Walking Heartbreak (27 page)

“So that’s it? These are the morsels you’re handing me tonight?” Bo asks, voice measured. The controlled anger that simmers beneath is palpable.

I’m not used to sharing. My only friends in this city, besides Zoe, are my colleagues at Scott’s. Zoe shut them up right away by telling them the only thing I’m not telling Bo. They know no details thanks to her, who always has my back.

“I don’t know how to do this, Bo,” I whisper, suppressing the urge to cry.

“Do what? Be honest? Give me enough of an insight to understand what’s going on in your head? In your fucking heart?” He shakes his head slowly. Frustrated. Disappointed. Hurt—again.

He longs for me, there, on the other side of the booth, and I can’t give what he needs. It hits me harder than ever; I’m an impostor, here to ruin Bo’s life like mine already is. Bo is an innocent, a bystander and a casualty. He shouldn’t be in this situation.

The signs were there from the moment I met him. I shouldn’t have allowed as much as a kiss between us. If you love something you don’t deserve, let it go. If it comes back, it’s still not yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.

And so I stand. Lean over the table. I give him a small kiss on the lips, and say, “You’re right. I don’t have it in me to make you happy. I hope I haven’t messed with your life too much.” Then I walk out of the restaurant. Alone.

BO

I let her walk toward the exit.
I watch her shoulders sag, and she’s small, beautiful, and I love every detail about her. Her sadness, her joy, the thoughts she doesn’t share, her skin against mine, her heat and her light snores when she sleeps tangled with me.

I’ve only known her for five weeks. In those weeks, I’ve learned everything and nothing, and for each seed of new knowledge, each nugget of information about her life, even her marriage, I need more.

She thinks I’ll let her leave. I drop a stack of my per diems on the table and get up just as she reaches the front door. The restaurant is quiet. Quiet enough for her to discern my voice when I say, “I’ll be knocking on your door.”

She twists quickly, long, dark locks swinging over her shoulder, and stares at me. Well-deep doe eyes storm with feelings, and my balls tighten on instinct; how hot is it to find a whirlwind of desire, anger, hope, and exasperation in the stare of a woman? It makes me want to break her. Turn her into lust, bring her to where the only one she wants is me.

“You can’t be serious,” she hisses as I approach her calmly.

“Oh I’m serious. You think you can run away? You’re not going anywhere until we’ve finished our talk, and we’ve barely even started. This. Is going to take a while. We’re going home.”

“Home where?” she squeaks, and a part of me wants to say, “Your house because this involves your damn husband too.”

I don’t say it. I’m holding it together for one reason and one reason only:

The other day, a fleeting moment of
love
for her rocked in over me. That fleeting moment must be frozen in time. Because it’s still happening.

I reach her. Crowd her against the mess of small bells jingling in the front-door window. I slide a hand up her hip until I grip the firm dip of her waist and say, “My place.”

BO

“Just pull it to the side.
It’s crazy sexy that way.” Emil’s muffled voice seeps out from his bedroom, and I groan inwardly.

“Not very handy though, is it?” Zoe replies.

“That’s not ‘to the side.’
Past
the lips, Zoe. Like a curtain so I can still get in. Hold on.”

“Geez! You owe me thirty dollars.”

“You kiddin’ me? That super-tiny scrap of fabric is…?”

“Yeah.
Was
thirty dollars. Now, thanks to you, it’s zero dollars. No one would buy it now.”

“You’d sell used underwear?”

“No! I’m just sayin’. And it’s lingerie. And I still hate you.”

I should have predicted this. To talk things out with Nadia here while Emil and Zoe bicker over makeup sex is the antithesis of a plan.

“You want to go somewhere else?” I whisper, securing her hand in mine so she doesn’t run away. I don’t have a good alternative at the ready. We could go to some romantic place, a park, the planetarium. But to be honest, I want her close to a bed. I can’t just make her cry over what she has to tell me without easing her pain afterward.

“I’ll get us a hotel room,” I decide and grab for my phone.

“No! No… it’s okay. This is good,” Nadia says, eyes wary and not backing her up. I don’t wait for her to reconsider. Instead I tow her with me past Emil’s room and into mine. His bed already convulses against my wall, but this time I’m not having it. I barge my fist into the wall and yell, “Fix the
bed
situation or I’m coming in there myself!”

All goes dead silent. Then Emil mutters, “Yeah, yeah,” before an eerie sort of screeching ensues.

