Taking the Lead (Secrets of a Rock Star #1)

by Cecilia Tan

  But I wanted to come. For him. Not because I needed to. Because he wanted me to. Because it was for his pleasure.

  My screams had turned to the word “please” over and over. Not “please stop” but more like a general plea to God or the universe to make it happen. I’d given everything I could and if another orgasm was going to happen it was going to have to come from somewhere else. A miracle.

  And then Axel slipped a completely slick finger into my ass and I suddenly felt the quickening, the tightening, the rising that meant I was going to peak again.

  I screamed so hard that when it stopped—when the orgasm faded enough for me to feel the rest of my body—I could tell I’d made my throat sore.

  Axel loomed above me, licking his lips, backlit by the bright overhead light in the middle of the room. “One more, Ricki. One more.”

  I reached up and put a hand over the one of his that was still holding my leg in place. “Please …?” I tried.

  “Please what, love?” He leaned over and planted one tender kiss on my mouth. “You’re allowed to beg, you know.”

  “Please, this time, when I come for you, can you …” It made no sense that I was blushing now and embarrassed to say this, given all we’d done and all he’d seen. Yet somehow that didn’t matter: asking for his cock had suddenly made me selfconscious. “I … I need you inside me,” I whispered.

  “Because I’m your human dildo?” he asked.

  “No! No. Because … if I’m yours … I just …” I tried to catch my breath but in this position that was impossible. “I can’t explain it.”

  “It’s all right, Ricki. I can.” He shifted us onto our sides so that my bent leg was hooked over his hip. “You want me to take you.”

  “I want to give you what’s yours,” I said, looking into his eyes. “Inside and out. Maybe it sounds stupid—”

  “It doesn’t.”

  “But you’re … you’re right. I need you to take me. I need you to possess me—yes, like a demon! Controlling my fears, making me lust, taking away my inhibitions. I … I don’t know why I can’t do it myself. I need you.”

  He nuzzled my ear. “Stop worrying about why. Just accept that it is.”

  “I haven’t been the same since the night of the awards,” I said. “Something broke loose that can’t be put back.”

  “It’s all right, Ricki. I’m here,” he said, shifting on top of me.

  “You said it yourself that night.” I wrapped my legs around him as he rubbed his cock up and down. I could feel it hardening against me. “You own my pleasure. You own this.” I ground against him.

  “I intend to take good care of it,” he said. “And you.”

  With that he thrust into me, one deep stab so fast it almost hurt, except that I wanted it so much.

  There was no blindfold now, no ropes, no leather, but somehow I felt every bit as bound as I had when I had been in the stocks with my neck and wrists immobilized and my ankles spread by an iron bar. With his tongue claiming my mouth, his arms wrapped around my back, and his cock buried deep inside me, I felt … at home. “I’m yours,” I heard myself whispering as he slid all the way out of me and then thrust in again, claiming me again.

  I’d never been fucked like this before. My experience had been that once a guy was in, he was in, and he’d sprint to the finish line.

  But this was Axel, and how many times was I going to learn that Axel wasn’t like other guys? He pulled all the way free again and thrust all the way in again, making me gasp.

  “How do you feel?” he asked, as he pulled free and then teased at my wet lips with the head of his cock.

  “Lucky,” I said.

  “Fuck me? Did you say ‘fuck me’?”

  “Lucky!” I tried to say it louder. My voice really was shot. “Just think, if we hadn’t met, or hadn’t met the way we did …” I might be on a date with Grant Randolph and hating it right now. Or working for him. Ugh.

  “Mmm, lucky,” he murmured in agreement, and plowed me again.

  “That makes your cock feel huge,” I said.

  “Mmm, and it makes your pussy feel incredible. Every time I pull out it’s like you plump up in anticipation.” He wiggled the head back and forth again and I whimpered with need.

