Sweet Ache

by K. Bromberg

  She has on a yellow tank top, the blond curls of her hair pulled forward over one of her shoulders, and that delicate font tattooed between her shoulder blades. There’s something so damn sexy about it. The words and the simplicity of its placement, not for show, but solely for her just like my tattoos are for me.

  When I read the words, Make it count, I can’t help the satisfied sigh that falls from my lips because we sure as fuck made it count last night. My dick pulses at the thought, wanting it again with her so damn close and so goddamn tempting. She shifts in her chair to grab something and the movement leads me to fixate on her sexy-ass lace panties that mold to the cheeks of her ass.

  And that is exactly why I’m still sitting on her bed in my jeans, ignoring the bullshit texts from the guys asking if I fell in and got lost.

  They can fuck off because I kind of think they’re right. I think I’m lost and not sure I want to find my way back.

  But I look at her and can’t fathom how her independence, her strength, could make me weak if this were to continue. The idea, the notion, the possibilities begin to spiral out of control, beg me to question things and beliefs so ingrained in me that I’ve only ever questioned them in theory.

  And yes, watching her, with the scent of her soap on my skin and taste of her pussy seared in my memory, I can’t help but wonder what it would be like. How is she making me … Shut it down, Hawke.

  My chest constricts as I push the notion away, the haunted promises I’ve lived my life by, and opt to lose myself in thoughts of Quinlan instead. The woman is all kinds of contradictions balled up into one knockout punch. Shit, she’s playful and a dynamo in the sack, is feisty outside of it, and doesn’t get freaked out by my name or career.

  But these feelings swirling around like a man after a fourth of Jack with the room spinning around me can’t be right. This is supposed to be easy, supposed to be uncomplicated, supposed to be casual.

  Casual, my ass. From the get-go it’s been a challenge and so many things I’d usually walk away from. And yet here I am, relaxing on her bed, radio playing softly to a rock station, and actually relaxing.

  Maybe I’m just enjoying the silence. Not being in a house with three other guys, people constantly coming in, is a relief. I thrum my thumb on my leg to the beat, laughing at my crazy surreal life when one of the D-Bags’ songs comes on. I don’t think this will ever become old hat, being a little starstruck, a little giddy when the person I was having a beer with last night is now singing on the radio.

  Leaning my head back, I realize maybe my contentment comes from the lack of incessant talking that usually follows sex with the random women I’ve grown accustomed to. The ones that just want the notoriety they’ll get from bragging about hooking up with me. I don’t care if I disappoint those women because one, they’re crazy if they think I’m going to fall madly in love with them and let them have my babies. And secondly, I don’t let them get close enough for there to be any other expectations that I won’t deliver on.

  You can’t control crazy so I don’t even try to.

  But then there’s Quinlan and shit if she hasn’t gotten to me somehow, broken through the ludicrous bet I made with Vince that I could get her to sleep with me, because now that’s all I want her to do.

  Well, obviously I want more than that because I’m blowing off the guys, ignoring the random texts Hunter’s sending my way that are escalating in pissiness, and watching her put makeup on while I kick back on her bed in and out of an oversexed fog. For the first time in forever I’m not thinking about figuring out the next lyric, the next chord, the next number one hit, losing my mother, jail, anything, because Quin’s successfully pulled me into her nice little bubble and held me here willingly.

  Shit, she can let Trixie out and hold me here with restraints for a while if she really wants to. And that’s saying a whole helluva lot.

  Living the dream, man.

  I chuckle, ruining the silence I’m enjoying, which causes her to turn around on the little stool she’s sitting on and angle her head as she meets my eyes. Fuck. My gaze flickers down to where her darkened nipples peak through the yellow tank top, the hickey I gave her last night visible above the fabric. Her tan legs make me want to spread them so my hands can run up their length to her pussy as the prize at the end of their journey. She parts those thighs some and I groan softly at the knowledge of just what it feels like to be nestled between them.

  “You know you don’t need any makeup. You’re gorgeous without it.”

  She laughs when most others would be flattered by the comment. I must be losing my touch, here.

