Blame It on the Bass (12 page)

The sides of Levi’s mouth twitched. A little.

But it was enough. Corbin’s heart sang. Even if Levi didn’t take him in his arms and find heat in Corbin’s body, Corbin had helped him find his smile, no matter how small it was.

“Nice socks,” Levi murmured.

“I heard rock stars have a thing for them.”

Levi returned his gaze to Corbin’s face, raw need a dark fire in his eyes.

Corbin swallowed, every molecule in his body straining for Levi’s touch, a touch that didn’t seem to be coming. “Do you want me to go?”

Without answering, Levi turned and walked back into his studio.

Numb rejection crashed over Corbin. He let out a ragged breath and froze when Levi opened the cupboard next to the grand piano and withdrew a set of suede-lined black leather cuffs from the top shelf. “No,” Levi said, half-turning toward Corbin, his attention fixed on the wide restraints in his hand. Restraints he had fixed around Corbin’s wrists more than once in their time together. He lifted his stare to Corbin’s face. “I don’t.”

Corbin’s pulse slammed fast in his neck. His mouth grew dry. His balls rose up. His cock throbbed. Fuck, did his cock throb.

Nodding, he entered the room.

On silent, sock-covered feet.

Chapter Seven

“To be honest—” Sonja cast the sign above the entry door to the rowdy bar a curious look, “—I thought it was going to be a private session.”

Levi ran a slow gaze over her profile, a silent chuckle vibrating in his throat at her reaction to their destination. “Sonny, if you wanted a private session you shouldn’t have suggested karaoke.”

Sonja threw him a sideways glance full of contempt. “You’re not doing yourself any favours, Stan.”

He shrugged, placed his palm on the small of her back and guided her into the bar. Mizuku was, according to Google, Sydney’s best karaoke bar. Established only a few years ago, it was the perfect blend of Japanese kitsch, technology and high-end dining. Expensive to eat at, its clientele were rich, discerning and discreet. In other words, exactly what Levi wanted for their first
date
.

When Sonja and Corbin came face-to-face in a proper introduction, Levi didn’t want a horde of onlookers gawking the whole time.

Guiding her through the crowded bar, he noted more than one local celebrity. A news anchor and a shamed former model once known as the “face of Australia” sat huddled together in a shadowy-lit booth, their fingers laced, their stares locked. Levi wondered if he should remind both of them they were currently in relationships—the news anchor was married to a senior politician and the model-cum-gossip target was engaged to the lead singer of an ARIA-winning rock band.

“Is that—”

Hurrying up his pace, he moved Sonja along before she could name names. Truly, it wasn’t his place to be the morals police. After all, he was here with a woman he was eighty-percent certain he wanted to fuck. The fact his partner had instigated the date didn’t seem to dull the edge on his guilt. Nor his desire.

Damn, he wished Corbin were here.

The ache for his partner—strong and undeniable—pulled at his gut. They’d spent the afternoon in his studio, rarely speaking. He’d dominated Corbin in every sexual way, binding him bent over the piano stool, fucking his arse and sucking on his balls until Corbin broke the rules and begged Levi to let him come.

Which Levi finally did—close to thirty minutes later. After he’d punished him for his pleading, firstly with a suede flogger and secondly with a glass dildo.

Only then did Levi bury himself deep in Corbin’s arse and lose himself in their simultaneous orgasms.

The sex was powerful and raw and carnal. And still, Levi felt…disconnected. And Corbin could tell. No matter how hard Levi tried to hide it from his lover, Corbin could tell. The pain in his eyes when he looked at Levi as they wordlessly showered together, cleaning each other’s bodies with hands too steady not to be controlled, told Levi his lover knew.

Which tore at Levi’s heart.

When the time had come to collect Sonja, Corbin had suggested he meet Levi and her there. “Better we ease her into this, don’t you think? Otherwise she’s going to feel like a rabbit trapped in the headlights of an approaching semi.”

Levi had agreed, taking the seventy-four minutes needed to get from their apartment to Sonja’s home in Sydney’s western suburbs to figure out what the fuck was wrong with him.

