by Karina Bliss
Her excitement was attracting attention, and Jared was already drawing interested glances. Kayla doubted the ER often saw a guy dressed in a tuxedo, and he had the build for it, lean and tall with wide shoulders.
“I’ll be happy to sign something for you…” Jared looked at the nurse’s name tag “…Sabrina. But can we sort out my wife first? Somewhere private?”
“Of course, I’m so sorry. You must get this constantly.”
“Pretty often,” Kayla said. They followed her to a cubicle and Sabrina became all business as she fitted a wrist splint and gave Kayla care instructions. “Ice it every few hours, wear the shoulder strap for a couple of days. Advil will help with pain and swelling.” She wanted both their autographs. “For good luck,” she said. “I want us to have what you’ve got.”
“Luck,” said Jared firmly, “has nothing to do with it. Some say it’s the hardest work you’ll ever do. Personally, I’d say that’s parenting.”
The mischief in his eyes made her remember her words at Joy Bar on their first date, when all she’d wanted for Christmas was the ‘sweet, shy guy’ she’d married.
What an idiot she’d been wanting their love to be fixed and immutable. Unchanging. That wasn’t how love worked. Like the children they’d created, love needed room to grow. Nourishment, encouragement, discipline. But if you were open to learning when to hold on and when to let go, the results could be…extraordinary.
With a deep breath, she released the last little niggle of doubt. I’m in, she thought. I’m all in.
“Is your wrist paining you?” Jared said. “I can ask for stronger meds.”
“No, I’m just remembering how much you love me.”
“I do,” he said, dark eyes serious, and she heard it like the vow it was. For all the days of my life.
When he picked up her suitcase, she said, “Let’s go to your party.”
“Babe, are you sure you’re only on Advil?”
“I’m serious. I’m going to the ball, Prince Charming, and you’re taking me. I have my clothes in that suitcase and I’ll get dressed in your car. Let’s hustle.”
Chapter Fifteen
Kayla dressed in the back seat of Jared’s Toyota SUV—because no one with kids got a sports car—while he drove like a bat out of hell through the L.A. night. He’d taken some convincing, but she’d been adamant.
Loosening the shoulder sling, she wriggled into the red dress he’d given her, feeding her injured wrist carefully through the capped sleeve. They didn’t have time to buy the tights she still needed, but her bare legs were toned, if not tanned. Ripping the tie out of her ponytail, she bent forward to brush it, hoping to add volume.
The first pang of doubt hit. The second came when she struggled to hold her compact mirror between her strapped fingers so she could apply fresh makeup under the weak interior light. “Maybe you should go alone.”
Jared glanced in the rear-view mirror, saw her problem, and pulled over. “We both go, or neither of us go.”
Climbing into the back seat, he fixed her makeup.
“I love being married to a nerdy metrosexual.”
“Yeah, we’re the best.”
As he moved to return to the driver’s seat, she said, “Wait.”
He looked at what she was dragging out of the suitcase and groaned.
“I swear I’ll take them off later, but Dimity said there’ll be TV cameras, and television adds ten pounds.” She unfolded the shapewear. “Be the supportive husband and help me get these on.”
Muttering under his breath, he did. As his reward, she showed him the corset at the bottom of the suitcase. “Happy anniversary.”
“Screw it,” he said, “Let’s go straight to the hotel.”
Kayla pushed him out of the car. “No way. Now drive.”
Jared had phoned ahead to let Dimity know what was happening, and when he flashed their invitation to the security guards at the gate to VIP drop-offs, they took over. Sending Jared to sit in the back with Kayla, one jumped in the driver’s seat and steered their family SUV into the line of limos waiting to drop off guests.
“How to make an entrance,” Jared commented. Stylishly soulful and sinfully handsome, his profile was unreadable as he stared out at the music fans crowded behind the barriers set up around the venue entrance. Shouts of excitement indicated the arrival of another famous music star.
