Resisting the Musician (a Head Over Heels Novel) (Entangled Indulgence) (10 page)

Her pencil skirt hampering her, she let go only long enough to reach back and undo the zip, shimmying out of the thing.

When he palmed the soft skin of her backside, his fingers sliding lower, kneading, tormenting, she pulled away to drag in a gulp of much needed air.

Her eyes caught his—melting brown drowned by the pitch black of his pupils—and her heart knocked so hard against her ribs she could practically hear it.

She ran her hands slowly over the gorgeous, roping muscle of his arms. Then, finding the top of his jeans, undid the top button.

He sucked a breath between his teeth.

She felt the grin grow deep in her belly before it landed on her mouth. Then, leaving his jeans and the glory within, she explored beneath his T-shirt, reveling in the hard ridges of his abs. Her soft palms met hot skin, rasping whorls of hair, hard nipples. Loving his solid stillness, she knew she was taking him to the very edge of patience.

No holding back now, her hand dove back inside his jeans, palming the rigid heat. She dipped lower, finally finding the end of his shaft. Heat spilled into her cheeks at the thought that all that soon would be hers.

When she curled her fingers around him to begin the long journey back to the tip, Dash swore loud enough to rock the room, then kissed her so hard she stumbled back in her high heels.

Lifting her off the floor, he lowered her to a soft rug, as if she weighed nothing. He sat back, devouring the sight of her in underwear and heels. Yet as the fur at her back tickled her skin, all she could do was laugh.

“Sheepskin” she said. “By a roaring fire. All we need is Barry White.”

“I don’t think I have any Barry but…”

Dash reached past her, found a remote, pressed a button and the cool strains of Aerosmith punching out “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)”, thumped hard from hidden speakers around the room.

Lori laughed so hard her stomach hurt.

When Dash settled over her, hovering, careful, the outburst faded away.

She traced his twice-broken nose, the graze of his stubbled jaw, his beautiful mouth until her finger trembled in the face of what was about to happen—what had
already
happened with this strong, sexy, uncommon man. She was thankful he wasn’t looking into her eyes in that moment. Instead his gaze raked her face as if memorizing every curve, every freckle, every nuance.

And then he kissed her, his lips tasting hers before pulling away. Tasting again, deeper. His tongue tracing her bottom lip. Sliding into her mouth and kissing her deeply. The roughness of his stubble a gorgeous flipside to the beautifully soft fleece at her back.

With the heat of the fire lapping at her one side, and the human furnace hovering above her, Lori thought she might expire from the most glorious burn.

Things only got hazier as he kissed his way down her neck. Slidding the strap of her bra over one shoulder, praising every sin under the sun as his gaze grazed the swell of her breasts before his mouth took over, licking, sucking, his hot breath turning her nipples to hard buds before he moved lower.

She bit her lip to stop from crying out, gripping his thick hair when he lifted her torso to kiss her belly, dipping his tongue into her navel, before grazing his teeth over her hipbone.

His big hands swept over her sides to her knees, down to her feet, stopping at her heels; plain black pumps, the simplest shoes she owned. But the way he stared at them as he stroked the top of her foot, his thumb caressing her ankle, it was as if they were the single sexiest things he’d seen his whole life.

His endeavor moved north, past her knees, skimming her thighs long enough to press them apart. All the way.

She lifted an arm to cover her face, to shield herself from the fire, as if darkness would slow the heat rising within her. But when his nose nudged her center, sweet and hot, she knew there was no slowing, no self-protection. This was going to burn so good.

His thumbs followed the edges of her panties. Out to her hips and back. Delving a fraction further beneath the lace with each sweep. Until without warning he lifted her backside, pulled her panties free and tossed them goodness knew where.

Then, shifting her knees so that her high heels caught on the rug, he buried his face between her thighs, his tongue dipping so deep inside her she cried out. His next lick was slow and deep, gripping her with a kind of pleasure that was barely bearable.

He pleasured her senseless, the most bittersweet ache pooling deep within her till her center throbbed along with the rising thunder of her heart. And he held her there, his big rough hands cradling her backside as he drew her into his mouth and took her higher than she’d ever been in her entire life.

To the moon, the stars, beyond as the world exploded in a shower of fireworks, a smooth, delicious heat spilling through her in their wake, till she floated back to earth, pulsing.

