by Ally Blake
Before he had the chance to say fine by me, she spun around and pushed him back on the bed. He landed with a bounce before she snuck a knee between his thighs, pressing up and up until it was hard against the growing bulge behind his fly.
Her other knee joined the first, pressing his thighs apart, and slowly, she began to undo her recent hard work. Unleashing the pin from her hair, sending the lush waves tumbling over her shoulders. Deft fingers undoing the tricky buttons of her top much more readily than they’d done them up. The sound of a zipper scraping the air as she rid herself of her skirt leaving her bare except for lacy underwear the exact color of the Californian waves. She tossed the shoe over her shoulder.
Sitting on the bed beside him like a sentinel. Sexy, sharp, take no prisoners. He’d never been so hard in his life.
“This is just about the sex,” she said, as she bent over him, hands landing next to his chest.
“Yes ma’am.”
Her teeth grabbed the edge of his shirt, sliding it up his chest to give her access to his belly where she lay a string of kisses in an ever-decreasing arc. Her tongue suddenly lathing his navel so that he sucked in air so as not to groan at the pleasure searing him right through the middle.
“I want nothing from you but your spectacular body.”
“And the occasional music lesson.”
“Whatever,” she said, watching him from between his legs, her long hair tickling his bare belly, her bra tipping forward to give him a glimpse of her beautiful dusky pink nipples.
And then her mouth was on him, tracing his ribs, his collarbone, her velvet soft skin sliding his shirt higher till the lace of her bra caught on his chest hairs, tugging at the roots till rockets exploded behind his eyes. And then her mouth was on his. Hungry, defiant, devouring.
Whether it was the fact that they’d set some boundaries, or that they’d shared accidental confidences in getting there, something had shifted. Adding a newfound urgency to every touch, every lick, every pleasure, taking sensation to a parallel universe.
Between hitting rock bottom and finding his eventual salvation in Reg’s ‘shed therapy’ he’d turned to the band’s old shrink for a few desparate weeks. She’d have probably called what he was experiencing intimacy. To Dash, it felt more like stepping out of a plane without a parachute.
Too late now, he thought, sliding his hand into her hair and tilting her head so that he could deepen the kiss, chase her tongue, capture every essence of her taste.
And when her spare hand undid the top button of his fly, then the next, then the next, then slid down over his heat, he didn’t much care what it might be called.
He wanted it. And he was going to take it.
…
It was late into the night, a few lessons and several marathon bedroom sessions later when Dash woke to find Lori running a finger over his bicep. At her touch, goose bumps rose about the single inked word: Enough.
He tilted his head to find her eyes on his.
“What does it mean?” she asked, her voice husky in the moonlight.
He lay back on the pillow, watching the shadows waving across his ceiling. “I was pretty wild for a while after I left the band, really in the wilderness. Then one day Reg called and asked when the hell I was going to get over myself and come home to help him clean out Pete’s place. I got that tattoo, I fixed everything in Sausalito, and then I moved in here.”
“Callie says Jake’s got dozens of the things. And when you get one it’s addictive.” Her eyes slunk down his torso, her hand following before she lifted the sheet at his hips.
Dash laughed, the rare sound feeling natural. “One’s enough for me.”
One guitar at a time. One tattoo. One woman… Any more and he lost direction.
“Mmm,” she said, her finger once more back to tracing the black script.
How long this would last with this one woman, he couldn’t say. Until the song was sung seemed fitting. Unless they had another blowout between now and then, which was as likely as not. Then again, the make-up sex was out of this world.
As if she was thinking the same, a small smile played about her lips, her breaths were sweet puffs against his skin, but her eyes were dark. Tinged with a lingering wariness that only really went away when he touched her, when he kissed her, then her sharp edges softened and she seemed to float on air.
“Never saw the point,” she said, shifting up onto her elbows so she could press a kiss to the tat and the thought fled. “The most important things I’ve learned are tattooed right here,” she said, tapping the side of her head.
