They did now.
The speaker of the song had been bemoaning that his girl had left him, but at the point where I started paying attention, he was telling her that now she would get to feel sad knowing that her guy was messing around with someone else. And, thinking about CJ running into the hands of his Hollywood starlet, the tears began to fall and they didn’t stop until I was almost home.
* * *
That night, I was home alone and, even though I knew it wouldn’t help get CJ out of my mind, I played around with the tune for “Bad Ass Bitch” on my guitar. While plucking on the strings, I envisioned myself playing the song onstage during our next tour, and it filled me with pride. I thought it was an amazing song, and it made me feel special.
I wound up working through the entire song, including a solo, and I couldn’t wait to share it with CJ. I was starting to get really excited about it, and I was tempted to send a group text to my band members but thought it would be best to send it to Mollie first. Moll, CJ wrote a srsly kick ass song for me. We need to put this on the new album.
It was less than five minutes before I got a reply. Ur kidding, right? We start recording week after next! Not gonna happen.
I picked up the phone again. Yeah, it was gonna happen. I wasn’t going to pull rank, but I was the fucking boss, and what I said would go…whether my manager wanted it or not. I’d done a lot of things she’d suggested, some things she’d even demanded—but I wasn’t going to budge on this one. I didn’t need to be a bitch about it, but we were going to do it. The guys are quick studies. We can do this.
Ur crazy. Yeah, I might have been, but she wasn’t arguing. A good sign.
So I texted the guys next and told them the same thing I’d told Mollie. All three of them were enthusiastic. Brandon asked, What’s the name of the song?
Bad Ass Bitch.
Can’t wait to hear it.
Goddamn, I loved my new band. Yeah, Brandon had been with me from the beginning—hell, I’d watched him grow up—but the other two guys along with Brandon were so positive and excited and thrilled to be a part of what we knew was going to be something big. I could just feel the electricity in the air and I knew my time had finally fucking come.
They knew it too. Something was different. There was a buzz that we couldn’t hear but we could feel. We just knew things were changing. We could fucking feel it in the air.
Even Mollie…and I knew it when I got her follow-up text the next day. Fine, but get it done ASAP. Can’t waste our time in the studio.
Consider it DONE!
CJ and I had planned to meet the following Tuesday, the only day the band and I weren’t scheduled to be in the studio. I’d told them we could rehearse the final version Tuesday night—and would need them to add their flair to it if CJ didn’t write the rhythm guitar, bass, and drum parts (although he might, because that was the kind of thing he did)—but that was before I knew what was going to happen on Tuesday. CJ had a way of making me change my plans…sometimes in a big way.
* * *
It was another feeling in the back of my mind. Jesus, I was being stupid, and I should have been smart and worked out the rest of the fucking song with CJ over Skype—but I was drawn to that man more than I’d ever been pulled to anything else in my whole life. I couldn’t resist him any more than a thirsty man can deny himself water. CJ was my Achilles’ heel and my drug of choice. I could resist him no more than I could deny my body sleep.
I wanted him.
I needed him.
He had become a part of me years ago and I was helpless in his presence…so, if he wanted me, I was his.
All this shit was brewing in my ribcage and between my ears as I got ready to head over to his place, and it was playing on my every move that morning. I chose clothes I knew he would like—ass-hugging jeans with a rip in the thigh on the left leg and a black baby doll Nirvana tee that embraced my curves like a lover. I’d just had my roots re-bleached as we had a shoot for our album cover next week in addition to recording. My makeup was like I was getting ready for a photo shoot (without the false eyelashes my makeup gal preferred), and I knew I looked good.
Oh, and so I didn’t disappoint him, I wore my black combat boots just for CJ so I could maintain my image of being a bad ass bitch.
A tiny spritz of spicy Red on my wrists and I was ready to go.
My alarm bells were clanging as I jumped in my car and drove off. My inner bitch was berating the hell out of me too. Kyle, what the fuck are you thinking? Turn back around. Text CJ and tell him you’re sick and can’t meet him today. Tell him the band needs to be a part of the final process. ANYTHING!
But I ignored my subconscious—hell, my conscious even—telling me not to go, that it was wrong. That I might get hurt in the process too didn’t even cross my mind.
I kept thinking back to the last year I attended high school, the night of the talent show, of overhearing my mom accuse my dad of getting his dick sucked by another woman. And that I was considering pulling out all the stops, pushing CJ to cheat on his girlfriend.
It was shameful and yet I was driving seventy-five miles an hour to perdition. CJ himself had said it in his song—as though it were a prediction of things to come: I’ll sin the way I wanna sin. I turned off the radio and let my new song roll around in my head.
Had that been what CJ was thinking when he’d written it?
Looking back over all my sexual indiscretions and dalliances of the past, the one thing I’d been able to say for myself was that I’d been a consenting party (though not adult when I’d started out). I might not have thought of others’ feelings, but I hadn’t caused someone else to cheat on their significant other…at least not knowingly.
