Obsession (Ink & Iron #1)

by Eden Bradley

  He could have it all… but all he wants is her.

  Ink & Iron, Book 1

  During his soaring career as the lead singer of indie-rock band Ink & Iron, Cole Kennrick has been through it all: sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Overindulging until he lost what mattered most.

  Now he’s pulled his life together and left his addictions behind, except for one: his ex-wife, Janie. If only he can convince her their love was—still is—the real thing.

  In the seven years since their divorce, Janie has kept tabs on the only man she’s ever truly loved. The one she had to leave in order to save herself. Still, dark and often kinky desires they explored together linger in her dreams and fantasies.

  Janie has seen up close and way-too-personal that rock stars are bad, bad medicine. But when Cole shows up at her yoga studio, clean and sober, his leather-and-motorcycles scent teasing her senses, it’s way too tempting to slip right back into the one place she swore she’d never risk again—his arms.

  This book has been previously published and has been revised and expanded from its original release.

  Warning: One smokin’ hot tattooed rock star, five sexy-as-hell motorcycles, and a little spanking—because leather and skin just naturally go together.

  Ink & Iron: Obsession

  Eden Bradley

  Dedication

  To all the bands I worked with over the years and to the many musicians I dated—you gave me an insight into the music industry and how things happen behind the scenes I could never have had otherwise. But most of all to my big brother David, a superb musician and songwriter, lost over twenty years ago, for the song lyrics to “Lay Me Down Tonight” used in this book.

  Chapter One

  Janie inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly and lowered her body, bending at the waist until she could place her hands flat on her yoga mat.

  “Everyone remember to breathe as you press hands and heels down into the floor, stretching the hamstrings…good. Gently rise up until you’re back in mountain pose, then reach high overhead with both hands, stretching…and bring both hands into prayer position in the center of your chest, head bent. Pause to inhale, exhale.” She straightened up and glanced around the room to see how her students were doing. “Now bring both arms up overhead again and…”

  Oh Jesus God.

  What the hell was he doing in her class?

  Cole Kennrick. Indie rock star. Hottest man she’d ever seen. And her ex-husband.

  She caught herself wanting to lean toward him to catch a hint of his scent: leather and motor oil from his motorcycle—he’d always had a motorcycle—and that little bit of something spicy and earthy that was him.

  His skin. His hair. His mouth…

  She blinked. Her class. What had she been saying?

  Breathe.

  “…inhale, lowering your arms until you touch the earth. Let it ground you.”

  Please let it ground me.

  Had he seen her blanch?

  “Let your breath out slowly as you step back with your right foot, coming into Warrior pose. Lift your arms and breathe.”

  If only she didn’t look at him again she’d be all right.

  “Inhale, and straighten the left leg once more, exhaling as you bend. Good. Now let’s bend the right knee down to the earth, straighten up and place your hands on your hips…”

  Hell.

  She was looking right at him—she couldn’t help it. And he was staring back at her; those mesmerizing ice-blue eyes gleaming even from the back of the room. Those eyes…and his tall, lean body, every muscle perfectly carved, his shoulders almost too broad for his frame. His right arm was completely tattooed now—a full sleeve in bold colors. His chest too, from what she could see—all black and gray work. God, she loved tattoos on a man.

  On Cole.

  She blinked, tried to breathe.

  She would finish the damn class despite his presence. Despite the sheer male beauty of him lurking at the back of the room in nothing but black basketball shorts and a simple white ribbed tank top that managed to look sexier on him than on any other man alive.

  She focused on the painted Japanese shoji screens behind him and continued with the instructions she knew by rote, thank God. Still, the hour-long class seemed to last at least a month before she reached the final pose.

  “Bring your hands together in front of your heart, palms together. Bow your head and give thanks. Namaste.”

  “Namaste,” the class repeated.

  “See you all next week.”

  She stood and began to roll up her mat, her gaze firmly on the polished bamboo floors she’d had installed in her studio, Om, when she did the remodel last year. They were softer on the feet.

  His feet, right in front of her.

  She inhaled, her eyes closed for several long seconds before daring to raise her head. Yep. He still smelled the same. And her body still responded with a slow, trembling heat that began in her middle and spread…everywhere.

  She met his gaze and goddammit his eyes were still that glossy silvery blue that looked as if they’d been cast in glass, framed by dark, long lashes.

  It made her hot all over and mad as hell that he could still do this to her just by showing up. Just by breathing.

  Breathe.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” she demanded quietly from between gritted teeth.

  “Janie, we need to talk.”

  “Do we?”

  “We didn’t have a chance when I saw you a week ago—”

  “We were at Sonny’s funeral, Cole!”

  He ran a hand over his crop of dark hair. “Come on. I know that. That’s why I left it alone once you made it clear you didn’t even want to say hello.”

  “So you just decide to show up at one of my classes?”

  His fingertips swept over the dark stubble of his goatee. “I didn’t know where else to find you,” he said quietly.

