Strings

by Emma Lea

  “You came!” Nadine’s voice broke through the hum of the gathered crowd and then she was there in front of him her arms raised and a big smile on her face.

  “How could I not come?” he asked her as she plastered herself against him and wound her arms around his neck.

  Instinctively he lowered his head and kissed her as if it were the most natural thing in the world. As if they had done it a million times. She returned his kiss eagerly and writhed against him like she couldn’t get close enough. His arms wound around her waist and pulled her hard against him. Yep. He was going to hell. In a hand basket. His sister was right.

  Thoughts of his sister were enough to break through his lust-addled brain and he lifted his head. She looked up at him with dazed eyes and if he thought seeing her on stage and in her element made her beyond beautiful, seeing her like this after just a kiss made her even more so. He dusted a quick, chaste kiss on her mouth before pulling away. She smiled shyly at him and a roaring protectiveness rose up in him. He couldn’t let go of her completely and their hands tangled, their fingers weaving together.

  “Come and meet the band,” she said.

  He nodded, not able to make his voice work, and followed her as she tugged him through the crowd.

  The band was standing together in the near center of the room. Nadine’s fingers tightened around his as they came to a stop in front of the group. Eyes looked at him curiously. One pair of eyes looked at him suspiciously.

  “Hey guys,” Nadine said, “I want you to meet a friend of mine.” There was a slight hesitation as she said friend. He understood her reluctance to call him her therapist, and not only because of the kiss that had just been witnessed by everyone in the group. Most people didn’t want people to know they were seeing a therapist and if, as in Nadine’s case, their friends already knew, most people didn’t want to introduce their therapist to their friends.

  “Hi,” he said with a non-threatening smile and a casual wave. “I’m Gabe.”

  There was silence from the group for a moment before the blonde one returned his smile and stuck out her hand to shake his.

  “Hi Gabe,” she said, “I’m Stevie and this is my boyfriend Nate.”

  Of course he knew who they were. Nate Nash and Stevie Jacks had made headlines with the song they had produced with Nadine’s band in the summer. There had been a bit of a media frenzy after it came out that they had once been a duo before Nate had left to sign with a record label without Stevie.

  “Nice to meet you,” he said, shaking both their hands.

  “I’m Vanessa,” the dark-haired one said. She looked eerily like Nadine but he knew from their sessions that Vanessa was Nadine’s younger sister and that they were often mistaken for twins.

  He shook her hand and smiled. “Nice to meet you.”

  “And this is my brother Jace,” Nadine said and her hand tightened in his just a little bit more.

  Jace looked at him, his mouth in a compressed line. It was probably an unfair advantage that Gabe knew the history of this family. He knew that Jace had raised his sisters and that even now that they were grown, he still watched over them like an over-protective father. After what had happened with Nadine, he couldn’t exactly blame the other man.

  Gabe stuck out his hand and it hung there in the space with Jace making no move to shake it until Stevie nudged him with her elbow. Jace took his hand and tried to crush it in a power play move. Gabe didn’t let it rattle him. He knew Jace was just looking out for Nadine and to him Gabe was a complete stranger.

  “Nadine told us about you,” Jace said, his voice a low growl.

  Gabe’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. Maybe he wasn’t a complete stranger to them.

  “I told them how we met at the coffee shop,” Nadine rushed in to explain. “And how you helped me when my car broke down.”

  He turned his head to look at her and she pleaded with her eyes for him not to call her out on her lies.

  “That’s right,” he said, turning back to Jace and clenching his molars together.

  Jace let go of his hand and Gabe shoved his bruised digits in his pocket.

  “So what did you think of the concert?” Stevie asked. It was a valiant effort to break the awkward tension that had descended on the group.

  “It was great,” Gabe replied truthfully, looking down at Nadine with a soft smile on his face.

  She beamed up at him and he pulled her closer in to his side where she seemed to fit perfectly.

  “Are you a country music fan?” Nate asked.

