Getting Played (Heart of Fame #7)

by Lexxie Couper

  “Sex?” he cut her off, lips twitching.

  Nat’s pussy pulsed. Her nipples pinched tight. Her belly fluttered. Damn, there was no backing out of this lunacy now. Now, all she could do was take the upper hand, take charge of the situation and make him suffer. And by suffer, she meant make him make her come more times than she could ever hope to count.

  The way he used to.

  “Not just sex, Jaxon,” she corrected, her brain slowly catching up with her body’s licentious intent. If she was doing this—and it appeared she was—she was doing it big. The bastard had stolen her AC/DC album, after all. It was high time she got something back. “Mind-blowing, earth-shattering sex. Let’s call them a series of sexual challenges, shall we? For each challenge you achieve, I’ll introduce you to a possible candidate to replace Blackthorne.”

  Jax studied her, his expression ambiguous. But there, in his eyes, was that promise. It made her sex constrict and her breath quicken.

  Nat sucked in a slow breath. Damn, this was a risky move. But if she played it right, kept her heart protected, the payoff would be amazing. The best sex of her life with the only man who had ever truly satisfied her. She’d come dangerously close to falling in love with him all those years ago. It had only been a stubborn sense of self-preservation that had saved her, but she was older now, wiser, more jaded about romance. She didn’t want romance from Jax. She wanted sex. And he’d just presented her with the perfect way to get it.

  Unattached, no-strings, make-him-suffer sex.

  She bit back a soft whimper at the unnerving, enticing thought and cocked an eyebrow at Jax. Who she noticed hadn’t uttered a word since sex. “Well?” she said, leaning closer to him, heart fast, lips curling. “You said you’d make it worth my while.”

  “Deal.”

  The second the word past his lips, Nat’s stomach granny-knotted again. A lump the size of the Opera House formed in her throat. Her clit ached, so damn swollen with lust she didn’t risk moving.

  He slowly ran his gaze over her face, down to the scooped neckline of her conservative but stylish dress, the kind she only wore at work, and back up to her face. “What’s the first one?”

  Forcing herself back into her seat, she leveled a coolly confident gaze at him. What she really wanted to do was bury her hands in his hair and kiss him senseless, but she couldn’t. Sure, she’d just thrown herself into the deep end of impulsive sexual lunacy, but she was at work. When she was at work, she was all professionalism. And she was going to maintain control.

  She had to. Otherwise Jaxon Campbell would walk away when it was done, not only with her AC/DC album this time, but her heart. And she wasn’t letting him anywhere near that.

  “Call tomorrow,” she said, placing the pen she’d gripped like a lifeline back on her desk with an indifferent toss. “Dory shall make an appointment for you and we shall discuss the details then.”

  Jax studied her. “The details?”

  She nodded.

  “On how I’m going to make you come over and over again? Those details?”

  The pit of her belly clenched at his question. She caught herself before she could bite her lip. “Those details.”

  “The details,” he went on, the glint in his dark eyes beyond devilish, “on how I’m going to make you scream my name? Will there be exhibitionism in the details, Nat? Rope? Ice cubes? A dildo? Two dildoes?”

  She swallowed, her mouth dry. “Tomorrow,” she said. “But for now, I have to see Nick and Josh.”

  Jax ran his gaze over her face again and then straightened to his feet with slow, fluid, deliberate grace.

  “Tomorrow,” he echoed, walking around the corner of her desk until he stood beside her. “But I think I’d like to give you some…details…before then. Something to think about.”

  He grabbed the arm of her chair and swung her to face him before she realized what he was doing. Or perhaps she did realize and didn’t want to stop him?

  Their stares clashed and, with a cheeky smile, he snared the base of her ponytail, yanked back her head and captured her lips with his, silencing her gasp with his tongue.

  Instant and searing lust rushed through Nat. Every fibre and molecule in her body tuned into the sensation of Jax’s mouth plundering hers. Every nerve ending sparked, the long-repressed memories of his kisses feeding the concentrated pleasure of this new kiss.

