by Wynne Roman
No, that isn’t right. I already understand, and I know it goddamn well. I need to admit it.
I’m in love with Paige. Think I always have been, from those high school days when we first got together, but I was young and dumb. I got caught up in the demands of my own selfish ego, where sex and coming and showing my old man who’s better got the upper hand.
What bullshit. Sex and orgasms were never as good with anyone else as they are with Paige. Twosomes, threesomes, public, private, drunk, or sober. Nothing compares.
And the sperm donor? The more I think about it, more I like Knox’s label. That fucker doesn’t know shit about me. Why waste my time trying to impress him? Be anything like him at all?
We’ve wasted years, Paige and I. I have no room to complain about that. It’s all my fault.
And yet, I learned so fucking much on my own. I appreciate her so much more than I ever did before.
I have to be sure she knows that.
I almost laugh when Paige’s seduction playlist changes, and the new song switches to Oh Girl by the Chi-Lites. Seems like encouragement from heaven, if I thought that way.
Paige is still on her knees, her cheek resting almost lovingly on my thigh, and her hand stroking my mostly limp cock. It’s kind of a submissive pose, and I like it. A lot. I’m not a Dom or anything, but the image speaks to some deeply held masculine place inside me.
I stroke one hand over her hair. “Sweetness?”
She slowly raises her head and looks at me with a satisfied gaze that surprises me. She didn’t come; I didn’t even touch her that way. She asked to pleasure me, and I couldn’t say no.
She liked it that much? Jesus.
“I love you, baby,” I say softly, leaning forward enough to gather her in my arms and drag her up onto my lap. “I think I always have.”
“Noah!”
Her eyes grow wide, and she doesn’t blink. She only stares, like she can’t do anything else. Her beautiful gaze searches mine, like she’s trying to understand the words. Or maybe believe them.
“I was young and dumb and so goddamn selfish before,” I explain. “I lost you—just let you go because my dick was more important than what really mattered. I’ll always regret that.”
She reaches up, pushes loose hair back from my eyes, cups my cheek for a few seconds, and then finally rests her hand over my shoulder. Her ass, even in her clothes, pushes pertly against my cock.
It won’t be long before I’m hard again.
“Do you mean that, Noah?”
“I do!” I close my eyes for a second, hating that she could wonder about it. That I made her feel that way.
“I . . . I do love you, Noah.”
She ducks her head against my chest, and I feel a small touch of her lips over my pec. I also hear the but that she doesn’t say. My heart drops to my stomach.
“But?” I ask for her.
“Being with you again? It’s like a dream come true. A dream I’d forgotten. A dream that scared me because it was so good. Because I wanted it so bad.”
“That sounds like a good thing.”
“It should be. It could be. But . . .”
Here it comes, I think, and hold myself steady. Regulate my breathing as best I can.
“I can’t share you, Noah.” She raises her head to look me dead in the face. No pretense, no flirting, nothing but heart-stopping honesty. “That time with Marlie almost killed me. I told you, I hated every single second of it. After that, even when we were apart, knowing that you were all over the country with tons of other girls, it was almost as bad. I had to push it away. Bury it.”
She pauses, takes a breath so deep it’s a wonder she doesn’t explode. “I can only be with a man—with you—if I’m truly yours and you’re truly mine.”
“Baby—”
“Maybe other women can do it, but I’m not one of them. I never have been, and I never will be. It just—” she takes a breath “—hurts my heart.”
“Baby,” I say again and pull her close. I wrap my arms around her shoulders, cradle her tightly against my chest, and kiss her forehead. “I don’t want those other women. Not in any way. I want you. Only you.”
I take her lips in a long, leisurely kiss. Thank God she responds, and then Barry’s back with I Can’t Get Enough of Your Love Baby.
Jesus, that’s so fucking true.
“I’m yours,” I promise, “and I want you to be mine.”
She snuggles against me for a few seconds, kissing my chest and tightening her arms around me, but then she drops her head back to look at me again.
