Who Do You Love (Rock Royalty Book 7)

by Christie Ridgway

  “To alleviating your boredom,” he said, that dark note in his voice reminding her he’d ordered his martini dirty.

  This time she did squirm. Sipping her drink, she again tried thinking of something else. “So you don’t usually take divorce cases.”

  He shook his head. “Too depressing. But this is for an old college buddy with a suspicious mind. He used to regularly accuse us of stealing the cookies from the care packages his mother sent.” Then Eamon’s lips twitched. “Bad example. We did regularly steal the cookies from the care packages his mother sent.”

  She laughed. “I suppose cookies are fair game. Sometimes Gwen—Gwendolyn Moon, the band groupie who lived at the compound—would bake homemade cookies for us. There was no honor among Velvet Lemons kids under those circumstances. No fair shares, no saving even a single one for a sibling. In that case we looked out for Number One.”

  Then she made a face. “I guess in most every case we were taught to look out for Number One. Comes from growing up in Hedon Eden.”

  “What?”

  “One of the names I made up for the Laurel Canyon compound.” The second sip of vodka didn’t have the bite of the first. “Profligate Paradise. Licentious-landia.”

  He shrugged. “Well, an MC knows how to have fun, too. Loyalty to family is the only quality more valued.”

  “We’re different there. Bean—my dad—didn’t inspire any fidelity, that’s for sure.” She showed him three fingers. “This many baby mamas.”

  Eamon reached for her hand and rubbed his thumb over her knuckles. “That must have been…confusing.”

  The tender gesture and his steady regard made her want to squirm again. But alleviating boredom didn’t mean baring her soul!

  “There are other words I’d use,” she said lightly, then pulled away from him and downed a large swallow of her drink. It burned a pleasant path along her throat.

  “Like…?”

  “I think I should have another.” Catching the attention of their server, she lifted her near-empty glass.

  Eamon waited until her second martini arrived before he spoke again. “We didn’t talk much about personal matters…before.” He looked at her, his gaze expectant.

  Her belly jittered. “We probably shouldn’t start now.”

  The time had passed for him to get a full glimpse of what lay inside her. Before, she would have given him anything, including all her secrets, but he’d lost that chance. As much of the heart that she’d exposed to him then had been scored and slashed when he’d left her. It still bled. Common sense decreed she steer clear of a repeat.

  Because obviously her crappy upbringing made her vulnerable to imagining someone cared simply because she wanted someone—anyone—to care so very much.

  That mistake wouldn’t happen again…though it hadn’t happened any other time, actually. With previous men she’d been careful. Circumspect with her time and with her body. Damn it, why had he been so different?

  Maybe she was glaring a little, because he held up both hands in surrender and sat back in his chair.

  “Okay, okay.”

  Under the table, he straightened his legs, and the light wool of his slacks tickled the bare skin of her calf. She yanked her own legs away even as goosebumps crawled toward her inner thighs.

  “Tell me about your tribe instead,” he continued as if he hadn’t noticed her jerk of reaction. “You said they’ve paired up. Seems like I read they’ve all become engaged.”

  That Times gossip column.

  “Oh, yeah.” Cami pinned a wide smile in place. Happy, happy. “It’s awesome.”

  No need to mention the selfish fact that the pairing-off sometimes served to make her feel more lonesome.

  Dinner plates arrived along with a bottle of wine and as they continued to eat and drink she regaled him with lighthearted tales of the Rock Royalty finding romance, from Cilla’s statement of love with her half-heart tattoo to Brody’s discovering his fallen angel in Topanga Canyon.

  “At Satan’s Roadhouse,” Eamon said.

  Mention of the bar made Cami set down her fork. The night he’d publicly rejected her there remained fresh in her mind. When she’d happened upon him drinking with some friends, not only had she pleaded with him to reconsider their break-up, but then, at his refusal, she’d sung “I Can’t Make You Love Me,” pathos dripping like tears from her voice. Where had her dignity been? Her pride?

