by Ally Blake
“While you think on that,” he said, a thumb sliding down the side of her neck, “I’m going to kiss you. And this time you’re not going to run away.”
“I didn’t run,” she said, her voice a husky whisper. “I had plans.”
“What you had was second thoughts. Got them still?”
Second. And third. And many many more. Thoughts of hard muscle, and hot skin, and kisses that turned her inside out. Thoughts of naked bodies and soft sheets. Of sweet, slow-building orgasms, and ones that tore her apart, and the certainty that this man had it in him to take her there.
She didn’t tell him any of that. She merely shook her head.
Which was all the go ahead Dash needed.
His head dipped, paused, and then—after a string of whispered oaths that touched on wicked temptation and lessons unlearned—he kissed her.
Lori’s eyes drifted closed on a melting whirl of sensation. Smooth cheeks, warm lips, the slide of his hot tongue simply undoing her.
His long fingers, musician’s fingers, slid artfully around her neck and up into her hair, making a mess of the twist, a beautiful liquefying mess. Till he had her hair falling over her shoulders, fulfilling his promise to bring it tumbling down.
And he was right, it felt so good. A cool slippery sensation vying with the heat of his mouth on hers, the warmth of his touch sliding over her shoulder, down her arm, to land on her waist. And there it stayed as they kissed, and kissed, and kissed. Till her brain was empty, her bones molten, her entire world two meters square.
She pressed away from the wall to lift onto her toes and thread her fingers through the back of his thick hair. His contented moan creating skitters down her spine. Then his arms wrapped about her waist, hauled her to him, all that hard muscle all hers, as he kissed her till she saw stars.
Eons later, the kisses slowed. Till they sipped on each other, gently, tenderly. Lori knew she had to stop before she died from the soul deep pleasure pulsing through her. Liquid heat and shivers deep within her very bones.
Arms around his neck, she dropped her head, resting her forehead against his. And there they breathed, the ins and outs the only sound in the long, empty hall.
“Is it because I find you so exasperating?” she asked, her voice a whisper that went no further than their little bubble.
“What?”
“That this felt so good.”
“This feels good?” he asked, pressing a kiss to the edge of her jaw.
“Yes,” she sighed, her head rocking back so her hair snagged on the wallpaper.
“How about this?” he asked, her skin jumping at his touch on her waist before she sank into it.
“Mmm hmm,” she managed.
His touch moved lower, his palm circling her hipbone before his fingers moved down her thigh, found the edge of her dress, slipped beneath.
“This?” he asked, his voice barely above a rumble as his thumb stroked her inner thigh.
But she had no words. No sounds. Nothing but feelings rippling through every part of her till her very cells felt stoned.
And then he kissed her again, gently, wetly. Sweet kisses and body heat. Overwhelming, he was, like a deluge of sensation. Making her feel delicate. Exquisitely fragile.
Like for once something good in her life wasn’t up to her.
When things started to tip over into X-rated, Dash pulled away with a growl, moving a good meter away to lean his back against the wall. He ran a hand through his hair, finishing the mussing she’d begun.
Lori stared up at the ceiling, the discreet strip lighting burning shapes onto her retina, and said, “God, I needed that.”
When Dash said nothing, she found herself filling the silence.
“Work’s been…a lot, of late, what with also having to keep on top of the whole Callie and Jake shemozzle. Harder still that Callie’s not around so much anymore to…” talk, work, keep me company “…help. Leaving not much time for…” She waved a hand between them.
She waited for him to laugh, to say you’re welcome. But after long enough she wondered if he’d even heard her, Dash’s voice came to her as a rumble through the wall. “So I hear. I met your assistant.”
She laughed. “Tracey’s fantastic, but she only has to inhale wine and she’s toasty. Apparently she had a crush on you back in the day.”
A muscle flickered in his cheek, then, “Apparently she knows about the song.”
Lori’s belly trembled, like a forewarning. She pressed the spot with both hands. “She knows Callie is planning a big surprise for Jake and that you’re helping out but she’s never seen the song, or heard a single note.”
