Make Me: The Black Lilith Series #3

by Hazel Jacobs

  How could she have read the situation so badly? Harper has always been so good at reading people, at knowing what they want to hear, at being what they need. How could she not see that Slate needed her to say what they both wanted?

  But that’s not fair, Harper reminds herself. They both had the chance to avoid the pain from last night. All they’d had to do was come out and tell the other what they’d wanted. Fear had held them both back.

  “I’m gonna stop doing coke,” Slate says, leaning over to kiss her neck.

  Harper is exhilarated at the thought but also troubled. “Don’t go changing your whole life for me.”

  Slate kisses her twice before answering. “Not my whole life. I’m keeping the sex and rock and roll,” he says. He pulls one hand out of her hair and starts running it down her shoulder, arm, waist, heading toward her thigh. “But the Drugs. Some things aren’t worth fighting over. Not with you.”

  “And the sex—”

  “Just you,” Slate says, leaning around so that he can kiss her lips. “Only you. Exclusively you. You get me high just being in the same room.”

  Harper loses herself in the kiss, letting her body drape over Slate’s. She can feel herself getting wet from the kiss, but it’s too soon for him to be hard again. Slate seems to sense how the kiss is affecting her because he pulls away and smirks.

  “Harper, you’re gonna kill me aren’t you?”

  “But what a way to go, right?”

  He pushes her onto her back and kisses her languidly while he reaches down between them. Harper lifts her leg and stretches her back so he has better access to her. Gently, but with obvious care and attention, he presses two fingers to her still-sensitive clit.

  Harper’s breath catches in her throat. She lets herself relax into the feeling. Slate likes to take his time, and she’s discovered that if she gets too worked up she’ll find herself on her belly with her ass in the air. Earlier in the day, that was useful information. But she’s in the mood for an easy, unhurried orgasm. Plus, after the workout she just had, she thinks she deserves a treat.

  Meanwhile, Slate does not stop kissing her. His penis is soft and thick against her thigh as he lies on his side and massages her with his fingers, his head tilted so their lips never part. He rubs her clit with two fingers while a third brushes her folds, tracing up and down, and she shivers in anticipation for what she knows is coming. If there’s one thing that Harper can be grateful for, it’s that Slate’s years of womanizing has given him intimate knowledge of the female form.

  It’s slow building up. If it were any other circumstances, she’d beat him over the head with a shoe for making her wait like this. But Harper just rolls her hips a little, letting out a breathy moan as he leaves her clit to dip two fingers inside of her. He slowly thrusts, keeping the kiss going even as Harper starts to pant. His other hand reaches up to cup her breast and toy with the nipple. She can feel the slow rise of light pressure in her belly. He keeps thrusting his fingers into her—he’s added a third now—and rubbing his palm against her clit. It doesn’t take long before she’s pulling out of the kiss to throw her head back and lets out a contented moan.

  Slate keeps rubbing her as she shudders and twitches through the orgasm. It’s not as body-shattering as the ones he’d given her when they first locked themselves in the suite. It’s a gentle, calm tidal wave of lust that ebbs away slowly once it’s finished flooding her.

  He pulls his fingers out and traces them, still damp, up her belly, rubbing her and bringing her into another kiss.

  “I’m gonna need at least fifteen more minutes,” he mutters into her lips. “And probably a protein bar.”

  “We never did order that pizza last night,” she replies, breathless.

  “At what point do you think the others are expecting us to come out?”

  Harper shrugs. She reaches over to the table next to her head, her fingers still trembling from the waves of her orgasm, and she takes Slate’s phone. She looks at the screen and snorts.

  “You’ve got a text from Logan.”

  “What’s he saying?”

  “He says, ‘When you two come up for air, we’re having dinner in the hotel restaurant.’”

  “Or we could order room service and never leave this bed.”

  Harper stretches. Her muscles ache pleasantly and she tries to calculate in her head how many calories she would have burned in the last few hours. Sex is good cardio, especially the frenzied kind where neither partner knows what they’re doing besides touching and feeling.

