Manipulated: a Rockstar Romantic Comedy (Hammered Book 3)

by Taryn Elliott

  “Do it,” I murmured.

  He cocked his head. “Do what?”

  “Touch me. Please.”

  “While you’re holding that in one hand? So you are a kinky girl.” He licked the side of my neck and obliged me by sliding the sheet lower. Instead of cupping one, he braced his wide hand over both as well as he could, plumping them up. Hiding my pink nipples from the camera as I snapped the button that would capture us for posterity.

  “More?” He changed his pose and wrapped his tanned fingers around one of them, the contrast of our skin tones stark. I was so pale, and he was not.

  “God, that’s hot.” My voice was shaking. I was shaking. Just seeing him touch me so possessively triggered something hot and toe-curling inside me.

  “It is. We can get even hotter.” He pushed down the sheet and slid his hand between my legs. With merely a flick of one of those long talented fingers, I was straining. My wetness coated his fingertip and he growled in approval. “Still raring to go. I wonder, love, if I put my head down and tasted you if you’d continue to snap your photos. How long do you think you would be able to?”

  I opened my legs.

  “Oh yes, there’s an exhibitionist inside you. I so enjoy urging her out to play.” He bent to suck on nipple while his tongue lapped at the crest of my breast. “Hit video,” he said in a guttural voice, and I couldn’t say no.

  Couldn’t stop.

  Slowly, so slowly, he licked my nipple. All the while, he strummed me as leisurely as he might his bass during the building phase of a song. But there was no climb here. I was already primed from last night and this morning. He simply had to bear down on my clit while his teeth grazed my tight tip and I was coming. Hard.

  “Don’t stop the video,” he commanded as I struggled to hold my hand aloft enough to get the action in view. Only years of training at maintaining a shot and that sexy, demanding voice held enough sway over me to help me keep my arm reasonably steady.

  “Again,” he purred, and this time, he lowered his head between my thighs. “I want to see you come on camera. Want to keep it for myself so I can look at it whenever I want, instead of relying on my memory.” He slipped his tongue between my swollen lower lips and I cried out.

  But I kept rolling.

  “Look at you. All flushed and wet for me.” He opened up my pussy, his touch so delicate that my hips lurched off the bed. I needed rough and hard—again, still—and he was so gentle. “Come closer.”

  Swallowing hard, I brought the phone closer to his head. To where I could see his tongue separating my folds and diving deep to scoop out my wetness. So much. All for him.

  “Someday we’ll get another camera. One that can get your face while you watch me eat your pussy on camera. While you see every little lick.” He curled his tongue and I moaned, my sweaty hand nearly losing grip on the phone.

  Then he pushed two fingers into his mouth, getting them damp. Knowing where they were going only made me eagerly buck my hips.

  “No patience.” He pressed his lubricated fingers against my entrance, sliding in without effort. I was drenched for him. “Ah, bunny, me either. I need this pussy around my fingers. Against my mouth.” Hand flexing, he lowered his head to resume his oral ministrations. “Come for me. Let me feel it again.”

  If I couldn’t say no to him, my body definitely couldn’t. I broke apart around his fingers and he groaned, reaching down to palm his cock. Stiff and gorgeous, it curved away from his groin. He was that hard for me, because of me.

  Even as I gasped through my climax, I turned the phone toward his hand grasping his dick. It was probably the most delicious thing I’d ever seen.

  Unfortunately, I was breathing too hard to keep my hand steady. I pressed stop and let my arm drop, intending to resume taping when I stopped wheezing like an aging train.

  Owen deftly plucked the phone out of my hand before I could. “Let me see.”

  My face heated. I trusted him implicitly, so I wasn’t worried my rash actions would come back to haunt me. In spite of our short relationship—it seemed impossible we’d come this far this fast—I knew I could count on him. He wasn’t the sort of rocker to brag about conquests or to leak a sex tape to up his social media clicks. Owen Blackwell was a good man, the kind I’d never imagined might want me.