  “I thought that was the point.” Anger was a fire blazing inside her. She’d had no idea she still had so much of it in her. Toward him. In general. Apparently training all these years as a yoga instructor hadn’t afforded her the inner calm she’d been striving for.

  All these years. Seven years since she’d left him—and she hadn’t seen him face-to-face since the divorce. Not until the funeral. She’d been so raw and angry and hurt that day she couldn’t bear to face him. She’d literally turned her back on him and walked away when he’d looked as if he might approach her.

  It still hurt.

  She looked up as the next session’s instructor came in.

  “Oh, sorry, Janie. I was going to set up for my Kundalini class. Am I interrupting?”

  “Go ahead, Brenda. We were…on our way out.”

  “Janie—” he started.

  Her look silenced him and she grabbed his wrist and began to pull him from the room, trying not to notice the soft hairs on his forearm, the muscle flexing there beneath the gorgeous ink. “Come on. We’ll talk in my office.”

  She moved as quickly as she could down the hallway, pushing open her office door and letting him pass through before shoving the door shut behind her. Leaning back against it, she took a breath, trying to control her shaking legs.

  “Okay. Talk, Cole.”

  He looked around, and even though her office was large and airy, he seemed to fill up the room. Not only because he was tall—it was more about the presence that made him so dynamic on stage. And off. “You’ve done a nice job here. Of course, you always did have good taste. This place suits you.”

&nbs
p; She bit her lip. It shouldn’t matter what he thought about anything she did, but a small bubble of happiness welled inside her. She hoped it didn’t show on her face. Still, she refused to make it too easy on him. “Thanks. So. What is it? Why are you here?”

  “I needed to see you.” He stepped closer and she would have stepped back had the door not already been pressed against her spine. She took in a small, gasping breath, and there was his scent again: leather and motor oil and Cole.

  “We need to talk, you needed to see me,” she muttered. “You’re seeing me. So talk.”

  “Janie. Look at me.” His tone was one of quiet command. Familiar. Irresistible. She glanced up at his face and was momentarily stunned by the emotion she saw there. “I needed to see you, to talk to you, after…after Sonny’s funeral. We haven’t seen each other since that last time at the attorney’s office, and you wouldn’t let me talk to you then, either.”

  “Seriously? Can you blame me?”

  He flinched. “Of course I can’t blame you. I put you through hell, and you deserved better. I’m sorry, Janie.”

  “You already apologized when you were working through your ninth step in the recovery program.”

  “On the phone.”

  “Because that’s all I would allow you,” she said, wondering why she was suddenly defending him. “But you’re right. You and your drug addiction, your drinking, put me through hell. So you can apologize all you want. It won’t change our history. And now…” she had to pause, to take in a breath. “…now Sonny is dead because of a damn addiction too. Apologies won’t change that, either.”

  Tears burned her eyes. She pressed into them with her fingertips.

  “Aw, Janie.”

  He moved closer, but she warded him off with a wave of her hand.

  “No. You do not get to comfort me.” She shook her head. “I’m so damn sick and tired of drugs and booze taking people away from me. Sonny is only the latest in a long string that included…” she paused to swallow a sob, “…you.”

  “You were the one who left,” he said, his tone low, thick with the gravelly rasp that made him famous in the music industry. The rough vulnerability that had lured her in when she was nineteen years old.

  God, it had been love at first sight for both of them, and they’d gotten married in Vegas only a few months later. Big mistake. Huge. Even if she’d been so wildly in love with him the idea of waiting to become his wife—to become his—had been unbearable. So in love the hole in her heart had never completely healed.

  “I had to, Cole. Had to. The music industry, those people, were swallowing you up. The drinking and the pills and God knows what else. There was no room for me in that world, and I didn’t want there to be.”

  He shook his head. “It was me that swallowed me up, who destroyed our life together. Fuck, Janie…if I’d only been smart enough to see it then, I never would have…hell, I can’t honestly say that. I don’t know. I’m an addict. That’s the way it works, right? I learned that early on in recovery. Most of us just keep on using until we lose everything. At least I still have my life. I was lucky. Not like poor Sonny.”

  “God, Cole! Please don’t.”

  To her horror, two fat tears leaked down her cheeks.

  “Ah, no… Don’t cry, baby.”

  That one word undid her. Baby. No one else had called her that since Cole. She wouldn’t have allowed it. But now it made her crumple into his arms, unshed grief ripping into her chest. When his strong arms wrapped around her she burrowed in, the sobs coming hard and fast.

  “Shh, baby. It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”

  “How will it be okay? Sonny is gone.” She paused to hiccup in a breath. “I know I hadn’t kept in touch with him, but I knew him since I was eighteen. I introduced you guys.” She pushed back enough to look up into his face. “It all seems like a thousand years ago. How is it possible that we were ever so damn young?”

  “Maybe because we were. Young and stupid. Sonny and me, anyway. You were always the smart one.” He paused, his dark brows drawing together. “And so damn beautiful. You still take my breath away, you know that?”

  She didn’t want to melt into him, but she did. Just like she always had. And before she had a chance for rational thought to kick in, he lowered his head and brushed her lips with his.