The answer had still eluded him when he’d pulled to a halt outside Sonja’s neat, gum-tree surrounded Victorian-era house in the ’burb.

He’d deliberately kept the conversation neutral during the trip to Mizuku, Corbin’s description of Sonja as a petrified rabbit playing on his mind. And yet, by the time they’d arrived at The Rocks, the trendy, historical suburb right on the water’s edge where Mizuku was located, the tension in his body had begun to ease.

What did that mean? That the sex he shared with Corbin was so amazing it stole his ability to think and breathe, but finding joy seemed to be an impossible task unless his old high school girlfriend was with him?

Had he always been this fucked up? Or was he just stuck in some fucked-up time warp where his subconscious had decided his past was safer than his present? Because if that was the case, his subconscious was more deluded than he was, given how horrific his childhood and past—

“Perfect timing,” Corbin’s deep voice with its sinfully sexy American accent yanked Levi from his bleak reverie. “I’ve just ordered fries.”

Levi blinked, drawing his attention to his lover now moving with that awkward sideways shuffle everyone employed when trying to exit a booth while semi-standing up. That Corbin—normally super smooth and graceful in all physical motion—was so awkward filled Levi with a deep lick of warmth. The only reason for such comical inelegance was to put Sonja at ease.

Levi shot her a quick glance. It seemed to be working. Her lips were dancing, mirth lighting up her eyes.

Christ, he’d forgotten just how beautiful she was under all that rough-diamond façade. Her eyes were the most exquisite blue. She had such expressive eyes. He’d always known what she was thinking, how she was feeling back at school.

While she’d complained she
never
knew what was in his mind.

Just like Corbin.

“I’ll never get use to calling them chips, I’m afraid.”

At the sound of Corbin’s chuckled statement, Levi swung his gaze to his partner, his heart tripping a beat at Corbin’s warm smile. Hell, when was the last time he’d truly seen his lover smile?

At Levi’s side, Sonja laughed. “You can call them fries all you like, as long as I’m allowed to make fun of you.”

Corbin grinned at her. “Deal.”

If they were nervous, neither showed it. They both looked relaxed, at ease. Of course, Sonja was the girl who’d spent a whole day at school without wearing underwear beneath her short school skirt and Corbin was the guy who’d accepted an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay in front of a tuxedo-donned crowd while wearing a pair of old denim jeans and Shaun of the Dead T-Shirt.

Shuffling back into the booth, just as comically clumsy as before, Corbin pulled a face and then dropped onto the seat and looked up at him.

To Levi’s right, Sonja studied him. He could feel her gaze on the side of his face.

A finger of terror stroked up his back. Where did he sit?

Sonja’s laugh caressed his indecision. “Yeah, you’re really ready for a threesome, Stan. You can’t even figure out which side of the table to sit at.”

Narrowing his eyes at her, he lowered himself onto the bench seat on which Corbin sat and slid closer to him.

Sonja chuckled, dropping onto the opposite bench and positioning herself right in the middle of the seat. “Thatta boy.”

Levi glared at her. Corbin chortled.

Almost drowned by the music throbbing from the speakers scattered everywhere in the bar, Levi heard his name as well as Corbin’s uttered on faint whispers more than once.

So much for the clientele of Mizuku being blasé to celebrities.

He pulled a slow breath in an effort to steady his heart.

Sonja kicked him under the table. “Okay, Stan, you’ve got me here. Maybe you should actually do the introduction.”

On Levi’s right, Corbin chuckled.

Levi leveled a steady look at her. “Sonja Stone, this is Corbin Smith. Corbin, Sonja.”

Sonja cocked a mocking eyebrow at him before turning a friendly smirk to Corbin. “Corbin. Can I just say, I love the screenplay for
Occasional
.”

“Screenplay? Don’t you mean movie?”

