by Cari Quinn
The chaos in his head could be quieted with one simple statement. He could disavow a million honorable reasons for why he shouldn’t take what he wanted and take it hard. Except one.
“You’re my employer and I won’t compromise your safety for any reason, including unnecessary personal involvement.”
“I can’t employ someone who refuses to accept payment.” She spooned up more chocolate and reminded him that he hadn’t finished his. A thought that vanished as soon as she trailed a thick line of white sauce along her full lower lip.
He might as well admit defeat. She’d officially signed his death warrant.
He wasn’t thinking about her mouth wet with chocolate sauce. Not even close. He wanted her lips wet from him. Wanted to lean down and drag his teeth over her flesh and taste what he’d left behind after she’d relieved the relentless throb in his balls.
“You don’t know what you’re stirring up, little girl.” He pushed her foot back harder than he’d meant to and she let out a startled squeak. “Sorry.” He grasped her calf and rubbed. “Did I hurt you?”
“No. I’m not delicate. I’m also not a little girl. And you’re not the brute you obviously think you are either. Do you think anything nice about yourself? Ever?” She kicked at him and dislodged his smile. “Eat your ice cream. I’ll sit here and think chaste thoughts.”
At a complete loss, he swallowed some of the melting chocolate. Then he went back for more. “Is that even possible?”
“Probably not.” She sulked into her chocolate sauce.
“What do you want from me, Summer?” he asked once five minutes of tense silence had passed. “Why don’t you just tell me instead of leaving me to guess? Am I supposed to prove to you that I think I’m a decent guy by bending you over this sofa and ramming inside you? You really think that’ll redeem my sense of self?”
She ran her spoon over her lip, obviously weighing something in her mind. Yet again he couldn’t be certain she’d heard him. Her inattention rankled. “A kiss,” she decided finally. “That’s all.”
“A kiss?” Narrowing his eyes, he cocked his head. “Where?”
Smiling, she took another lick of her spoon and set the jar aside. Then she crawled closer and hovered beside him, her gaze already fixated on his lips. “Mouth to mouth, baby.”
That tightness in his chest returned. He didn’t like her calling him baby. It didn’t seem right.
He liked it too much.
“Fine.” He set aside his ice cream and motioned her toward him impatiently. Better to let her think he wanted to get it over with. “Let’s make this fa—”
Her lips met his and his thoughts died a fiery death.
Her gentle, seeking kiss incited a whole new throb beneath his waist. He didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. His only defense against her careful assault was to wait it out. Then she slipped her tongue, flavored with sweet raspberry and chocolate, along his and he forgot that he couldn’t participate. He grabbed her arms and tugged her onto his lap, pulling her legs on either side of his so that she straddled him. Reaching up, he shoved his hands through the miles of dark hair that fell down around them and met her stroke for stroke.
Instead of trying to drive the intensity higher, she softened around him. Yielding to his touch. He’d figured her to be the type to expect a guy to follow her lead, but she seemed to want to let him set the pace. He found himself easing back on his speed, his fingers slipping from her hair to cup her cheeks as he slanted his mouth over hers. Finding a whole new angle, a new way to make her breath stutter and catch. Going deeper and hotter and wetter. Not as a prelude to getting her naked, but because he’d never tasted anyone or anything as succulent. Never experienced a kiss that meant so much more.
Lifetimes passed in that kiss. Kisses, plural. He operated on auto-pilot. After a while, his jaw started to ache and his lips grew numb. Her breasts pressed to his chest, her exhalations blew hot over his lips, her knees dug into his thighs. When the weakness in his arm rendered his grip shaky, he let his hands fall. She simply framed his face between her palms and continued her onslaught.
Drawing from a well of tenderness he hadn’t even realized he had, he banded his arms around her and held on with all the strength he had left. And somehow, he found more.
Breaking apart hurt. Air rushed from his lungs and fanned the tendrils of dark hair that clung to her flushed cheeks. She kept her eyes closed and struggled to breathe, her thick, tangled lashes fluttering from the effort.