It was forever before her vision cleared, before she could feel her breaths moving in and out of her lungs, before she even understood what had happened to her.

Which was when Dash began kissing his way back up her body, her over-sensitized skin screaming for relief, and for more. His deft fingers unclipped the front clasp of her bra, gently pressing the fabric aside, and under the blistering heat of his gaze she felt utterly bare.

“Beautiful,” he said, “so fucking insanely beautiful it’s not fair.”

The veracity of his words, the intensity of his touch, the wild in his eyes was so overwhelming Lori felt a sob rising in her throat. She swallowed it back. Found enough remaining strength in her boneless body to catch herself before she did anything stupid, like fall for the guy, and instead grabbed him by the belt loop of his jeans and tugged him down.

“Enough,” she demanded when his dark gaze settled on hers. “I want you, Dash. Inside me. Now.”

With a grin that turned her boneless limbs to pure jelly, he took off his jeans, found a foil packet in the back pocket, and set to sheathing the most impressive erection she’d ever seen.

“Seriously? Do you always have a condom in your back pocket?” she said, lifting onto her elbows.

“I was a boy scout. Always prepared.” A grin, a lift of the eyebrows, and then it didn’t matter anymore, as he was back, down, kissing her till she saw planets way beyond the edges of the solar system.

Lori wrapped a leg about him, the rasp of hair on his legs creating shivers through the parts of her that had any feeling left. His heat nudged her center and she pushed back, taking him, drawing him in, lifting to take more.

So much. Too much. He eased back. She breathed through it.

His, “Fucking hell, Lori, you are a revelation,” melted her till she took him to the hilt. And again, and again, the universe hers, before everything contracted to the heat swirling within her, Dash’s hard heat, spearing her, searing her, sheering through her till she felt like a thousand tiny pieces of pleasure, vibrating, intense, immense.

And with a cry Dash came, she felt it, felt him, filling her before she felt herself tear apart, shatter, gather, and float back to earth a whole new being.

Music thrummed in the background along with the new steady beat of rain on the roof. As Lori settled into Dash’s strong arms, she realized how far she’d come from
her
life at seventeen, and for the first time in her life that feeling didn’t count on distance, money, things.

She’d never felt this warm, this safe, this sweet.

She fell asleep, radiant in the flush of feeling, of fragility, of being a part of something larger than herself.

…

As the first rays of sunlight poured through the gap in Dash’s bedroom curtains, he watched Lori sleep.

A freight train, he’d called her, barreling through life with her fortissimo personality. And she was. Meaning last night had been inevitable ever since the first moment he’d caught her looking at him like he was a can of whipped cream.

It had also been transcen-fucking-dental. Lori was wound so tight when she finally let go it was either hold on or get out of her way.

But asleep on her stomach, her blonde waves splayed out across the pillow, the ferocious energy that crackled about her had quieted leaving her soft, warm, and so touchable.

And yet he kept his hands to himself. He needed a clear head with which to disentangle the happenings of the last few hours. Few days. Few weeks.

That night at her place had been a wake-up call. Going from his quiet sanctuary to a party in the city with many of the old gang leading to a kiss that had verged on becoming an act of public indecency—a total rock star move if there ever was one—he’d sweated on his actions being like a junkie taking a hit after four years stone cold sober.

But trying not to touch her while she sat on his couch…honestly trying to play the damn guitar, his theory had had less and less credence. He’d wanted his mate’s aggravating, interfering, out-of-bounds future sister-in-law and she’d wanted him. It had led to pretty much one of the most annihilating sexual encounters of his life.

That kind of thing happened to regular people who lived regular lives all the time, right?

He rolled to sit on the edge of the bed, and tugged his hands through his hair. He’d been world-famous at seventeen. Retired at twenty-seven. Who the hell was he to know about what was normal?

He glanced back at her, drinking in the curve of her hip, the way one side of her mouth kicked higher than the other, the mole on her right shoulder that had a twin on her left breast.

She wasn’t the first woman he’d been with since he’d left the band. For a while they’d been a fine way to numb the guilt. But she was the first he’d let into his home. His bed. His head.

And now the scent of her beneath his tongue filled places that hadn’t felt full in a very long time.

Dash dipped his fingers beneath a swathe of her hair that caught the rough calluses from years of plucking and weathered by more years of axes and hammers, sandpaper, and lathes. Reminders that his life was simple now. Or it had been until Lori had wanted a song. Then a kiss. Then all of him.

