by Tessa Bailey
Looking over her body to reassure himself there were no marks, James laid down behind Lita, pressing his chest to her back. His eyelids drooped—from exhaustion, tenderness, renewed need—when she snuggled closer, fitting her bottom to his groin. “James?”
“Yes.”
A small hesitation. “I could really get used to that other side of you.”
There it was. That was what scared him.
A horrible twisting took place in his chest.
James didn’t sleep that night.
Chapter Six
James had been quiet all morning, but Lita wasn’t fazed. She knew this man well. With James, brooding was just par for the course. Not to mention? Hot as shit.
His Broodiness sat in the driver’s seat, once again in a pair of faded jeans, this time with a fitted, white T-shirt that hugged his biceps. A hint of his boxer briefs was visible around the waistband of his pants and she wanted to lick the entire perimeter until he begged for her to go lower. Yeah. After James had given her the Orgasm To End All Orgasms last night, Lita wanted a one-way ticket back to bed. She wanted to be roughed up and held down. Wanted more of his disrespectful words issued beside her ear. And she wanted it now.
Unfortunately, James had already been fully dressed when he woke her up by opening the window blinds in a loud zip. Thanks to the haziness of sleep, she’d made a clumsy attempt at seduction by fluffing her hair and winking. He’d left the room like wolves were on his heels, saying he would wait in the car while she got ready.
“You forgot about the rule,” Lita said, donning her Ray-Bans.
“Which rule is that?”
Wowee. Had his voice always rumbled like that? It blew cool air across her senses, creating goose bumps in its wake. She could hear it saying plaything in the darkness. “Uh, you know. The one. Never wake a musician before noon.”
His lips twitched. “That rule only applies on the tour.” He slid a glance—not his first—across the car’s console to where Lita’s legs were crossed. Maybe she was playing dirty with the cut-off jean shorts, but hey, it was a hot day outside. She totally got away with it. Although, she really hoped James didn’t let her get away with it.
The only way for her plan to succeed was persistence. And after last night, after she’d gotten to the bottom of his fears, her new goal was…a relationship. One that didn’t have secrets or hidden insecurities. One where they could be themselves without being afraid of hurting one another. If she’d approached the situation with James with any sort of rational thought earlier, instead of acting out, they might have gotten to this point sooner. Instead, she’d damaged his trust. Now she would make up for it by handing over hers. I trust you. I trust you. If she proved those words through her actions, he would start to believe it. He had to, right? The alternative was going back to Los Angeles without James and the very possibility of that reality…honestly, it terrified her to think about.
“Remember that time I woke up Sarge with a water balloon?”
Lita had to catch her breath when James gave a rare smile. “Oh, I remember. He slept with one eye open for a month.”
“Hid my sticks as payback, too. Right before a show, the bum.” They coasted to a stop at a red light. “I kept expecting him to balloon me back while I was asleep, so I kept one loaded underneath my bunk.” She shook her head. “The attack that never came.”
James drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Oh, he tried. I stopped him.”
Lita frowned. “Why?”
Silence passed while he pulled through the intersection. “I didn’t want anyone to see you sleeping. They weren’t allowed in the back of the tour bus.”
A low pulse started just south of Lita’s belly button. “Is that why you were always the one to come wake me?” James said nothing, jaw flexing as he watched the road. Lita wasn’t letting it go, though. “Did you always want to get in bed with me?”
“Every. Time.”
Lita’s nipples hardened inside her bra. “I would have welcomed you,” she breathed, reaching over to trace the waistband of his jeans with her index finger. “I used to touch myself thinking about it. You slipping into my bed when everyone was asleep. That big hand covering my mouth to keep me quiet so no one would hear.”
“Jesus, Lita.” He adjusted himself with a strangled groan. “We’re not talking about this now. I have a meeting in ten minutes.”
“A meeting?”
“Yes. An important one.” His gaze pinned her back against the seat. “You wouldn’t be wearing clothes right now unless I had a good goddamn reason.”