He needed to kiss her again. To take her to bed. For the first time, he wanted to know what making love was like. He’d done everything else. She’d show him things he hadn’t even believed existed.
In that moment, he might’ve been weak enough to risk it. But she stumbled off his lap and backed toward the door. “I have to get dressed. My show.” Her dazed expression opened up holes inside him. The panic that followed poured acid into them. “I’ll be late. The shower—” She gave up and left.
Chase groaned and dropped his head on the back of the sofa. The next time she said the words “just a kiss” he’d know better.
No such thing existed, at least with Summer Maitland.
Chapter Six
Another Saturday night, and yet again he was on Summer-patrol. It had been the longest week of his life, one where he’d dreaded and anticipated seeing her again with equal fervor.
Chase widened his stance where he stood near the front right corner of the stage, pushing his elbows outward so no one got too close. He needed to keep room available so he could move at a moment’s notice. It didn’t look like he’d need to anytime soon though, because the brunette chanteuse on stage had captured the crowd’s interest and now held it on the tip of one glossy red fingernail.
The fact that she’d become a brunette chanteuse in his mind said volumes about where his head was. All his self-talk about how off-limits she was worked until she climbed the stage and became someone else. More than the Summer he’d always known. Mysterious and sexy, a fully confident woman who needed no games to seduce. He loved hearing her laugh, savored every moment of pleasure in her eyes.
The moment she opened those slick lips, the same hue as her nail polish, and let those honey-toned words fly, he was a goner. If she’d been anyone else, he wouldn’t have held back. She made him hard as a fucking rock, mentally dull as a broken pencil. She enthralled him, effortlessly.
Him and every other guy in the crowd, and most of the women too.
She kept stroking her braid. Not pulling it as he’d instructed her if she felt threatened, but working it through her fingers, freeing the occasional curl to fall across her breast. From this angle, they looked like they were on hydraulic lifts, for fuck’s sake. So high and firm he wanted to thank God for women. And simultaneously begrudge their very existence.
That wasn’t the worst of it. She sang like she was revealing her soul, just laying every part of herself on the line. Her hopes, her fears. Kyle played at her side, sometimes joining her as she played the guitar, sometimes playing on his own, but their accomplished harmonies barely reached his ears. Summer was the music, the lyrics and the instrument to him. All-encompassing.
Unforgettable.
And he stood like a hulking sentinel in the shadows, guarding her from those who wanted to own a piece of that joy for themselves. He wouldn’t let anyone risk her safety. Not even Summer herself.
Empire wasn’t quite as big as The Platinum Club, but what it lacked in fancy clientele, it made up for with volume. Bodies packed the place. Eager, writhing bodies. It didn’t take long for him to register the barometer of the crowd changing. This bunch wanted to mosh, not hum easy country-pop ballads. Summer soon realized that, as a few of her more traditional folksy songs received boos. Chase’s chest compressed with every one of them.
At this distance, he couldn’t see her face clearly. The glare from the lights blinded him to most of the details, but he could read her body language. The way she tucked her guitar closer to her
breasts, how she dipped her head and let her loosened hair shield her from prying eyes. Her pain and embarrassment twined inside his gut. He couldn’t let the surge of people around him divert his attention, no matter how much he wanted to drag her away to a place where no one could hurt her with their careless words. He knew what that was like and hated anyone daring to harm her that way. Only the repeated clenching and unclenching of his fists stopped him from launching himself at the nearest heckler.
That shit was not going down when he was around. He could handle what they’d said—and would say again—about him. For fuck’s sake, they wouldn’t treat her the same. Not while he could beat their stupidity out of their thick skulls.
But he didn’t move. And while he watched, his anger on steady simmer, she adjusted the set list and turned it all around.
She kicked aside her stool and leaned in close to Kyle, whispering to him between numbers. He nodded and rose while she took off the virginal white sweater that had hidden her bare shoulders. She wore a dress of alternating strips of color beneath, as wild as the hair she tossed back. Then she kicked off her cowboy boots and seized the microphone. “So I’m guessing you guys want something a little rougher tonight? A little more raw?”
“Hell yeah, baby.” Came a shout way too close to Chase’s left ear.
