Nathan mimicked her lean beside her. He seemed strangely calm as he eyed her.
She rolled onto her shoulder to face him. “Why aren’t you lecturing me about my bad decision-making?”
“Maybe I’m impressed with their security.” He nodded his chin to the ceiling. “Cameras at every bend and doorway, the high-tech security gate at the garage entrance, and the preparedness of the bodyguards when we left the restaurant blows me away.” A shrug. “Crane just sent a text. He hasn’t found anything on the band or their staff to cause suspicion.” He smiled. “Enfolded in all these safety measures is a nice change.”
Oh, the things money could buy. The relief in his words melted over her. “The way to Nathan Winslow’s heart is through impressive protection.”
“True story.”
Their smiles were interrupted by the whoosh of the doors. Laz stuck his head out and looked at Nathan. “Can you…uh…help me a minute?”
She moved with Nathan and Laz blocked her entrance. “Just Nathan, okay?”
Her teeth sawed together. “I can handle it, whatever it is.”
“Maybe.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, took a deep breath, and met her gaze. “Jay wouldn’t want you to. Man’s ego and all that.”
Nathan wedged himself between them. “I prefer she stays with me.”
“The suite is locked down—”
“Let me in, Laz.” She stepped to the side and held his weary eyes.
A moan rumbled from behind him. A woman’s moan. It hit her like fingers digging around in her innards, stirring up feelings she didn’t have the right to act on.
Laz glanced over his shoulder and back at her. “You sure?”
Was she? She’d only met Jay once and had been through hell and back since that meeting. And how screwed up would it be for Jay if she walked in on something embarrassing? Depending on what she saw, he may not ever want to talk to her again.
Dammit. She needed to wrangle in her self-doubt. Famous Jay Mayard held an all-you-can-eat VIP pass to the pussy buffet, good for every night in every town. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about entangling her emotions in whatever waited on the other side of the door. Images of his feasting chased her heart far, far away.
She jerked her chin in a stubborn nod and followed him through the door.
Chapter Twenty-One
‡
Charlee strode through the suite, head high, shoulders back, and stomach rolling. The moaning grew closer and laughter joined it. Her ankle wobbled, and she righted her gait without slowing.
“Jaaaaay.” A second woman.
Another foyer opened to a dining room set for a royal court. How many damned foyers were in this place? The gold-plated light fixtures, hand-carved mahogany chairs, and tinkling crystal glasses made her want to hold her breath for fear of breaking something. She wanted to break something.
She was thankful they skipped that room until they arrived in the living room. It exuded the same stuffy air with marble fireplaces and silk embroidered couches too sumptuous to sit on.
Her focus narrowed on the grand piano and the two naked women tied to the top of it.
“Holy guacamole, it’s Laz Bromwell. Untie us, Laz.”
“Or fuck us.” The other one laughed.
Did Jay restrain them? Whether they were willing or not, if that kind of thing turned him on, what else was he into? Would it be a scene like the Doms she played with? Or something more comparable to Roy’s breed of kink. She tensed against a shiver.
The first one jerked her hips. “Jay left like an hour ago. Come on, baby. We’re dying here.”
She couldn’t see the mouths that were polluting the air. She couldn’t see anything beyond the spread legs and the gaping vaginas. The light from the chandelier illuminated their glistening slits. Cloudy-white globs drenched their crevices from knees to hips. Oh, God. Jay had been there, in there, all over there.
A wave of disgust swept through her. The kind of disgust that seeped from open sewers. Maybe his dick would rot off.
Where was her sense of ownership over him coming from? What the hell was wrong with her? She couldn’t stop her cheeks from heating, her body from shaking, or the progression of vicious thoughts storming through her head.
“Charlee?” Nathan’s hand touched her back.
She startled. Was that normal behavior for women? Did they all look that debauched? She’d never witnessed another woman in a sexual situation. “Did I look like that?” she whispered for his ears only.
“No, Charlee.” It was a repulsed response.
