by Lily Harlem
EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ®
www.evernightpublishing.com
Copyright© 2016 Lily Harlem
ISBN: 978-1-77233-969-7
Cover Artist: Jay Aheer
Editor: JS Cook
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
MATTRESS MUSIC
Rock Starz, 1
Lily Harlem
Copyright © 2016
Chapter One
Elton was killing me. I needed to do something—fast. I glanced at my iPod in the far corner of the room. The small blue circle stared at me uncaring, as if it knew I’d lost the remote in the move and could do nothing, in my current compromised position, to shuffle the droning song.
And boy, did I need to fast-forward Candle in the Wind. It had conjured a head full of images of Marilyn and Diana, big hair, sweet smiles, churches, orphans—
I pulled in a deep breath and focused my attentions. What did it matter what song played? Its purpose was to mask noise as I concentrated on Ian, the hot guy I’d picked up at the Solo Bar. He was where my thoughts should be trained, not icons and princesses and worrying about my new flatmates hearing our sex noises.
Because bless him, Ian was doing his best down there, licking and sucking, swirling and fondling. Hell, he even had two fingers searching out my G-spot. But what could I do? My head wasn’t in it—
Neither was my body…
“What’s up?” Ian asked, throwing off the duvet as he came up for air.
“Nothing, I’m fine.” I curled my hands over his wide shoulders and pulled him down for a kiss. He tasted of me, hot and spicy, slippery-tongued. He settled his sheathed erection between my legs and prodded my entrance. All I could think of was Marilyn being found in the nude, Diana forever in England’s greenest hills.
“God, you feel good,” he said in a tight voice. “So damn good, I won’t last long.” He had a rugged, should’ve-shaved look and now, hovering over me with his face flushed, pupils wide and a sheen of sweat on his brow, he really was drop-dead gorgeous.
I wrapped my legs around his hard thighs and encouraged him in. Despite his appeal, it was just as well he wouldn’t last long. Because there was no way I was going to climax, not with Elton warbling on miserably about dead people. Might as well get it over with, then I could turn off the abysmal mattress music and get some sleep.
He pounded to the hilt on his first plunge. I caught his uncontrolled moan in my mouth to stop the guttural sound vibrating through the walls into my flatmates’ ears. I had three—two guys and a girl. They were nice, friendly, but I hadn’t been living at 62B Chiltern Apartments long and I was on my best behavior. Last in, first out played on my mind—if any of the longer-tenured residents complained about my weekend habit of picking up strangers and fucking them stupid, it would be me who had to leave.
“I’m coming,” Ian gasped, racing in and out of me like a jackhammer. Our skins were hot and sweaty, and dark coils of his chest hair slid against my jiggling breasts. With one hand, I grabbed hold of the headboard to stop it banging on the wall and tried to find a spark in my clit. Elton carried on singing, totally oblivious to my predicament.
“Aah…” Ian grunted as he froze and buried deep. I clamped my internal muscles and gleaned what physical pleasure I could from having a hard rod pulsating deep inside me. He tried to lift his head but I pressed his nape and caught his second long moan in a kiss.
He quivered and shivered and then his weight landed hard. “You’re fucking awesome,” he whispered into my ear on a hot, panting breath.
“You too,” I said, running my hand down his perfectly smooth back. Not a pimple anywhere, just acres of glorious hot, male flesh and a deeply guttered spine lined with solid muscle. “Really good.”
He lifted his head and looked into my eyes. “Liar.”
“What?”
“Liar, you didn’t come.”
“I did, it was great…you were great.” Lying to a man who was buried inside me wasn’t something I was good at.
“I’m not stupid, Nina, I can tell when a woman orgasms. I can’t always tell the difference between real and fake, but bloody hell, you didn’t even try to pretend, not even a little wriggle and a gasp at the right moment.”
Frowning and shifting my hips, I muttered, “Sorry,” as I pushed out from under him.
