by Lily Harlem
My lips flattened. “I’m not pumpkin, for your information, I’m Dr. Calahan.”
“Yeah, I know.” He stepped closer, real close, and the scent of his freshly showered skin filled my nostrils. “You’re important and respected in the medical world, but,” he said with a naughty glint in his eye, “you’ll always be my little pumpkin.”
The song about the girl next door finished and in its place ‘Party Animal’ began with its trippy tones and Robbie’s excitable voice.
I looked at the hollow of his throat—his smile was just too devastating—but then all I could think of was the taste of his skin on my tongue. “Then I guess I should be glad you didn’t write a song about pumpkins and squeals,” I managed through a suddenly dry mouth.
“Mmm, not a bad idea. I’ll see what the guys think.” He paused. “Pumpkins and squeals, she tastes like a meal,” he sang.
“Don’t you dare,” I said, shocked that he might take my stupid idea seriously.
His grin dropped and he reached out and tucked a lock of hair behind my ear. “You look amazing,” he said in a soft voice. “Even better than I remembered.”
My skin tingled where his fingertip had brushed the small patch behind my ear. “You don’t look any different,” I said, although that wasn’t strictly true. He was more handsome, if that was possible, his jaw a little squarer, his eyes greener, and he’d taken to sporting a dense layer of stubble. “And I still don’t understand,” I carried on in as stern a voice as I could muster, “why you were so desperate to see me after all this time.”
“I’ve always been desperate to see you. I just got caught up in the roller coaster ride the band has taken us on over the last few years. It’s only now we’ve managed to catch our breath and get used to what happened when we were first catapulted into the limelight.” His gaze captured mine. “It’s only now I’ve had the chance to sit and figure out what’s really important to me outside the insane world of the music industry.”
He dipped his head and his lips hovered over my mouth. “And it’s you, pumpkin, you’re what’s important to me, it’s always been you.” His lips settled on mine again, the tip of his tongue searching and caressing.
I kissed him back. I couldn’t help it. It was instinctual; my body was taking what it needed with no consideration for my vulnerable heart.
“And you still taste so good too,” he murmured. “So damn good.” He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close. I rested my hands on his chest, absorbing the heat of him and feeling his small, tight nipples beneath my palms. It felt so right to be in his arms. Loved, protected. I melted into him, and through the towel his steely erection prodded my stomach.
“Robbie, no.” I pushed at him and took a step back. “What’s going on? We can’t do this. We can’t just meet up and have sex. I can’t get my head around it.” Or my heart.
His arms fell to his sides. His mouth was damp and shiny from our kiss. “But I want you back,” he said simply. “For good.”
“We’ve been there, done that. It didn’t work, remember?”
“But we loved each other so much and there’s still something there, a lot there. Hell, I think that kiss just proved it.” He dragged in a deep breath and his eyebrows pulled together. “Jenny, you’re the first thing on my mind when I wake up and the last thing on my mind when I go to sleep at night.”
I shook my head, hardly daring to believe his words. He was describing my first and last thoughts of each and every day.
“It will work this time, it has to,” he said softly.
I rubbed my hand over my forehead. I was hot, hot and bothered. My clothes were damp on my back. “But you’ll still accuse me of seeing other guys even when I’m not. Still want to check up on me. And I can’t stand that, you know I can’t, it’s what destroyed us last time.”
“I’m different, I’ve grown up. It was hard for me then. You’d gone off to university in Edinburgh and left me in suburbia. Everything was new and exciting for you, you were a student, working hard and playing hard in a big new city.” His voice lowered and a muscle flexed in his cheek. “You were playing without me. I got the dregs of you when you came home, tired and with piles of study to do over the holidays.”
“But that’s how it was at uni. I had to study during the holidays to get top grades, you knew that.”
“You were supposed to study there, while you were away. The holidays were my time with you. I couldn’t understand why you hadn’t got the work done in term time. The same old thought kept coming back to my head—you hadn’t done it because you were seeing someone there, someone who took up all your time and energy.”
