by Tara Leigh
Piper cleared her throat, trying to push away from me. I didn’t let her, instead lifting the heavy curtain of hair obstructing access to her neck and dropping a kiss on the glimpse of bare skin just above the collar of my shirt, giving her neck a swipe with my tongue. She released a soft puff of air, the tension draining away from her frame as she relaxed in my arms. “Again?” she asked.
I nudged her ass, nipping at the spot I just licked. “Best way to start the day.”
“But I was going to make you breakfast,” she demurred.
For the first time I noticed the mess scattered on the granite countertop—eggs, bread, milk, fruit.
“Later,” I said, turning Piper in my arms and pushing my hands through her hair, tugging a little to get her at the perfect angle for my mouth. My body was craving a different kind of nourishment.
My eyes swept over Piper’s face as I leaned down to kiss her. The girl’s skin was flawless. Creamy with golden undertones. And scattered across the bridge of her ski-jump nose was just the tiniest smattering of freckles, so light you could only see them up close.
With my tongue, I traced the plush softness of Piper’s lower lip. Tasting the orange juice she must have had. Sweet and tart. Delicious. I growled, slanting my lips over hers, deepening our kiss. Wanting to devour her whole.
Piper slid grasping hands against my sides, flattening her palms against my back, pushing her body against mine. I unwrapped my fists from her hair, dragging them down her spine to squeeze her ass cheeks as I ground against her flat belly. Why didn’t I keep condoms in the kitchen?
“Oh.” Ana’s surprised gasp sent Piper and I flying apart from each other like guilty teenagers.
My housekeeper recovered faster than we did, beaming a wide grin from me to Piper and back again. To Ana’s credit, it barely even slipped when she caught sight of the mess cluttering the countertops she prided herself on keeping spotless. “Sit, sit.” She shooed us to the planked kitchen table overlooking the backyard. Piper’s shirt, the one she’d been wearing at Travis’s party, must have blown into the pool during the night because it was now drifting in the deep end like a fallen cloud.
Piper tossed an embarrassed glance my way, so I grabbed her hand and brought her to the table with me. My shirt went practically to her knees, but unlike me, she’d actually buttoned it. “Piper, this is Ana. Ana, Piper is an old friend of mine.”
I was met with a pair of equally dubious expressions. Ana probably wondering why she’d never seen or heard of her in the eighteen months she’d been working for me. And Piper, for too many reasons to think about right now.
Smothering her laugh with a cough, Ana turned back to the provisions laid out on the countertop. “So, frittatas?”
“Actually, I should probably—” The beginning of Piper’s softly spoken excuse turned my stomach in a way I couldn’t remember feeling. I didn’t want her to go, and it wasn’t because I was trying to figure out a way to get her back to my bedroom. I just wasn’t ready for her to leave yet.
“Sounds perfect,” I said, interrupting her.
Between the whir of the Vitamix, Piper and I managed to chat about inconsequential things. And by the time we were halfway done with Ana’s amazing kale and berry smoothies, she had placed steaming plates in front of us. Digging into the frittata and toast with butter and strawberry jam, I couldn’t tamp down the smile that had crept onto my face. This was nice.
Sitting in the kitchen of a house I loved but had never shared with any woman besides Ana. Sharing my home, my breakfast, my morning with Piper…it felt so goddamn nice.
A welcome change from dragging my hungover ass out of bed to force down whatever Ana wanted to feed me, not because I was hungry but because I knew I needed to eat if I wanted to start feeling like a human being again.
Was this how most people felt in the morning? Like they could conquer the day after some eggs and juice?
Or was it the warmth of Piper’s presence that was making me feel this way?
I put my fork down, realizing I shouldn’t be enjoying this so much. Sure Shane and Delaney were making it work, but they were the exception to the rule. Rockers weren’t rocks. We were tumbleweeds, blowing with the wind. Subject to the whims of the industry. Our manager, tour schedule, award season, recording timetable, release dates. I was blown by those forces. And when it all got to be too much, when I needed to escape into my own world, that was when drinking and drugging and fucking came in so handy.
