by Lyrica Creed
“Strip,” she challenged, borrowing his word and hoping it had even a modicum of the effect on him that it had on her.
Ignoring her taunt, he crowded her so closely her back touched the graffitied tile. His forehead rested on the wall beside and just above her head, and his breath swirled around her along with the steam vapors.
His hands came up to rest on the wall on either side of her, trapping her. Yet, he was still warring with himself because they remained flat against the tile.
One of his markers lay on a tile shelf next to a shampoo bottle, and she stretched, reaching until she had it in her hand. Biting the cap off and pinching it between her teeth, she turned slightly… Enough to trace the outline of one of his hands with the purple ink. His brows raised, and despite being a horny bitch in heat, she wanted to giggle at his expression. Done, she pulled at his wrist until he lifted the hand. In the center, beneath the outline of his fingers, she scrawled, ‘touch me.’
Without looking up, she capped the marker, and when she tried to replace it, it rolled, falling to the floor. Ignoring it, she finally met his eyes, and her gaze dropped to his throat when his Adam’s apple bobbed with a gulp.
But he didn’t disappoint. His hands brushed the fabric of her bra. His fingertips drifted down her body to the waist of her bikini panties and then back up. She took the opportunity to unclasp the bra and let it slide down her arms to fall at their feet.
The momentum of the moment shifted. He filled his hands. Control was gone. Squeezing, pinching, playing, she watched him watching his hands until her eyes closed overwhelmed with the ecstasy of his touch, and his face landed in the crook of her neck. He licked a trail like a necklace, and then followed the lines of an invisible pendant, landing between her breasts with his tongue. A moan tore through her lips, her fingers curved into his hair, and she shifted, longing for the attention of his kiss to be a little to one side or the other.
When he turned his chin, claiming with his tongue, teeth, and lips, the area he’d already claimed with his hands and fingers, she lost her breath. Her pants echoed in the space. The sensations were overwhelming and the back of her head banged the tile as she arched beneath the attention of his mouth. Crazy thoughts made their way into her head. Like if it felt this good here, what would it feel like there?
As if reading her mind, he licked a path to her navel and sucked at the sensitive skin of her waist. Sure, she had envisioned it for a second while tumbling through a fog of ecstasy, but could she really let him go down? And again, as if he was tapped into her mind, he straightened, fusing his lips to hers.
She wasn’t sure if her groan was one of disappointment or a reaction to his skillful tongue playing with hers. His kisses seemed to taper off until he was pressing his lips into her neck again. She was on freaking fire, and she felt a warring tenseness creeping into his limbs again.
“I want you.” In case he didn’t take her words seriously enough, she went right for the fly of his soaked jeans and licked a water rivulet from a mouthwatering pec. “Don’t stop… Please… I want you so much.”
He made no move to halt the downward slide of his zipper or the curl of her fingers over the fit of his briefs. Still, he raggedly whispered a denial. “Not like this. You’ve been drinking. Way too much. Way, way too much.”
“So?” And then she paused, horrified. “I’m not going to throw up on you or anything.”
His husky chuckled bounced around the walls. “Fuck it, Scar.”
“Mean it, this time?”
“You’re killing me. Fuck. Killin’ me here.”
And then with no preamble, he cupped the back of her wet panties, pressing her to his wet briefs. They ground and humped like virgin teens while kissing one another crazy. But when he allowed enough space between them to slip his fingers inside her silky drawers, his touch was anything but virginal.
The talents acquired from a rock star life of sexual exploits came as naturally to him as any of his other finger skills honed with excessive practice. He played her body as if it were one of his guitars, sliding his fingers up and down, twisting in exactly the right rhythm and finishing with a hook that had her shriek echoing through the chamber.
The shake, shake, shake of the bed―Rascal scratching―woke her, but she didn’t immediately open her eyes. Memories of the night before paraded through her mind. Moments after stars had lit the backs of her eyelids and her legs had jellied, she’d watched fascinated as he’d finished himself off before she’d even recovered enough to offer her services.
