The last few words are broken off, leaving me to mentally fill them in for him.
I won’t bother with you again.
You can finally forget me.
We can pretend like you never loved me.
I wrap my fingers around his as if I need to hold on to him to stay upright. My chest is cold, and I try to figure out why. Am I scared of what will happen if I spent tonight and tomorrow night with him? Or do I fear that he’s agreeing to what I’ve already settled in my mind—to let things between us go after we’re done here? “And here I was thinking that you’d keep your word about not trying to get me into bed.”
“Shit happens.” When he grins, I smile back, but mine is shaky and unsure. “You in or not?” he asks.
Maybe it’s because I still want Wyatt, and this might be the last time I can act on that desire before I move on. Or maybe it’s because, not even a week ago, I convinced Sienna Jensen to take a chance on helping the man who screwed her over in the past. Either way, I know that I have to do this. I need to get this man out of my system.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m in.”
Because Heidi soon texts me that she and Shiner Bock—or Finn as she calls him—are having “drinks” in the hotel room that she and I are sharing, staying with Wyatt tonight becomes inevitable anyway, unless I want to cough up the fee to get another room.
To my surprise though, when he comes out of the shower with a towel slung low on his hips, he says, “Night, beautiful.”
“You’re going to bed?” I ask, surprised.
He stands on his side of the bed with his back turned to me, but glances over his shoulder to cock an eyebrow. “Thought you were tired.”
“Well, I am, but—” He drops the towel, revealing his incredible ass, and now, it’s my turn to lift an eyebrow. “Really, Wyatt?”
He pulls on a pair of boxer briefs before turning around. Grinning, he jerks back the bedspread and stretches out on the oversized bed. What the hell is he doing?
“Come to bed.”
I keep my eyes trained on him as I shimmy my jeans down, pull off my boots, and step out of them. I drag my T-shirt—which smells like booze, cigarettes, and my Betsey Johnson perfume—over my head and drop it beside my pants. “Got a shirt I can wear?”
His gaze dips to the tattoos on my shoulder and then to the big star in the center of my underwear. “Bag on the chair.”
I grab the first thing I can find—a plain white T-shirt that smells like the Tide detergent his housekeeper washes his clothes in—and climb into bed with him as I finish pulling it on. When I move to lie down, he stops me, squeezing my hips gently between his hands.
“What?” I whisper breathlessly.
“How many of those things do you have now?” he asks, a serious expression on his face.
“What things?”
“Those goddamn blackbirds.”
Unconsciously, my hand flies up to the left side of my chest to the tattoos, blackbirds in several different sizes. His T-shirt is covering most of them, but a few are still clearly visible. “Eighteen.”
There’s one for each time things have gone to hell between us and for every time I’ve screwed myself over. Even though they’re not all because of him, my tattoos feel like eighteen tiny reminders of why accepting his challenge to stay with him for tonight and the next is as much of an omen as the ink itself.
Seventeen too many tattoos.
Wyatt inclines his head, and I almost expect him to say something else about the blackbirds, but when he speaks, it’s about sex. How typical.
“I want nothing more than to wrap your legs around my shoulders and fuck you for the rest of the night.” He pulls me on top of him, one leg at a time. “But in all the years we’ve been doing this, not once have I ever just slept with you. I figure if we’re pulling the plug, we might as well do it just once.”
The change of subject is like a fist to my stomach. It’s so painful that it comes damn close to knocking the air out of my lungs. It’s hard for me not to react, but I maintain my composure as I grip his shoulders tightly and lower my face down to his. Our lips graze briefly, softly, and I can’t help but want for more.
“Sweet dreams.” I don’t give him time to respond. I roll off of him and curl up on my side with my back turned to his body.
We’re quiet for several minutes before he makes a noise deep in his throat. “Come closer, Ky. I need to touch you.”