Except that right now, my kitchen felt pretty damn self-contained. Like its own world.
And it was leading me to think…maybe I could make things work with Piper.
Hope surged—a tempting lure for the unwary and undeserving.
So goddamn tempting.
I should know better than to give in to it.
If I was being honest with myself, I’d admit the odds were slim to none. At best.
How could I take the risk of hurting her again?
The thing I did even better than drinking and drugging and fucking?
Destroying.
Piper
I noticed the second Landon went from being relaxed and easygoing, shoveling eggs in around his smile, to the brooding, intense stranger I saw on stage. The change in energy was obvious. One minute the air in the kitchen was light and buoyant, and the next it was sharp and acrid.
I swallowed the food in my mouth, taking a sip of coffee to get it past the tightness in my throat. Telling myself I was wrong, or at least oversensitive, I spared a sideways glance at Landon.
I wasn’t wrong. He was scowling at his plate like a cockroach had crawled inside his breakfast and died.
Setting down my fork, I wiped at my mouth with my napkin. “This has been lovely,” I mumbled, forcing an appreciative smile onto my face for Ana.
She beamed back at me, and I wondered if the women Landon brought home didn’t stay for breakfast.
What difference did that make?
Landon probably brought different women back to his bed every night. How could I have thought, even for one second, that I was enough for him?
I hadn’t been six years ago, and I certainly wasn’t now.
What Landon and I had done in my dorm room was great—he’d had the stamina and enthusiasm of a college quarterback. But last night…
Last night I discovered that the college kid had turned pro. The stamina and enthusiasm had still been there, in spades, but they were tempered—no, that was the wrong word. They were enhanced by skill and patience. There had been tenderness, too. And a reverence that had softened the intensity of it all.
It had been intense.
The press of Landon’s mouth on mine, the scrape and bite of his teeth on my skin, the flex and pull of his muscles beneath my hungry hands, the grind of his hips punctuating each deep stroke.
Gasps of pleasure. So. Much. Pleasure.
Maybe his change in mood was because I’d overstayed my welcome.
Was there protocol to follow? A way to do this right, whatever this was?
After my conversation with Delaney, I’d thought of last night as some kind of game. A way to even the score between Landon and I, maybe even tilt the board in my favor.
There were probably rules to the game. Rules I wasn’t aware of. Like checking my messy emotions at the door and leaving before first light.
The real problem, of course, was that this wasn’t a game for me. I thought it could be. Had fooled myself into thinking that a casual fling with my ex didn’t have to mean anything. But it did. He did.
And now I felt lost, and emotionally exhausted. Vulnerable in a way I didn’t like, as if the seam guarding my emotions had come undone, Landon ripping a stitch with every kiss and bite and thrust.
I didn’t know who I was supposed to be in this moment. And I didn’t belong with this new person Landon had become. Maybe I hadn’t belonged with the old Landon, either. Although I would always belong to him. New, old, it didn’t matter. A part of my soul would always
be his. Which was why I had to leave, before Landon used it against me.
“You hardly ate,” Ana said, glancing at my plate.
It might have looked that way, considering how much food she’d heaped on it. But I did eat, a lot. And every bite was now churning in the pit of my stomach, threatening revolt. “It was delicious,” I insisted, sliding off the bench and picking up my plate and coffee mug, making an attempt to grab the mason jar with the remains of my smoothie before deciding to come back for it. With my luck the lot would wind up in Landon’s lap.
Well, maybe I could lick—
Piper, focus.
Ana tsked as I set my plate on the counter, and I spun around to go back for the smoothie.
Landon looked up from his plate just as I was reaching out to grab the glass. The raw emotion in his eyes hit my chest like a flash of lightning. I don’t know whether it was a spasm from the current, or just a self-fulfilling prophecy, but I overshot the mark and swatted his glass instead of grasping it. Right. Into. Landon’s. Lap.