What else?

Every time someone wanted a piece of him it took something from him in the process. Sometimes as little as his time. Sometimes as large as his self-respect. Always more than he could afford. What else would Lori demand of him? Could he trust that, older and wiser, this time he’d know when enough was enough?

Dash rubbed his hands over his face and found a pair of jeans, a T-shirt that was clean enough, and slid them on. Not trusting he’d be able to refrain from giving in to the already mounting urge to wake her with his mouth at her breast he didn’t look back as he went through the doorway and down the ladder leading from the loft to the kitchen.

One thing he’d learned through the whole mess with Saffron, his uncle, and leaving the band was that all he could control was what came next.

Before he could second guess himself, Dash picked up the phone he often kept hidden in a drawer so he didn’t have to hear it ring and and picked out a number he still knew by heart.

“Yeah?” Rocky answered, his voice gruff.

“Hey mate, it’s Dash.”

A beat. Then, “What can I do
you for?”

Dash pictured Lori splayed out on his bed, her hair draped over his pillow, the scent of her imprinted on his skin like a tattoo. The fullness in his belly when he thought of her. A fullness that made his head spin and his cock ache.

Gritting his teeth, he said, “Tell me about the reporter.”

Chapter Seven

Lori’s eyes fluttered open. Wrapped up in a nut-brown comforter in a bed that wasn’t her own, she found herself face to face with a big feather pillow that looked as if it had survived a prize title fight, but its opponent was nowhere to be seen.

With a sigh, she rolled onto her back, and stared at the light flickering across Dash’s bedroom ceiling as her mind’s eye enjoyed a slideshow of memories. Dash and the sex. All the lovely, lovely sex. Sheepskin rug by a roaring fire, no less. Up against the wall in the hall. Before ending up in his big beautiful bed in the secret loft over the kitchen with the sound of soft rain pattering the window. Over and over until she was trembling, shaken, fractured.

And renewed
, she thought, stretching her blissed-out muscles.

Listening for sounds of him, and hearing nothing, she rolled out of bed, her weakened legs shaking as her feet hit the floor. Clueless as to the whereabouts of her clothes, she found one of Dash’s shirts. Taking a moment to breathe in the scent lingering in the cotton, she slid her arms into the soft holes then padded down the ladder in search of coffee.

Coming face-to-face with his space-aged espresso machine, she instead settled for tap water. And—from the smell of the kitchen—a freshly made chocolate croissant.

Then, listening with one ear for Dash and the other for his crazy dogs, Lori headed through the house. In the daylight, when she wasn’t looking at the place through a frown, it was actually quite lovely. Raw, rustic, comfortable, warm. The rare kind of place she could walk around in an over-sized T-shirt, her hair a mess, and truly not care.

Till she took a wrong turn and found herself in a six car garage filled with some serious automobiles. Only one car was completely uncovered—cream curvy, with wood dash and soft leather seats. A Bentley, she saw, licking croissant from her fingers before running them over a fender.

There was enough money in that one room to pay her staff for a year, and yet most were half-covered in tarps, collecting dust. Like relics of his past. Forgotten. Dismissed. This was the Dash she didn’t know. One with a past that jumped up to bite her when she least expected it.

A
woof
at the door had her jumping out of her skin. One of his dogs stood sentry at the top of the concrete stairs leading into the garage. Bowie with the whiter snout. He looked down his long nose at her, like a long-suffering butler.

Jagger lumbered up next to its friend, lolling its tongue at her.

“Hey boys,” she said, as she eased passed.

Bowie shot her a sniff for her efforts.

Lori shrugged. “He left me alone,” she said. “What did he expect?”

She got a conciliatory whump of Jagger’s tail for her efforts. Maybe this one wasn’t so dumb. When he leapt up and snagged her croissant she realized he wasn’t dumb at all.

“Hey!” she called out, something in the back of her head telling her dogs and chocolate weren’t a good mix.

Following the flash of a tail and the scrabble of claws on wood through a wing of the house she hadn’t been in before, her bare feet slid to a halt when she hit fresh air.

Before her was a shed, square and utilitarian, out of sorts with the elegantly rambling architecture of the house. Banging noises from inside told her she’d found Dash. The way in was through a musty old roller door. Which was open. As good as an invitation.

