A vibration of a moan filled her throat, and she fumbled with the fly of his jeans as a diversion. Hooking her fingers into the waistband, she used the momentum of sliding down the wall to peel them down, and then overly excited to have him huge and hard before her, shoved the denim all the way to the floor.
“Scar, I’m barely holding on… Not a good idea—” His protest melted into a string of euphoric curses when her lips fit around him.
With him now at her mercy, she fully intended to pay him back for each tortuous minute he’d subjected her to. That was the plan. But Gage was a man. His physical strength outmatched hers. And it was just as erotic when he silently called the shots by yanking her up after she’d barely had a taste, pivoting her to face the wall, copping a quick grab of her breasts before locking his hands to her waist, kicking her feet apart, and growling sex talk into her ear while slamming into her.
Chapter 9
They said nothing for the longest time. He wondered if she also was too wrung out to speak. Or if taking her like an animal instead of worshiping every inch of the gorgeous body he’d been deprived of for months had traumatized her into silence.
“You okay?” Finally, he managed two words and cradled her closer in his lap.
“Um hmm.” She barely stirred against his chest.
Tipping his head back to rest in the corner, he closed his eyes while brushing his fingers up and down the smooth silkiness of her toned calves.
“Are they going to write you up or something if we miss the welcome meeting?”
“Write me up?” He grinned at her juvenile suggestion, wishing they could sit like this until… Until they didn’t want to. “Nah.” She relaxed onto him, and until then he hadn’t realized she had stiffened while waiting for his answer. “Just detention.” She slapped at him, and he let her, but caught her wrist when she began to button up. “Leave it, so I can play a little longer…” Using his knuckles, he skimmed the velvet softness swelling from her bra. “Speaking of school…”
“Were we?”
“You probably didn’t, but I definitely had detention a time or two.” His thumb dipped beneath the lace.
“No!” Her whispered comeback was suitably appalled.
Her antics had him grinning like a fool. Everything right now had him smiling. He was firmly entrenched in his happy place. “How are classes?”
“Great. I’m liking them a lot. One professor seems like she’s going to be impossible, but the rest are cool.”
The conversation took off and he soaked up the sound of her voice and relished hushing her laugh with his lips to hers when it got too loud.
“What’s new with your music? Still finding time?”
Nodding proudly, she reached behind him, and he raised his brows when her finger splayed on the back pocket area of his jeans. “My phone, nympho,” she clarified what she was after. And he remembered he had pocketed it when he’d noticed her carrying it without her purse. After thumbing through the icons, she passed it to him.
“Don’t tell me. ‘Gage and Scarlette Wallbanging in a Barn’ has been already uploaded by some spying pervy fuck with their camera always ready.”
He loved watching her brows shoot up when he rattled her cage of decency and decorum. Somehow, Henni Smythe had raised a lady. Despite all she had seen during her upbringing, Scar could be shocked. But that didn’t mean she was a prude. She always laughed at his audacity or told him off, and this time was no different.
“I love how you think you’re so funny.”
“Tell me I’m not.”
“You’re not.”
“I love how you think I believe everything you say.”
“Tell me you don’t.”
They’d reached an impasse, and they both fell quiet.
He had just joked about the sex video for the first time. It had a life of just over a month before the attorneys had managed to get it pulled. Copies continued to crop up, and now it was a task of someone his publicist had hired to routinely scan the internet for it.
Coming out of the past, he spent a moment taking in her mussed hair, swollen lips, disheveled clothing, and eyes alight from their teasing exchange.
With an anticipatory smile of whatever he was about to see, he hit play on the video and hastily bumped the volume down. Onscreen, Scar was on the studio couch with Claudine in her lap. Holding the speaker directly to one of his ears, he nodded his encouragement at what he was hearing. She was advancing on the guitar fast. Obviously, she’d inherited every last artistic gene from her father. When it ended, he replayed, but the second time around, he admired her fingers as they danced on the strings.
