by Vivian Lux
Shit, we were doing Jagged?
She'd inspired these words. God I hope she didn't notice... I wasn't ready for her to notice. But at the same time I couldn't wait to play it for her, to see if she would notice.
Would she know that this song was all about her? And more than that, would it make her happy?
Chapter Twenty-One
Celia
I was expecting to hear an old standby. Something tried and true that I'd sung along to a zillion times before. A Wrecked song.
When the unfamiliar melody teased out slowly, I felt something warm seeping into my veins as I realized that, for the very first time, I was actually hearing a song by the new band. The band they were now. I was hearing a song by Wreckage.
It was slow, almost a ballad but not quite. Niall's bassline had a dirty, swamp-blues groove that slunk underneath Ewan's spare, shimmering guitar work like a bad omen. I felt goosebumps raising on my arm even before Hudson growled the first verse into the mic.
"I'm looking behind me at you / And there's a crack in the mirror."
I snapped my head over so hard I felt my neck twinge and gaped at Ewan. He dragged his eyes up from his slow finger work and looked me dead in the eye, watching me as he played. His guitar swung low at his waist and he slung himself around it like it was an extension of himself, teasing out an echoing melody line that I felt raise the hairs on the back of my neck. My breath came faster as Hudson's voice swirled around my head, singing words that only Ewan could have written.
"For you I'll piece the jagged parts together."
I couldn't have moved if I tried. I was pinned down by the poetry of the words and the ferocity of his gaze. Had he looked at me like this last night and I hadn't realized? The words to his song made me think that he had. The words made promises about how he was feeling, but did he mean them? Was this the truth? Or were these just pretty words on paper, a song of seduction to win over millions of women, not just me? Was I being a selfish fool to think they were about me in the first place?
As the bridge of the song lifted me to my feet, I realized there was only one way to find out.
In two steps, I was in his arms, cutting off the song with a screechy clunk of feedback as my body slammed into his. In one motion he yanked the cord from his guitar and slung it behind him to catch me up in his arms before his lips came crashing down into mine.
It was true, it was true, I could feel it in the slide of his tongue swirling with mine, and the heat of his lips as he seared me. He pulled me so close he nearly squeezed the breath from my body and we spun in a slow circle in our own private dance. We were falling and flying and standing perfectly still, melded to each other as the strains of music still echoed in my head. He meant it. He had to have meant it because this kiss, this kiss meant everything.
I heard a small noise and realized it was my own gasping moan as he kissed me even harder and his growl rumbled lower than the bass of the song he'd written just for me. Breathless, I pulled back and looked at him, and slowly I realized that we weren't alone and that the entire band had just watched us kiss like that.
"Ah," Jules said, clearing his throat. "So it's like that then?"
Ewan's eyes blazed fiercely. He slung his arms over around me and pulled me tight to his side as he turned and faced the whole band. "Yeah," he growled. "It's fucking like that."
There was silence. My heart hammered but not with fear. No, this was excitement to be claimed by him like this in front of everyone. I'd cut his hair. He'd made me his.
"Cool man," Hudson finally said, coming over to us. "That's kind of rad." He looked at me with a crooked, eager smile. "Like your mom and dad, right?"
If Ewan hadn't been holding me, I would have stepped back. Instead I swallowed hard. "You know who I am?" I heard myself asking.
Hudson looked confused. "You mean you're not Ricky Silver's daughter? Oh, well my bad, but I could have sworn..."
I looked down and heaved a heavy sigh. Ewan watched me carefully as I slowly extricated myself from his arms, but without them around me I felt cold and alone. "No, I am," I confessed, the words sticking in my throat,
Hudson brightened. "So cool!" he said, looking from me to Ewan. "It is like that then, right? I mean, the whole reason your dad started Silvergate Recordings in the first place..."
"Was to give my mom a career," I finished tightly. "No one else would hire her so he decided to keep it in the family. Except it didn't really work out that well, now did it?"
