Blame it on the Bass: Heart of Fame, Book 6

by Lexxie Couper

  “Do you ever get used to it?” She threw the stalking photographers a dark scowl.

  Corbin chuckled. “Hell, no. But you learn to deal with them. Australian paparazzi are a different breed to their US brethren. Your guys are much more dogged and sneaky. The British pap, however, now those guys are just plain maniacal.”

  She gave him a sideways look, enjoying the morning autumn sun on her face. “So the image that was on the front page of the Sunday Telegraph today doesn’t stress you out?”

  “Why? What was on the front page?”

  “The photo of the three of us.” Sonja’s throat grew thick. “You haven’t seen it? You and me kissing outside the Do Re Me while Levi held my hand? The implication in the headline we are a threesome? Ménage a Who?”

  He winced. “Damn, that’s a woeful pun.”

  Despite her ire, Sonja laughed. “You’re damn right.”

  He cast her a quizzical look even as he adjusted his hold on her hand. “How do you feel about it?”

  Sonja frowned, digesting the question. “Pissed.”

  “Because your privacy’s been invaded? Or because you were caught doing something you didn’t want to be caught doing?”

  She gnawed on her bottom lip.

  “Or was it because what you saw on the front page turned you on?”

  The last option sent a sizzling tingle of tight heat into the pit of her belly. She swallowed, unsettled by Corbin’s insight. “All three,” she confessed, watching her feet move beneath her.

  “Good thing the café we’re going to has complimentary copies of the Sunday Telegraph.”

  She raised her head and cocked an eyebrow at him.

  He grinned. “Hey, I’m just telling the truth. I want to see you aroused again like you were last night.”

  “Do you now?”

  “Hell, yeah. Something tells me I’m going to be affected the same way.”

  She shot him a sideways look. “I honestly have no idea if you’re flirting with me or if you’re genuinely just this upbeat and cheerful.”

  He winked. “Both.”

  Sonja laughed. And rolled her eyes.

  A few minutes later, they were seated at a back corner table of an intimate coffee shop overlooking the harbour. Corbin and Levi obviously went there often, given all the staff seemed to know Corbin’s name. Their waiter—a hipster wannabe in black horn-rims—asked Corbin if he wanted just the usual before beaming at Sonja. “And for you, ma’am?”

  Her stomach chose that very second to rumble and it dawned on her she hadn’t eaten breakfast. She peered askew at Corbin. “You said it was your shout, right?”

  He nodded. “Yep.”

  Turning back to their waiter, she gave her order. “Eggs, scrambled. Multigrain toast, no butter. Bacon. Tomatoes and do you have those funky little sausages?”

  Their waiter smiled. “We do. Both chicken and pork varieties.”

  She licked her lips. “Can I some of those as well, please? And the biggest flat white you have.”

  Lips twitching, their waiter nodded at them both, took their menus and hurried away.

  “Flat white,” Corbin echoed, reaching for his glass of ice water. “Y’know, I’ve been living here in Australia with Levi for almost three years and I still can’t get my head around a flat white.”

  Sonja reached for her own water, sipped, and then licked the leftover moisture from her lips. “It’s simple. It’s a coffee made with milk, without the extraneous foam of a cappuccino. There’s a thin layer of dense foam at the top but it must never rise above the rim of the cup and never be dusted with chocolate powder. Flat. White. See? A true flat white is made with lightly roasted coffee beans, not dark roast, and the milk is folded through the coffee to give it a rich, velvety texture.”

  Corbin grinned. “Do I detect the faint stirrings of a coffee snob?”

  “Fuck, no.” She slumped back in her seat and hooked her elbow over the back of the chair. “I just want to know everything I can about things I like.”

  Leaning his elbows on the table, Corbin fixed her with a laughing stare. “That means you want to know everything about me?”

  “Who says I like you? I thought we were here for the brainstorming?” She narrowed her eyes in a melodramatic squint. “Did you trick me?”

  Corbin took a sip of his water and then chuckled. “You like me. I can tell.”

  “Oh, okay. A little. You did list The Beatle’s White Album as your favourite, after all.”