She wanted to believe him. She also wanted to power wash those vaginas with a fire hose. Inside and out. Then hold them down in a tub of bleach.
Jesus, that was a hell of a thing to wish on someone. Why was she so appalled? Was she ashamed for them? For herself? How many hours had she spent tied down and wearing come just like that? She was no better than they were.
Despite her unraveling justifications, she knew her reaction was driven by jealousy. How important were those women in Jay’s life? Was he writing songs about them? She clutched her gut and circled, scanning the room. Where was he?
Nathan grabbed her shoulders. “Charlee?”
“Why do you keep calling her Charlee?” The woman struggled against the ropes. “I’m his Charlee tonight.”
A shiver chilled her spine. She pushed around Nathan and glared at the woman. “What did you say?”
“Whatever, bitch.” The other one tried to kick a tied foot. “He called me Charlee right before he ejaculated.”
Bile bubbled in her gut. She wasn’t sure what her expression held, but Laz ducked out of a bathroom and turned her toward the connecting bedroom. “Don’t pay attention to them. While I’m looking for Jay, can you just…” He nudged her forward. “Go turn down his bed or something.”
She twisted her head, searched his eyes, driven by a need for answers. “He calls them Charlee?”
His face tightened as he shifted his gaze to the piano. “Girls, where did Jay go?”
“He wandered off.” One woman giggled. “Didn’t look so good. Hey there, sexpot. Who are you?”
Nathan bent over the piano, untying the knots in the rope. They could stay there for all Charlee cared, but in the eyes of her benevolent protector, a restraint was a restraint, no matter how willing.
With a sudden need to be out of the room when the women were free, she trudged to bedroom. The maid service had already turned down the bed, but what caught her eye was a doorway in the furthest corner of the room. A walk-in closet? She moved toward it and flicked on the light.
A center island dominated the space. She walked around it and froze.
Jay sprawled on the floor, nude from the waist down, his face planted in the rug. Lines of white powder dusted a square plate beside him.
How many times had Laz warned her? She understood Jay had issues, but seeing him prone and pathetic on the closet floor squeezed things in her chest. “Laz!”
Should she check to see if he’d overdosed? Her experience with drugs was limited, as in nonexistent. She screamed louder, “Laz!”
Stomps pounded through the bedroom. A moment later, Laz dropped beside Jay, lifting his head up and to the side, and prodding his lips. “Lips aren’t blue. Still has his annoying bronze glow.” He rolled his eyes, hovered his mouth over Jay’s ear, and roared, “Faggot!”
A flinch rippled over Jay’s body, and his eyes opened and squeezed shut.
“He’s just high, not OD’d.” Laz grabbed a wadded towel from the floor, spread it over Jay’s very sculpted, too naked ass, and raised his eyes to her. “Remember what I said, Charlee. Look for the man beneath the—”
“Towel?”
He smirked. “You’re twisted.”
She shrugged, and it was stiff and forced. “When it fits the bill.”
“Fair enough. Any pants up there on the counter?”
She tagged a pair of workout shorts from the island where she leaned and tos
sed them. As Laz shoved them up Jay’s long legs, she tried not to watch, let alone think about how toned his calves and thighs were. Those legs were wrapped around piano sluts. Her cheeks heated and sparked. “I thought cocaine made a person jittery and excited. Why is he so out of it?”
Laz tugged and twisted the shorts over his friend’s ass and removed the towel. “Doesn’t look like he touched much blow tonight. He was probably drunk off his ass before he invited the girls up. I bet he hurls before he wakes.”
Here he was, rich and famous with the world salivating at his feet. Yet…“What a sad and lonely life, drinking, fucking wanton women…” She waved a hand over the bed. “Vomiting in his sleep. Is it a rock star thing?”
With a heave and a grunt, Laz threw Jay’s body over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and carted him to the bed. “Is it a rock star thing to drink, fuck, and vomit? In the nineties, maybe. You won’t find much of that among modern musicians. Our schedules are hell, the media slaughters us for bad behavior, and most of us are businessmen in this industry.”