  Now Eamon rested his utensils on his plate as well then pushed it away.

  “I’m really sorry.” He hesitated. “I thought it for the best, but I am really sorry it played out that way.”

  “Yeah, well you played me pretty damn well,” Cami muttered.

  He winced.

  She placed her napkin on the table, done with eating any more of her meal—but on second thought not done with the subject at hand. Since they’d found themselves at it again, anyway, maybe a little more air-clearing would prove beneficial.

  Picking up her wine, she watched him over the rim. “I’m curious. How did you think it would go? Us? I mean before the situation with your cousin precipitated the end.”

  The server came by and cleared their plates then tipped the rest of the wine between them. When she departed, Eamon twirled the stem of his glass in his long fingers, his contemplative gaze on the straw-colored liquid.

  “I don’t know. I told you marriage isn’t a part of my future plans.”

  “And you thought that’s what I would want?”

  He shrugged. “I hope this doesn’t make me sound like an asshat, but I think that idea comes more naturally to your gender than to mine.” His gaze lifted to meet hers. “So what did you expect from us?”

  “I was in the moment. Not thinking about…beyond.” His skeptical expression made her frown. “You don’t believe me?”

  “It’s not that. I—“

  “Let me tell you about how my mom met my dad. Just out of high school, she waitressed in a diner in Teeny Nowhere, Iowa. One day, a guy on a motorcycle comes in, his bike busted. He stays a few days in the motel next door while waiting on a part.”

  Eamon’s eyebrows had risen as she set up the story.

  She sent him a pointed look. “Sound familiar?”

  “Here and there.”

  “Well, the young lady was seduced…Yes, by the man, but more by the fantasy of the mysterious stranger riding into town. It’s a powerful one. So years later, like mother, daughter fell down a similar rabbit hole when there came a knock on her door. She…I enjoyed the slide.”

  “You enjoyed the fantasy.”

  “It was fun. A lark. A hoot. That’s not to say I wouldn’t have enjoyed all that hoot-ness to continue a while longer.” It was imperative she include that part, because the whole Satan’s Roadhouse, pleading for him to reconsider, the belting out of “I Can’t Make You Love Me” would make her a liar if she didn’t.

  Cami looked down, cleared her throat, looked back up again. “But I wasn’t exactly demanding we set a date, was I?”

  “No.” He studied her face as if looking for a crack in the account of her side of their affair. “So we’re…cool now?”

  She nodded. Smiled—she was a professional showman’s daughter after all, and a performer in her own right. “Like ice.”

  They decided to forego coffee and dessert for cognac on their suite’s terrace, just a friendly end to the evening around the blazing chiminea. As Cami rose from the table, she promised herself she’d exchange the lacy underwear for her regular cotton, wrap herself in the voluminous bathrobe, and exchange platonic chitchat as if Eamon was an old friend from a dozen years ago.

  On the way out, he strolled just behind her, his fingertips touching the small of her back. At the hostess stand near the front of the restaurant there was a gathering, a back-up of people, apparently, waiting for tables.

  “Shit,” Eamon said in her ear, halting beside a sturdy pillar.

  He jerked them both behind it.

  She glanced at him. “Wh
at’s wrong?”

  His expression turned sheepish. “I forgot why we came here. We’re going to have to pass Gretchen—the woman I’m looking for. She’s on that bench by the entry, with two others.”

  Cami peeked around the pillar. Four females close to thirty, in dresses and heels and with hair blown out. On each of their laps rested a copy of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch.

  “Hmm. That looks more like a book club than a betrayal of marriage vows.”

  “Yeah.” Eamon shoved his hand through his hair. “Voight is such an idiot.”

  “Well, we can just swan on by, and if she notices, you can act all surprised.” She went wide-eyed and added a mock-gasp for effect, her hand at her chest. “Imagine meeting you here!”

  “She’ll guess what’s going on,” he said in a gloomy voice. “He’s dumb as a brick, but she’s clever and knows him, me, what I do. It could ruin their chances for keeping their marriage together.”