Hudson raised his chin. "Shit man, I don't give a fuck if people make fun of me. Penelope Silver's got some righteous tunes. She was like the original badass rocker chick."
"Who lost all her cred once people found out her husband was the reason she got signed," I corrected. "She became a national joke and it wasn't even her fault."
Hudson looked chagrined. "She got a bum rap, I say. If she had just..."
"Not been with my dad?" I snapped, more harshly than I meant to. "Yeah maybe then she would have been taken seriously. Maybe then her talent would have been treated as talent instead of all my dad's doing. You've heard the jokes. That she's an airhead ditz who needed a Svengali type manager just to have a career." I took a deep breath, trying to rein in the defensiveness I always felt when I talked about my mom. It had actually been her career that launched my father's, not the other way around, but no one ever saw it that way. They only saw that she had the same last name as his. I could never figure out exactly what it was; habit, sexism, disbelief that a woman could really kick out the jams and tear shit up without a man pulling the strings, but my mom had suffered for being publicly linked to my father. "That's why I don't tell people who my dad is," I told Hudson, told them all, pleading with them to understand, to drop it. "Because everyone thinks he's the puppet master. Once people think you don't deserve your success they are more than happy to take it all away from you."
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ewan
"Hey," I called, rushing after her. She was little but damn was she fast. She'd only had a two-second head start, but in that moment she had managed to rush from the warehouse space and start tearing ass up the dark and deserted street, shouting for a taxi. I sprinted faster. "Hey Celia, what the fuck?"
She slowed but didn't turn around. I caught up with her under the yellow glowing pool of a streetlamp as a night bus whooshed by. "Would you fucking look at me, please?" I begged, reaching out and whirling her around.
She glared up at me. "You don't listen, do you?"
She tried to shake her arm free but I was holding her tight. Strong fingers. "I listen just fine," I snapped. "And what I heard was a bunch of excuses."
"Really?" she exploded. "You really don't see why this is a bad idea?"
I shook my head. Her eyes were wild and crazed, dark pools of black water in the night and I was already drowning. "No, really can't say that I do," I confessed. This thing, whatever hangup she had about her name and her career was not something I understood. But I knew one thing for certain. My heart was thudding way up in my throat, which was threatening to close in some panicked overreaction over how upset she was. I needed to fix this and I had no idea how. "I'm fucking mad for you CeCe and you know it. You heard the fucking song, yeah? Well, that's it, love. That's the truth as near as I can tell it and the truth is you're driving me crazy. I think about you all the fucking time, and I know you've got it bad for me too."
"You know that huh? You've got some kind of ego, you know that?"
"Love, you've got a shit poker face and you kiss me like you're drowning. This isn't rockstar ego talking. This is reality."
"Fuck off Ewan."
"No you know, I don't think I will. I think I'm gonna stay right here until you stop being daft."
"Daft?" she shouted, yanking her arm back with a mighty tug that sent her staggering backwards. "You think it's daft to want to protect everything I've worked for? You think I'm," she choked out the word, "daft for trying to protect you?" She lowered her voice, dartin
g a look around the deserted street as if we might somehow be overheard. "Don't you know how it'll be perceived if people find out we've slept together?"
"Aye, but we haven't yet, have we love?" I moved to her, catching her hair in my fist to tilt her head back. "If that's what's bothering you lass, I'll happily remedy the situation for you."
"Ewan," she snapped, but her lips were parted and I could feel her heart beating fast under her ribcage. "Don't you see I'm trying to protect you?"
The word clanged in my head like a bell. Protect you. That's what men did, real men. They protected what was theirs. Friends, lovers, it didn't matter. That's what my father did for his dreamy, barely able to cope-in-the-real-world wife and his sullen brat of a kid.
That's what I had failed to do for Jane. If I had known, I could have protected her from Killian. If she had just trusted me enough.