  I don’t know how long it went on like that, with him driving into me, occasionally giving a couple of pumps and a grind, and then he would pull out and tease me. He sometimes pushed into me with agonizing slowness, and pulled out just as slowly, leaving me making hungry sounds, trying to get him back again. But there was no hurrying him. It was almost like Axel went into a kind of fugue state, where time didn’t move; only his hips did.

  And then he pulled out and closed his eyes. His voice was hoarse and tight and I feared what he might be thinking as he demanded, “How do you feel?”

  I cradled his face in my hands. “Like I love you more than anything else in the world.”

  He opened his eyes and I could see the shimmer of unshed tears there.

  I went on. “Like I want to cherish you the way you cherish me. I need your help to do that, though, Axel. We need to figure out how to make it work together. But we will. I don’t just need you. I don’t just want your body. I love you. I love you and everything else we’ll figure out later.”

  He smiled as he filled me with his cock, a smile that was like the sunrise. “I love you, too, Ricki Hamilton. I love you, too.”

  EPILOGUE

  SIX MONTHS LATER

  RICKI

  Paul breezed into the office with a small stack of mail and plopped the latest print edition of The Tinseltown Tab in front of me with a smug smile.

  There on the front page was a photo from the press conference where Mandy and I had announced the launch of our new company, WOMedia. “Have you paged through it yet?”

  “You have to get all the way to page twenty-two before you find the one of you and Axel leaving the jewelry store,” he said.

  “Good.” I paged through just to see it. The photo was quite blurry, showing the two of us crossing the street outside the Harry Winston diamond shop in Manhattan. The caption read: Rumors continue to swirl about whether heiress Ricki Hamilton and rock singer Axel Hawke are, or aren’t, Hollywood’s latest power couple. Sources could not confirm whether any rings were purchased on this visit to the “Jeweler to the Stars.”

  I reached up to touch my throat without realizing it. While we were in New York we’d gone to Winston’s to get Nana’s diamond choker refitted. I wasn’t wearing it now, of course, but I could almost feel Axel’s fingers, playing along the sensitive places in my neck …

  “Ricki. It’s nearly four and you’ve got a party to prep for.” Paul jerked me from my reverie with a reminder.

  “Right.” I stood and stretched, then looked under my desk for my sandals. “Have you seen my shoes?”

  “I think you came down to the office today in bare feet,” Paul said. “Speaking of which, right now there’s a sale on yoga pants from that all-natural fibers, fair-trade website you like.”

  While WOMedia was still young, I was working from home, and I hadn’t put on heels or a blazer once since the press conference. We’d be opening an office soon enough, but right now I was enjoying the freedom. I could start a blog called Yoga Pants CEO. “Is Axel here yet?”

  “I believe he’s right outside.”

  “Great. Send him in, and you can get out of here. We’re taking tomorrow off, remember. Got hot plans for tonight?”

  “Mm-hm. Netflix and take-out sushi,” he said with a smirk. “See you Monday.”

  He swanned out and a moment later Axel popped his head in, knocking on the wooden door frame with his knuckles. “Is the boss in?”

  I met him halfway across the office with a quick kiss. “No, the boss is most definitely off the clock,” I said.

  “Good.” He let the gear bag on his shoulder drop to the floor and he stripped my top over my head before I could take a breath. His thumbs hooked around my nipples and his
mouth went to my neck, but he didn’t linger there. His hands slid down my back, under the waistband of my yoga pants, and a moment later I was stepping out of them, entirely naked.

  “Mm, Ricki.” He nuzzled the crook between my thigh and body, then stood up, pulling me against him. He was wearing his usual, jeans and a leather jacket, and the zipper of the jacket felt cold against my bare skin. “Are you ready for tonight?”

  My heart, which had already sped up to ninety miles an hour when he’d stripped me, skipped a beat. “I think so.”

  “You can always give me the sign to stop,” he said. “Do you want to see the ropes I brought?”

  “Are they different?”

  “Come look.” He knelt down and unzipped the bag.