“Oh. Point made.” She rolled down her window, allowing the breeze to cool her heated face. “Who is your meeting with?”
His voice was strained upon answering. “A realtor.”
Lita shot forward in the passenger seat, pressure already beginning to burn behind her eyelids. “Why? You’re not…m-moving here. James.”
“No,” he said quickly, shooting her a worried look. “No, my parents moved into an apartment closer to town. My mother asked for help selling the house.”
Lita tried not to be obvious with her relief, but slumping down into the seat like her puppet strings had been cut probably gave it away. With her heart so firmly lodged in her throat, it took her a few minutes to speak again. “Is this the house where you grew up?”
“It is.”
Pleasure washed away the remaining tension. Coming to Modesto had been the best decision she ever made. Or maybe just the first good one. Not only was she making headway with President Broody, she would actually get a peek into his past. Until that moment, she hadn’t realized how starved she was for information about where he’d come from. What events had brought him to her that night in the hotel bar?
“Don’t get too excited. The house is empty,” James said, breaking into her elated and somewhat sappy thoughts. “Anyway, I haven’t been back here in a decade. It’s been even longer since I lived in the house.”
James slowed the car and turned into a small, blacktop driveway. It was empty, signaling the realtor hadn’t arrived yet. Lita was too busy focusing on him to notice much else, though. “Why haven’t you been back?”
“My father and I aren’t on good terms.” He turned off the car’s ignition. “I’m here to help sell the house and run the business for a while. That’s it.”
Lita made no move to get out. “Tell me why you don’t speak to him.”
He opened his mouth but closed it just as fast. “Another time, Lita.”
While Lita attempted to swallow the hurt, James climbed out of the car and rounded to her side. He opened the door and helped her out, eyes and fingers lingering on skin far longer than was necessary. James’s way of apologizing for shutting her out? Probably. But she needed to be patient instead of pushing.
Feeling the burn of James’s regard, Lita turned her attention toward the house. “Wow,” she laughed. There were flowers. Everywhere. A million different colors, all vibrant. Lush greenery and tall, leafy trees surrounded the small, cottage-style house, making it look like something out of a fairytale. “This is not what I pictured at all,” she said, climbing the porch stairs. “Maybe I should have when you told me they owned a landscaping company.”
James passed her on the stairs, keys in hand. “Yes, it has always been pretty on the outside.”
Wondering at his cryptic statement, but determined to keep the morning light, Lita followed James into the house. White walls and dark wood floors greeted her, but the paintjob was obviously fresh. Not a single trace of the family who had lived there before. “Show me your room.”
“It’s not my—” He broke off with a sigh. “It’s upstairs.”
Lita preceded him up the creaking steps, imagining photographs lining the walls at one point. Homey smells coming from the kitchen downstairs. All the things she’d missed out on growing up. “Which way?”
“To the right.”
Based on his husky tone of voice, James was looking at her backside.
Lita smothered a laugh as she turned the corner and breezed in through the only open door. The bedroom was small, but bright; empty, save the fluttering blue curtains blowing in front of the open windows. Lita faced James, refusing to dim her enthusiasm one notch. “You slept right here for eighteen years.”
“Why does that make you smile?” he murmured.
Lita executed an awkward pirouette at the room’s center. “Because you just showed up one day, like you’d come into the world fully formed as an adult. You know everything about me, witnessed my best and worst days…” She stopped turning and shrugged. “So I have one thing now. I have one, and maybe in another four years, I’ll have two…”
Transfixed by his intense expression, Lita trailed off, her ability to speak deserting her. James came forward, although barreling down on her was a more apt description. Long, determined strides that kept her rooted to the spot, sending her heart into a fit of erratic beats. His mouth swooped down onto hers and opened, pushing her lips wide. On a simultaneous groan, their heads tilted opposite directions, mouths interlocking like the final piece of a jigsaw. Oh…oh God. She could barely stand under the assault of feeling. Drugging, dirty, fucked-up passion that made her white blood cells scream and she couldn’t get enough. Couldn’t ever. Lita’s hands tangled in James’s hair the same time he walked them backward, giving Lita the wall to lean on while he mouth-fucked her.
