Release Me (6 page)

They head back to the table and I continue to sit at the bar, for once annoyed with the fangirls that refuse to give me a moment’s peace.

I sit there, ignoring countless women and I just look at her. She is breathtaking my Tay. She moves with delicate purpose, and every shift or shiver she makes is erotic. 

I feel bile rise in my throat and an unhealthy hatred for Sam when I watch his fingers stroke along the back of her exposed neck. I want to scream knowing he is touching her. I watch her and wait for a response from her but there is no laughter, no longing looks.

I go on instinct alone and type out a text and send it to her.

Me: Does he make you tremble? 

I watch her and wait. She slips her phone under the table and pulls the message up. Her spine goes stiff immediately; she sits up and starts rubbing her neck, clearly uncomfortable. I watch as Sam leans in, I assume to ask if everything is okay. I watch her nod yes, then slowly, so slowly she looks over that delicate shoulder and stares me down.

I tip my bottle back, my eyes never leaving hers. I drop a twenty on the bar and tap it before sending one more text once I’m in my Jeep.

Me: That’s what I thought. He never will...Pet

I don’t even know if I believe

I don’t even know if I believe

I don’t even know if I believe

Everything you’re trying to say to me

Chapter Five

Tayla

Cal: That’s what I thought. He never will...Pet

The use of Pet is enough to pool tears in my eyes and I hear Noah’s voice shaking me from my pain.

“He left.” He says and then six sets of eyes train on me for answers they know I have.

I read the messages he just sent me and drop my head in shame. Sam laughs and shakes his head pulling me in tight. “Maybe no more games Pet.” He puts emphasis on the Pet and winks.

“I am so sorry he hates you Sam. I have destroyed any chance of you guys being friends just to fuck with his head.”

I feel horrendous knowing how amazing Sam is and that Cal will always resent him too much to see the truth. 

“Have you thought about hearing him out Tay?” Shamus asks me and I shake my head no, swiping a tear from beneath one of my lashes.

“I can’t go there again. You guys don’t know how hard it is to love him. I am barely getting by without him as it is. If I let him back in and we fail? It will destroy me.” It’s the first time I have said those words out loud.

“Who says you won’t make it?” Cassa asks and I respect her words knowing what she and Shamus went through.

I have no words to respond with and I just let more tears fall.

“Look Hun, he is trying so hard right now to impress you and rock the romance, and he really sucks at it Tay. You’ve got to meet him half way.” Carrie says and touches my hand but I pull back irritated by her words.

“You know how hard it’s been without him Carrie, knowing full well how bad he treated me. How can you ask me to pretend it never happened?”

“I’m not saying to forget it Tay. No way does he get off after treating you like you were nothing. I am all for Cal being in the trenches and earning your heart, but he needs a little direction and only you can provide that babycakes. You have got to at least talk to him.”

I want to, God I do, but it all has to wait for now because Guy Vincent takes the stage and it’s time for me to work.

I shove the anger, the pain and the stress of what I do next down deep and give Guy all of my attention. I watch the crowd and how he interacts with them.

I listen to the melodic beauty he fills the bar with and how he owns that stage and the fans in front of it. My personal life may suck at its best but when it comes to business I am lucky because I know the IT factor when I see it and Guy Vincent is it.

I wait for him to finish the set and I buy him a beer and make my offer and by the time I leave A Bar Named Sue I have an appointment scheduled tomorrow to sign my latest star.

Once I am in my car and actually driving, I know I am going to go to him tonight. I need answers and he needs to give me them. I just hope that my luck in business passes over to my love life tonight.

Cal

I need to get Axe from my parents but decide to stop by my house and change first. The rain is no joke in the Northwest and it seems that when life sucks it is always raining here. I send a quick text to my mom to let her know I am heading her way as I take my stairs to my room two at a time. Tonight was a letdown for sure. I had hoped to melt a little of the ice I formed around her heart. I wanted a few drinks and conversation before I had to get him. Instead I lasted an hour and had to leave from the sight before me.

As a man I don’t weigh to heavily on emotion when it comes to big decisions in my life. I don’t do things because I want to. I do them because I weigh the logic and the repercussion and I decide from there. Never once did I play it safe, but I played every hand I have been dealt with logic that gives me the best possible outcome.