“Are you sure, Noah? How can you be? You’ve had multiple women—a lot of them—for years now. Do you really think you can just stop doing that?”
“Absolutely.” No doubt in my mind. “If I have you.”
Her disbelief comes out as a soft snort. “But how can you be sure?” she asks again. “How will I ever be enough for you?”
“You’re so much more than enough.”
“But you’ve been with beautiful, stunning women. Women who are much more accomplished than me. Models, actresses, singers, besides the groupies. They’re all more experienced, probably much better lovers than I am, too.”
“You’re the perfect lover for me.”
“But I don’t fit into your world. I’m just a girl with an MBA, probably no job, no apartment, no—”
“You have me.”
She looks at me, and I don’t miss the disbelief. “Do I really?”
“Absolutely,” I say again. “If you want me.”
“That isn’t the question.” She shakes her head slowly, and I love how her hair shifts over her shoulders like a chocolate waterfall. “You know I want you. Every part of you. My fear is whether you want me. And, if you do, for how long?”
“Paige. Sweetness.” Fuck. How do I reassure her when I’m the one who ruined her to begin with? My selfishness did things it never should have.
“It’s a reasonable question,” she insists, and I can’t argue with her. “What happens if you get bored with having only one woman? With . . . just me?”
“It won’t happen.” How can I convince her? “I’ve changed. The need has changed.”
She studies me. I pray she can see the honest sincerity in my expression. How do I explain how certain I am?
“How can you be sure?” she asks for maybe the third time. “And for how long? In fact, how long has it been since you’ve been with two women?”
Fuck. I hate that question. I’m going to be honest, even it kills me.
“A couple of months. I haven’t been with anybody but you since we got off tour.”
Her eyes pop wide in surprise. “I . . . you . . .” She pauses and then asks the question she really wants to. “Why not?”
I adjust her in my arms, cradling her close again. Should this seem weird? I mean, I’m sitting here naked, while she’s dressed in the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. More than that, we’re having maybe the most serious conversation of our lives.
But . . . maybe it’s right. Maybe that’s the way it should be. Laying myself bare is what I need to do.
For both of us.
I trace my fingers down over her arm. It’s almost like I’m petting her, and it soothes me. Hope it does the same for her.
“I need you to understand, baby. Shit happened to us—to the band—this summer. You know about most of it, probably knew it from the tabloids.”
“The rumors?”
“Yeah.” I nod once. “Bree having sex with all of us. Knox’s old man coming around. London getting pregnant and losing the baby. Zayne’s OD and going into rehab. It was a lot of shit, and it affected us all.”
“I’m sorry.” She rubs a soft hand over my chest.
Goddamn, that feels good!
“It isn’t your fault, baby. If anything, I’m the one who made it worse. I added my own crap to it.” I take a breath, hating this part. “Some chick claimed I gave her an STD. I didn’t—I was clean and proved i
t—but it killed me that somebody would say it. Then Elyssa showed up with her pregnancy story, and I mean . . . Jesus!”
“That’s a lot.” She adds a kiss or two to her caresses.
“It made me think, though. Made me take a look at us. The band. Me. My lifestyle.”
I take a deep breath and think for a few seconds before deciding how I want to proceed. “I was riding a wild edge before Wycked Obsession hit. Nineteen, twenty, having fun, surrounded by my bandmates and all the pussy we could want. It was such a fucking high, and I loved it.”
I stroke her hair, remembering. “We started getting popular in local clubs. Doing some touring on our own, taking whatever gig we could get, wherever it was. Put together an EP, posted some stuff on YouTube. We got noticed.”
“I wish I’d been a part of that.” She sounds kind of wistful.
I laugh. “No you don’t, sweetness. In a lot of ways, it was awful. Even Bree doesn’t know what it was like, and she was around for it.