  “I did. And it is. Want to know my second? AC/DC’s Back in Black. Followed by Imagine Dragons’ Night Visions. Oh, and my second favourite movie is Jaws. And my second favourite book is Catch-22.”

  “Favourite food?”

  “Grilled cheese.”

  Sonja wriggled her finger at him in an admonishing side-to-side blur. “Uh-ah, you’re living in Australia now, Hollywood. We call it a toasted-cheese sandwich, or a toasty, not a grilled cheese. Did you know toasted-cheese sandwiches are Nick Blackthorne’s favourite meal, by the way?”

  Corbin’s frown was puzzled. “Why on earth do you know that?”

  She smirked. “Told you. I like to know everything about anything I like, and I like Nick Blackthorne’s music.”

  “So, did you ever go see him in concert?”

  She shook her head. “Never.”

  “Why? Because of Levi?”

  The question took her by surprise. She’d never really thought about it. She’d seen every major rock band she loved live in concert, some three or four times, but not once had she attended a Nick Blackthorne concert, not even his farewell concert in Sydney six years ago. There’d always been a reason, something stopping her. But now that she thought about it, she realized none of those reasons had ever been really serious. In fact, she was pretty certain she’d declined an invitation from her ex-personal trainer to attend the farewell concert, long before she’d discovered he was married, because she was dying her hair electric blue.

  Which meant she’d stayed away from Nick Blackthorne concerts for an entirely different reason.

  Levi.

  Lifting her glass of ice water to her lips, she took another sip, her mouth dry. Wow, the realization was kind of…unnerving.

  “How long were you and Levi boyfriend and girlfriend?”

  She let her gaze move back to Corbin’s face.

  It dawned on her she was in a swanky café surrounded by people in expensive clothes and she was wearing purple tracksuit pants, a Sex Pistols tank top and flip-flops. With, now she came to think of it, Kermit-green painted toenails. She should have felt uncomfortable, but she didn’t. Nor did she feel uncomfortable talking to Corbin. Which was both weird and lovely. He was her ex-boyfriend’s lover, after all. A gay man who’d been quite open in his interest to not only have sex with her, but to have sex with Levi at the same time. The whole thing should have made her uncomfortable. “On and off for two years,” she answered, ignoring the elephant in the room. “I was in year nine, he was in year eleven when we started”

  “Which is…?”

  She snorted. “You American.”

  He grinned, accepting her jibe with a good-natured shrug. “True.”

  “I was fifteen and he was seventeen when we first kissed. Out the back of the school soccer fields during the second half of lunch. Term Two, Tuesday, week seven.”

  “Wow, you remember to that detail?”

  She nodded. “We got busted by Mr. Edmonds, the school careers advisor. Levi was squeezing my right boob and I had my left leg wrapped around his hip. Mum grounded me for the rest of the term.”

  Corbin whistled. “Tough mom. How long was that?”

  “Three weeks. It was hell. I had to climb out my bedroom window every damn night after ten to see Stan.”

  Corbin laughed, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “That I would have loved to see. What did Levi’s mom do?”

  A numb pressure wrapped around Sonja’s chest at the question. She fiddled with the edge of her coaster
, chewing on her bottom lip. Levi had never explained why he’d missed school for the rest of week seven, only saying he’d been needed at home, assuring her the fading bruise on his cheek had been the result of falling down the stairs. It wasn’t until a year later, when she’d walked in on his father dealing with him in the garage over a minute scratch on Neil Levistan’s car that she realized the reason for so many of Levi’s absences. And just what exactly punishment meant in his family. Fists, punches and kicks to the ribs.

  It wasn’t until months after that that she’d grown to suspect there was even more to Neil’s wrong treatment of his son. So much more. And all of it beyond wrong.

  “Sonja?”

  She blinked at Corbin’s voice, aware she’d vagued out. “Sorry,” she said, reaching for her glass. She took a sip. Swallowed. Returned the glass to the table. “How much of Levi’s life do you know about? The stuff before he met you?”

  Corbin shook his head. “Not much, to be honest. He doesn’t talk about it. Never meeting his parents, despite the fact they’re still alive tells me more than words can.”