Dash didn’t move and the flutter in Lori’s belly doubled.
“She’s my assistant. She’s in charge of my calendar, which is as fluid as it is tightly run. She has to know where I am at any given moment, including when I’m with you.”
“Aware as you are of my wish to keep the song on the down low, it didn’t occur to you to make something up? Such as having a hot new lover on the ropes?”
“One I see once an hour three times a week?” she asked, incredulous. “Tracey’s family. Or as near as we have here. Her adoration for Callie is second only to my own. She won’t tell a soul.”
Dash cradled the back of his neck. When he shifted his head her way his eyes were dark, his rippling energy held tight beneath the surface. “I’m not big on complications, Lori.”
Lori pushed away from the wall so fast she nearly got whiplash. “What on earth gave you the idea that I am?”
“Having to deal with your sister getting married—”
“Excuse me? You think I’m struggling with the idea of Jake marrying my little sister because I’m jealous? I mean, it’s not as if Jake’s been engaged before—oh, right, he has. Or that Callie’s romantically naïve—which she is. It’s that I’m pining about the fact it’s not happening to me? Screw you.” She stormed down the hall, her legs not even close to fully functional, little black dots of anger floating through her vision.
But before she reached her door, she found herself turning back. She’d never been good at letting someone else have the last word. It was the things left unsaid to those who wronged her that haunted her still.
“You want to know why I kissed you?” she asked when she was close enough to jab the guy in the chest.
A wild gleam leapt into his dark eyes, even while he slid his hands into the pockets of his pants, like he had not a care in the world.
“Because. I. Couldn’t. Not,” she threw back at him. Then with a growl she grabbed him by the chin, laid a hard, fast kiss on his beautiful mouth, said, “Deal with that.”
And then she headed back inside her beautiful, luxurious, Dash-free haven.
Chapter Six
Dash opened his front door expecting Reg. Even while his body surged at the thought it might yet be Lori. After the way they’d left things after her party the other night he had no idea if she’d show up on his doorstep again.
Instead he found The Rift’s long-time drummer darkening his door.
Rocky’s memory was long, and for him forgiveness was a four-letter word. It’d been no surprise when he’d avoided Dash at Lori’s party—which, considering the drummer was as big as a house, was saying something.
“Rocky,” said Dash, careful not to cross his arms in case the big guy was spooked, “mate, come on in.”
“Can’t,” Rocky rumbled, glancing briefly at Bowie who was playing sentinel at Dash’s feet. Jagger was off chasing shadows in the forest. “I only hit the sticks because you wouldn’t answer your damn phone.”
It was beginning to be a theme. If he ever wished to open his front door with any certainty of who’d be on the other side, Dash was going to have to invest in a new phone.
“Then what can I do you for, mate?”
“I have a favor to ask.”
You owe me, hovered on the air between them. But Rocky was too much of a gent to come right out and say it. Jake fixe
d things with a fist. Laz simply got over it. Rocky usually poured it into song. Apparently not this time.
“Ask away,” Dash asked, holding his breath at the thought that he was about to be dragged deeper into the world he’d left behind.
“It’s about Callie’s sister.”
So it had nothing to do with the music, and yet Dash’s fists balled at the thought that Rocky might be keen on Lori. Even while the man’s nickname was not ironic. “What about her?”
“I saw you guys at the party the other night, figured you were friendly.”
That was one way of putting it, Dash thought, unclenching a tad before remembering her telling him off in one breath and kissing him with the next.
Rocky said, “Hoping it means you have some kind of influence over her.”
Dash laughed before he even felt it coming. “Over Lori? The woman’s a freight train, man. Most stubborn creature I’ve ever met, and that’s including our friend Jake the bull.” Rocky’s brow lifted at that one. Dash even imagined the beginning of a smile. “What’s the problem?”
Whatever smile there might have been gave up the ghosts as Rocky crossed arms that were huge and roped with veins from years of drumming. “Jake tells me she’s invited a reporter to do a puff piece on Callie and Jake.”
