Rock It

by Jennifer Chance

  It hadn’t hurt either that she’d agreed to chat with the cameraman on video in the wake of RockerGrrl’s disappearance. Looking like a fifties sorority girl contrasted nicely with the video of the sexed-up stage groupie, and she even managed to do a bit of damage control on her own scrapbooks. For about the fiftieth time that night, she marveled at Anna’s choices of outfits—both for her onstage and offstage personas. If clothes made the woman, Anna had made her into two overnight successes. The woman was a genius. If her consulting gig didn’t work out, she would definitely have a future as a roadie.

  And Lacey might be joining her, sad to say. After tonight, she wasn’t sure exactly where things stood on the employment front. Brenda had finally given up torturing her via text, and her one exchange with Jim had been at least moderately positive. But the bottom line was, she’d taken a huge risk—not in terms of Dante’s safety, but in terms of her career. It might pay off, and it might not, but it was way too early to tell.

  “Hey.”

  Lacey looked up and smiled at Dante, startled by how right it was to see him there, sinking into the couch a few feet away from her. Not just “of course he’s here, it’s his bus” right, but a deep-seated sense of familiarity that was unusual after such a short time on tour together. She’d gotten used to him too quickly. She’d have to get unused to him just as quickly, she knew. But not tonight—not yet. He was wearing loose sweats slung low around his hips, no shirt, and she knew he’d caught her staring when his beautiful lips curved into a smile.

  “Come over here, Lacey.” Dante’s voice was intense, and it served to remind her that she was naked under the soft, heavy blanket. She stood and moved toward him, dragging her comforter with her. “Here, give me some of that.”

  With a few deft moves, Dante had managed to unwrap Lacey and spread the blanket over both of them. She gasped at the contact of her breasts against his chest, and the hitch in his own breath showed he wasn’t unaffected by it, either. She dragged her body up against his, and touched her lips to his. When her hips tilted to take him more deeply against her, though, he chuckled against her mouth. “That’s good,” he murmured. “That’s really good.”

  “Oh yeah?” Lacey pulled away, and the look in his eyes told her everything she wanted to know. Her body practically sang with pleasure and excitement, the heat swirling within her so intense she was astounded it wasn’t pouring out. “So you’re finally going to have sex with me, Dante Falcone?”

  Dante’s beautiful, perfectly sculpted lips twisted. “Everybody wants to have sex with you, Ms. Dawes,” he said. “I, on the other hand, I want to make love to you.”

  Lacey’s half groan, half sigh brought her lips more firmly against his, and Dante held his breath for another moment more, feeling the blood rush and pound in his ears, his whole body filling with heat. He’d kissed Lacey before—hell, he’d spent most of this trip kissing her, it seemed—but this was different to him. This wasn’t one or the other of them taking the initiative; this wasn’t a tease and tug; this wasn’t a dare. This was exploration on both a physical and emotional level. This was possibility.

  This was hot enough to make him come apart at the seams if he didn’t cool it.

  He slanted a look to the console. He’d told everyone to leave him alone, and the driver to stop for nothing and no one. There weren’t any cameras, anywhere. No one was watching.

  They were safe.

  He pushed the blanket away from Lacey, giving him more access, then reached up and cradled her head with his hands, deepening the kiss. Beneath his fingers, he could feel her pulse skyrocketing, echoing his own desperate need. Christ, it felt like he’d been thinking about making love to her for weeks. Maybe since that first night in his hotel room … or even, if he was honest, that first day in the conference room of IMO, when he’d seen Lacey in her uptight white suit, her hair lashed back into a bun.

  Her hair wasn’t tied back now. It was thick and tumbling all around her bare shoulders, framing her beautiful face with those large expressive eyes that looked like they could see into the deepest part of him. He wanted this to be perfect for her. He wanted her to remember it forever—not as some token or trinket, like she was some fan he was banging for the night. But to give her a tiny part of him that she could hold. Not for her benefit but for his.