  I was too many things. Too ungainly, except when a camera was in my hands. Too snarky, too apt to say the worst thing at the worst time. Too thoughtless, too self-conscious.

  Too full of feelings for this man to even have the slightest clue what to do with them.

  “Christ, you’re a vision. I need copies of these. Many copies. On every device I own, on every hard drive—” He stopped as I laughed softly and turned my face against the inside of my arm. My cheeks were flaming. “What? You don’t believe me?” He turned the phone toward me and I couldn’t close my eyes. “Look at you, so close to coming for me. Trying so hard to hold back and being unable to. That is potent magic, knowing I unwind you just as you do me.”

  “You do. All you have to do is look at me or speak to me and I’m lost.” And now I was sounding as fanciful as he often did.

  That wasn’t me, but with him, it was. He brought out new sides of me. Ones I’d stuffed down or denied entirely. I’d never been more myself than when he was at my side. Or inside me, loving me with his gaze.

  Almost immediately, I tried to backtrack. He was fond of me, sure. But love? I didn’t want to fool myself. To set myself up to be hurt again. Wasn’t that why I’d been trying to keep a part of myself safe and remote all this time?

  But I couldn’t. Not when it came to Owen. He had all of me, and I couldn’t hold anything back.

  Even if we ended things tomorrow, I couldn’t give less than my all.

  I sat up to rub the heel of my hand over my chest. I couldn’t breathe again, and it wasn’t due to afterglow.

  It was all too much. Too fast, too soon. It didn’t feel too soon, and that was the scary part. Was I setting myself up for the biggest fall of my life? Far bigger than what I’d experienced with Steven, because I’d never felt like this for him. I’d loved my husband, of course, but this was a whole new ballgame.

  I dipped my head as my skin grew clammy and my heart started to race. I was going to have a panic attack right here in Owen’s bed. Owen, Mr. Rockstar. Yet more proof why we could never suit.

  Even if we’d been suiting up just fine for a while now.

  He chuckled and I jerked up my head as if he’d fired a gun. “What?”

  “Just sent one off to Instagram. We look good together, love. Imagine the beautiful babies we’d make.”

  I barely registered the babies comment, though I’d be unpacking that one at length later. In my already panicked state, all I could think about was that he’d “sent one off”.

  “Which one? You posted our sex pictures on the internet?” I snatched back my phone, my cheeks heating anew.

  What had I been thinking to do that with him? Who was I becoming?

  You. You’re finally, finally becoming you.

  “Hardly a sex picture. Don’t you think I have more discretion than that?” His voice was mild, but his expression was not. “After what we just did together, you still have so little trust in me?”

  “It’s not about trust. It’s about you taking an intimate moment and sharing it with the masses. People who didn’t know me, who might enjoy making trouble for me. God, the band. Lila.

  Donovan.

  I scrolled to the post he’d made and let out a sigh of relief. It was just us cheek to cheek. Of course it was. He wouldn’t try to hurt me or embarrass me, even as part of a joke. We were both covered, but we also were both obviously bare-shouldered and very close in proximity. And it was hard to see the bedsheets and pillows as anything what they were, especially when paired with the caption he’d chosen.

  A very fine morning indeed.

  The post was already garnering likes by the bucketload.

  I was going to be sick
in Owen’s bed.

  “What about my job? If I get fired…this isn’t professional…oh God, Owen, this isn’t like you have a shag with Keys. You’re on equal footing. You have money.” My windpipe tightened until I couldn’t draw in enough oxygen. “If I get tossed off this tour—”

  He sat up and grabbed my phone, tossing it aside. “What about Keys? What does she have anything to do with this?”

  “Nothing, except I see how you look at her. How you fawned after her when she got hurt.”