“Okay.”
“Not a bad idea as the whole thing’s been a bit of a shit storm from the beginning. It’s the reporter—Rosalita Matthews—apparently they’re real good friends. I don’t think it’d be smart for the band to get mixed up with her.”
Dash opened his mouth to remind Rocky he wasn’t with the band and stopped himself in time. Rocky had taken the break the hardest. But the fact that the big guy had found him, considered him, warned him—for Rocky that was akin to a bear hug.
“Don’t have to convince me, mate,” Dash said, voice rough. “I’d be glad not to have to deal with another reporter again till the end of time. I’ll do what I can.”
“Appreciate it.” Rocky nodded. Frowned. Said, “She’s trouble.”
Before Dash had the chance to see if he meant Lori or the reporter, the big man was off, lumbering over the flat rocks leading to a huge Harley Davidson that would give Reg’s bike a run for its money.
He sat astride the beast, and shot Dash a crooked smile, a knowing smile. “Freight train, eh?”
Dash ran a hand up the back of his over long hair. “Nice to see ya, Rocky.”
Rocky waved, shoved his helmet on his head, kicked out the kick stand, gunned the engine with enough gusto to send a flock of birds spiraling into the sky and was gone.
…
The harder Lori stared at the music, the harder it was to see the notes, but it had nothing to do with the twilight that had descended fast over Dash’s secluded house.
After a couple of days spent cursing the man’s very name, she’d swallowed her pride and shown up. It had taken him less than a second to push open his door and let her in. Nearly an hour in, with a fire crackling behind an ancient grate bigger than she was, and lamps lighting the sprawling living room till it glowed a warm, pale gold, Lori felt like she knew less than she had before she’d arrived.
Which was crazy-making. She could picture the finger positions for the chords she had to learn. Had even made a couple of them sound not terrible the night before. Because instead of wasting sleepless hours watching Escape to the Country, she’d had YouTube guitar lessons running over and over on her tablet, and Barbarella in her lap—cramming.
It helped that she now had the sheet music in her phone after taking a quick snapshot of it during one lesson when Dash had taken off to separate his dogs. Honestly, how he thought she was meant to practice without it was idiotic. The man was too wary by half.
All she could put her current suckiness down to was the fact that her bedroom didn’t smell like man and wood and forest, unlike the man sitting next to her, his squishy couch sending her leaning his way. His deep voice crooning the quixotic collection of sounds she was meant to be making, sending goose bumps down her arms. Calmly talking her through the notes, like he hadn’t had his hands and mouth all over her the last time they’d been alone.
And yet, as frustrating as it was, what with work like butting her head against a brick wall and home being empty without Callie around anymore, being there, with him, felt better than anything else she’d done that day.
Exhausted—from the constant effort at keeping her business afloat and the relentless scratchiness of sexual tension he’d unearthed in her, as well as feeling more and more like her mother’s daughter every day in taking whatever scraps of attention she could get—her last nerve disintegrated. “I’m never going to get this.”
“Sure you are. Don’t slouch,” said Dash, his hand hovering so near Lori’s lower back she felt a pulse in her spine. “Breathe. Rest the dip of the guitar more squarely on your thigh, it’ll be a natural fit.”
“There is nothing natural about this.”
“Here,” he said, shifting closer so that he could edge Barbarella into the right position. The backs of his knuckles scraped her thigh and while prickles of perspiration sprung up all over her body, her lungs grew so tight her vision began to blur.
She tried to think of Callie instead. Which only made her think about Jake. So she thought about Tracey, and Mack, and the dozens of others who relied on her. She couldn’t let them down. Couldn’t let herself become distracted by muscles, and pasta sauce, and deep brown bedroom eyes.
“Enough,” she said, moving away and lifting her hair off the back of her hot neck. “I can’t think with you barking instructions in my ear.”
Okay, so he hadn’t been barking. More like…encouraging, soothing, illuminating, in a voice that felt like a caress.
