Romance: Gibson's Legacy ( New Adult Contemporary Erotic Romance) (Last Score Book 1) (3 page)

Smirking wickedly at her, I said, “I could say the same. Look at you dancing around in your panties.” Shaking her head, she leaned over and pulled a blue cotton t-shirt from the pile of clean laundry and pulled it down over her slender frame.

“What time are you meeting Kace?” Those words jolted me right back to the bar and M3rCy’s upcoming performance. Unsure I would be able to sit through it, I swallowed hard, twisting my mouth at Julie.

“I don’t think I’m going to make it tonight. An assignment for my media class is proving more difficult than I thought.” It was a bare faced lie. I could still feel the soft pressure of his hands on my hips from that briefest touch, but one that I was finding hard to shake.

Eventually, Julie wore me down because part of me was being irrational about that little encounter. Wishful thinking probably made me see more than there was, besides, I couldn’t hide from him indefinitely. Once Julie talked me around I showered and changed to go out with them. There was no way around it anyway I had to face him again sooner or later, Beltz Bar fed me

Seeing Kace made my heart swell. After all this time he could still make my heart flutter and the thing with Gibson was probably infatuation. Leaning back lazily against the front of his truck, his legs crossed at the ankles, Kace was engrossed in his cell phone. My stiletto heels clicked noisily as I approached and he looked in my direction.

Slowly, his pouting mouth stretched into a beautiful, sexy smile, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “Well, hello there beautiful. How is my gorgeous girl tonight?” Smiling warmly as we walked towards each other, I licked my lips, preparing for the kiss I knew we’d have as soon as we made contact. Strong, warm arms wrapped around me-- one around my waist, one over the back of my shoulders, as Kace pulled me into his chest.

“Great, and it just got a whole lot better.” Grinning with pleasure, I glanced up at him, right before he bent and kissed me softly on the mouth. All my worries about Gibson and going back to the bar dispersed as soon as Kace were together.

I had started to think that my interlude with Gibson was all nonsense and I’d been ridiculous in my thinking that what happened was anything other than an innocent interaction. From my own perspective, I thought it was probably best for me to get this particular gig over with, as it would the first of many more times I’d have to be around him.

My friend Ruby and her boyfriend Dylan had already snagged a table for us. Unfortunately for me, it was right in front of the stage. Stupid that I should feel so shaken by what was probably a very innocent situation I had blown out of proportion.

Ruby stood up from her chair and edged her way around Dylan’s legs to cuddle me. “Thank God you’re here, I thought I was going to be stuck listening to these guys talking car parts like they were pornographic images. I mean who would have thought there were so many parts to an engine, that it had been the only topic of conversation for the last twenty minutes?”

Ruby’s face was a picture, her lips pursed and her eyes rolling. She always did look very dramatic, and had one of those really animated faces when she was explaining something. Smiling my understanding of how boring the guys got when they talked cars, I nodded towards the rest rooms for us to have a five minute catch up without the guys in earshot.

Kace saw someone he knew and excused himself from me as at we were walking to the table. When I turned to see if he was coming he was at the bar talking to one of the girls in his lab class. Their discussion looked pretty intense.

Glancing over, he seemed to stop in his tracks and smile at me, and I immediately relaxed. Turning back to the girl, he continued to talk to her, leaning in a little as if she couldn’t hear what he was saying.

She looked frustrated with him whatever they were talking about, and although Ruby was talking to me, I was still watching them as we crossed the floor, until I had to lose sight of them to go into the restroom.

“So, we have a ‘close up and personal’ of Gibson tonight, Chloe. Still got that hot fantasy going around in your head about him?” Feeling flustered, my heart started beating quickly because I was taken off guard by Ruby’s remark about the disclosure I made at the slumber party. She was choosing this moment to throw it back at me. I began to blush and protest that it was all made up on the spur of the moment to shock her and the other girls there.

Ruby laughed loudly and shook her head. “No way, Chloe, we all saw your reaction when you were talking about him, honey. It wasn’t as much about what you said about him, and more about
how
you said it.”