  I knelt down beside him. There were coils and coils of finely made, silky smooth rope. Unlike all the rope we’d been practicing with, which was white, these were in brilliant colors. “Gorgeous.” I picked one up that was scarlet. Under it was purple. “Where did you get these?”

  “Sakura has a friend who makes them especially for bondage purposes.”

  “Of course she does.” I felt a flutter of excitement. “She’s coming tonight, right?”

  “You’re in charge of the guest list for these secret parties, not me,” Axel said with a laugh.

  “Well, except there’s no list because if we had a list it could be incriminating, and I’ve had too much going on in my head to remember.”

  “Mm-hm. Well, tonight you will have only one thing on your mind.”

  “Rope?”

  “Pleasing me,” he said sternly, but then cracked a grin. He stood. “Now. If I’m going to have you in a bodysuit for the actual bondage scene that means I better get my fill of your gorgeous body before we go to the dungeon.” He took a quick look around the office. “Bend over the desk. Arms out. Palms flat against it.”

  I went to the wide oak desk without hesitation and took the position he’d asked for. That put my face on top of the article about us visiting the diamond shop.

  I heard his jacket and trousers drop to the floor.

  His hand ran down my buttocks and then teased its way toward my center. One finger worked open the seam and probed gently. “Tsk tsk. Not nearly wet enough for how hard I want to fuck you.” I could feel his erection burning against my leg. “Let’s see if ten spanks on each cheek improves the situation.”

  There were no “warm up” swats this time, just ten breath-stealingly painful smacks on my left and then ten on my right, leaving me gasping and writhing against the desk. His fingers slid from my tailbone downward, right into a thick, slick patch of my body’s lubrication.

  “That’s better. Oh, Ricki. You’re perfect.”

  The next thing I felt was the head of his cock sliding up and down in the wetness. Just when I was considering begging him to put it in, he thrust into me with one forceful stroke. His hands took hold of my hips.

  “Now we’re going to take a few steps back from the desk,” he said, and we edged backward. “Use your hands on the desk to give you leverage,” he said. “Your job is to fuck yourself on me until I come.”

  “May I point out that we have a party to prepare for?”

  “You may, and that’s all the more reason to make it happen fast, Ms. Hamilton. I suggest you squeeze me tight and set a hard rhythm.”

  I couldn’t help but squeeze his cock with my insides when he said that and I felt a deep throb of my own arousal spread through me as I did. “Am I allowed to come?”

  “If you happen to come while you’re getting me off, that’s fine,” he said casually. “Your one goal is to get your insides coated with my come. Now, go.”

  He had braced his feet somehow so I could push myself back against him as hard as I wanted. With my hands on the desk I rocked back and forth, feeling his flesh penetrating deeply into me on each push.

  “That’s it,” he encouraged, and I could feel him moving enough to give me a clue to find the right rhythm. “You’re so good. So good.”

  When I got the rhythm right, though, he began messing me up by spanking me, which—between how good his cock felt and that—would have guaranteed an orgasm for me if only something were touching my clit. As it was, I felt myself getting closer and closer.

  But that made me want to shift to the rhythm that was right for me, not the rhythm that would get Axel off. I felt his fingertips against one of my hips, reminding me of the pace.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck, so good. I concentrated on his pleasure instead of mine and was rewarded when he suddenly grabbed me by both hips and plowed into me for a flurry of quick intense strokes. Then he held still with a groan and I could feel the pumping and twitching of his cock inside me as he came.

  He kissed me on the spine while he emptied, then held still until he was completely done, pulling out and letting everything dribble down my legs.

  He pushed a finger in and fished around. “Did you come?”

  “No, Mr. Hawke.”

  “Do you want to?”

  “Yes, Mr. Hawke!”

  “Good.” He pulled his hand free. “You can come once I have you suspended in rope tonight.”

  I sucked in a breath.

