Raw Rhythm

by Cari Quinn

  She wouldn’t ever be ready to hear his honesty when it came to her. Just as he’d never be ready to share it.

  “Will you wash my hair?”

  He was still processing the question—and trying to blink water out of his eyes—when she turned and offered him the equally stunning view of her ass. Inky wet strands hung almost to the top of her cheeks, for fuck’s sake. That shit must weigh a ton.

  His fingers were already itching to touch.

  It was okay if she asked. If she wanted his hands on her, even in that small way.

  He grabbed the bottle of shampoo the tenants had left for him. It was generic store brand and smelled of almonds. The most non-arousing scent in the history of the world. He poured some into his palm and set the bottle aside, ignoring the tremor that went through his hand. Thank fuck she hadn’t seen it.

  Rubbing his hands together, he stepped closer. One step. Two. Three brought him up against her. Close but not too close. He held his hips back. She had to have seen, though he’d been too much of a coward to check. But he didn’t want to intimidate her with what it meant.

  He didn’t expect a goddamn thing. This was already more than he’d ever hoped for.

  “Just do it already,” she mumbled, and he nearly smiled.

  One of them was brave, and it sure as fuck was not him.

  He massaged the shampoo into her hair, not touching her scalp at first. He stuck to the length of it first, watching the way the thick waves soaked up the moisture.

  “Not wet enough,” he muttered.

  “Says you,” she muttered back, and he smothered a laugh as he gripped her waist oh-so-carefully and brought her backward. He stepped backward too, tilting his head as the water spattered over his shoulder and down his chest, splashing his painfully stiff cock. He managed to stifle a groan as he lifted her hair, letting the spray hit it more fully. Watching the suds he’d already added work their way down her long locks before swirling around her feet and disappearing down the drain.

  He went back for the shampoo and added more to his hands. He gripped her hair more firmly, working in the liquid before pulling it down the length. Then he finally rubbed some into her scalp, gritting his teeth at the indecent sound she made.

  It wasn’t a moan. God, so much worse. More like a cross between a whimper, a sigh, and a gasp.

  His already aching dick levered up against his stomach.

  Then she stepped back into him, swaying until he righted her with his arm around her belly. She made that sound again, and he knew it was because she’d felt exactly what she was doing to him.

  “You’ve got good hands.” He barely had time to register the compliment before she flashed him a look over her shoulder with heavy-lidded eyes. “Wash me off now?”

  Even grunting would’ve required more air than he had left in his lungs, so he nodded though she’d already faced forward again. But he wasn’t so gentle as he drew her back into the center of the spray with him.

  And hit the cold water with his elbow, accidentally on purpose.

  She squeaked and flailed away from him, spinning toward him with wild sudsy hair and mischief lighting over her face. Her laughter was like fucking sunshine, warming him despite the ice-cold water drenching him from head to toe.

  “You did that intentionally,” she said over the driving water.

  He jerked a shoulder. “Prove it.”

  Instead she stepped closer again, keeping her gaze strictly on his face as she came as close as she dared. Any closer and his cock would be nestled against her stomach. As it was, he could feel the warmth from her skin as she braved the cold water with chattering teeth and a gleam in her gaze.

  “You’re not finished,” she reminded him, tilting her head forward.

  He grabbed a handful of her hair, dragging her head back until her big blue eyes locked with his. “What kind of game you playing, Crandall?”

  “No game. Not my style.” She blinked and sputtered, spitting out water so it splashed on his chest. He was amazed his flesh didn’t fucking sizzle. “But I’m getting soap in my eyes.”

  He switched their positions until she was directly under the spray and bumped up the temperature until it was lukewarm. No more heat. They didn’t need it. Any more and the damn bathroom was going to combust.

  She kept her focus on his face as he grasped soapy handfuls of her hair and went through the meticulous task of getting her clean. All the way clean. He ignored his cock, figuring he’d use the tactile memory of all this wet silk between his fingers as more fodder for his jerk-off fantasies. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, angling her head to make it easier, watching him all the while.