“Don’t be sorry.” He rolled to his side, bent his arm and propped his head on his hand. The flat silver cross around his neck hung toward the mattress. “Just tell me what I did wrong so I can fix it for next time,” he said, still catching his breath.
Next time? Not likely. One-night stands were my game. “You didn’t do anything wrong.” I pulled the duvet to my chin and turned to the wall. “It was me.”
He caught my jaw. “Tell me,” he ordered, tipping me to face him. “I want to know.”
Through the dim light, blushed orange by a streetlamp, I could see his dark eyes staring straight into mine, unblinking. One of my flatmates banged crockery in the kitchen next to my room, then a deep rumble of laughter from one of the guys, Jerry I think, filtered through the thin wall.
“Why do you care?” I asked, toes and fingers curling.
“I’m lying naked in bed with you, we’ve just shared as intimate an experience as two people can, and you wonder why I’m bothered that you didn’t have as good a time as me? Would I be human if I didn’t give a shit?”
I shrugged. Candle in the Wind had finished, and in its place Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me was swirling around us.
That was me, I thought, too far gone on this road of shagging any cock I could find to be saved. In my old flat, living with Dee and Fiona, life had been great and mattress music was never needed. We all just went for it, having as much sex and as many noisy orgasms as possible. We would giggle about it over breakfast and swap stories about what racy shenanigans we’d been up to.
But now they’d moved on. They were both head over heels in love and settled in their own homes, leaving me out on a limb and living here with strangers.
Of course I wasn’t technically alone, but if I was honest I’d never felt so lonely. I didn’t want to be. Loneliness was like a dull, gray hole swelling inside me, starting in my stomach and stretching outward. And in the center of this hole was a new bitter emotion—envy. I envied what Dee and Fi had found, lasting love with respect and commitment. But admitting what I wanted, and changing the fact that there was no one special in my life were two separate issues.
More pressingly, at the moment anyway, nor could I change the fact that I hadn’t orgasmed since I’d moved. My one-night stands just weren’t doing it for me anymore. The intimacy of getting naked and sweaty with someone wasn’t satisfying the hunger, the need that was eating away at me like an itch I couldn’t quite reach.
I’d been here three weeks, three fucks. But each week there had been something sneaking into my brain that had distracted me from the delicious buildup to climax. The flat had been deadly quiet the first week when I was with a bodybuilding scaffolder from Durham, every mattress squeak and grunt sliding under the door and echoing through the walls for all to hear. With Dave, an earnest accountant from Chelsea, a knock on my door midway through a blowjob put me off my stride. And now this morose mattress music was stopping me from having a g
reat time with the truly gorgeous Ian.
“Nina?” Ian pressed, dragging me from my depressed musing.
“It was the damn music,” I said with a frown. He wasn’t going to let it drop so I might as well fess up. “I couldn’t concentrate. You were doing it right, great, but I just kept thinking of Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana and Elton singing at his piano with his big, wobbling white wig and that mole thing he used to paint on his cheek.”
Ian tipped his head back and laughed. A big guffaw that shook the bed.
“Shh!” I pressed my fingers to his lips.
“Thank God for that,” he said, grinning. “Thought I’d lost my touch.”
“It’s not funny,” I whispered.
“No, no.” He tried to straighten out his grin. “Of course it’s not. I’ve just never thought of it before, the words in a song competing for the attention of the woman I’m trying to please.” He dropped a kiss to my lips. “So why did you put it on if you don’t like it?”
“So no one will hear. The walls here are so thin, and I’ve got male flatmates who I don’t want perving with glasses pressed to the walls.”
“You think they would?”
“Probably not, they seem nice enough, but just the same…”
“You want your privacy.”
“Exactly.” I paused then sighed. “We should have taken a cab and gone to yours.”
“Yeah, but this was closer, much closer, just a quick walk around the corner.” He smoothed the hair from my face. It always went wild after sex. The hundreds of tiny, copper corkscrews seemed to take on lives of their own. “Maybe we could leave the music off and do it really, really quietly,” he whispered, spreading springs of my hair over the pillowcase.
