Rock It

by Jennifer Chance

  “I think now is a pretty good time, actually.” Dante grinned as Lacey’s head finally did pop up, her nervous gaze flicking over to him, then skittering away. “Oh, c’mon, Lacey. Just a chat? Just five minutes?”

  “Ah—sure. Of course.” Lacey nodded, seeming to come to terms with the idea of talking. Then he patted the seat next to him and her eyes flared again with that immediate mix of emotions again—heat, wariness, fear—and something else. Something he couldn’t quite figure out but was driving him crazy. “Um, what do you want to talk about?” she asked, though she still made no move toward him.

  He flicked his gaze down and took in what she was holding. “Why don’t you give me the once-over again on the SiniStar deal?”

  “The what?”

  “The contract in your hands?”

  “Oh.” She fumbled the manila folder, blushing. “It’s pretty straightforward, actually.” She leaned forward to hand him the paperwork, and he shook his head, relaxing back against soft, plush cushions.

  “Over here,” he said, patting the couch again. “So you can talk to me like a normal person, and not like my accountant.”

  “Dante, I—”

  “Lacey,” Dante almost whispered the words, letting a little of his intensity seep through. She caught it immediately, and her whole body seemed to shiver. The woman was a fraying fuse around him, just waiting for the right connection to explode. “Is sitting next to me that much of a problem?”

  “I …” For one impossible moment, Dante thought she’d still reject him. Then one of the more interesting emotions warring within her seemed to gain hold. “Fine,” she snapped. She crossed the luxurious thick carpet and slid onto the leather couch, drawing her legs up beneath her. Her black tunic and tights clung and shimmered, and Dante had to flex his fingers to remind himself not to touch. Lacey, for her part, settled her face into a politely serene mask. “So,” she said. “What is it you want to know?”

  Dante shrugged, willing the game to begin. “When did you start listening to the band?”

  “I’m sorry?” There it was again, Dante saw. Fear, panic. Heat, hope. Hope, he realized. That’s what was in her eyes, lurking behind every conversation. But hope for what? For him to touch her? To kiss her? To wrap his arms around her and sink inside her body, seeing just how ready she was for him?

  Well, fine. He was on board with that.

  “You know, the band,” he said, watching her carefully. “Me. You clearly have done your homework on us. How long have you been at it?”

  “Oh—well,” Lacey said, tightening her hands in her lap. She was thinking way too hard about the answer to this question, and that intrigued him as well. “We have a great research team at IMO. They’ve pulled every clipping on you—gosh, I don’t know how far back. Years, probably. Since the beginning.”

  “The beginning, huh?” Dante felt his eyebrows lift. “So, what—the Disney Channel?”

  “Oh, please. Try Perry High School.” She smiled at his obvious surprise, looking impossibly young for a moment, caught up in a delighted memory. “Battle of the Bands. You only took second place, but you got on Channel Two.”

  Dante let out a low whistle and shifted toward her. Interestingly, she didn’t shift back. “Let me get this straight,” he said. “A community segment of the Baltimore evening news that aired more than ten years ago somehow made it into your clip file?”

  Lacey was staring at his lips. It was a good place to start, but he had other places where he’d like her to rest that cool blue gaze. “You’d be amazed what’s made it into my clip file,” she murmured, and her voice had suddenly gone husky and soft. “Every show you ever did, every video you ever recorded, every teen fantasy you ever fulfilled. It’s all there.” Then she cleared her throat, her tattered veneer of professionalism slamming back into place. She gave him a million-watt smile. “Because, you know—we have a very thorough team.”

  “You know I’m not that kid anymore, right?” he asked her, and he watched her face slide through its kaleidoscope of emotions—once again, seeming to end with hope. Did she want him to be that kid? Had she fallen for him through his clippings file, for chrissakes? “I haven’t been that kid for a long time, Lacey.”

  She jerked herself upright. “Of course you haven’t!” she said, her words just shy of a snap. “Those were … research. The past. You’re very much not that guy. You’re a star. You’re ‘Dante Falcone.’ ” She must have realized she was babbling, because she squared the SiniStar folder on her knees, gripping it way too hard. “So, um, what is it you want to know about the contract?”

