Hung Out: A Needles and Pins Rock Romance (68 page)

“S
on of a bitch.”

At his curse, she drug her eyes open and couldn’t keep from moving her chin enough to nuzzle the dark damp strands of hair resting against her face. He’d collapsed crossways on the bed with her, and one of his legs lay intimately between hers.

Lifting his head, he eyed his task as he worked a few of her blouse buttons from their slots. His fingers stroked the valley between her breasts and then the swell of each. Dipping beneath her bra, he tugged at one of the achy taunt nipples. His words were breathy. “That didn’t exactly go as planned.”

Meaning they’d screwed like wild animals again? True dat. But she couldn’t add her amen yet. Her limbs were still rubbery and her lips wouldn’t part.

“Want to go again?” He’d liberated one of her girls from the confines of the bra and now they both watched as he toyed with it. Her heart slammed against her ribs, but she controlled her breathing.

“Whatever.” She gave in to the urge to tease him with words as much as he was teasing her with touch. “We can have a do-over if you want to.”

His gaze darted to hers, and she saw the flicker of hurt before he aptly read the sass in her eyes. “We don’t have to.” He pressed a finger between her lips, wetting it and brought it back to his playground. “If you don’t want to.” The cool air of the room bathed the damp tip, making her body long for his mouth, not his hand.

Summoning every ounce of her sapped strength, she rolled to him, running a hand up beneath his tee shirt, stopping on what she sought. She smiled in gratification to hear his groan when her fingers circled one of his nipples. “Want to take a shower? Play it by ear?”

It was a game they’d had between them in the past and her memories flickered pleasantly within the lobes of her brain.

Want to fuck? Maybe. Come swimming with me. We’ll play it by ear.

Want your dick sucked? Oh, I don’t know… Let’s take a shower. Play it by ear.

Which of course, ‘playing it by ear’ had never been a serious option. Sex had always been the agenda from the beginning of any of their wordplay. As it was now.

Grabbing her hand, he tugged her upright, and they sprinted to the bathroom. A push shoved the door closed. They stripped the vestiges of their clothing in record time--socks, shirts, and her bra. He adjusted the shower and they stepped over the side of the tub and wrapped together beneath the spray.

His head dipped and she groaned when their lips meshed. Not that anything was on her mind now except the familiar fire burning through her every vein and capillary, but she’d already conceded some time ago that no kiss would ever be as good as the ones she and Gage shared. Their kiss was every bit as hungry as the one that had begun the crazy out of control ride in the bedroom. His mouth consumed hers and their tongues slipped and slid together in all of the ecstatic ways she remembered...

Until he stopped, and forcefully set her away.

In the lighting of this room, his eyes took on a whiskey hue as they skimmed from the lips he’d just kissed to her toes, which almost touched his. Her body reacted as if it were his hands instead of his languid look caressing it. Her nipples hardened, heat pooled into a wet ache between her legs, and the goose flesh prickled her skin.

Reaching out, he traced a finger down her chest and stopped at the sensitive patch of skin just below a slight bikini line leftover from days in his pool more than a year ago. “I love looking at you…”

“Ditto…” She slid both hands up hard flat abs and moved closer to glide them around to his backside. “New ink?” With her tongue, she traced the half-opened rose and its charred petals positioned in the center of his breastbone among all the barbed wire music staffs and notes she remembered.

“Like it?”

“Mmh, hmm.”

He ran a finger down the conclave of her chest. “Um, earlier, I didn’t ask and should have. You still okay this way?” His other hand remained on his own body and encircled around those long thick inches of pleasure. An answering throb or two pulsed between her thighs. At first, she misunderstood what he was asking, remembering all the times he’d indulged her voyeuristic side. But his next words cleared things up. “With nothing between us…”

He was speaking of condoms.

Unwillingly, an ugly reminder flickered through her mind of the woman--his ex—Allison or whatever her name had been. And of the throngs of women she’d seen throw themselves at him.

“Should I be?” She countered and watched a scowl shadow his face.

His answer was immediate and earnest. “I’ve never gone without—except with you.” Grazing his fingertips up her stomach, he tweaked the tip of one breast. “I was asking about you.”

“Me?” She drew in an indignant breath, and a twinge of anger coursed through her, knowing Derrick had been her only lover in so long. “Seriously? Me.” He had no way of knowing her lack of a sex life and yet the buzz of anger became a flurry of fury.

“Birth control, Scar.” His agitated fingers left her body and forked into his wet hair. “That’s all I was asking. Believe me. I don’t want to know anything else.”

“There’s nothing else to know,” she snapped. “Way to kill the mood, by the way.”

“I got plenty of mood right here...” He closed in, surrounding her with his expanse of ink and muscle. His callused hands landed on and possessively squeezed her rear while his hard dick smashed against the soft skin of her front.

It became a give and take match of mouths to skin with Gage winning—when he wanted to. The scruff on his chin was heaven against the most sensitive expanses of her skin. His lips brushed each trail he blazed until she was delirious. The taste of him was something she’d hungered for, far too long. The laps of his tongue here, there, everywhere, fed her craze.

They played against the tiled walls, and at some point, ended up horizontal, stretched out in the tub as the spray of endless lukewarm water rained down. The bathroom acoustics echoed their every moan, groan, and whimper in a sinfully sexy way.