"It's not your job to protect me," I told Celia as I brushed my lips past hers. Just a test. And when she didn't pull away, or worse, bite me, I smiled against her mouth in abject relief. "Celia, don't you see that I don't want you to?" I said, kissing across her cheek to her jaw. "I can take care of myself. And lass," I breathed, bending to kiss that racing pulse at her throat. "I can protect you too. If you'll let me."
"From what?" she demanded, but her voice was quavering.
"From whatever you need, love. From yourself. I can do it, you just need to let me."
She was coiled and still stiff in my arms. Like she was poised to push me away, but I held her still tighter, barely wanting to breathe lest I scare her. The sound of footsteps echoed in the night, but the unseen person never materialized. There was no other sound but the soft swish of far-off traffic.
And then she groaned.
She sagged in my arms and the sound of her groan was nearly my undoing. It sounded like music. It sounded like letting me in. I could hear it, all of the walls she'd built up inside of herself crumbling away as she lifted her head and moaned against my mouth. Suddenly all of the coiled tension in her body was dissolving away, and for the first time, I felt like she might truly be mine.
That was all it took to drive me crazy. Wrapping her hair around my fist, I pulled her head back and melded her mouth to mine. Alone on the sidewalk on a dark, lonely street, the sounds of the city swirling around sounded far away. We were all alone in the pool of lights, the only two people in the universe, and she was all that I needed. Her hands found my newly shorn hair, the mark she'd made to claim me as hers, and I groaned in return, lifting her in my arms. She wrapped her legs around my waist and I needed so much more than just standing here kissing her in the dark. I needed to hear her breathless gasp come quickly as I kissed down her throat. I needed to hear her moaning, and feel her sagging against me as my hands sought between her legs. I needed to feel her weight, lifting her up.
Without thinking, I turned and walked blindly, my lips at her neck.
It was only a matter of a few steps before we were in the shadow of an alleyway near a silent, hulking loading ramp. And if there were guard dogs or security cameras, I didn't give a shit because CeCe's fingers were tugging at my shirt, untucking it from my waistband,
I helped her lift it over my head, and it fell away, lost forever in the shadows. "Ewan," she breathed, and the way she said my name it was like she was realizing something for the very first time. Her word died in the back of her throat and she kissed me instead of speaking but I swore I heard whatever it was she had left unsaid. I understood because when I tried to speak, "Love, you're going to..." I couldn't finish the sentence. All the blood was rushing away from my brain, leaving me in a state of primitive arousal.
"Fuck," I said instead, reduced to a caveman's eloquence by the feel of her skin under my hands.
"Ewan," she said again, a mewling, begging sound. I couldn't see her face in the dark, but I could hear her breath catch and feel her body stiffen, and suddenly I remembered my promise to myself.
Next time I was going to make her scream.
There was no way I was going to miss watching her face while I made her come again and again.
My dick was straining against my pants. I felt like I was going to explode. It would be such a simple thing to lift her small body into my arms and lower her onto my cock. It would be such a simple thing to just fuck her here up against the wall of some anonymous alleyway, to sink myself into her heat and drive myself into her so hard that she yelped. It wouldn't have been the first time that I staggered into a blind alleyway for an anonymous fuck.
But not with CeCe. With her, I wanted to do it right.
"Love, I am not going to fuck you up against the side of some random building," I said and I could hear the strain my voice. "No matter how badly I want to."
Her arms uncoiled from my neck. "Dammit," she breathed, and I could feel the shape of her grin against my lips. "Well, you'd better fuck me soon. Before I change my mind."
"I'm going to make it so that you never change your mind again," I said.
"Oh, strong words," she teased, pressing her lips to my throat.
"True words," I promised her and then stooped down and swept her up into my arms.
"Oh my God!" she squeaked. "What are you doing?"
I strode out onto the street and made the turn. "Making sure you can't run away from me again."
"Where are we going?" she yelled, wrapping her arms around my neck.
