“You’re perfection,” he said. “You feel like a dream in my arms.”
Hooking one of his legs around one of mine, he lowered my body gently to the pallet he’d made on the sand and followed me down as if we were already one and connected.
“Art would sculpt you if I’d let him,” Gale said as he unbuttoned my jeans and lowered the zipper.
I bit back a moan as he tugged the denim down my legs. His fingers were rough against my soft skin, underscoring the differences between us and increasing my desire.
“Why won’t you let him?” I asked. Lying on my back, I wore only my panties and cropped top.
When he dropped his body, his hands came down to the blanket on either side of me. I arched my neck to the side so he could cover my skin with his world-rearranging kisses.
“He sculpts nudes.” Gale’s whiskers were a whispering prelude on my skin, and his kisses applauds of approval. His gaze swept over me, possessive and hot, making me feel adored. “You like this are for my eyes only, Jo.”
I wished that were the case, but I set aside all thoughts of the RFC and everything else as he dipped his skillful fingers under my tee. I pulled in a breath and held it as he gripped the cotton hem and drew it over my head. On his knees between my spread legs, he stared down at me, all of me that he’d revealed.
“Beautiful. You’re fucking beautiful.”
I was glad that was his verdict. In the dark, he didn’t notice the long, jagged scar along the outside of my right leg, nor did he comment on the locket around my neck. He certainly couldn’t see the picture of my brother inside it, or the scar inside me from that loss. But I think without them specifically being mentioned, Gale mostly knew, and I trusted he would accept those things.
“You’re the beautiful one.” I reached for him.
“Hold on.” He shook his head and stood.
Reaching between his shoulder blades, he removed his T-shirt. His thick hair settling around his face and his glorious form towering to the starlit heavens, he was so far above me in so many ways. My eager gaze lovingly caressed the sculpted contours of his body the way the starlight was doing. I came up on my elbows, and my jaw dropped before his jeans did at the portrait he made in only his low-slung black boxers.
“Babe.” He grinned. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?” I licked my lips.
“Like you want my cock inside you. Like you want me to get us both there, hard and fast.”
Yes, please. “I do want that.”
“So do I, but the first time I want to savor you. Show you how I feel. I want to be certain you know what this is between us.”
“You’re going to kill me if you go slow.”
“I want to explore every inch of your body. I want to find out what you like, what makes you crazy. I want to break you down kiss by kiss, sigh by sigh, until you’re aching, until you’re throbbing, until you can’t take any more.”
“You’re going to leave my broken body in the desert as a warning to any other woman who’s insane enough to take on your slow-and-savor method.”
“No one else interests me. Just you.” His mouth curved on one side. “I will take you apart, but I promise I’ll put you back together again.”
“Truly?”
“I have to put you back together so I can do you all over again, and again, and again.” He grinned.
“Fucking hell.”
“Fucking heaven.” Lowering his body onto his hands on the blanket once more, he positioned himself between my legs and firmly gripped my knees.
I pulled in a sharp breath.
His gaze leaped to my face. “You like that?” He gripped harder, then grazed his thumb softly over the skin he’d been measuredly harsh with.
“I like your hands on me. I like you being firm, as if going slow makes you crazy too.”
“I love touching you.” He glided his hands over my knees, down to my calves, and then swept them back up again. “Your skin’s like silk that’s been warmed by the sun.”
He watched his hands moving on my legs, moving them slower, achingly slower, until he reached my thighs. Gripping them firmly, he paused as I gasped again. My clit pulsed as if my heartbeat was centered between my legs. He lifted his gaze, noting my response.
“My panties are soaked. I’m throbbing already. If you put your mouth anywhere near my tits or my pussy, I’m probably going to come.”
His lips curved slowly.
“Don’t,” I said. “Please don’t do that.” I’d just given him a road map to follow. “Or please do, but I want you inside me when you do.”
I squirmed, shifting my legs restlessly beneath him as he placed his palm on my abdomen.
“Be still.” He pinched my skin near my hip bone.
Pleasure spiked straight to my pussy, and I drew in a sharp breath.
“I’ll give you my mouth, Jo.” His voice was sinfully low. “And I’ll give you my cock too. Eventually.”
He lowered his head and pressed his warm lips to my skin.
“I love the way your skin tastes like the sweetest cream.” He breathed into the indentation at my stomach. “And the way your body tightens when I get close to places you like me to be.”
He licked the underside of one tit, then the other. My nipples tightened in the chilled air, then throbbed inside the wet heat of his mouth a moment later.
“Gale, yes. That’s so good.” I arched off the blanket. Grabbing fistfuls of his hair, I trembled as he greedily sucked on one tit and then the other.
“No more,” I said as he licked back and forth across the tight nubs. “Please.” My voice shook as much as I did.
“Please stop?” He lifted his head, his gaze as dark as my desire. “Or please continue?”
I appreciated the careful way he was being with me, but I was ready for him. Reaching down between our bodies, I grabbed my own panties and tried to shimmy them off. I wanted all the barriers between our bodies out of the way.
“I have them. I have you.”