Holy shit. The seam of her jean shorts was damp within thirty seconds of James stroking his talented tongue along hers, again and again, hungry sounds ripping from his throat. His hands slid up her outer thighs and gripped the frayed ends of her shorts. “I will destroy these before the day ends.”
“They’re kind of already destroyed,” she panted. “It’s a look.”
His laugh emerged on a puff of air, stirring the hair he’d messed up in his hands. A beat passed as he scrutinized her face. “I played water polo when I was younger. There’s your second thing, all right?”
Lita’s mouth dropped open. “Did you wear a Speedo?”
“Hmmm. A white one.”
Two very potent emotions were fighting for precedence—hope, because he’d opened up to her, even with such a small thing, and all out arousal, because his powerful body had her plastered up against a wall, his pupils dilated enough to obscure the gray, need like she’d never seen in their depths. “James?”
He dipped his head to suck at her top lip, slowly pulling it into his mouth and letting it go. “Yes?”
…aaand arousal won the day. Lita wedged her right hand between their bodies and gently squeezed the bulge behind his fly, running her fingers over the thick outline until she found the plump tip. So big. God, he’s so big. “I need to get on my knees for you. For this.”
“Fuck yes.” James placed his hands on the wall, easing his hips back to give her room to work the button and fly of his jeans. “I’m going to bang your beautiful mouth, Lita. Just the way you like it.”
She nodded, unable to catch her breath. “Yes. Please.”
Even though James hadn’t lived in the house in ages, there was still something illicit about unzipping his jeans and fisting his erection, giving it a slow pump as she exposed him completely. His hips rolled in time with her strokes, mimicking sex. Only with James, it wasn’t mere sex, it was giving in to compressed need. His teeth were bared, the veins in his biceps growing more prominent. A man that could break her and didn’t mind making that clear.
Lita dropped to her knees, wrists crossed at the small of her back. She couldn’t say what intuition drove her to that position, only that it was what James would like. What she would like. His arousal was delicious fruit inches from her mouth and she couldn’t stop staring, wanting to taste him, pleasure him.
Before Lita could lean forward and take his flesh between her starving lips, James threaded his fingers through her hair, tilting back her head. “Ah, Lita.” His fingers tightened around the strands. “I would kill a man for doing the things I want to do to you.”
“Hello? Anyone up there?”
Lita waded through the cresting surf of desire to pinpoint where a third voice had come from. Downstairs. A woman. Realtor. “Ohhh.”
“Goddammit.” Pain clear in his features, James hauled Lita to her feet, holding her steady as she swayed. “You look at me…you smile, and I forget everything.”
Oh. Oh wow. “Really?”
Gaze narrowing, he paused in the crucial act of stowing his still-erect manhood back inside his jeans. “Yeah. Really.”
“I wish I could be sorry,” she said, more than a little breathless. “So…after you meet with the cockblock downstairs, can we go back to the motel?”
He zipped his jeans with a wince. “Later. We have work to do first.”
“Work?”
On the way out of the room, James threw a wink over his shoulder. “I hope you’re ready to get dirty.”
“I don’t think we’re on the same dirty page,” she called after him, unable to banish her smile. Playful James? She could get used to that.
Chapter Seven
This was getting out of hand.
Twenty yards away, Lita was bent forward on hands and knees, digging with a hand shovel in the dirt. It was a good goddamn thing he’d sent the rest of their landscaping crew to another section of the property to work, because anyone seeing that hot, young backside swaying in the air but him? Not. Happening. The men had already shown way too much interest upon arrival, asking for pictures and autographs when recognition dawned.