  “Is that such a—”

  “Oh, hell.” He clutched one of her upper arms, drawing her tighter to him and both of them closer to the pillar.

  “What now?” She glanced around.

  “Don’t look. They’re coming this way.” He cursed under his breath and narrowed his eyes at her. “For the record, I’m going to blame this on you. You’re highly distracting.”

  Hmm. Inside, Cami’s ego preened. And as she sensed bodies approaching a plan formed. Her arms slid around his neck. Her hands forked into his hair, pulling his mouth close to hers.

  “Pretend to kiss me.”

  He went still a moment, then laughed softly as his lips descended. His wine-scented breath touched her face, and then they were locked together, one of his palms sliding to her hip to tuck her closer as his tongue teased the seam of her lips. She opened for him and he plunged inside, the kiss going from zero to sexy in two seconds.

  She didn’t care. Her mind spun away on his taste, his scent, the delicious feel of his heat and strength surrounding her. When she started to go dizzy from lack of air, he broke the kiss, but his lips found her throat. Her hands clung to him, and she shivered as he licked a line toward her ear.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered.

  He stilled again, sucked in a quick breath, then straightened to press his forehead to hers. “Okay. Well.”

  They both were breathing hard. “Did she…did we…” Cami couldn’t gather her thoughts. “It’s the suit,” she blurted out. “I might have a thing for guys in suits.”

  He smiled, but his gaze held a serious intensity. “Is this thing a dark stranger thing?”

  “Maybe.” Her head was still whirling. “Yes.”

  “You know…” He bent his head again and kissed the side of her neck.

  Her body felt like it had been dipped in heat then sprinkled with icy, ultra-sensation. Her nipples had hardened to tight points, and she felt swollen between her thighs. Her flesh pulsed there.

  “You know?” she managed to prompt him, her voice a husky whisper. “You know… what?”

  His mouth trailed to her ear. “We could play it again, Cam.”

  She laughed—it sounded giddy—at the corny play on the old movie line, then groaned when his teeth grazed her lobe. “I don’t…we’re not together…”

  He straightened to look into her eyes once more, and his forefinger slid beneath the strap of the dress to caress her bare shoulder. “I’m in a suit this time. I could be a different stranger than the one who showed up at the salvage yard.”

  Oh, God. Temptation feathered down her spine, tickling her already sensitized skin. He could be another fantasy man, and Cami, like her mother before her, was a sucker for them. And would it be such a surprise to find herself a chip off Bean’s block? Her father had never been one to refuse his impulses, no matter how rash.

  Maybe Eamon knew her answer without her saying so, because he took her by the hand and started leading her to the exit.

  “I’ll be your dark stranger,” he said, in a voice promising shameless sin and potent reward. “And you can be the sweet lovely who brings me in from the cold.”

  Chapter 7

  Eamon keyed open the door of the suite and Cami stepped inside. When he lingered in the doorway, she turned to face him, all big eyes and soft lips. His sex went harder, pressing against the fly of his pants.

  “Are you going to ask me in?” he said, his voice low and rough.

  That’s how he felt, low and rough, because lust was grating on the ends of his nerves and he was that low…willing to bed her after breaking up with her.

  But, God, he needed it. The stress of the last few days—the stress of every day since the Savage Sons had delivered their threat—was bottled up inside him. He needed an outlet.

  He needed Cami.

  “Are you going to ask me in?” he repeated.

  She backed up a step, the space she left for him the invitation he wanted, but he hesitated another moment, long enough for her to grasp the end of his tie and yank him over the threshold.

  An interesting show of aggression.

  Then more true to form, she dropped the fabric, her expression turning uncertain. Biting back his smile, he pushed the door shut behind him without breaking eye contact with her. Their gazes locked, she moistened her lips with her tongue, the nervous gesture making him feel tender and even hornier.

  Driving Cami past her doubts and inhibitions had always aroused the hell out of him.