I meet Nadia’s quizzical glance and answer, “He’s pulling the bed out to stop their touchy-feelies from interrupting us. Anyway”—I hook an arm around her waist and pull her down on the mattress with me—“what do you want to do first?”

She blinks slowly, eyes glassy. I’m not sure if she’s sad or turned on, but right now, with her scent tickling my nose and her chest heaving beneath me, all I want is to feel her. Nadia’s mouth offers pillowy, parted lips that accept my kisses and suck me into a moist welcome. Her tongue dances with mine, like she wasn’t just storming out of a restaurant in an attempt to escape.

“You ran,” I whisper between our kisses. “Don’t ever run.”

“I had to,” she stutters, but her body’s already pliable, a warm wave against mine. I ease a hand under the hem of her shirt and bring it upward. With a quick shove, I’ve wedged it under her bra and we’re stuck together this way for a moment before I roll it upward and release her breasts under her T-shirt.

I get up on an elbow just to look. There’s something magical about this—lush tits free and utterly touchable beneath a thin top. Nadia’s breath moves in rapid sighs. I cup one breast, squeezing lightly, and shut my eyes at the sensation of her hardening nipple. “Have I told you that you’re beautiful? That everything you do is beautiful?” I rasp out.

To please a woman—drive her insane with need for me—is the ultimate pleasure. She shakes her head at my question, and I find myself staring deep into her eyes in a way that’s new to me.

Nadia doesn’t scream or moan loudly. Doesn’t tell me how I turn her on. This girl doesn’t make a show of things. But her pupils dilate until they leave only the smallest trace of brown irises, and her chest doesn’t stop shuddering out small breaths. When I pull her cleavage down with a finger, revealing smooth skin over bone that thickens into soft flesh below, I imagine the quick, quick heartbeats beneath.

“You are, you know. So beautiful. And all I want, all the time, is to be with you.” As I help her remove her shirt, I continue talking, my tongue delivering what my soul has known for a while. “You were my quiet in the storm on tour. My rock. You believed in me.”

“Bo, everyone does.”

“Yes, but it’s different. They want something from me. You watch me when I play, when I mock up a melody. I see it in your eyes—you trust my crazies to become a song.

“Even when I doubt, Nadia, you believe. You keep me company, and it’s not for what I can do for you, for the favors I’ll extend later. Not for a private interview or an autograph.” I grimace. “Not for a scrapbook photo of when we have sex.”

“Photos?” she repeats, chest bowing toward me as I kiss my way down to her navel. I sink my teeth into the small ridge circling it, licking, sucking, and the scent of her skin makes my blood boil. God, I have missed her.

Again, jealousy knifes me at the thought of this woman sleeping night after night in another man’s bed. It’s excruciating, intolerable because—she. Was made. For me. He makes her suffer, while
I
want to give her the world.

My desire for Nadia stirs up a haze, and it’s difficult to remain coherent. “Did you keep your promise? Have you been only mine since you left the tour?”

“Yes… Yes, I keep my promises,” she says, skyrocketing my energy, pouring gasoline on it, and I don’t know how to slow down, how to be what she probably needs. I’m back on tour in our last hotel room, snarling my hunger out against her skin, pressing my fingers into her muscles and making her whimper.

“God, I love you,” I moan, like it hurts, like
I
hurt, because I do.

Is this love? Is this how people walk around feeling? Because if it’s this much, this big—how do they not burn up?

I eat my way down her stomach, draw a new kind of cry from her. She helps me with her pants—we’re fast, and there she is, bare and beautiful, unafraid and… unashamed.

For an instant, I’m on my knees between her legs. She’s glorious, eyes open and balmy, and it’s how I must look staring back at her. The tiniest curve of her lips tells me she’s happy. I skim her stomach with my thumb again before I dive down, tearing my shirt off on the way.

“I can’t wait to feel all of you,” I whisper. “Everything. Your heat, the slickness. Ah it’s been a whole week.” I croak the last part out as I kick my jeans to the floor. “I can’t be away from you a whole week again.”

My dick jerks as if it’s her touching me when I grab it, and I probe her core with its head. Soft and killing me, she parts and takes me deep, every inch of me until I’m as warm, as enveloped as I can be.

I force myself to lie still, chest meeting chest and hearts racing. For her I can freeze the moment.

“Move,” she pleads, but I press my mouth to hers, breathing slowly, my control fortified by her impatience.

