We had settled into a comfortable routine. I would shower first while he whipped up something for breakfast. Then he would drive me to work and pick me up when my shift was over. We would return to the house just the two of us. He would cook dinner while I sat at the bar and kept him company. We would eat on the deck. Then I would clean the kitchen like I had done tonight while he went downstairs and played his guitar. Not a life altering agenda and yet it seemed that way to me.
Ramon’s beautiful melody drifted out to me, rising about the sound of the surf, curling around my body and luring me back. As I padded across the drive on my bare feet, my eyes snagged on the two surfboards, his and mine. They leaned against each other beside our wetsuits hanging on pegs on the wall.
They looked right together, the way I had felt with Ramon this past week, except when something reminded me of Vanessa’s phone call. Then my contentment would fade, and I would worry that maybe we were only passing time and not building toward the more permanent togetherness that I desired and that I believed we both deserved.
Pausing briefly to gather myself, I opened the door and stepped back inside. My eyes found and melded to his. A feeling more warm and meaningful than seeing our surf gear together rolled over me. His gaze seemed to say that he wanted me. That I was the only woman on his mind. That he wanted me to stay forever.
He sang, his fingers strumming his guitar. The familiar tune he had been crafting the night he had carried me up the stairs burrowed deep inside and settled me.
“Ramon,” I swallowed, trying to work up the courage to start the conversation I knew we needed to have, but chickening out at the last moment. “Would you teach me how to play the guitar?”
“Sure.” His eyes brightened. “I never knew you were interested in learning.”
“I am. I’m interested in everything that’s important to you. If you have the time?”
“For you I have all the time in the world, surfer girl. Come sit with me.” He dropped down on the plush carpet, leaned back against the leather couch, held the guitar to the side and spread his knees wide. I moved between them. His arms draped around me, he settled the acoustic guitar in my lap. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. The warmth of his skin seeped through my clothing. I had been looking for an excuse to spend more time with him. Learning to play would take lots and lots of it. But like so many things with him I got more than I bargained for. As his fingers covered mine and we stroked the first chord together, I knew the words for how I felt about him. My feelings hadn’t changed over the years. They never would. But could I risk sharing them?
• • •
Ramon
“Thanks for coming over,” I told Ash, taking a long pull on my lager before leaning back over the rail. I had spent a lot of time on the deck and downstairs in the music room over the past week. Karen was still around, but she had been a wistful apparition since that day with her dad. We had only made love once, and I had initiated it, waking her in the night unable to resist her allure a single moment longer. I had tasted her, caressed her, and brought her to climax once with my mouth, and then a second time with my cock. But the next morning she seemed more distant than ever.
“Wish I could have made it over sooner.” He gave me a long serious look. “You have an albums’ worth of prime material. Real solid. I wondered if you’d at least consider letting Linc and me put the Outside label on it. We don’t have the reach Black Cat does, but…”
“I’m not interested in their offer.” Vanessa had been driving me nuts with texts all week. I’d had to block her number. “Honestly, I had hoped you would want to represent me all along.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll tell you the truth. Anything I offer you upfront as an advance is going to be an insult. We’re just starting out. But that one song, ‘Left Behind’, that has definite top one hundred potential. All it needs is a solid bass line.”
“I hope you’re right.” The message in the lyrics seemed to resonate with Karen. I hoped it might encourage others who had sacrificed so much like she and her mom. “I already sent the file to Diesel. Karen’s heard me messing around with it,” I explained in response to his questioning look. “She had some ideas about a countermelody.”
“She has a good ear.”
I nodded. She had that, and about a million other good things about her that I stood to lose. But I saw the inevitability. She didn’t want to hurt my feelings, but it was only a matter of when not if she left. She had said as much when she had been half asleep and I had carried her up the stairs. She wasn’t falling in love with me again the way I had hoped she would. I had tried every way possible to convince her we were good for each other. But it seemed the harder I tried, the more she pulled away.
“She was meant to be a rock chick. It smothered her being a soldier’s wife.”
I gave him a sharp look in response to his astute observation.
“You two have been holed up at your place for a while now. You get down on one knee like Linc yet?”
“It’s not like that.” I shook my head, staring out at the waves. I had to let her go. It was killing her to stay. She wasn’t even surfing anymore.
“How’s it different? You love her, don’t you?”
“Absolutely.”
“She’s crazy about you.”
“At one time, maybe. Not anymore.”
“She tell you that?”
“No. But I can feel it. She’s here in my house, but every day she’s more like a ghost. I’m just trying to man up and let her go.”
“Are you nuts?”
I turned to focus on him. He wore an incredulous look.
“I’m nuts about her,” I allowed. “But sometimes that’s not enough.”
“Yeah, I get that truth totally.” He cocked his head to the side, studying me for a long moment. “I don’t have a lot of experience giving out advice in situations like these, so take it for what it’s probably worth, which isn’t a lot, except that it’s offered with good intentions, and out of love for both you and Karen.”