She was waiting expectantly, and he voiced his praise aloud. “No way. No way you’re going to school and still finding the time it takes to get that good that fast.” She rolled her eyes, matching his playful tone, but her face lit up, and he always felt lucky when he was the one to put the sparkle in her eyes. Something onscreen caught his eye, and his fingers clamped the phone when another look confirmed what he was seeing. “Son of a bitch. No fucking wonder!”
When she raised her face, no doubt alerted by the flip side of his tone, he looked away, hating the innocent confusion in her gaze. Because, if she truly didn’t know what piqued him about the video, then she didn’t share his same depth of feeling in this relationship.
“No wonder what?”
Easy to see why you’re playing like a rock star. “We need to get back.” He shoved the phone back into her hand.
She rolled to her knees, and with a hand on each of his shoulders, tried to use her weight to keep him from standing. “What’s wrong?”
He blew out an enraged breath and dropped a concentrated glare to her face. “That’s Colt’s studio.”
“So?”
He honest to God hated her right now. So? No. He wished he hated her. It would be easier than loving her. Easier than the stabbing shards of hurt and jealousy.
“You’re being a pissy-ass bitch about me being at Colt’s?”
“I’m always a dick about you at Colt’s. And I always will be. I thought you’re with me now, and suddenly I’m feeling like I need to be there to fuckin’ drag you from his car.”
He’d hurt her. He saw it. A shimmer in her baby blues. A shift of her bottom lip told him she was biting it from the inside. She reeled from his words, but she came up fighting.
“You asshole! Seriously? You don’t get to say shit like that when you’re here hanging with junkie whores by the pool!”
“Hanging? I’m not hanging with anyone! Jesus. This isn’t a vacation. I’ve never felt so fuckin’ alone in my life.” Squeezing his eyes shut and clamping his teeth closed, he stopped the pitiful tirade. He felt her shift, but she didn’t storm off as he expected her to. Her hands still rested on his shoulders, but instead of clenching in anger, they’d relaxed, and now he swore he felt the slightest flex of her fingers—almost a gentle squeeze. His eyes drifted open, and his gaze landed smack into her concerned one. Panic seized him. Fear of being an object of her pity. Fear of how much he had opened up to her over the months, and fear of what she now saw when she looked at him. “I knew I shouldn’t have let you come.”
Their relationship was so lopsided right now. Her having it all together and him in the middle of mayhem. He’d been afraid her seeing him in this element would tip the precarious balance and so he’d refused visits at first. Then, after a couple of months of missing her crazy, he’d given in. There had been none of the awkwardness he’d worried about until now.
Now, in the span of something he’d seen during a second in time, his doubts and insecurities returned with a vengeance. He shouldn’t have let her come.
“You’re right. It was stupid.” She pushed away with her hands, but remained staring angrily into his face. “I knew it too.”
Her reply ripped him from his contemplation. “Knew what, exactly?”
“Knew you couldn’t man up and handle doing what you have to do.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“It’s here, or doing time in county. You’d walk out if that weren’t the case.”
“I would. Because I’m fine. And there’s no sense sitting around here until some overpaid shrink decides I can leave.”
“They’ll let you leave when you’re ready! Goddammit, Gage. They don’t have some war against you. Let ’em do what they do! Let ’em help you.”
“Do what they do? You know how the world works. Someone like me walks in who has no choice except to stay as long as they say he has to stay. Someone who has deep pockets. Who, every week they can extort another fifteen grand from. Is it any wonder I’m not well enough to walk out of here yet? Fuck it all!” It suddenly seemed as if she was staring into his soul a little too sympathetically, and he closed himself off again, this time, looking away. Grasping her hips, he pushed at her, gaining some distance between them. “You should go.” She’d made it clear what she thought of him. He was a loser until a piece of paper said he wasn’t anymore.
Chapter 10
“Just go. Please…”
“Go where?” Scarlette studied his face, seeing the barest twitch of an eyelid. Still as a statue, he sat, waiting for what came next. What? For her to go ahead to the main complex, and he would catch up?