  “I want to thank them,” she says. “For helping us get on the right track.”

  Slate hums, leaning over to rub his nose along her neck. He seems to like that. Harper likes it too, except when he does it too lightly and tickles her. He dips down to kiss her shoulder, collarbone, and grabs her hand to plant a kiss on the inside of her wrist. Every moment in bed with him makes her feel more and more wanted, like he wants to erase any doubt from her mind that he was ever anything but absolutely into her.

  “Yeah, I already did,” Slate says. “It’s nice, you know? I always knew they’d have my back, but I never thought I would need them to.”

  “You’re so used to playing matchmaker?”

  Slate grins at her. “Tommy and Logan were fucking hopeless. I thought I was going to have to lock Logan and Mik in a closet together like they do in those Harry Potter fanfics Dash is always sending me.”

  “Men in glass houses should not throw stones.”

  “We didn’t need help admitting we wanted each other,” Slate says, leaning over to kiss her lips again. “We just needed help with the other parts.”

  Harper wraps her leg around his hip, bringing him close and deepening the kiss. She meets his warm, sweet tongue with her own and presses her hands to the back of his neck to hold him there. He goes pliantly, allowing himself to be maneuvered into position. He’s very pliable until she does something to break his iron control. Harper wonders if she’ll ever be able to play his body as expertly as he seems to play hers.

  Nothing like practice.

  As the kiss becomes more passionate, Slate begins rubbing the skin on Harper’s hips, right where the bruises he’d left her the night before lay. She can feel him stirring against her.

  “What time is it?” he mutters, definitely more breathless now than when they’d started the kiss.

  “Four thirty-seven,” she replies. It took her a second to remember the time on the phone screen.

  “We’ve got time,” he says, slowly rolling over to pin her on the bed, knocking her legs apart with his knees so he can settle more comfortably in between them. “Round four?”

  “I’m on round nine.”

  “You have an unfair biological advantage,” Slate says, grinning down at her with his golden smile. “I need backup, I swear.”

  “Didn’t Tommy say something about a wild foursome?”

  He braces himself above her and gives her a smirk. “You minx. Later! Right now, you’re all mine.”

  Harper couldn’t be happier with that.

  When they finally surface, it’s past dinner and Slate’s got another text asking him to come downstairs because Black Lilith is putting on a show for the crowd at the restaurant. The hotel staff got a bit freaked out when they saw Slate scaling the wall outside, so Mikayla had organized an impromptu private gig to make up for the inconvenience. Harper is starting to realize just how much of Black Lilith’s career can be blamed on them flying by the seats of their pants.

  Harper and Slate join the rest of the band downstairs, in the private restaurant for guests of the hotel. It’s a massive room gilded in gold and bedazzled to within an inch of its life, with dozens of tables covered with red cloths and fine silverware. Most of the guests are dressed like they’re planning on going to a casino later tonight, though there are some who clearly just got back from the spa and plan to return there as soon as they’ve fueled up. Harper and Slate are part of the second group—jeans and T-shirts,
though Slate is wearing his jacket because he has to perform later.

  As soon as the guys see them coming, they start jeering.

  “Look at the lovebirds.”

  “Harper, you’re glowing.”

  “Slate, you look exhausted.”

  Mikayla and Sersha just grin over their matching chocolate brownies. It seems that Harper and Slate have shown up just in time to sneak in some dessert before the band does their show.

  Slate pulls the seat out for Harper on Sersha’s left, and then takes the seat beside Harper for himself. He’s looking pretty pleased with himself now. “Now, now, boys… a gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell.”

  “So there was kissing?” Dash asks, wiggling his eyebrows in a way that makes Harper snort.

  Logan leans over and hands Harper the dessert menu, giving her a warm wink as he does. “Glad to see it all worked out.”

  “Thank you,” she says, taking the menu. Their eyes meet and he nods as though he understands—the thank you is not just because he’s handed her the menu.

