Manipulated: a Rockstar Romantic Comedy (Hammered Book 3) (16 page)

“God, no. Every woman wants to say they were throughly ravished.”

I grinned down at her. “That you were.” I wrestled out of my pants and flipped my phone out of my pocket and onto the bed, before tossing my jeans to the farthest reaches of the room.

She settled in against me and I lifted my phone to flash a picture. The first time she’d been in my space. I needed it for myself.

She pushed at her hair. “Oh, Owen. Being ravished doesn’t mean you get to take a picture of it.”

I laughed. “Sorry.” I tossed my phone onto the end table. Before I settled back in with her I snagged another condom out of my drawer. I owed her a little more than a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am.

When I was done with her, she was a limp noodle and her thighs were still quaking. Only then did I flop onto my back beside her.

“Do you do underwater sports, or is that just a fun side hobby you have there?”

I turned my head with a grin. “Say what now?”

She held a finger up as her chest heaved. “I need a minute. I think I forgot how to breathe.”

I rolled onto my side and swiped my tongue over her nipple, taking it inside my mouth for a thorough suck before releasing the dark rose tip. Her back arched for more. I was dead on my feet, but willing to oblige.

She caged my face with her fingers. “Uncle. I can’t come again. I’m dehydrated.”

“I should feed you.”

She rested a shaking hand on her belly. “I can’t move.”

“Well, you can just lay there.”

“No, I prefer to participate, but I require sustenance.” She licked her lips and pushed her hair out of her face. “And a shower.”

“You start the shower, I’ll get us a gallon of water and carbs.”

“Could those carbs include ice cream?”

I slid out of bed and threw a smile over my shoulder. “Aye, I think that can be arranged.”

“You are a god among men.”

“Don’t say that around my ma, she’ll have your knees bruised purple from kneeling at a pew.” I leaned back. “I, however, would help you end up with bruised knees for a lot less holier ventures.”

“You’re all heart.”

“So, I’ve been told.”

“Get.” She pushed me out of bed with her foot. She pushed her hair out of her face. “Get me ice cream.”

“I’m going, I’m going. So damn pushy.”

She sat up in bed, holding a sheet around her chest. “Can you carry me to the shower?” She held up her arms, the sheet falling away.

“The lady plays dirty.”

“But I can’t walk. It’s too far.”

I laughed and dragged her out of bed, but instead of the romantic carry, I tossed her over my shoulder. She slapped my ass. “Not what I had in mind.”

I set her down in my master bathroom. “Think you can manage?”

She made a slow circle and those summer sky eyes started to get all focused. No focusing tonight, thank you. I led her to the huge glass shower and turned on all the taps.

Surefire way to distract.

“Oh, what’s that?”

I grinned at the wonder in her voice. Same tone I had when I saw the bathroom the first time. Nine different shower heads and a rain hood would do that to a person.

She stepped under the spray, then waved me away. “Okay, you can go now. I need to be alone with my
new
boyfriend.” She blinked water out of her eyes and scooped her hair out of her face. “I didn’t mean—”

I dragged her back to the doorway and kissed her hard. “Mean it, bunny. I want you to mean it.”

Her eyelashes were starred with water and so wide I feared she’d need surgical assistance.

When she didn’t say anything, I gentled the kiss, then stepped back. I needed to let her get used to the idea. “I’ll be right back with that ice cream.”

“Right. Okay.” She stepped back under the stream of water.

I grabbed a pair of boxers before I ran downstairs. I raided every pantry I had to make the perfect sundae for us to share and grabbed two bottles of water. By the time I got back upstairs, she was out of the shower and curled into the huge pie-shaped chair I had by my picture window.

I set the bottles on the table, then the huge bowl into her lap. “Here we go.”

“Holy crap.” She swiped her finger through the layer of whipped cream.

I grabbed her hand and drew her finger into my mouth. “Delicious.” Then kissed her. She drew a slow breath in as I eased back, then settled behind her. “Like my chair, then?” I settled her back against my chest.

“Best seat in the house.”

I scooped her wet hair over her shoulder and settled my chin against her shoulder. “I’d have to agree. Especially now.”

She smiled a little, then held up a spoonful of sundae to me. “Yeah.”

Now this was a little bit of perfect. I curled my arms around her waist. “More, please.”