His body finds mine in the dark, and he wraps his arm around my waist. He presses his lips against the tattoo between my shoulder blades—the caged bluebird. He picked it out for me a few years ago when I went with him to Atlanta for his father’s funeral. It was supposed to symbolize happiness, a new beginning, but it hasn’t done me much good.
“This, Kylie, this is how I need to remember you, if you’re not bullshitting about being done with me.”
“I’m not.” I curl my fingers around his hand, but I say nothing. I don’t trust myself to speak.
It doesn’t take long for him to fall asleep. He sleeps hard, soundly, so he doesn’t even flinch when I untangle myself from his body to turn back over to face him. I spend the next hour studying him, running my fingertips gently over his lips and the angles of his face. I etch every detail of him into my memory.
CHAPTER THREE
* * *
“Fuck…”
The sound of Wyatt’s voice cutting through the silence of the dark hotel room immediately snaps me out of my sleep, which is already fitful, thanks to him.
“Don’t do that, Ky,” he continues.
It takes a moment, which I spend with my eyes squeezed together, to realize that he’s talking to me. And it takes another few seconds to grasp that at some point since I drifted off to sleep, he closed the tiny amount of space that had been left between our bodies earlier. He’s wrapped his arm loosely around my waist and thrown one of his long legs over mine, trapping me partially beneath him. He’s also gotten rid of his boxers.
Once some of my grogginess disappears, I realize that his very bare and—as much as I hate to admit it—incredibly epic cock is pressed against my stomach.
“Fuck is right,” I mutter under my breath, echoing the very word he used to wake me up.
“Kylie,” he says my name again, this time in an urgent growl.
His hold on my waist tightens, and I flinch. I just know he’ll mention how hot my skin feels, how he knows that every inch of my body is reacting to him right now.
But he doesn’t say anything. And that’s so untypical of Wyatt that I freeze. “Hmm?” When he doesn’t rush to answer me, I drag open my eyes. “Wyatt, what the—” My words catch in the back of my throat.
He’s asleep.
Wyatt is asleep, and he’s saying my name desperately, hopelessly.
Call it cliché, but when the man I’ve loved since I lost my virginity to him at seventeen, the heavy sleeper that I’m just a few days away from leaving for good, calls out my name in his sleep, I’ve got no choice but to react.
The question is: What am I supposed to do?
Blowing a short blue strand of hair up and out of my eye, I curl my fingers around his shoulders. “You okay?” I nudge him back and forth.
He grinds his hips down and doesn’t stop moving until his erection finds the outside of my panties. My lips part slowly, and something that sounds like a rumble mixed with a moan comes out of my mouth. What the hell is this man trying to do to me?
“Wyatt, are you okay?” I repeat.
He exhales roughly. “I’m fine.” He takes his hand away from my waist and moves it to my wrist, pulling my hand away from his shoulder. “I’m fine, but sleeping with you like this fucks me up.” He grazes the tip of his tongue over my fingers and then sucks every other one completely into his mouth, skimming his straight teeth over the ridges of my knuckles.
Even though I know where this is going, I still gasp when he presses my palm to his erection. “Not fucking fair, McCrae,” I say through a fo
rced smile.
He closes my fingers one by one around his cock and then guides my hand up and down his shaft. No, this isn’t fair at all.
“Go back to sleep,” I tell him.
He finally decides to open his eyes, parting them lazily so that he can stare at me unblinking. The back of my throat constricts, and inadvertently, I tighten my grip on him.
The side of his mouth with the labret pulls up into a wicked grin. “We’ve slept long enough, Kylie,” he says. In a couple of swift, well-executed motions, he pins me flat on my back and rolls over on top of me, his knees sinking into the mattress on each side of my hips. “Now, I’m planning to fuck you until my wake-up call.”
When he tries to bend his head down to mine, I stop him, shoving my palm to his chest. I succeed at not wandering my fingertips over the defined muscles taut beneath them, but the hand that’s below his waist is not so resistant. It strokes him even harder. “And what time would that be?”
He moves his knee, and just when I think he’s about to get off me and go back to bed, he nudges it between my closed thighs. I don’t budge.
