Blackthorne: Heart of Fame, Book 8

by Lexxie Couper

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he growled, staring at the spot Caitlin had disappeared into the frenetic nightclub. He had to find her. He had to apologise. Not just because he didn’t want to disappoint his father, or incur physical injury from her uncle, Liev, but because he didn’t like the idea he’d upset her.

  Didn’t like that he was responsible for the shocked pain in her eyes.

  Shoving his way through the crowd, uncaring of the hands groping at him, the bodies grinding against him and the dull ache in his right knee where the metal pins buried into his bones, he headed for the bar. He didn’t see Rhys. It was likely, knowing how smooth his friend was, that Rhys was already scoring in a dark corner somewhere. He did hear his own name whispered more than once. By the time he made it to the bar, he’d had four paper napkins with phone numbers scribbled on them shoved into his hands, down his shirt and in his back pocket. Christ, women were shameless sometimes.

  It almost made him wish he hadn’t ditched his bodyguard back in New York with nothing but an email telling him to take a few days off. If Kenny were here now, Josh would be able to find Caitlin without dealing with groping hands and unsolicited phone numbers in his pocket.

  Elbowing his way to the bar’s edge, he studied the people working behind it. Four women and two guys tended the madness of demanding patrons. All did so with easy smiles and natural calm.

  Josh couldn’t help but be impressed. Caitlin knew how to pick her staff.

  “Hey,” he shouted, waving at the nearest bartender—a tall guy with skin darker than chocolate, a gleaming shaved head and bulging muscles under his tight black shirt.

  The bartender crossed to where he stood, bent at the waist and leaned an elbow on the marble counter. “Can I help you?” he asked, his voice a deep timbre, his gaze fixed on Josh’s.

  “I need to speak to Caitlin,” Josh shouted back, the crowd around him a jostling mix of excited women and impatient men waiting to be served. “Can you tell me where she is, please?”

  The massive guy narrowed his eyes and folded arms the size of tree trunks across an equally impressive chest. “Nope.”

  Josh raised his eyebrows. Bloody hell, what was it with this bar? Everyone in here said no to him. “I’m not going to hurt her or do anything horrible,” he pleaded his case, a situation he was far from used to. “She just damn near knocked the breath out of me over by the DJ with a single whack. I get the feeling she’s more than capable of taking care of herself. I just wanted to talk to her, is all. I know her uncle and he told me to look her up. Nothing nefarious. Honest.”

  He didn’t mention his overwhelming urge to bury himself in her body he’d experienced out on the street. The physical reaction had taken him not by surprise, but by storm. Since then however, he’d looked into her eyes and seen something else in there. Something…intriguing. Sure, he still wanted to lose himself in her lush curves, but he also wanted to have a conversation with her that didn’t involve her telling him to, in so many words, fuck off.

  The bartender studied him, his expression contemplative. “You’re not making a deal about who you are then.”

  It was, in Josh’s opinion, an odd thing to say. He frowned. “Nope. Should I? Would that make you tell me where I can find Caitlin?”

  Those on either side of him began to shove and squirm more, like a writhing mass of sweat, their stares fixed on his face. He heard his name whispered with excited awe and amazement more than once. His chest tightened. At some point there was the distinct possibility of the crowd rioting if he didn’t get away soon.

  He really hadn’t thought this night through at all.

  In front on him, on the other side of the marble bar, the bartender chuckled, a deep, relaxed sound Josh could hear quite well despite the pulsing music emanating from the speakers and the horde exclaiming his name. “The opposite actually.” He leaned forward, close enough his forehead almost bumped Josh’s. “Head to the door marked private behind the stage. I’ll buzz you in.”

  “Dude!” Josh held out his hand, a tight ribbon of elation threading through his unease. “Thanks, mate.”

  The massive guy flashed a crooked smile at him and grabbed him around the wrist in a firm shake. “No worries, Blackthorne. But if you do hurt her, I’ll tear you apart limb by limb. Got it?”

  And with that, he released Josh’s wrist and went back to serving customers.

  Josh stared at him for a moment, trying to process the threat. Damn, she must be a great boss to warrant such violent, protective behavior in her staff. Further evidence she wasn’t the icy, uptight woman she’d presented to him.