Tayla and everything we are and aren’t, lacks logic, rationality and the repercussions are huge. I go in every fucking time and I play it on emotion, and I get so uncomfortable displaying emotion like that. I never felt the viscous strike of my parents hate. I was tucked in bed every night with I love you’s and bedtime kisses. I never had anything tremendously terrorizing to take place in my life. I have been blessed and I know it, probably better than most. That perfect life made me outright awkward when it came to guiding by emotion.

Then I get a call from my sweet mom and my life and what I knew changes. I can play on emotion with Axe. I don’t know why it is natural with him. I want to save him and protect him and never let him hurt. I feel the same way with Tay, where with Axe I know without a doubt or concern if I am what’s best for him. Tay can do better than me, should do better than me but I will never let her.

When everything went to hell with Tayla, I tried to weigh the repercussions against a positive outcome. I tried to be logical and tell myself that in our industry and the things we do and God knows the things she has seen, that logically we wouldn’t survive. Then there was the emotion to deal with. TAT. Should this thing with Tayla go to hell in a hand-basket, TAT will too. 

I chose TAT because of logic and emotion.

Now I weigh the caution of my son falling in love with Tay and my fucking it up.

Had I let emotion play it out after first hooking up… fuck I’d probably be married to her by now and Axe wouldn’t exist. I try to see purpose in it all and I end up confused. I keep trying to be rational about everything that happened and the emotional side keeps interfering. Case in point? The damn texts I keep sending her. I should have made Carrie or Cassa take my phone so I would stop making a fool out of myself.

I walk to the kitchen and grab a beer, cracking the bottle cap off and chucking it across the floor. I read the text from my mom and she tells me Axe is sound asleep and then right after she sends a picture of him curled up in the corner of his crib in his superman jams and no blanket or stuffed toy near him. This is because he never had a toy let alone a blanket.

Me: Kiss him for me mom. I’ll be there early to get him.

I switch my sound system on and turn it up, letting an old blues guitar cry through my speakers. My clothes are wet, my skin is chilled and I feel nothing but the rip in my heart knowing he is there touching her right now. Fuck me I couldn’t watch it. Now that I know what I am missing, knowing it’s not logical but all emotion, fuck I can’t handle it. I miss her. I can’t sleep at night because my eyes close and I see this perfect skin covered in tattoos. I can feel the diamonds that line her ribcage in dermal piercings.

At times I think I could cry the loss is so profound. I often wonder how Noah survives. Even now, this awful pain in my chest that belongs to the woman I forced out the door and I know that I’ll suffer that loss as long as she is happy and alive.

Before I can contemplate further I hear the doorbell ring and I see her through my security monitor. I don’t know what brought her here but I thank God, even if she is here to scream at me for my texts. I turn my music down and don’t bother to putting a shirt on or that my feet are bare, I only care about opening the door. “Hey.” I say and the tune to Make it rain plays softly in the background.

“Hi.” She says and looks behind her at the kitchen table. “Can I sit?”

“Yeah of course. Want a beer or some wine?” I ask knowing she wants wine and I grab two glasses from my cabinet.

“You don’t drink wine.” She says and looks almost shocked when I remove the chilled bottle of Moscato from my fridge and pop the cork.

“I’ve had this bottle in here for four months waiting for you.” I say and hand her a glass.

She looks at me like I have two heads. “And if I never came back?” She asks and takes a sip, her fuck me red lipstick leaving a perfect print of her lips on the glass.

“Then it’d stay there until I died, but I would have been trying forever to get you to come back.” I feel like an asshole for being so sappy but I’m winging it here with nothing but the truth of how I feel.

“Cal...” She says my name on an exhausted breath. “It’s never been that easy.”

“Then tell me what you need from me Tay?” I say and cup my hands over my face wanting so bad to understand what she wants and needs from me “Tell me what you need.”

“I need to not be a secret!” She yells and goes from a calm sitting position at the counter to an angry stance before me. But, it’s enough to know I have her where I need her, and that’s talking.