Out of the corner of his eye, Chase noticed the club’s security guys branching out in the increasingly rowdy crowd. Things were heating up. Damn, he wished he’d thought to bring Jax tonight. He hadn’t told Summer yet about the new addition to his unnamed agency, though he would by next week’s show at The Platinum Club. She’d only told him about the surprise sudden cancellation that had led to another invitation to the club that night at dinner. For her, a week was advance notice. And hell, in the meantime, maybe he and Jax could name their agency.
Names fled from his brain the instant Kyle returned from backstage with an electric guitar. He plugged it in an amp and started to play a jarring groove that made Summer’s smile widen like the sunshine coming out after a storm. Rainbows had nothing on her, especially when a razor-tipped growl emerged from the same heart-shaped lips that had earlier caressed and cajoled the words from her soul. Now they were a screaming, sex-laced demand, full of an aggression he never would’ve known she possessed.
Barefoot, floaty dress swishing around her thighs, fingers wrapped around the microphone that became her lover, she threw herself into the song, dragging the crowd with her whether or not they were willing. Dragging him.
He’d already been half hers—three-quarters—since last weekend. The memory of her soft, giving body and her breathy moans had tormented his sleep all week. He’d awakened cock in hand too many times to count. It hadn’t touched the ache she’d caused with her mouth and her innocence and the fact that she cared. She genuinely gave a shit about him, and that more than anything else pulled him to her with magnetic force.
His lips quirked. Maybe she’d been right about the importance of peas.
She bent at the waist, crooning into the microphone as she wailed about not giving a second chance to a lover who’d done her wrong. Then she turned, shaking her ass as she strutted over to Kyle and sang at his side. Her guitarist gave a rare grin, obviously enjoying the set change. Together they added their typical soaring harmony to the grinding beat.
Chase lost track of the bodies pressing close around him. The cheers and screams disappeared. Everything faded away but Summer and the song that she seemed to be singing to him, her gaze flashing to his and away again before he could sink into its heat.
He couldn’t stop staring. His vision lasered to her sweat-sheened face, to her blissful smile, to the twist of her athletic thighs. All the while, her damn near orgasmic breathy demands filled his brain as she reached the climax of the song. Total overload.
If he had to walk right now, he’d be in fucking trouble, because his dick was so hard he doubted his jeans would even bend enough to accommodate movement. She’d done that to him, and he couldn’t even punish her for the exquisite torture. It was his alone.
Something red whizzed by his head, exploding on the stage with a frighteningly loud bang. The guitar screamed to a halt and Summer jumped back, her fear telegraphing across her face as her gaze met Chase’s.
He didn’t think, he moved. Erection or no erection, he scaled the stage and hauled ass over to her, too concerned with making sure she was okay to even care about the bastard who’d thrown the bottle. He’d handle him later.
“Did you get hit?” he demanded, stroking a hand over her hair and pulling her trembling body to his before he’d thought better of it. His grip faltered and he had to tighten his fingers to hold on to her. God, what if the same weakness occurred when he needed to restrain someone who could cause her harm?
Pushing the thought away, he cupped her cheek. His little finger had gone numb, one of his more usual symptoms. “Summer. Are you all right?”
Shaking her head, she pushed him back and pressed her lips together until they were white. Her gaze darted to the club staff already cleaning up the mess. “I’m fine. It was only a drink.” Her voice wobbled. “Looks like Hawaiian punch, for God’s sake.” She waved him away before he could argue. “Go on. I need to finish the show.”
“You’re still going to?”
“Of course I am. It’s my job.” She gave him a determined smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “It’ll take more than a kiddie drink to get me to quit.” She licked her lips and his not-so-dormant erection returned to life. “At least it tasted pretty good.”
“You’re an insurance risk waiting to happen.”
“I’m not officially employing you, remember, so you don’t have to worry about what kind of a risk I am.” She lightly shoved him away and turned to Kyle, dismissing him as effectively as if she’d slammed a door in his face.
Terrific.