  A thick lump filled Sonja’s throat. She studied her water, unsure what to say. It wasn’t her place to tell Corbin what little she knew of Levi’s life. Levi had been a secretive teenager who guarded his wounds, his emotions and his heart like they were the only things of worth he had. In her naïve youth, she’d hated that secrecy, believing his inability to open up to her a slight on their relationship. It wasn’t until years later, when she’d found herself thinking about him one night while listening to a Nick Blackthorne album, that she’d understood it for what it was—protection. She only wished then, as she did now, she’d known how to help him.

  Looking at Corbin, the man Levi loved, she wondered if Corbin had it in him to help Levi beat his demons. Did anyone?

  Before she could contemplate the bleakness of that thought, their waiter arrived. “Parmesan and spinach egg-white omelet,” he said, placing a large white plate with a tiny green and white lump in the middle in front of Corbin. “And protein-overload with tomatoes for the lady.”

  He placed a plate loaded with fluffy yellow eggs, fat sausages, a pile of toast, strips of bacon and a full tomato cut in half and grilled to juicy perfection in front of Sonja. “Enjoy.”

  “Now that…” Corbin picked up his knife and fork as he nodded at Sonja’s meal, “…is a breakfast. Good to see you’re not afraid of calories.”

  Sonja laughed, glad for the arrival of their food. She didn’t want to think about Levi’s childhood. If she thought of his childhood, it made her think of the pain in his eyes that morning in his bedroom. She didn’t want to think about that at all. She’d made up her mind about his suggestion of a threesome, which meant after this breakfast with Corbin she was going back to being a part of his history, not a part of his present or future. Besides, she didn’t like the idea of being on the front page of a paper again, which would most likely happen if she kept hanging around with them. “Calories don’t scare me,” she said, scooping up a forkful of eggs. “I went for a run this morning.”

  “Did you know,” Corbin said around a mouthful of omelet, “twenty minutes of hard sex will burn off six-hundred calories.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Is this you flirting with me again? Or just typical breakfast conversation for you?”

  He smirked at her. “Both.”

  Sonja’s bucket of coffee arrived, saving her from an answer. Which was good, because she didn’t have one.

  Thankfully, Corbin decided it was time to talk shop. “So,” he said, his attention on his omelet. “I need to add sexual tension to the last act of Dead Even 2 and my head just isn’t playing ball.”

  “Have you thought of adding a third member to the sexual shenanigans?”

  He laughed at her flippant suggestion. “I think the director may kill me if I did that. Still, it has merit. Sure as shit worked for us.”

  Sonja studied him, unsure what to say.

  He tapped his thumb against his fork as he flicked his gaze around the air to his right, his expression contemplative. “What do you think is the best way to show sexual tension between two people who’ve already had sex once on the screen?”

  “Make one of them announce it was a mistake,” Sonja answered. “And that it can’t happen again.”

  “While the other undresses them with their eyes?”

  She nodded. “Definitely. And make sure they are constantly forced into situations where their bodies are brushing together.”

  “And every time that happens one of them closes their eyes and sucks in a ragged breath.”

  “It’s an action thriller movie, yes?”

  “Yep.”

  “In that case, you’ve got to have the hero somehow restrained and the heroine—are they the same actors from the first movie?”

  Corbin nodded.

  “Perfect. I loved the screenplay for Dead Even, by the way. Anyway, have her need to straddle him for some reason, maybe to release his wrists, but she can’t, and they are forced to face each other for a heartbeat or so, her astride his lap, her breasts almost at his mouth level, their stares locked.”

  “And the audience can see all he wants to do is take her nipple, so tantalizingly close to his lips, into his mouth and suck on it,” Corbin said, picking up on her train of thought, “but just as he moves closer, they are interrupted and she has to slide off him. Close up shot of her thighs…slick with sweat, of course, sliding against his, cut to another close up of her parted lips…”

  “Ooh, cut to another close up of his hitching belly just there,” Sonja interjected. “He should be bare-chested, of course. Stripped from the waist up.”

  “Of course.”

