Steady Beat

by Lexxie Couper

  Noah whistled. “Impressive. So what happened?”

  Pepper let out a slow sigh. “My dad died. He suffered his heart attack while I was prepping them for their first appearance on Leno. I asked them to give me a few days to sort myself out. When I called them again, Ewan Burgess had already made his move, convincing them I was nothing without the contacts Dad gave me. They sent me a text cutting our ties during Dad’s funeral.”

  “Bloody hell.”

  Pepper shrugged off Noah’s shocked anger. “It’s okay. They got their just deserts. Have you seen them on any charts or performing at any festivals since?” She sighed again. “Still, it was fun while it lasted.”

  Noah frowned. “You take it so well.”

  “I’m used to failing. My mom told me that’s all I was ever good at.”

  “Jesus. Has she ever heard you sing?”

  “Yeah. But she’s also seen me freeze on more than one school-talent-contest stage. She left Dad and me for her cosmetic surgeon years ago, and I haven’t heard from her since.”

  Noah’s stare roamed her face. “You’re too hard on yourself, you know?”

  Pepper raised her eyebrows.

  He nodded. “You’re obviously very talented and your music-industry knowledge is very impressive, and yet you consider yourself incapable of doing anything. Of achieving anything. Give me a month and I’ll have you believing how incredible you really are.”

  She laughed, even as a blush crept over her cheeks. “I…I think you’re exaggerating. I know I can sing, but incredible?” She shook her head and lowered her gaze to her knees. “That’s not me.”

  “Bullshit. Remember what you told me you’d do for Synergy. That was pure genius.”

  She frowned. “Synergy?”

  Noah grinned. “The band. Can’t call ourselves Blackthorne without Nick, although I guess we could have called ourselves Blackthorne sans Blackthorne.”

  Pepper chuckled. “An interesting name to be sure.”

  He smirked. “It is. I’ll mention it to the guys.”

  “I think I like Synergy more.”

  “I think I like you more. And more and more and more.”

  Pepper ducked her head, her laughter spilling from her. “You’re mad, Noah Holden.”

  His gentle pressure on her chin made her turn to him. “You’re right,” he murmured. “I’m completely, irrevocably mad about you.”

  And, with his fingers holding her hand tight, he leant forward and captured her lips with his.

  Chapter Eight

  They fell into his hotel room. Try as hard as he might, Noah couldn’t stop kissing her. He made love to her mouth in the lift. He worshipped her body with his hands as they walked the entire length of the hallway to his room. He pinned her to his suite’s closed door and branded her throat with a love bite, not caring other guests walked by as he did so.

  There wasn’t a hope in bloody hell he could control himself any longer. Pepper Kerrigan hadn’t just captivated him, she’d completely enslaved him.

  He’d fallen for her, was still falling for her, and nothing was going to stop him showing her how much he wanted her. Needed her.

  Craved to have her.

  By the time he shoved the keycard to his suite into the lock and yanked it out, by the time he pushed the door open, he could no more stop kissing her than he could stop breathing.

  He drove her backward into the opulent hotel room, their feet stumbling over each other, the scent of roses a potent perfume in the air. He wrapped one arm around her waist, holding her to his body even as he desperately tried to release his fly with his other hand.

  His cock, on permanent alert since the Loft, throbbed with straining agony. If Pepper touched it he’d come. He had no doubt. As it was, he didn’t think he’d last even long enough to cover the engorged thing with a rubber.

  The reality that he couldn’t undo his fly with enough speed while still holding and kissing Pepper scratched at the fringes of his mind. He groaned, swiping his tongue over hers one last time before breaking the kiss and letting her go.

  She stumbled back a step, her breasts heaving as she watched him.

  Without a word, he yanked his fly open and shoved his jeans down over his hips. Still shoeless, nothing interfered with the complete removal of the snug denim, and a second later he stood before her as naked as the day he was born.

  She drew in a shaky breath, her stare roaming over his body.