I waited patiently, his brow creased. I could tell he was framing his thoughts. “I loved someone once the way you are describing with Karen. I never spoke about my feelings. I buried them. In the end when I finally admitted them, they weren’t reciprocated the way I had always wanted.” I knew he was talking about Linc, though it was never discussed. You couldn’t be on the road in a tour bus and with each other twenty-four seven as long as we’d been together as a group and not know all of each other’s secrets. “But I don’t regret being honest about my feelings. It’s allowed us to grow closer without that unspoken truth hanging in the air between us.” His eyes narrowed. “Have you told her how you feel?”
I shook my head. “I don’t want her to feel an obligation to return those feelings. You know how she is.”
“No, I don’t know. Not really. But I think you do. I think you know her better than anyone. Better than Simone. Maybe even better than Dominic did.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
* * *
Karen
Where was he?
He should have been here by now. My stomach twisted into knots. I had almost gnawed my bottom lip ragged waiting for him to pick me up at the shop. Simone had long since gone.
Was he already with someone else?
Several someones else?
He had only made love to me one time this week.
Was he already bored with me?
I couldn’t accept that when it was hardly the case with me. Being with him. In his house. In his arms. It was so close to everything I wanted. Everything I believed we both needed. I withdrew the key from my pocket, facing the sobering choice that I should have been brave enough to confront days ago—either to slink back to my parent’s place and live without him or stand and fight for him. For us. After all, wasn’t what we had already built together after years of friendship a treasure worth preserving? Wasn’t the potential of what more we could be to each other worth the risk?
&nbs
p; “Karen.” The shop bell jingled along with my name.
My eyes lit up at the sight of his handsome face.
“Sorry I’m late. Ash came over.”
“Oh. Did he love your songs?”
He nodded and drew me toward him, stroking my cheek with his thumb. I pressed more deeply into his caress. He seemed surprised. He stepped closer, his heat and his scent engulfing me. He slid his hand beneath my braid, and from just that simple touch, my legs began to quiver. “I’m going in to sign the contract with him and the Outside label tomorrow.”
“That’s wonderful. We should celebrate tonight.” My eyes glittered with tears. His gaze narrowed. I avoided his eyes. He would read in them too much, and I wasn’t ready yet. I needed the perfect setting to say the words.
“Where would you like to go?” he asked as I senselessly dug around in my backpack for the key that I already had in my hand. “We could drive to Coronado. Eat at the Del?”
I met his eyes after I set the alarm. I motioned him outside. I turned the key and pocketed it. “Would you mind if we just picked up something and ate it at your place, out on the deck like a picnic maybe?”
I had an idea how I wanted this to be and a crowded restaurant wouldn’t work.
“Sure,” he agreed. “Whatever you’d like.”
I called in the order for sandwiches, pasta salad and chocolate covered strawberries from Lavon’s. I could feel his intense scrutiny as I finished the call. I figured he knew he was getting lucky given the dessert choice, but I actually felt like the fortunate one.
He dropped me off at the house. I told him I wanted a shower, but really I just wanted a chance to get everything ready, including myself.
When he returned I was waiting for him. I’d fashioned an impromptu A-frame for privacy using the deck furniture and a sheet, a spread-out blanket and pillows over the concrete and shielded candles in glasses from the kitchen. It was a little windy. I didn’t want to set the linens on fire. And then there was me. All of me. I let all that I felt for him shine in my eyes. I would speak the words, but first I was going to show him.
• • •
Ramon
My throat grew tight. The way she looked at me…I hoped it wasn’t just my own wishful thinking reflected back at me. I had been working all day on the words.
“Take off your shirt,” she ordered as I stood there just outside the pocket doors staring at her with the takeout sack in one hand and a bottle of sparkling cider in the other.
“Alright.” I got myself in gear, kicked off my flip flops, set down the sack and the bottle on the blanket. She crawled forward between the flickering candles on her hands and knees to retrieve them, and I almost asked her if I could go ahead and take off my shorts. Seeing her in that red bikini was making more than just my throat tight. To hell with dinner, I’d have her instead. She looked up at me through her lashes. I tore off my shirt and lunged for her. She scampered backward smiling. My heart flipped like a freakin’ schoolgirl. I hadn’t seen her smile like that all week. I caught her, pulled her to me, moved my hands from her upper arms to her curves, gliding them over her breasts, to her waist and down to her hips. There I rested them, my thumbs brushing back and forth over her soft, warm as the sun skin before I lowered my head and captured her smile with my mouth. She tasted fantastic the way she always did. My already hard cock leapt in anticipation. Placing her hands on my chest, she pushed me backward breaking the kiss.
“Food first.” She laughed. “Then dessert.”
“I told you what that bikini does to me. I’m practically dying over here.” I arched a brow and gave her a coaxing half smile. “Can’t I talk you into working up an appetite first?”
“You could. You could convince me to do just about anything, Ramon Martinez. I think you know very well the power you have over me.”
My grin widened. More like the power she had over me, but if that’s what she thought then I would go with it. I reached for her again, my hands gliding to the tempting strings at the center of her back. I pulled one loop loose. I heard her draw in a sharp breath that felt like she’d stroked my cock.