Wait, that wasn’t completely true. She could have taken over, but the sheer primal beauty in his sure and fluid movements had held her obsessive. Up, down, up, down, twist, Up, down, up, down, twist. His eyes had locked with hers, and he had been his own driver to paradise city.
After crossing their thin dotted line in the shower, they’d both pulled on clothing from his closet, and had fallen almost directly asleep in his huge bed where Rascal had eventually crawled between them.
Stretching her legs, she blinked the sleep from her eyes as she opened them to find Gage’s face inches from hers, his eyes on her.
Her neck and face heated as she got her thoughts in check.
What was he thinking on so seriously?
She’d fallen asleep to his adoring gaze, and now had woken to something different. Something oddly akin to guilt was swimming in his assessing stare.
“What?” Her inquiry came out a whispered breath.
The corners of his mouth quirked but never quite made it to a smile. One of his fingers lifted to trace her cheek, but the gentleness of the action was accompanied by a sad glimmer in his eyes instead of a sweet one.
Equal parts of panic and empathy warred inside her. If he had brought her aboard this ride only to regret it, she wasn’t going to recover easily at this point. By the same token, she understood if it was confusion he was feeling, because she had enough of that emotion bubbling inside her own caldron of emotions.
“Don’t think. Just take it a minute at a time. Remember?” she reminded.
“Maybe that was stupid of me to say.” His finger had dropped, and he remained still, the only movement being his lips forming those scary words, and the slight flex of his scruffy chin and jaw.
She couldn’t meet his gaze anymore, and she couldn’t speak past the achy lump building in her throat. Pushing up, she sat, staring down at the large Fire Flight tee shirt covering her frame. Beneath it, she could feel the pair of his boxers she’d stolen from his drawer rather than stumbling to her own room for clothing.
“Why? Why would you say that?” she inquired over her shoulder, willing her voice not to waver. A low hum had begun in her ears, and was slowly increasing to drown out the rustle of Rascal as he bounded from the bed, crossed the room, and nudged the door open.
Gage was quiet for several breaths and then he said, “I’m starting to rethink it all…” The hum grew louder. “That this thing between us probably won’t work out and…” The hum became a vibration she could physically feel. “That maybe I had my own agenda in mind and not…” His thought faded and he looked up, as if he too were hearing the drone of distortion in her head. “Dammit! Is it already ten?”
Twisting, he fumbled around on the nightstand and cursed again, oblivious to the shredding of her heart. Swinging out of bed, he spanned the room and she eyed his movements as he snatched up and pilfered the pockets of his wet jeans from the bathroom floor. The humming had become a palpitation. She lifted her eyes to the ceiling, finally understanding. A helicopter approach.
“I guess my phone is still down by the pool.” He zipped on clean jeans. “Can you be ready in fifteen minutes?”
“For Arrowhead?”
“Yeah. Throw together what you need. We’re flying straight there, so you don’t really have to dress like we’re going anywhere.” He spoke while sprinting out of the room, barefoot and shirtless, presumably to retrieve his phone.
Instinctively, she jumped from th
e bed. It wasn’t until she found herself in her room with a pile of clothing in her carry-on bag and was pulling her swimsuit from where it had last hung to dry on the side of her tub that she halted her motions.
“…this thing between us probably won’t work out…”
Gage had flashed by her bedroom doorway en route back to his room. The decibel of the chopper honing in was too loud to hear him stirring around as he did his own packing. She was startled from her reflective trance when he suddenly appeared in the middle of her room with Rascal on his heels.
“Ready?” He grabbed the bag from her bed.
She shook her head. “I’m not going.”
“What?”
“I’m. Not. Going.”
“What the hell? We talked about it all week. We talked about it last… night…” He finally seemed to understand. “Scar, last night… God, this is fucked… Just c’mon. We’ll finish talking there in a few minutes.” He undoubtedly spoke of his cabin.