  “I am now,” Gabe replied not taking his eyes off Nadine.

  Chapter Three

  Nadine slumped into the chair of the little hole-in-the-wall coffee shop and looked at the man across from her. As much as she had ached to see him tonight, she had also been nervous. Nervous that he wouldn’t like her performance and nervous that meeting the band would scare him away.

  “So this is where we met, huh?” he said casually as he looked around.

  She smiled sheepishly. “Yeah,” she said, “sorry about that.”

  He shrugged and smiled at her. “It’s okay,” he replied. “I understand why you might not have wanted them to know how we really met. They do know you’ve been getting therapy, though?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. I didn’t really have a choice about that. Derek spelled it all out to them when I was released from rehab.”

  Her rehab stint had only been for three months. She wasn’t an alcoholic and she wasn’t addicted to illegal substances but the ready access she’d had to both over the summer had shown her that she had the type of personality that could quite easily become so. Her sabbatical in rehab was more about getting her mind sorted out than to dry her out. She had convinced herself that she was bipolar like her mom and had sought out the numbness that drugs and alcohol could give her so that she wouldn’t have to face it. Until one night she had gone too far and had ended up in the hospital.

  Gabe reached across the table and took her hand in his. “You did really well tonight,” he said, his voice soft. “I was so proud of you.”

  Nadine felt her cheeks flush and she looked down. She tried to tug her hand away, but Gabe held on, not letting her pull away from him - physically or emotionally.

  “Hey,” he said, reaching over to tip her chin up so that she had no choice but to look into his eyes. “Don’t do that. Don’t hide.”

  As if she could hide anything from him. The man saw through her all the way to her very soul. No one had ever been able to get that close to her before, not even her family.

  “I’m not…” she shook her head and tried to clear her thoughts. “I’m not good with compliments,” she said.

  He smiled at her and her tummy flipped over. “I know,” he said with a grin, “which is why I intend to give you lots of them.”

  She returned his smile. What did she do to deserve a man like this in her life? He was so far from the deadbeat guys that she was normally attracted to. Even now, after being at a concert, he still looked like he stepped out of a GQ magazine. He had jeans on at least, but there wasn’t a tear in sight. He also had on a sports coat over a button down. He looked like a professor or an investment banker or maybe even one of Carson’s - sorry, Senator Carson Giles’ - cronies. He did not look like a man who had just been to see an up and coming country rock band at a venue called Dirty Moe’s.

  She picked up her coffee, which was now probably cold, and took a sip. She didn’t know what to say to him. When she had thought about what might happen tonight, it had been thoughts of the two of them naked and pressed up against one another, not this quasi-date. She didn’t generally do this. Go for coffee with the men she slept with. Nadine was all about the parties - had been all about the parties. Her regular post-gig ritual would be to find some fans and party all night long with them until she couldn’t remember her own name. Not go out for coffee and flirt. Not that she wasn’t enjoying herself. She was just a little out of her depth.

  Gabe sipp
ed his coffee and then she heard the buzz of his cell phone. He let go of her hand and pulled it out of his pocket to check the screen. His eyebrows pinched together in a frown and he looked up at her.

  “Sorry,” he said, “I need to take this.”

  Nadine nodded and watched as he got up to walk outside to take the phone call. Through the window she could see him pace as he spoke into the phone, one hand clenched around the device, the other hand waving wildly. He looked agitated, where as before he had been the perfect image of controlled.

  “Is he your boyfriend?”

  Nadine looked up at the waitress standing near the table, her eyes on Gabe outside. Nadine felt a stirring of jealousy at the look in the other woman’s eyes. Gabe was a good-looking guy and it was only natural that women would look at him, but she didn’t like the hungry look she saw in the waitress’s eyes.

  “Yes,” she said, although they were barely even friends. Nadine felt the need to claim him in front of the other woman’s obvious interest in him.

  The waitress sighed. “Story of my life,” she said. “All the good ones are either taken or gay, right?”