“Wait,” she said, holding the top I’d half unfastened to her breasts, in the same way she had when I’d sent her away at the OB Hotel all those years ago.
Not tonight. Not ever again, I hoped.
She licked her lips. I think she could tell a lot of what I was thinking from the hungry way I looked at her.
“Why wait?” I lowered my voice. “Let me undo that top string. I’ll reward you. I promise. I…”
“You mentioned something before.” She hit me with smoldering glance through her lashes. “You offered to let me watch you…masturbate.”
Holy fucking shit.
“Alright.” My throat already desert dry, the quench for my thirst sat right there as bold as brass asking me to jack off in front of her. “I’ll whip my cock out, if you’ll show me your tits.”
“You first,” she practically purred.
I changed my position, untied the strings of my board shorts and kicked them away, never taking my eyes off my inspiration. I took my rod in my hand, began to stroke it, then dipped my gaze from her pretty eyes to her tits. “Your turn.”
She scooted closer to me, her eyes on my cock. My body responded. My pulse thundered. My gaze heated. She reached behind her neck, pulled the top bow loose and crawled over to me, straddling my calves and resting her bikini clad bottom on them.
“I need to be close. I don’t want to miss anything,” she explained.
“I wouldn’t want you to, either. Touch yourself, baby. If I’m stroking, I want you to do the same.” I circled my thumb around my cock. She circled hers around her nipples. They pebbled beautifully, the rosy nipples hardening temptingly before my rapt attention.
“How wet are you?” I asked her as she wiggled on my legs.
“Soaked,” she said. “How about you? Are you as turned on as I am?”
“Baby, all you have to do is look at me to get me hard. But this.” I cupped my balls, lifting my chin, watching her cup her breasts and arch them into her own hands, “this is something I’ll never forget.”
“Me, neither,” she said breathily, brushing her thumbs back and forth over her nipples without me even asking.
“I’ll take this all the way to the end, mi cielo. Finish all by myself if it pleases you, but I’d much prefer to come inside you.”
She closed her eyes and nodded her head. I had her flipped on her back before she could reopen them. I tore the string on one side of her hips loose and then the other, completely unveiling her. I spread her thighs apart and brought my cock within an inch of where I wanted to be.
“Look at me. I want you to look at me while I make love to you. I want you to see the way I feel about you.”
She nodded and I slid inside her tight wet sheath. Her hips lifted to deepen the first stroke and the ones that followed. Her eyes remained fastened on mine until the very end when I emptied myself, all that I was and all that I would ever be, all that meant anything to me was when I was inside her.
“I love you,” she cried, coming apart with me. “I love you so much.”
Chapter Fifty-Six
* * *
Karen
“You’ve got to know I feel the same way,” Ramon implored, his eyes filled with the warmth I wanted to immerse myself in for a lifetime. I desperately wanted to believe him. To hold on to his words and never let go.
“Ramon, are you sure…” I trailed off hearing my phone. My mom’s ringtone. My heart started to race. After my dad’s last episode, I worried all the time how quickly things might change with him. “I have to answer that.” I gave Ramon a desperate glance. “Did you see where I left my phone when you came in?”
“Yeah.” He went to the kitchen, scooped it off one of the bar stools and handed it to me. I called her back, my hands trembling.
“Mom,” I said as soon as she picked up. “Is everything ok?”
“I
t is now. They put the fire out before it did too much damage.” I swayed, and Ramon steadied me.
“Dad. Is he alright?”
“Yes, physically, but…I need your help.”
“I’m on my way. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
Ramon pressed a kiss to my cheek and snagged his keys from the counter, waving them at me to let me know he would drive. We both hastily got dressed and then hand on the small of my back, he led me to the car. He opened the door for me and closed it once I clicked my belt. He jogged to the driver’s side, hopped in, snapped his own belt, fired up the engine and backed out of the driveway.
“It’ll be ok,” he told me at the stop sign before we turned onto my street. I bobbed my head, hoping he was right. The fire trucks were still there when we arrived. I gasped as I surveyed the charred section of the house where the kitchen stood.
“Mom!” I called, slamming my door and running across the yard. She turned, and my dad turned with her. He gave me a blank look that stopped me in my tracks before shifting his attention back to the fireman.
“My daughter. Please, Sir. Did you get my daughter out?”
The fireman looked frustrated.
“You don’t have to explain again.” My mom touched the man’s arm. “Is there anything else you need from me?” she asked him. From the timbre of her voice I could tell she was near collapse. I got my feet moving again and took her hand, threading her fingers together with mine, offering my silent support. She gave me a tremulous smile. Ramon moved beside me, close should I need him. And I did because when I reached for my dad, he drew away from me.
“Dad, it’s me. Karen. I’m right here.”
He studied me for a long moment, but I could tell he still didn’t recognize me. “My Sunshine. She has pigtails,” my dad mumbled looking straight at me. Pain sliced through me.
“Don’t take it personally, sweetie. It’s the evening. He gets more confused at night.”
(Complete Rock Stars, Surf and Second Chances #1-5) Page 55