  A hot spasm claimed his cock as she openly studied it. The suite’s cool air flowed over his flushed skin, cool and teasing and driving him crazy. Not because it made him cold, or affected the size of his organ, but because it wasn’t Pepper’s skin on his.

  And at this point in time, Noah wanted nothing but Pepper’s skin touching his.

  He stood still, waiting for her gaze to return to his face.

  It did, her dilated pupils telling him just how aroused she was.

  When she reached for the hem of her shirt, he shook his head. “I want to undress you.”

  Her answering nod was short. Her breaths were shallow. Quick.

  He stepped toward her and slid his hands over her hips. The smooth material of her hot pants was cool under his palms, and he shivered, impatient for the warmth of her skin.

  She lifted her eyes to his, and then let out a soft sound when he lowered the zip of her fly. Holding her stare, he hooked his thumbs between her hips and the waistband of her hot pants and slowly, slowly inched them downward.

  Gravity claimed them halfway down her thighs. They fell to the floor, revealing her to the room. The subtle scent of her arousal slipped into Noah’s breath and he swallowed, so close to the edge already that any stimulation of his senses threatened to undo him.

  Lowering himself to one knee, he brushed a hand over the back of Pepper’s leg, from her thigh to her calf. With gentle force, he lifted her booted foot, pushed aside her hot pants and returned her foot to the floor. Repeating the action with her other leg, he smiled up at her, trailing his fingers up the length of her inner thighs to the exquisite heat of her pussy.

  He twisted his wrist, just enough to allow his fingertips to stroke over her seam. They came away damp, her pleasure already seeping from her.

  She hitched in a quick breath and another when he raised his fingers to his lips and licked her juices from them.

  “Oh, Noah.” His name fell from her in a groan.

  He brushed her pussy again, with a little more pressure this time, lingering longer on the hooded button of her clit.

  Her eyes fluttered closed and her hips pushed forward.

  He rolled a finger over the small nub of flesh, two slow circles that made her moan, and then raised his hand to his mouth once more.

  She watched him suck her moisture from his index finger, her tongue swiping over her lips.

  Once again, he returned his hand to her sex. Traced the velvet heat of her folds with two fingers. This time he pressed harder, hard enough to penetrate her wetness to his first knuckle. She gasped, swaying on her feet even as she parted her thighs more.

  He ground his teeth, determined not to rush. Pushing his fingers deeper into her pussy, he wrapped his other hand around the distended length of his cock and pumped once.

  Concentrated pleasure rushed through him, hot and scalding and ready.

  Releasing his cock, he withdrew his fingers from Pepper’s sex and replaced them with his tongue.

  She shuddered, her hands burying in his hair. “Oh Noah…”

  The raw urgency in her voice flooded his aching cock with fresh need. Swiping his tongue over her swollen clit, he smoothed his hands around her hips and squeezed her arse cheeks. Yanked her sex harder to his mouth.

  Fucked her pussy with his tongue.

  She cried out, her nails scraping at his scalp.

  With a growl, he tore his mouth away and shoved two fingers back into her tight heat. She bucked forward, her head thrown back, her moans rising to the ceiling.

  He thrust i
n and out of her, a wild rhythm of speed and penetration she matched with whimpers and pleas for more.

  He’d never heard music like it. It was sublime and perfect. When she cried out once more, begging him to wait, to wait, he knew she was on the cusp of orgasm.

  Before she could tumble into the pleasure of her release, he returned his tongue to her sex, flicking its tip over her clit as he scissored his fingers inside her constricting walls.

  “Fuck!” she cried, her hips punching forward.

  He lapped at her cream as it flowed from her. She tasted like heaven, and he would willingly die to feast on her pleasure every day. Every night.

  “Noah,” she breathed, her knees trembling.

  He pulled his head from the junction of her thighs and grinned up at her. “That was just the intro,” he said, his cock an aching rod of impatient steel. “Ready for the first verse?”

  He straightened to his feet before she could respond, grabbing her arse as he stood and hauling her off the floor.

