by Lisa Suzanne
“It wasn’t exhaustion. My publicist covered up an overdose.”
“An overdose?” I asked, surprised at his confession. I knew he was a rock star, but he seemed to have his head on straight. “You do drugs?”
“Not anymore, no. I’m not into fucking up my life, but I tried something Ethan gave me and it put me in the hospital.”
“And your publicist covered it up?”
“Yeah. I realize now how fucking stupid I was.”
“Was it scary?”
“The OD?”
I nodded.
He shook his head. “I passed out cold and didn’t even know I overdosed until I woke up in the hospital. It was scarier for Ethan than it was for me.”
“Was it a wakeup call for him?”
Mark chuckled and glanced out the window. “Nothing’s a wakeup call for him. Some men are born without the part of their brain that tells them they’re not invincible. Ethan’s one of them.”
“Was it for you?”
“Yeah.” He was quiet for a minute, and then he told me the thing that would stay with me for a long time to come. “Only a few people know what really happened that night. Ethan, Steve, and James, because they were there. My publicist and the doctors and nurses that night. That’s it. And now, you.”
“Not even your family?” I asked.
He shook his head and flexed his fingers on my thigh.
It was that moment I was certain I wanted more than one night with him—needed more than one night. I wanted it all, but that’s not what Mark Ashton did. That’s not who he was, and no matter how intrigued he was by me or how different I was from the other women he brought home, I wasn’t going to be the one to change him.
I couldn’t help but wonder why he chose to confess one of the darkest hours of his life to me. It made me believe his words were sincere—I really was different from the others. Or it was just another line, something he told every woman he took in the car back to his place.
I’d never know.
He leaned over and tugged my earlobe between his teeth, sending a jolt of desire through my entire being.
His voice came low in my ear, the heat of his breath sending shivers down my spine. “Usually a woman is all over me in the back of this car and I don’t even have to try. Are you gonna make me try, Reese?”
I fidgeted nervously with my fingers still clasped around his arm. “I don’t even know what that means.”
He chuckled, and then he pressed a kiss beneath my ear, the stubble lining his jaw tickling me and making me even hotter for him than I already was. He pulled his arm out from its captivity between my arms and laced it around my back. He hauled me onto his lap, and then he rested his forehead against mine. “Why does this feel different?” he whispered.
“Because it is,” I whispered back, and then he lowered his mouth to mine.
It was our first kiss, seconds before we pulled into the private resident’s drive of the Mandarin Oriental. He didn’t even open his mouth to mine, didn’t deepen the kiss—just rested his lips on top of mine, the gentlest brush of lip on lip, and every synapse in my body fired at the same time.
It was the sweetest kiss I’ve ever had with a man, yet it pressed an aching throb between my legs like no one else had ever managed to do to me. The throb pulsed and spread into my belly, battling with the butterflies there, the pain gaining momentum as his arms wrapped more tightly around me but his lips didn’t move.
He pulled back, his eyes closed. “We’re here,” he muttered, and then he opened his eyes. We were inches away from each other. His eyes told the story that he wanted this, too, which of course I knew since he took me back to his place…but he wanted me, not just sex with me. I didn’t just represent a warm hole to him. I was something more, something I didn’t understand, something I was terrified of because I was sure I couldn’t be what he needed. He was this overwhelming presence, this larger than life being who routinely serial dated singers and actresses and porn stars, and I would never be enough for him no matter how intriguing I might be in the moment.
I sat on his lap, and we were eye to eye, both of our chests heaving with anticipation.
The car had stopped, and I didn’t even know it. The door beside Mark swung open, the driver standing at attention and waiting for us to exit. He broke our intense moment and I slid off his lap as I wondered what sorts of things his driver saw on a regular basis.
Mark grabbed my hand and then got out of the car, pulling me out behind him. Another man followed us—a bodyguard, I assumed, but Mark didn’t confirm that. We ran into the building and then he led me up to the second floor and we called the elevator from there. The bodyguard stayed on the first floor. “Easier from here than from the first floor,” he said as we waited for the elevator to arrive.
