by Nalini Singh
Thea immediately recognized the name. “They’re fine,” she said, “but pedestrian. This partnership will answer mail for you, handle the phones, upload your videos online, and coordinate interviews if those interviews fall into their laps. But they’re not going to be reaching out to make new opportunities for you.”
Esteban shrugged. “I’m not really into publicity anyway, so I’m good with that.”
Musicians. Thea turned in her seat. “You might not be into it, but you need it to grow your brand so you can do what you love full-time. When you’re big enough, then you can ignore it—like Schoolboy Choir so often does, against their publicist’s express wishes.”
Esteban’s smile deepened at her dry tone. “I don’t think I’m ever going to be that big.”
“I wouldn’t bet on that.” Making a quick but rational decision, she said, “I’ll take you on for a fee you can afford, to be renegotiated as your circumstances change. You’ll be working with one of my younger associates, but I’ll keep an eye on things.”
Esteban stared at her. “Thea, I’m not in your league.”
“You will be. I’m getting in on the ground floor.” Opening her evening clutch, she pulled out a card. “Here. Call this number tomorrow and ask to talk to Jeth. I’ll tell him to expect the call.”
Looking uncomfortable, Esteban blew out a breath. “I didn’t come here to—”
“I know.” Thea hoped he’d retain that personal integrity as his fame grew. “Now, I suggest you have fun tonight, because your life will soon involve more work than you can handle.”
David had been listening to Thea talk to Esteban with half an ear while he chatted with Fox and one of the owners of the club. And she thought she wasn’t kind. Lot of people in her position, they’d have sent Esteban to the “pedestrian” company, then scooped him up once he started earning some real money.
Whether Thea admitted it or not, she was taking a risk by signing the other musician. David was pulling for him, but there was no guarantee he’d hit it big. Not every musician did, no matter how talented. Luck and timing played a huge part in success. Schoolboy Choir had been knocking on doors and playing small—sometimes miniscule—gigs for a year before they were spotted by a record-company exec with the pull to back a hard-rock band at a time when hard rock wasn’t the “in” genre.
Another day, an exec with less juice, and the band might’ve never gotten radio-play, much less ended up with a triple-platinum debut album.
However, beyond that point, it became a matter of resilience, talent, and determination. A single hit song or album was one thing, a long-term career quite another. David knew Esteban had the grit and the talent to last in this business. But first he had to break through.
Thea’s hand moved on his thigh at that moment, though she was still talking to Esteban. It was the slow, petting stroke of a woman who wasn’t focusing totally on what she was doing but was aware of who she touched. David shifted in his seat as his cock hardened. If he had to get up anytime soon, he wasn’t going to be able to walk.
Much as he hated to stop her, he closed his hand over hers.
She shot him a startled look over her shoulder… and then her cheeks tinged pink under the rich gold of her skin. “Sorry,” she mouthed.
“I’m not.” He’d waited what felt like a lifetime to have Thea pet him that way.
Later that night, she did it again, but this time, they were both naked and she had his cock in her mouth.
“Christ.” Sprawled on his back in bed, with her kneeling between his thighs, her lips painted with a luscious new coat of lipstick, and her beautiful body curved over him as the hot suction of her mouth drove him to insanity, she was his every erotic fantasy come to life.
Grasping fistfuls of her hair in his hands, he couldn’t help thrusting into her mouth. “God, yes. Suck me just like that.”
She didn’t shy at his aggressiveness, licking her tongue along the underside.
“Harder,” he gasped. “Fuck me with your mouth.”
Taking him at his word, she tightened the soft, wet suction and began to move on him in a faster, deeper tempo, his cock glistening as it pushed in and out through the glossy red of her lips.
His eyes rolled back in his head, spine arching.
No, damn it to hell!
He was going to come and she’d barely gotten started. “Thea,” he said in hoarse warning.
Continuing to caress his thighs with her hands, she sucked him as if he was her favorite treat… and looked up to lock her gaze with his.
He came.
Hard enough that he saw stars, his muscles feeling as if they would tear from the rigid tension, his balls drawn up tight against his body. Shuddering, he surrendered to the sexual ecstasy, to her, and when he lifted his heavy lids after it had passed, it was to see her sitting up.
She licked her lips.
“Fuck!” Another shock ripped through him.
Prowling up his body, her hair a tumbled mess and her lips swollen, most of her lipstick gone, she said, “You have a dirty mouth underneath that gentlemanly exterior, David Rivera.” She kissed him, the eroticism blinding. “I like it, especially the dirty things you do to me with that mouth.”
He gathered up the energy to run one hand down her spine and to her butt. “You have no idea how many nights I’ve jerked off to the fantasy of sliding my cock between your lips.” Nothing he’d imagined had come close to the blinding pleasure of the real thing.
Rubbing herself against him, all satiny skin and hard nipples, and lower down, an erotic slickness, Thea kissed his jaw, his throat. “Every time you walked into my office after my breakup,” she said, her eyes naked with an intense vulnerability, “I wanted to slip into your arms and have you hold me.”
“Thea.” He would’ve given anything to do exactly that; seeing her in pain was like being tortured with thumbscrews.