“Ten thirty,” he says. “And your ass is mine ‘til then.”
Rolling my head to the side, I check the time on the digital MP3 clock sitting on the nightstand beside the hotel telephone. It’s 5:53 a.m.
“Ambitious, aren’t we, McCrae?” I ask, loving the way he shudders when I move my hand that’s wrapped around him faster.
“One part ambition…” He reaches down and splays his hands on my thighs. He gives me a pointed look that clearly says he’s not going to tell me part two until I oblige.
Sighing, I spread my feet apart, curling my toes in the crisp white sheets. “Now, part two?”
He caresses two fingers back and forth between my legs, sucking in a breath at how wet I’ve become, and he whispers something unintelligible about how much he hates my panties. It takes every ounce of self-control I have not to moan.
I want him to feel what I am feeling. I want him to experience every flash of exquisite torture and numbing pleasure. And I want him to feel it now. I move my hand up the length of him and then back down again, and I feel a thrill spread through my veins as a slow but uncertain smile builds on his face.
“That’s my girl,” he whispers into my ear.
“What’s the other part?”
“Every time we see each other after this is all over, and you’re pretending like we don’t mean shit to one another, I want to think back on how tonight and every night before it, your pussy belonged to me.”
Without warning, he dips a finger into my panties and traces a heart around my clit. Wyatt’s always hated playing his guitar with a pick, so his fingertips are rough. It’s the most erotic, addictive thing I’ve ever felt—just a little painful but incredibly satisfying.
I’m not aware that I’ve let go of his cock, and I have started to dig my fingers into his back until a low noise slips from his lips.
“You tryin’ to draw blood?”
I drop my hands. “Damn, sorry. You screw me up, too. You make me want—”
“What? Tell me what you want, Bluebird.”
You make me want to keep trying.
But even Wyatt’s magic fingers, pierced lip, and unforgettable dick aren’t enough to make me want to go through all the emotional bullshit again. “You make me want to kick you in the throat for talking too much.”
When he throws his head back and laughs, I kiss the tattoo on his throat.
“You are fucking amazing,” he growls, pinning me back down.
He presses his mouth to his T-shirt that I’m wearing. My back arches as he skims his tongue around my breast, wetting the thin fabric. He pauses, his expression pensive for a few seconds, but then he makes up his mind. He shoves the tee up and over my head. Cupping my breast in his hand, he pulls my nipple into his mouth, sucking hard and using his teeth.
God, he knows what that does to me.
“You’ve always been amazing to me,” he says, in between strokes of his tongue.
His words push so many of my emotions to the surface at once that they all seem to crash into each other, causing my head to spin and my vision to cloud. What I feel is love, but there’s something else, too—something that’s bitter and nauseating, but not quite hatred. And I realize that I need to say so much to him before we’re done. There’s so much I hadn’t even considered when I came here to get away from him.
But putting everything out there will have to wait.
Because if Wyatt’s going to look at me a few months from now and think about what we did in our final hours, I want him to remember how I rocked his world, not how I turned into a sentimental sap.
I curve my fingers back around his erection. Racing my free hand up his chest, I bring my face up to his. When I clench the skin close to his neck, he groans and squeezes my clit between his thumb and forefinger.
“Fuck me,” I pant.
He leans over and rummages around in the nightstand drawer. “Shit,” he says in a harsh whisper. When his eyes meet mine again, his gorgeous features are worked into a frown. He rubs his palm back and forth over the top of his head, mussing his short blond hair. “Ah hell, I’ve cockblocked myself.”
Because my head is obviously not in the right place, I release an exasperated moan. “Well, stop.”
He makes a soft noise that sounds like a chuckle against the column of my throat. “Trust me, it was unintentional.” He rubs my center faster, and my legs tremble. “Damn, I need you.”
My hand finally closes around his neck, not hard but just enough for him to growl a curse against my mouth. “Why not now?” I demand as he pulls himself out of my grip.
