Playing Autumn (Breathe Rockstar Romance Book 1) (17 page)

She uncapped and sprayed. “Guess.” The relief began again, spreading down on her toes, but there was an ache somewhere else that didn't go away.

“So,” Oliver said, sitting on the corner of the hotel bed, watching as she took the love seat instead. He propped up his guitar and strummed. Then she noticed that he was in his boxers. Or what looked like boxers.

He looks like…a boyfriend
, Haley thought, her heart feeling a sad pinch. The kind she wanted when she was a teenager. Artistic, intense, but didn’t take himself seriously, didn’t mind spending an evening strumming idly like so. There weren’t a lot of those when she was actually a teen.

He was looking at her, sort of expectantly. “Long day?”

“Very,” Haley said. She tilted her head back and just let the strings and their music reach her, tickling a path down her spine. She was seriously feeling it. “Is that Cornelia?”

He smiled, his hand possessively resting on a curve on the butterscotch-colored instrument. “Yes. My dad and I got her when I was fifteen. But you know that, right?”

She blushed and continued looking up at the ceiling. “It was in the
People
article.”

“Hey, I heard something today.” The strumming led to the beginning of a song, one that she was starting to vaguely recognize. “Something about Florida.”

“Hmm?” Haley asked. Her job application?

“About my concert. And a hurricane.”

Oh my God.
So Haley wished for the love seat to swallow her whole. “Who told you?”

“Does it matter? That was unexpectedly the last stop on my tour. I’m actually glad you made it there; they cancelled the other dates after that.”

“Yeah,” Haley said softly.

“So you went? What did you think?”

Half of Haley's focus was on the guitar, trying to figure out what he was playing, because it seemed like the less embarrassing thing to do. “I… I loved it. You were great, as usual.”

Oliver kept playing. She settled into her seat, loving how without the stubble he looked just like he did when he was younger, right when she was so into him. His fingers knew Cornelia well, plucked at her strings lovingly, knowingly, playfully. “I wrote that album in the middle of a breakdown. Do you think it showed?”

Haley sighed. She wouldn't have put it that way. Something was off about that night, but she thought it was her. That she had outgrown him, and when she applauded at his encore it was as if she was saying goodbye.

That was in the spring, earlier this year. It already felt so long ago.

“You were great,” she said. “But I wasn't connecting to it, to you, the way I used to. I didn't think it was your fault though.”

His fingers moved a little faster. “It
is
my fault. If I had you before and lost you, it's my fault.”

“You mean as a musician,” Haley said.

He smiled. “Of course.” And then he looked down at his guitar, fingers slowing down again, and then she realized that he was playing with the arrangement. He had been improvising, and that was why she couldn't place it.

“I know what that is,” she gasped.

Chapter 20

Oliver was hoping she would recognize it. He had been sitting in his room for the better part of the evening, holding Cornelia, waiting for something. His fingers started moving, as they usually did when he lay in bed with his guitar. It was a habit, usually how he warmed up while his brain searched for a new song, but this one triggered a memory.

When he was in
Tomorrow’s Talent
, he was simply one precocious music geek among a dozen others. And then, one episode, he followed his mom's advice and played something he had learned when he was younger. He chose
Autumn
from Antonio Vivaldi's
The Four Seasons
on violin. That it went well was an understatement. He got a standing ovation, became the subject of water cooler discussions across the world, and started getting fan mail from proud mothers. That performance turned things around for him.

Haley had played it too, in one of her videos. He hadn't made the connection because he was fixated on the songs she had covered that he had personally written, but she did a stellar take on it. He had seen it several times (one could not watch a Hot Piano Girl video just once) and tried to recreate it. It took a few tries.

What had brought on this memory?

Victoria found him that evening and gave him her best stern-teacher face. He was flying high though; the “conversation” with Trey tickled more than distressed him, and Kari and John were in good spirits after their performance. He was smug and feeling like he was getting his bearings back.

“You can do whatever you want, I promise,” she told him, “I’m not going around rapping people’s wrists or anything. I thought Haley’d gotten you out of her system after your Orlando show, but don’t be too much of a distraction, okay?”

“What Orlando show?” he said.

Victoria coughed. “Nothing. God, I’m so tired.”

Haley had been to his last big show. She hadn’t said anything.

What was there to say though? Orlando was when he thought he was getting his career back. If he knew then that it would be the last show of the tour because of the cancellations, he would have done something he really wanted with that set. He would have changed it and played the songs he wanted to be remembered for.

So he started thinking about the songs he wanted to be remembered for.

It so happened that he got the arrangement, right when he happened to be in front of her, and everything about her—her shampoo, her legs, the fact that she was barely clothed—was assaulting his senses. He would have continued playing, but she had left her seat and he knew he had to put Cornelia aside as soon as possible.

Just a kiss
, he said, but not aloud, because he knew it was a lie and he lied to himself a lot anyway. As she fell and dragged him to the bed, her bare shoulder emerged from beneath the thick blue robe and he sucked in his breath, getting confirmation that she was wearing nothing underneath. His mouth went for that shoulder, leaving a wet imprint on the smooth skin with his tongue. Still a kiss. Not exactly a liar.