  Nadine smiled benignly up at the other woman. The last thing she wanted to do was get into a conversation about the availability of men in this town. She turned her eyes back to Gabe and saw him slip his phone back into his pocket. He didn’t come back inside straight away, instead he stood with one hand on his hip as he dragged the other hand through his short hair. Nadine got up from her seat and tossed some bills on the table.

  “That’s my cue,” she said to the woman who was still gawking at Gabe through the window.

  Nadine walked swiftly out of the coffee shop and towards Gabe. She stepped up close to his back and she could smell the subtle scent of his cologne. She rested her head between his shoulder blades and she felt him stiffen before relaxing and turning to gather her into his arms. She tilted her head up to him and saw a myriad of emotions pass across his face.

  “Take me home, Gabe,” she whispered to him.

  He lowered his head to hers and kissed her. It skirted the edge of the desperation she knew they both felt. It was a promise of things to come and they lingered, just for a moment, before he lifted his head, snugged her into his side and walked them towards his car.

  The phone call had rattled him. He should have expected it, but he had begun to think that that episode in his life had come to an end. Of course it hadn’t. Sometimes he felt that it would never end.

  The detective had assured Gabe that they would find her but in the meantime, she was out there somewhere. An unknown threat. Her parole officer hadn’t reported her failure to appear for three weeks. She could be anywhere by now. They had assured him she wasn’t a risk to him anymore. They had denied his requests that she wear a tracking bracelet during her parole period. She was just a woman after all, how much of a threat could she be?

  He ran his hand through his hair and cursed six ways to Sunday over their apparent disregard for his safety. If he was a woman and had been stalked by a crazy-ass man, things would have been different. They would have taken the threat a lot more seriously and she would have been sentenced more harshly. Instead she got a slap on the wrist and a token stint in a low-security correctional facility and then let out on early release because she had been a model prisoner. They had no idea what she was capable of. He had petitioned the court for a stricter penalty, but they had brushed off his concerns and now she was out there, probably planning his demise and they were ‘sorry.’ Stupid fucking assholes. The woman had put him in hospital last time and he could only imagine what she was cooking up for him this time.

  The presence of someone behind him made him stiffen until he caught the scent of Nadine’s perfume. He turned and took her into his arms. The weight of her against him and the warmth of her body went a long way to chasing away the chill that had begun to settle in his bones.

  She looked up at him and he couldn’t help but kiss her and when she asked him to take her home, he couldn’t deny the need he saw in her eyes. He felt it too. Whatever it was between them, he was powerless to stop it.

  The ride to his apartment was quiet, but not awkward. He parked in the underground garage and took her hand as they ascended in the elevator. It wasn’t until they were behind the closed door of his home that he finally spoke.

  “Nadine,” he said, his voice thready and needy.

  She came to him, her hands burrowing under his coat and around his back as she pushed up on her toes and kissed him. He took his time. Tasting her. Exploring her mouth. He relaxed into the kiss, his hands threading through her hair, the silky strands tangling in his fingers. He let go of the agitation he felt from the phone call and just let himself feel the sensation of having her in his arms.

  She shifted against him, pressing closer and he groaned as her soft breasts pushed up against his chest. He could feel their beaded nipples through his shirt and suddenly there were far too many clothes between them. She had changed out of her stage outfit and wore a t-shirt and ripped jeans with a leather jacket over the top. He pushed the jacket from her shoulders and she unwound her arms from him so it dropped to the floor. His fingers found the hem of her shirt and he tugged it up. She lifted her arms and they broke their kiss so he could tug it over her head. His eyes were drawn to the barely-there black lace that covered her breasts and he dropped his head to pull a lace covered nipple into his mouth.

  She made a soft mewling sound as her fingers speared into his hair.

  “Gabe.” His name was a prayer on her lips and he growled as his arms went around her and lifted her.