I pull on the advice the girls gave me. Smiling, I think of how it felt knowing she was mine. “You cannot pretend that it wasn’t hot?”

I see that soft sexy look glaze her eyes and I know she knows what I mean. “I’m not saying it wasn’t hot. I’m saying it got old damn fast. Once we were actively fucking, and often mind you, the fun stopped. I felt like a dirty secret.” She said that last part quietly and as a statement full of shame.

Jesus no. “What?” I ask and my voice sounds raw. “Tayla you were never a secret. Not a bad one. I have never been ashamed of you or felt like I needed to hide the fact I wanted you for any reason other than fucking up our business.” But I had secrets, God did I.

“I was still a secret though and it sucked.”

I step in close, pulling on that swagger that the girls tell me she can’t deny and I am so shocked stupid that they are right. Her eyes get glossy and her breathing picks up. She blinks a lot and props her hand on her hip trying desperately to be nonchalant. “You didn’t find it wicked hot, sitting in a meeting, discussing money and contracts; still wet because I’d eaten your pussy five minutes before the fucking meeting started?”

There it is that perfect flush on her cheeks. That first indication that the same pussy I am referring to is the same one getting wet off my words right now. Carrie and Cassa are so getting spoiled this Christmas. They are mischievous and devious and nosy as a neighbor, but smart, dammit but they are smart.

“Or how when we were on tour and you’d fly in to whatever city we were in an hour earlier than whatever meeting you had that day, just to suck my dick and let me cum in that mouth.”

I reach up; close enough now and I rub my thumb over her bottom lip and feel her breath on my face when she gasps. And then I go in for the kill.

“Or the time we were in the studio laying tracks and you came over the mic and asked me to come into the booth.” I see recognition flash and I have her.

“Remember that night?”

“Y-y-yes, duh.” She says but her voice is weak and she is refusing to look at me. But she will this I know.

“What happened baby?” I ask softly and I lean my face in close to her neck and speak softly, inhaling her scent without touching her.

“Stop it!” She cries a desperate sound that has me hard enough to pound nails.

“You shut the blinds and muted the mic, telling the guys to keep playing. I walked in the producer’s room to see it empty and you spread eagle on the floor fingering your pussy.”

I watch her face looking for any signs I have pushed her too far and not even close. She is so turned on right now I could touch her and she’d pop. I use that moment to drop the seduction and step back leaning against my counter, my voice is calm and even, unaffected when I speak. “You said you couldn’t watch me anymore until you got off, because....” I pause and tap my chin dramatically. “Oh duh, I looked too fucking edible and you couldn’t focus. I dropped to my knees right there in the studio to eat your pussy and had you coming on my tongue in forty five seconds. Then I made you wait for my cock until that night at the hotel.” I step close again and cup her face in my hands, forcing her to meet my eyes. “Do. You. Remember?”

 “Yes.” She says and she is looking at me, wanting me just as bad. I feel her hand skim over the denim of my jeans where my painfully erect cock is trapped.

“You shouldn’t touch me unless you want what I am offering here Tay. I am done playing around.” I am hoping and praying she doesn’t stop because it has been too damn long since I’d touched her.

I feel her fingers encase the front of my cock and then she strokes.

Match point. I got to the front of her jeans and start working the belt and she starts undoing mine. Our eyes are locked on one another and I want to kiss her, show her how deep this goes.

“Kiss me baby.” I say and she stops stroking my dick because I found her pussy, wet bare and hot. I waste no time slipping two fingers inside of her and pressing my thumb on her clit.

She rolls her head back and moans and I can’t wait for her to decide. “Fuck it!” I grit between clenched teeth and use my free hand to grip her neck and bring her mouth to mine. The minute our lips touch she seals her lips and refuses me entry.

“Let me in Tay.” I ask and she tightens her lips more and shakes her head no. She isn’t stopping though and I feel her hand grasp my cock, flesh to flesh now that she’s freed me I know I can’t stop. “Let me in baby, please.” I beg and wait for that mouth to surrender.

This isn’t about a kiss. It’s about what this kiss represents and she’s willing to let me in her body but not in her heart. As much as I crave her, need her wet pussy, I can’t take it unless I have all of her.