Her lashes came down and when they rose again, the vulnerability was tempered by mischief. “Later, after the emotional bruises began to fade, I used to fantasize about seducing you against the door, going down on you while I was dressed for work—heels included.”
David’s fingers dug into her left buttock. “You cannot tell me things like that,” he groaned. “I’ve promised you I’ll behave in the office.”
A husky laugh. “It’s your fault. All those buttoned-up shirts and the way you watch me with your gorgeous eyes.” Licking over his nipple, she bit lightly at it. “How am I supposed to resist the temptation?” She began to lick and kiss her way down his ribcage.
Sated though he was, it felt good, really good, to have her caressing him. “I’m being selfish,” he said, still not moving.
Thea ran her nails up his thighs. “You go on being selfish,” she said over his deep-throated groan. “I’m having fun.”
“I love your idea of fun.” In truth, David loved everything about Thea, wanted to shout his devotion from the rooftops—but he wasn’t certain Thea was ready to hear it yet, and he could be patient now that she was his.
He would speak with his touch, his loyalty instead.
Continuing to kiss her way down and across his body, she blew on the skin she’d wet. He tugged her up to ask for another kiss. The scent of her was intoxicating. His recently satisfied cock grew heavy and hard again. “Let’s have a different kind of fun,” he said and slipped his hand between her thighs. What he discovered had him uttering a shaky “Baby, you’re drenched.”
No woman had ever wanted him so much.
Hips rising and falling on his fingers, she said a breathy “You taste good.”
After that, the only words they spoke were whispered and rough, their bodies hot with need and the air musky with sex.
“I hate how women come on to you.”
David blinked awake from the half-doze he’d fallen into with her in his arms. “Thea?”
“I feel stupid and jealous and I can’t make it stop,” she muttered, her head on his shoulder and one hand on his chest.
He had no idea how to handle this. Thea was so confident and so strong that he’d never expected it to come up, but he knew it was important that he—they—deal with it. Because she’d trusted him with her exposed heart, and he knew exactly how difficult that must’ve been for her after what the fuckwit who’d been her fiancé had done to her. “I wanted to kick your ex’s balls into his throat every time I saw him, and then I wanted to drive my fist into his preppy face.”
Eyes wide, Thea lifted her head, her throat marked by his kisses and the stubble on his jaw. “Since when?”
Taking a deep breath, David admitted his secret. “Since the first goddamn time I saw him.”
“David… I was with Eric when I took over the band’s PR.”
“I know.”
Her gaze sheened wet, Thea touched her fingers to his cheek. “Really? That long?”
“Yeah.”
“David, I—”
“It’s okay.” Closing his fingers on the slender bones of her wrist, he pressed his lips to the delicate skin above her pulse. “I know you, Thea. I knew you were faithful to that bastard, that you didn’t look at me the same way.” It had killed him at the time, but now he wanted her to feel the same unwavering loyalty for him.
Maintaining the intimacy of the eye contact, she said, “Do you remember holding me in my office while I cried about six months before I ended my engagement?”
“It broke me up to see you so sad.” He’d dropped by to pick up a schedule she could’ve as easily e-mailed him. Fact was, he’d wanted the chance to see her, have her smile at him.
Then he’d looked into eyes that were always vibrant, and the bruised pain he’d seen there had him drawing her instinctively into his arms. “Thea, hey, what’s wrong?” he’d asked, the need to fix it for her, to slay her dragons, a visceral need in his gut. “Baby, has someone hurt you?”
Her initial resistance to his hold had crumbled with his question and she’d sobbed quietly against his shoulder. Each tear had been a hot poker to his heart. He’d wanted so badly to do something, make it better. But all he could do that day was hold her tight.
Afterward, she’d been too embarrassed to meet his gaze. Seeing how fragile she was feeling, he’d stifled his need to demand answers and left. Neither one of them had ever mentioned it again, and while their friendship had remained strong, a subtle new barrier had grown between them in the aftermath.
That barrier hadn’t fallen until she broke it off with her ex. “You finally going to tell me what happened?” David asked, hoping to hell he never made her cry that way. He’d fucking cut off his arm before causing her such pain.
Chapter 12
Thea spoke past the thickness in her throat. “Eric and I had a fight that morning,” she said, thinking back to one of the most painful times of her life. “He didn’t say anything terrible”—the ugly words hadn’t come till right at the end—“but I knew that day that I’d made a mistake, that he wasn’t the man I’d believed him to be.”
The horrible feeling in her gut had grown and grown with each minute that passed. “When you came in, I was in the middle of trying to convince myself that it had simply been a bad fight, that we’d get through it.” She laughed and it was a sound that held no humor. “No one can say I’m not stubborn.”
David ran his fingers through her hair. “Not stubborn, just willing to fight for your relationship. I would’ve thrown a goddamn party if you’d left him, but I know it must’ve been tough to think it had all been a waste.”
Laying her head against his shoulder, the feel of his fingers caressing her hair and nape deeply comforting, she said, “That was part of it, but it wasn’t everything.” She paused, took a shaky breath.
“Hey.” He wrapped his arm more firmly around her, his other hand cupping her cheek. “We don’t have to talk about this all tonight if it hurts.”
