Fix It Up - Mary Calmes Page 0,103

diamonds or––”

“No,” I assured him. “I want the one you’ve loved all this time.”

He threw up his hands in defeat.

“What?” I asked, chuckling, loving him all disgruntled. It was just as sexy as him behind me on the bike because both spoke to his want of me.

“Suddenly all you say is the right thing?”

“Always,” I replied, my voice sultry as I grinned at him. “Unless you’re planning to take your ring back?”

“God, you’re an ass.”

I couldn’t suppress the cackle.

“You’re going to be wearing that ring for the rest of your life,’ he assured me. “It’s best that you get used to it now.”

“I dunno,” I said flatly.

“I’m sorry?”

I grunted.

“Oh? Think you can do better?”

I shrugged.

He growled. I laughed.

“I’m warning you that if you take off that ring, I will do something so horrible that––”

“I won’t take it off, jackass,” I rumbled, gesturing for him. “C’mere.”

I loved how fast he moved.

That afternoon, people started showing up, and there were more cars along the road than the day before. I told Nick I wasn’t sitting up front like a crazed groupie, but I would walk around and wave from time to time.

“Okay,” he agreed as we ate lunch together on the porch, me answering emails, him plucking on the strings of his guitar, writing in his spiral notebook as he worked through lyrics. “Hey,” he said, bumping me with his boot.

I turned to him after I finished typing the sentence.

“The guys and I talked, and the new record is going to be called The Reckoning.”

“I like it.”

“Yeah,” he whispered, nodding, looking down at his fingers strumming the guitar and then back up to me. “And so, you know, the first song is called ‘Heart and Lock,’ and, well…it’s about you.”

“Me?”

“Don’t sound so distraught.”

I groaned. “What about me?”

“Ridiculous head-over-heels-in-love things that I’m certain will make you physically ill.”

I let my head fall back on the swing as he chuckled.

“The band said they had no idea I could even write a ballad.”

“Oh God.”

“And a power ballad at that.”

The horror. “Do not ruin your career over me,” I groused at him.

“No,” he agreed, leaning sideways toward me.

“What?”

He snickered and puckered.

“I do not kiss on command.”

“Oh, baby, I know,” he agreed, his voice hoarse and silky. “I have to work for it.”

“That’s what you’re signing on for,” I warned him.

“I am aware,” he said with a sigh, tipping his head at me. “Now, please come here.”

I meant to simply brush his lips with mine, but he caught my bottom lip with his teeth, gently, letting me know I was trapped. He tasted like sweet tea and the salt from the potato chips he’d eaten, and a trace of peaches. I made sure to deepen the kiss in case there was any flavor I was missing.

His groan was decadent, as it had been earlier, and I felt a roll of arousal go through me, because he was telegraphing a desire I wasn’t sure he was even aware of.

“Nick,” I said softly, my hand on his cheek, my thumb sliding over his lips. “Honey, could there be a way you want to seal this new thing between us?”

His pupils were huge, utterly blown as he stared at me, and his breath caught when I slipped my thumb into his mouth.

“Did you want me to take you upstairs, put you up against the wall, and then send you out to sing with my cum still dripping out of your ass?”

I not only saw his shudder, but I felt it, and the swing jostled with the movement. When I pulled him forward, kissing him, taking the guitar away and putting it gently on the table in front of us, his hands fisted in my T-shirt as I tipped his head back and devoured his mouth.

When I eased back, parting us, his breathing was rough, hitching again and again.

“I leave marks,” I warned him, lifting him to his feet and meeting his gaze.

“Yes, please.”

“You can’t whine, and you can’t cry.”

“No, I would never.”

“This is you giving me consent.”

“Absolutely, yes,” he almost keened, and because I didn’t want anyone to see him so needy, so out of control, I grabbed his hand and hauled him after me.

Everyone else was down at the stage where the band would be playing again, so there was no one there to witness me tugging him up the stairs and shoving him through the bedroom door, locking it behind me. When I rounded on him, he was there, staring at me, waiting, and I grinned before I