“No.” She had been bravely meeting his gaze, but soon dropped her eyes to Rascal’s sagging ears and watchful expression. The handle of a retractable leash dangled from his collar like a giant pendant. When she heard an exasperated hiss blew through Gage’s lips, she returned his stare and exploded. “I’m not taking a road trip with the two of us rethinking things all the way there!”
“It’s thirty minutes!”
“Why would I go anywhere with someone who is rethinking things?”
“Would you stop saying that?” His head fell dramatically back and he focused on the ceiling. “So, if nothing else, you’re going to stop being my sister too?”
That was a low blow. She knew she had decided to take this trip while still in sister-mode. It was to be her escape from civilization as well as a continuance of his personal rehab. But he had to know after the last few days they couldn’t go back to a sister and brother relationship. Or maybe he could. Maybe what he’d been after all along had been a friends-with-benefits relationship.
“I never was your sister. Whatever last night was—it pretty much proved that.” Images assaulted her in waves and her nerves came alive, stimulated by the feelings not so long passed. “Just… I just want to go…” Home. But home was where? It sure didn’t feel like Belize any longer. In fact, here had felt like home until roughly a quarter of an hour ago.
Chapter 37
The conflict eddied in her pained gaze and ripped at his guts. It wasn’t possible to be a bigger douche than he had been. How could a morning begun with the utter bliss of opening his eyes to her sleeping face have degraded to a calamity of this proportion? How could he have been so fucking stupid?
A tone emitted from his back pocket, and he continued to hold her eyes as he slid his cell from it. His finger tapped over the ‘view’ icon and the camera at the gate streamed onto the screen. Observing the visitor requesting access into the property was like taking another gut punch.
“Like things aren’t fucked up enough,” he muttered and let his hand drop, gripping the phone in a tight clench. “Your mother’s at the gate.” To his surprise, her expression lightened some, and she hastened for the hallway. In auto mode, his arm shot out, blocking her from passing him. Curling her into the crook of his elbow, he leaned forward, picking up her bag and purse. “Is this all?”
“Let go.” Her hands landed flat against his chest and she shoved. “I need to talk to her.”
Incredulous, he remained unyielding. “No, you don’t. Not face to face anyway.” Her purse settled on his wrist, and he shouldered her luggage.
“I do. I should apologize.”
So they were back to this. Last night he had deflected it ‘until she was sober.’ She was now sober. Regardless, he ushered her into the hallway. Instead of the main stairway, he progressed them toward the back stairs, which led to the roof. “That’s bullshit. You have nothing to apologize for.” When she realized they were going in the wrong direction and resisted, he dug in, forcing her into the stairwell. “Everything you said yesterday… All that shit that happened—and I’m betting that’s not the half of it! What the hell do you have to say to her?”
“It’s none of your business! Just let me!” She was not only balking now; she was fighting in earnest. “Let go!” A kick landed on his shin, and he sucked in a startled breath. “You can’t just make me!”
Her purse slid further up his arm when it took two hands to pull and push her with him as he ascended each stair. She was a step higher than him as he prodded her along. A swing of her elbow landed on his windpipe, and he choked, “Dammit! Will you stop?” Blockading the narrow passage with his body, he dropped a few stairs back to the doorway and whistled for Rascal. When his pet lumbered past, he pulled the door closed and took a moment to grab and extend Rascal’s leash. Scar stood like an angry statue, and he pondered a collar and leash around her beautiful neck. Problem solved. Yeah, that image was more sexy than sensible. He tipped his head, locked eyes with her, and swung his chin in a ‘go forth’ gesture. No? Okay. Looping the leash onto his wrist, he used the freed hand to pull her up the next couple of stairs. When reaching the top, he paused before flinging the door to the roof open.
The whir of the helicopter pounded, and he yelled over the racket. “Is it true? Did that all happen to you?” It was something he hadn’t considered until now. Had she exaggerated while in the shock and rage of the moment? However, the second she registered the question, he perceived the set of her jaw and the gulp in her throat. Everything she had said was the truth with absolutely no exaggeration. In fact, if he remembered correctly and believed the tabloid stories of Henni Smythe before she had married his father, his fear of many more such stories was justified. It sounded as if his former stepmother had lapsed back into slumming with the worst of the bad boy rockers she loved.
