Seduction by Song (18 page)

The line comes out smoother than I expect it to. I’ve never been a pro at flirty talk like this, especially when I wasn’t backed up by my girlfriends, but it seems to have an immediate and profound effect on Romeo. His eyes darken with lust and he drags me up to kiss me again, hard and needy.

“Not here,” he says, breaking off the kiss with a low growl. He takes my hand again and begins to pull me deeper down the tunnel we’d entered. “They could find us here.”

The arousal that had been pooling in my stomach disappears instantly as my eyes go wide. “
They
? What—is someone looking for us?”

He must sense the fear that creeps into my voice because he stops again, letting go of me to cup his hands around my cheeks. I can barely see him in the dim lighting of the tunnel, but he catches my gaze and holds it until I start to calm down.

“Just the press, don’t worry. They’re nothing to be scared of. I do wish they didn’t find out about us so quickly.” He sighs, regret lacing his breath. “I would have loved to take you right there on the couch backstage, but those vultures were already swarming.”

“They won’t hurt us, right?” I ask, keeping my voice low and feeling silly for voicing my worries.

Romeo smiles and shakes his head. “Those idiots? I can take care of them.”

Although I get the feeling that it won’t be as simple as he thinks it is, I trust him for at least this moment and take his hands again.

“Lead on, then,” I say.

We continue down the tunnel, taking a few turns to lose any potential stalkers, until we finally come across a golf cart. Romeo feels around the driver’s side until he finds the keys. I suspect this isn’t
his
golf cart, but a short joyride at this time of night couldn’t possibly hurt—no one would miss this. Feeling like I was in high school again, breaking out of our parents’ house after midnight to meet under moonlight, I giggle as I climb in next to Romeo.

“Something funny?” he asks, his own voice laced with mirth as he starts the vehicle.

I look over at him and burst into laughter again. Romeo Ortiz, the rock star, was the kind of guy that was always photographed behind the wheel of the newest Ferrari or Lamborghini. I never expected to see him driving a
golf cart
.

He laughs when I explain what a strange sight this is, speeding up a little. “Golf carts are plenty glamorous! I drove them all the time back in the day when I worked at the golf course back home.”

I make a non-committal sound, just to tease him.

He seems to know that that’s my only intent, because his grin doesn’t falter. “What, you don’t think it’s manly enough?”

“
Ehh
,” I say, egging him on.

“Oh, I’ll
show
you manly,
chica
,” he says.

We both laugh. The road beneath our wheels turns to dirt. When I look around us, I see that we’re driving through some sort of park now. I’m not entirely sure where we are—Tampa’s not far from home, but I don’t usually have a reason to come up here—but I try to stay quiet and patient in anticipation for Romeo’s surprise.

To pass the time, I think back on what he’d said mere moments ago and ask, “You worked at a golf course?”

“My life hasn’t always been rock and roll,
as I think I briefly mentioned before,” he says. He doesn’t sound exactly bitter about that, but it’s definitely comes out sounding rather bittersweet. I wait for him to continue, and he does after a breath. “I had a few jobs in high school, just to get by. The golf course didn’t pay so well, but sometimes I would get a huge tip.”

I blink in surprise, trying to imaging working a
few
jobs in high school. I knew a lot of kids had to work to help out in their families, but I only every babysat some friends’ younger siblings a few nights a month. It wasn’t that my family was rich, but I was virtually their only child—Logan was ten years older than me and had moved out by the time I was a teenager. So my parents pampered me and told me I didn’t need to find a job until college, wanting me to enjoy my youth instead of being laden down by work.

Looking over at Romeo, I see his shoulders tense a bit as though just thinking of those years stressed him out. I smooth a hand over his shoulders, trying to relax him.

“You must have worked hard to get where you are,” I say.

He nods, smiling when he looks at me out of the corner of his eye. “Everyone works hard to get to the place they’ve always dreamed of being.”

I smile, too, liking the sound of that philosophy very much.

“We’re here,” he says, finally.

I look up, and gasp.

Romeo pulls over in a clearing in the park that we had been driving through. While most of the streetlamps we passed were broken or shut off, this small area is illuminated by a set of beautiful lanterns. A picnic table sits in the center of the clearing, decorated with a silky blanket and an old-fashioned wicker basket that opens to reveal a huge variety of picnic foods.

“You planned all this?” I ask, whirling around to face Romeo.

He smiles, plucking a single rose out from behind his back—where had he even been
hiding
that?—and holding it out to me. “Of course. Well, Jonathan—my driver, you met him earlier—helped with the set up. I couldn’t very well be here
and
on stage, after all.”

I wrap my arms around him in a tight hug, pressing a kiss to his cheek. “Romeo, it’s
gorgeous
.”

He nudges me back a little and leads me to the picnic table. “Shall we? I hope you’re hungry.”

I almost start to nod, the delicious scent of the foods he had prepared wafting up from the basket, but stop when I realize I couldn’t possibly sit through dinner with Romeo so close to me. Instead, I shake my head and wrap my arms around his shoulders until he looks at me again.

“Not for food,” I tell him, whispering like it’s a secret. “I thought you were going to show me how
manly
you were.”

He grins as he wraps his arms around my waist, his grip firm as he lifts me up to place me on the picnic table. I drop my hands in surprise and shiver at how pleasant the fabric covering the table feels against my fingers.

“Is that a
challenge
?” he asks, breathing low and dangerous in my ear.