Gale stripped my panties away. His face no longer wearing a teasing smile, his features were drawn taut with hunger of his own as he stared down at me. He swept one of his wicked thumbs over my pussy. Finding my clit, he circled it carefully while watching me.
I moaned low and long when he strummed it, playing with the slippery surface. Back and forth, he plucked a perfect rhythm, and I lifted my hips into each chord, whimpering when he took his thumb away.
Grinning darkly, he brought his thumb to his mouth and slipped it between his lips. When he sucked, I swallowed. I didn’t need any more stimulation to come.
“Gale, I’m so close.” My body vibrated with need. I ached to be filled. “You don’t need to break me down anymore. I’m going to love anything you do to me, because it’s you.”
“All right, babe.”
When he lowered his boxers and his cock sprang free, I grabbed him. He was so gloriously thick and hard, I had to get my fingers around him. When I stroked along his velvety length, he shuddered.
“Okay, so you can tease too.” His voice was raw, guttural. “I get it, and soon you’ll get me. I promise.”
He withdrew to take his boxers the rest of the way off, and then he moved over me. When he handed me a condom packet, I tore it open and rolled the condom on him while we both watched the show.
“Thank you, Jo,” he said, then kissed the center of my palm.
I felt the press of his lips and the glide of his tongue on my skin. But I also felt the swipe of his fingers as he found and swept my swollen nub again.
Taking his fingers away, he replaced them with the blunt end of his cock. I held my breath as he aligned himself, then let it out in a long blissful moan as he stroked his entire length inside me.
“So good, Gale. You feel so good inside me.”
Grabbing his tight ass in my hands, I squeezed. He withdrew and glided right back inside me. Fucking in deep and gliding out shallow, it was fucking perfection.
He fucked faster and harder. Again and again, he filled me, taking me higher and nearer to the edge.
“Yes!” I lifted my hips, dug my nails in his shoulders. “You’re very good at this.”
I’d never felt like this. My scalp tingled and my toes curled. I didn’t want to be anywhere else. I didn’t want to do anything else, ever, but this. More and more of this.
I caught a glimpse of silver before his lids fluttered closed.
Gale stroked in and out, his cock hard and his rhythm perfect. I started to unravel with each deep thrust, more and more with each decadent stroke. Closing my eyes, I let myself go, enjoying the feel of his damp skin, his warm breaths, and his thick cock stretching me as he pierced me deep.
He hammered into me, pushing me closer and closer to the edge. I fought it for a moment, the beautiful remaking, not because I didn’t want it but because I did want it, and I wanted him so much. I wanted the pleasure to last and last, but I wanted to fly with him too.
Surrender inevitable, the edge rushed toward me.
“Jo!” He stiffened, then groaned.
It was here for him. The choice gone. His need was my need.
“Gale!” I threw my arms around him and held on tight, going over the edge of the known into a new world with him.
Flying, both of us flying, but no longer alone.
“JO,” GALE SAID, PLACING his hands on my shoulders. “We don’t have to go back right away.”
Sitting with my legs pulled into me on the far end of the blanket, I glanced at him over my shoulder. “I loved what we did here. Together.”
I turned away. There was too much in my eyes to look at him, and not enough in what lay ahead, only different shades of dark. My biggest fear was that the days to follow would seem like an unending, unbearable night without him.
“But it’s over now, and I need to go.” I bit down hard on my lip to still the trembling.
“Why do you need to go?” He scooted closer to me on the blanket, seducing me with his heat.
I’d only managed to pull on my tee and my panties. It was colder than before, partly because it was later, but mostly because I’d been so incredibly warm just moments before in his arms.
“Because I never stay after I hook up with someone.” I started with the broad strokes of a general explanation. We would get to the rest. I had to tell him the truth. All the truth. I’d let this go on too long.
“This wasn’t a hookup.” His hands on my shoulders tightened before they rested loosely again. “I think you know that very well.”
I exhaled. “I don’t know. Not really. I don’t have a previous point of reference. I just know that for me, it was different.”
“How different?” he asked.
“I’ve never had pleasure like you gave me. You made me feel cared for, protected, appreciated, admired.” With him behind me, I felt braver. And I hoped that it would be easier to eventually speak the words that needed to be said.
“You felt loved,” Gale said as he moved in front of me.
Dipping my chin to my chest so my hair fell forward, I scooted backward on the blanket so he wouldn’t be on the sand. He tucked a finger under my chin and lifted it. My hair glided away, and his gaze found mine and held it. His eyes were still full of stars, though the meteor shower had passed.
“Have you never had anyone make love to you before?”
“Not a man. Only Dolly. And I didn’t realize until now that’s what she was doing. I only knew she made me feel like I was desirable again.”
“She’s with Tyler now. You know that, right?”
“We talked about it.”
“You and she are very close.”
“We’re best friends. I just can’t love her physically the way she loves me.”
“And the boy you mentioned, the one you loved. What about him?”
“He was my first. He was much older than me.”
“How much older?” Gale’s brow creased.
“He was in college when I was in high school.”
