Resisting the Musician (a Head Over Heels Novel) (Entangled Indulgence) (11 page)

A muscle clenched in his cheek. The guy looked intractable, and once again Lori felt the ground shift beneath her feet.

She didn’t like it. Didn’t like not being the one in control. She’d worked too hard to get all her ducks in a row to just sit there and watch them get picked off one by one.

“Look,” she said, pressing herself to standing, feigning nonchalance she certainly didn’t feel. In fact, her knees shook and a hard, cold knot coiled in her belly. “I’m going to go.”

“Lori—” he growled holding out a hand before drawing it back and running it through his hair.

“It’s fine. I’m fine. You’ve clearly got up on the wrong side of bed this morning. Probably because I was in it. So, I’ll see you Tuesday morning. For rehearsal. As per the original schedule.”

She didn’t say good-bye and he didn’t try to stop her.

She wrapped her arms about her shirt, holding it tight as she walked out into the dappled sunshine beating through the canopy of trees. Only it was his shirt, and it smelled like him; all warm, and sleepy, like
eau de lumber.
And yet it did nothing to stave the chills that had seeped deeper inside.

Stupid,
stupid
Lori. Just because he didn’t look like the men she usually dated, or act like them, or live like them, didn’t mean he didn’t have the same exact instinct to find any excuse to dump and run.

Taking two wrong turns in Dash’s rabbit warren of a house, she found her way back through the lounge room where she gathered up her haphazardly discarded clothes, found her way to the kitchen and up the ridiculous ladder to his loft bedroom, with its mussed up sheets and memories that still made her feel flushed all over, despite the anti-climax.

She gathered her remaining clothes, or at least those she could actually find. And cursed herself as the endorphins faded and she was left feeling ridiculous. Because she’d
known
he’d pull away. The man was as much of an island as any she’d ever known. And yet it still stung.

She’d known, and she’d let it happen, because it made the moments when he smiled, when he touched her, when his breaths slowed, and his eyes darkened all the more thrilling. Like that moment at the top of a roller coaster when your breath leaves your body, gravity starts to pull, and you feel like you can see the whole world. That moment before you rush head first toward the ground.

Lori understood the thrill of a business risk. How charged she felt when it all paid off.

But an emotional risk? That was a whole other beast. After watching her mother fall prey to the ups and downs of that kind of thing day in and day out until it left her a shell of a woman, it was more than Lori was willing to
bear
.

…

Dash’s feet pressed into his boots as Lori’s footsteps faded beneath the rush of blood in his ears. It was either that or follow.

But then what?

He’d gotten what he’d wanted. Space in which to think. Quiet in which to regroup. Because, as he now knew all too well, every choice he made had consequences.

Sleeping with Saffron had had consequences. Trusting the record company had his interests at heart had had consequences. Taking his sweet time getting home from school, even while knowing his parents were worriers had had consequences. It was up to him to define the boundaries in which he could live with his life. Live with himself.

His gaze snagged on the
consequences of having retired at the age of twenty-seven and being good with his hands.

A half dozen guitar bodies in various stages of completion hung from custom built hooks on the wall. Lori hadn’t seen them, or at least hadn’t known what the bits and pieces could one day become, or there’s no way she wouldn’t have pressed him on them. Though he had no idea what he would have told her. For they’d started out as therapy
a la
Reg, days spent honing his skills bending, carving, polishing, varnishing.

Except one. The rosewood and spruce; locked up safe from dust in the lone glass cabinet. The lacquer nearly two weeks into the drying, she’d soon be ready for the final cut and polish. And while the thought of actually playing her, testing her for volume, pitch, and creep made his palms sweat, the terror of holding a guitar and playing it had lessened a little every day since Lori’s first lesson.

Dammit
.

It wasn’t her fault. It was his. She’d done nothing but give him a good time. And rather than taking it, rather than giving himself a break for once and letting himself enjoy his life rather than finding new and improved ways to atone for past sins, he’d called Rocky looking for trouble.