“Now I have to feed you?”

“It’s only right, don’t you think?” I grazed my lips against her throat.

“Owen, the ice cream is going to melt if you keep that up.”

I took the bowl from her and set it on the table. “I’ve got more.”

I
was pretty
sure I was going to turn into a puddle on Owen’s expensive bedsheets.

Scratch that. I was already a puddle.

Maybe I’d died and this was the afterlife. All things considered, leaving this mortal coil after a string of orgasms so long that your chicken had been thoroughly choked—not so bad.

“I don’t have a chicken,” I mumbled, pressing my face against a hard male shoulder. “Unless my button counts as…as a little chicken?”

Rich husky male laughter poured over me and I shifted, wanting to get closer to the source. His chest was rumbling with it, but I wanted his mouth. Oh, his mouth. Dreams were born and satisfied there.

Eyes closed, I moved toward where his lips should be. When we were millimeters apart, he fisted a handful of my hair and made me open my eyes.

His were oh so blue, terribly satisfied, and centered right on mine.

“What are you on about, bunny?”

“Choking a chicken.”

His eyebrows winged up. “Okay. Some dream you had there. Did you grow a wanker then in yours?”

“A wanker?” I almost felt behooved to check under the sheets. “No, no wanker. Just I know that’s a term for coming a lot, right? And I did. So did. But no penis. Is my clit a little chicken?”

“Just when I think you’re completely nonsensical, a little bit sneaks in to keep me off my guard. Darling, you didn’t masturbate. I can tell you that for sure, as I happily did all the heavy lifting.” He peeled up my sheet and I had the joy of watching his expression glaze and his jaw actually slacken. “I’m about to go for round two.”

“Round two? Try round fifteen. A match can’t have this many rounds. You nearly killed me via fucking.”

His lips curled and his fingers tightened in my hair as he tipped my head back. “Finally I get a fucking out of that pretty, polite mouth. Did I have to coax it out of you?” His other hand coasted down my back. “Should I give you more of the same and see what else you can say when properly motivated?”

I tipped my forehead against his. “Huh. I did say it. Didn’t even mention forking first.”

“A damn stupid word, by the way.”

“What about spooning and sporking?” I shifted and settled myself against his morning wood. Such an early riser.

Then I lifted my head and squinted at the alarm clock. “No way. It can’t be that late. We slept this long?”

“Needed recovery time, love. I’m an extraordinary man for sure, but even I have my limits.” Grinning, he pressed a kiss to my nose. “Besides, we ate too somewhere in there. Have you forgotten?”

I seemed to have forgotten a lot, including how to use the lower half of my body. An inconvenience, since I now urgently had to pee.

If only I could have been certain I wouldn’t trip in the bedsheets and fall flat on my face if I attempted to move. That was how out of sorts I felt. My limbs were warm and loose, and my head…

Yeah, I was even loopier than usual. In a very good way.

“So this idea to come here to get away, gotta say excellent plan, rockstar.” I planted a kiss on his mouth, and though he smiled, something dimmed in his gaze.

“That has no place here in this bed.”

“Sure it does. It’s part of you, just like I’m a photographer. It goes with me everywhere, whatever I’m doing or who I’m with.” I rolled over to grab my iPhone off the nightstand.

Post-sex selfie time. I better take pictures of my after-coitus face as proof. For who, I didn’t know, but as they always say, pictures or it didn’t happen.

And this had definitely happened. The whisker burn on my breasts and inner thighs could attest to that.

I settled back into the pillows and lifted the phone. Before I clicked the shot, I fiddled and tried different angles. Even in a quickie photo wasn’t quickie for me.

Oops, nip slip. I tugged up the sheet and clicked the button.

Owen leaned over and pressed his cheek against mine. The sheet dipped precipitously lower but my breasts were still covered. I just looked as if I’d had an incredible time.

“Take the picture of us, bunny.”

That low, sleep-roughened voice in my ear could make me do all manner of things, most of them naughty. This particular thing wasn’t even a stretch. I wanted to take pictures of us all loved up and cuddling in bed. I wanted ones even more intimate than this. Ones where Owen nudged the sheet down and cupped my breast, trapping one taut nipple between his fingers.

“Do it,” I murmured.

He cocked his head. “Do what?”

“Touch me. Please.”