“No,” I said. “That won’t work. I’ll be too conscious of even our breathing, or if the mattress squeaks.”
His eyes narrowed and a muscle in his cheek flexed, then he got up, dropped the condom in the bin, walked to the iPod and finally silenced Elton. “This isn’t over, you know.”
“What isn’t?”
“This…you.” He flopped back down, scooped an arm under my shoulders and pulled me onto his chest. “Go to sleep,” he said quietly, rubbing a circle over my bare upper arm. “I can tell you’re exhausted.”
I didn’t normally sleep touching anyone else. I liked my personal space, cool sheets, room to shift. But something about Ian’s steady heartbeat rhythmically pounding into my right ear, boom, boom—boom, boom, was instantly soothing, like the perfect beat of music to go to sleep to. My tired limbs sagged onto his and he tucked the duvet around our linked bodies. Shutting my eyes, I sighed at what had become of my weekend fun.
Chapter Two
A police siren wailing along the High Street woke me the next morning. I hadn’t moved all night. I was still sprawled over Ian, cheek pressed into his chest, legs tangled with his.
I sat, rubbing sleep from my eyes and feeling my wrinkled cheek, marked by his chest hair. He didn’t stir, didn’t even flicker his eyes, so I gently pushed up from his sleeping body, poked my toes into pink rabbit slippers and padded to the door. I pulled on a t-shirt and cotton robe and ducked out to use the bathroom.
I freshened up and nipped into the kitchen—coffee, that was what I needed.
“You all right, Nina?”
Hattie. She was nice, friendly. In fact, she had best-friend potential. Bubbly and blonde with a smile that went right to her eyes. I liked her.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Had a fun night?” She leaned her bum against the counter, full mug of coffee cradled in her palms.
“What do you mean?” I asked defensively. I didn’t like people nosing into my unwholesome weekend habits, and for the hundredth time I wished I could have stretched the budget to a pad of my own.
“We were watching some awful horror Jerry put on and I thought I heard voices. Did you have company?”
If my hair hadn’t been falling down my back, my hackles would have been visibly standing at attention. “He’s going soon,” I muttered.
“Mornin’.” Ian walked into the kitchen, low-slung jeans hanging off his lean hips. His black hair was tousled and his eyes were still droopy with sleep. “Who’s going soon?” he asked, looking at me then Hattie and then back to me.
“Er, me. Us. I mean…you,” I said firmly.
He lifted his left hand and shoved it through his messy curls, exposing a tuft of silken black armpit hair and a dark-blue, swirling tattoo on the delicate skin of his underarm. How had I not noticed that?
“Where am I going?” He yawned and reached for the coffeepot.
“Er, home.” I glanced at Hattie, who was sipping her steaming coffee and batting big, amused eyes between the pair of us.
“Yeah, but not ’til I’ve had my morning juice.” He poured a big mug of coffee. “I can’t do anything ’til I’ve had that.” He turned and strolled from the kitchen as though he did that exact thing, in that exact room, with that exact mug every day.
My gaze was drawn to his cute butt and I suspected Hattie’s was too. Perfectly small but with enough flesh to fill out his jeans, and the shape of his back as it disappeared into the denim was divine—long, lean, golden—the type of muscles that hung around tight and taut until needed, rather than bunched-up like overbuilt springs. He was tall too. I hadn’t noticed that either, but Ian was over six feet. I knew that because he stooped his neck slightly as he went through the doorframe. He didn’t need to, but the gap was close so it was probably instinctual to duck.
“Is that…is he—?” Hattie asked.
“Yeah, he stayed. I’m sorry, but he’s going soon.” I scurried back to my room and shut the door.
“Hey,” Ian said, settling on the duvet. “Gonna join me?”
I swallowed. Didn’t he just want to get out of here? Why prolong the awkward morning-after conversation?