Gage hadn’t unpacked yet
, so in the absence of any toiletries scattered on the vanity, she used her fingers to comb her hair back from her face. He opened the door and a heavenly rush of air cooled her skin. Obviously feeling as hot as she felt, he abandoned his towel, and she resisted the urge to snap the towel she still held to his god-like ass as she trailed him into the main room.

When he stopped in his tracks, she ran smack into the wall of his back, and he pivoted, shoving her back into the seclusion of the bathroom.

But not before she saw Landon.

The drummer was stretched on the bed that wasn’t a rumpled mess, and his jeans gaped open. The television was on, but muted.

Wrapping her towel securely to her body, she stared into nothingness repulsed. Gage stood in front of the closed bathroom door, wearing an equally horrified look on his face.

“What the hell is he doing in there?”

Gage arched his brows in what looked like an attempt at sarcasm. She gave her towel another firm tuck and stifled any verbal expression of her revulsion. From the looks of it, Landon had pleasured himself to the erotic sounds coming from the bathroom as she and Gage had sex. If that wasn’t bad enough, he’d seen her naked.

She was avoiding the worst of the worst. For all of his innuendos since the tour began, Landon had now seen with his own eyes Gage and her together.

“He’s not going to say anything.” Grabbing the towel he’d left in a heap on the vanity, Gage wrapped his own waist as he made the assurance. “Be right back. I’ll get your clothes.” He disappeared, closing the door firmly behind him.

Too late, she was remembering that generally on this tour, she was the only one who didn’t share a room. How could she have had such a lapse? How could Gage have forgotten? They had been lucky they were in the privacy of the bathroom when Landon arrived.

“Shiiit, dude.” Landon’s voice clearly carried through the wall. “Was that
Scarlette
?”

“Nope.” Gage.

Seconds passed, and she could only imagine one of the meaningful stare-downs similar to those she’d often seen pass between Colt and Gage. And then Landon said, “Whatever. Listen, tell Scarlette her phone’s been blowing up.”

Gage was right back with a fist full of clothing. Leaving the bulky weight of her phone in the pocket of her shorts, she dressed as if the building were on fire.

“He’s not going to say a word.” Gage promised again, and she stayed quiet. How could he be so sure? The Instagram episode earlier in the summer was a stark reminder of the idiot drummer’s insensitivity.

To her surprise, Landon was gone from the room when they emerged and not waiting with one of his taunts. Gage walked her to her room, and when she popped the lock on her door with the keycard, he asked to come inside with her.

He pulled her into a hug and whispered again into her hair. “He won’t do anything. Won’t say anything.”

“Yeah. He will. He’s an asshole.”

“He won’t. I swear.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

He seemed positive, and she breathed easier, believing him.

There was no show that night. They were on a seventy-two-hour break before their slot at one of the biggest festivals on this tour.

They ordered up and over their meal decided to extend their ‘closure’ through the night. She justified their extended workout since their perfect shower time had been marred by the thought of Landon jacking off in the next room to their erotic tune.

It wasn’t until sometime in the middle of the night that she remembered her phone and rolled from the bed. Unearthing it from a pile of clothing, she found it dark and cold. Another search—this one through her bag—produced the charger, and she stretched her sated and satisfied, sore body into a chair as she waited for it to power up. As it hummed to life and synced with various tones, Gage rolled over in his sleep, and the sheet slipped to his lean hips, distracting her.

Even in only the shadows of her hotel room, he was magnificent.

Could she give him up again? Was it really what they wanted? Had he picked his career over their relationship with the same resolve she had picked a certain ideal of her life over their relationship?

Shit!
Three of the several texts were from Logan and their basic message was the same each time. ‘Call me.’ And three of her missed calls were from Logan with no accompanying voice messages.

Since she’d been on this tour, she and Logan had communicated daily. They’d never officially broken up. But lately, his correspondence felt more friendly than boyfriend-ly. She’d bet her last dime he was ready to break things off. If this was indeed the development, it didn’t make her feel any better about screwing Gage before officially breaking it off with Logan.

“Who’s got you looking so sad?” Gage’s voice was a slurry, sleepy rumble from the shadows of the bed.

“Me,” she admitted and set the phone aside to finish charging. “I make myself sad.”

The moonlight played
on her forlorn features, and he decided he’d never seen anything as beautiful as a nude Scarlette Conterra silhouetted in the darkness with her hair mussed around her face and cascading over her thoroughly fucked body.

“C’mere. Let’s make you happy again…”

The towel she’d been sitting on left tiny grooves on the backs of her thighs, and he unconsciously traced them with his fingertips as he tasted first one tit and then the other. Rolling onto her, he enjoyed the friction of their skin before he went down.

If there was anything he excelled in, it was making Scarlette’s body very happy…

…Not so much her mind and soul obviously.

Long after she’d screamed out her orgasms, after her lids had closed over her beautiful eyes, and after her breathing had evened, he remained awake, staring into the inky blackness above the bed.

At some point, he tried to guess the time. Leaving before morning light would be best all around. Stealthily, he eased from the bed and wandered into the bathroom to take a piss. Afterward, he stepped into his boxer briefs and took a seat in the chair she’d vacated. He alternated between studying her shadowy curves and watching the traffic on the street far below the window.