Chase crossed the stage and jumped to the floor. Better this way. If she treated him like a bug she couldn’t wait to swat, maybe he wouldn’t get hard every time she spoke or smiled or breathed.
Maybe he wouldn’t recall the flavor of raspberry and chocolate on her tongue.
He fisted his hands at his sides and watched the rest of the show without making eye contact with her. He saved his visual inspections for the guys who tried to push too close to Summer. Empire’s security team kept a tight watch on things, but they hadn’t stopped what had happened earlier.
Nor had he.
For the last song, Summer went back to one of her country-pop standards. That blissed-out smile of hers returned while she and Kyle rocked their way through it. This group definitely preferred the harder-edged cuts, but they didn’t boo this time. By the final notes, they were chanting “Sunny Z” so enthusiastically that she couldn’t stop grinning as she and Kyle took their bows.
Chase waited until she and Kyle headed backstage before leaving his post. He pushed his hands in his jeans pockets and strode through the buzzing clutch of people closest to the stage. From what he could tell, most everyone had enjoyed it. He sure had, enough to lose track of his focus. His purpose for being there was to do a job—to keep Summer safe. No more, no less. And he’d failed.
The glass hadn’t hit her. She was fine. But the point was she could have been hurt. If she’d been injured, he wouldn’t have forgiven himself, especially since he’d been so preoccupied for one ridiculous reason.
Sex. Stupid fucking sex. Which they would not be having, so he needed to get it out of his head. Or more accurately, he needed to get his brain out of his dick.
It had been too long, that was all. It wasn’t because it was Summer. She could’ve been anyone. Sure, she made him laugh. Talking to her reminded him of some of the best times of his life, and somehow she managed to make them sweeter. Her voice blew his mind. She was smart and sarcastic and tough as nails under that cotton candy exterior. But she was Cass’s friend and now his client, which made her doubly off-limits. Besides, she didn’t see him that way anyway. Her haste to shov
e him off stage earlier had proven she didn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea.
Message received.
He tapped his knuckles on the partially closed door to the closet-sized dressing room. “I’ll be parked outside,” he began, his voice deserting him as he glimpsed a bare shoulder. She sat at the makeup table and clenched a puff of some sort. The eyes she turned his way were ravaged. “Summer?”
“Don’t come in here,” she said as he did just that.
“What’s wrong?” He glanced around the room, noting the scatter of clothes on the floor that accounted for why she was sitting there in her bra and tiny little cotton shorts that might’ve been underwear. A second equally small table across the room offered another mirror that gave him a way too revealing glimpse of the curve of her back and the long laces of dark curls that spilled over it. “Why aren’t you dressed?”
“This is the changing room, you know. I already chased out the other chick who’s up next. She didn’t want to hang around some emo guitar bitch. Now it’s your turn to leave.” She threw down her makeup thingy and whirled around on the seat, evidently realizing he had no intention of moving. “You shouldn’t be back here.”
“Yeah, I know I shouldn’t be here, but I am. You’re upset and I’m not leaving until you tell me why.” He crossed his arms and waited.
“You saw that show. I’m a round peg trying to fit in a square hole. No, worse, I’m a round peg trying to fit in the head of a needle. I need a band. I need to write harder stuff. No one wants to hear my country-tinged stuff in the city—”
“Hold on.” He moved forward and cupped her shoulders, registering the satiny skin under his. Soft. Way too fucking soft. But he still kept his hands right where they were as he bent his knees to meet her eyes. “What I saw was that it took a little time for you to win them over, but you did it. By the end, they were eating out of your palm. You didn’t buckle. You adapted and got the job done.”
“I need a band,” she muttered, averting her gaze. The loss of those big blue eyes staring straight into his hit him as acutely as the loss of breath. “Me and Kyle can only do so much. He knows some people, but I’ve been resisting bringing more people onboard. Too much trouble, too many personalities. I only want to sing.” She rubbed the heels of her hands into her eyes, hard. “Up there, I feel alive. I’m more me on stage than I am anywhere else. I live for those moments. The rest of the day, it’s just surviving until I hear the crowd again. That acceptance…” She shuddered. “God, I’d die without it.”
