With Vengeance (19 page)

He collapsed on top of her. For a while they
two lay entwined, panting and trembling. Kat raised a languid hand
and caressed his cheek. She stared at him, awestruck at the power
of what he’d made her feel.

Slowly, he lowered his head and placed a
chaste kiss on her lips before rolling off to flop on his back.

“I can’t believe we did that,” he said
finally.

“Mmmm-hmmm,” Kat mumbled, still reeling in
the aftershocks of her orgasm, incapable of coherent speech.
Reluctant to allow the break in their contact, she trailed her
fingers along his bicep, admiring the sight of his naked body,
glistening from their lovemaking.

He moved away and got up from the bed. Kat
watched him stride across the room into the bathroom to remove the
condom, and his butt looked even cuter without pants.

Kat sighed and sat up, searching for her
panties. Tugging them on, she carefully slid off of the high bed
and adjusted her disheveled nightgown. Every inch of her skin
tingled from Klement’s touch.

When he emerged, she rose and moved toward
him, wanting to wrap her arms around him and press her cheek
against his chest. But the coolness of his voice stopped her.

“We should get dressed,” he said, pulling on
his boxer briefs. “The guys should be back any time. They won’t
stay out too late on a recording night.”

Kat got the hint.

Fleeing to her room, she changed into a
t-shirt and jeans. Passing the mirror, she halted at the sight of
her messed up hair and puffy lips. The memory of what happened to
put her in that state gave her a delicious shiver, and yet the
sound of the front door opening and Cliff and Rod’s drunken voices
down the hall had her scrambling for the hairbrush.

When she emerged from her room, she heard
Klement talking with them in the music room. On quaking legs, she
headed up the stairs to join them. Every step made her hyper aware
of the tenderness between her thighs.

Klement glanced at her before turning back to
Cliff. Their brief eye contact was enough to make unbearable
longing spear her through the chest.

Rod smiled as she joined them. “Hello, love.
Had enough clicking away on your computer?”

“Um, yeah.” That’s what she was supposed to
have been doing.

She looked over at Klement again, only from
the corner of her eye, but he was loading his pipe with studious
concentration. Clearly he didn’t want anyone to know what they’d
done, and her stomach churned with something like hurt. Was he
ashamed?

If so, what did that mean for the future? Any
of it?

Chapter Sixteen

Klement struggled to focus on Cliff and Rod’s
chatter, but from the moment Kat came up to the music room and sat
next to his drummer, he couldn’t stop looking at her. Her scruffy
jeans and t-shirt didn’t stop him from picturing the curves of her
luscious body, curves that he’d explored with his hands and
mouth.

What had he been thinking? He’d just had sex
with a colleague, a woman he’d promised to protect. This was going
to wreak havoc on their working relationship, and it would bring
him hell when she inevitably broke his heart. But when she’d come
into his office wearing unbearably sexy lingerie, he’d been
incapable of resisting her.

He should be angry with her for that, but he
couldn’t muster up even the slightest hostility. That had been the
best sex of his life. One would think their vast size difference
would have made things awkward, with him being six-five and her
only five feet tall, but her body fit to his like she was made for
him.

As he raised the pipe to his lips, the scent
of Kat’s arousal, still on his fingers, filled his senses. God,
she’d smelled so good. And she’d tasted and felt even better. He
lowered the pipe. He didn’t want weed. He wanted Kat. Again and
again. Like a potent drug, one taste had him hooked.

Before his arousal returned, he shifted his
attention back to his friends. “How was the Hellion?”

Roderick shrugged. “I lost twenty bucks on
pool, and Cliff hung out with his new friend.”

Cliff shook his head, clearly perturbed. “I
don’t know if I want to hang out with that guy anymore. He turned
out to be kinda whacked.”

Klement leaned forward. “Oh? What
happened?”

“First he suggested grabbing this chick off
the dance-floor for a three-way…”

Rod perked up. “A little double stuff?
Nothing wrong with that.”

“I’m not into it, but if that’s his thing,
fine.” Cliff took the pipe and ran a thumb down the swirling blue
glass. “It was the fact that when I pointed out she wasn’t
interested in doing anything with anyone Rick got all date-rapist
about it.”