  Nadine’s legs wound around his hips, her ass a comfortable weight in his hands. He lifted his head and kissed her lips again as he walked them through his apartment to the bedroom. He let her slide down his body until her feet were on the floor and then he trailed kisses down between her breasts as he knelt in front of her. All his reservations about going there with her were long gone, as was his sanity when he undid the button of her jeans and pulled down the zipper. He could smell her arousal and his already thick cock swelled further. He tugged her jeans down her legs, getting them caught on her boots. He buried his face in her mound, inhaling her sweet scent as he tried to get his muddled brain to figure out just how he was going to get her naked.

  She laughed gently and pushed him away. She sat on the edge of his bed and held up a foot for him so he could tug her boot free. She smiled at him and he blinked, taking a snapshot of it in his brain. He had never seen her look at him like that and he wanted to remember it for always.

  He tossed the now free boot over his shoulder and repeated the process with the other one. He finally pulled her jeans free and he looked up at her as she lay back on his bed, her dark hair with its purple streaks spread out on his boring beige duvet. It seemed like a metaphor for his life. Everything around him was beige and boring until Nadine had come into it with her purple panties and short skirts. He looked at her now - red panties this time and black bra - and he knew that nothing after tonight would ever be the same.

  And he didn’t care.

  She watched him watch her and he could see uncertainty in her eyes. He didn’t want her to doubt the way he saw her or the way he felt about her. But it was too soon for declarations of feelings. Instead, he dipped his head and slicked his tongue over her red lace panties, groaning as the taste of her exploded over his tongue. Her fingers grabbed at his hair and she tugged him closer. He grinned against her core. Her fierceness was what attracted him and he had known from the very start that she would be demanding in bed. Just the way he liked it.

  He lifted his head and looked up at her along the full length of her body. Their eyes clashed and he saw her naked desire.

  “You’re wearing too many clothes,” she said.

  Nadine watched Gabe as he looked down at her. There was something about the way he gazed at her that made her want to squirm. He had been able to see past every one of her damned walls during the hours t
hey had spent together but she had never felt more naked than she did now, and it had nothing to do with her lack of clothes. The man knew her, saw to her very soul, like no one else ever had. He was probably the only person who had ever taken the time to look beyond the outward appearance and find the scared little girl underneath. It shouldn’t make her want him even more. It should make her want to run like hell.

  Running was her go-to. Running and hiding - although not always physically. Every party she had gone to while they were on tour? That was her running. Every sip of alcohol or swallow of a pill had been her hiding from a truth she had wanted to deny. But Gabe’s eyes pinned her in place and she could no more run from him than she could ignore the effect he had on her.

  He slipped his jacket off, his eyes not leaving hers. His long fingers unbuttoned his crisp white shirt and her breath hitched as his hard chest was revealed, button by button. When she had kissed him, when he had pulled her against his body, she had felt the solidness of him, but seeing it in the flesh was a whole different matter. It wasn’t just her stomach that flipped over this time. All her girlie parts went on high alert. They were already practically begging for his attention, now they whimpered with need. She felt the rush of wet warmth between her thighs and bit her lip to stop herself from moaning out loud.

  The white cotton fluttered to the floor behind him and his hands went to his belt. She did moan then and squeezed her thighs together as he undid his jeans and let them fall to the floor. He’d already lost his shoes somewhere, she didn’t know where, and he stepped out of the puddle of dark denim, prowling toward her. He rested a knee on the bed and crawled over her so he was suspended above her. His cologne swirled around her and her eyes fluttered, but she refused to close them. She didn’t want to miss even a moment of what was about to happen.

  He dipped his head and took her bottom lip between his teeth, pulling it gently before letting it go. Her hands coasted up his taut arms, her fingers skimming over the hills and valleys of his muscles until she reached the rounded bulge of his shoulders. His skin was smooth and soft. The heat of him warmed her as the fire in his eyes scorched her soul. Oh. This was a very bad idea. Very, very bad. She knew that what happened next would ruin her for any other man.