her fist in his open shirt and dragged his mouth down to hers.
Back on the street among the crowds eating at sidewalk cafes, Rielle laughed. There was insanity in Jake’s eyes, there was promise in his hand as he dragged her past shop fronts and restaurants and dodged waiters with drinks trays. He alone could make her feel the same exhilaration she felt when fifty thousand people screamed her name—this extraordinary man—a roadie.
A rock star for her heart.
The touch of his body between her legs and through her ribs and chest on the ride back to the hotel made her feel electric, like pure energy crackled in her veins, like she could fly if she wanted to.
In the hotel foyer, she was recognised by fans and stopped to scrawl her signature on a man’s shirt and pose for some hasty pictures. Once Jake would have stepped back, given her space, now he kept a hand on her shoulder, his action saying, “She is mine”.
In the elevator, he kept her pulled tight against his side, his arm around her back, his fingers under the hem of her shirt. At her floor, she took his hand and led him down the corridor to her suite. She had her jacket and her shirt off before he was properly inside the room and his shirt followed hers to the floor, his grunt of pleasure meeting her gasp of anticipation as their bodies came together.
He backed her up against a hall table, lifting her so she sat, wrapping her legs around his waist. His mouth was firm, insistent on hers. One hand pressed against her tailbone, holding her against him, the other in her hair. She opened her body and flattened against him. All thought dissolved, the sensation of his touch and her body’s response overriding every other purpose in life.
He broke away to pull off her boots. She lifted her hips so he could drag her jeans down, inspired by the look on his face when he took in her black lace underwear.
“Too nice to tear.” He breathed in sharply, placed a finger in the elastic string over her hip while his teeth plucked at the shoulder strap of her bra.
She deep breathed his sandalwood scent, so much better on him than it would be in the bottle. “Not yet.” She pushed him away. “Let me see you.”
He stepped back, undid his belt. His eyes never left hers. He discarded boots and socks, jeans and underwear. He was lit by the warm glow of a lamp which turned his skin golden. She sucked in a breath. She remade her life when she saw him naked. This is the body she’d had under her hands in the dark, and been too scared to look at, too tentative to devour, too scared to trust. She was a chronic fool.
Jake played it up, turning in a circle, his arms wide, like he’d done at the sound check earlier. He was work hewn and lean—a man whose physical grace should never be defaced by as pedestrian an object as a shirt. Every part of his body from his athlete’s legs to the triangular flare of shoulders was defined by flexed tendons and bunched muscles placed precisely for perfect form and function. He had coiled energy and languid, unconscious confidence and he was built for being touched, for loving.
Rielle clamped her legs together. She was a mass of wet urges and zapping electric shocks. She put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. “You’re beautiful, Jake.”
He laughed, disbelief etched on his face. “I’ll take whatever you give me, Rie. But it’s gonna need to be quick.”
“I can see that.” Quick would be glorious. It would burn out the fever, cap off the torrent of need, have the madness—the game—done with. She slid off the table, coming to stand in front of him. She unhooked her bra and then sent her lacy g-string slithering down her legs to the floor, making his breath hitch and his hands tremble.
In the lamplight, as she straightened, Jake saw the scar on her hip for the first time and frowned. It was a thick white line running from the dimple of her sacrum, across the crest of her hipbone, and along her lower abdominals to her pubic bone. He went down on his knees, his lips chasing his hands across that old highway of pain, that map line of remorse.
She gasped, her hands going to his hair, half wanting to push him away, half