  Something about her made him want to brand her as his own.

  And that was crazy. He knew the drill. Lacey had her life—God knew he had his. But tonight, this moment, all that mattered was that she was here, in his arms, the blankets surrounding them both holding them in a soft embrace that helped keep the world at bay. He felt her hands at the waistband of his sweats, pushing them down, and he groaned as she took his cock in her grasp, reveling in the fact that every time she touched him, she was more confident, more certain. He couldn’t imagine how that certainty would grow, where her curiosity would take her, but when she slipped her hand farther down, caressing his balls with the lightest touch even as she slid down his body and took the very tip of him into her mouth, he could actually feel his eyes cross.

  “Not this time, sweetheart,” he said, shocked at the roughness of his own voice. With an easy roll he tucked her underneath him, the blankets now tangled, pinning her as she laughed and wriggled. “A little harder to move, is it?” he asked. “You like that?” Her arms were trapped against her, but her legs were free, and he grinned as Lacey stilled, her eyes going a little wide as the realization of her position hit her. “Because I have to say, I like it a lot.” He braced her legs open with his hand even as they instinctively moved to close herself off to him, and leaned down to nuzzle the tight vee between her legs. She was already damp, and he felt his own body ratchet up in reaction.

  “Dante,” Lacey managed, and he loved the sound of his name in her throaty rasp.

  “What do you want, baby?” he asked, taking the very tip of her clit in his mouth and sucking as she groaned and arched her hips beneath him. Her sighs sounded exactly like he felt, and he slipped a finger inside her only to feel her ready for him, her entrance smooth and wet. “So, so good,” he whispered, then delighted in her gasp as he stroked her more firmly, his tongue joining in the dance of exquisite torture as he brought her almost to the brink then eased away, only to do it again—and then again. Her body was an instrument under his fingers, and he was tuning it to the exact right vibration to make it sing. He’d never felt so perfectly in sync with a woman as this, and he felt his own nerves fire at the experience, the sensual blaze searing into him, imprinting on his memory.

  “Dante, please.” Lacey’s voice was more desperate now, and he didn’t feel like holding himself off any longer, either. He moved up her body, yanking the blankets free but catching her wrists in his hands so she was still held, tight and writhing, in his grasp. He grinned fiercely as he drew even with her face, taking in her clamped mouth, her eyes screwed shut against the onslaught of sensation he was unleashing within her. He leaned in and kissed her, then smiled, knowing what he could finally do next.

  “Look at me, Lacey,” he breathed, and her eyes fluttered open on the command, their hazy depths dark with desire as he fixed his stare on her. He released her then, and reached over to the table to grab the condom he’d Thank God brought with him this time. “I want to watch you as you take me inside you,” he whispered, and her eyes flared wider, her hands twisting into fists as she watched him. “You ready?” he asked, and her answer was a simple moan of need that threatened to turn him inside out.

  In movements that were nowhere near fast enough, he sheathed himself then maneuvered over her, his breathing as hard as hers. He held her wrists again, high and away, loving how she stretched out beneath him, flawless and beautiful. A moment later, he breached her entrance and felt his own eyes narrow to slits. “God, you are so tight,” he muttered as her passage closed around him, enveloping him with an intense, swamping heat. “So unbelievably perfect.”

  Lacey gasped and he froze, balancing on the edge, his gaze
frantically searching her face. “Are you okay?” he rasped, but her only response was a deep sigh, her hips thrusting upward to try and take him more deeply inside her.

  “Damnit, please, Dante,” she urged, her face tight with agony. “I want you—I want you so much—please—ah!” Her words broke off as he complied with her demands, pushing into her with a deep pulsing thrust. He gritted his teeth at the sheer beauty of her body as she arched beneath him and pressed the back of her head into the cushions of the couch. The two of them were as close as any two people could be, and still he strived to press more fully into her body, to fuse their skin together until there was nothing left between them. He drew out and reveled in her reaction as he seated himself again firmly against her, rocking against her clit, greedily watching every hitched breath, every sigh, every shuddering gasp. He let go of one of her hands and reached between them, shushing her as she shook her head frantically at yet another pulse of stimulation. But she was too far gone to protest, too close to her own spectacular climax, and he watched her go over the edge with such a surge of desire and primal satisfaction that he followed her over just as quickly, feeling himself come apart and fuse back together again in a long, impossible rush.