She smoothed down her dress with damp palms. “I hope this isn’t the same red as the carpet,” she joked. I’m not going to get scared. I’m not going to get scar—
“I’m terrified,” Jared murmured, too low for their driver to hear. “All my music heroes are in there. And I get to stand beside some of them as a fellow nominee…that’s insane.”
Forgetting her own nerves, she reached for his hand. “You’re over-thinking this. Remember our wedding day?”
“No.” Rueful eyes met hers. “I was terrified then, too.”
“Exactly, and we missed one of the best days of our life. So, to adopt a rock phrase, fuck it. We’re young and we’re happy and, however surreal this gets, we’re going to enjoy every minute. We worked hard to get here.”
Jared caught her face in his hands and kissed her fervently. “I love you.”
“I know.”
Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a jewelry box. She opened it and saw an eternity ring inset with diamonds. Raised stunned eyes to Jared’s face.
“I thought of replacing our wedding rings, but they mean too much to me. It will fit. I sized it from your ring.” When she still didn’t speak, he picked up her hand and slid it onto her finger. “Happy anniversary.”
“Thank you,” she breathed. “It’s…I don’t know—”
As she tried to find the words, the security guard called, “Show time, folks.” The car stopped, the back doors opened simultaneously, and an official offered his assistance.
“Ma’am?”
Swallowing hard, she found her biggest smile and stepped out of the car, instantly assailed by spotlights, shrieks and a sea of faces. “Jared…over here! Jared, please!”
Her husband joined her and took her hand. Fingers intertwined, they walked the red carpet.
Dimity waited at the end, exquisite in a green gown. “Sure you’re okay?” she asked Kayla, who nodded. “We were all so worried about you.”
She straightened Kayla’s sling. “Love what you’ve done with your hair,” she said approvingly, and led them forward to the cameras.
The next hour was tough, but Kayla did her part, smiling and gracious, making small talk with people who stared over her shoulder looking for a celebrity to talk to. And she did enjoy a few conversations with the normal people dotted among the fakers and phonies. Some of them were famous.
Jared returned when his obligations allowed, Seth and Moss flirted with her behind his back, and she had a good time. Then a great time, when they all escaped the formal part of the evening and found a table together. Dimity ordered champagnes and Skyped Zander and Elizabeth in New Zealand, who led the toasts.
Kayla was leaving the powder room toward the end of the evening when she glimpsed Simone Dumont. Dimity had already warned her that the French journalist was covering the event.
The other woman had no idea Kayla had watched her hit on her husband in Edinburgh. No idea of the havoc she’d wreaked on their marriage. But she’d also been the catalyst for forcing them to grow together, grow stronger.
So Kayla acknowledged her with a polite smile. “Hello, Simone.”
The Frenchwoman looked her up and down, “Pardon…do I know you?”
“You spent a few days on tour with Rage,” Kayla prompted helpfully. “I’m Jared Walker’s wife, Kayla. You crashed our family day in Paris.”
“Oh yes, Kayla. You did not want your children photographed because you detest publicity. And yet you are here at one of the biggest events of the year.” Her delicate shoulders rose in a Gallic shrug. She wore a little black dress and looked like Audrey Hepburn in Breakfa
st at Tiffany’s.
“It’s a big night for us.”
“For Jared, yes. A wonderful song. The tonal qualities remind me of Wild Horses—the Stones’ version—also the way the hook builds melodically. You’re looking confused, but you were never into the…what’s the word?”
“Mechanics,” Kayla supplied. “No, I have to settle for being the inspiration. Enjoy your evening.” With a nod, she prepared to move on.
“And you are looking so, well…so jolly,” Simone said. Not pronounced jolie—pretty in French—but very firmly as jolly. “And your dress, so very red. Festive. I think though I preferred the one like mine, that you wore to the last awards party in Paris. Black is so slimming.” She made a thin silhouette with her hands.
How had she ever allowed herself to be intimidated by this mean-spirited woman? What had Zander called Simone? That pretentious Gallic kiss-ass.