“Anyway, we ended up with a record deal from all that. The label turned our EP into our first album, and went on tour opening for anybody who needed a band. It was a wild six months of all the sex and booze and drugs we could want on a scale way past what we were used to. We lived it up every single second.”
“But you made it.”
“In a sense,” I agree heavily. “When we got back to Austin, we dried out. Ajia pushed us to go drug free—he has a buddy who got fucked up—and we pretty much did. But we kept up the rest of the lifestyle while we put together Wicked Is As Wycked Does. Started out the same way on the Edge of Return tour, but Bree was with us. That changed things. Then all the other shit happened, and every time another bomb dropped, it all got clearer and clearer.”
“What did?”
“We can’t keep it up. Zayne almost fucking died! He OD’d twice, did you know that? Caught him both times, but what about the next time? What about the next rumor because we’re in the public eye? Who’d be the next one to extort money because we’re rich and famous now?” I almost snarl the words. “And what other shit could come down the pike if I keep fucking women like they mean nothing?”
“So it’s self-protection?”
“Yes. And no.”
I readjust my arms around her, wanting her closer suddenly. Wanting to be inside of her so bad. Maybe Marvin can help with his Sexual Healing.
“Yeah,” I agree. “I do want to protect myself and the band from who knows what crap. Seeing how it can go, what others can do out of—I don’t know . . . desperation or obsession or whatever—made me way less trusting. Like it kind of cured me of doing some of the shit I’d been doing.”
“Like threesomes?”
I hear the need in her question, but it requires more than a yes-or-no answer. “By the time all the unbelievable shit came down with Drake and Marlie, I was so done. You and I reconnected, and you helped me see the shitty impact my old man had on what I’m doing. I mean, so the fuck what if he liked to do two women at once?”
She swallows. “But you like it, too.”
“Yeah.” I won’t deny it. “I did like it. It was exciting. It was . . . daring. Bad. It was throwing morality in my father’s face—except he wasn’t there to see it. Wouldn’t have cared if he had been. So what’s the fucking point?”
“And that’s it? Just like that?”
Her tone tells me she still isn’t convinced. All I can do is play my only remaining card.
“No.” If my sigh is weary, it’s no less than I deserve. “One more thing. The video with Drake, Marlie, and that other guy.”
“Marsh.”
“What?”
“The other guy in the video. It’s Drake’s friend Marsh.”
Interesting. So maybe that wasn’t a one-time thing. But I really don’t give a shit about Drake, his buddy Marsh, or Marlie.
“Whatever.” I flick my free hand through the air like I’m dismissing them—and maybe I am. “The point is, I saw that and thought about the threesome we had with Marlie. Didn’t take much to get me thinking about a threesome with you and another guy. I mean, if I wanted that shit, why couldn’t you?”
She pulls back enough so that I can’t look anywhere but at her.
“And?”
“And I fucking hated it.”
Her lips curve up, and then she laughs. It’s weak, but it’s still a laugh.
“It was like Thor’s hammer hit me over the fucking head,” I add, hoping to make her smile real. “If I hated just the thought of a threesome with you and another man, of seeing another man touch you or kiss you or whatever. Even if it wasn’t fucking, it was . . . hell, unbearable. So how could it be any different for you?”
“It isn’t. It never was.”
“And that’s it. All I needed to hear. See. Think.”
“And that’s enough?”
I kiss her, mostly because I need to feel her mouth against mine. Taste her with my tongue in her mouth.
“I can’t say I’ll never have the thought again.” I force the honesty out. “Might even tease you about it from time to time. But I really don’t wanna go there anymore. Maybe some people can have that in their lives all the time. Part of their relationships.”
I lift a shoulder and drop another kiss on her lips, this one quicker. “More power to ‘em, if it works in their lives. But that’s not you, and it’s not what I want anymore, either.”
“And you’re sure?”
She sounds hopeful enough to encourage me. So I have to prove myself to her. I can do that. And we might have to have this conversation again. More than once. I’m willing to do it.