  “Fawned?” He whipped the sheet aside and stood up in all his naked glory. “Excuse me for saying so, love, but I’m not one to fawn over anyone. I know I said I was different from your bloody waste of space of an ex-husband, but that doesn’t mean I’ll just pine over someone who doesn’t want me or has found someone else.”

  All at once, it dawned on me. I hadn’t been just blowing smoke about Keys or grasping at drumsticks when I was in the midst of an attack of fear. He really had looked at Keys the way my jealous mind had tried to insist the night I’d patched him up in the bathroom after the show.

  “She didn’t want you? How can that possibly be?”

  “Oh, Jesus, this has no bearing on us. On what we did in this bed or the moments we’ve stacked together to make something whole and real.” He slapped his hands on the bed and leaned across the mattress to get right in my face. “What I felt for her is a shadow. I only thought it was huge until I met you. The feelings you arouse me, God, woman, I could just take you over my knee and—”

  “And what? Spank me into not being afraid about losing my job? I thought you understood how much a part of me it was.”

  I wasn’t going to think about the spanking thing. How much it intrigued me, and how exciting it was to send Owen spiraling out of. He’d made me that way from the first day we’d met, for God’s sake, so turnabout was only fair.

  “You think I don’t understand? I know so much of you already and I’m learning more every day, no matter how often you try to close yourself off.”

  “We’re only temporary,” I managed, throwing the sheet aside and rolling toward the other side of the bed.

  I had to get away from him. Not because I wanted to. I wanted nothing more than to burrow in and stay with him. To forget the rest of the world even existed.

  To forget I was so goddamned scared.

  “If we are, that’s your choice. I don’t use that word half as much as you do.”

  “You set up this agreement.” I searched for my bra and panties and stepped into them hurriedly without looking his way. I grabbed the rest of my clothes, tossing them on haphazardly. “You promised this would be no strings.”

  “I did and I meant it, if that was the only way I could get my hands on you. But what if I want them now? What if—”

  “Don’t.” My voice slashed out, trembling as badly as my hands as I straightened my clothes. “I’m finally getting back to my photography and back to me after what I went through with my husband. If that all ends now because I couldn’t keep myself from pushing the boundaries, how will I ever look at myself in the mirror again?” I stared at him through the blur of tears. My vow not to cry in front of anyone ever again didn’t apply to Owen Blackwell apparently.

  So few of my rules did. He was the exception to them all.

  “You think this was about pushing boundaries?” He raked a hand through his hair. “Okay, yes, some of it was, maybe for both of us. But the boundaries you pushed wide open in me aren’t the same ones you’re learning to test. Bunny, I’ve never felt like this before. I definitely didn’t feel like this about Keys.”

  Even as I rejoiced inside, the sneaky voice in my head rejected it. He was just placating me. Just trying to make me feel better so he would win the argument. My ex had done that so many times, and where had that gotten me?

  “You don’t get it. I’ve always come in second. With my sister, and now here too.” I snatched my purse off the nightstand and dug my phone out of the sheets where I’d dropped it. “I’m sorry, but I need air and space. I need to make this right with Ripper. God, I just need to go. Please.”

  Instead of fighting me or offering to drive me anywhere, he opened the top drawer of his nightstand and rooted around until he pulled out a key. “I keep a couple keys up here too. I have them stashed all over the house.” He held it out and closed his fingers around it as his Adam’s apple bobbed. “You don’t have to rush to return it. When you come back to me, I want it to be your decision, not because you have to return my property.”

  Shakily, I nodded. If I continued much longer, the sobs I was holding at bay would spring free. I didn’t want to further destroy what had been a beautiful start to the weekend with my histrionics.

  It wasn’t his fault that I was so terrified to lose my job I couldn’t be rational. Or that he’d made me fall in lo—

  No. One thing at a time.

  First, I needed to get out of his spectacular home and away from those smoldering blue eyes that made every decision seem like a good one.

  Take nude pictures with a rockstar with a million fans who you’ve only known for a short time? Absolutely!

  Have sex on a car hood outside? Why not?