  With a grin, he pivoted on his heel and headed away from the bar.

  Getting to know Caitlin Reynolds was his new plan, his new mission. He’d just decided. Getting to know her and tasting those sublime lips of hers.

  Approaching the empty stage next to the dance floor, he flicked it a quick look, picturing himself up there, guitar in hand. If Caitlin’s lasagna was as delicious as Liev Reynolds said, maybe he’d give a small, unplugged performance on that stage one night to say thank you for dinner. Just him, his guitar, a mic and an unsuspecting crowd.

  A warm finger of joy shot through him at the notion. It had been a while since he’d performed. Synergy was taking some well-earned time out after their last North American tour. Jax was hard at work writing his next memoires, no doubt driving Natalie crazy while doing so. Noah and Pepper were overseeing the formation of their new foundation, a fund-raising group dedicated to the research of ADHD. Samuel had whisked Lily away to Paris in a heart-wrenching attempt to help her deal with her twin brother’s fatal overdose. And Levi was enjoying being a father, doting over his baby daughter as much as he doted over her mother, Sonny, and their partner, Corbin.

  Josh was the only one who seemed restless, occasionally working on new material for Synergy’s next album, more often wasting time just fooling about being a rich celebrity. But maybe that was because Josh was only twenty-seven. A rich, famous twenty-seven-year-old, but still only twenty-seven.

  Or maybe it was because he didn’t have someone…important to share his life with. Well, someone apart from Rhys.

  He snorted, shaking his head and grinning at the thought of a life spent only with the wild pro-soccer player as his significant other.

  “Now that,” he muttered, reaching the door marked Private without too many offers of wild sex whispered in his ear, or too many napkins scrawled with phone numbers shoved in his hands, “would be a messed-up, crazy existence.”

  Depositing the napkins on the tall table beside the door, he shot a look over his shoulder at the bar he’d just left.

  His guardian angel—he of the massive muscles, towering frame and gleaming head—gave him a single nod and then reached under the counter. There was a soft buzz, followed by a softer click and the door opened a crack.

  Josh grinned back at the bartender, returned his nod and slipped into the dimly lit corridor on the other side of the threshold.

  Cool air caressed his skin, left hot and sweaty from the nightclub’s heady atmosphere. He drew in a slow breath, appreciating the lack of alcohol, perspiration and cloying perfume and cologne on the air, and shut the door behind him.

  Instantly, the throbbing beat of the DJ’s music faded.

  Josh turned and cast the door’s metal surface an admiring look. “That’s some serious sound-proofing.”

  His voice bounced around the concrete floor and stark, concrete brick walls. He pulled a face, for some reason suddenly nervous.

  Nervous. Him. Josh Blackthorne.

  Maybe he was as jetlagged as Rhys?

  Giving his shoulders a shake and his neck a roll, he started walking down the corridor. The heels of his boots echoed through the space, each footfall a loud announcement he was there.

  Each one taking the ridiculous nerves in his gut and twisting them tighter.

  What the fuck was up with that?

  Two closed doors later—one labeled Staff Toilets, the
other labeled Lose the Key For This Door and You’re Dead—he stopped at another door. This one was also closed. Hanging from the knob of this door by a length of twine was a laminated sign saying The Boss.

  The muted sound of some kind of music came from the other side, too soft and indistinct for Josh to make out. He stood there for a moment, straining to hear it. What a person listened to in their private space was, in his opinion, a good insight into their state of mind.

  What was Caitlin Reynolds listening to now? After meeting him?

  He closed his eyes, trying to make out something that would clue him in, a riff, a lyric, a voice maybe…

  Whatever it was, it wasn’t like the frenzied music pumping through the speakers out in the nightclub. It was more…subdued? More—

  “Can I help you?”

  At the sound of Caitlin’s droll voice, Josh let out a yelp and staggered back a step. “Fuck, you scared the life out of me,” he burst out, staring at her where she stood in the now-open door. From her office, the sound of classical music wafted on the air. Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 7”. Powerful. Moody. Stirring. What did that say about her current thoughts and emotions?