  He swept his tongue past her lips, taking possession of hers, at once demanding and playful. She groaned, the sound low in her throat.

  In response, Jax chuckled into her mouth, tugged her ponytail harder and sucked on her bottom lip.

  She reached up and buried her hand in his hair, fisting it tight as she reclaimed his mouth and took charge of the kiss. He met her passion, echoing her earlier groan when she captured his tongue and drew on it with greedy pressure.

  It was her turn to chuckle. She released his tongue, swiped hers over his bottom lip and then nipped his chin, smoothing her free hand up the column of his neck to his jaw as she did so.

  He twisted his head straight away, kissing the centre of her palm before capturing her lips with his again. Their teeth clicked, their tongues mated. Nat’s heart hammered. Her nipples ached. Her head swam.

  When her pussy constricted with urgent need, she pulled away, all too aware she was dangerously close to doing something utterly unprofessional, like beg him to fuck her there and then on her desk.

  She looked up at him, breath far too shallow and rapid for just one kiss.

  Jax gazed down at her, his nostrils flaring, a small grin playing at the corners of his mouth. “Fuck, Boxhead,” he murmured, his eyes ablaze with undeniable desire. “I’d forgotten how good you kiss.”

  “Don’t call me Boxhead,” she murmured back, the damp heat between her thighs a steady, demanding throb she’d have to address as soon as she got him out of her office. Masturbating in the ladies loo while at work. Oh boy, she was a ball of class.

  He breathed out a laugh, released her ponytail from his grip and brushed his thumb along her bottom lip. “Can’t make any promises on that, but I promise I’m going to make you come so many times you lose count.”

  Nat swallowed the soft gasp threatening to escape her at his claim. “And I promise I’ll find you a replacement for Nick.”

  Something dark and animalistic flickered in Jax’s eyes. “Ah, that’s right. That why we’re doing this again, isn’t it?”

  “The only reason,” she said, aching for his lips on hers again.

  He stared at her for a long moment, their faces so close she could feel his warm exhalations fanning her lips. “The only reason,” he repeated when Nat thought she was about to explode from the open lust in his eyes.

  And then he straightened. At the exact moment a knock sounded on her door.

  She swiveled on her chair, cheeks hot with guilt, to stare at Dory, who smirked at her from the threshold. “Nick Blackthorne and his son are here to see you, Ms. Thorton.”

  Before Nat could squelch her wanton reaction to Jax’s presence and regroup, Nick Blackthorne strode into the room, Josh meeting his stride beside him.

  “Jaxon bloody Campbell,” the retired rock star proclaimed, meeting Jax halfway across Nat’s office to grab his wrist in a mutual shake. “Now are you going to tell me what the hell you’re doing here?”

  Nat sat in her seat, her heart slamming into her throat. Not because of the rock god now in her office, not because of the meeting with said rock god and his son about to take place—a meeting that may or may not end with Josh leaving the Con, but because the realization she’d made a really, really big mistake licked at her sanity.

  She was about to embark on a purely sexual fling, or more to the point, a purely sexual binge with a man who’s sexual equal she’d never encountered. A man with a ferocious and infamous sexual reputation.

  A man who’d once had the ability to make her knees weak and her heart melt with just the softest of caresses and the sweetest of words.

 
She better damn well make the most of it.

  Because there was no fucking way, no matter how she played it—and she planned to play it very well—she was walking away from this unscathed.

  Chapter Three

  Jax spent most of lunch with Nick not hearing a word the guy said. Nick could have been telling him to call off the search for his replacement because he was coming out of retirement and planned to do a world tour for all Jax knew.

  If that were the case, the rest of the band would kill him. Jax, not Nick. As much as the search for a new lead singer had been fun, they all knew deep down that finding someone who had the same magic as Nick was a lost cause.

  At this point in time, however, Jax didn’t care. At this point in time, all he could think about was Natalie Thorton.

  Fuck a duck, she looked hot. She always had, what with those grey eyes of hers that twinkled with naughtiness, jet-black hair that hung down her back like a liquid curtain, lush hips, full breasts and turned-up nose sprinkled with freckles. But damn, the way she’d looked today…all professional and conservative and tightly wound with a hungry lust simmering below the surface no ponytail or tailored dress or sensible heels could hide.