I sighed. We’d had this conversation too many times. It was like picking at an old scab until it oozed blood. “You know I’m not the sort of girl who’d cheat and lie. I couldn’t even lie to Mrs. Baker that time she accused me of hanging out behind the bike shed with you. I got us both a week of detention because I blushed and stammered so much she knew full well where I’d been and what I’d been doing.”
He smiled and I knew he was remembering me letting him touch my breasts over the top of my school shirt that day. “I know that now.” He stepped closer again. “Because I’ve been there, been immersed in a career, going after what I wanted with such single-minded focus that it consumed my every waking moment.” He reached for my hand and rubbed his thumb over my knuckles. “I understand what you were going through, what your studies meant to you and how time-consuming it was.”
I looked at his anxious face, at the way his eyes had narrowed and his brow had furrowed. It was older than the face I’d last gazed at in the flesh. There was nothing boyish about his features anymore. Robbie was all man.
“You have to believe me,” he said.
My heart churned. What should I think? Four years ago I’d walked away from him. Shut the door and left him alone and devastated. It wasn’t because I hadn’t loved him, it was because I couldn’t cope with the way he’d loved me. The way he couldn’t let me chase my dreams without him.
“We’ve both achieved what we dreamed of,” he said, tilting my chin with his finger. “We’re where we want to be and,” he set his jaw determinedly, “it’s time for us to be together again. Turn around.” He pressed on my shoulders. “Look in the mirror.”
I allowed him to twist me until I stared at the mirror behind the bed. I was more disheveled than I’d thought, my blonde hair tangled and tufty and my hoody damp and drab.
“We were meant to be,” he whispered in my ear, the stubble on his cheek brushing my temple. “Look at us, even after time apart we look so right.” He caught my gaze in the reflection. “We feel so right. It’s always been Robbie and Jenny, Jenny and Robbie, always, it’s our destiny. All you have to do is say the word, just say yes to us.”
I leaned back into his hard chest, my body light and small next to his.
“I just don’t know how else to be,” he murmured, “without you. Without the one person in the world who truly knows me. ”
The doors to my heart began to creep open. He was getting to me. Big time.
“When I sit alone thinking of all Manic Machines has achieved, it just doesn’t feel real,” he went on.
“But it is real. You just have to look at the wall of awards and discs and photos.”
“It’s not real,” he said, curling his forearm around my waist and pulling me tighter against him. “Because I haven’t told you. I haven’t shared it with you.” His other hand smoothed my hair over my shoulder. I tilted my head and he pressed his lips to the side of my neck. I was glad he was holding me, as his delicate touch made my legs feeble. “That’s got to change,” he whispered. “I’ve got to have you back in my life, sharing this with me. Everyone else has just been treading water until you were back in my arms again.” He paused to drag in a breath. ”You’re the one thing missing, Jenny, and you’re the one thing I want and need the most. Please, let’s try again, let’s make it work this time.”
Tho
se doors protecting my heart flew wide open. I’d spent so long shutting them tight, saving myself from him, but the touch of his lips and the heat of his words had blown them off their hinges. There was only one answer I could give him if I was going to be true to myself. “Yes,” I said, “we can try again.”
“Really?” He lifted his head to look at me in the mirror.
I smiled at the apprehension on his face. “Yes, really. I want you back too. I miss Jenny and Robbie.”
He slid his other arm around my waist. “Thank God for that,” he said on a sigh.
“But it has to be a new us,” I said as he nuzzled his face into my neck again. I squirmed at the delicious fluttering trailing over my hypersensitive flesh as he kissed my ticklish spot. I had to lay down rules. Be strong for both our sakes. “We have to start afresh, get to know each other all over again. We have to take it slow and steady, like adults.”
“Suits me.” His fingers curled beneath the base of my hoody. “I’m keen to get to know every single bit of you all over again as slowly or as quickly as you want me to.” He lifted upward and I raised my hands and let the heavy material slip over my head. “I’ve thought of nothing else for more months than I care to admit. It’s been obsessional.”