Kat shuddered. “Ugh, he sounds like my ex. He
was always trying to get me to agree to having a threesome with
Kinley, and when I told him first off, ‘Kinley would never go for
it,’ and second, ‘Hell no.’ He kept trying to get us drunk. Kinley
wouldn’t even hang out with us for awhile because she was scared
he’d slip something into her booze.”

Klement’s frown deepened. The more he heard
about her ex, the more he sounded like a piece of shit, and his
protective instincts raced to the forefront.
I would never treat
you or your friends like that,
he wanted to assure her.

Roderick leaned back in his chair with a
smirk. “I don’t blame him for wanting that.” At Kat’s glare he held
up his hands. “But I wouldn’t be like
that
, I swear. I know
what ‘no’ means.”

Cliff took a hit off the pipe, filling the
room with the slightly skunky odor of burnt weed. “Yeah, well, I
wouldn’t have been surprised if this guy had busted out some
roofies, but instead he suggested we do some crank. Even in my coke
days I never touched that shit.” His mouth twisted into a disgusted
scowl. “That’s when I left.”

He passed the pipe to Kat, who passed it to
Roderick then frowned. “So, hanging out with him when he was being
all rapey was okay, but when he offered you meth it was a problem?
I mean, I hate tweakers, but…”

Klement nodded. “She’s got you there.” Still,
he was relieved that Cliff had taken the band’s official stance on
hard drugs to heart.

“No, I wasn’t going to keep hanging around
with him,” Cliff countered. “I was even about to tell him so, but
then he brought up that shit and I was just
done
.”

“A tweaker-rapist.” Klement shook his head as
Rod passed him back the pipe. “Man, you know how to pick ’em.” He
glanced back at Kat. Her upper lip still curled in revulsion.

“Hey, I can’t help it if I’m social. I give
everyone a chance.” Cliff leaned back in his chair. “Besides, he
seemed cool before that. I wish I hadn’t given him that backstage
pass. Hopefully he’ll spend all of his money on smack and won’t be
able to get a plane ticket.”

Klement handed over the pipe. “We can hope.
At least these things are always crowded, so he should be easy to
avoid.”

Kat looked up quickly and blushed before
turning back to the others. “He just better stay the hell away from
me.”

“Don’t worry,” Klement said. “I…ah, we will
keep you away from the creeps. Plus, there’s always a lot of
security at these things.”

Their eyes met once more, sending an arc of
heat between them. Kat’s face pinkened further before she rose from
her seat.

“Well, I’m going to bed. G’night, guys.”

As Klement watched her leave the room, he
felt like an invisible cord bound them, pulling tighter the further
away she went.

After a long, awkward silence, he got up from
his seat. “I think I’m going to crash, too. I’ve got those bass
tracks tomorrow.”

Once downstairs, he paused by Kat’s door.
What would she do if he knocked? A thousand delicious fantasies
played out in his mind, but reluctantly he continued on to his own
room. There his gaze lit on her satin robe, still pooled on his
bedroom floor. Scooping it up, he inhaled the silken fabric. It
still smelled like her.

He needed to return the robe to her tomorrow
before the guys saw it. They didn’t usually go in his room, but he
didn’t want to take any risks. However, he couldn’t give it back to
Kat tonight.

After undressing and climbing into bed, he
tucked the robe under his arm, wishing instead for the softness of
her skin.

***

Kat’s stomach roiled with butterflies as she
joined Klement in his Suburban the next morning. It was the first
time they’d been alone together since he’d taken her into his
bed.

She’d been up all night trying to figure out
what to say to him, rehearsing imaginary conversations in her head.
Would they do it again? Was she now his girlfriend, or was it a
one-time thing that he never wanted to repeat? She hadn’t really
given him much opportunity to say no. She’d just barged into his
office in sexy lingerie and thrown herself at him. What normal guy
would pass that up?

But, as much as she should be ashamed for her
behavior, she couldn’t muster more than a twinge of remorse.
Klement’s lovemaking had been magical. Earth-shattering.

She peeked over at him as he drove down the
windy mountain road, studying the sharp angles of his cheeks, the
curve of his lips that had been between her thighs. His large, lean
body that had been entwined with hers. Had the experience been as
powerful for him? Kat practically vibrated with frustration at the
unanswered questions. If she didn’t have some sort of closure or
resolution soon, she’d go insane.

