Hot and Bothered (11 page)

* * *

D
ESPITE
WHAT
L
YN
had done to him, he’d never seen sex as a power game. Sex, especially since Lyn, had been a convenience, a way of forgetting. A way of leaving the things he
didn’t
want to think about for a realm where thought was inconvenient and unnecessary.

But between Haven’s legs he felt powerful. Hearing the slick, wet sound of her as he moved the head of his cock over her clit, feeling her tipped-up hips pleading with his body to deliver on its promise. And his name on her lips, that
please
like a chant, like a
mantra.
He felt invincible.

“What do you want?” he asked.

She licked her lips, closed her eyes and lifted her hips higher, trying to engage.

He resisted for a moment longer, wanting to prolong this perfect, on-the-edge feeling.

“You’re
killing
me,” she whispered.

He braced himself on his arms, fitted himself to her without needing a hand to guide him, and gave her the head of his cock. Her heat enveloped him, squeezing him, and his balls drew up tight.

It was too much. He couldn’t hold back. He thrust into her abruptly, and she exhaled, a deep half-moan on her lips as she grabbed his ass and pulled him in close.

“Oh,” she said. Just that.
Oh.

He wanted to stay where he was, pressed up against her where she needed him. He wanted to do this for her, let her keep wriggling against him, making little needy, whimpering noises, digging her fingernails into his back and her teeth into his shoulder. He wanted her to come for the fourth time, but he was too far gone. His abs contracted and his hips thrust forward, driving him into her, drawing him back so he could get more—more power, more length, more stroke, more Haven, more, more, more.

And far from complaining, she was crying out her pleasure at the pinnacle of each plunge, his name,
please
,
more
,
oh
,
I’m coming again
, and he wasn’t sure he’d given her the three minutes he’d promised her, but there was no helping it now, tension gathering in every muscle in his body, in the curl of his toes and the kinks in his fingers and the strain in his neck, coalescing into something pinpoint small and infinitely big, exploding outward and collapsing inward at the same moment.

He barely had enough of his wits about him to disengage and rescue the condom before he collapsed limply beside her.

She rolled to her side and draped her arm and half her body over him, rested her cheek against his damp chest and sighed contentedly.

Of all of it, of everything, it was that sigh that undid him. Her little exhalation was yielding, was release. He’d made Haven come spectacularly, over and over. He’d made her do things she’d never done before. She’d pushed him beyond his own controls.

But it was the way she willingly put her clean cheek to his sweaty skin and gave herself over to him that choked him up.

And terrified him.

What happens now?

He stroked her hair and listened as her breathing evened and slowed until he was pretty sure she was asleep.

He tried to imagine it. Haven waking up and smiling at him. Telling him,
That was amazing.
Let’s do it again.

They’d do it again, Haven just as wild and uninhibited.

They’d order takeout and sit up in her bed—

He was ninety-nine percent sure Haven didn’t eat takeout in bed.

He was ninety-nine percent sure Haven wasn’t going to smile at him and say,
That was amazing. Let’s do it again.

He had a vivid mental picture of what she’d do when she woke up and found herself twisted in damp sheets, wrapped around his body, salty from sweat that had cooled and dried. She’d pull back and try to smile. She’d reach up and fix her hair into a perfect do, hard and tight, fasten it so it couldn’t escape. Then she’d button herself back into her clothes, as if she were putting armor on. And all the while, she wouldn’t
quite
look at him, as if by avoiding him she could also avoid having to admit what she was doing, that she was shutting him out and saying goodbye.

He could see it so clearly, it already hurt.

10

I
T
WAS
DARK
when Haven woke up, only a little light filtering in from the street, and she didn’t know what time it was or why her body was sore all over, her neck stiff, her cheek sticky. And then everything came back.

Her first impulse was to run.

Right now, she felt as if she had something to give him, but that would change. The meeting—colliding, really, a kind of physical cataclysm—of their bodies was enough for him.
For now
.

But eventually he would want to dig deeper. He would want the kind of meeting of souls that someone with his depth deserved. He was filled with emotion and passion, and he was able to find a matching passion in other people, with his music, with his teaching.

And she—

She wouldn’t be enough.

But, of course, there was nowhere to run to. He was asleep in her bed.

Her second impulse was to kick him out, but then she looked at him and found she couldn’t take her eyes off him. He was sound asleep, his mouth open just a little, breathing slowly, his long lashes motionless on his beautiful face. Effort and the humidity of the room had curled his hair just a little. He looked so peaceful, almost angelic. She didn’t want to wake him. In fact, she didn’t want him to go. She wanted to hold onto him as long as she could, as long as he’d have her. But she knew what would come—eventually he’d see that when he cracked her open, he wouldn’t find the hidden depths he needed, but only more of what she’d already given him.

So she lay back down, her face on his chest, wrapped her arms around him and went back to sleep.

The next time she woke, it was morning, and he was not in bed with her. A moment of panic set in. He had run. He had kicked
himself
out.

But no, she could hear him moving around the kitchen, and then she could smell coffee and breakfast cooking.