  She flips through, ignoring the ribbing from the band, it’s aimed more toward Slate anyway. Sersha and Mikayla each give Harper a congratulatory smile and offer her bites from their brownies. Harper accepts them. She just had an amazing cardio workout, after all, she can afford to treat herself.

  “So did you get into trouble for the Pretty Woman stunt?” Harper asks Sersha and Mikayla while the men keep pouring shit on Slate.

  Mikayla shakes her head. “They weren’t thrilled about it, but thank God being famous apparently gets you a bit of leniency.”

  “Money talks,” Sersha says sagely, taking another bit of her brownie.

  It’s Harper’s turn to shake her head. “Guys, you didn’t need to do that. I would’ve been happy with an apology.”

  “This is Black Lilith, Love,” Sersha says, reaching across to pat Harper’s hand. “They don’t do things by halves here.”

  “When Logan wanted to apologize to me, he wrote a song and performed it live on stage.”

  “When Tommy wanted to apologize to me, he flew halfway around the world,” Sersha said, nodding. “That’s the thing with these boys. The fuck-ups are colossal, but so are their theatrics when it comes to making it up to you.”

  Harper looks around the table, at this strange family that she’s found herself a part of. Because she has no illusions about her place in this group now. The men are brothers, the women sisters-in-law. Harper is dating the drummer, and he brings with him a family of five.

  Mikayla and Logan, entwined no matter where they are and gazing at each other whenever they’re not directly in a conversation with someone else at the table.

  Tommy and Sersha, separated by Logan and Mikayla, but still managing to match their movements as though they’d practiced the routine of eating dessert for weeks.

  Dash, with his cheeky grin as he carefully makes his way through a tiramisu, making fun of Slate in-between mouthfuls.

  It’s such a sharp contrast to the family she’d met at the wedding that Harper is reminded all over again how lucky Slate was to find these people. How lucky he had been to get shipped off to his aunt in Jersey, to meet Logan, to form this band. If he hadn’t, he might still be Jordan Nicholls or White-Picket-Fence guy. She glances over at him, cheerfully accepting the ribbing from his bandmates, and thinks what a waste it would have been for him to have stayed in Pella.

  She reaches over and gives his hand a squeeze. He looks at their hands, then at her with a question in his eyes, but she just smiles. He returns the smile and the squeeze. There’s really nothing to be said now.

  The band is still making fun of him, mostly for having a girlfriend. The King of Groupies—Dash’s words—has finally settled into a relationship, which is clearly baffling and intriguing for the rest of the band.

  Tommy’s hair flops into his eyes as he grins over a wine glass at Slate, shaking his head. “Honestly, I don’t know how you managed to keep her interested,” he says. “She saw Dash last night, same as Sersha. I’m gonna have to pull double-duty just to keep her on my team.”

  “There’re no teams,” Logan mutters. He’s got one hand visible on the table while the other is underneath, suspiciously in the vicinity of Mikayla’s thigh.

  “There are teams,” Slate says. “But I’m not worried. I make up for the size issue with enthusiasm.”

  “There’s no size issue,” Harper says, probably a bit louder than she should. She glances around to make sure that no one is listening, but the other people in the room seem more interested in their food than they are in the slightly rowdy table in the corner.

  “Exactly,” Tommy says, pointing at Harper as though she’s said something profound. “Not our fault Dash is… well, Dash.”

  Dash, who has been sipping his coke throughout this conversation with a very pleased smirk on his face, doesn’t answer. Harper thinks that he’s enjoying watching the other guys rile themselves up. It makes her wonder how the band discovered Dash’s… assets. She would have loved to be a fly on the wall for that little revelation.

  “I’m more interested in what he was planning to do with that whip,” Sersha mutters.

  Dash laughs at that while Tommy purses his lips and takes a bite of his cupcake, a very aggressive bite, which should be tough to do when his fingers are covered in sprinkles. But somehow he manages it.

  “You’ve got no idea, Sersha,” Dash says, giving her a wink. He looks at Mikayla and Harper as well as he says, “Don’t worry, girls, I’ll give your men some pointers later. Someone’s gotta make sure they treat you right.”