  Josh didn’t know.

  A dark light glinted in her eyes and, for a split second, the corners of her lips twitched. A little. “Then my work here is done,” she declared, watching him. “You can’t bother me when you’re dead, can you?”

  Recovering his composure, Josh shoved his hands into his back pockets and gave her a puzzled frown. “You really are hell-bent on being horrible to me, aren’t you?”

  She waved her hand in a so-so motion. “Possibly. Or maybe I’m just this horrible to everyone?”

  Josh shook his head, letting his own smile pull at his lips. Not his usual smirk, the one he used when being interviewed or photographed. The one that said he knew all the filthy ways to make a woman come and if a woman was lucky he’d demonstrate them to her. His real smile. The one he gave his sister when she asked him to play fairy tea parties with her. “See, I would have believed that after our footpath standoff, but now I know that’s not the case.”

  She cocked an eyebrow, crossed her arms under her breasts and leaned her shoulder against the doorjamb. Josh couldn’t miss the fact the edges of her lips still danced. A little. Nor the fact she hadn’t closed the door in his face.

  Progress. Go me!

  “How so?” she asked, that enigmatic glint still in her eyes. He couldn’t decipher it. Was it mirth? Sarcasm? Or pre-garroting tolerance?

  Risking his solar plexus, he rested his elbow to the doorframe just above her head and let his smile grow wider as he drew his head closer to hers. “I was threatened with physical violence by one of your staff. A horrible person doesn’t gain that kind of protective loyalty.”

  She held his gaze, her face turned up to his, her chin titled. “Is that so? Perhaps I pay them well?”

  Josh shook his head again. “Not well enough to risk threatening a celebrity.”

  “Ahh, and there it is.” Her smile stretched wider, becoming sardonic and cutting. Her eyes grew flinty once more, filled with the same disdain he’d seen out on the street when she’d refused to believe he was who he said he was. “The arrogance of fame. I should have known I’d see it again. Ask me again why I’m being so horrible to you.”

  Josh couldn’t help himself. He burst out laughing. “Wait a minute,” he said, levering from the doorframe. “You didn’t like me out on the street when you thought I was a hot-looking nobody pretending to be someone famous, and now you don’t like me because I am someone famous?” He tapped his index finger on the tip of her nose. She blinked, his unexpected contact obviously taking her completely unawares. “I think you’re prejudice against hot-looking guys whether they are famous or not.”

  His jesting rebuke hung on the air between them, both playful and pointed.

  He arched his own eyebrow in a show of quizzical patience. “Well?”

  With a ragged sigh, Caitlin rolled her eyes and threw up her hands. “You got me. I’m only nice to ugly people. Which you, clearly, are not. So go away now.” She waved her fingers at him in a sweeping gesture. “Shoo.”

  The tiny twitch of the corners of her lips gave her away. A warm rush of delight rushed through Josh. For that very brief moment, she was enjoying herself with him.

  Yay. Now how did he capitalize on it?

  “I tell you what,” he said, refusing to budge or release her gaze. “If I promise to whack my face against the wall a few times, maybe break my nose and bruise up my cheek, even give myself a swollen eye and a split lip, will you let me buy you dinner? Or a drink?”

  She raised both her eyebrows up her forehead. Her lips danced some more.

  Oh yeah, he was winning her over. Excellent.

  “That wall?” she asked, leaning toward him a little as she pointed at the concrete-block wall beside her office door.

  He nodded.

  She grinned. A real one. He could see the laughter in it, and in her blue eyes. Fuck, it turned her from standoffishly beautiful to steal-his-breath stunning. “Go for it. Let’s see if you earn yourself just a drink or dinner as well.”

  Josh returned her grin. “Deal.”

  And then, with a laugh, he threw himself at the wall.

  Chapter Three

  Oh God, he did it.

  Caitlin squealed, the shock of watching Josh Blackthorne—rock-god Josh Blackthorne, sexiest-man-she’d-ever-seen Josh Blackthorne, the-only-man-to-turn-her-on-in-eight-months Josh Blackthorne—propel himself face-first at the wall spurring her into action.