“While you’re holding that in one hand? So you are a kinky girl.” He licked the side of my neck and obliged me by sliding the sheet lower. Instead of cupping one, he braced his wide hand over both as well as he could, plumping them up. Hiding my pink nipples from the camera as I snapped the button that would capture us for posterity.

“More?” He changed his pose and wrapped his tanned fingers around one of them, the contrast of our skin tones stark. I was so pale, and he was not.

“God, that’s hot.” My voice was shaking. I was shaking. Just seeing him touch me so possessively triggered something hot and toe-curling inside me.

“It is. We can get even hotter.” He pushed down the sheet and slid his hand between my legs. With merely a flick of one of those long talented fingers, I was straining. My wetness coated his fingertip and he growled in approval. “Still raring to go. I wonder, love, if I put my head down and tasted you if you’d continue to snap your photos. How long do you think you would be able to?”

I opened my legs.

“Oh yes, there’s an exhibitionist inside you. I so enjoy urging her out to play.” He bent to suck on nipple while his tongue lapped at the crest of my breast. “Hit video,” he said in a guttural voice, and I couldn’t say no.

Couldn’t stop.

Slowly, so slowly, he licked my nipple. All the while, he strummed me as leisurely as he might his bass during the building phase of a song. But there was no climb here. I was already primed from last night and this morning. He simply had to bear down on my clit while his teeth grazed my tight tip and I was coming. Hard.

“Don’t stop the video,” he commanded as I struggled to hold my hand aloft enough to get the action in view. Only years of training at maintaining a shot and that sexy, demanding voice held enough sway over me to help me keep my arm reasonably steady.

“Again,” he purred, and this time, he lowered his head between my thighs. “I want to see you come on camera. Want to keep it for myself so I can look at it whenever I want, instead of relying on my memory.” He slipped his tongue between my swollen lower lips and I cried out.

But I kept rolling.

“Look at you. All flushed and wet for me.” He opened up my pussy, his touch so delicate that my hips lurched off the bed. I needed rough and hard—again, still—and he was so gentle. “Come closer.”

Swallowing hard, I brought the phone closer to his head. To where I could see his tongue separating my folds and diving deep to scoop out my wetness. So much. All for him.

“Someday we’ll get another camera. One that can get your face while you watch me eat your pussy on camera. While you see every little lick.” He curled his tongue and I moaned, my sweaty hand nearly losing grip on the phone.

Then he pushed two fingers into his mouth, getting them damp. Knowing where they were going only made me eagerly buck my hips.

“No patience.” He pressed his lubricated fingers against my entrance, sliding in without effort. I was drenched for him. “Ah, bunny, me either. I need this pussy around my fingers. Against my mouth.” Hand flexing, he lowered his head to resume his oral ministrations. “Come for me. Let me feel it again.”

If I couldn’t say no to him, my body definitely couldn’t. I broke apart around his fingers and he groaned, reaching down to palm his cock. Stiff and gorgeous, it curved away from his groin. He was that hard for me, because of me.

Even as I gasped through my climax, I turned the phone toward his hand grasping his dick. It was probably the most delicious thing I’d ever seen.

Unfortunately, I was breathing too hard to keep my hand steady. I pressed stop and let my arm drop, intending to resume taping when I stopped wheezing like an aging train.

Owen deftly plucked the phone out of my hand before I could. “Let me see.”

My face heated. I trusted him implicitly, so I wasn’t worried my rash actions would come back to haunt me. In spite of our short relationship—it seemed impossible we’d come this far this fast—I knew I could count on him. He wasn’t the sort of rocker to brag about conquests or to leak a sex tape to up his social media clicks. Owen Blackwell was a good man, the kind I’d never imagined might want me.

I was too many things. Too ungainly, except when a camera was in my hands. Too snarky, too apt to say the worst thing at the worst time. Too thoughtless, too self-conscious.

Too full of feelings for this man to even have the slightest clue what to do with them.

“Christ, you’re a vision. I need copies of these. Many copies. On every device I own, on every hard drive—” He stopped as I laughed softly and turned my face against the inside of my arm. My cheeks were flaming. “What? You don’t believe me?” He turned the phone toward me and I couldn’t close my eyes. “Look at you, so close to coming for me. Trying so hard to hold back and being unable to. That is potent magic, knowing I unwind you just as you do me.”