  Once he’d finished, she glanced up at his head. “Want me to do you now?” Amusement laced the little cocktease’s voice.

  Rather than answer, he leaned around her and grabbed the bottle of peppermint-scented bodywash. He didn’t get why anyone thought that was a good smell, so he’d used it as sparingly as possible.

  He also figured it was the perfect scent for her. So much better than that plum stuff she tortured him with on the regular.

  But before he could dump some onto her, she grabbed the bottle and did the honors herself, quickly scrubbing the soap into her skin. She started with her arms, then swiftly moved to her breasts and lower, covering herself with suds. “This smells so good,” she said, taking a long sniff of her good shoulder.

  “You’d think so.”

  “You don’t?” She tipped the container and squeezed more onto her tits. Watching the liquid drip onto her curves was the sweetest torture, probably exactly why she did it.

  Wench.

  He grabbed the bottle back from her and took care of his own scrub down, directing his attention on being as fast as humanly possible. When he was done, she was still soaping her hips and upper thighs and he was probably going to kill her.

  “You know, in Japan, they think if you save someone’s life, you’re responsible for them.” He waited a beat, hating the brief flash of pain in her expression. “No one would prosecute me for drowning you. Just saying.”

  Her lips twitched and she took back the bottle, turning around to aim it over her shoulder at her back and ass. Bullseye.

  More dripping. More wet. Christ. Maybe he should drown himself.

  Or…

  He took back the bottle and deliberately squeezed some bodywash on his cock. He gripped it and ran his hand up and down, moving slow and hard. Fuck the bubbles. If she was going to torment him, he was going to make her make that little whimper-slash-sigh-slash-gasp sound again, like she was doing right now.

  She’d stopped pretending to wash entirely and was staring at his hand, her rapid exhales causing the shower door to fog up even more. He understood. If he kept doing this, just thirty more seconds—

  But he stopped.

  He turned toward the water, pretending he didn’t hear her deep inhalation. And he washed his dick off as fast as he’d washed the rest of him before wrenching back the shower door and stepping out.

  “Towel’s in the cabinet under the sink,” he said over his shoulder, bypassing one of his own to walk naked into the room she’d stayed in before.

  The second he shut the bathroom door behind him, he gripped his dick again.

  This time, he didn’t stop.

  Chapter Ten

  When you took a shower with a guy, it tended to make things weird afterward.

  This was not knowledge she’d had previously. Elle had never actually showered with a guy before, though if she had, she would’ve assumed sexual things would be involved.

  Like serious making out. Possibly oral for one or both parties. Penetration. The usual.

  Mal had touched her hair and her scalp and her waist, and his arm had circled her belly. Otherwise, he’d touched no part of her.

  He’d saved his touching for himself.

  Shuddering, she gripped the microphone that felt foreign in her hand and sucked in a strengthening breath.

&nb
sp; She’d taken about four hundred of those so far.

  The only good thing about replaying what had happened earlier in the shower was that it kept her mind off the fact she was singing for other people. Later tonight, people would pay a cover charge to hear Dobby and his band, and instead they’d get her. Shaking and probably flashing back to the last show she’d played.

  She couldn’t even take anything to blunt her nerves. Not that she would. She wouldn’t. Not again. But it wasn’t even an option when she was being watched by Mr. Clean’s angry twin, who would lock her in his dungeon if she so much sucked on a Tic Tac he couldn’t account for.

  She should hate him for his high-handed ways. Locking her in a room. Dumping her in a shower.

  Keeping me alive.

  “We gonna try this again?” Scooby asked.

  He was the lead guitarist for Venus Rising, and he was a bit of a prick. For one, he sneered a lot about his skills. If she’d been able to play, she would’ve happily smoked his ass and taught him some damn manners.