  “I want to know if you kissed me because you wanted my signature on it, or because you wanted to kiss Dante Falcone.” Bingo. Dante watched Lacey’s cheeks flame and didn’t feel the least bit bad about it.

  Her mouth tightened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, c’mon. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. I get it from groupies every day.” Dante watched her, feeling need pulse into a tight, thrumming beat in his blood. “People want to kiss me all the time. So what if you do, too? Maybe it’s a fantasy, as simple as that—easy to get out of your head once you’ve tried it, right?”

  He reached out a lazy hand, traced a finger down Lacey’s cheek. “Why don’t we see if that’s the case?” he asked. “Why don’t you kiss me again and find out?”

  All of the stored-up adrenaline that Lacey had been punching down for the last week came rushing to the fore. “What?” she sputtered, although her ears were working perfectly well. “You want me to kiss you?”

  Dante shrugged. “You didn’t seem to have a problem with it before. Or was that just the drugged champagne talking?” He skimmed his finger over her lower lip, and Lacey realized her mouth had fallen open. The electricity that sparked from his fingertips made her stomach clench. Hell, it made everything clench.

  “Of course I didn’t have a problem with it. You’re a very attractive man, Dante,” she said, her voice sounding like a weird mechanical facsimile of her own. “But you’re my client.”

  “And you full-on propositioned me already,” Dante said reasonably. “So what’s the big deal about a kiss? No one can see us here—no one will know.” Somehow, he’d gotten closer to her, and she felt the sheer presence of him like a visceral jolt to her system, all of her nerve endings sizzling with awareness. He smelled amazing—an intoxicating blend of crisp cotton and heat. She seemed to have trouble filling her lungs with air, her mouth opening and closing but not allowing enough oxygen to get past the constriction of her throat.

  “I never meant to proposition you,” she whispered, and his smile was heartbreakingly tender, his fingers lightly grazing her cheek, cool on her overheated skin.

  “I know you didn’t, sweetheart,” he said. “Though I can’t say I’m not interested in the possibility.” Lacey’s gaze flew to his, met his dark chocolate eyes. “But I’ll settle for a kiss, remember?”

  She tried to process his words as she realized their mouths were hovering close enough now that it would take just the tiniest of movements for her to brush his lips with her own. And it was just a kiss after all. Just one. There couldn’t be anything wrong with a kiss, right?

  Professionalism made one last, desperate bid to regain ground. “But we could arrive at the—”

  “Not for another three hours.” Dante shook his head, and against her will, Lacey found herself looking at his lips. His beautiful, sensual mouth forming each word and sending soft thrills through her. Dante Falcone wants me to kiss him! “And then you’ll be caught up doing your thing; I’ll be caught up doing mine. This could be it, the moment lost. And you said it yourself—sometimes it’s best to get these things out of the way.”

  Get it out of the way? Like that was even remotely possible. Dimly, in the deep recesses of her mind, she knew his words were a trap, but she held on to them with both hands, the last little justification she needed to do what her entire body wanted—needed—from her.
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  “You’re right,” she said finally. “That—that’s probably for the best. Of course.” Before she could change her mind, Lacey closed her eyes and leaned forward. She delicately brushed Dante’s lips with hers. Chaste, almost platonic. That was her goal. She didn’t have to breathe, didn’t have to register the renewed shock of contact.

  All she needed to do now was pull away.

  But she couldn’t. This was Dante Falcone in front of her, Dante Falcone who’d asked her to kiss him. They were alone, on a bus, driving through God only knew where to some random location she couldn’t even begin to remember in her current state.

  Who knew when she’d have another chance like this? How else would she ever know if Dante Falcone the rock god lived up to the man of her million and one daydreams?

  So softly, tentatively, Lacey moved her lips on his, marveling at the way his mouth opened beneath her touch, easily, almost gently.