  Harper laughs at the scandalized looks on Logan, Tommy, and Slate’s faces.

  “Listen here, Squirt,” Slate says, shoving Dash in the shoulder. “I’ll shove that guitar up your ass if you start talking shit.”

  “I’m not talking shit, I’m dropping knowledge.”

  Tommy and Logan boo at him.

  The waiter comes around and the table orders drinks, plus an apple pie for Harper and a cupcake like Tommy’s for Slate. Harper’s mind fills with thoughts of Slate licking the icing off of her belly, and she needs to pull her mind out of the gutter as quickly as possible. She looks up to see Dash giving her a knowing smile.

  “You’re looking a little flushed there, Harper.”

  She smiles charmingly at him. “Keep talking shit, Dash. Remember who’s in charge of your cardio training.”

  Slate chuckles beside her as Dash’s face switches from amused to horrified. Tommy and Logan cackle as well, while Mikayla and Sersha just shake their heads in amusement.

  Then the band is called to perform. Logan kisses Mikayla on the cheek and it’s so sweet that Harper will need to run a full mile on the treadmill just to work off the calories she gained by looking at it. Dash practically bounces up to the stage and slings the guitar expertly over his shoulder, while Tommy follows at a more sedate pace.

  Slate is the last to leave the table. He leans over and whispers into Harper’s ear, “Just to be clear, you’re on Team Slate, right?”

  She thinks it would be funny to make him sweat a little. To say something like, ‘That depends on how you do on stage,’ or ‘how about you talk Dash into a threesome and get back to me?’ But now isn’t the time for funny. She can hear the faintest—so faint she’s half-sure that she’s imagining it—hint of insecurity in his voice. It could be the fact that Dash is so much bigger than him or the fact that the band has been making fun of him for dating Harper, or even just the fact he’s still not sure if this is real. Harper can relate to that. If it weren’t for the pleasant ache in her crotch, Harper might have thought that the last twenty-four hours were a dream.

  She turns her head so that she’s looking him dead in the eye. “Always,” she replies.

  He kisses her quickly on the lips. “Back in a bit,” he says, and this time she’s sure that she sees relief in those eyes. He pushes himself away from the table—giving Mikayla and Sersha kisses on the cheek—bef
ore heading up to the stage to join the rest of the band.

  They open with their song ‘Thanks A Lot.’ Sersha leans over to Harper and explains how that was the first song she’d written with Tommy. Harper thinks that she can hear their voices in the song lyrics, but she has to admit that she’s no expert. Music is still just noise to her, but it’s nice noise. She wonders if she’ll make a good girlfriend for a rockstar.

  As soon as that thought crosses her mind, it gets stuck and she starts to panic.

  What if she isn’t a good girlfriend for a rockstar?

  Slate and Black Lilith are getting more popular every day. Their band keeps going from great moment to great moment, and it would take a great woman to hang on for that ride. Sersha seems to understand the music world, and Mikayla’s so well-put-together that she probably runs the ride. Where does that leave Harper? She’s just a personal trainer. She’s not musical, or important to the band’s functioning. What if she turns out to be an absolutely terrible companion?

  And then there’s the paparazzi. And the press junkets. And the tours. She’d freaked out over a spur-of-the-moment trip to Vegas. But Black Lilith’s job is to travel to exotic locations and perform. Could Harper handle seeing her face in gossip mags?

  She hasn’t even told her parents yet.

  Harper feels a hand close on hers as Black Lilith moves into their next song. Mikayla is leaning over Sersha, holding Harper’s hand and looking concerned.

  “Everything all right?” she asks, raising her voice just a little to be heard over the music.

  “I’m dating a rockstar,” Harper says. “I think it just hit me. What that means.”

  Both Mikayla and Sersha share a look. They seem to instantly understand what has Harper so worried. Sersha leans over to wrap her arm around Harper’s shoulders while Mikayla gives her hand a squeeze.

  “We’ll be with you, Love,” Sersha says.

  “We’re still trying to figure this out, too,” Mikayla says. “But believe me, these boys are so worth it.”