The first thing that hit Lori as she neared was the scent—an oddly pleasant mix of chemicals. Turpentine? Paint? And inside the cabin dust motes danced through a beam of muted sunlight desperately pushing through the one grime-smeared window at the rear, painting a squarish patch of light upon a workbench covered in tools, tins, dirty rags, empty beer bottles, coffee mugs…

And wood. Everywhere wood—chunks, logs, slivers, chips, shavings. Not a surprise considering she’d seen the guy swing an axe.
And how.
The surprise came by way of furniture in various stages of completion. A stool. A lamp table. A cabinet with smooth, rounded sides.

A shape moved in a dark corner. It was Dash bent over a workbench in old jeans, heavy work boots. Sweat dripped down his naked back creating damp curls at the back of
his neck. He worked a hunk of wood like he was exorcising demons from the thing, the interplay of muscles compressing Lori’s focus to the size of a pin head.

Chopping wood had been sexy, but this, whatever this was,
this
was the manliest thing she’d seen in her entire life.

She must have made a noise, probably something between a moan and a groan, as Dash stopped lathing, straightened his back, and turned—his dark gaze colliding with hers. Serious face. Flat mouth. No warmth in that gaze. Not even a fraction of the heat that had consumed her all night long.

“Your dog stole my croissant,” she said, her voice breathy. “Dogs aren’t supposed to have chocolate, right?”

“Which one?”

“Gray snout. Jagger?”

“He’s eaten far worse. He’ll live.” Then, “I thought you were asleep.”

“I was. I can’t remember the last time I slept so late.” She bowed her head in acknowledgement of his part in that, and got…nothing. Not a smile, a wink. His eyes never once slid to her bare legs, her mussed hair, her mouth.

A dog barked in the distance. A plane roared miles overhead. An odd sensation skittered down her spine. “When I couldn’t find you I went exploring. Found your garage. How many cars does one man need?”

“How many pairs of shoes does one woman need?” Dash moved away from the bench to prowl around her in a semi-circle.

“My opinion? As many as she damn well wants.” Twisting to follow, a cluster of nerves began vibrating uneasily deep in her belly.

He stopped next to the doorway—light from outside creating a halo around his huge form. It took her a moment to realize he was herding her out. And the sense that something was very off became a blaring siren inside her head.

It wasn’t as if she’d expected the night before to have changed anything between them—well, not in any consequential way—but neither was she going to be dismissed. Swept under a tarp and forgotten.

“What is this place?” she asked, turning her back on him to move deeper inside, taking care to avoid standing on any stray bits of sharp wood.

She glanced back. A muscle ticked in his jaw before he lowered a hand, grabbing rag from a nearby bench to run it over and through his fingers. Long fingers, the creases a deep brown, the beds ragged, the tips dark with…probably whatever secret men’s business he got up to in here.

“Did you make this?” she asked, when he didn’t answer her. She patted a stool with a square masculine back and softly rounded seat.

She stared at him long enough that he finally nodded.

Oh
. He had? Well,
wow
. Her trepidation mellowed as she paid closer attention to the workmanship in the room. She knew design. And while some of Dash’s ideas clearly hadn’t paid off, others were stunning, with a sense of movement in the graceful curvature.

“To sell?” she asked.

“Give away. Mostly. The pieces that are any good.”

“Where does a world class guitarist find time to learn how to do this?”

With an outshot of breath that told Lori Dash realized she wasn’t going anywhere, he rolled the rag into a ball and tossed it across the room. He straddled a stool—old, chipped, and laced with varnish—gripping the front, his big thighs bunched, his expression shuttered as he stared into the middle-distance. “My uncle was a carpenter.”

Disquieted by the thought of laid-back Dash Mills and profound loss in the same universe, Lori let the ‘was’ slide. She perched her backside against the edge of a table, and said, “And?”

“You really want to know about this stuff?” he said, a warning note edging his deep voice. “You, who usually can’t wait to get out of here?”

That was because she was a busy woman. Okay, also partly because she’d been trying to avoid what had happened the night before. Now that was moot, it was a Saturday and without the usual party invites and fashion shows that filled every inch of her calendar, for once she had nowhere else to be.

“Your uncle,” she persisted, crossing
her feet at her ankles, and finally drawing his gaze to her bare legs.

The fingers gripping his stool tightened.
“It’s not a story you want to hear.”