  He remembered stripping her naked the last time they’d been together, really together, a week before she’d called it quits and he’d buggered off. They’d been on the roof of the Sydney Hilton, celebrating Nick’s second platinum album.

  He’d peeled her skin-tight blood-red hot pants down over her gorgeous legs and thrown them over the edge. Her bra had followed—a skimpy red lace thing he’d bought for her in New York as a peace offering for missing her birthday—along with its matching G-string.

  Someone down on George Street must have got a surprise, but neither he nor Nat had cared, too lost in each other’s bodies to think about anyone else.

  He’d made love to her under the stars, her curvaceous sex-kitten body lush and so, so receptive to everything he did to it. She hadn’t worn sensible heels that night. No, she’d been wearing blood-red gold-heeled stilettos that made her six inches taller. He’d left them on her feet, removing them only after he’d made her come three times with his hands and mouth. Then he’d tugged them off her, planted her feet on his shoulders and buried himself to the hilt in her tight, wet, slick pussy.

  Buried to the hilt on top of the Hilton. It couldn’t have been better.

  Of course, the whole thing had been captured by the Chanel Nine news helicopter and broadcasted to millions of viewers the next evening on the six-o’clock news.

  That hadn’t fazed Nat. They both got off on exhibitionism. What had pissed her off, made her walk out on the best thing ever, was the similar footage of Jax doing close to the same thing four months earlier with a blonde supermodel in Berlin.

  And a redhead actress a month before that in New York.

  And a blonde professional tennis player in Moscow two months before that.

  And a brunette opera singer two weeks before that in Sydney.

  The fact he and Nat hadn’t yet moved in together at the time, that neither had declared any notion of exclusivity, hadn’t appeased her. Sure, they’d looked at diamond rings a few times while shopping, laughing at the idea of being married to each other, maybe bonking in the chapel while their guests waited for them to sign the papers, but hey, he’d never said he was going to pop the question and she’d never said she wanted him to. They were just having a good time together. But when all that footage had come to light…she’d looked at him, folded her arms across her beautiful breasts and told him it was over.

  “I’ve been thinking for a while it’s time I focus on my educational degree,” she’d said, voice clipped. “And this is just the impetus I needed.”

  He’d shrugged, wandered into their bedroom—the one they’d only shared for one month, three weeks and two days—thrown his clothes into the duffle bag he used when touring and left straight away.

  Well, almost straight away. Nat was nowhere to be seen when he’d exited the bedroom. He’d suspected she’d gone outside to their tiny backyard—the one they’d fucked like rabbits in often during the short time since they’d rented the house. When Nat was stressed, she liked to take her shoes off and feel the grass under her feet, a quirk from her wild country-girl days.

  As he’d been walking to the front door, duffle bag over his shoulder, a heavy lump in his gut he hadn’t wanted to analyse in case it told him he’d been a complete and utter fuckwit, he’d spied her prized vinyl record collection near their retro sound system.

  He’d crossed to it, the lump in his gut morphing into a prickling full-body tension equally as confronting and accusatory, and picked up the first album from the stack next to the turntable.

  A rare copy, fully signed, of AC/DC’s Back in Black.

  How many times had they screwed to that album? How many times had he impaled her on his cock as the raw, unabashed rock music shook the very world around them?

  How many times had they lay in each other’s arms post-fucking, sweat-slicked and breathless, discussing the complexity of the music even as they waited for their bodies to recover so they could fuck again?

  To this day, he didn’t know why he’d taken the record. It wasn’t like he was sentimental or anything. Something had just come over him and he’d left, Back in Black in hand.

  He hadn’t seen Nat again. Not until this morning. Nor had he listened to AC/DC for that matter. Whenever the hard rock band—one of the biggest influences on his earlier music career—came on the radio, he turned it off. Whenever he was at the same award ceremony as AC/DC, Jax always found himself as far away as he could manage from the band. Samuel, Noah, Nick and Levi never questioned him about it. They’d all had their bizarre little oddities back in those wild days after all, when their phenomenal success kept growing more and more phenomenal and surreal.