It made sense. The elevator on the first floor probably opened somewhere near the hotel lobby, and if we snuck onto the second floor, there was far less of a chance he’d be recognized.
Doors opened to the elevator in the middle. We stepped on alone. He inserted a key into a slot and then pressed the button for the top floor—the forty-seventh floor.
It should have been a long ride from the second floor to the forty-seventh, but it was far, far too short.
He picked up where we left off in that car the second the doors shut and sealed us into privacy. He stalked toward me, shoving me up against the mirrored wall. I caught sight of the back of him in the mirrored doors, the last image of the him burned into my mind. It was his back side as he pressed his body to mine, his hand coming up to palm my cheek, but because of the mirrored walls, the image repeated and repeated and repeated to infinity. There were a hundred Reeses pressed against the wall by a hundred Marks, a hundred Mark hands touching a hundred Reese faces. That image would stay with me, burned in my mind for eternity.
With the image fresh in my mind, Mark whispered, “I don’t understand this, Reese.” His words were riddled with pain.
I didn’t have time to respond, didn’t have time to ask what he didn’t understand or why he was confessing it to me or what it all meant, because then his lips were crashing to mine and his mouth was opening and there were fireworks going off in that tiny elevator. I responded immediately to his kiss, his tongue finding mine as I tasted peppermint masking a hint of whiskey on his tongue and an even fainter suggestion of cigarettes. He smelled of fresh laundry despite the fact that he’d been sweating up on that stage, a faded trace of sandalwood lying underneath.
They were flavors and scents unique to Mark, different from any other man I’d ever kissed, but I didn’t have time to focus on those sensory details because his body boxed me in. One arm rested on the glass of the elevator wall, and the other came around my waist to haul me against him. His erection met my hip as he pressed close to me. My blood heated and my veins boiled as I was met with the realization that it was me that did that to him. He was turned on. He was hot for me. He desired me.
The elevator doors opened too soon, and he broke away from me. I hadn’t even noticed the elevator had come to a stop, let alone the fact that the doors had opened. I was too wrapped up in what was happening between the two of us. He was my sole focus, and I couldn’t think of another time I’d been with a man when everything else faded to complete insignificance in the background. I’d always been able to maintain some semblance of control—it was what had prevented me from wanting to have sex in public with Justin, my ex, when he’d tried to slide a hand up my skirt in a restaurant. I wasn’t a prude, but I was aware of what was going on around me.
Mark was different, though. With him, I had no control or awareness. It was all him—my entire being focused on him—his touch, his taste, his scent, the fiery, strong emotions he produced in me.
Some people were waiting to go down the elevator as we stepped off. I didn’t take notice who they were because I was looking at him. We stepped off and they stepped on. He waved to someone, greeted someone else, but I was stuck in a fog from his kiss. Was
this real life? Was this really happening to me?
He led me to a door marked 4701 and opened it to a party in full swing. People milled around, music blared. Some people sat on his couch while others helped themselves to drinks in his kitchen.
“Welcome to my place,” he said wryly.
I smiled and glanced around, memorizing every detail for the report Jill would surely want the next day. “It’s nice,” I said.
He shrugged. “Better be for what I paid for it. You want a beer?”
“Sure.” I followed him to his refrigerator. “Do you live alone?”
“Usually, yes, but I have houseguests for the next few weeks.” A woman with bleach blonde hair stood just beside it.
“Hi you,” she said, her voice throaty.
“Hey, Delilah. Excuse me.” He opened the fridge and she moved over about a half a centimeter. She ran her hand up his arm, and I felt incredibly uncomfortable as I stood a few feet behind him, my eyes focused on the fridge.
“Marky Mark, take me to bed.” Her lids were heavy and she was clearly trying for seduction. I had to wonder if this is the type of girl Mark normally went for, because that wasn’t me.