Dash leaned against the back of the couch, slowly, and simply waited, as if he had all the time in the world. But when her eyes snagged his there was nothing casual about him. She could feel his coiled energy, like an axe hovering at the top of its arc, primed to split something in half.
Jake’s friend, she reminded herself as her heart began to thump against her ribs making a hash of her concentration. Part of the broader picture of why she was in this mess in the first place. As distractions went, he would be the least smart choice on the planet.
“You okay?” he asked, an edge to his voice.
“What do you think?” she asked, sarcasm—the last bastion—lighting her words.
“Would you like to take a break?”
She’d pay good money for a little distance from the guy right about then, but with having lost another retail account that afternoon, money would very soon be getting scarce.
She’d been there nearly fifty minutes already, with little achieved bar frustration of every imaginable kind. But it was a Friday evening and she had nothing lined up after, which is why she’d driven herself and given Mack the afternoon off, so she knew she should push through.
She blinked down at the music, and swallowed. “Do you mind giving me a few minutes to nut it out on my own?”
If he noticed her exaggerated politeness, he didn’t call her on it. He simply did exactly the opposite of what she’d asked—leaning toward her, arm on the back of the couch, scent enveloping her till she couldn’t think straight. And said, “No.”
“No?” she said, her bark of laughter tinged with hysteria. “Is that your favorite word where I’m concerned?”
A beat, then, “No. There’ll be an audience on the night, Lori, so best you get used to having eyes on you while you play. It could be a pretty big one now that Callie’s picked The Tremont as the venue.”
He was right. The idea of The Tremont was perfect. Elegant, luxurious, with a semi-private staged area for parties exactly like the one Callie planned to throw. The reality was terrifying.
“You’re coming, right?” she asked, wishing instantly that she could take the words back.
“I’ll be there,” said Dash in his deep, soothing voice. “I’m putting money on Jake crying.”<
br />
Lori coughed out a laugh. Right. He’d be there for Jake.
He shifted closer, till his thigh touched hers. “And you are my star student.”
“Your only student.” Lori spared him a glance to find the energy not so coiled anymore. It hummed from him like a halo of light as a muscle twitched in his freshly-stubbled jaw. Her voice cracked as she said, “They say a student is only as good as her teacher, so I think it’s safe to say that you suck.”
A good reason for her to just go. Practice more at home. It would save her so much time… His eyes found hers; deep, lovely, serious, rippling with heat. Her next breath in was useless.
“ ‘No’ is a word I find easy to throw around,” he said, “which is why I wouldn’t have agreed to write the song if I didn’t think you had it in you to kill it.”
She swallowed, churned up by the vulnerability shimmering through her, even while every little bit she gave into it felt like pure relief. “I assumed you were doing it for Jake.”
“Did you?” He lifted his hand and slid it into her hair, frowning as his thumb followed the curve of her cheek.
And Lori realized that everything she thought she knew about the man was built on assumptions. She’d disliked him based on nothing but conjecture before they’d even met. But now she knew what a dangerous game that had been.
It was the quiet depths and occasional edges that she found so compelling. His unpredictability and intensity. Those brief glimpses into the obscured recesses of his soul lit the urge to keep coming back for more.
But no good could be found heading down the dark alleyways of a man’s mind without a torch, a map and an invitation. She knew. Her mother had tried. And failed spectacularly.
“I should go,” Lori said, tipping her head so that his hand fell away.
He breathed out hard. And yet he nodded, willing to let her go.
With a sigh that was half bone-deep disappointment, half relief, Lori divested herself of the guitar and packed up, feeling Dash’s intense gaze on her every move. She wasn’t sure she could do this anymore, even for Callie.
On numb feet, she walked around the coffee table, the fire heating her right side as she passed. But she came to a stop when she found Dash standing in front of her, blocking her way. His T-shirt had snuck up at his waist, his hair was shaggy from raked fingers, his eyes were so dark she couldn’t see the centers.