Laz rolled him into the bed facedown, and Jay bounced with a moan. Then he kicked a trash can with his foot until it bumped the bedside. “No, this is a Jay thing.”
A Jay thing? He’s been in a three-year walking coma.
With his hands hooked under Jay’s armpits, he pulled until Jay’s chin hung off the side of the bed and over the can. That done, he stepped back and stared down at her. “Be patient with him, and please, please, wait till he wakes up. Talk to him.” He softened his eyes, put the meaning of his words there. “It would kill him to learn you were alive without seeing you for himself.”
Despite the drama, there wasn’t a chance in hell she would leave without talking to Jay. She crawled across the bed, settled beside him, and hovered a hand over his shirt-covered back. “Can I touch?”
“Only when he’s comatose.” He studied her as if a sudden move might scare her off.
“I’ll stay with him. Go help Nathan with the leaking vaginas.”
A laugh burst out of him. “Jesus, you’re a hell of a woman.” His laughter cut off, and he stared at her, resolute in his stillness. “I see it now. I totally get what he saw in you.”
He didn’t see shit. Neither of them did.
She lowered her hand, tested the feel of his back with a finger, right over the ink. “Have you seen the tattoo?”
He shook his head, watching her. “No one has.”
“You think he wants me to finish it?”
“More than anything.”
She was too stunned to respond. It wasn’t shock. It was the echo of her longing. She saw her drawings. The sketches of charred skin made to look like it was curling away. The flames. The steel plates and rivets beneath the hurt.
She wanted to finish the tattoo, but it wasn’t all. There was something deeper, something vibrating beneath, begging her to unveil. It was the strength of the man that had kept her alive during those long two months with Roy.
Footsteps approached, sped up, and one of the piano girls skidded into the room, flippant in her nudity. “We’re staying in here tonight. Jay invited us. Not her.”
Nathan charged in after her dragging the other woman by the arm. “Laz?”
Laz scooped up the one on the loose, tossed her over his shoulder, and smacked her butt. “Party’s over ladies. Let’s go.”
The woman pounded on his back. “Nooo. It’s not your decision. He didn’t fuck us yet. He promised this time.” Her voice faded as Nathan and Laz moved them through the suite.
Nathan left her alone? Apparently, he just needed a woman to protect and control, any woman—or two—would do. Not that she cared. It was a rare moment to be out of his watchful gaze.
She leaned over Jay’s back. Please, wake up. Thick lashes fanned his sculptured cheekbones.
If he hadn’t fucked the women, what was the white shit between their legs? A shudder barreled through her. Roy loved to jerk off on her and watch his come drip down her pussy. But why did the notion of Jay stroking off on them rather than in them soothe some of the boiling in her blood?
She fell on her back with a sigh. How often did this kind of thing happen in his life? Jealousy surged anew, gripping her insides. She hated the feeling. It was a needy weakness, and she wasn’t weak.
She stretched out on the bed beside him while he slept and wondered how he felt about her, wondered if he felt anything. Maybe the only way he thought of her was in some bondage fantasy that he jerked off to?
What about his song Charlee? The title was convincing with two e’s, its passionate lyrics aching with love and regret. Was it written for her? If it was, she wanted the opportunity to try to free him from the pain woven into those words.
She rolled to her side and studied his face, where it cocked awkwardly over the side of the bed. A shadow of whiskers darkened his jaw. The curves of his lips looked as though they had been drawn on, every crease sketched to perfection. He was so devastatingly handsome, it hurt to look at him. No wonder he was the ladies’ first pick.
The masculine angles of his face begged to be gentled. Would his taut tanned skin be warm?
She crawled off the bed and crouched beneath his face. Reaching out tentative fingers, she brushed his eyelid. It was soft and twitchy. Yes, there was life in there. She traced the arch of one cheek, stroked through the thick brown hair that curled over the tip of his ear, and followed the sinews in his neck. Could she lift his shirt and peek at his back without waking him?
He opened his eyes. Glazed and dark, they blinked at her. And blinked again. “Emb I dea…iiidth?”