“So eager,” I whisper against her mouth and she moans, she moans, and it’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever heard. Then I do move, small rolling efforts on top of her, pushing her into the mattress and forcing myself in far between her legs.

“So good,” she stutters, pelvis high and begging for more. I let my arms circle her ribs. Tighten my hold so I can move her on top of me without losing our connection.

Carefully, I push against her shoulders, a test—does she trust me enough to ride me like this? My nuts draw up high in expectation. She’s timid, but she’s turned on now, very turned on.

She opens her eyes again, meeting my gaze and understanding without words. Unhurriedly, she obeys. Draws back up like a beautiful little jockey ready to sprint the last yards to her goal. She arches over me, nipples hard and pointy.

My hands go up, kneading her as she rides me. She’s slow, like I knew she’d be if she controlled the pace. Her head falls back, throat curved, and if I’d been there—if I could reach her, I’d eat her there too.

She’s a dancer, torso swaying on me in slow motion, owning the feel of me inside of her and pushing down against my crotch.

“So gorgeous,” I pant. “So delicious. I love you. Still. Still I love you.”

When she approaches her climax, I catch it from the quiver in a thigh. From the sudden strength in her grip as she bends into our kiss. I lock my arms around her. I want her trembling against all of me so I know it’s
me
who gives her this.

When she does, she muffles a scream into my neck. I wish she hadn’t. It is the sweetest sound when this woman comes.

I’m a selfish man. While she trusts me with her climax, I mark her with my kiss, a blue rose waiting to bloom on the delicate skin beneath her ear.

A flash of satisfaction runs through me.

What will the competition think now?

BO

She’s upset.
So upset. Why is she upset? I don’t understand. She’s hot as a forge and sad as the ocean, interweaved in mysterious waves. Her face over me on the bed. I brought her to the moon, but here she is now, crashed.

“Are you thinking of him?” I ask, jealousy making my voice gravelly. “Is it too much to ask that you don’t think about him when you’re with me?”

“Bo, you can’t even fathom,” she says, getting dressed like I only bought her for a few hours. I’m still on the bed. I haven’t even cleaned myself up yet. No, I’m on my back with a knee wide, showing her the goods she enjoyed so thoroughly minutes ago.

I can’t win!

“What’s happening right now,” I say. I get on my feet and swallow the distance between us. I’m in her face when she straightens, her eyes glossy again—again she’s ready to cry. “How is it that I make you cry?”

“You don’t. You make me happy.”

“Sure doesn’t look like it!”

“Please…”

“And how the hell can I ‘fathom’ anything when you say nothing? Nothing! You’re thinking about him. Why? Is it because you want to leave him?” I take her hand before she can bend back down to strap her shoe on. “Because if you do, I’d be the happiest fucking loser in the world. I’m begging for scraps, here, and it’s what I get too—fifty-seven minutes of temporary bliss. Hey, is it that you can’t help sleeping with me and regret it every time?”

I’m thinking with my heart, not my brain—I can’t believe what I’m dealing with right now. My intestines grind with the need to own her because the love just doesn’t budge! It’s destroying me. I need her to make her mind up.

Fucking pick me!

“You’ve got to choose,” I grit out, bold, so much bolder than I am.

Her gaze lifts from my hand that’s white-knuckling hers.

“Choose what? I told you there is no leaving him.” She’s cruel. Too honest. Darker, much darker is her gaze, and it’s not from passion. It’s from grief, fear, anger, and all I can do is throw my arms around her and jerk her close. I bury my nose in her hair and inhale her fast, needing her so much I ache.

“Stay,” I plead. “Just stay. Tell me more about you. Make me understand what’s going on because I’m so fucking lost. I’m lost in you, and I hate this confusion, Nadia. Nothing should be this confusing.”

Hesitant, she links her arms around my waist. We breathe together, hearts thundering between us, wall to wall.

“Do you like me?” I ask, pitiful. “A little?” She can’t say no, or I am crushed. Nadia, my beautiful girl who strings me through Hell to Heaven and drops me back off downstairs once she’s done. She lifts her face from my chest, secret-keeper eyes penetrating mine in one, big, full, right-on, truthful stare and says—

“I’m in love with you too.”

NADIA

Until tonight,
I didn’t realize the extent of what I’m doing to Bo. I saw it in the words he threw at me, in the frustration of his embrace, and even now, after I’ve agreed to stay the night, the strain lingers in fine lines around his eyes.