“Oh my god, I’m so, so sorry!” I screeched, clapping a hand—the offending one that had spilled my drink—over my mouth. Wishing I could just bite it off.
Thick purple sludge that had been delicious to drink, but actually looked like a slaughtered eggplant, was strewn all over Landon’s plate and bare chest, pooling between his thighs and dripping onto the floor.
Landon pushed back his chair and stood up, staring at the massacre as if he didn’t know how it had gotten there.
“Not to worry, not to worry,” Ana said, brushing by me with a damp cloth.
Landon started to walk away from the table, probably to change out of his smoothie-drenched pants.
“Mr. Landon, you’re dripping. You take those pants off right now.”
Landon stopped in his tracks, sin and sarcasm written across his face. “Now Ana, if I didn’t know better I would think you put Piper up to that to get me naked.”
With one hand on her hip, Ana didn’t look flustered in the slightest. “I raised three boys and still have a husband to care for. If you think I’m interested in any other man’s cojones, your ego is bigger than your brain.” As if realizing she’d overstepped some invisible boss-employee line, Ana finished with, “Mr. Landon.”
Landon didn’t look offended at all, pulling his pants off in one smooth movement and handing them to her. Ana kept her face averted, but I could have sworn I saw her glance at Landon’s ass as he sauntered away.
Damn that man had a fine ass.
I sighed. Not that I would be seeing it again.
Landon
Well, so much for thinking Ana would be flustered by the sight of me in my birthday suit. She didn’t even peek at my cojones. Although Piper did, with a flash of longing that made me want to grab her by the hair and bring her back to my bed like the caveman beating his fists inside my chest.
But I didn’t.
And not just because Ana would probably have slapped my hand away and out-cavemanned me. Having Piper around wasn’t supposed to feel so homey and natural. She wasn’t the kind of girl who belonged in my life. I deserved groupies who didn’t care which member of the band they fucked, as long as it gave them bragging rights. Piper deserved…
I yanked the lever in the shower, not bothering to adjust the cold spray, the better to calm my chaotic thoughts. I didn’t want to think about the kind of man Piper deserved. I didn’t want to think about her with another man, period.
Fuck.
By the time I got back downstairs, my hair still wet, I didn’t have to worry about it anymore. Piper was gone.
Ana looked at me with a raised eyebrow as I sauntered into the kitchen. “Your friend said she would send your shirt back to you.” There was a distinct air of disapproval in her voice.
I glanced out the window. Piper’s shirt was no longer floating in the pool, her shoes and jeans also gone. “Did she—”
“Leave? Yes.”
Guilt gripped me by the throat.
I’ve woken up in places I didn’t remember going, with women I didn’t remember meeting, much less fucking. I’ve woken up hungover and with bruises from bar fights I didn’t remember.
I’ve woken up feeling like shit on a stick more mornings than not, for an impressive variety of reasons.
But this morning had started off great until I realized Piper wasn’t in bed with me. Then I’d discovered her downstairs and felt great again. Better than great—happy. For once, I’d felt comfortable in my own skin.
Until I hadn’t.
And now I didn’t know how to feel. I had whiplash and the sun was barely up.
I wasn’t happy Piper had left. Her absence wasn’t a relief. It was an itch I wanted to scratch until it bled.
I walked to the foyer, standing beside the window where I’d seen the obnoxiously cheerful blue of Piper’s car looking so out of place among the elaborately elegant landscape of trees and plants and flowers meticulously tended by Ana’s husband. The gravel driveway had already been raked over, leaving no sign that she’d been here at all.
My chest tightened and I blinked away from the view, walking around the main floor like a guest in my own home.
Eventually, I ended up at the bar tucked into a corner of my oversized living room. A room that could easily have accommodated a party of a hundred people.