He’d obsessed about me. The way I had him.
“And,” I said, watching as my hoody landed on top of the black jeans and t-shirt he’d worn on stage—now in a heap in the corner. “You have to promise to trust me. I am where I say I am, doing what I say I’m doing.”
“I get all that now. I’m not twenty and ridiculously insecure anymore. I won’t fuck up over something so stupid.” He lifted the butterfly necklace sitting in the hollow of my throat. “You still wear this?”
“Sometimes.” I watched his reflection turn it over in his big fingers and felt the chain tug the base of my neck. “I wear it when it’s your birthday, Christmas, anniversaries, you know, when I feel the need to be close to you.”
His lips tilted. “Anniversaries of what?” he said, laying it gently back on my skin.
I swallowed as he smoothed his hands into the dips of my waist, tracing the outline of my body. “You know…firsts.”
“Firsts?”
“First kiss, July 8, first cinema trip March 4, first time we…”
“First time we…?” He began to pull my thin t-shirt upward the way he had my hoody.
“The first time we made love.”
He paused and his eyes sparkled in the mirror. “In the tent, at the bottom of my garden.”
“You remember?”
He slipped the top over my head and tossed it aside. My hair fell around my shoulders, a couple of tendrils landing over my white bra. I hadn’t planned on putting my underwear on show tonight so it was nothing special, but it was clean and neat.
“How could I ever forget?” He gave a small groan. “I performed terribly.”
“It was both our first times and it wasn’t that bad.”
“Yeah, it was. But I’m pleased to say I’ve improved considerably.” He rested the flat of his hand at the base of my neck, over the butterfly on my necklace. I was sure he’d be able to feel my pulse. “A lot of my improvement is thanks to you. We had fun practicing, didn’t we?”
“Mmm,” I managed as he slid his hand over my right breast until he cupped me through the thin material of my bra. “We did.”
“And these babies,” he said, smoothing over my other breast so he supported them both, “were the stars of all my teenage wet dreams. Right from that first day I spotted a bra through your school blouse and realized you were going to grow a set, I wanted to see them, touch them, kiss them.”
“You did, plenty of times.”
“Yeah, but it took me a few years to get there.” He released my breasts, pulled back slightly, and the next thing I knew my bra was sitting at my feet. “It took me a while to persuade you to let me do that.”
“That was in the alley, between Mr. James’s and old Gerty Drew’s, June 29.”
He grinned and let his thumbs brush over my tight nipples. Darts of pleasure shot through my chest and settled low in my belly. My nipples strained for his touch and I watched in the mirror as he lowered his head over my shoulder and studied his own delicate caresses. “I just about went off in my pants that day,” he murmured.
I sucked in a breath as my breasts grew heavy with need and my pulse rate picked up further.
“You’re even more exquisite than I remembered, Jenny. I want you so bad, not just for a quickie. I want to savor making love to you all night long, and then again tomorrow night and the next. Do you remember what we said?”
I turned in his arms and pressed against his hot chest and hard pecs. “What?”
“That we would be each other’s first and last.”
I gave a small nod. “Yes, I remember that.”
“We promised,” he said. “Not just that night in the tent but a hundred more times over the years.” His lips brushed mine. “Have me back, Jenny, be mine and we can pick up where we left off and start being each other’s last, right now, tonight. I don’t want anyone but you, ever again.”
I slid my hands around the base of his neck, my soul swelling with joy and love. My stomach clenched, I could hardly breathe. Never in my wildest dreams had I dared to hope that he still felt the same way about me as I did about him. I pushed to my toes and pulled his mouth to mine. “Yes,” I said breathlessly onto his lips. “Yes, I want to be yours again and I want you to be mine, forever.”
He shut his eyes and blew out a slow breath. “You won’t regret it, I promise.”
And then we were kissing, hard, fast and urgent and I forgot all about my ‘slowly’ rule. His hands were at my jeans, tugging and popping open buttons. A hunger grew inside me. A hunger that couldn’t be ignored, not for another moment.