James had a lot of experience steeling himself against the urge to scoop Lita up and carry her away when men spoke to her on the road, their familiarity with her persona making them way too chummy. So he’d gritted his teeth and gotten through ten minutes of listening to Lita charm the crew out of their fucking minds before sending them far away as possible.
They worked outside a newly built commercial space surrounded by a wooded area. He was supposed to be uprooting a rotted tree stump, but nothing could keep his eyes off the little white strands of frayed denim ticking the underside of her ass cheeks. Every time she exerted pressure on the ground with her hands, her back arched, allowing his gaze to follow the denim seam where it ran down the middle of her pussy. Every so often she would sit back on her heels and stretch, tightening the tank top’s material across her tits, lifting it to expose her stomach.
His hard cock was lodged between the waistband of his jeans and his abdomen. His balls ached with the need to empty. Visions of Lita on her knees like a sacrifice wouldn’t leave him alone.
So why was James enjoying himself so much?
Maybe because they were…talking. Not the usual way they spoke to one another, taunts and warnings issued like cannon blasts. This was different. His secrets were out on the table now. And damn if her plan to replace their first night together with something better—something he could be proud of—hadn’t worked. The guilt that typically sat in cactus form inside his chest was less spiked today. The compulsion to apologize every time they locked eyes had eased. While he still had major reservations about dragging her into the dark fog inhabiting his brain, spending time with her was an aphrodisiac. He craved having her close. Watching her expressions change. Listening to her unique logic.
God, she was something.
“So you were on the water polo team.” She sent him a sly look. “I bet you were beating the chicks off with a stick.”
He wiped the sweat off his upper lip. “You think I’m going to answer that?”
She went back to digging with a half smile on her mouth. That. Fucking. Mouth. “Did you have a nickname?” Wanting to hear what she would inevitably come up with, James stayed quiet. “I bet they called you the Torpedo in a Speedo.”
James laughed under his breath. “Nothing as good as Lita Bandita.”
“I’m still mad that didn’t stick,” she said, throwing down her shovel. “You cause one little panic...”
“You fired blanks during a show and started a s
tampede for the exits.”
“And you cleaned it up for me.” She shifted on her knees. “You always cleaned it up. I should have said thank you more.”
“Don’t worry about it.” He wiped his dirt-streaked palms down the thighs of his jeans. Jesus, he couldn’t handle her acting sweet. If she’d been in reaching distance at that moment, she would have been on her back. “Old News is going back into the studio in a month,” James prompted, cursing himself for bringing up a sore subject. As it stood, he wouldn’t be in the studio with them.
“Yeah.” She dragged the tip of her shovel back and forth through the dirt. “It might be good to rehearse once or twice beforehand, right? It’s going to take the Jaws of Life to pry Sergeant from Jasmine and the new house.”
His throat started to ache. “What about you? Don’t you eventually want a house?”
Her laughter sounded forced. “I don’t know. Do houses come with room service?” They fell silent for a few minutes until she spoke again. “An apartment, I think. A two bedroom so I have a place for my kit. Maybe a balcony in case I feel like some late-night bungee jumping.”
“Lita…” James warned.
She turned sparkling green eyes on him, but there was a hint of sadness in them that made him miserable. “There we are.”
James wanted to erase the last five minutes and start over. Go back to when they were teasing each other and she was prodding him for information about his younger days. It had felt so good. Then he’d fucked it up by reminding her he’d left the manager position behind. She was just playing defense by putting them back on more familiar ground of wayward drummer and killjoy.
Had he changed his mind about leaving Old News with a new manager? Since Lita had arrived dripping blood, his focus had been zeroed in on her. The sexual hum that followed them everywhere. Time had come to face facts, though. Before she’d followed him to Modesto, there had been zero chance of James severing all ties. He’d resigned himself to checking up on Lita through the new manager. Now? Now she’d shown up with the obvious goal of shooting down each and every one of his reservations. And Jesus, it was working. She didn’t think he was a monster. She…liked his aggression in bed. Encouraged it.