But now…I wanted CJ so badly, I was willing to go down that path, and it made me feel dirty and bad. I pushed those ugly thoughts to the back of my mind, the selfish part of me wanting what it wanted no matter the cost. I justified it too, telling myself that he’d been mine before the actress had come into his life.
And I knew that even that wasn’t true. CJ had never been mine, a fact he’d often made too abundantly clear.
Still, I drove like a bat out of hell, eager to see him and take my first step into ruin. Everything else in my life was shooting out of the stratosphere for success, but I guess I couldn’t be happy with just music as my lover. I’d been lying to myself all these years, and now I knew it. I couldn’t say that I needed a man, because that wasn’t true. I needed CJ. Only CJ. No other man would ever do.
And so, as I drove through Black Forest toward CJ’s home, I decided that I would take this man any way I could have him…my soul be damned.
“Blueberry” ~ Lita Ford
Chapter Twenty-nine
“MY, MY, MY. You’re gonna make me feel special, Kyle, dressing up like that for me.” Ah. His eyes twinkled as I realized he did notice, but no way was I going to admit it.
I pulled my guitar out of the trunk—because, once more, he met me in the driveway (something that should have also been a clue but I hadn’t tuned in on it at that time)—and winked at him. “Nice try, CJ. What makes you think I’d dress special for you? You know I dress like this all the time.” I slammed the lid to the trunk down and¸ grinning, walked beside him. “You serving lunch today?”
“I could. You like turkey and American on your sandwich? And I might even have potato chips as a side.”
I snorted, walking through the door as he held it open for me. “Maybe we’ll go out to eat to celebrate.”
“Celebrate?”
“Yeah. ‘Cause this song kicks major ass.” He closed the door and paused, looking at me. “I’ve been working on it and I want to know what you think.”
“Change the rhythm at all?”
“No—that’s perfect. I tweaked the riff, though, and wrote a rough solo. I want to know what you think.”
“I can’t wait. But first, drinks. What’s your poison?”
Oh, he was my poison…but I didn’t say tha
t out loud. He probably could read it in the lusty look in my eyes, though. “Water’s fine.”
“Okay, for work. But when we’re done, we’ll celebrate with something a little heavier.”
“Now you’re talkin’.”
After he got us both glasses of water and we started heading down the stairs, he said, “So…tell me about the solo. What did you come up with?”
“You’ll just have to wait. I can’t wait to see what you think.” As soon as we got my guitar plugged in and the metronome going, CJ asked me to play the song with all the changes I was suggesting, both major and minor. I’d played the damn thing so much over the past week that it was easy. “I’m going to speak or whisper the words as you go. We need to work out the vocal melody—unless you already have something in mind.”
“Nothing that works so far. I’ve just been speaking it too.” Great minds think alike? Not necessarily. We were just musically compatible.
I played and got lost in the music, but I was very aware of CJ sitting in the stool just across from me, really fucking close. When I got to the solo, I paused. “I want you to know I worked this a hundred different ways. I love the rhythm of the song—it’s fast and frenetic and desperate, and that’s what I love about it, but I wanted to slow down the solo. It just seemed to work…so I need you to turn off the metronome for this part ‘cause it’ll confuse me.”
“Okay…I’m curious.” He nodded and turned around to turn off the little machine driving the way I played.
So I played the chorus just before the solo again to lead into it, playing at the speed the song had demanded and then, in my head, I heard the way I imagined Brandon would be drumming. First, we’d start with a slight pause of silence—no more than two beats—and then slowly work into a solo…deliberately paced, marked with irregular drumming, and then my guitar—a couple of small notes here and there but building to something deadly before exploding and finally crashing into the last verse. I imagined once more being on stage playing that thing and I was lost in the music.
It wasn’t until I was more than halfway through the final verse that I realized CJ wasn’t mouthing words anymore. I glanced up from my right hand and looked at him across from me. When I saw the look on his face, I paused. Shit. Maybe it wasn’t as good as I’d originally thought. “Didn’t like it?”
“No. Holy shit. I loved it. It’s different, Kyle. Really unusual and…sexy.”
Sexy? I felt my mouth flood in anticipation of tasting this man that I hadn’t touched in ages. Oh, my body knew long before my mind what was happening there. My voice was quiet. “You think so?”
He nodded slightly. “Best shit I’ve heard in a long time. You are one bad ass bitch.”
He’d said that, but his eyes weren’t thinking that. His eyes were telling me something else entirely. I’d considered in my mind dozens of different ways of seducing him this day, not realizing that just being myself and doing what I’d do anyway would be the ultimate aphrodisiac. I was already under CJ’s spell, so when he leaned forward, I was mesmerized and more than ready.
I sucked in a tiny breath between my slightly parted lips and even found myself leaning forward to meet his. There was no question what his intent was, and it had been the moment I’d been waiting for…for a very long time. I closed my eyes and caught my breath as his lips touched mine. I felt my left hand clench the neck of my guitar, my entire body tensing up while I fought my lips to stay soft and my body to move slowly. I wanted to yank my guitar off, followed by my clothes, and love CJ the way I’d wanted to love him for so long…but he was moving like my solo…slow, methodical, with a purpose.