“No, screenplay. I have this weird thing where I read a movie rather than watch it. I think it has something to do with the movie
The Last Samurai
. A guy I knew sent me the screenplay for the movie for some reason. I read it and was blown away. Then I watched the film. And umm, well, sufficed to say, what I saw in my head based on the screenplay was much better than what I saw on the screen. Plus Nathan Algren in my head
wasn’t
Tom Cruise.”

Corbin chuckled. “He wasn’t
my
Nathan Algren either.” He shot Levi a grin. “I like her already.”

Levi smiled, his gut clenching. “I figured you might.”

A curious light flickered in Corbin’s eyes. A faint frown pulled at his forehead. And then he turned back to Sonja, fixing his attention on her. “So tell me what you do for a living, Sonja.”

She grinned. “I read smut and correct spelling.”

Corbin’s eyebrows rose. “Err…”

“I’m a senior editor at an erotic romance publisher.”

“Ahhh. I see. Which may also explain the screenplay-reading thing, yes? You’re skilled already at creating pictures in your head based on words?”

Sonja laughed, a relaxed snort Levi remembered well. “That’s one way of putting it.” Slouching back in her seat, she studied Corbin with open curiousity. “You know, you’re the first person I’ve met who doesn’t get all flustered and prudishly embarrassed when I tell them what my job is.”

Corbin shrugged. “You’ve read the screenplay for
Occasional
. I’m not adverse to writing detailed sex. Mind you, that scene didn’t make it onto the screen for some reason.”

“That scene made me as horny as all hell,” Sonja declared.

“Why, thank you.” Corbin nodded his head with a smirk, even as he shifted on the seat. His thigh brushed Levi’s and a searing current of want stabbed deep into Levi’s groin.

God, it would be so easy to flatten Corbin to the bench and make love to his gorgeous mouth with his tongue right now.

The desirous thought—raw and powerful—stole Levi’s breath. He stiffened on the seat. Ground his teeth together.

Beside him, Corbin moved his leg away. Because he’d felt Levi’s discomfort and misread it?

With a low growl at the absence of Corbin’s heat on his thigh, Levi reached below the table, dug his fingers into Corbin’s leg—high, right next to the bulge of his scrotum—and pulled it back.

His lover’s shaky exhalation told Levi he was just as unsettled as Levi was. Would he be as hard as well? Because holy fuck, Levi’s cock was a steel pole right now. Hard, engorged and trapped at a painful angle within the snug denim crotch of his jeans.

He swallowed, closed his eyes and opened them again, forcing himself to focus on Sonja. Who watched him with contemplative interest.

“You’re more than welcome, Corbin,” she said. “Thank you for writing it. There’s nothing I like more than a well-written f—”

“Here’s your appetizer.” A large bowl of steaming chips smothered in melted cheese appeared on the table, the waitress delivering them running an evocative inspection over Levi before smiling at Corbin. “Sake is on the way.”

She gave Levi another smoldering look—the kind that said, “I will let you do whatever you want to me”—and then walked away.

“And there it is.” Sonja reached forward, plucked a chip from the bowl and raised it high to stretch out the tendril of yellow cheese clinging to its tip. “The invisibility cloak that comes with sharing space with celebrities.” She flicked Levi a knowing grin. “The same thing used to happen when we dated, if I remember correctly. I’d follow you to a gig, you’d play, we’d be hanging out after and the girls would come throw themselves at you as if I weren’t there.”

“You’ve experienced that as well?” Corbin snagged a chip from the pile, giving Levi a sideways smirk. “I’ve lost count how many times I’ve had to point out I’m with Levi when we’re out and about. Especially at post-award ceremony parties. There’s something about those parties that makes women—and a lot of guys, to be honest—forget social etiquette dictates they wait until the boyfriend is
out
of ear shot before offering their bodies as objects of sexual slavery.”

The pit of Levi’s gut clenched. His balls tightened. He slid his stare to his lover, letting his lips pull into a slow smile as he smoothed his palm up Corbin’s thigh and cupped the rigid bulge in his trousers. “You know a good sexual slave is
hard
to find, right?”

A hitching groan fell from Corbin’s throat. His stare locked on Levi’s.

For a straining moment, silence enveloped them.