“You have a point,” he said, his voice a rumble in the dark silence. “And yet, you never thought of getting a butterfly—” he slid his spare hand down her back to land on the full cheek of her derriere “—right here?” He punctuated it with a light smack.
Her kiss turned into a nip. When he hissed in a breath, her mouth opened wide and her teeth scraped the soft skin of his bicep, sending shards of heat down his arm and beyond.
“No?” he said, his voice a good octave deeper. “Or a star. It could go over the top of that little mole in your cleavage.”
She opened her mouth, no doubt to ask what was wrong with her mole, but he lifted, found it, sucked the skin around it into his mouth and shut her the hell up.
“Or how about a shoe,” he said, pulling away, going back for a last kiss. “Discreet, black, in the indent of your ankle. Sexy as hell with a killer heel.”
Something flashed through her eyes, something warm and achingly sweet, before she blinked it away. “You surprise me sometimes, Dashiel Mills.”
It was said with respect. And something akin to liking. Even while they’d reached an agreement—that this was merely about the sex—the liking was felt. Reciprocated. Then tucked away somewhere safe, where it couldn’t do either of them any damage.
“Happy to oblige, oh Lorelei of the rock,” he said, caressing her backside, kneading, before sliding a tad lower, finding a happy place, and making her mouth open and her eyes close and her whole body relax into his touch.
Watching her face as she came, slow and deep, pink heat pouring into her cheeks, her gorgeous mouth lax, her eyes coming over smoky and tender, he realized that despite her prickles and stubbornness, the fact that she never gave up on trying to get him to stick to a schedule made him like her more. Way more than sensible.
Then with a growl that knocked against the walls, he rolled her onto her back, and liked her all over again.
Chapter Eight
Lori sat staring out her office window. It boasted ‘glimpse views’ of the Golden Gate Bridge on the days when it wasn’t shrouded in fog and today was such a one. Honestly, San Francisco had to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
It probably helped that the last few weeks, everything had begun to feel easier. Simpler. Lovelier. And getting lucky by way of Dash Mills of the wood-chopping muscles and slow, easy smiles was a big part of that.
But so was the fact that the bad news where Calliope Shoes’ future was concerned seemed to be trickling in now, rather than gushing like a hole kicked in a water pipe. Things had begun to really turn after she’d sacked their old PR firm and hired a cool new mob on Lita’s recommendation.
They’d skewed away from the high romance of their usual campaigns and after convincing Lori to own Callie’s change of circumstance rather than shying away from it, they’d gone with something more rock and roll.
The new website banner had Calliope Shoes written in its usual romantic font but off kilter in hot pink, and the image was a black and white still of a bride in layers of tulle standing over her groom with a glittery high heel shoe pressed against his chest.
With that, some of the smaller and more fringe magazines had happily taken on their edgy new spreads and they’d finally regained some editorial traction.
It was a tricky business, nevertheless. The hard work far from complete. Finding that point of difference, that one thing that could spark t
he imagination of the right partner businesses, and especially the shoe-buying public, was key.
The song.
Dash’s beautiful song would do it. Or at least she assumed it was beautiful. He still hadn’t played it for her. Though she caught him humming it more and more as she stilted her way through her chords. And the discord of his deep husky voice and the slow sonorous notes was a wondrous thing.
Lori recognized Callie’s soft footsteps entering her office and she sat up with a cheery smile. “Good morning, my darling sister!”
Callie stopped in the doorway, and glanced over her shoulder as if she’d missed something. When Callie looked back Lori realized her sister was deathly pale. “Callie?”
“We’ve set a date.”
“What?” Lori gripped the edge of her desk, tight.
“I just got off the phone with Jake and we’ve set the date for Labor Day weekend. Can you believe it?”
“Next Labor Day?” Lori asked, without much hope.
“This one, of course.”
“Did you tell him we’ve got Fashion Week to get through right after that?”