“You do. All you have to do is look at me or speak to me and I’m lost.” And now I was sounding as fanciful as he often did.

That wasn’t me, but with him, it was. He brought out new sides of me. Ones I’d stuffed down or denied entirely. I’d never been more myself than when he was at my side. Or inside me, loving me with his gaze.

Almost immediately, I tried to backtrack. He was fond of me, sure. But love? I didn’t want to fool myself. To set myself up to be hurt again. Wasn’t that why I’d been trying to keep a part of myself safe and remote all this time?

But I couldn’t. Not when it came to Owen. He had all of me, and I couldn’t hold anything back.

Even if we ended things tomorrow, I couldn’t give less than my all.

I sat up to rub the heel of my hand over my chest. I couldn’t breathe again, and it wasn’t due to afterglow.

It was all too much. Too fast, too soon. It didn’t feel too soon, and that was the scary part. Was I setting myself up for the biggest fall of my life? Far bigger than what I’d experienced with Steven, because I’d never felt like this for him. I’d loved my husband, of course, but this was a whole new ballgame.

I dipped my head as my skin grew clammy and my heart started to race. I was going to have a panic attack right here in Owen’s bed. Owen, Mr. Rockstar. Yet more proof why we could never suit.

Even if we’d been suiting up just fine for a while now.

He chuckled and I jerked up my head as if he’d fired a gun. “What?”

“Just sent one off to Instagram. We look good together, love. Imagine the beautiful babies we’d make.”

I barely registered the babies comment, though I’d be unpacking that one at length later. In my already panicked state, all I could think about was that he’d “sent one off”.

“Which one? You posted our sex pictures on the internet?” I snatched back my phone, my cheeks heating anew.

What had I been thinking to do that with him? Who was I becoming?

You. You’re finally, finally becoming you.

“Hardly a sex picture. Don’t you think I have more discretion than that?” His voice was mild, but his expression was not. “After what we just did together, you still have so little trust in me?”

“It’s not about trust. It’s about you taking an intimate moment and sharing it with the masses. People who didn’t know me, who might enjoy making trouble for me. God, the band. Lila.

Donovan
.

I scrolled to the post he’d made and let out a sigh of relief. It was just us cheek to cheek. Of course it was. He wouldn’t try to hurt me or embarrass me, even as part of a joke. We were both covered, but we also were both obviously bare-shouldered and very close in proximity. And it was hard to see the bedsheets and pillows as anything what they were, especially when paired with the caption he’d chosen.

A very fine morning indeed.

The post was already garnering likes by the bucketload.

I was going to be sick in Owen’s bed.

“What about my job? If I get fired…this isn’t professional…oh God, Owen, this isn’t like you have a shag with Keys. You’re on equal footing. You have money.” My windpipe tightened until I couldn’t draw in enough oxygen. “If I get tossed off this tour—”

He sat up and grabbed my phone, tossing it aside. “What about Keys? What does she have anything to do with this?”

“Nothing, except I see how you look at her. How you fawned after her when she got hurt.”

“Fawned?” He whipped the sheet aside and stood up in all his naked glory. “Excuse me for saying so, love, but I’m not one to fawn over anyone. I know I said I was different from your bloody waste of space of an ex-husband, but that doesn’t mean I’ll just pine over someone who doesn’t want me or has found someone else.”

All at once, it dawned on me. I hadn’t been just blowing smoke about Keys or grasping at drumsticks when I was in the midst of an attack of fear. He really
had
looked at Keys the way my jealous mind had tried to insist the night I’d patched him up in the bathroom after the show.

“She didn’t want you? How can that possibly be?”

“Oh, Jesus, this has no bearing on us. On what we did in this bed or the moments we’ve stacked together to make something whole and real.” He slapped his hands on the bed and leaned across the mattress to get right in my face. “What I felt for her is a shadow. I only thought it was huge until I met you. The feelings you arouse me, God, woman, I could just take you over my knee and—”

“And what? Spank me into not being afraid about losing my job? I thought you understood how much a part of me it was.”

I wasn’t going to think about the spanking thing. How much it intrigued me, and how exciting it was to send Owen spiraling out of. He’d made me that way from the first day we’d met, for God’s sake, so turnabout was only fair.