Steady Beat (11 page)

She let out a squeal, the sound turning to a giggle as Noah tickled her right side with determined intent.

“No hiding,” he chuckled the command, “I flew straight from Canada to see you. You’re not allowed to hide from me.”

She laughed, even as she still tried to squirm away from his playful grip, her cheeks on fire. “At least let me put on some clothes,” she beseeched, the plea turning to a squeal when he tickled her once more.

She flailed on the bed, laughing when Noah planted one knee and then the other on other side of her legs, his fingers playing over her sides in devious, delicious torment.

And then his body covered hers, his hips pressed her back to the bed, his hands pinned her wrists to the pillows and his lips captured hers.

There was
nothing
platonic about the kiss. Noah couldn’t help himself. He’d thought of no one else but Pepper the whole time he’d been dealing with other shit, shit that couldn’t wait. Like signing the drum kit endorsement deal his agent had arranged and then spending a day in a studio having his photograph taken for the advertising that would follow. Like meeting with his lawyer about the illegal use of his name on a drum kit manufactured in Korea.

Like emptying his home of the last of Heather’s stuff and finally finishing the home theatre he’d started three years ago.

Like watching his brother get married.

Now here he was, in Pepper’s home, and even as he reminded himself she wanted a platonic relationship, he couldn’t stop himself making love to her mouth with his tongue. Her lips were soft, her breath sweet with the faintest hint of toothpaste. Christ, he couldn’t get enough of her.

She moaned, the sound low and raw, her body shifting beneath his.

He pulled away, his blood throbbing through his veins in a wild beat. What was he doing? This wasn’t what she—

“Noah.”

Pepper’s husky voice caressed his control. He gazed down into her face and almost groaned. There wasn’t anything platonic about the open desire smoldering in her eyes. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. She may try to fight it, but it was undeniable.

He took possession of her lips again, thrusting his tongue into her mouth, seeking hers. She met him with equal hunger, pushing her hips upward. Her sex pressed to his balls, the taut fabric of the trouser he’d worn to his brother’s wedding offering little protection from the contact. He raked a hand down her arm and captured her breast, kneading it through the cotton of her tank.

She whimpered, arching into his bold touch, her tongue lashing at his.

Hot lust surged through Noah at the ferocity of her response. He yanked his hand from her breast and shoved it under the hemline of her shirt, needing to feel his flesh on hers. Closing his fingers over the heavy swell of her breast, he pinched her nipple. She bucked her hips into his groin again, tangling her free hand in his hair.

Noah’s head swam. His cock pulsed. His balls ached. With a groan close to a growl, he tore his lips from hers, charting a path along her jaw up to her ear. He flicked his tongue against her lobe before capturing the fleshy pad with his teeth and giving it a nip.

“Oh God,” she gasped, balling her fist tighter in his hair.

Dragging his mouth back to hers, he ravished her lips again, pinching and rolling her nipple with his fingers as he did so. She writhed beneath him, scrapping her nails over his shoulders, down his back to tug his shirt from of his waistband.

She slipped her hand under the silk, smoothing her palm up his side, over his ribcage to his chest. When her fingers found his nipple, his heart smashed faster. When she dragged her thumb over its rock-hard form, he couldn’t stop his groan.

“Christ, Pepper.” He lifted his head from hers. “I know this…not what…you wanted…but…”

She tweaked his nipple. “Noah,” she panted. “Just…”

She arched her back, snaring the hem of her shirt to tug it up over her ribs, revealing her breasts to him.

He stared at what she offered. His mouth filled with saliva, his cock filled with fresh, hot blood. Before his mind could finish telling him this was too fast, that Pepper would regret it later, he lowered his head and closed his lips around her nipple.

“Yes!” she cried, thrusting her breasts higher.

He moaned around the pebbled peak, laving it with his tongue.

Pepper writhed on the bed, pushing her hips upward, scratching her nails at his shoulders.