He shoved at my jeans and knickers, dragging them down my thighs. I gasped as he stooped to take my nipple into his wet, warm mouth. I arched into him and groaned for more. “Sit down,” he said on a rush of breath, urging me onto the bed. He knelt in front of me and slid off my sneakers. Tugged away my jeans and underwear completely.
Before I knew it I was sat before Robbie Harding, lead singer of the Manic Machines, totally, utterly naked.
Chapter Three
He looked up, and as his gaze devoured me from the tips of my toes to the top of my head, the naughtiest grin I’d ever seen slid over his face. “My God, Jenny, you were so beautiful growing up you made me ache, but now—now you’re beyond exquisite.”
“Robbie,” I said, placing my hands on the hard balls of his shoulders. “You don’t have to say that, I’ve seen who else you’ve dated—”
“None of them compare, none of them come close to you.” His voice deepened. “Do you know why?” He slid his big hands from my ankles to my knees.
“No,” I said in a shaky voice as he exerted gentle pressure and eased my legs apart.
“Because not only are you stunning on the outside, I know you’re beautiful on the inside too, in the very depths of your soul.” He tickled his fingers up my inner thighs.
I licked my lips, swollen from our hard kisses, and watched their progress.
“You’re beautiful right down to the core,” he said, watching his fingers move over my pale flesh. “Sweet and caring, truthful and pure, and I can’t believe I was so stupid to let you go. I can assure you…” he trailed his finger into the soft folds of my pussy and I let out a small whimper of need, “I won’t be letting you go again, not ever.”
He urged my legs wider with his shoulders, dipped his head between my legs and planted a long, hot kiss on top of my little fuzz of blonde pubic hair. I hardly dared to hope he’d do what only he had ever done to me.
“You remember how much you used to like me worshipping you like this?” he asked, stroking his thumb over my clit, teasing it from its hood.
“Yes, yes I do,” I whispered, resting my hands on top of his head. His hair was still damp from t
he shower.
“Then lie back and enjoy,” he said in a voice that was smoky and rich with desire. “I know I’m going to.”
Oh God, he was going to do that. I let the cool, soft sheets envelop my back as the song about sexed-up party animals ended and ‘Jenny’ came on. I was Jenny; this song was about me. I looked up at the reflection on the mirrored ceiling. For a moment I was shocked to see myself sprawled wantonly on the big bed. My hair was spread out like a fan, my small breasts tight and pale. Between my legs was Robbie’s head, shockingly dark against my creamy skin tones and the light silver of the duvet. Then his broad back and wide shoulders filled the space where my legs folded to the floor. Even hunched over, he looked so much bigger than me.
I tensed as Robbie’s tongue began to explore where his fingers had left off. Stroking my soft, damp flesh and delving into every crease and fold. I let out a moan and arched my back as his tongue finally tangled with my clit. His fingers joined in, searched out my entrance and pushed up to the knuckle. “Robbie,” I gasped and pressed down for more, suddenly desperate for it, desperate for that filling sensation.
Still I kept my eyes open, watching him, watching us as his voice ricocheted around the room, singing about his shattered heart and his broken dreams.
Jenny, oh Jenny
I’m still here, still waiting, still aching
No one else has ever compared
He picked up the pace with his tongue, swirling and laving at my clitoris. Warm, liquid silkiness collected in my pussy, coating his fingers as he pumped them in and out of me. My hips ground against the mattress, and his other hand steadied me, holding my hipbone firmly.
Oh, Jenny
I’m here, still waiting
Still breaking my heart over youuuuuuuuu.
“That’s too good,” I groaned, willing my eyes to stay open and carry on looking at our reflection. The towel had slipped from his waist and I could see the first outlines of his sweet butt as he knelt before me. His left shoulder was moving, shifting in time with the delicious filling sensations he was giving me. He’d slid his other hand to my stomach and his head dipped in time with the growing pressure in my clit. “I’m going to come,” I moaned as a climax hurtled toward me.