She had noticed the time on her phone screen. There was a half hour before the short meeting held before dinner. And then after dinner, guests had an hour left before visitation was over until the next afternoon.
Or go? As in leave for today? Each weekend, she visited on both Saturday and Sunday. She kept standing reservations in the same hotel they’d shared prior to his check in almost two months ago.
At last, his dark eyes roamed her face, before stopping dead on her gaze. “Go back to life. Back to what you do.”
One of the horses in the pastures might as well have been sitting on her chest. It became impossible to breathe, but she croaked out a confused, “What?”
“I’m not capable of a relationship right now.”
“What are you saying? Did that come out in therapy?”
“No!” His eyes widened a fraction, visibly shocked at the question and then a resigned look glazed them. “Look.” For a second he seemed on the verge of pulling her to him, and his next words were gentle. “Can we just end this for now, without a lot of talking? Just put everything on hold, and then do our talking when we’re not hiding out in a barn?”
Holding his gaze, she stood as if in a trance. “Fine. My flight tomorrow is not until six. Call me and―”
“I won’t. I won’t call. Change it for an earlier one. Go ahead back to the house and go about your life like there’s no me rotting away back here.”
She’d been on the verge of slapping him or breaking down in tears. Which, she wasn’t sure. Now, she worried and sank to his level again. “Do they have you on some meds?”
His eyes had strayed, but they snapped to hers. “No. This is me. All me. Telling you we’re done for now.”
“Fine.” She wanted to scream every hateful curse in her vocabulary at him. More so, she wanted to scream them at herself. He was a fucking rock star. They were all nuts, and she’d known that going in. What an idiot she’d been to convince herself the boy who’d once been her ally against the world and against her mother, was still inside the man who had just fucked her both physically and emotionally. “I don’t want to talk about it either. So don’t worry.” She hated messy split ups. God. Is that what we’re doing? Breaking up? “I’ll talk to you when I talk to you, I guess.” She stood as she talked and clenched her phone as if it were a lifeline. “I’m going to see if I can get a red-eye out. Maybe I can get back before Colt goes to bed.” She moved toward the stairs. And suddenly he was there, in her face.
“Fuck you, Scarlette.”
“No. Fuck you!”
His lips curved, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Yeah, you did. And I’m the best you’ll ever have. You know it.”
“Asshole. Let me go!”
He looked down and seemed startled to see his hands curled around her upper arms. Immediately, he released and she shot down the stairs so fast, she hit her head on the wall as she rounded the corner.
Chapter 11
The warmth of the shower raining down over her skin relaxed her enough that her tears finally poured. She’d been dry eyed for almost twenty-four hours, through the overnight hotel stay—she hadn’t made good on her threat to take an earlier flight. Through the flight home, she’d dozed—exhausted from tossing and turning, expecting him to give in and call. She’d let herself into the house and played a few minutes with Rascal before going upstairs to wash the travel-grime feel from her body.
The dam of emotion might have remained intact longer had she not been reading the lyrics on the tile as she lathered her hair.
‘Forever Scarred’ broke her. There were only six verses in Gage’s distinctive scrawl. But his feelings and intentions at that time of their relationship shone through.
After drying off, she carelessly let the towel fall, pulled on one of his tee shirts and a pair of black Diesel boxers, and climbed into the bed with Rascal. Still sniffling, she dialed Ivy.
Voicemail greeted her and she spoke. “Hi. I just got back. Call me when you can.” Hesitating, she combed through Rascal’s fur. “Gage broke it off.”
The phone rang the second she pressed ‘end.’ Ivy’s number and smiling face blinked. Managing a hello through the lump in her throat, she squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to let the waterworks begin again.
“Are you okay, honey?”
She nodded and then realized her friend couldn’t see the gesture. “Yeah. Just sad.” Sad was such an understatement that her eyes betrayed her with more tears.