Turning away from her to use the hand drier, I was glad of the noise it made because I needed a moment to collect my composure and leave a pause in the conversation. Protesting too much was much worse than letting it go.

Leaving the restroom, I wondered how I was going to get through the evening after the encounter with Gibson that morning and Ruby’s comments. The night was only beginning. Desperate to shake off the lingering feelings that his brief touch had given me, I decided to focus completely on Kace during M3rCy’s performance.

Not usually the most outgoing or demonstrative person, I surprised Kace by sitting on his lap when we got back to the table. I felt a bit embarrassed about my public display of affection but this was rewarded with a seductive smile on his part, and he slid his warm hand up the inside of my tight fitting, red t-shirt at the back, causing the hem to ride up my belly at the front.

Just as he did that, Gibson and the rest of M3rCy walked out on stage, his gaze immediately falling to my bare mid-rift. When he looked up again, he caught me watching him, watching me. Raising an eyebrow at me, he smirked suggestively then licked his bottom lip.

Looking away, I squirmed uncomfortably on Kace’s lap, which Kace read as a sexual overtone and pulled me tighter onto his growing erection, by gripping my left hip and positioning me more central on him.

For a moment I thought about having an imaginary migraine so that I could leave, but I knew I had to get over the stupid misplaced attraction I felt for a guy who treated women like sexual objects.

The conversations I’d heard previously from his band members was enough to turn me off. And, although I hadn’t actually heard Gibson use the term, his band mates often talked about other bars they were going to as places where they got to sample “fresh meat.”

Striking the first cord, Mick, the lead guitarist, dragged me out of my reverie and my eyes automatically followed the sound. Gibson was walking over to the mic wearing a tight fitting black t-shirt with a Harley Davidson motif on the front, tight fitting dark blue jeans and a pair of biker boots. Classical disheveled rock star attire.

Strong upper arms strained the short sleeves of his t- shirt and exposed his amazing bold tribal tattoo on one arm, and a clever bass guitar tattoo on the other. The guitar strings on this were inked like the stave on a music manuscript, with notes positioned along the strings or stave, and words written along the neck above which said, “Heart strings can only truly be tugged by music.”

While wrapping his fingers around the mic he took from the stand, the introduction to a cover of “Just Like Heaven” by The Cure played. An instant hush fell as the room held their breath waiting for him to sing.

Choosing the line ‘I’ll run away with you,’ he started staring straight at me and I was embarrassed by his attention. Gibson seemed to sense my discomfort and that only made him focus all the more on me.

Coming close to the edge of the stage, he made me his target female to sing to. That was a very normal occurrence for him; Gibson did that with every song. He generally singled out a female in the audience and sang in a way that made the girl feel it was just for her.

Averting my eyes from him, I looked in Ruby’s direction and she was singing along but raised her eyebrow at me. Her questioning brow made me feel like I was being ridiculed by the both of them, so I looked at the floor. Rising off Kace’s lap before the song ended, I excused myself to go to the restroom.

I was humiliated by what had happened and there was no way I could continue to sit there with the level of scrutiny I was under. Twice in twenty four hours I had been stuck in the same restroom, mortified by the selfish attitude of Gibson fucking Barclay.

CHAPTER 3 - LUCKY GIRL

Chloe

Somehow, I managed to fumble my way through the rest of the night in the bar after Gibson’s ‘personal performance’ aimed at me. It wasn’t so bad when Julie and Brody arrived. She positioned a chair directly in front of my line of vision from the stage, and that gave me some respite from the scrutiny that Gibson had me under.

Ruby was the only one who seemed to notice what was going on with Gibson and as soon as we were alone she cornered me. “Oh. My. God. Chloe. Talk about eye fucking? It’s a wonder he didn’t whip his dick out and shove it down your throat. That performance between you both was smoldering hot! If you had seen your face, it was priceless. You were trying to give him an, I- couldn’t- give- a- shit face, but what I was seeing, was an uncomfortable, hot and horny reaction from you.”

“Ruby! That’s bullshit, why would I feel anything for a guy like that when I’m lucky to have someone like Kace?” Ruby looked like she was considering my comparison for a moment then grinned.

