack. No one but Jack Whitehorse could turn me into a hot mess merely by touching his tongue to mine. His hands roamed my back, from my shoulders to my waist, holding me, urging me closer to his hard body. He slid his hands over my ass, kneading me and pulling me against the erection pushing hard between us. I moaned into his mouth and tightened my arms around his neck, desperately trying to meld myself into him.

  Then he pulled out all the stops, sliding his hands up my waist, skimming the curves of my breasts on his way to my neck. He cupped his big palms on the sides of my neck, his fingertips meeting at my nape while he skimmed his calloused thumbs along my jaw. All the while, he deepened the kiss, undoing me with his touch. I never could resist that one move, and he knew it.

  Keeping his hands on my neck, he started walking me backward, stealing kisses between checking his navigation over my shoulder.

  “What, where are we—?”

  Jack preempted my questions with more kisses.

  Something solid gave way at my back. We’d pushed through the door, left the sitting room, and entered the bedroom. Still, he kept walking me backward until the backs of my thighs bumped the soft edge of the bed. At last, he dropped his hands from my neck to grasp my hips, silently urging me back, and I fell slowly onto the mattress with him coming down on top of me.

  “Jack.”

  His mouth returned to mine, making me forget what I’d wanted to say.

  Somehow, he worked the zipper on the back of my dress free before he slid off me and sat up on his knees. Desire darkened his eyes as he reached for the neck of my dress. “May I?”

  I answered the question with a single nod, and slowly, he tugged my dress down. The callouses on his palms played over my skin as he skimmed his hands across my collarbone, over my shoulders, and down my arms behind the lace of my dress, his touch driving me as wild as his kisses. Writhing beneath his hands, I helped him divest me of the pretty periwinkle confection, which he tossed over a nearby chair.

  For a few seconds, he stared at me lying in the middle of his bed in nothing but my plain white bra and bikini panties and silver sandals. Being so exposed should have made me self-conscious, but I was with Jack, and the hungry look on his face emboldened me. I trailed my hand along the top of his thigh, enjoying the power of muscles I could feel beneath the fabric of his jeans.

  He sucked in a breath before reaching behind his head and grabbing the collar of his T-shirt in the way guys do, pulling it over his head and off his body to drop on the floor beside the bed. His broad sculpted shoulders and deep chest hinted at the kind of shape he was in. In the dim light glowing from the sitting room beyond the bedroom door, I could see the outlines of a tattoo over his shoulder. As I reached up to trace it, Jack bent down to kiss me again, stretching out beside me as he took his time with my mouth.

  He nibbled at the side of my lips, working his way slowly across my mouth while his calloused hand toured my body. Starting with the bare skin of my waist, he explored my torso from the edge of my panties to the underwires of my bra before dropping lower again to the top of my thigh. Involuntarily, I shifted under his touch, pulling my knee up and opening my center to him.

  He smiled against my mouth and moved his hand around to my back. When he plunged his tongue inside my lips, I met him with the desperation of wanting him for five long years. With my hands buried in his silky dark hair, I held his mouth to mine as we kissed each other crazy. Cool air flowed over my nipples, alerting me Jack had unhooked my bra. He lifted away from me enough to strip me of that scrap of fabric and bent his head to one tight nipple. I arched off the bed at the touch of his lips tugging me into his mouth, sucking me and ripping a scream from me.

  Deep in his throat, he chuckled at my response before he transferred his attention to my other nipple. My belly tightened and hummed, and I thought I might come from his attentions to my breasts alone. He mesmerized me with his talented mouth and left me begging when he pulled away to stand beside the bed.

  “Where are you going?” I whimpered.

  “Nowhere, Clio. I’m staying right here.”

  He toed off his Converse and unzipped the fly of his jeans. Hooking his fingers in the waistbands of both his jeans and his boxers, he slid the whole works over his lean hips and down his long legs before straightening up and stepping out of them. The evidence of his response to me stood proudly erect at the apex of his thighs, and my eyes nearly popped out of my head at the size of him. He picked up his jeans, retrieved his wallet, and pulled a condom from it, setting it on the nightstand beside the bed. Instead of rejoining me like I thought he would, he walked around to the foot of the bed and raked my body with his eyes from my face to my feet.

  “I think I want you to leave these on,” Jack said with a grin as he palmed my sandals.

  The way he smoothed his hands along the outsides of my legs had me digging my heels into the mattress to lift my hips in anticipation of his destination. Smiling at my eagerness, he slipped his fingers inside the waistband of my panties and smoothed them down my legs.

  “Jesus, Clio. You’re even more beautiful than I dreamed, and that’s saying something. I’ve got to taste you.”

  It took me several seconds to process what he meant, time he spent slipping his hands beneath my knees to raise them off the bed, widening my thighs enough for his broad shoulders to fit between them. When I figured out what he meant to do, I tried to push my thighs together, but his dark laugh met my surprise. He held my legs apart with his shoulders as he lowered his head to my center. Having never experienced a man’s mouth so intimately before, and considering it was Jack’s mouth, maybe I should have been at least a little prepared for what
he would do to me. But I wasn’t. What his kisses did to me when he trailed them along my neck, on my breasts, on my mouth were pink sensations compared to the deep dark vermillion thrill of his mouth on my pussy.

  I cried out and arched into him, dragging a moan from him as he tightened his grip on my thighs and continued to lick and kiss my sex. When he turned his full attention to my clit, tonguing and nipping, sucking and kissing me, I lost my mind. As if from some great distance, I heard myself whimpering his name, heard his dark laugh rumbling in his throat. “That’s it, Clio. Come all over my face.”

  At little time later when my heart slowed from warp speed to a race, he let me go, only to crawl up the bed beside me to grab the condom off the nightstand. Lying on his back, he tore open the packet and smoothed the condom over his cock before he rolled over on top of me again. After nudging my thighs apart with his knee, he settled himself between them, the head of his cock twitching against my clit.

  He pushed up on his elbows and smiled down at me. “You tasted even sweeter than I imagined. Want me to show you?”

  I couldn’t understand what he meant until he leaned down and kissed me, and I tasted myself on his lips, smelled my arousal on his face. Somehow whenever I’d imagined a man doing to me what Jack had just done, I’d thought it might be vaguely disgusting to taste myself, smell myself, but on Jack, those smells and that taste only intensified the tightening low in my belly, the anticipation of what would happen next.

  Shifting my thighs farther apart, I gave him better access to my pussy. I wanted him so much, even though I didn’t understand what that truly meant. A hollowness, a deep longing drew my body to his, and I instinctively lifted my hips to encourage him to fill me. Clinically, I knew we’d fit together, but nothing could prepare me for the sting as he stretched me and popped my cherry with the first thrust of his impressive cock.