“He’s an idiot.” The three words were so vehemently spit through the speakers of the phone that Scarlette almost raised her fingers to her face to wipe it. “What happened? Tell me everything, hon.”
“We were…” What had happened? She cuddled closer to Rascal and shouldered the phone. “I went to visit. And we…” Letting her head fall back to the headboard, she watched the wall sconce on the wall over it blur. Now she did lift her finger and wipe a stray tear. “We had a good visit. And then he just went ballistic and turned on me. I was showing him a video of the stuff Seth is teaching me.”
“Why’d he lose his mind over Seth?”
“Because he assumed it was Colt teaching me the new stuff.”
“And when you told him it wasn’t?”
“Fuck him, just fuck him.”
“You didn’t tell him Colt has been on tour over a month?”
“If he doesn’t trust me then―”
“I know. Fuck him!”
Her eyes burned and brimmed again, and when they flooded over and spilled down her face, she hiccupped out a “Fuck it all.” Through fresh sniffles, she croaked, “Want to come over tomorrow? Get drunk by the pool?”
Rascal edged close and rested his head across her leg. She cast her eyes about, looking for a tee shirt or anything near she could use on her dripping nose. Finally, she drew the edge of the sheet up and was too depressed to feel repulsed by the action. Forcing a deep breath through her mouth, she tried to calm herself, and wondered if her call had dropped.
Ivy’s words dripped with empathy. “Scarlette, I’m not in town. But I’ll be home Tuesday morning. Do you want to do something after your class? Are you going to class?”
“Where are you?” Another swipe at her nose while she tried to remember if Ivy had mentioned Bradley on location.
Again the seconds seemed long before Ivy chirped, “Auditioning. I’ll tell you all about it Tuesday. But you can call me anytime. In fact, call me when you wake up in the morning?”
Scarlette agreed. After hanging up, she placed the phone on the giant pillow next to her. The one with Rascal’s head on the corner instead of Gage’s. She reached for the lamp and then changed her mind. The house seemed emptier than it had since his leaving
, and she was glad, not for the first time, of the bodyguard who was less than a minute and a panic button away.
Chapter 12
Kicked back in the desk chair, feet propped on an open drawer, Gage assaulted the guitar strings. When the high E snapped, he welcomed the sting to his hand. Ignoring the hanging string, he continued, the beat battering his eardrums through the headphones.
The blinking of his phone caught his eye. He couldn’t deal with Scar. Worry, however, had him setting aside the instrument and swinging his legs to the floor. He didn’t want to disregard her reaching out in an emergency situation.
Instead of a text from Scar, he found one from Colt. Two words. Call. Me.
And he was just mad enough to do that. Carrying the phone, he marched down the hall since there was little or no signal in the ‘guest’ rooms as they were called.
Pacing just outside the common room, he glared at the twinkling stars and placed the call.
Mid ring, Colt answered with a “What the hell is going on?”
So Scarlette had gone running to Colt, either literally or with a phone call. The knowledge cut like a knife and twisted in his gut. “Why don’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what? Have you lost your fucking mind? Why the hell would you do this shit to Scarlette?”
“The second I’m out of here you better watch yourself. I’m coming for you! I will fuck you up, motherfucker!”
“You know I’m not even home, right? There was a cancellation in the metal tour that passed on us during your last rehab stint and we’re on it.”
Fuck. Fuck so many things.
“Fire Flight?” Immediately after kicking him out, they’d gone on tour?
“Are you hearing what I’m saying? Seth is teaching her guitar. Seth! Not fucking me! Scarlette is a fucking mess. You need to fix this shit now!”
His relief upon knowing the truth was as great as his guilt. The jealousy didn’t completely subside. How did Colt know there was a mess? Obviously because she called him. And that, right there, was something he couldn’t seem to get past. The freaky friendship she and Colt had. The hate-one-minute-and-best-friends-next-minute rapport they had.
Hung Out: A Needles and Pins Rock Romance Page 34