  She slammed into his side, wrapping her arms around his body and stopping him hitting the wall.

  They stumbled sideways, their legs and feet jumbling and knotting, their chests mushed together, their hips bumping and colliding as they went.

  An insane part of her mind took great delight in noting how hard and firm and sculpted his body was, how warm and alive and right there he was. An insane part of her body reacted to that information, the pit of her tummy clenching, her sex contracting and her nipples pinching into tight points.

  A moan slipped past her, low and soft but a moan all the same. She tried to hide it in a grunt, but something about the way Josh flattened his palms to her back as they regained balance told her he’d heard it.

  Heard it and recognized it for what it was—sexual awareness.

  Crap. She couldn’t be sexually aroused by Josh Blackthorne.

  It took her a second to realize they were both standing motionless again. Her arms were around his hips, their bellies pressed together, their groins touching, before she heard him say with a throaty chuckle, “You saved me.”

  She jerked her head up, tearing her stare from where it had stuck on the perfection of his lips. Wow, they were gorgeous lips. Defined and almost too pink for any man’s lips to be.

  Storm-cloud-grey eyes regarded her, a humoured light shining in their depths. And a promise of something any woman with a pulse and a libido would be insane to say no to.

  She wasn’t insane. She wasn’t. She just had insane…parts. Which meant Josh Blackthorne had to go. “I did,” she answered, disengaging herself from his arms. Well, trying to. He was doing a damn good job of holding her to his body. “I didn’t want blood staining my wall.”

  He chuckled again. Incongruously, he somehow managed to pull her closer to his body. Why was she letting him do that?

  Because you’re lonely, girl. And you can’t wait forever. You’ve already wasted eight—

  “Maybe you just didn’t like the thought of me hurting myself?” His deep voice played with her senses. And her resolve to get away from him. Damn, no one had the right to have such a sexy voice. They didn’t.

  He drew his head closer to hers. Close enough his warm breath tickled her lips. “Or maybe you’re not the horrible person you so want me to believe you are?”

  “I am horrible,” she whispered, staring up at him. Horrible because I want you to kiss me r
ight now. Oh God, do I want you to kiss me right now. Kiss me and make love to me against this wall. It’s been so long. So long and you are so gorgeous and sexy and here…wanting me… “And I couldn’t care less if you hurt yourself or—”

  He kissed her silent. Stole the rest of her ridiculous statement with a soft brush of his lips over hers.

  No tongue, not even enough pressure to really feel. Just a feathering of his skin against her skin, just a lingering melding of their breaths.

  He held her, aligned their hips, pressed the steel pole of his erection to the soft curve of her sex and silenced her protest with a kiss softer than the caress of a butterfly wing.

  For a perfect moment, Caitlin forgot the weird reality of her life and lost herself in that kiss.

  For a perfect heartbeat-long moment.

  And then it was over.

  He drew his head away from hers, seeking out her eyes with his gaze. “Or maybe,” he whispered, his voice a little shaky, “you just wanted me to do that?”

  Pressing her palms to his chest, Caitlin pushed him away. Heat filled her cheeks. “Boy, have you got an ego. I didn’t want you to do that.”

  Liar.

  Josh seemed to agree with the traitorous little whisper inside her head. He let out a low laugh, an entirely devious sound her body reacted to with entirely too much need. “Ego or not, I think you did. And I think you liked it as much as I did.”

  The pit of Caitlin’s belly tightened. Her pussy contracted again. Grinding her teeth, she leveled a glare his way. “Even if I did like it, and I’m not saying that’s the case, you can’t just come back here to my office and kiss me like that.”

  He smirked. Already she both hated and loved the expression. Hated the way it said he knew how hot he was, loved the way it made his lips curl and his eyes fill with devilish conceit. “Why not?”

  She opened her mouth. Behind her, wafting from the speakers of her iPod’s dock, Beethoven’s “7th Symphony” gave way to Bach’s “Toccota and Fugue in D Minor”. “Because you can’t,” she offered as an answer. As answers go, it was a lame one, but somewhere between opening her office door to discover him there and his lips brushing over hers in the most tender, sensitive kiss she’d ever experienced, she’d lost higher brain function.