  But she was having enough trouble holding on to the mic even with her good hand, so that was out. She was favoring her other arm too much. Mal was right. She was getting too used to not using her other side at all, because she didn’t want to hurt it further.

  And if Mal was right about anything, she was clearly in an alternate universe and needed to get her head examined.

  It was probably watching him stroke his cock. She’d lost vital brain cells. Or no, she’d probably lost them after last night’s bout of massive stupidity, which she was still feeling the effects from. Her head ached, her eyes were blurry and grainy, and her stomach still wasn’t right. Maybe the crash accounted for her strange behavior that morning. Why else would she have encouraged him to shower with her anyway?

  Because he’s hot, duh.

  Which was not a reason at all. She’d never paid any mind to his purported hotness before.

  And because he keeps acting as if he cares about you, in spite of saying at every turn he doesn’t.

  That was just pathetic. She didn’t even like the guy. She hadn’t from the very first time they’d met. The jerk had picked her up and deposited her beside the bench she’d been sitting on, just so he could sit there instead. Though he’d called her Little Ricki even then, so somehow he’d known her even if the reverse wasn’t true. Probably because of Lila. So wild how she was his stepmother. Well, ex-stepmother. She and Mal were practically related, and that made showering with him epically wrong.

  If only he had a small penis. That would make things much easier. But no. He had to have a motherfucking huge one that he liked to flash all over.

  Hi, good morning, meet my penis. Oh, you already have? I’m not surprised. It fills out a pair of tight jeans quite nicely, doesn’t it?

  Of course, he’d strolled off without allowing her to see the big finish. Not that she cared about that. If showering with him had made things strange, him coming all over her feet probably would’ve been worse.

  Then again, could anything be worse than the uncomfortable car ride she’d endured with Mal to Brooklyn? Unlikely. They’d gone to the shitty converted warehouse Venus Rising used to rehearse in, and Mal had not said a single word to her the entire way. That wasn’t wholly unusual. Even their day in the park—yesterday, only yesterday—he hadn’t said much of anything. But that silence had been comforting somehow. They were used to each other after all. They lived together, for God’s sake. She shared a stage with him—

  Just like she was sharing a stage with him right now. That it wasn’t a real one didn’t seem to matter. Even singing to the exposed rafters was daunting knowing he was behind her on his kit.

  All of this was daunting. She wasn’t a singer. And Scooby, the self-appointed leader of Venus Rising since Dobby was home in his sick bed, wasn’t missing an opportunity to let her know it.

  “Ellen, I hope you’re more prepared this time,” he said, thumping his guitar with the flat of his hand. “I know this material is all new to you, but—”

  “Her name isn’t fucking Ellen.”

  Elle shut her eyes and clenched the mic so hard that pain sung up her arm. “Don’t,” she mouthed, but he couldn’t see her. No one could, since she faced ahead into an audience that didn’t exist.

  “Pardon me,” Scooby said. “Ellie.”

  “Let’s change the song. You said you guys cover different shit from all kinds of eras and genres, right?”

  Elle whirled toward Mal. Had he lost the last of his marbles? Maybe drained them into his hand when he’d gone into the other room to finish what he hadn’t wanted her to see?

  Oh, but she’d heard him. She’d turned off the water just in time to listen to the slick sounds of him working his wet cock, following by the low groan that had made her grip the sink to stay upright.

  “Yeah, sure, but Ellie needs to get this material down.”

  “She will. Later.” Mal nodded at her. “Sing what you kept singing last night.”

  Heat climbed up her neck to blast her cheeks. She hadn’t flushed when she’d stripped in front of him or when he’d done the same. She certainly hadn’t when he’d fisted his dick. But knowing he’d heard her concert for one last night made even her toes hot.

  “I sang a lot of things.” It took effort to add that prim note to her tone. She felt a lot of things at that moment, but prim wasn’t one of them.

  Embarrassed as hell was leading the pack.

  “The one you repeated over and over for a good hour.”