Dash knew he’d struggled with forgiveness at times, and had always found it difficult to let people in—but until that moment he could safely say he’d never been gutless.

He heard a door shut in the house somewhere.
Lori.
Leaving.

And with a shot of clarity that had been eluding him, he knew that no matter what, he couldn’t leave things like that.

Dash grabbed the T-shirt hanging over the back of a stool and, whipping it on, jogged across the grass and through the back door, hastening his pace when he could no longer hear her.

He took the ladder two rungs at a time to find her in his loft bedroom.

Sitting on the far edge of his unmade bed in her skirt and bra, holding one of her shoes—the shoes she’d left on as she’d fallen apart in his arms.

She stood to drag her top back on, the sweet mole on her right shoulder blade winking out of existence.

“Lori.”

She spun around, her expression wounded. Though she instantly tried to hide it—lifting her chin, flattening her lips, looking down her nose. But she couldn’t hide the pink flushing her lovely face. Or the damage in her intense green eyes. Not now that he’d felt her unwind and soften and let go.

She held up a high heel, black and sharp. “I’ll be out of your hair as soon as I find my other shoe.”

“Don’t go,” he found himself saying.

She snorted. Somehow on her it was sexy. Hell, a potato sack on her would be sexy. As was the way she locked her teeth around some kind of pin as shoved her shoe under her arm and twisted her hair into a roll before shoving the pin into place.
“Are we going to keep having this same conversation, Dash? Where you seduce me, then have second thoughts, then realize that means you’re not going to get any so you track me down looking all hot and raw and frustrated, in your sexy crushed shirt and your faded jeans that fit just so and make me feel all—?”

Lori growled at the ceiling, then she jabbed another pin into her hair with a ferocity that made his stomach knot.

“I’m just saying, some women might find the hot and cold thing enthralling, Dash, but that’s not me.”

“Never thought it was.”

“My mother was like that,” she went on, then swore when she began buttoning her frothy little shirt and her fingers got lost in the ruffles. “My father was a great charmer who did many bad things.
He’d disappear for days and whether he was in a ditch somewhere after losing all his pay on a poker game or sleeping it off in another woman’s house, we never knew. And
every time she’d take him back.”

“Lori,” Dash said, moving to cup her elbow, and simply touching her dissolved the tension he’d been wrapped in all morning. “I’m sorry.”

Her elbow sank into his palm before she twisted lightly and moved an inch away, pulling her dagger heel out from under her arm and brandishing it at him. “For what, exactly? Intimating I’d called the tabloids on you, when I’ve managed to contain myself so far? You can’t just walk in here looking like that—” she fluttered her spare hand in his direction— “and get some.”

She glanced down at the twisted sheets, her chest rising and falling, before she glared up at him, all sweet lips, and tousled hair, and pride.

Hell.

“I’m sorry that I was such a horse’s ass.”

She crossed her arms, and didn’t deny he was spot on.

“It wasn’t your fault I went into shutdown. It’s…what I do. Retreat to the shed when I need to sort things out. Only time it doesn’t do the job is when whatever’s making me itch is inside my own head. And you are Lori. All the time.”

He moved closer, and while her eyelashes fluttered manically, her feet didn’t budge. With the tangle of sheets as a backdrop, and the scent of their night together wafting under his tongue, lust rose up inside of him, fierce and fast, streaming out to his extremities and back to his core with a pulsing thud.

“Your taste is on my tongue, like honey and cream. I can feel your skin against my palm, soft, warm, and tight. And your mouth—” His eyes landed there to find her lips had parted, her breaths coming short and sharp. And those plump pink lips beckoned him, like the pathway to heaven.

Her eyes flickered between his, indecision and desire warring in their depths. Until finally she said, “What do you want from me?”

This was virgin territory. He had no choice but to follow his gut instincts, damaged as they were. And his instincts told him to touch her again.