As his mouth moved closer to her neck, she giggled, softly, and used a hand to push the robe down the other shoulder. The flimsy article of clothing unraveled in an instant, revealing more of her with each staggered breath. Her breasts peeked out of the robe. He wasted no time and cupped one, holding it with care as his hand curved under it, and put a rosy nipple in his mouth.

She made that sound again, the gasp that turned into sighs, each time he teased the bud with his tongue.

“This is how you sleep?” he said after a strangled curse. “You're going to make the rest of the weekend hell for me. Knowing this is on the other side of the wall. Did you want my tongue on the other one, too? Is that what you want?”

“God, do you overthink this, too?”

He did overthink this. He had spent the day overthinking this one thing, wondering how being on her, beside her, inside her would feel. But he remembered to be a gentleman about it and decided that he was not going to pass through her life and raze everything to the ground.

Unless she wanted razing.

He had to ask.

***

“Are you sure about this?” he was saying. They were words, but they were also delicious rumbles against her neck, and he had to repeat them before she realized that he needed an answer. And then she didn't reply instantly.

Sure about what? About the literal disrobing for him, for Oliver Cabrera, the same one from her fantasies from back when she learned how to fantasize? About the wisdom of doing this with someone she met yesterday? Someone who wouldn't be around next weekend?

She was beyond that. But despite what they thought they knew about each other, he wouldn't have guessed that about her. That when she told Logan that it was over, it
was over
. That when she decided to make a life out of music, she didn't hesitate to pack up and leave to do it. He wouldn't have known that she had decided on this as soon as she had opened the door for him, and all he needed to do was step inside.

“Are
you
sure about this?” she said instead, hands leaving his back so she could cradle his jaw. She found herself looking into familiar dark eyes that for the first time were looking back at her. “I've had you in my head for a long time, longer than you probably realize. I know what I'm getting into. You, I don't think so.”

He frowned, pulling back to look at her. “Because?”

“You don't really know me.”

He shifted, leaning on his side, freeing his hand so he could take one of hers. He nipped at her knuckles and turned it around to nibble at her open palm. “And you've been in my head too, whether you believe it or not,” Oliver said.

“I don't believe it,” Haley said.

“You will,” Oliver said. “You recognized what I played. When we're done tonight you'll think about that, how I could have possibly known that particular arrangement, and it'll occur to you that I know it from memory. Because I've
had you in my head for a long time
, Haley.”

It was like a song almost, the way he said it back to her, how her words transformed when they came out of his mouth. “It's not the same thing. It can't be.”

“That's your problem, not mine.
I'm
sure. I went out after the meeting and got calamine and condoms. I have three in my pocket right now.” And then his hand pushed hers back against the mattress, his lips moving down one breast to the other. “Do you want me to stop?”

God, those lips. Hovering, teasing her skin, with a softness that was a stark contrast to the rough ridges of his musician's fingers. Her body didn't care about the difference.

“No,” Haley conceded. She still didn't believe him, not that part about him thinking about her, ever, but she could grill him about that later. “No, don't stop.”

“I’m good with instructions, no matter what anyone else says,” Oliver said, his mouth already on her other breast. Haley closed her eyes and only felt it when he lightly bit and sucked on the soft skin before closing in on the nipple. Even more nerves came alive not just there, but down her back and up her neck, and she clasped both hands over her mouth to keep the moan inside.

“I want to hear you,” he said, regrettably having to stop the sweet torture on her skin to do it.

“I don’t want the rest of the hotel to hear me.”

“Make sure it’s just for me then.”

Haley wasn’t sure she could manage that. She was shaking her head as a response as he straightened up and removed his shirt, exposing the lean muscle underneath to her touch. She wanted those arms around her, those shoulders right where she could lay her chin on them, smell them, taste them, but he eased himself down and parted the lower half of her robe.

“I wonder if you’re ready,” he said, and he didn’t have to wonder as he thrust his tongue inside her, and then licked up, toward her already-throbbing clit. She needed to hang on to something, one hand finding his hair, the other a fistful of the discarded robe.

When a teasing finger slipped inside, she pulled at the robe as hard as she could to displace the moan that was going to tear out of her. “I’m ready, I’m ready, what else do you
want
—”

To his credit, he was quick about this. She felt a draft of air as he let go of her and took off his shorts, reaching for something in its pocket. She watched him, eyes burning, as he held his thick erection in his hand and slipped a condom over it. She wanted to touch it, hold it in her hand, but before she knew it he had lifted her up and it was
right there
at her entrance.

It looked like he was about to ask if she wanted him that way, and she didn’t want to have to discuss further because yes, this was how, this was the time, and she eased herself up and then sank into him, taking him as deep as he could go.

“
Fuck,”
she gasped, right into his ear.

He laughed, brushing the hair out of her eyes, and every movement stretched her around him. “That’s the idea.”

“You feel good,” she said. “I’m sorry, it’s—it’s true.”

His hands went to her hips and held her as he pumped up, even deeper. “So tight, Haley. I feel you pulsing around me.”

“I can’t help it.”

“I wouldn’t want you to.”

She could feel each stroke, felt him slowly, deliciously impaling her, but she wanted more—needed more. Haley pushed her hips against his thrusts and moaned at how the new angle gave her more to feel, and she rewarded herself with this discovery by wrapping her legs around him and doing it again. And again.