  She glared at Mal and wished one of the drumsticks she’d gotten him would accidentally flip out of his hand and poke out his eye. Or poke out his dick.

  Would serve him right to rev up a girl so much then leave her hanging.

  In all fairness, she’d done the same to him. But she hadn’t masturbated. That was taking things a wee bit far. Besides, they were in a band together. They lived together for half the year. Together was a part of many of their sentences, even if they rarely spoke to each other without a sneer.

  She couldn’t actually have sex with Malachi Shawcross.

  Not in this lifetime or any other. Even if he was hot as fuck and growly in ways that made her tingle though she’d never, ever told a single soul.

  Hell, she’d barely even told herself.

  Now they were all looking at her, waiting for her to answer. She’d have to kick his ass later, since leaping across his kit to do him bodily harm probably wouldn’t help her injured arm.

  “‘If I Was Your Woman’,” she said in a low voice, slitting her eyes until Mal knew exactly her level of displeasure.

  The bastard didn’t so much as blink. “Sorry? Didn’t hear you.”

  “‘If I Was Your Woman’,” she repeated through gritted teeth. “But I don’t really think the guys know that song, or plays seventies’ R&B in their sets—”

  “Gladys Knight and The Pips?” Scooby was the most animated she’d ever seen him. “That song’s a classic. My dad used to play it and my mom would sing it when they had their old soul duo, Brother and Sister Sledge.”

  Elle wrinkled her nose. “Your parents pretended to be brother and sister?”

  She hoped they’d only been pretending.

  “It was a joke.” He seemed affronted. “You know, as a homage to Sister Sledge? ‘We Are Family’? They played that in their sets too, but my Dad would sing lead on that one and she’d back him up on the piano.”

  “Let’s get started,” Mal said.

  “Let’s not,” Elle shot back. “You don’t know that song.”

  “Sure ‘bout that?”

  She had been, but now she wasn’t. He was an excellent bluffer.

  So she turned toward Jase on bass. He was the only one of them with a normal name, though she wondered the name of the guy that Mal was sitting in for. Probably something crazy to match the others.

  “You don’t know it, right?” she asked more than a little hopefully.

  “He was too busy staring at your
ass to know much right now.”

  Elle pinned Mal with a flat stare but Jase just jerked a shoulder. “Nice ass. Can’t blame a guy for looking.”

  “Oh really.” She stopped death-beaming Mal to do it to Jase instead. “So I can do the same to you?”

  “Sure, if I wasn’t afraid your boyfriend would try to rip my head off if I turned around to let you look.” His affable grin distracted her from what he’d said long enough for her delayed reaction to seem like…well, like a delayed reaction.

  “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  God, no. That thought was even worse than fucking him. To be honest, the fucking part wasn’t all that abhorrent. Especially today.

  Jesus, his body was ripped. And he was huge all over. And dear Lord, the strength she’d felt in his hands as he massaged her scalp…

  Her panties went damp. Again. It just wasn’t fair.

  “Tell him, M,” she said, emphasizing his shortened name.

  Mal said nothing. Just kept flipping his sticks as if he was a kid passing the time.

  “Now would be good.”

  “You’re wrong,” Mal said finally, and her shoulders sagged with relief. “There is no try. There is only do.”

  “I hate you.” She turned her back on all of them and lifted the hand holding the mic over her head. “You know what, from the top. Let’s sing the song. Then when you hate how it sounds and lose all your fans, you’ll regret listening to that heathen.”

  “From the top,” Scooby echoed eagerly.

  So she sang the words she knew by heart. She’d been listening to sixties and seventies R&B since she was a kid, since her mom had loved it. Her memories of playing her mom’s old, scratchy records and singing along were some of her most treasured ones of all. Then reaching the end of the song and hearing applause, knowing when she opened her eyes, her audience would be beaming.

  “That’s my baby girl. Sings just like an angel.”

  But when she opened her eyes this time, no one was smiling. Silence reigned.