  Once again, everything in her world seemed to coalesce in this moment, in the simple touch of a kiss. The first time she’d seen Dante on TV was as a teen heartthrob, when his Disney concerts were being talked about by seemingly all of her friends at once. The excitement of realizing he was coming to a city near her, and her pleading and begging with her parents to let her go, to let her see him, that she promised she’d never ask for anything again, like seriously ever, but if she could just see him, just this one time, that everything would be perfect, her whole world would be complete.

  And then the time after that, and after that. The magazines, the Internet articles, the awards shows. The research into his very first show, her screams at every one of his concerts she could attend. And at the center of it all had been Dante, this impossibly precious dream that now was right in front of her, a bubble about to break if she pressed too hard, moved too fast, believed too much.

  She couldn’t bear it if she destroyed that.

  Lacey felt crazily off-balance, excited and powerful but vulnerable and reeling at the same time. Dante didn’t move beneath her, didn’t wrap his arms around her, didn’t pull her close. Only his mouth betrayed that he was engaged at all, and she nervously reached out and pressed her hand against his chest, if only to confirm that his heart was still beating.

  A steady, pulsing thrum matched her own, and she felt the hard nub of a nipple beneath her fingers. She dragged in another breath, still unable to believe this was happening.

  Then his hand came up and covered hers on his chest, hard and sure. “Lacey,” he said, and the voice seemed dragged from deep within him. “Lacey, I need you to look at me.”

  She blinked her eyes open and was transfixed.

  He was staring straight at her, and this wasn’t the fresh-faced boy bander or the moody, molten rock star. This wasn’t an image or a legend or a celebrity. This was a man, flesh and bones and heart and heat. And he was in front of her, focused on her, real and powerful and turning her inside out, making hope surge up within her like maybe, just maybe, this was real and she could, she could …

  Lacey tried to pull back, feeling like she’d done something terribly wrong, but Dante didn’t let her go. He kept her hand imprisoned on his chest as she felt another wave of heat flood her cheeks, an overwhelming mix of lust and mortification. “Oh—I didn’t mean—,” she gasped, not knowing what else to say. “I’m sorry!”

  “Sorry about what?” Dante asked, his words low and intense. “Sorry that you started, or sorry that you stopped?”

  And suddenly this felt all wrong, intrusive, like she’d made a mistake. Lacey blinked, trying to form the words, and Dante shook his head.

  “Oh no you don’t,” he said. “Not yet. Not when it was just getting interesting. Who was it you just kissed right then? Are you sure it was me?”

  There was something demanding in the way he asked the question, something intent and focused, and Lacey blinked at him. “What do you mean?” she asked. “Of course it was you.”

  “I’m not so sure.” Dante tilted forward, and Lacey felt her body easing back, sinking into the soft leather of the couch, the weight of him just enough on her that she—oh God, she could feel how hard he was, how taut, his erection thick and full against her side, suddenly reminding her that he was a flesh-and-blood man. Not an icon, not even a rock star, but hot and real and full and—

  “Oh, Dante,” Lacey breathed, the sensual intimacy of his body against hers too much to process, too much to bear. “Please, just—this—”

  She’d barely spoken when he surged forward, his entire long, lean body seeming to have been poised for just that moment. He pressed her back into the deeply plush cushions of the couch and brought both hands up to cradle her face, the right one then snaking back to bury itself in her hair.

  When Dante kissed her, there was none of the questioning hesitation she had felt, none of the doubt or the worry that she was doing the wrong thing or pushing too hard or taking what wasn’t hers to have. Dante leaned into her with his whole body, and she sank into the soft leather with a gasp that was also a sigh as he dragged his mouth over hers seeking, tasting, needing. He teased her lips with his tongue and when she opened her mouth he pushed into her, the move so shockingly intimate that something snapped off and dissolved inside of Lacey, some frosted core of her psyche that she hadn’t even realized she’d erected as a defense.