She got up, wrapped herself in a satin robe and went into the kitchen where he was frying eggs wearing only his jeans, slung low on his hips, that fine angled line of hip muscle just visible. He smiled tentatively at her, and she smiled back.

With a quizzical look, as if she hadn’t done what he expected her to do, he crossed the kitchen and embraced her. He was warm and solid and somehow fierce. She rested her cheek against his bare skin, his chest hair rough, the now familiar scent of his skin overwhelming her. Her lips almost twitched with how much they wanted to explore his firm contours.

“I wish I were actually a songwriter,” he said against her hair. “Because I could write a really good song about that sex.”

“Can I ask you a question?” She had to pull away from him a little, because she knew this wasn’t an easy question, and it felt like cheating to have her face buried in his chest.

“Anything you want.”

“Why’d you do it? Let that producer convince you to play with Sliding Up? Was it really just that you were broke and needed money?”

He turned away, giving the eggs and bacon more attention than they probably required.

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want,” she said. “I just thought—it seems so far from who you are. Maybe so far from who you
ever
were. I mean, I didn’t know you then, and maybe you were really different, but I feel like—” She stopped.

“Like you know me now?” he said.

“I guess I feel like I do.”

“I feel like you do, too.”

He caught her gaze and held it, and she felt heat wash upward through her body and sweep down again. Behind the heat was something, too, some emotion that filled her and swelled her heart, making it hard for her to keep looking at him.

He crossed his arms protectively. “I guess—I guess I did it because I wanted someone to convince me that the music mattered. It’s pretty thankless, you know, being a musician. You work your butt off, you pour your soul into it, and you’re lucky if you have an audience, and then you’re lucky if the audience enjoys themselves. And these guys came to me and they said, hey, we can make you famous and rich, and you’ll have an audience every night, and they’ll show up and clap and throw themselves at you. And maybe it was just too much for me to resist.”

He flipped the cooked eggs onto two plates, not quite meeting her eye. The lines on his face looked more pronounced, making him seem suddenly old again, the way he’d appeared that first day in the restaurant. She hadn’t realized how carefree he’d become with her recently. She thought of the man in the restaurant, how angry and worn-out he’d been.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she said.

“I sold out,” he said quietly. “I sold out my music.”

His voice cracked with the pain of it, and she felt it in herself, like a line fissuring through her own chest. She wanted to do something, anything, to give back to him what he felt he’d lost. He’d made a very human decision all those years ago to be recognized for his work.

“It’s not finite,” she said. “It’s still in you. I heard it the other night. It’s not something you sell out and then it’s all gone. It’s still there for you if you want it. If you wanted to make the blues thing happen, I am totally convinced you could.”

He let out a breath then, as if he’d been holding it, all the time they’d been talking. All the time she’d known him, maybe. Maybe all his life. He’d been waiting for someone to absolve him.

He took her in his arms and kissed her so fully and so deeply that she almost said, “Forget breakfast,” so she could take him back to bed. But then her phone buzzed and she pulled back, pretending she hadn’t seen the look on his face—still quizzical, but now disappointed. The beginning of the deeper disappointment he would feel in her one day not too far off. She went in search of her phone, finding it in her purse on the floor of the bedroom. She wasn’t sure how it had failed to wake her up, because she seemed to have twenty-two new voice mails.

There was no way that could be good.

She started to panic almost right away, her mind searching for explanations—something had happened to her family, someone had seen her groping Mark in the cab, someone had released video of their exploits in the dressing room to the press.

“I have to listen to my voice mail,” she called to the kitchen. “I have a million messages, apparently, and I only have that many when there’s a crisis. Since you’re my biggest client, that means the crisis is very likely to be you.”

“Haven,”
the first message began. It was a stranger, and at least there was no death or urgency in the woman’s voice.
“This is Suellen Marvel at
High Note
magazine. We know Sliding Up is planning a comeback tour, and we’d like to talk to you and set up an interview with Mark Webster.”

All the other voice mails were variations on that one. Damn it. They’d lost control of the timing of announcing the tour. Someone—she suspected Jimmy Jeffers, though she knew better than to accuse him—had leaked word of the possible tour to the media. She bet Jimmy had gotten tired of his stars squabbling, tired of waiting for Mark to capitulate and Pete to act like a human being. She bet this was his way of forcing their hands.

All the reporters who’d called her seemed to know that Pete Sovereign was a wild card, that his participation wasn’t yet ensured. Some were dubious that he could be convinced, and a few even said they didn’t believe that Pete and Mark could ever work together again. Many of them seemed to question her ability to make Mark Webster show-ready, and two mentioned Celine Carr’s Caribbean high jinks, doubting flat-out Haven’s ability to keep a PR situation from turning into a circus.

Well, they could shove it, because she didn’t doubt her abilities.

Except that—

What had she done?

If sleeping with her client wasn’t turning a situation into a circus, she had no
idea what was.

A total of seventeen separate reporters had contacted her. But only one of the calls made her heart pound—the one that mentioned knowing that Haven had taken Mark to Nordstrom yesterday, and asking what that trip was about. That caller also knew that they had left the department store together, though, it seemed, not where they had gone. But it was way too close for comfort. They were being watched. They were being watched far more intensely than she had imagined.