So when his tongue touched my lower lip and then entered my mouth, I felt my breath escape. The guitar pick that had been between the index finger and thumb of my right hand dropped on my thigh and then fell to the floor as my muscles froze. My mind and heart were racing in opposition. He ended that agonizingly slow kiss and stopped, and I could feel the softness of his breath against my mouth. My muscles thawed and I opened my eyes to see him looking at me, as if questioning if this was okay.
Yeah, it was more than okay.
My soul cried because I’d missed this man for far too long. His soul had been entwined through mine for far too long and I had forgotten just how one touch from him could set me on fire.
There was no question that I had belonged to him since the first day I had met him, had been branded by his first kiss…had been ruined for any other man from the first time we’d made love.
I was his and he could have me any way he wanted—right or wrong, there was no way I could escape.
I swallowed the pool of saliva in my mouth and lifted the guitar over my head so I could place it on the floor. I tilted it against the amp beside the chair, signaling CJ that it was more than okay for him to proceed. I heard the guitar slide and fall to the carpet as CJ took my face in his hands and pulled me to him for another slow, sensual kiss in which I gave myself completely to him—mind and soul, I acknowledged silently that this was what I wanted, whether I felt that giving myself was in my control or not. I felt my hands grab his t-shirt as if to take him prisoner and not let him go. I felt desperate then and yet so alive and, once more, I heard my new guitar solo play in my head.
Had I written it for him? Because it felt like CJ.
And, like the solo, our bodies climbed to the climax of the solo only to drift into the hard, driving, passionate music of the song. It was seconds before we were kissing hard and desperately, as though we’d been dying without each other and had finally found the nourishment we’d been missing.
And another song began playing in my head, one I hadn’t written yet. It was a mid-tempo song, dedicated to CJ, one that I’d probably never put on paper or play on my guitar but that I’d hear for the rest of my life.
We stood, tearing clothes off ourselves and each other, and it didn’t bother me a bit that all those goddamned windows were open to the forest around his house. I was with my man, the man who was mine, the man I’d claimed all those years ago, and I didn’t care who knew or saw. Had I thought about it, I would know that it was highly unlikely we’d be seen, but the thought didn’t cross my mind anyway. I was so filled with so many emotions—conflicting and overpowering—that I couldn’t think straight.
We were beyond frantic, pawing at each other, clutching at pieces of fabric that we threw to the floor in our need to be joined, and so when I felt his hands underneath my arms, lifting me up so I could wrap my legs around him, I responded instinctively. He backed me up until my ass was on that goddamned piano, the edges of its keys digging into the soft flesh of my ass, tinkling and almost pulling me out of the moment. I looked at CJ, almost ready to burst out laughing, but the look on his face was serious, possessive, needy, and the humor was gone again as my heart cried once more.
He entered me then and I wrapped my legs around him again, digging my fingernails into his back. Oh, God, he felt so good, so right, and my body responded to his insistent pounding. Should I have cared that he hadn’t used a condom? Should I have wondered when the last time he’d fucked his girlfriend had been? Should I have stopped him then and walked out while my dignity was intact?
The answer was yes on all three counts and yet, against the logical part of my brain, I rebelled, clinging to my man as though nothing else mattered.
Because, I realized, as we both gave into climax, nothing else did without CJ.
Chapter Thirty
WHAT A STRANGE feeling. I lay on the carpet in CJ’s arms and watched as a storm rolled in. By the time he stirred and kissed the back of my head, a downpour had started and was coming down so hard, I could hardly see the trees just yards away through the windows away from his house.
The feeling…felt like I’d come home, but it was interwoven with a touch of wistfulness. Actually, deep down sadness. I couldn’t shake the feeling of guilt buried deep within, and it cast a cloud over what was trying to be an ecstatic mood.
CJ pulled me ev
en closer, tight up against his body. God, I loved this man and it was killing me that this was probably the only time I’d be able to be with him until I didn’t know when—maybe never. I had no idea how close he and his girlfriend were, how serious, but I did know that what I’d done was wrong. I had no business sleeping with CJ.
Looking back over the past hour, though, I didn’t know how I could have prevented it. Yes, I’d tipped the scales in my favor by making sure I looked irresistible and smelled good, but it had been almost impossible. CJ was the only man I’d ever loved. I knew he didn’t love me back but I did know that it had been hard for him to resist making love with me.
We were just kind of compatible that way.
But now I lay there, thinking that I needed to get my ass up and get that goddamned song done so I could get the hell out of Dodge…and then I needed to actually get the hell out of Dodge. This was a bad scene, and I was at risk of making a complete fool out of myself. I was damn near to confessing my undying love to him…and that would have been a mistake. It would have made our working relationship difficult and awkward, and I couldn’t afford that, especially not right now.
“God, Kyle, I missed this.” I processed his statement, trying to figure out what that meant—if he just missed having sex with his favorite fuck buddy or if there was something else there. I had a hard time believing that, because he’d never committed to me, not once.
But I could play along. “Me too.” I wasn’t going to turn around, though, because I felt fresh tears well up inside my eyes.
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