  She squealed, clinging to his shoulders as she wrapped her legs around his waist. The slick heat of her release on his stomach sent shards of male lust into his core and he growled, pulling her closer to him as he took the three steps to the nearest chaise.

  His knees bumped the chair and, without a word, he dropped her onto it.

  She tumbled from his arms with a laugh, a laugh he captured with a savage kiss. He plunged into her mouth, wanting her to taste her own juices on his lips and tongue. She moaned, fisting her hands in his hair.

  But it wasn’t enough. Kissing her, pinning her to the chaise with his body. He wanted more.

  Jerking away from the kiss, he shoved his hands under the cotton of her shirt and bunched it up her body, exposing her glorious breasts to his greedy stare.

  Her nipples were puckered into hard points. He palmed her breasts, dragging his thumb over each tip. She arched, a low groan rumbling in her chest at his less-than-gentle touch. “That feels so good.”

  Her praise scalded his control. He lowered his head to her breast and took one nipple in his mouth, suckling on it with ferocious hunger. His cock nudged his belly, depositing drops of pre-come on his hot skin. The contact only highlighted how close he was to detonation. He doubted he’d last more than one stroke inside her. Which meant he wanted to make her come again before he entered her. He needed to give her more pleasure than she’d ever known before he claimed her completely and utterly.

  Moving his mouth to her other breast, he worshipped its nipple, sucking with increasing pressure.

  Pepper whimpered, scratching her nails on his shoulders, his arms, his neck, her pleas for more building. Growing louder. More desperate.

  He feasted on her breasts, never torturing one for too long, cherishing her silken flesh under his tongue even as his cock throbbed with demanding want. When she gasped she was going to come again, her voice incredulous, her pleasure thick, he drew harder on the nipple in his mouth. When she begged him to be inside her, he pinched her other nipple with thumb and forefinger. When she drove her own fingers into her sex and cried his name, he knew she’d climaxed once more.

  Only then did he relinquish his mouth’s possession of her breasts. Dragging his lips down her belly, he shoved her legs wider apart and thrust his tongue inside her sodden channel once again.

  “Fuck, Noah!” She thrashed on the chaise, her thighs trembled on either side of his head. “I c-can’t. No more. Too good…too…”

  He rose from between her legs and took possession of her mouth with his, feeding her pleasure back to her with his tongue and lips.

  She clawed at his shoulders and kissed him back, her lust wild.

  A lifetime later—an agonizingly exquisite heartbeat later—he forced himself to abandon her lips. If he didn’t he’d come on the edge of the chaise. All it would take was one more brush of anything on his cock and he’d shoot his load.

  Staggering backward, he sought out his discarded jeans on the floor and withdrew his wallet from its back pocket.

  “Wow.” Pepper’s ragged exclamation stroked his explosive need.

  He turned to face her. “Ready for the second verse?”

  She raised her head, her chuckle weak, her face soft and flushed with pleasure. “Are you kidding?”

  He held the condom packet he’d just pulled from his wallet up for her to see. “I’ve been told I’m pretty good at pounding out a beat.”

  If someone had told Pepper three weeks ago the world’s most lauded rock drummer was going to bring her to orgasm not once but three times in the space of five minutes on a rose-petal covered chaise in a penthouse suite on the Upper West Side, she would have told them to stop shooting up whatever shit they were on.

  But he did. Before Noah snared her calves and yanked her to the very edge of the chaise, before he buried himself deep inside her sex, he made her come three more times with his tongue and fingers. She didn’t think she had any strength left in her. She didn’t think it was possible to orgasm again. Every orgasm he built inside her was more powerful than the last. She didn’t believe it possible.

  She didn’t want it to ever end. He knew exactly how to tap into the rhythm of her body’s pleasure and he played it to perfection.

  It was only when he sat back on his haunches and, his gaze fixed on her face, covered his erection with the thin sheath of latex, did Pepper accept he was truly a maestro of her every carnal need. At the sight of his engorged shaft jutting upward—its venous girth stretching the integrity of the pre-lubricated condom—she knew she was ready to come for him again.

  For him. With him.