Without thinking twice about it, I nod. I open my mouth to say something, anything, but I’m interrupted when he claims my mouth once more in a passionate kiss. I gasp against his lips as he pushes me back, spreading me out flat on the table as he spreads my legs to hook them around his waist.

He’s already hard through his jeans, thrusting his hips against my inner thighs in tight little jabs. I groan and feel myself getting wet at the thought of exciting him like this, of him being so aroused over my body.

I know he can feel my wetness as clearly as I can feel his erection. I had chosen a skirt for that night, and it parts easily to reveal my damp panties. He grabs both of my wrists in one of his hands and pins my hands above my head, kissing me again and stealing my breath away.

It’s so distracting that I don’t notice his fingers working to push my panties aside until he’s rubbing the pads of his fingertips against my clit. I hear myself moan breathily into the night sky, startling some birds in the trees nearby. My cheeks flush at the realization that we’re doing such obscene things out in the open, practically in
public
, but I can’t bring myself to care as I roll my hips back to get more of that delicious friction.

He plunges his fingers inside of me before long, kissing from my neck to my collarbone as he works me open. It doesn’t take long—I’m already aching for him.

“Romeo,
please
,” I say, moaning against his hair as he buries his face in the crook of his neck.

He pulls back, letting go of me to start unbuckling his belt. He stops, briefly, to land a sharp, but carefully painless, slap on my inner thigh. “Keep your legs open.”

The command sends shiver shooting straight down my body, all the way to my toes. I shift to spread my legs for him, as wide as I can, as I watch him pull him dripping cock free. He slips a condom on and pumps it a few times with his hand as he gets into position, and he gives me no warning as he thrusts into me in one long, sure stroke.

I gasp and moan, and I groan his name. I wrap my arms around his shoulders and pull him in closer until he’s fully seated inside of me, filling me completely. Then he begins to move, setting a quick rhythm right from the start. The sensations it sends throughout my body are almost too much. He lights every one of my nerves on fire and I have to cling to him, my nails digging into his skin, just to stay grounded in reality.

“
Romeo
,” I say again, gasping the syllables out so loudly that I almost think they can hear us all the way back at the stadium.

“Yeah, babe,
yeah
,” he says, grunting with exertion as he thrusts in deeper, harder. He grabs my hands again, this time using both of his to pin my wrists to the table above my head.

I moan as our shirts ride up together, creating a rough friction against my breasts. I couldn’t remember the last time I made love—no, I corrected myself; this was fucking, rough and raw and perfect—with all my clothes on. Although I ache to feel the press of his skin against mine, there’s something about the urgency that comes with not even taking our clothes off that brings me so close to the brink that I have to think of totally unsexy things just to keep from climaxing right then and there.

As though he knows what I’m thinking, how
close
I am, Romeo takes both of my wrists in one of his hands and drops his free hand down to cup my breasts, squeezing through my shirt.

“You’re so damn beautiful,” he says, his voice rough and hoarse against my ear. “You gonna come for me?”

I gasp, feeling my climax washing over my without warning. I moan my pleasure out into the night air for anyone to hear, but Romeo catches the sound in his mouth—
yes
, I want to tell him,
just for you
. The sounds I make are all for him.

He comes moments later, right after me, and collapses on top of me. We’re both breathless for a moment, but even exhausted Romeo does his best to keep his weight off of me. The blanket is crumpled under us, but I can’t bring myself to care as I tilt my head up to kiss him, sweetly and slowly. Our tongues twine together in the most lethargic way. With the stars overhead, we kiss until we both lose our breath again.

Over dinner—a light meal of sandwiches and fancy cheeses, which we
finally
get around to eating—Romeo keeps me in his lap and feeds me small bites between kisses. At the night of the night, he lets go of me reluctantly. He has to travel with the band, but he wants to see me at his next show. Front and center, just like tonight.

“But I don’t think I can wait a day to have you again,” he says as he tucks my hair behind my ears. “Come see me during rehearsal. I’ll make sure security knows to let you in.”

The thought of watching him practice, of getting a
private
show, is an exciting prospect. I smile and stretch up to kiss him, quickly. “Maybe I can help you relax during your break, too.”

He laughs and cups my cheeks again. “God, you’re perfect—but, unfortunately, I have a personal rule about sex before shows. Afterwards, though—you’re
mine
.”

He growls the last words and I pretend to pout at the refusal, but the promise of
later
is always enough to make me crave more when it comes from him.

“I’m always yours,” I tell him as he leaves me back in the parking lot of the stadium.

I don’t know if he hears me as he walks away, but I’m sure we both already know it’s true.

Chapter
Twenty Two

I wake up in Orlando with the silliest, hugest smile on my face. The girls, after hearing a bit about my night (I still refused to go into detail), decided we would grab some clothes from home and head to Orlando that very night. They would pay for gas, they would drive, and they would even spring for a hotel. I argued that it was too much just for me, but they all rolled their eyes—practically in unison.

“Don’t be such a stickler for
money
, Erin,” April said. “We’re all well-off enough to afford it. We
want
to do this for you.”

It didn’t take them long to convince me, the bliss of my night with Romeo still lingering on my mind.

I find a note from the girls and a fresh latte waiting for me when I finally convince myself to roll out of bed. They’d gone shopping and promised to bring back something totally luscious for me to wear. I smile fondly to myself and sip at my latte as I slip into the extra set of clothes—a simple jeans and t-shirt combination—I brought from him. Although I loved shopping as much as the next girl, they knew better to invite me.

I had plans, after all.