Callie lifted her chin, getting that glint in her eye she always got when Lori said anything less than complimentary about Jake, which admittedly was pretty much everything. “Any later and it would clash with the band’s next tour. So it’s either then or months from now. Jake figured if we just got it over with, and fast, it could only do us good.”
Well, that shut Lori up quick. Was Callie saying she knew the business was in trouble? And that Jake had factored that into his plans? If so, it ought to have warmed Lori’s corporate soul. Instead, alarm bells went haywire. Get the wedding over with? In order to shore up Callie’s business concerns?
“He wants to give me the wedding of my dreams,” Callie went on, her voice getting faster, her cheeks a splotchy pink, and Lori’s concerns heightened tenfold. “As a surprise he’s already organized it all. He’s hired a beautiful estate backing up to the lake, and is inviting everyone we know, and has booked out every hotel, motel, and campsite within twenty miles of town as he wants us to have a couple of weeks of celebrations leading up to the big day—”
Then Lori’s head really started to buzz. Estate? Lake? Town? Everyone they knew…? “Where, Callie? Which lake?”
Callie’s stubborn blustering faltered and she swallowed hard. “Lake Echo.”
And from one second to the next, Lori felt like the bottom had just fallen out of her life.
“Fairbanks?” Lori said, a miracle that her voice worked. “Let me get this straight. In factoring in your business concerns Jake has gone ahead and organized for your wedding to take place in—”Lori calculated madly—“a little under six weeks in Fairbanks?”
“My fiancé,” Callie shot back, “as a surprise to me, in order to try to save me—not the business—from the stress of being chased down by photographers every second of every day, has organized for us to be married on the edge of a stunning lake in the beautiful small town in which I grew up so that the mother I never get to see can be there with me. God, Lori, can’t you smile and pretend to be happy for me for a single second?”
Lori swallowed hard at the smack down. Because despite her valid concerns, everything Callie had said was true. And then the rest of Callie’s words filtered through.
“Mom,” Lori said, sinking her head into her hands. “Does she—?”
Callie’s nod was short. “He called Mom a few days ago. Asking for her permission to marry me. Which I think is adorable. And she gave him the idea to bring her girls home.”
A big white wedding between Small-Town-Good-Girl and Bad-Boy-Rocker under the stunning big sky of Montana. The press would go nuts. And yet Lori seriously thought she might be ill. Because it’s in Fairbanks? A little voice asked in the back of her head. Or because this means it’s really happening?
“He’ll need help,” Callie said, her fingers twisting, the heated pink in her cheeks dissipating as she became overly pale yet again. “But he has this picture in my head of me not having to go through the stress, just turning up and having fun. So the help will have to come from you.”
“Me?”
“Yes, only sister of mine. For one, you will be my maid of honor. And second, Jake is so used to having his people do everything for him he couldn’t organize his way out of a paper bag! So,” she said, holding her hands out flat as if it might help her breathe. “All I want is for Mom to give me away. And for you to hold my hand and get me through every other part of this without passing out. If you can make that happen then I might just be so happy I could burst.”
Callie didn’t look happy. She looked terrified. Maybe this was a cry for help. Maybe this was Lori’s chance to fix everything once and for all.
“Don’t you worry about a single thing,” Lori said, standing to pull Callie into a hug. “I’ll take care of everything.”
Callie had been so small when their father had left; Lori had felt it more, harder. She’d been the apple of his eye, the one to miss him like her heart had been ripped from her chest. And yet Callie had still been in such shock at their change of circumstance she didn’t speak for nearly six months, not until she’d started to draw.
No. Callie and Jake would not marry in Fairbanks, if they even married at all.
…
Before Lori even had the chance to knock on Dash’s door, it whipped open and she found herself dragged into a kiss. Smoldering, deep, the man groaning against her mouth. Like he’d never get enough.
“This time,” he said when he pulled away, “I’m really glad you weren’t Reg.”