I need to do it. I owe it to her—and to myself.
“Listen, sweetness, there are no guarantees. We both know that. Life has already thrown us some fucking curveballs. But I will never cheat on you. I will never ask you to share me in any way—except musically, when I’m performing for the fans—and I will never share you.”
I move her so that she’s straddling me, my hands on either side of her face, and I hold her steady for my gaze. “I love you, Paige Hamilton, and if you want to love me, it’s the two of us. Alone. Together. In it for the long haul.”
“The long haul.” She blinks, looks at me curiously. “That sounds so serious.”
“It is. I am. I love you.”
She pushes up to her knees, meets my mouth with hers in a new, soul-stealing kiss, and whispers against my lips. “I love you.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Paige
Noah stands up with me in his arms. Maybe it seems weird that he’s naked and I’m still dressed, but I like it. He’s not a shy man, and I like that I could give him pleasure, enough so that I actually grasped some of the control from him.
More than that, I’m amazed by the things he said afterward. Not just the I love you, but the rest of it.
It made sense. All of it. I can see why the men of Wycked Obsession would get gun shy about people and situations. Fame and celebrity aren’t as easy, certainly not always as wonderful, as they seem from the outside.
I was so afraid to believe. So unsure of myself. And I didn’t trust Noah.
I understand why, and I think he does, too. I also know that I’m not magically over it, but is that enough of a reason to hold back? Aren’t my feelings stronger than that? Don’t I owe it to us both to take that one, big chance?
So maybe there are no guarantees. There never are . . . except for one. Without at least trying, I know I’ll be unhappy. I’m pretty sure Noah will be, too.
We’re in the bedroom now, and he lowers me to my feet next to the bed. I stand so close, we’re almost touching. Gazing up into the handsome face I’ve never forgotten, tender emotion washes over me. Tears prickle, and I want to cry and laugh at the same time.
He reaches for me, for my waist. His hands fumble, and then the fastening to my dress falls open. With a flick of his fingers, the whole thing drops to the floor, and I’m standing there in my thong and bra.
/> “Jesus Christ, sweetness” Noah stares, his tongue settled flat on his lower lip. “If I’d know you were hiding this, I’d have gotten rid of that dress a long time ago.”
“It’s just for you, baby.” I smile and mean it.
“Fuck.”
He pulls me in tight for a kiss. A long, slow kiss that starts and stops a hundred times. Then he slips his tongue between my lips and strokes around inside my mouth.
I go up on my tiptoes, pressing closer. My nipples pebble against his chest, and his erection grows against my stomach. Long, wide, and so damn hard. My already wet pussy is drenched, and every swipe of his tongue over mine gets me more so.
“As hot as this is—” he pulls away and stares with blue fire flashing in his eyes “—I need to see all of you.”
A flick of his fingers at my back, and the bra falls away. My nipples tighten even harder under his gaze, and I arch my back without thinking. He laughs.
“My girl has such sensitive nipples,” he murmurs as he outlines each one with his index finger. I can’t help it; I sigh with a little frustration.
He nods, switches to his thumbs, and then strokes over the tips again and again.
“Oohh,” I groan. “Please, Noah, don’t stop.”
He bends down. “How about I change it up a little?”
He takes one nipple in his mouth, laves it with his tongue, sucks hard enough to earn another moan, and then closes his teeth deliciously over me. He pinches the other one with powerful fingers. Awareness shoots through me, straight to my clit, my very core, and I sag against him.
“You like that, baby?” he asks, his voice so damn deep with satisfaction.
“Oh, yes. God, yes.”
He switches sides, rewards each nipple to the same treatment the other just received, and I become less and less steady.
“Here,” he murmurs.
He holds me upright with his hands at my waist and drags his mouth down over my abdomen, my belly button, the mound above my pussy. He tugs at my thong panties until they’re around my ankles. I step out of them automatically, and then he tumbles me back onto the bed.