“Goodbye, Simone,” she said. “You take care—” She stopped. Before the security guard denied her entry, Kayla had glimpsed Simone at the party and tried to get her attention. She’d thought the French woman hadn’t seen her. “The party in Paris,” she repeated.
Simone’s gaze slid away. “I must go.”
“Before you do, I wondered if you could translate a phrase into French for me?”
“Bien sûr.”
“I’m married.”
Simone lost her savoir faire. The two women looked at each other, then Kayla smiled. “Actually, don’t bother. I think we both understand each other.”
Jared was laughing with Seth and Moss when she returned to the table, and she stopped to enjoy the view.
“You better be looking at me,” he teased. It was so good to be able to joke about this stuff again.
She put a sway in her hips as she walked toward him. Lush, sexy, confident. Watched his gaze smolder. Sliding into her seat, she casually picked up his hand and put it on her thigh, waiting until he registered her lack of undergarments.
Leaned over and whispered in his ear. “About that leash…”
Chapter Sixteen
When Kayla exited the hotel’s marble bathroom, Jared was already sprawled in the bed. Against the crisp white sheets, he was black-haired, stubble-jawed, with a dusting of dark hair on his chest and arms, his winter-pale skin warm with life. Her eyes went to the tattoo sharply delineated on his muscular arm. The top sheet barely covered him, a deliberate tease she suspected.
Well, two could play.
She’d tied the sash of her green satin robe so when she walked it fell open along the length of her legs. Almost, not quite indecent. The neckline crossed high over her breasts and would have been modest but for the way it clung to her nipples, clearly outlined under the thin fabric.
She turned on every light as she walked toward him, every lamp, every switch until the room was ablaze. Stopped at the end of the bed.
“I’m not wearing the corset,” she said.
“Oh?” He waited.
“I’m saving it. Tonight, I’m not wearing anything.”
Tonight, I’m taking back my power. She half slid the robe off her shoulders, stopping when her breasts were almost bare. “Unless,” she pouted, “you’re disappointed?”
“Betty,” he growled, his eyes hooded, waiting, wanting.
With a smile curving her lips, she untied the robe, letting it fall in a slither of cool silk down her butt and the back of her thighs, and stood there in her glittery red stilettos.
He blew out a slow and reverent breath. How could she have forgotten this, the way he looked at her body, had always looked at her body, in hunger and wonder, fascinated by the female terrain, the softness, the curves.
“Do you want me?” Slowly, she ran her hands, the nails coral-tipped, over her breasts, and up again to the nipples. “Do you want these?”
He shifted in the bed, his eyes hot, slipping the sheet away for his own reveal that very clearly said, Hell, yeah.
She laughed deep in her throat, her fingers sliding down her breast, her belly, around her hips and to her mound. “Can you satisfy this much woman, Bob?”
“You know, Betty, I have a confession. My name’s not Bob.”
“It isn’t?”
“It’s Jared. Maybe you could call it out when I make you come harder than you’ve ever come in your life.”
Her knees threatened to buckle with lust, but she only chuckled and lifted her foot to the edge of the mattress to untie the strap of her shoe and remove it. First one, then the other, taking her time and making sure she gave him plenty to look at.
“As it happens, I’ve been using a pseudonym, too. Call out Kayla when I make you see stars.” She added in a husky voice, “Now hold onto that pretty iron bed head for me.”
An old-fashioned girl could do a lot with old-fashioned furniture. She’d first had the thought on tour, among the five-star antiques, and never acted on it. But she could now.
He obeyed, and she took a moment to enjoy the pull of muscle across his deltoids and pecs. Climbing onto the bed, she sat astride him, low on his thighs, and reached for the bottle of massage oil she’d left on the bedside table.
Unscrewing the cap, she tipped the oil across her collarbone so that it ran over and between her breasts. Watched his eyes follow each and every rivulet, including the ones that beaded on her nipples and fell silently onto her widespread thighs, and the others sliding over the soft curve of her belly, and lower, into the shorn curls.