Klement kept his eyes on the road, his hand
at ten and two on the steering wheel like a model driver’s ed
student. He
had
to be feeling the awkwardness, too. Didn’t
he?

She opened her mouth, closed it, then took a
deep breath and found her voice. “A-about last night…”

His gaze whipped to hers, intense with
unreadable emotion. “I’m still processing that. Can we discuss it
later?”

“Okay.” Kat sank back in her seat. “Are we
still cool?” Was he mad at her?

His voice softened. “Of course we are.” He
reached out and squeezed her hand quickly before returning his grip
to the steering wheel. “I just need to focus on my session today,
okay?”

A thrill ran through her at the small
physical contact, brief as it was. “I understand.”

Actually, tension in her muscles eased at his
gentle tone. At least he didn’t seem to be too mad at her.

At the studio, Kat felt a different sort of
awkwardness, as she didn’t have any sessions herself. Today they
were focusing on the bass and drums. Klement had told her that she
could stay home, but she wanted to watch him play—and spend a few
stolen moments alone with him in the truck if she could get
them.

To her surprise, Cliff had managed to drag
his hungover ass out of bed to accompany Roderick. He met her in
the sound engineer’s booth and offered her a McDonald’s hash brown.
Kat was beginning to suspect that he was one of those people who
couldn’t stand to be alone. Her mom was like that, and Kat would
call her soon. She should. Right now, her aunt was staying there.
She hoped they two were having a good time.

Her thoughts broke off as Klement stepped
into the recording booth. She admired his confident demeanor as he
shrugged the strap holding his bass over his shoulders, donned the
headphones, and signaled for the engineer to begin.

Frank pushed a button, and Klement began
playing, but Kat couldn’t hear a thing. Feeling like an idiot, she
grabbed a pair of headphones from the table and put them on.

Throbbing bass notes filled her ears,
thrumming through her body and pulsing in her blood. It took her a
moment to recognize that he was playing his riffs for “Sorrow’s
Harvest.” Kat’s lips parted as she watched his fingers dance along
the fret board in a blur of speed, but it was his right hand that
plucked the strings with a deftness that made heat unfurl in her
lower body. Last night, those skilled fingers had worked their
magic on her,
inside
her.

To her embarrassment, she found herself
getting wet again. Even though Cliff and the sound guy couldn’t see
her predicament, she couldn’t help but cast them guilty looks. What
was it about this man that affected her so much?

Cliff’s eyes were closed as he mouthed the
lyrics to the song and moved his fingers in time with the rhythm
section. Kat clenched her fists, determined to follow his example
and focus on the music instead of lusting after the musician.

Bringing forth her guitar solos from memory,
Kat moved her own fingers in time with her parts. Tapping her foot
to compensate for the missing drum beat, she let the music overtake
her consciousness, drowning her in melodious desire.

When the bass stopped mid-song, the silence
was as sudden as a bucket of ice water, and Kat’s eyes snapped open
as Cliff pushed the microphone button.

“You sped up after the third bridge.” He
released the button and turned to Kat. “Now we get a chance to get
back at him for his nit-picking.”

Klement’s voice filled her ears. “Damn it, I
was afraid of that. Should I start over at the second?”

In the end, it took three takes for him to
get the bass track for the first song and four takes for the
second. Kat tried to give helpful feedback, but mostly she remained
transfixed watching and listening to him.

After all of her years of listening to
Bleeding Vengeance, how had she not realized before how incredible
he was? His riffs were fast and complex, blowing the usual
pedestrian thrums of many bassists out of the water. He was fierce,
he was dynamic. And as she watched him move with his instrument
like he was joined to it, she’d never seen anyone look so powerful,
so alive.

On the ride back home, he was so quiet and
fidgety that she didn’t dare broach the subject of their lovemaking
again.

Klement fixed a quick dinner of
halushki
for them back at the house, a delicious Czech pasta
dish, before retreating to his office. Kat went to her own room and
tried to call Kinley, but her friend’s phone was out of service.
With a sigh, Kat settled on fiddling with their website and writing
a post on Thrashfest.