  And now here he was, twenty-one years later, with an urge to listen to AC/DC again. An urge he found…intriguing.

  “Tell me what I just said?”

  Blinking, Jax forced himself to focus on the man sitting opposite him.

  Nick grinned at him. “Yeah, thought so. Figured when I saw you in Nat’s office I could kiss all chance of a rational, lucid conversation with you goodbye.”

  Jax grinned back. “Fuck you, Blackthorne.”

  The man who’d made women’s pants drenched the whole world over laughed. “I remember what you two were like back in the day. I also remember how both of you stubbornly refused to admit it was more than just fucking.”

  “It wasn’t more than just fucking,” Jax denied. “And neither will this be.”

  Nick raised his eyebrows. “What be?”

  A peculiar tension curled through Jax’s gut. His heart thumped a little faster. He hadn’t intended to mutter that last bit.

  “Campbell?” Nick prodded. “Care to elaborate?”

  Jax considered telling Nick what Nat had suggested and what he’d agreed to, but he held his tongue. He didn’t do secrets, and most days he didn’t have a filter to speak of, but he knew Nick well. The guy would tell him straight out he was deluding himself about the inconsequential nature of his and Nat’s sexual challenge. Would insist what they were about to embark on was something so much more than wild sex.

  Jax didn’t feel like hearing it. Not because he suspected it was the truth—it wasn’t—but because…because…well, just because.

  Besides, how would Nick feel knowing his replacement was going to be found via fucking? Wasn’t that kind of disrespectful?

  Instead of answering, Jax picked up their lunch bill where it sat on the table and scrawled his signature across the bottom. “My shout,” he said, smirking at Nick. “Reckon I owe you one after making me so fucking rich.”

  Nick smiled. “I’m not going to argue.”

  “So—” Jax waved over their waiter and handed him the bill, “—what’s the deal with Josh? Is he taking after his old man?”

  Nick snorted, a disgruntled scowl pulling
at his face. “Y’know, I missed the first fifteen years of his life, the formative years, so they say, so I can’t be blamed for the way he’s carrying on now. And he is twenty-one. Old enough to know what the fuck he’s doing…”

  Jax watched his friend’s scowl twist. “But you do blame yourself?”

  Nick let out a ragged sigh. “He was a grounded, normal teenager when I first met him. Now…maybe I fucked him up coming into his life. Maybe it’s taken this long for the reality of the situation—a famous father, a heritage, more money than God—maybe it’s taken this long to sink in?”

  Jax frowned. “You don’t think the loss of his pro-soccer career has anything to do with it? What’s he studying at the Con?”

  “Composition and music technology. And yeah, probably.” Nick sighed again. “He’s not angry at me or his mum, but he’s angry. He’s a gifted bloody musician, Jax. Leaves me for dead, but his first love has always been soccer. That didn’t change even when I turned up in his life. And now that’s been taken from him…” He raked his hands through his hair and shrugged. “Maybe he’s acting out. I think it’s shocked both Lauren and I because it’s come out of blue. We knew the end of his soccer career was going to be hard to move on from. Hell, he’d only just been approached by Manchester United to play for them in the UK the week before his injury, but we figured when he enrolled at the Con that he’d got himself sorted out. Now, every time the phone rings at home I’m wondering if it’s Natalie, calling to tell us he’s high in class again, or talking back to a lecturer or been busted screwing some girl or another in the rehearsal rooms.”

  Jax let out a sympathetic chuckle. “Hate to say this, mate, but it does sound like he’s taking after you, even if he isn’t on a stage or in a band. Do you remember some of the shit we got up to in our twenties? On tour?”

  Nick visibly shuddered. “Don’t remind me. There are whole periods of that part of my life that are just a foggy blur. Jesus, I still thank God every damn day for giving me Lauren back. I was rudderless without her.” He fixed Jax with a pointed look. “Much the same way you are without Nat in your life.”