She felt his thighs tense inside hers. “Let me touch you.”
“First, I need you to watch.” Replacing the bottle on the table, she rubbed the oil into her breasts, starting wide and slowing as she circled closer to her nipples, making her skin shine and the nipples harden. Watching him want her, watching him hunger for her, seeing the muscles in his arms cord as he fought not to touch, his fists tighten on the wrought iron.
“You like what you see?”
His chest rose and fell in a ragged sigh. “You can see that I do.”
Smiling, she looked at his cock, hard and proud, and leaned forward until her nipples touched his chest, then traced his lips with the tip of her tongue, her hair falling around them in a silky curtain. They were both finding it hard to regulate their breathing now. His lips parted and she slipped her tongue into his mouth in a light teasing foray that became a deep leisurely kiss, wet and intimate.
She broke the kiss and resettled a little higher on his body, and the sensation was exquisite, a torment. Velvet and heat, oil and arousal. Jared held his breath, one moment, two, then released it carefully. She moved, rubbing herself along the length of his cock. Felt the throb of sensation in her clitoris, the coil of erotic tension.
Her husband groaned.
She ran her palms down her body again, just to watch his gaze follow, burning her skin. She felt like a goddess, poised above him. Desired.
“Use me, Kayla. Take everything you want.”
Reaching between them, she sank onto and down his shaft with the ease of…she smiled…long practice. Holding herself still, she touched herself while his cock filled her. His breathing came faster, and his spine arched but he didn’t move while she pleasured herself. It was torturous. It was thrilling.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. “Gorgeous and wild, and I will always love you.”
Kayla gasped as pleasure took her, shock waves of it. His hands curved around her hips, steadying her through a rocketing orgasm.
Dazed, she opened her eyes. “Your tur—”
She was flipped on her back so fast she barely had time to catch her breath. He lifted her legs to his shoulder and pushed deep, so deep as he fucked her. It was gloriously carnal and exposed, and when his orgasm hit, she crested with him.
And in that moment, she remembered the connection that shimmered between them when they were open to each other, remembered that he loved her body, not because it was perfect, but because it was hers, the woman he loved.
Remembered that every time they made love could be c
reation, re-creation.
Play.
Epilogue
“Back to your own bed.”
Maddie staged a cough. “Daddy, I’m still sick.”
“No, you’re well now.”
She stamped her foot. “I’m not.”
“Well, okay.” In the spill of moonlight, he pulled back the covers. “I guess we could leave a note for Santa on your bed. Maybe he’d find you.”
She stopped climbing onto the mattress and slid down, her feet hitting the carpet with a thud. “What?”
“Or,” he pretended to reflect deeply, “we could send a letter to the North Pole telling him you’ll be in our bed. But would it get there in time?” He ignored the muffled snort behind him. “It’s only ten sleeps to go. And even if it did, Santa only knows where every kid’s bed is. He’s not great on the location of grown-ups’ beds.”
A small silence. “I’ll leave him a map.”
“Yeah, that’s a good idea. Except you’re so little, he’ll probably glance in, see Mommy and me and think, ‘Nope, no Maddie here.’ But if you want to take the risk…”
His daughter was already halfway out the door.
“Night, baby girl.”
Rolling over, he stripped the covers off his silently laughing wife, looked at the corset and said, “Where was I? Oh yeah, unwrapping my present.”
Copyright © 2016, Karina Bliss
Thanks for reading PLAY, the second in my Rock Solid romance series. If you enjoyed it, sign up to my newsletter at www.karinabliss.com and receive a bonus scene with all the band members of Rage as they reunite to celebrate Christmas Eve rock-star style.
And if you’re curious to read how Jared and Kayla got here, you can read the beginning of their story in RISE, a redemption story of a rock star going straight(er) through the love of a good(ish) woman.
RISE
Acclaimed literary biographer Elizabeth Winston writes about long-dead heroes.
So bad-boy rock icon Zander Freedman couldn’t possibly tempt her to write his memoir.