She cursed herself, her unruly, out-of-control desire for Mark Webster. How had she let this happen, not once, not twice, but three times? How had she allowed herself to be sucked in deeper each time?

She’d chosen sex over her career, that’s what she’d done. Like some horny politician Tweeting photos of his dick or accepting blow jobs under the desk.

She had to regain control.

Maybe it was better this way. Rather than waiting for the clock to run out, for Mark to realize she wasn’t good enough for him, maybe it was better to be the one who brought things to a neat and tidy conclusion.

“Mark.”

He flipped a slice of bacon, and didn’t look at her. There must’ve been something in her voice that warned him he wasn’t going to like what she was about to say.

“Someone leaked about the tour. The press is on to us.”

“What does that mean?” His tone was suspicious.

“We have to be—we have to be more careful.”

“You mean we have to be discreet.” He said it flatly. “And I know that really equals ‘celibate.’”

“Mark.”

“Haven.” He crossed his arms to match hers.

“We can’t keep doing this.”

“Haven. We’re not doing ‘this.’
This
—” he gestured, encompassing both of them, her apartment, the kitchen, breakfast “—is not a
this
. It’s us. It’s—”

“It’s messy. It’s foolish. It’s dangerous for you and for your father.”

He closed his eyes. “Haven, I like you. I like you way too much for games.”

“I know,” she said. “I like you way too much for games, too. That’s why we can’t play this one. I want you to have what you need, and that means being—
celibate,
if you prefer—for the time being. Until the tour is well underway, or maybe even over.”

“Couldn’t you drop me as a client? Couldn’t I work with someone else?”

“Not now,” she said. “Seventeen different reporters know we’re working together. If you went to someone else, then everyone would want to know why.”

“And we could explain. We could tell the truth.”

The truth was evident in how she’d felt with him yesterday. In the dressing room, in the cab, in her bed.

But truth wasn’t her job. Jimmy Jeffers had given her a task: clean Mark Webster up, make him ready for the tour. Even if Mark
thought
he didn’t want her to, she had to stick with the plan.

And she had to find a way to make him understand.

“Oh, hell,” he said, before she could speak. “You don’t want to. You want the tour. You’d rather give up what’s happening between us for your career, or whatever it represents to you.”

“It’s not just about
my
career,” she said. “It’s about
yours
,
too, and about your father. I can’t turn everything we’ve both worked for upside down for something that might just be a fantasy. I mean, here we are, and I’m your fairy godmother, right? You know, people write articles about this in image consulting–trade magazines. Don’t fall for your creation. It’s a huge danger, to make someone over to be exactly who you want them to be, and then when they’re how you want them—clean shaven and short-haired and well dressed and behaving like you’ve told them to, fall in—”

She stopped before the word could pass her lips. His jaw tightened at the omission, and she wondered how he would have reacted if she’d said it out loud, that thing she wasn’t sure was true but also wasn’t sure wasn’t true.

Maybe some people would have had a moment of revelation right then.
Oh, my God, I’m in love with him! Or I might be, anyway!
And they’d stop in their tracks and say,
Love trumps everything, let’s throw caution to the wind and just go with the flow here.
But that was only half the equation. Suspecting she might have fallen in love with him didn’t tell her anything about how he felt about her. And even if he believed himself to be in love with her—

She cut off her own runaway thoughts. “When you make someone over, you can think they’re someone they’re not. And they can try too hard to be who you want them to be. That’s not good for either of you. You’re not my creation, you’re a real human being. So let’s give you the time to be that person before we complicate things any more.”

Mark turned away, then back, his eyes dark. “Don’t say, ‘let’s’ like it’s a decision I agree to. I hate the idea. What I want is to go back to bed with you and stay there for another few days.”

God, that was an appealing suggestion. Her body still held the imprint of his and she craved more, not just of what he could do to her physically, but more of him, the man who knew her weaknesses and wanted her anyway.

But she shook her head slowly. There were vultures closing in on them. “Hiatus,” she said. “Mark,
please
.”

He hung his head for a moment. Then he straightened and looked her in the eye. “I’ll make you a deal. You can have it your way. But first, we eat breakfast. And then we go back to bed.”

How much harm could it do? It wouldn’t be a hardship to go back to bed with him.

What would be a hardship was stopping after that.

Well, life was tough. Sticking to the plan was difficult. Image was demanding work. But it was good work, too. Necessary work. “And then we take a break.”

He nodded. “If that’s really what you want.”

“It’s the right thing for you, too,” she said. “Trust me. Going forward, I’ll make sure you have an acceptable date on your arm for all the events, and it’s not going to be me. I’ll find you another date for the fund-raiser. I’ll be there, but not with you. Just
there
.”

“Making sure I don’t screw it up,” he said bitterly.

“No—don’t be ridiculous. Just—” But of course he was right, wasn’t he? She’d be there in case anything went wrong, to rein him in or advise him.

“Will you have a date, too?”