She jerked her hand back. “Are you dead? No, but you’re headed there at the rate you’re going.”
He swallowed. “I muth be dead. You’re…you’re…” His jaw stretched open, his chest heaved, and he reared back.
She dropped to her ass and rolled as a wash of vomit hit the can on the floor. After a few heavy exhales, he lowered his head to the bed and mumbled, “Charlee.”
He remembered her.
Whatever, bitch. He called me Charlee right before he ejaculated.
She sucked in a breath and with it the rancid stench of puke. A few splatters had hit her chest despite her efforts. She fought her gag reflex and ran to the closet, stripping her shirt on the way.
As she shrugged on one of his t-shirts—a vintage Dead Milkmen shirt? Yes!—she told herself that he was every bit as fucked up as she was. The only thing they could develop beyond friendship was a madness shared by two.
She wanted to be supportive. She wanted to finish his tattoo, but she had to be careful with her feelings, and most definitely with his. More than that, she had to make sure Roy didn’t learn about her interest in Jay Mayard.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‡
Charlee returned to Jay’s bedside, wearing his t-shirt instead of his puke. He hadn’t stirred. The sheets appeared clean. There were a few drops on the carpet, but the can caught most of it. A practiced move, no doubt.
She rinsed out the bucket in the bathroom and scrubbed the carpet with a towel that probably cost more than her entire wardrobe. Then she stood beside his head, staring at him. Should she move him?
Stop staring at him. Stop thinking about him. She should find out what was keeping Laz and Nathan, but she didn’t want to leave him. What if he needed her?
That was when she knew she should leave the room. Her longing for a man she’d met three long years ago was surfacing and she didn’t know what to do with that. Panic flooded her. She tucked her ridiculous feelings away and fled the room.
A few empty foyers led her to the hush of voices in the suite’s library. Nathan and the driver—what was her name? Tony?—sat on velvet chaises amidst the shelves of leatherbound books. It wasn’t the company Nathan kept that surprised her, so much as how close they leaned toward one another.
Nathan laughed at something the woman said, and he turned his head. Their eyes caught. “Hey Charlee. Everything okay?”
She crossed the room and settled in the closest chair. “Jay’s out for the night. I’ll talk to him tomorrow if he’s not busy.”
The woman stood with her shoulders kicked back. “This is a pleasure trip. They don’t have anything booked.”
Nathan rose. “Let me do some introductions. This is Master Sergeant Maryanna Tony, U.S. Marine Corps. She leads the protective team for the band.” He actually puffed out his chest. “Master Sergeant. Meet Charlee Grosky.”
A fellow Marine. This would be interesting. “She outranks you.”
He stared at his feet with a smile playing on his lips.
“Nice to officially meet you, Master…er…Tony… How should I address you?”
“Tony is fine. And I’m retired, Nathan.” Her rigid posture mirrored his, but her teasing expression softened her pretty features.
He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “We were just discussing escort formation techniques for protection while on foot. Their area security procedures for traveling and the perimeter barriers at their L.A. home are—”
“Impressive?”
He grinned. “Yeah.”
Oh, yeah. Tony had nuzzled right into his heart. He’d never get it back. “Sharing trade secrets then?”
They looked at one another with blank expressions. Must have been some kind of Marine language. But beneath his usual stiffness, there was a phlegmatic feel to the way he observed—and didn’t observe—his surroundings. He trusted the pretty Marine. “Did you tell her?”
He palmed his nape. “Some of it. She knows who Roy is. In fact, he recruited her for his VIP protection personnel.”
Jesus, Nathan really did trust her. She looked at Tony and felt a little intimidated by the air of competence exuding from her. Her crisp black pants suit, alert eyes, and fierce set to her jaw were enough to act as a deterrent to would-be celebrity maulers. “Turning down that job was probably the smartest thing you’ve ever done.”
“So I hear.” Her face gave away nothing. “My sidearm is useless without fingers to fire it.”
Make Me: Twelve Tales of Dark Desire Page 121