I didn't answer. I was too busy relishing the feel of her in my arms, the way she clung to me. I'd told her I was going to protect her, and goddammit if I didn't need to do it on some very primitive level. I needed to show her, show her that I could. And that meant...
"We're going to my place," I told her.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Celia
As I rocked like a baby, cradled in his arms, my mind waged a quiet war with itself. The dignified part that demanded respect wanted to shout at him to put me the fuck down as I was quite capable of walking myself.
But the other part, the up-to-now silent part, wanted nothing more than to rest my head on his shoulder and relish the gentle bob and sway and take the comfort I didn't know I had needed in being held in his arms.
His strength was breathtaking, unflagging. I was worried I was too heavy, that he would have to groan and shift the weight, maybe ask me to walk for a second while he stretched, but the thought never seemed to cross his mind so after a short while I realized I was worrying about nothing.
But still, I couldn't seem to help myself. The deserted warehouse streets were giving over to high-rises. He'd been carrying me for three short blocks now but it felt like an eternity. "Are you going to carry me all the way there?" I wondered aloud.
"I have to make sure you can't get away," he replied and didn't even sound out of breath.
I looked up at his face, his set jaw. That dimple was hiding in shadow but I felt like I knew him well enough to know it was there. "You're like part cavemen aren't you?" I teased.
"The Scots are an ancient people," he declared with mock solemnity.
"Do you ever wear a kilt?" I wondered.
He laughed. "You want to see what I have underneath?"
I bit my lip. "Maybe?"
"Not much farther now, love, and I promised I'll show you every inch of it."
If he hadn't been holding me my knees would have given out. The downward rush was so fast and so sudden that I swore gravity doubled, pulling me down heavy in his arms. For a moment I wanted to demand he dispense with this ridiculous idea of getting to his place and just lie on my back on the sidewalk and pull him down on top of me. "You're ridiculous carrying me like this," I said, squirming.
"Stop wiggling, or I'll throw you over my shoulder."
Heat flooded my limbs in a boneless rush at the thought of being carried like that. "Seriously?" I yelped.
He slowed a little. "I think you like the idea," he mused and his voice dripped dangerous promise. "I have half a mind to do it now."
I smacked his arm. "Don'
t you dare."
He turned his head with an impish smile.
"Ewan."
He slowed to a halt.
"Ewan! Don't you...! Oh my God!" I gasped as he slung me over his shoulder. "I can't believe you!'
"Oi, this is much easier," he announced as he broke out into a run. "I should have been doing this all along!"
I bobbed helpless, ineffectually beating at his back, aware that his lips were only inches from my pussy, separated by only a few millimeters of fabric. Ewan must have been thinking the same thing because he suddenly turned and charged up a set of stone stairs. From my upside-down vantage point, I could only see the sidewalk change to the marble floor of some lobby, and feel the cooling blast of air conditioning to know that..."Are you carrying me like this in a lobby?" I hissed. "Ewan!"
"Private entrance, love," he growled as a faint ding sounded above us. He stepped over a threshold and suddenly flipped me back down to my feet.
The whirl of dizziness as the blood rushed from my head was no matched for the reeling tempo of my heartbeat to find myself suddenly alone with Ewan Boyd in a mirror-lined elevator. All around me my own flushed and breathless reflection was mirrored back at me, but for once I wasn't caught up in how I looked.
I was looking at him.
His face was in the forefront of my mind all of this time, but now as I looked at him it was like seeing him for the first time all over again. That cut-glass jawline with the deeply carved dimple. Those blue-blue eyes, darker around the edges and sky-blue at the center. That dark hair, no longer obscuring his face, but framing it, like he was a work of fucking art. His height, a full foot taller than me looming in this small space, taking it all up, the way he took up all of my attention and all of my thought. And for the first time the breadth of him, those broad shoulders, and the strong arms that had just carried me for however many blocks without faltering. "You're..." I exhaled, trying to find the word.