“Don’t presume to understand what I want to hear, Dash. I’m a complicated woman.”

At that, his mouth flickered. Just a fraction.

“I…I grew up in Melbourne,” he said, his words tight.

“You’re Australian?”

A nod.

So
that
explained the accent and the tripping cadences that snuck through every now and then. He was Australian. If possible, it only made him hotter. Maybe that was what he was aiming to tell her—he was the long lost Hemsworth brother.

“Bright, sunny, happy childhood,” he went on. “Till my parents died in a car accident when I was eleven. My dad’s Uncle Peter was my only living family. He agreed to take me in. Even though he lived over here, in Sausalito actually, and there were issues of immigration and adoption at play, he took me on. Even though he was in his fifties, a quiet man, a long-time bachelor, or so I’d thought. Even while I was a mess, belligerent, hell on two legs, he let me get it out of my system till the time came he decided enough was enough, then he gave me my first hammer. And my first guitar.”

Silence stretched between them as Lori found herself lost in thoughts of Dash as an eleven-year-old boy, no doubt adorable with his shaggy blond hair and puppy dog brown eyes. No parents. Then no family at all.

She crossed her arms under her breasts, as if that might tie up the knot of empathy that grew, and twisted, and bloomed inside her. “Did he play? Your uncle?”

Dash sniffed out a laugh. “No. But he knew Jake did. And Jake was the only kid from school I’d ever talked to him about. Mostly to complain he was a little shit. Used to try to rough me up any chance he got, probably because he saw the wild in me that he had in himself. Jake was gonna be the biggest rock star in the world and I’d taken piano lessons since I was a toddler, was kind of always able to pick up any instrument and just figure it out. The day Jake learned I had a
guitar,
he found me. Once I had him convinced he could be the poster boy, as all I wanted to do was play, that was it.
Paisanos
. Best mates ever since. As for the hammer? This guff is amateur hour compared to what Pete could do.” Dash flicked at a piece of lint on the thigh of his jeans when he said, “This old shed was Pete’s atelier, in fact. I had it moved here piece by piece after he died.”

If the room had felt airless before, now it felt positively stifling.

Despite the fact that his laid-back attitude drove her mad, a part of her secretly envied him; n
ot having to live by a clock, not having to spend every waking hour focused on where the next dollar came from, the fact that he only had himself to think of. But no matter how inextricably her life was tied to Callie’s—ups and downs, successes, and strings of horrendous luck—Callie was her heart. Without that cornerstone, that reason to strive, she’d be adrift.

With the business floundering, and Callie spending more and more time with Jake, Dash’s isolation suddenly felt like a mirror held up to her possible future. The floor beneath her feet seemed to tip and sway.

“When did he die?” she asked, no longer able to ignore the ghost in the room.

A humorless smile tugged at his mouth, and she knew. Like a piece of the Dash puzzle sliding into place with a sigh.

“A little over four years ago,” she said in her head a fraction of a second before the words left his lips.
When he’d famously left the band. Oh, Dash.

“That information is not for public consumption,” he added, lifting a hand as if trying to rein the words back. “Any of this, in fact.”

Lori felt a moment of pure panic. The song… But when Dash’s eyes cut to the workshop, she realized he was talking about his uncle, his story, and about the fact that he was dabbling in carpentry.

“Of course,” she said, swallowing hard. And while he didn’t mention the song, neither did she, telling herself that if it meant that much to him he’d tell her so explicitly. Because she
needed
the whole world to know that Dash Mills had written it. And soon.

“I’m serious about this.”

“I get that.”

“Are you sure? Because I know about the reporter.”

Lori shook her head fast. The what? Then a glimmer of understanding bled through and willful heat rose up her throat. “You mean Lita?”

He nodded. “I hear she’s heading to town. At your behest.”

He heard? Jake.
She was going to strangle him. Slowly. “Rosalita Matthews is a friend of mine.”

“The band doesn’t have the best history with her.”

“Really?” she said, crossing her arms. “Well lucky then you’re not
in
the band, as you’ve taken great pains to remind me.”

“And yet here I am again. All tangled up in the thing.”

He spat the last part out like it tasted bitter. Like it was her fault.

“I’m not quite sure what you’re intimating, Dash, but I asked Lita to do a story because she’s a highly respected entertainment journalist with a lifelong pedigree in the subject. The fact that she’s agreed is the best luck I’ve had in months.”