  “And as she finally straightens to go…go, I don’t know, hide in the room, cut to a shot of his face, his eyes closed, his nostrils flaring.”

  “I can see that. I can see that.” Corbin tapped at his fork again, his omelet forgotten. “And then later in that scene, when he’s freed himself, he can use the same restrains…cuffs? Rope?”

  “Oh, please make them cuffs.”

  “Done. The same cuffs it is.”

  Sonja closed her eyes, the scene unfolding in her mind in vivid detail. “Bingo. There’s a money shot right there. He’s pressed to her, hips to hips, belly to belly, cuffing her wrists behind her back. Her nipples are poking at her shirt—white would be perfect, and damp with sweat and clinging to her body like a second skin—and his chest, still bare, brushes against them. They both suck in a breath at the same time…”

  “And the camera pans back to reveal someone watching them,” Corbin murmured, watching her.

  Sonja stared at him for a moment. Her pulse thumped fast in her throat. Her pussy contracted. An image flashed through her head: Corbin binding her wrists at the small of her back, his hips and belly pressed to hers, his chest caressing her nipples, as Levi stood and watched.

  Oh boy.

  “And that someone is Huntley’s boss, the President of the United States,” he burst out, breaking the tension crackling in the air between them, his arms thrown wide, his grin even wider. “And the end credits roll. Boom!”

  Sonja laughed. “Boom.”

  Corbin winked. “I’m all about the boom. You’ve read Occasional.”

  They spent the rest of the morning talking shop. Writing, scene setting, showing not telling. The power of the visual metaphor, reoccurring motifs, symbolism. They had an in-depth discussion about the cult-classic film Blue Velvet and a movie-line quote-off that Corbin won with an enthusiastic self-congratulatory cheering.

  When their waiter deposited lunch menus in front of them and asked if they wanted to see a wine list, Sonja blinked. “Holy shit,” she said, louder than she’d intended when she looked at her watch. “We’ve been here for over three hours.”

  Corbin dropped his stare to his own watch. “Well, I guess Levi is on the plane by now.”

  Sonja didn’t miss the anguish cutting the calm stateme
nt. Nor the way his jaw bunched. Or the way his shoulders slumped. For a second. Just a second. And then he smiled at her, that sexy, orgasm-inducing smile of his, and opened the lunch menu before him. “So, what are we ordering?”

  Chapter Nine

  Who knew two weeks, or a fortnight, as Sonja called it, could go by so quickly and yet so slowly.

  Corbin relaxed back in his seat, threaded his fingers behind his head and stared with blank melancholy out his office window. Two weeks of breakfast with Sonja every morning, each meal at a different café in a different suburb all over Sydney, each café stimulating a different topic of discussion.

  Two weeks of afternoons spent at his laptop, intensifying the sexual tension between the Chris Huntley hero of Dead Even 2 and his duplicitous heroine. Sexual tension he was becoming more and more familiar with, given he was growing more and more…attracted to Sonja Stone.

  Two weeks of evenings spent Skyping with Levi, where they discussed little, their every word weighted with unspoken want as they avoided any topic but the most neutral.

  A fast fortnight of laughter, good food, stimulating conversation and stimulating glimpses of Sonja’s boobs. Who would have thought two full curves of flesh could cause such a stirring sensation in his groin? A dragging fortnight of yearning for Levi to come home. To hold him, undress him. Kiss him. Make love to him. Love him. Talk to him.

  Christ, he wanted Levi to talk to him.

  To open up and tell him how he was feeling. They’d rediscovered each other sexually—in the two days between Corbin finding Levi and Sonja together in the karaoke bar and Levi flying to Seattle they’d fucked more than Corbin believed possible—but sex didn’t a healthy relationship make. Not without communication beyond the mutual agreement of a safe word. The closest they’d come to being with each other again like they had before Isabella’s death was the date night with Sonja at Mizuku.

  That night…

  The beginning of the quickest and slowest fortnight in recorded history, during which Corbin had worked on Dead Even 2 with close to frenzied zeal before finally finishing the damn thing and emailing it off to Nigel McQueen.