He feasted on her flesh, reveling in the open, honest way she responded to him. There was nothing shy or hesitant about it. When he raked his hand over her torso, she whimpered, knowing what he sought with his fingers.

He found it, and pinched her other nipple between thumb and index finger.

“Oh, Noah.” His name fell from her on a shaky breath. He loved the way it sounded, raw and throbbing with need. He stroked the nipple in his mouth with his tongue as his fingers echoed the rhythm on her other breast, pinching and tweaking with increasing speed.

His cock strained against his trousers, insistent and impatient. If he were a stronger man, he’d tear one hand from Pepper’s body and release the engorged organ. But he wasn’t. He didn’t have the will power or the strength to stop worshipping her flesh with his hands. His dick could wait. All he could focus on right now was the exquisite lushness of her breasts, her body against his palms.

He lost himself in the pleasure of her moans and hitching breaths. He grew hungrier with every second that passed, even as he grew more and more sated. The contradiction drove him wild. He swapped nipples often, drawing groans from Pepper as he dragged his mouth backward and forward between the wet points of her breasts, pinching and teasing the abandoned nipple with his fingers every time.

Christ, he’d never get enough of her. Her whimpers fed his aching desire. Her surrender to their passion fed his potent want.

Unable to survive another heartbeat without seeking out her heat, he raked his hand down her belly to the waistline of her undies and slipped his fingers between the elastic and her stomach.

She arched, driving her hips to the ceiling, fisting a hand in his hair.

Noah lifted his head from her breast, needing to witness the open pleasure on her face as he dipped his fingers to her pussy.

Eyes closed, Pepper’s lips parted. A raw sound of willing want filled the room. Not a word, but a surrender all the same.

It was all Noah needed to hear.

He parted her moist folds and penetrated her.

“Oh God, Noah!” Pepper stiffened beneath him, her thighs parting as much as his weight would allow. “That…oh yeah, that…”

He thrust deeper into her wet heat. Her inner muscles gripped his fingers. She moaned, her head rolling side to side on the softness of her bed. He watched her, drowning in the unadulterated pleasure washing over him. Her pleasure. His pleasure.

Their pleasure.

He scissored his fingers within her constricting centre, a building beat he felt in his very soul.

She whimpered, scraping at his shoulders and arms with her fingers, his name a panting song falling from her lips he wanted to hear for the rest of time.

Two weeks of dreaming of this moment, hurting for it, and it was nothing like he imagined.

It was infinitely more.

Returning his mouth to her nipple, he drew on the puckered tip, rolling it between his teeth as he thrust a third finger into her wetness.

She arched. “Oh God, Noah, I’m…I’m going…”

The muscles sucking at his fingers contracted. A tremble took her body. It vibrated through her body, flooding Noah’s veins with need.

He needed to make her come. He needed to hear the exquisite song of her release.

He needed to be the reason for that song. Before the throbbing beat of his own release overwhelmed him.

With a slight shift of his hand, he rolled his thumb over her clit, once, twice, three times. Pepper’s plea for mercy meshed with her plea for more. The tremble in her body became shudders, wild and powerful. She buried her hand in his hair and pressed his mouth to her nipple once again, begging him to make her come.

He sank his fingers back into her sex. Drove them deep inside her. Stroked the sweetest spot on her inner walls.

She came.

Her throaty moans turned to hitching gasps. Her hips bucked. Her pussy sucked at his fingers. Her release flowed over his knuckles.

“Oh, Noah,” she cried, and the song of her orgasm was everything he knew it would be.

She came on his fingers, his hand, with her fist in his hair, her voice in his ears and the pounding rhythm of her heart thumping through her body into his.

He’d never experienced such an intoxicating beat.

The heady pulse in her sex grew faster, and then, as his name slipped from her lips in a sated breath, began to fade.

He raised his head, the demanding throb of his cock barely registering in his mind as he took in the sheer bliss on her face. “I’ve always been good with my hands,” he murmured.