“Come back to bed,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee. “We could put some music on.” He grinned like a naughty schoolboy and twitched his eyebrows.
I frowned and sat next to him, clutching my coffee. There was nowhere else to sit in my small room and it seemed there was no rushing Ian.
He reached forward and touched my hair. “You look great in the morning,” he murmured, dropping a light kiss onto my shoulder. “Good enough to eat.”
“No, I don’t.” I looked at him incredulously. I was a mess and I knew it. If he’d said I looked quirky or eccentric I would have believed him, but great was not an accurate adjective.
“But I love the wildfire hair, the panda eyes and…” He placed his coffee on the bedside table and moved closer. “And the inside-out, back to front t-shirt twinned with rabbit slippers—it’s a style statement.”
Glancing down, I saw that, sure enough, beneath my dressing gown the black label of my favorite Snoopy sleeping t-shirt poked out at me.
He took my coffee, placed it next to his and then tugged at the knot holding my dressing gown in place. “Lose this,” he said, before swiping his tongue over his bottom lip.
Before I knew it, he’d slipped it from my shoulders and the crimson material sat bunched around me. As he curled his hands under the hem of my t-shirt, his fingers just brushed the flesh of my stomach. Currents of heat shot around my body and my breath hitched in my throat.
“What…what are you doing?” I asked, falling under the spell of his dark, chocolate-brown eyes.
“Sorting you out.”
“I don’t need sorting out.”
A shard of determination shot across his pupils. “I think you do.” He tugged my t-shirt so I tipped toward him and pressed his lips to mine, soft but insistent, confident but gentle. Unable to resist, I opened up and let his tongue in. He tasted of hot, black coffee and maybe a hint of my peppermint toothpaste. I felt a pull in my belly and a tingle in my nipples. Perhaps a morning quickie would work better than our late-night consummation. It was definitely worth a try, since Ian was not only willing but also, unlike me, gor
geous in the morning, with his bed-hair and irresistible grin.
I gave a little sigh. Taking this as encouragement, he broke our kiss and whisked off my t-shirt. It landed in a crumpled heap as my hair flew wildly around my face.
“Bloody hell.” He looked down at my uncovered breasts, creamy pale with strawberry-pink nipples rapidly hardening under his gaze. “How did you get to be so perfect?” He tugged at his bottom lip with his teeth.
“Yeah, right.”
“Why do you do that?” He frowned and looked up at my face.
“What?”
“Put yourself down.”
I shrugged and crossed my arms over my breasts, suddenly feeling ridiculously exposed in the harsh morning light flooding through my thin, striped curtains.
“You did it last night, too, at the bar.” He reached for my wrists and gently pulled them away from my body. “Don’t throw my words away as if they mean nothing. I think you’re perfect, gorgeous, and I want to tell you that.” He brushed the back of his hand over my right nipple. It strained for more attention. “Just smile and say thanks,” he murmured, treating my left nipple to the same light brush. “Just say thanks and believe me. Because you really are gorgeous, unique, exquisite.”
I swallowed down a lump in my throat. “You have a way with words,” I managed, as the weight of my breasts doubled with the sudden rush of blood.
“Nina, don’t dodge it.”
I sighed. “Okay, thanks.”
“See, that wasn’t so hard.” He leaned forward and kissed me again, but this time harder, as if he meant business and wasn’t about to stop anytime soon. He darted his tongue into my mouth and his chest pressed against mine. Scooping me into the crook of his arm, he dragged me into a lying position, then flopped on top of me. My head sank in the pillow. I felt the hardness in his jeans press onto my bare legs as his body stretched out over mine. “I think we should put some music on,” he whispered into my mouth. “To cover up the squeals of delight you’re gonna be making in a minute.”
Utterly convinced of his plan, I muffled a giggle and smoothed my palms over the beautiful planes of his shoulders. “Okay, hit shuffle and see what comes on.”