He glances up at me for a moment. “Because as good as I know you’ll feel, I’m not prepared.”
Realization dawns on me that he’s condomless. I nod my head in understanding, even though for the life of me, I can’t fathom why a rock star would leave the house without protection. Before he even has the chance to think about asking me if I’m willing to go without, I shake my head.
“You’re not fucking me bare.”
He crawls down the length of my body and kisses the insides of my thighs. “We’ll just do this the hard way.”
My muscles grow tense as he sucks hungrily on my clit. My next question is muffled because I cover my mouth with my wrist to keep from crying out. Once I catch my breath, I tease, “Wake-up call, my ass.”
“Don’t worry. Tonight, your ass and that wake-up call are mine.”
What exactly does he call this then? He lowers his mouth to my sex again, and I bite down on my tongue as if it’ll keep me from making a sound, but finally, I whimper.
Because Wyatt knows me so well, he leans away from me for a split second. “Oh, you’re mine right now, Kylie. It only takes a little improv.”
“Improv?” I repeat.
He nods, his dark blond hair tickling my thighs. “Like this.” With one hand gripping my waist, he parts my wet slit with the other, and without warning, he pushes two fingers inside me. I ball my hands into fists, clutching onto the crumpled cotton sheets.
“And this.” The tip of his tongue races around my clit as his fingers glide back and forth inside me.
His rhythm makes me dizzy. I buck my hips toward him. He releases a low sound that seems to hum through my body. Wyatt and I have done this more than once. We’ve fucked so many times that I’ve lost count, but this is the first time that I’ve felt like I’ll catch fire.
Keeping his fingers deep inside me, the pad of his thumb replaces his tongue as he strategically kisses up my body. With one kiss on each hipbone, I shiver. After a kiss on my belly button, he pauses to circle it with his tongue, and when I try to grasp his hair, he catches my wrist. And then he kisses each of my breasts, using everything from his teeth to his piercing to get a rise out of me. By the time our bodies are flush with each other again, I’m a wreck.
“More improv?” I moan.
He hoo
ks his free hand under my knee and wraps my leg around his waist. I follow suit with my other leg, clenching him tight.
“Mmhmm, like this.” His mouth covers mine, nibbling my lips and battling my tongue.
So, when I come intensely a moment later, whispering that I love him, my words are nothing more than muffled sobs.
***
Wyatt is in the shower when the alarm on my phone suddenly goes off at exactly six twenty a.m. At first, I don’t do anything to silence it. One, my legs are still shaky from his improvisation. Two, my phone is all the way across the room, lodged down in the back pocket of my jeans. And three, I love The Black Keys, and I could probably listen to my “Lonely Boy” ringtone over and over again for the rest of the morning. But when the person staying in the next room over taps gently on the wall, I suck it up and slide out of bed. As I steady myself and tiptoe over to my pants, I try not to think about why our neighbor didn’t knock on the wall five minutes ago.
I bring my jeans back over to the bed, pluck my iPhone out of them, and drop them on the floor. As I deactivate the alarm, I pause, my gaze zeroing in on the reason for the reminder: CHECK ON LUCAS’S ATL FLIGHT!
Last night, just as Heidi and I were leaving our hotel room, I realized that I had never confirmed today’s flight with Sienna. It was too late to call her then, so I had tipsily left a message for myself. It was a stupid move on my part because I should have taken care of it immediately.
“I go on vacation, and I’m still doing work.” As I climb back into Wyatt’s bed, I know I shouldn’t complain. Making sure my brother’s trip to Atlanta goes smoothly is my responsibility, it’s what he pays me for, and it’s something I shouldn’t have left on a to-do list for my replacement just because I was in a hurry to get the hell away from Wyatt.
I log in to both of Lucas’s email accounts and search through the last six days of messages three times, going back to well before I left for vacation. Finally, I give up and send Sienna a text message.
Rock Star Romance Ultimate: Volume 1 Page 138