Pepper laughed. The husky sound sent fresh need to Noah’s aching erection.

“Good with your mouth and tongue as—”

The sound of Darth Vader’s menacing mechanical breathing emanating from Noah’s hip pocket cut her off.

He bit back a curse. “Give me a sec,” he muttered, twisting on the bed to shove his hand in his pocket. “I’m going to throw this thing against the wall.”

He withdrew the phone—now silent—and frowned when a text flashed onto the screen.

Roger’s a no-show. Brutal’s been arrested. I’m stuck at JFK and the paparazzi are everywhere. Get your arse here now and save me. You know I don’t do cabs.

“Is there a problem?”

Pepper’s soft voice lifted Noah’s attention from Samuel’s text message.

She studied him, her glorious breasts covered once more by her tank. He wanted to shake his head. Wanted to tell her the world could fuck off and go to hell. Nothing mattered but her and him.

Would have, if it wasn’t for the way her palms cupped her elbows.

She’d closed herself off to him. In the time it took him to yank his phone from his pocket, Pepper had retreated behind the uncertainty of her shyness. Her earlier request from two weeks ago came back to him, along with the requests she’d made when he first asked to kiss her here in her room.

Platonic.

He’d taken that request and mocked it. Thoroughly. With his kiss, his hands, his conquest of her body and pleasure, and while she’d willingly surrendered to that conquest, he knew it was not what she’d beseeched of him.

Cursing himself, he turned his stare on his phone’s screen. “Strings has touched down,” he answered, doing his best to ignore the painful throb in his trousers. Jesus, his head may have remembered his promise to Pepper, but his dick wasn’t listening, demanding he bloody well hurry up and get on with the program. “His bodyguard’s been arrested for some reason and our manager hasn’t turned up.”

Unable to stop himself, he looked up at her. “He wants me to go get him.”

Pepper caught her bottom lip with her teeth. “You should do that.”

Noah’s gut knotted. “Come with me?”

She shook her head. “No. I don’t think I should.”

“Why? I promise I won’t maul you again.”

A soft chuckle escaped her. A delicate pink tinge painted her cheeks. “I might maul you though. And I’m not sure I’m ready to have a cab driver watch me go down on you in the backseat.”

A wall of hot lust slammed into Noah at her declaration. He shifted on the bed, finding her hand with his to thread their fingers together. “You don’t have to fight what you want, Pepper. I want it to.” He grinned, hoping to make her laugh again. “Besides, I’ve got a limo driving around the block waiting for me. It’s got privacy glass and everything.”

She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, gnawed on her lip and then shook her head again. “I need to think about all this. I could fall in love with you very easily, Noah Holden, and I’m not sure my heart would survive that. Especially when you’ve only just ended an eight-year relationship with a bikini model and you have groupies offering themselves to you all the time.” She gave him a wry smile. “Besides, we have to remember Stevie N—”

Noah held up his hand and shook his head. “Don’t. I think you and Strings and Levi have forever ruined me for Fleetwood Mac.”

Pepper laughed. The sorrow in it tore at Noah’s heart.

“What if we
do
take a cab?” he asked, unwilling to give up. “I’ll even sit in the front. Out of your reach.”

Pepper frowned. “Where’s
your
bodyguard going to sit?”

Noah didn’t miss that she’d sidestepped his suggestion. “Don’t have one. Never felt the need.” He chose not to mention Heather had a hulking, six-foot-seven ex-Marine guarding her whenever they went anywhere. With Desmond the Destroyer shadowing Heather’s every move, no one came near Noah. And until recently, Noah never went out in public without Heather.

He didn’t want to get a bodyguard now. He’d always found the idea a tad egocentric. Sure Nick had needed one every time he left his home, and Strings was almost as ravenously stalked, but Noah was just the drummer, and few fans went crazy around him. But then he didn’t want Pepper stressed and harassed by fans and paparazzi whenever they were out together, so maybe he needed to reconsider his stance.