  Jump headfirst onto a pile of rocks? Sure!

  That would probably be next if I didn’t get myself straightened around again. If I even could at this point.

  “Thank you.” I held out my hand. “I really appreciate it. And thank you for this weekend. For…” I gestured toward the bed. The sheets were barely still on the mattress. Unsurprising, considering the way we’d gone at each other. “For all of this. For everything.”

  He dropped the key in my hand, reluctance lining his features. The same reluctance made it hard for me to take hold of them.

  I wanted to stay far more than I wanted to leave. Only fear was pushing me out the door.

  The fear I’d lived with way too fucking long.

  “You’re welcome.”

  I’d made it to the doorway before he spoke again. “Oh, and just in case you’re wondering, bunny.” I glanced back and our gazes connected. I was amazed lightning didn’t arc between us, the emotions in the room were so potent.

  Or maybe that was just more of Owen’s poetic worldview rubbing off on me.

  “I will give you your space, because you asked for it. But that doesn’t mean I won’t try everything in my power to convince you to come back to me.”

  I held his stare for another minute, and then I fled like the coward I was.

  The coward I’d been since the first night we met.

  16

  Callie

  The tears subsided after a few minutes on the road. And I started to secondguess myself.

  Had I made a colossal mistake? Again?

  Driving away from the man’s palatial secret hideaway in his sexy black Jaguar seemed more than a little ridiculous, but I needed space to process everything. What he’d done, all that he’d told me. How it all made me feel.

  He understands your need for privacy and room to think. Just like he understands you.

  I’d certainly begun to believe that, but after the photo he’d so blithely uploaded to the web, I had my doubts. I’d told him my job meant everything to me. Securing my rep and getting back the joy of taking pictures again was more important than anything in my life.

  More important than anything but Owen?

  That was the question. I’d taken that extended leave from the restaurant and my boss had stopped answering my calls, so even if I tucked tail between my legs and went back home, I might not have anything to go back to. My boss would only be so nice, no matter what sob story I trotted out. And what exactly could I say?

  I had to go on tour with a bunch of sexy rockstars and take pictures of their life. Then I hooked up with their bassist and fell in—

  Nothing. I’d fallen in nothing. I’d just been swept up in a whirlwind affair. Of course I’d build it up in my head to something so huge, I couldn’t imagine my life without it
.

  Without him.

  I curled my fingers around the wheel and forced myself to glance out the window at the ocean. That was eternal. The tide, the sun, the moon. Not my little insignificant problems. A year from now, I’d probably barely remember his name.

  Right. Sure. Okay, maybe I should change that to ten years. Or fifty. Or when I couldn’t breathe or think anymore. I doubted I’d ever be able to scour his seductive voice or his soft, patient hands or those mischievous blue eyes from my brain.

  I’d driven halfway back to where the bus was parked in preparation for Monday night’s concert when my phone trilled in my pocket with a text message.

  Keys. Fabulous. Just whom I wanted to hear from right now. I dug out my phone and glanced at the readout.

  FA: Say, are we still on next week to take those pix we talked about? You know the sexy ones?

  I groaned and tossed my phone on the passenger seat. Seriously? I’d just had to hear how the guy I lo—cared about—had been in love with this woman, now I’d get to see her lush body all spread out in front of me. Perfect fodder for me to imagine he’d settled with his second choice rather than whom he truly wanted.

  He said being with you had shown him that his feelings for Keys weren’t the real deal.

  Sure, they were. I believed him and his soulful midnight blue eyes. It would be so easy to, if I didn’t happen to have a pair of my own and a knowledge of the power of history. Keys and Owen had it. He’d wanted her before she’d found someone to love of her own. So a part of him would probably always wonder, what if?

  So what? Doesn’t a part of you still wonder what if things had gone better between you and Steven? Even so, you’re not pining for the dude. You definitely wouldn’t run back to him if he showed up and told you he’d changed.