Me, too, she thought, glancing over her shoulder to find Mack watching her with a grin. She shut the door behind her when Dash seemed to forget. Or not care. Probably both.
As he walked her backward into the house, her head grew fuzzy with lust. Her knees weak as the bones in her legs dissolved. Her breath choppy as they stumbled into his kitchen and her backside bumped against the cold kitchen countertop.
But the prime thought that had been glaring in the back of her head all day, remained; like a warning beacon smack bang in the middle of her vision.
She snuck out from under his arms and positioned herself on the other side of the island, gripping the countertop for balance. Once she caught her breath she blurted, “You’ve heard, I suppose.”
“What’s that?” he said, his heavy gaze on her mouth even as he stretched his arms above his head with a groan and revealing a patch of hard belly between the bottom of his shirt and top of his jeans, then spun to allow her gaze a moment to admire a curve of beautiful male backside to boot.
Lori shook herself clear of the fresh burst of lust blooming inside of her. “Jake’s latest grand idea.”
“You’re going to have to be more specific,” he said, now stretching his arms across his body, one at a time, muscles bunching, long fingers curling. Fingers she now knew had more skills than playing the guitar.
“They’ve set the date.”
“Who? And what for?”
“The wedding. A month and a half from now. In Montana.”
Dash finally perked up, distracting stretching thankfully abandoned. “Why Montana?”
“Because that’s where Callie and I are from.”
“Right,” he said, nodding like it made perfect sense. It didn’t. It was a terrible idea.
“It’s not right. It’s awful.” She tried to settle her thoughts. “It’s a lovely idea, just not right for her. That town didn’t leave us with the best memories. So could you—” She paused, swallowed. “Could you talk to Jake?”
“I’ve been known to.”
When she didn’t crack a smile, he came around the counter to hold her by the waist. “You look so serious.”
“It’s…complicated.”
He smiled as he said, “I’ve found things are only complicated if you let them be.”
Lori’s skin contracted under his touch, itching under her dress. And she pressed his ha
nds away. “Oh, you’ve found that have you? You, who have nothing more complex to decide in your day but whether or not to wake up or keep sleeping? I’m freaking out here, Dash. While you stand there telling me to stop creating complications? You, who gave up your career by choice? You walked away.”
“Lori,” he said, his voice deepening, an edge to it now, “you’re clearly upset, but I’m confused as to what one thing has to do with the other.”
“I’m hanging onto my business by my fingernails, okay? Sales have plummeted, new orders have dried up. This time last year we were the number one seller of wedding footwear in the United States, now we are poison.” Lori didn’t realize she was shouting until her whole body felt rigid from it, until her fists began to shake, her fingernails digging into her palms.
“I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t. Do you think I go about announcing the fact? I’m working my backside off to stop the slide, starting to make progress, but when Jake keeps making these kinds of decisions without consulting—”She stopped, bit her lip.
“Consulting who? You?”
She shook her head. “He doesn’t seem to care that these random decisions of his are affecting people. Like with the whining to you about the whole Lita thing.”
“Hang on, now, that wasn’t Jake.”
“Right, sure. Then who?”
Dash drew his lips into a thin line, which made the answer pretty clear.
“He’s affecting Callie, too. She’s so distracted she can’t draw. And the press are still so taken by the whole America’s sweetheart dumped angle they’ve painted Callie as some kind of home wrecker. Callie! The sweetest kid on the planet. If he’d left Callie well enough alone we’d be happy, and together, and fine.”
Her words faded to the last as her energy seeped from her. The fears she’d kept bottled up inside had leaked over Dash’s kitchen. Legs shaking, she propped herself on a kitchen stool, and dropped her head into her hands.
Breathless, gripped by panic. The kind of panic she hadn’t felt in years. Not since she’d been trapped in the basketball court, the mean girls having cornered her to accuse her father of breaking up one of their parents’ marriages, another nail in the Hanover girls’ social coffin.