“Gibson Barclay, experienced, seriously hot, highly sexed and well-oiled machine, is why.” She grinned wickedly at me. “Come on Chloe, there isn’t one girl on campus that would turn that guy down if they came on his radar. Well, I definitely wouldn’t.”

Dropping my jaw, I said, “Even after what I told you about him yesterday?”

Laughing out loud, Ruby threw her head back before making eye contact with me again, widening her eyes at me, “Especially, after what you told me yesterday. I’d love a guy to take me like, with that amount of want that he just couldn’t control himself and couldn’t stop.”

Shaking my head in disbelief. “Ruby he wasn’t doing that because he was being passionate about being with that girl, he was taking her like that because he didn’t give a shit about what she wanted, or how she felt. Don’t you understand the difference?”

Staring at me like I had just said something outrageous, she smirked. “I get it. Sex is still new to you, right? You’re the one that has no idea about the difference. Sex isn’t all hearts and butterflies, stolen glances and going to bed in the dark naked, Chloe. There are
all
different kinds of sex, fun sex, angry sex, make- up sex, hard and fast, slow and sweet, kinky, freaky, quiet, sneaky…”

Not wanting to listen to any more, I interjected. “Alright, I get it. You think my inexperience is making me miss something? Let me think about that a moment.” I pretended to reflect and tapped my lips with my forefinger and rolled my eyes high to my brows, as if deep in thought, then gave her eye contact again.

“Umm, no way. It would make no difference to me, if I’d had ten guys and tons of sex. One thing I can assure you of is that Gibson Barclay would still not be a candidate for me to have sex with.”

Smirking, Ruby rolled her eyes. “Okay. Have it your way, Chloe, but at some point in your life you are going to regret making that remark and you’ll have to eat your words on that one. I hope Kace is everything you ever dreamed of in bed, because my thinking is that there is something about Gibson’s smile that says there is a lot more to him than people know.”

Huffing out loudly, my thoughts were that she was being absurd. “Ruby, look at me. This is me. Chloe. Average build. Average height. Average student. Average. What would a guy like Gibson ‘I can have any woman I want,’ with his velvety soft southern twang that makes women swoon, see in someone like me, apart from an easy lay? Incidentally, he’d be way off with that, if he ever tried to pick on me.”

Ruby was shaking her head and the disappointment on her face was a clear sign that she was fed up with me putting myself down. We’d had many conversations about how she thought I looked to other people. She felt I had some “image issues,” as she called them. And I felt I was being realistic.

“How many times do we have to have this conversation Chloe? Do you think you would have landed a guy like Kace if you weren’t a stunningly gorgeous, sweet girl? Kace is one of those visual guys who needs to like what he sees to be interested. I’ve never known him to go out with anyone who wasn’t beautiful, and before you, there was never anyone steady. You need to wise up about how you look, lady. Sure you don’t get dressed up and wear make-up, but you have no need for that stuff. You are an extremely beautiful girl, Chloe. You need to start owning that.”

Leaving the conversation hanging, I was too tired to argue any more. Gibson had messed with me enough, and the less I thought about him the better. Kace was waiting outside the restroom when we came out and I saw this as an opportunity not to go back to the bar.

“I’m beat honey, do you mind if we leave?

Ruby raised her eyebrow at me and I nodded, so we arranged to see each other on Wednesday and she headed back to be with Dylan, while Kace and I headed home.

In the few short weeks since Ruby and I had arrived at college we were already growing apart. We had been so nervous about leaving each other behind that Ruby, Kace and I had all applied to the same university, and were stoked when all three of us got accepted.

Walking towards the car, we saw Gibson already getting into his car, with what looked like the red headed girl, Sian from my creative writing class getting in on the other side. Shaking my head, I was surprised at the sudden feeling of disappointment that seemed to grip me and squeeze at my heart.

Unsure whether I was disappointed with myself, or with Gibson, I asked Kace to take me home. There was no way I was having sex with Kace until I had myself back on track and had rid myself of the crazy thoughts I was having about Gibson. Kace looked disappointed when I said I wanted to stay on my own, especially after the way I was behaving during the gig, sitting on his lap and what he had probably thought that meant for later.