I knew what I was here for, and I also knew I had no claim to stake on him. Seeing another woman try to take him out from under my nose sent a shock of reality through me. What if he decided he’d rather be with her tonight? What would I do? Where would I go?
How was I even here tonight? How had he chosen me?
“Sorry, babe, I’ve got company.” He nodded back to me.
Company. Is that all I was to him—after that car ride where he wrote down those words and confessed his darkest secret to me? After the way he kissed me after he typed out A Little Like Destiny, kissed me like a starved man with all that raw, unfiltered passion?
He grabbed two bottles of beer from the fridge, opened both, and handed one to me, and then he took my hand in his and led me through the crowded living room, down a hallway, and into his bedroom.
His bedroom was sleek and, just like the rest of his place, black, white, and gray. The floors were a white, shiny tile, and a soft, plush, black and white rug covered the majority of the floor. The walls painted a soft gray with white panel molding. The bed was the centerpiece, a huge king with white sheets and a white comforter. Black, white, and gray pillows decorated the top of the bed, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he had a housekeeper who made his bed every day. I just couldn’t see Mark Ashton, rock star extraordinaire, making his bed.
His bedroom set was white and simple, and black and white framed pictures adorned the walls. The images were simple and musical—a guitar, a sexy image of just a microphone against the backdrop of a stage, Vail’s first album cover. They were all general photos—none of him, none of people. I wondered if this was his main residence, if he picked out those pictures, that dresser, or if he had a person who did those things for him. I wondered if he had another house somewhere else where he kept pictures of his family. His mom and dad. His siblings. If his parents had a house with his childhood bedroom still intact.
He didn’t turn on any lights—instead, the room was lit with the glow of the Strip right outside his window.
The bedroom was empty and quiet despite the music pumping just in the next room. “Soundproof walls,” he said, a smile tipping up his lips.
I looked out over the view as he walked over to a chair and collapsed in it.
“I’ve never met anybody who had a soundproof bedroom,” I said.
“Helps for when my parents are visiting.” He winked at me.
I wanted to giggle because it was funny, but it just reminded me how I was one of many. I wasn’t special. This night wasn’t special—not to him, anyway. This was something he did all the time even if it wasn’t something I did all the time.
He patted his lap, and I walked slowly across the room to sit on it. I faced the window, looking out over the lights of Las Vegas while I sat on Mark Ashton’s lap in his bedroom drinking his beer.
When Jill told me she’d be able to get us backstage at the Vail concert, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine this was how the night would go.
“Do you like being a teacher?” he asked me out of the blue, one of his hands holding his bottle of beer while his other rested somewhere between my hip and my ass as we both looked out the window at his magical view.
I nodded. “Finals are next week and then I’m out for the summer. If you’d have asked me that a month ago, I might’ve had a very different answer.”
He laughed, and something sparked inside me that I was the cause of that laughter. “What do you teach?”
“High school English.”
“That was always my favorite subject.”
“Did you prefer reading or writing?” I asked.
“Both. But writing was always my passion. I had a great teacher my sophomore year who made me see that lyrics are poetry. Without that base, I don’t know if I’d be a lyricist today. What about you? Reading or writing?”
“I love both, but I prefer to read what I want to read over teaching the classics.”
“What do you like to read?”
“Chick lit.”
“Chick lit?”
“You know, literature for chicks…women.”
“Are you a closet romance reader?” he teased.
“No. I’m open about it.”
He laughed again, and I felt that same spark in my chest. I liked making him laugh.
“What’s a teacher like you doing mixed up with me?” he asked softly.
“Because I’m a teacher, I can’t end up at a rock star’s house after the show?”
He lifted a shoulder. “It just seems like teachers wouldn’t do that.”
“Teachers are people just like everybody else. I make mistakes and grow from them. I have a life outside of school. It’s not like I publicize what I do on the weekends to my students.”
“Thank God for that,” he muttered, and I laughed.