“No.” She shook her head. “I need to tell you.” Inhaling a steadying breath, David’s scent a warm embrace, she said, “I’d met Molly well before that fight happened, discovered all the awful details of the damage my biological father had done.” Molly didn’t like to talk about the past and Thea didn’t blame her for it, but the media coverage from the time had been so unrelenting that Thea had been able to answer many of her own questions.
“Patrick Buchanan broke vows like they were made of glass, left bloody shards all over the place.” He’d destroyed his wife, scarred Molly so deeply that Thea’s sister carried the shadows of those scars to this day. “I couldn’t bear to think I was like him in any way. I was not going to walk away just because things were hard.”
“Ah, baby.” David rubbed his chin over her hair. “I didn’t know that about your biological father.”
Fox, Thea guessed, had kept Molly’s confidence. It was nothing less than she’d expected. “My mother,” she began, “was a maid in the Buchanan household.” And then, for the first time in her life, she told someone the entire, sordid story.
Eric had known only the bare bones of it—that she’d discovered a half sister, wanted to build a relationship with her. She didn’t know why she hadn’t told him everything. After all, they’d been happy at the time. Maybe because it had felt disloyal to her mother, given the fact Eric hadn’t seemed to connect with Thea’s family.
Or perhaps her subconscious had seen the fractures in their relationship she couldn’t. Not then.
Because David hadn’t even met her parents and siblings, and yet it didn’t feel wrong to tell him. She’d seen how he treated his own mom, knew he’d treat hers with the same affection and respect, regardless of anything. And even if they went down in flames, their relationship unable to survive the pressure cooker of a rock star’s life, David would never use her secrets against her.
“I’m glad the piece of scum is dead,” David said after she completed the painful story, his voice low and taut. “Otherwise, I’d be tempted to kill him myself.”
She spread her hand over the strong, steady beat of his heart. “I did find Molly, so it was worth it in the end.” Thea and Molly had liked one another from the first despite being two very different women. “It was like a first date when we met for coffee after I flew to New Zealand.” She smiled at the memory. “I had to pretend I was in the country to set up a satellite office, just to take the pressure off.”
“Family’s important, isn’t it, Thea?”
She nodded. “It can screw us up too.” A raw confession. “Having learned exactly how worthless Patrick Buchanan had been at keeping his promises, I couldn’t just walk away from Eric when the cracks began to appear.”
“I get it.” Shifting so that he was braced over her, David stroked her hair off her face. “You don’t still think that way, do you? You’re nothing like Patrick Buchanan. You never break your word about anything. You stick.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I do.” It had taken her time to get her head screwed on straight and it had been her sister who’d helped her see the truth. “Molly eventually guessed what was going on inside me, reminded me that where Patrick had thrown both of us away, I’d done the opposite.”
You came looking to nurture a relationship with me, to build something new, when Patrick only destroyed.
Thea had needed to hear those fierce words, could believe them when they came from a woman who had grown up with Patrick’s selfishness.
He seriously messed me up, Thea, her sister had added. Don’t you dare let him do the same to you.
Every cell in Thea’s body wanted and hoped for Molly and Fox to make it, for her sister to slam the lid on the ghost of Patrick Buchanan once and for all. “The irony of it all,” she told David on the heels of that passionate thought, “is that the day I found Eric in bed with his floozy, I’d gone over there to break it off with him.”
Thea hadn’t meant to confess the rest, but held so safe and protected in the cage of David’s body, it spilled out. “He called me a ball-busting bitch who should’ve been born with a penis.” The words had
always hurt more than the fact Eric had clearly been cheating for weeks before she discovered his duplicity. “Said he’d needed a real woman to fuck.”
A growl of sound from David’s throat. “I swear to God I’m going to break his goddamn face if he shows it anywhere near my vicinity.” Kissing her on that harsh promise, he said, “Wimp has no idea about real women—he wants a pretty doll.”
Another kiss, his cock growing hard against her. “Me, I like my woman so tough grown men whimper and hide when they see her coming their way.”
David’s vow made the scary emotions inside Thea grow even bigger. Because where Eric would’ve made the words a sly insult, there was nothing but possessive pride in David’s voice.
Pushing up her thigh after quickly taking care of protection, he circled the head of his cock against her core. “I am so proud to have you as mine, Thea.” More kisses, her body melting for his. “I want to strut down the street telling other men to roll their tongues back up because you belong to me and I’m keeping you—and any dickhead who wants to try his luck had better be ready to get that head taken off.”
He thrust his thickness inside her in a slow, inexorable push that had her nails digging into his shoulders. “I know that’s Neanderthal behavior, but I don’t give a shit.”
Holding him close, Thea kissed him with the violent power of the emotions in her veins. She couldn’t speak them yet, couldn’t even think about them too hard without her chest hurting and perspiration breaking out along her spine, but she was getting there.
“No matter what,” she whispered, “you were always my friend.” Her safe place. “I never cried with anyone else. Only you.”
A tremor ran through him, his head falling forward. Then he loved her, this rock star who’d been her anchor for so long that she didn’t know what she’d do without him.