  “I know, you’ll be wearing a catsuit and all, but a little fabric isn’t enough to keep you from getting there.” He slapped me playfully on the buttock. “Time to get cleaned up.”

  He picked up the bag of ropes and sauntered out without waiting for me, whistling the tune of “Kidnap My Heart.”

  A beautiful young submissive.

  A sexy, dominant rock star.

  The passion blazes in a sizzling new novel …

  Please see the next page

  for a preview of

  WILD LICKS

  GWEN

  The only piece of advice my father ever gave me was one I took to heart. “Never let them see you cry.”

  Those were the words going through my head while I clutched a wrinkled and folded set of pages in my fingers, sitting on a bench in a hallway outside the audition room with a dozen other women. At least three had emerged from the room in tears and I tried to imagine what the director and casting agent must have said to them. Did they insult their clothing? Their weight? Did they rip apart their acting ability? Was it all some kind of a test to see if you could stand the heat?

  The director, Miles Redlace, was a notorious asshole. But, you know, Hollywood loves an asshole if he’s brilliant.

  Honestly, insults might be better than the last audition I’d gone to, where I’d felt completely ignored. It was as if they weren’t even paying attention to the fact that someone was in front of them. I had never felt so dismissed or humiliated in my life. On top of that I’d overheard the casting director saying he was disappointed in the effort people were putting in. How could he even tell how much effort an actor had given to getting into a part if he never even looked up from his phone or the crossword puzzle he was doing?

  I’d taken his words to heart, though. For this audition I’d put fake tattoos on my shoulders and arms, a temporary red wash in my hair to cover my natural blonde, and was wearing a fake nose ring. I was going to do everything I could to be this character, to be what the producers were hopefully picturing in their minds.

  My sister Ricki asked me the other day why I even went to these cattle calls. “Let me put the financing together and we’ll create a project for you,” she said.

  I couldn’t explain right then why a “vanity project” wasn’t what I wanted, but she didn’t push. Maybe she kind of knew that I didn’t want to rely on the family money or name to get my start.

  I wanted to prove myself. I wanted to prove that my talent could get me the part, not my family name. I always put in a stage name, but anyone paying attention could have recognized me. But like I said, they don’t usually pay much attention. This time I looked so different from myself, though.

  If this worked …

  The door opened and another girl came out looking dejected. She didn’t even
look at us on the bench, just dragged herself toward the exit, depositing the script in a trash bin across the hall as she went.

  I looked up and down the dozen or so of us still waiting. Everyone looked fresh out of college, like me, although I heard two of them talking and they seemed older. But everyone wants to look young, even when the role isn’t an eighteen-year-old punk rock rebel girl in a film with the working title Wild Child.

  I know how Hollywood works. I grew up in the film business and I am a realist. I knew I was doing it the hard way. But I had to do it my way.

  “Ginger Hill?” called the PA at the door. It took me a moment to remember that was the stage name I’d picked.

  I hopped to my feet, adrenaline surging. “Right here!”

  “Oh no, wait,” the woman said, checking her clipboard. “Marian Foy, you first. Hill, you’re next.”

  I felt mortified and sank back down onto the bench. Why did I feel that way? It was her mistake, but I wished a hole would open in the ground and swallow me up.

  Great. Now you’re going to go in there all red-faced and flustered. My heart had sped up and it didn’t seem like it would slow down anytime soon.

  I gripped the folded script more tightly, trying to keep my hands from shaking, thinking, Is this how a wild child would act? Of course not! She would just strut in there like she didn’t give a fuck what they thought. Could I do it? Could I really “act” like someone I wasn’t? That was the question.

  An eternity—or maybe only an agonizing moment—later, the door opened again. I was expecting to see Marian Foy come trudging out. But no, it was the PA, this time without her clipboard. “Thank you all for coming, but we have filled the role.”

  Some of the women groaned. One of them flung the script into the trash bin across the hall where it landed with a quiet crashing sound.