I expected to feel in awe around him, which I did when we first met, but he had this way of making me feel comfortable around him—so comfortable that I forgot I was sitting on the lap of a rock star in the lap of luxury while I drank his beer in his penthouse suite on the Strip.
“You intrigue me,” he said.
“Oh?” Butterflies hammered against my stomach. I turned to look at him. “Why?”
He was silent for a moment, as if pondering my question as he looked out over the blinking lights below us. His puzzled eyes met mine. “There’s just something riveting about you. You seem like you have depth. Everyone’s so shallow these days.”
“You intrigue me, too.”
“Oh?” he mimicked. “Why?”
“Because you’re a rock star. And someone once told me that being a rock star is fucking awesome. So I guess that makes you fucking awesome.”
He chuckled at my reference to our conversation in the car on the way over. He set down his beer on the table beside the chair and then took my bottle from my hand and set it next to his.
“Yeah, it is pretty fucking awesome,” he said, and then his hand cupped my neck and he pulled me down until my mouth covered his.
We kissed in his chair with Vegas on one side and his bed on the other. He shifted me so I was straddling him, our kiss heating up as he bucked his hips toward me. His hands settled on my ass for a few beats. He guided me up and down over him, giving me a preview of what was to come. His hands left my ass and trailed up, always moving, always working, and my body responded to his touch, seeking pleasure and moving in rhythm with him. I broke from the kiss because he was overwhelming me with his mouth and his hands. I needed to see him, to look at him—to know that this was real and not just some fantasy I dreamed up.
His eyes flashed from the glow of lights outside the window forty-seven stories down. He was animalistic, his eyes so heavily laden with lust that I wanted to alleviate it—the need I saw there, the passion and the ache. His hand moved to the
back of my head, and he pulled me back down with him. We kissed some more as the need between us became this tangible thing we could hold in our hands, this sphere of ache and pain, and then we threw the sphere aside as clothes flew in all directions. My shirt, my bra, at the work of his deft fingers. His shirt as I fumbled clumsily.
My fingertips ran along the cuts of muscle hidden beneath that shirt—cuts of muscle I’d ogled in pictures online for ten years. The tattooed body I’d seen in magazines was real, and it was mine for tonight. My fingertips gave pause over a tattoo I’d never seen before. It stood out from the others. It must’ve been newer. It was a small scripted letter F enclosed in a circle.
I was about to ask him the meaning, but then more clothes started coming off. He kicked his shoes off and pushed mine off, too. He lifted my ass so I was kneeling on either side of him on his chair, and then he unbuckled his belt and unbuttoned his pants. My jeans were eye-level for him, and he popped the button and lowered the zipper. My damp black panties peeked out the top, and he ran a finger along the band.
I shivered, and his hands trailed up to my breasts. He massaged and kneaded, pinched and rolled, and then he leaned forward and took one in his mouth while he worked the other with his fingertips.
I sat back on his lap and his hand trailed to the elastic band of my panties. He dipped a finger inside, difficult to do at this angle, and brushed against my clit. I nearly fell apart on top of him. He leaned back to give himself better access, and then he slipped a finger inside, his mouth still working my breast.
I dug my fingernails into his shoulders where my hands rested. He bit down on my nipple, sending a shot of need straight through me. That need only pressed harder upon me as he worked me with his hand. He pushed another finger in, and I threw my head back with a low moan. He grunted before he pulled his fingers away and let go of my breast.
“Stand up,” he commanded, and I did because you always do what Mark Ashton tells you to do.
He pulled my jeans and my panties down my legs. I stood in Mark’s bedroom completely naked, lit only by the gleaming glow of lights from below.
A carnal, guttural growl rose up from his chest, and then he shifted out of his jeans and his boxers. I panted at the sight of a naked Mark Ashton sitting in a chair in his bedroom. Need lit inside of me, a painful need so strong I thought I might die if I didn’t get to quench the thirst. He’d fingered me halfway to an orgasm, and just the naked sight of him was almost enough to push me there.