He moved in, ran his hands over her hips, drew her close. Unable to help the smile building inside as she let him. Everything clenching, hard, as one hand fluttered to rest on his chest, the other—holding the shoe—landed with the point of a heel aimed at his heart. “I remember something about a lesson next Tuesday.”

Her gaze traced the column of his throat before landing on his mouth. “So you want me to go, and come back then, ready to learn?”

He hummed his agreement. Then the shoe in her hand traced his ribs. When the heel caught on his shirt she sucked in a sharp breath through parted lips, and lust coiled in his gut.

Then her eyes became twin storms, warning of hail and thunder and all out destruction as she said, “Or maybe it’s my turn to teach you a thing or two.”

Before he had the chance to say
fine by me
, she spun around and pushed him back on the bed. He landed with a bounce before she snuck a knee between his thighs, pressing up and up until it was hard against the growing bulge behind his fly.

Her other knee joined the first, pressing his thighs apart, and slowly, she began to undo her recent hard work. Unleashing the pin from her hair, sending the lush waves tumbling over her shoulders. Deft fingers undoing the tricky buttons of her top much more readily than they’d done them up. The sound of a zipper scraping the air as she rid herself of her skirt leaving her bare except for lacy underwear the exact color of the Californian waves. She tossed the shoe over her shoulder.

Sitting on the bed beside him like a sentinel. Sexy, sharp, take no prisoners. He’d never been so hard in his life.

“This is just about the sex,” she said, as she bent over him, hands landing next to his chest.

“Yes ma’am.”

Her teeth grabbed the edge of his shirt, sliding it up his chest to give her access to his belly where she lay a string of kisses in an ever-decreasing arc. Her tongue suddenly lathing his navel so that he sucked in air so as not to groan at the pleasure searing him right through the middle.

“I want nothing from
you
but your spectacular body.”

“And the occasional music lesson.”

“Whatever,” she said, watching him from between his legs, her long hair tickling his bare belly, her bra tipping forward to give him a glimpse of her beautiful dusky pink nipples.

And then her mouth was on him, tracing his ribs, his collarbone, her velvet soft skin sliding his shirt higher till the lace of her bra caught on his chest hairs, tugging at the roots till rockets exploded behind his eyes. And then her mouth was on his. Hungry, defiant, devouring.

Whether it was the fact that they’d set some boundaries, or that they’d shared accidental confidences in getting there, something had shifted. Adding a newfound urgency to every touch, every lick, every pleasure, taking sensation to a parallel universe.

Between hitting rock bottom and finding his eventual salvation in Reg’s ‘shed therapy’ he’d turned to the band’s old shrink for a few desparate weeks. She’d have probably called what he was experiencing intimacy. To Dash, it felt more like stepping out of a plane without a parachute.

Too late now
, he thought, sliding his hand into her hair and tilting her head so that he could deepen the kiss, chase her tongue, capture every essence of her taste.

And when her spare hand undid the top button of his fly, then the next, then the next, then slid down over his heat, he didn’t much care what it might be called.

He wanted it. And he was going to take it.

…

It was late into the night, a few lessons and several marathon bedroom sessions later when Dash woke to find Lori running a finger over his bicep. At her touch, goose bumps rose about the single inked word:
Enough
.

He tilted his head to find her eyes on his.

“What does it mean?” she asked, her voice husky in the moonlight.

He lay back on the pillow, watching the shadows waving across his ceiling. “I was pretty wild for a while after I left the band, really in the wilderness. Then one day Reg called and asked when the hell I was going to get over myself and come home to help him clean out Pete’s place. I got that tattoo, I fixed everything in Sausalito, and then I moved in here.”

“Callie says Jake’s got dozens of the things. And when you get one it’s addictive.” Her eyes slunk down his torso, her hand following before she lifted the sheet at his hips.

Dash laughed, the rare sound feeling natural. “One’s enough for me.”

One guitar at a time. One tattoo. One woman… Any more and he lost direction.