  He lay there, wrapped up in her a moment more as he kissed away the tears that were now escaping Lacey’s tightly shut eyes. “That bad, huh?” he whispered, and she coughed a short laugh.

  “No—no,” she whispered, her body still racked with a few errant shivers, struggling for recovery. “I—I don’t know why—”

  “Shhh.” He dropped a light kiss on her hip and rolled away from her, only to return a few moments later with warm, damp towels. Lacey tried to shift back, but he followed her, rocking them both back into the couch as he held her tightly, not even minding when the tears came again. He stilled her incoherent apologies a second time, letting her mind and emotions catch up to what had just happened between them, while keeping his own emotions carefully on lockdown. This all was great—it was fantastic. And it was just sex. He needed to remember that, no matter how unnervingly natural and right it felt to have Lacey’s head on his chest, her weight warm and solid in his arms. They’d created their own fantasy for these few weeks, the two of them, and it was as perfect and pure as a song that wrote itself. He wouldn’t ruin it by thinking it was anything more.

  “They’re probably going to fire me, you know,” she murmured at last, so matter-of-fact after her raw emotions that it took Dante a few seconds to fully understand her words.

  He tightened his hold on her a moment, then shifted, looking down at her. Her face was beautiful and resigned in the half-light, but her eyes were clear. She really believed what she said. “Didn’t the stunt you pulled get a lot of hits or whatever? Aren’t people talking about it?”

  Lacey gave him a tired smile. “So far, yeah. But it was a stunt. I put you in danger.”

  “Well, not really.” He raised a brow. “I mean, it wasn’t like you shoved a crazed fan out there on stage. It was you. Why don’t you just tell them that?”

  “It was a risk—one that hasn’t quite paid out yet. The early buzz looks good, I’m not going to lie. But it’ll be another twelve hours or even more before I look like a genius to IMO or just an employee who got caught in an embarrassing situation and created an elaborate stunt to distract everyone from her humiliation.”

  Dante leaned forward and kissed her on the crown of her head, drawing her back into him. “Can I help in any way?” he asked, feeling a new wave of emotions course through him. Emotions he didn’t want to feel, and sure as hell didn’t want to examine too closely, that urged him to fight, to protect, and to keep what was his safe. But Lacey didn’t need him, he reminded himself sternly. And her next words proved that.

  “You’ve done everything you could already,” she said, the smile back in her words. “I can handle it from here.” He felt her shift away from him, but he held her close, preventing her from escaping his embrace.

  “Not so fast, sweetheart,” he said. “I want to enjoy every part of you this time, including all the way up here.” He tapped her forehead, and she slanted him a wary look.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, clearly perplexed. “What is it you want to enjoy about my brain?”

  “Mmmm, so many things,” he murmured, and he urged her head down on his chest, his fingers going through her hair. “Why don’t you tell me something I don’t know about you.”

  He could feel her shift beneath him, oddly uncomfortable despite all they’d already shared. “About myself?” she asked. “But why?”

  “Tell me something that wasn’t in your bio. Why are you in Boston, for example? Why are you in entertainment?”

  She didn’t even pause for that one. “I’m in Boston and here because that’s where the job was that I wanted,” she said. “It offered the most money doing the closest thing to what I loved.”

  Dante felt his eyebrows lift. “And what is it you love?” he asked.