  And she found herself kissing back. Her body shivered beneath his hold and she strained up toward him, wanting him as desperately as she wanted breath. Her inexperienced hands sought out new holds on unfamiliar terrain, mapping the angles and contours of his body at first tentatively and then with growing need. She gasped out a breath as Dante finally freed her mouth, only to feel her bones completely melt into a pool of shimmering heat as he drew his lips along her neck and down the contour of her throat. He stopped only when she felt his teeth press into her shoulder, and he was shaking.

  Or maybe that was her.

  Actually, that was her.

  “Shit!” Lacey twisted under Dante and freed her cell phone from under her body, trapped as it was in layers of soft knit. She didn’t have to see the screen to know who it was. No one else in her life had such colossally bad timing.

  Still half-pinned beneath Dante, she thumbed on the phone. “Hello, Brenda.”

  Chapter Ten

  “You were supposed to check in an hour ago.” Dante could hear Brenda’s clipped tones across the tiny space that separated him and Lacey, but he didn’t mind the interruption. He needed to chill. Something about Lacey was making him forget every rule he’d ever forged with women, and if she hadn’t been stopped by her phone going off, he certainly wouldn’t have stopped either.

  He hadn’t expected to have sex with the woman in the first three hours they were alone together. And he was having a damnably hard time convincing himself that that was a bad idea.

  Lacey still lay beneath him, impressively serene as she fielded one icy question after another from her bitch of a boss. Yes, they were almost to the hotel. Yes, the YouTube crew was dedicated to getting plenty of footage for the premiere in a few days. Yes, their warm-up shows were on track from last report, with sold-out crowds expected in small amphitheaters and impassioned fans promising to watch the YouTube series and flood the Internet with social media love when the tour started up in earnest.

  As she talked, Lacey eased her way up the couch in tiny increments, careful not to make a sound while still giving herself slightly better leverage to talk with Brenda. It was clear she needed to keep her cool.

  But he found he didn’t want Lacey to keep her cool. He wanted her hot and writhing beneath him, ideally naked, ideally now.

  “What do you mean, where am I?” Lacey asked, still trapped beneath him. “I’m on the bus with Dante. We’re discussing the sub-vendor contracts.” Pause. “Yes, those agreements, too. And we still have to figure out the—oh!”

  Lacey shuddered and shot him a glazed look, and he realized that his hands had begun kneading the backs of her thighs in rhythmic palpita
tions, his fingers now splayed over her ass. “Right, Brenda, of course,” she managed.

  He looked at Lacey more fully and took in her flushed cheeks, liquid eyes, her mouth falling open to breathe in and out fitful little gasps of air. Her hair was a tousled mess, and he felt the hard punch to his gut again, same as he had when he’d kissed her. She had started out kissing him like he was some sort of angel—something worthy of being put on a pedestal. But he wasn’t that guy. He’d never been that guy.

  And he didn’t know how much help he should give her in figuring that out.

  She set him on fire, but it wasn’t like she realized what she was doing. Beneath all of that desire she probably didn’t even know was inside her, she was sweet—hell, even innocent. He had no idea what kind of life she’d led up to this point, but chances are it hadn’t included road-toughened rock stars who had sex offered to them twenty-four hours a day.

  Dante fought a grimace, careful to mask his thoughts while she stared at him, still talking to Brenda. When Lacey looked at him, he wasn’t even sure what she saw. It wasn’t just the boybander he’d once been, though some of that was mixed up in her gaze. That kid was easy enough to peg. The middle class parents, the loving family, while he had always been a little bit of a loner, a little bit of a show-off. He’d fallen into music early, and had been lucky enough to have parents who didn’t hover too closely or for too long. They just figured that his playing out in his buddy’s garage had been a better alternative to video games or Internet porn. But it wasn’t everything there was to Dante, and he wondered just how deep Lacey’s clip file went.

  He should let her keep her fantasies intact. Perfect. Far away from the truth of what he really wanted to do with her—to her—right now. Lacey needed to be off-limits to him, or he couldn’t be held responsible for his own actions.

  Even as she babbled something unintelligible to an increasingly shrill Brenda, he lifted himself off the couch, and kissed her chastely on the forehead.