  Sometimes it took just a touch—a firm grip around her wrist or his palm sliding beneath her hair to cover her nape.

  Other times required more finesse. Now, he went that route, keeping his distance from her and breathing slowly to calm his lust. “So…” He glanced around the room. “Do you come here often?”

  It took her a minute, then she recognized the play, and he saw some of her tension abate.

  “A guy I…I used to date brought me here.”

  Skirting her, he walked farther into the living space, dimly lit by a lamp beside the couch and another over the small bar. As he moved, he shrugged out of his suit jacket and tossed it over a nearby chair. His tie followed, and then he unfastened the top buttons of his shirt.

  Cami stared as if he’d stripped down to skin.

  He raised an eyebrow at her then nodded toward the bar. “Something to drink?”

  She bobbed her head. “Sure.” Then, as if remembering her role was as hostess, she gestured toward the bottles and glasses. “Please. Pour what you like for both of us.”

  Instead of two snifters, he made a generous pour from the brandy into a single balloon glass. Putting a wide berth between them again, he approached the doors that led to the private terrace. Walls on either side made it a cozy outdoor space, though the latticed roof allowed for glimpses of the night sky and the diamond-bright stars.

  “I’ll light the fire,” he said, reaching for a knob.

  “Good idea.” She followed him out.

  He set the liquor on the small table between two cushioned chairs and reached for the matches to light the freestanding clay fireplace. The fuel in its belly quickly caught, and flames cast orange and yellow shadows around the small area.

  “Warm enough?” he asked, casting her a look.

  “I’ll be fine.” She perched on a seat.

  He took the other, then picked up the glass.

  “I’ll test,” he said, and took a swallow of the aromatic spirits. Then he passed her the glass, turning it so her lips would touch the same spot as his.

  Hokey as shit move, but he liked the idea of it, and so did she because she made sure that her mouth drank from the same side. Then she set aside the glass, and he noted the trembling of her hands.

  “You’re cold,” he said and, frowning, patted his knee. “Come sit with me.”

  Whether she needed comfort from the night temperature or from her nerves, she practically dove into his lap.

  Ahh, he thought, as his arms closed around her. This is right. This is good.

  Inhaling, he b
reathed in the scent of her hair and felt another shiver wrack her body. His arms tightened. “It will be okay,” he said, whispering into her ear.

  She grabbed up the snifter, took another bracing swallow.

  Eamon extracted the glass from her hand. “Not so fast,” he chided. “We have all night.”

  Bending his head, he placed his lips against the side of her throat, giving the tender skin a slight suck.

  “Oh, God.” She leaned into him. “You’re good at that.”

  “Was the last guy so bad?” he teased.

  “No, he was good, too,” she said. “But before that, paper doll sex.”

  Huh? He craned his neck to look at her. “What’s paper doll sex?”

  “Flat. Two flat figures mashed together. Tab A into Slot B.”

  He laughed. “I thought it might be some kind of weird kink you learned in the Canyon.”

  Cami shook her head. “I tried spying a time or two, but I made too much noise moving around in the dark. I was always apprehended by Gwen, or the people I wanted to catch scampered off before I could get a real eyeful.”

  “I can see the source of your curiosity and frustration,” he murmured. He nuzzled her temple. “You needed more experiences. More dimensions.”

  “I—oh.” Her head tilted to give him better access as his mouth feathered over her throat to her ear.

  One hand slipped into the bodice of her dress to cup her breast. “What do you want me to do to you, baby?”

  She squirmed, her ass pressing against his cock. “I can’t…”

  His fingers slid into the cup of her bra to enclose her nipple. Her body froze, and he didn’t hesitate to squeeze.

  “What turns you on?”

  She moaned, wiggling as he continued to work the tight nub. “You…know.”

  “How could I?” Now he used his free hand to push the dress’s straps down her shoulders. Then he worked the bodice below her breasts until her lacey bra was exposed to the air and his eyes, his other fingers still teasing her nipple beneath the stretchy fabric. “We’ve only just met.”