  That made her hesitate a bit more. “Well, I thought it was music. Anything music, really. I never had any talent to play, or the money to pursue the lessons. But I listened to it, you know? All the time. My parents indulged me—mainly because I didn’t like just pop or rock or rap, but also classical music and folk and show tunes and gospel. We had kind of a deal, I guess. As long as I didn’t say no to what they liked, they wouldn’t say no to whatever new sound I wanted to try out.” He smiled as he listened to her talk, nodding along to the images she was painting in his mind. “Music got me through a lot, but I suppose anyone can say that.”

  “Not everyone,” Dante said, as he continued to thread his fingers through her hair. “But it doesn’t make you feel the same way anymore?”

  She didn’t answer right away, her body shifting again, then settling against his as she breathed out a long sigh. “I guess it does—I haven’t really had any time in the past year to listen, though. Your show at that club in Baltimore was the first time I’d heard anything fresh in forever. I’m just always focused on work, listening to our clients and the competition—you know, doing my job.”

  “Uh-huh.” It was Dante’s turn to go quiet, but the question hammering away at his mind refused to go unasked. “Have you ever thought about just taking a job in the industry doing just what you want to do—discovering new music, helping it reach a new audience?”

  “What, like some sort of talent scout?” Lacey’s laugh was derisive, and maybe a little regretful. “You gotta start out doing that for nothing, Dante. And I have this thing about eating.”

  He gave her a little squeeze. “So that’s it? You’re not going to try to do what you love just because you love it, not because it will make you a bunch of money, give you a bunch of fame?”

  Another short huff of a laugh. “Oh, right. Like you do?”

  Almost as soon as she’d spoken the words, however, Lacey seemed to realize their weight. She peeled back from Dante, looking down at him, suddenly worried. “I’m sorry, Dante,” she said in a rush. “I didn’t mean it like—”

  “Shhh,” he said. “I can take it.” He leaned up and brushed his lips across hers. “So you think I’m a sellout?”

  “What? No!” Her reply was so earnest, so intense, that he couldn’t help but smile. “Dante you’re a multinational brand now,” Lacey protested. “You’ve made a promise to people, and you have to make good on your promise. That’s totally different.”

  “But …,” he prompted her, even as his mouth moved along her jawline and up to the sensitive curl of her earlobe.

  Lacey’s breathing was definitely ragged now. He liked the sound of it, even as she struggled to answer his question. “But, um, yeah, maybe you should also focus on carving out time for your new music—old music—whatever it is you were playing in that club. Not just to refill your well. Real artists put their work out there, let people experience it. You should do that, too. You could do it under a different name if you wanted, so everyone knows what you’re doing, that it’s
experimental. You could just release it in limited markets, or over the web. In today’s world, you could do anything—but you have to do it, Dante. If you don’t, you’ll get caught up in what you’re doing day-to-day, doing less and less of what you love and more and more of what people expect you to do, and eventually you’ll forget the reason why you were doing all of this in the first place.”

  “What about you, Lacey? Are you doing what you want?” He brushed his lips over hers, thrilled to feel her shudder, to watch her fingers grip the soft blanket more tightly. “Is the work you do every day enough for you?”

  She smiled, and it was quite possibly the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen in his life. “It is right now,” she said. “Like right this very minute, especially.”

  She settled back against him, laying her head down on his chest, but despite the rightness of her body there, a hole was opening up inside Dante, a ragged ache that even Lacey’s warm, solid presence couldn’t quite dispel. He gritted his teeth against his own wave of unwanted emotion, and pulled Lacey closer.

  He didn’t want this to end.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Has everyone arrived?”

  Lacey beamed into the webcam of the oversized monitor thoughtfully provided by the conference support personnel of the Atlanta Hyatt. After a fitful and mind-blowing night, she’d formed the inspiration for this meeting and had called it proactively, but that didn’t mean she knew how the hell she was going to carry it off, exactly. As it was, the staff at IMO could see her, but she couldn’t see them. When she jumped to the graphs and slides, the cam would mercifully switch off and she’d go into full-screen presentation mode. But for the moment, she worked her “I’m the PR wave of the future” look with eye-popping earnestness.