“Oh no, Jo. That’s not right.”
“A lot of things with him weren’t right. It screwed me up for a long time afterward.”
“And your parents?”
I tensed. “Why so many questions about my past?”
“I told you I want to know everything about you. I have the key you’ve given me, but it doesn’t seem to work on that door. You’ve locked me out of your past.” He framed one half of my face with his hand, sweeping his thumb across my cheek before he removed it. “Was there abuse in your home? Is that why you’re reluctant to tell me about it?”
“It wasn’t a home, and there wasn’t any abuse, only neglect.”
“That’s a form of abuse.”
“That’s what Dolly says.”
“She’s right.”
I nodded. “My mother was obsessed with my father. He was with someone else when they met, and he continued that pattern when he was with her. Maybe she thought she could change him. Probably she was just too weak. He was all she cared about. He couldn’t have cared less about her or my brother and me, from what I could tell during the few times he was around.”
“Your mother didn’t take any interest in you?” Gale asked softly.
“It didn’t matter. My brother and I built our own world. Music was a big part of it.”
“I think your parents not taking an interest did matter. It breaks something inside a child not to have that foundation of love and acceptance.” He sighed. “And then the one person who did take an interest in you died. I’m so sorry, Jo.”
He pressed a soft kiss to my forehead, smoothing the line between my eyes that I sometimes worried would become permanent.
“You’re probably right.” I reached for my locket.
“And you dedicated your life to your brother’s memory.”
I nodded.
“What did your parents do during all of this? You were underage when he died, weren’t you?”
“My father was never a parent. But he stopped coming around anymore, and my mother moved on to her next obsession. Or that’s what I heard. We don’t keep in touch.”
“Who took care of you?”
“I took care of myself. And not very well, a lot of the time. A lot of bad things happened. You know most of it. Things got better when I found Dolly—or she found me, really. Then we added in the twins, and now we’re a family.”
“A band family. I certainly understand that.”
“I know you do. They stuck with you through the very bad during the last year and a half, right? That’s what the media said.”
“They did. Tyler too. I have a lot of genuine friends.”
“That’s because you’re a good guy.”
“I don’t see it like that. But I certainly had examples you didn’t have.”
“Your parents supported you.”
“They did,” he said. “They still do. I wouldn’t have made it through the last eighteen months without them and my friends. I went away on my motorcycle, but I always knew I could come back.”
“I’m glad you have that. You deserve it. And I’m glad you came back. They need you, and the world needs your music.”
“I don’t know about deserving it, Jo. You aren’t a bad person.”
But I was. Ice slithered down my spine.
“Why does one child get a loving, nurturing home, and another gets a terribly dysfunctional one like yours?” The starlight in his eyes seeming to wink out, he shook his head.
His mane of hair with its gleaming satiny strands didn’t distract me the way it usually did. His empathy for me and others with busted lives was more compelling. Peeling away every layer but one, he’d revealed nearly all of me.
“Because maybe there’s something missing in me, something that’s not lovable?” I whispered the question, the worry I’d never admitted to anyone.
“You identify with Heathcliff in your f
avorite story, don’t you?”
I nodded.
“A lot makes sense now.”
“Does it?” I cocked my head. It didn’t really to me. But maybe what I’d lacked was another perspective. His perspective.
“Your past is why you think love is complicated,” he said softly. “You have a skewed view of it. You think you have to earn love by being perfect.”
“Don’t you?”
“No. There are no perfect people, Jo. Love, if we’re fortunate enough to find it, is just two imperfect people coming together who make each other better, who make a better whole.”
He reframed my face. The stars twinkled again in his metallic gaze.
“It’s me and you, Jo, us together. We’re creating something brand new. It’s what I was trying to show you just now. It’s how I feel about you. I’m in love with you.”
“YOU CAN’T LOVE ME,” I said, my lips parting in awe.
“I can. Let me show you.”
He leaned in slowly, and in the moonlight, I saw myself reflected in his eyes. Me, the way he saw me. It was nearly as irresistible of a dream as he was.
“Okay, Gale.” I didn’t deserve the dream he offered, but I could allow myself this one more time.
He framed my face, I framed his, and our mouths came together again. A tentative brush of his firm lips to my softer ones. A tender reciprocating touch of mine to his, and then there was a major melding. That new creation he spoke of, I showed him what I wished it could be. What I wished I could be.
I came up on my knees, savoring for a mere moment the view of him, his handsome face cupped in my hands. Then I changed the angle, refastened my lips to his, and deepened the kiss.
He groaned. I took the sound of his pleasure, swallowing it greedily. I wouldn’t give that back. Tenderly, I sipped from the well. With my lips and tongue, I made love to his mouth. I was making love to him the best I knew how.
“Jo,” he said, breaking the kiss. “Wow.”
He was up on his knees now too, and my hands rested on his arms, a platform to hold mine steady. Kneeling together on a blanket under the stars felt reverent, and even though I didn’t deserve it, for the first time in my life, I felt revered.
ROCK F*CK CLUB (Girls Ranking the Rock Stars Book 5) Page 22