I poured myself my favorite drink: one-third bourbon, one-third whiskey, one-third scotch. It was my version of a Long Island iced tea, and existed for one reason and one reason only, to obliterate the thoughts cluttering my brain with a tsunami of alcohol.
I dropped onto a chair by a window, one of a dozen I could have chosen, and kicked my feet onto the nearby ottoman.
Staring at the sumptuously appointed space, I let my eyes jump from one piece of furniture to another, realizing that few had ever felt the imprint of a human ass.
There was no TV in the room, and I didn’t have my phone near me to activate the sound system. Over the hum of air-conditioning, the sounds of Ana moving about in the kitchen were muffled. My thoughts were loud though. Frenzied and angry.
I took swallow after swallow from my glass, but they didn’t calm down.
Once drained, I slammed my glass down on an end table that had been fashioned from birch and bronze, waiting to feel something.
Wanting to feel nothing.
Eventually, I made another drink and went in search of my cell phone. What I was really looking for was Piper’s number, which wasn’t in my phone. I could get it from Travis, or from anyone in his office. But then I remembered how he’d looked at the two of us together, before I’d feigned drunkenness.
More importantly, how he’d looked at Piper. Like he was disgusted at the possibility that she’d fallen for a guy like me.
If I wasn’t his client, he would have had me thrown out.
I could go to Piper’s place, although even I wasn’t stupid enough to get behind the wheel right now. My truck was still at Travis’s place, anyway. I had another car, a ridiculously expensive Italian number I hated. Jett had taken it for a joyride last week and hadn’t bothered returning it. He could keep it, for all I cared.
I scowled at the latest iPhone in my hands. Useless piece of shit. I tossed it on the ground, which was covered by a hand-knotted rug made in some former Eastern Bloc country I couldn’t pronounce. We’d played a show there once.
Everything in this house, and of course the house itself, had been bought with the beat of a drum.
My success had given me so much. Money, trophies, fame, endless options for how to enjoy all three.
But there were times, like this morning, when I could only see how much that success had cost me.
I made another drink and retrieved my phone, unscathed from its padded landing. Maybe it was time to invite people into my life. Relax, open up.
I took another burning sip, hissing as the liquor scorched its way down my throat.
Piper and I probably traveled in the same circles and I’
d never even known it. Maybe if I got out more, or threw a party every once in a while, our paths would cross again.
I glanced outside. Bright sun, nearly cloudless sky. Perfect day for a pool party.
Falling back into my chair, I pulled up my contacts and thumbed off a massive group text.
Maybe they could cross again this afternoon.
Chapter Eight
Piper
I drove home in a daze, my eyes on the road but my brain still trapped inside Landon’s kitchen. What exactly had caused the shift in his mood? It was so sudden, so certain. With no obvious reason. At least, not one that I could see.
I shivered from the air-conditioning, then turned it off. My skin felt raw. I would have loved to take a long, hot shower, then retreat to my bed with a mug of hot tea and a bowl of ice cream, alternating from one to the other until even my taste buds had been neutralized.
Unfortunately, I’d barely unbuckled my seatbelt when I spotted Adam crossing the parking lot toward me.
For god’s sake. I slammed my door in frustration. If I had to make the walk of shame, did it have to be in front of Adam?
And I was ashamed. The leaden emotion crept through my veins like a toxin, turning my limbs heavy and stiff. Landon belonged in my past. What had I been thinking bringing him back into my present?
And now I had to deal with Adam, too. Life just wasn’t fair.
At least, not mine.
I was still wearing Landon’s shirt, although I’d pulled my jeans on before getting into my car. But going commando in denim, after last night’s sexcapades, was its own kind of torture.
Adam’s gaze roved from my head to my toes, taking in my appearance. “Nice shirt,” he quipped.
I skirted around him and headed for my apartment, wanting to be left alone with my sore body and aching heart. “Adam,” I said, pushing at my front door as if it were a ten-ton bank vault instead of flimsy particleboard, “now isn’t a good time.”