  They shared no words as he positioned himself between her spread thighs. Their stares locked. Breaths synchronized.

  He cupped the backs of her calves and, nostrils flaring, jerked her to the end of the chaise. Her ass cheeks hung over the edge. Her feet—still encased in the knee-high boots she wore for work—planted flat to the floor. He fanned his fingers over her sodden folds, watching her face.

  She drew a slow breath and nodded. “Fuck me, Noah.”

  His Adam’s apple slid up and down his muscular throat once and then, without delay, he aligned the bulbous head of his cock to her channel and drove into her.

  The single thrust pierced her to her very core. She cried out, his size stretching the lips of her sex, burning heat giving away to pleasure so intense stars filled her vision.

  The second the saturated sensations of her body told her he was buried to the hilt inside her, he withdrew. Fast. Confident. And slammed back into her again.

  With every pounding thrust, he sank deeper. With every penetration, he destroyed any hope she’d ever be satisfied by another again.

  He mauled and squeezed her ass, pulling her into each fevered stroke, impaling her over and over again on his length.

  Liquid heat sparked through her. Molten electricity flooded her veins. She grabbed at the cushion beneath her, drowning in his utter ownership of her body, her pleasure, and then let out a keening breath as he shifted positions.

  He slid up between her legs and covered her body with his, crushing her breasts under his hard chest. He smoothed his hand up the back of her leg, raising it until her bent knee hooked over the crook of his elbow. The shift in position granted him even deeper access to her sex, and she shouted her rapture, eyes closed, neck bowed.

  His tempo became slower, longer. He trailed his lips over every inch of her throat, her shoulders, her breasts. He thrust into her, his hips an exquisite rolling action she ached to ride forever.

  When his lips found her ear, when his elbow pulled her knee higher, Pepper couldn’t fight the pressure mounting inside her. Nor deny it.

  “Noah,” she breathed, the centre of her existence flooded with elemental pleasure. “I’m going to…please, come with me. I want…want you to come…”

  He nipped at her earlobe, drove his body deeper into hers. “With you, babe. Always with you.”

  She opened her eyes and looked up a
t him. Found him gazing at her, his blue eyes ablaze with a desire she felt in her soul.

  “Always,” she echoed his promise.

  And then he pulled her knee higher, captured her lips with his and slammed into her. Harder. Faster.

  Faster.

  Pepper’s orgasm shattered her sanity. She came, torn apart and reformed in every contraction around Noah’s thrusting shaft. She screamed his name. Heard him moan hers. He dug his nails into the flesh of her hip. His balls slapped her butt cheeks.

  He stretched her, filled her, the powerful ejaculation of his seed a searing line of tormenting pressure up the length of his cock. She could feel it leave his body, her inner muscles gripping him with absolute possession. She wanted it to flood her sex and cursed the condom separating their release.

  His rhythm increased, grew erratic. Crazy. With a deafening roar, he froze above her, buried deeper than ever in her constricting, pulsing sex. Froze, as if dangling on the cusp of oblivion.

  Pepper hung there with him, her flesh holding him, her heart beating with his.

  And then he slumped on top of her, nuzzling his lips on the side of her throat, slipping his arm away from her leg, releasing it.

  “Fuck me, babe,” he murmured, skimming his hand up and over her hip, across her breast to come to rest on her jaw. “Fuck me.”

  She chuckled, more than sated. Alive. “Didn’t I just do that?”

  Noah laughed, his body a vibrating weight before he rolled to the side. “You did.”

  His cock slipped from her sex. Pepper moaned at its desertion of her body even as she reveled in the slick friction of its length against her folds.

  Warm lips caressed the curve of her shoulder a second before Noah pushed himself from the chaise. “Don’t move.”

  Dancing her fingers through the loose petals scattered around her on the piece of furniture, she watched him walk through a side door into what she assumed was the suite’s bathroom.

  Rose petals, multiple orgasms and a rock-star drummer sexier than sin. If this was a dream, she would kill the person who woke her.

  Pulling herself into an upright position, she looked down at herself.