  She went warm all over, the heat that had always burned between them suffusing her. That and a sense of comfort in his arms. His lips were a whisper of soft flesh against hers, and he tasted exactly as he should—like sweet and wild masculinity.

  Something between her thighs went tight, and she realized she was crushing her breasts against the hard wall of his finely muscled chest.

  “No.” She pushed back, but he held onto her.

  “Why not, baby? Why not, if we both need this? Just…contact. Just holding each other.”

  “I’m not some song you’re writing, Cole,” she protested, but her voice was a whisper.

  “Aren’t you? Do you know how many songs I’ve written about you? I’ve never forgotten my Janie girl.”

  “Don’t call me that,” she warned, even though every cell in her body wanted him to say it again, over and over until she could believe it. But wanting Cole Kennrick and trusting him were two different things.

  He pulled her in tighter, until she could feel the strength in his arms, in his chest, even his hard, muscled stomach.

  “But you are my girl,” he said softly, the gravel sinking to a low rumble. “You always have been. You always will be. I can’t help it. I’ve stayed away for so many years, but Sonny… Janie, life is too goddamn short to waste a minute on regret. I know I fucked up. Royally. And I’ve worked all twelve of my steps around my addictions and again around what I did to you. I try not to let myself get too tangled up in regret, but I have plenty when it comes to you. Let’s not make any new regrets. I can tell something in you wants me the way I never stopped wanting you. I can feel it. I can see it in your eyes.” He paused, watching her face closely. “That, and fear,” he said, keeping his voice soft, as if he knew how easily she could be scared away.

  She shivered, closed her eyes, and he brushed a hand over her hair.

  “Honey and silk,” he said, taking a few strands between his fingers. “Exactly like I remembered. It’s been too long since I’ve touched your hair. Since I held you.”

  She wanted to shake him off—literally and figuratively—but he was right there and it was too damn hard.

  And oh God, she was pressed up against him tight enough to feel that he was hard.

  Her body wanted him. Wanted to simply give in and rub up against him and purr.

  But there was too much history between them. She was not going to risk the serenity she’d worked so long for, fought for, over a sexual infatuation that would not die. That and the memories of the best sex she’d ever had. Even if that sex was with Cole—rock star, bad boy biker, inherently sex on a stick.

  The risk was too big, and she wasn’t sure she could fight her way out again if she gave in now. She had paid too high a price.

  Her mind flashed back to one of the last painful nights of their marriage.

  Startled awake in the middle of the night by a noise in the kitchen. Again. She threw her robe on, pulled the belt tight and made her way downstairs. Cole drunk or high or both, hanging onto the counter for support while he stood blinking in front of the open refrigerator, a carton of orange juice spilled heedlessly at his feet. Still so damn beautiful, in some terrible, tragic way that hurt her heart.

  “Cole, I told you, you can’t do this anymore. I can’t take it.” She hated the desperation in her voice. Where had their happiness gone? Why didn’t he seem to care what he was doing to her? To them?

  “Sorry, baby.”

  “Please don’t call me that when you’re loaded.”

  “But you are my baby.
”

  He started to move toward her, a crooked smile on his face, but all the charm it once held was gone, drowned in his addiction. She could have been anyone. He didn’t even see her most of the time anymore, and certainly not now, when he was loaded. Again.

  She put her hands up in front of her like a shield and took a step back. “Not like this, I’m not.”

  He blinked, looking confused, as if he didn’t understand why she was pushing him away. But it was his behavior that had caused this chasm between them. And that chasm hurt like hell.

  “C’mon, baby. It’s all good.”

  “It is not all good, Cole. None of it is good anymore.”

  She had to swallow the tears. She’d spent too much time crying in the last year.

  It was the sense of utter betrayal that really got her. Betrayal of their vows. Of the love they had for each other. Oh, she knew he loved her. He simply loved his Jack Daniels and his Vicodin more.

  “You’re sleeping on the couch, Cole. And tomorrow…tomorrow you need to find somewhere else to sleep.”

  It hurt her to say the words. To turn her back on him. But she had to do it.

  She’d had to do it. And it still hurt. She couldn’t go through it again.

  Squirming, she pushed away from him, fighting down the emotion that wanted to overwhelm her.

  “I can’t go there, Cole. I don’t want to talk about my fears with you. Or being your girl. Or my fucking hair, for God’s sake! This is…ridiculous. Impossible.”

  But the sheer masculine beauty of his face—a face thousands of women would have killed to be close to—and the sincerity of his tone were getting to her. That, and the pure chemistry that still sizzled and snapped in the air between them like static electricity before a storm.

  The past was the past. Wasn’t it? How was it possible that she still responded to him like this? She couldn’t seem to think straight.

  “Have dinner with me tonight. We can talk.”

  Her mind spun with images of them together in the darkness, with nothing but the light of the moon shining on their naked bodies through the windows of their old house in Venice Beach… Those images drove the other ones away, and she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or if it was bad, but this certainly felt better. “Tonight?” she asked uncertainly.