Scar pushed at him again, and he wedged her into a corner, using his body to block her escape. The scent of her had his heart slamming against the ribs that had taken a bruising. Infusing his senses was his own spicy soap and shampoo brand that had run in suds from her head to toes last night mingling with the heady cinnamon and vanilla combination naturally hers.
“I’m sorry about this morning. But can we not do this now? I’m not going to let you go out to that gate and do something you’re going to regret. Because one way or another, it’s going to come back and bite you in your sexy ass.” Right on cue, his phone toned again. “And I’m not going to let that woman guilt you into feeling like you did something or that you need to do something.”
He’d hoped his words would get through, but she was still furious and tried to dart down the stairs. This culminated into a push and pull match as they spilled from the house, and had their pilot, who was waiting on the helipad, raising his brows.
Visibly nervous when one of his passengers forced the other into the craft, he frowned. “Is everything all right, sir?” The shout was choppy sounding.
“Fine. An argument with the missus.” Gage let her bags drop and took up the slack in the leash. It was then he realized he didn’t have his luggage or Rascal’s travel crate. Screw it. There was no way he would chance leaving her here and returning inside the house for it. “We woke up late. She didn’t have her coffee,” he added, ignoring Scar’s withering glare. “We’ll be fine. Sorry to keep you waiting.” He tried to crack a casual ‘you know how it is’ grin, but he knew it must have come out as a grimace when the pilot continued to wear a doubtful look while stowing the bags.
Gage climbed into the rear seat next to Scarlette, leaving the second front seat open. He called Rascal in and situated him on the floor between the two of them before giving the leash a few extra loops around his arm. The pilot actually produced a strap, threading it through the ring on the canine’s collar and clipping it to a bracket behind one of the front seats. Gage nodded in thanks. In response, the man saluted and then eyeballed Scarlette again, before strapping into his own seat. Possibly the stony fury in her expression or the fact that she’d willingly buck
led up when asked to convinced him she wasn’t a kidnap victim, because he took great care when passing her purse to her and then maneuvered the levers, lifting the craft up.
Peering out his side, Gage looked to where the hedges followed the fence line along the road. Henni Smythe was Barbie doll sized and growing smaller, but her face was clearly upturned to the whirly bird drifting away from her. He sent a sideways look to Scar and found her also watching her mother. When the woman was only a speck that disappeared, Scarlette’s chest rose in one long breath, and he hoped it was a sigh of relief. He might not have been there for her in the past when she needed him, but he intended to begin protecting her now.
Chapter 38
So this was it. The lake cabin as Gage had been referring to it. The flight over had taken less than an hour. She wandered from room to room while he alternately voice texted and pecked on his phone locked in some sort of chat conversation with possibly a label executive involving an upcoming meeting with a producer or some type of session artist.
The entire house could fit with room to spare in a corner of his home in Los Angeles. Although it was cozy, it had every modern amenity one could want from a giant screen television over the fireplace to the Jacuzzi in the bathroom. The décor, unlike the stark ultra-chic look of his other home was decorated in woodsy wildflower colors. A hardwood floor that appeared authentically scuffed flowed through most of the rooms and cozy throw rugs dotted its expanse.
There were no interior doors except for the bathroom, and she found this odd until she noted the style of the house seemed very old, possibly pre air-conditioning years. With numerous screened windows, she supposed it had been built with catching the breeze from outside in mind. She took stock of the one bedroom and wondered what Gage would do when she insisted on taking the couch.
Ending up on one of the ginormous decks, she leaned against the rail and watched a sailboat drift on the water. Gage had neighbors on either side of his cabin, but both homes seemed empty for now. The boats at the end of the piers were covered and the deck furniture was lined up against the outer walls of the houses. She pulled one of the chairs away from Gage’s house and dragged it to the edge of the deck.