  “Thanks but you’re full of shit.” She rises from her chair, eyeliner in one hand as she walks toward the bed. “A man will say or do anything when he thinks he might get laid.”

  “Is that what I’m doing? Trying to get laid here?” I feign innocence as my dick tents unmistakably against the denim of my half-buttoned-up jeans.

  “Mm-hmm,” she says, mischief in her eyes and desire reflected in the way she works her bottom lip between her teeth so that one side of her mouth quirks up in a suggestive smirk.

  “Anything, huh?”

  “Anything,” she says as she crawls onto the bed and sits cross-legged in front of me. Her perfume—clean and not overpowering—fills my nose and makes me recall how she must put it between her cleavage because when my mouth was sliding over her perfect tits that’s when I smelled it the strongest.

  My eyes wander down her body, to the panties that are hiding everything I want and over and up her tits to her eyes. “I can think of a few anythings that I assure you I wouldn’t do for sex.”

  “That so?” she asks, eyebrows raised, playful smile on her lips. “What about for ice cream?”

  I chuckle softly. “Now, that? I’ll do anything for,” I tease in return. “A man’s got to have his vices after all,” I tell her, pursing my lips to fight my own smirk when I see the challenge in her eyes.

  “Hm …?” She angles her head, tapping her eyeliner pencil on her knee. “I do seem to have some ice cream in the freezer…. I wonder just what you’d do for it.” She taunts me, with both her words and her body.

  “Oh, sweetness, are you trying to tempt me?” Thoughts in my head turn to getting a double fill of both of the things I’m dying to have right now: ice cream and Quinlan. Talk about her being the cookies to my cream. Damn.

  She leans forward and studies my face, suddenly making me self-conscious when I never care what others think. “I think you would have been great in an eighties hair band.”

  My loud laughter echoes around the room as I try to decipher what in the hell she’s thinking about that made her say that. “Come again?” I ask, confused how we went from sex to ice cream to old eighties rock bands. None of these things are connected—well, maybe later I’ll connect the first two if I get lucky—so what is she getting at?

  Her eyes continue to scrutinize me, her nose scrunching up in an adorable way as she concentrates. “I used to love hair bands. Bon Jovi, Van Halen, Def Leppard, White-snake …”

  As if I don’t know my hair bands. Did she forget what I do for a living? “Yes …?” I finally say. She’s lost me but as long as I can sit here staring at her nipples through her tank top then I’m good.

  “Well, I’m wondering what you’d look like with big hair and guyliner, shirts with the sides cut out of them, and skintight pants.”

  I can’t stop the smile that blankets my lips right now because I’m clueless but this is pretty damn funny. “What? Just when I was thinking how you’re the first noncrazy girl I’ve been with in some time, there you go and prove how certifiable you are.”

  She takes the dig in jest, how I intended it, and smiles so the action lights up her entire face. “Rocker boy,” she says, scooting in closer, and there’s something about when she calls me that term that makes me smile, makes me feel special to her when I’ve done nothing to deserve it, that I love. “Humor me.” She holds up her eyeliner pencil a
nd raises her eyebrows.

  “No way,” I laugh, batting her hands away playfully.

  “You did say anything….” She lets the word trail off, desperately trying to hide the victorious smile from spreading on her lips when I realize she just backdoored me into doing this.

  Fuck if that’s the kind of backdoor entry I prefer.

  “So I let you put guyliner on me and then I get ice cream?” I quip, leaning back on the pillows behind me as I adjust my dick that’s at a constant state of semi-arousal with her around. She nods her head once. “I think I need a little more than that, Trixie,” I challenge back.

  “Like what?” she giggles as she climbs astride my lap with pencil ready to demasculinize me while at the same time igniting my fire with the heat of her pussy sliding over my dick.

  “Like this,” I say as I fist my hand in the back of her hair and pull her toward me. Her soft lips hit mine and I don’t hold back as I slip my tongue between her lips and take what I want.

  She responds, all tongue, hands, mouth, and fuck am I not primed and ready to go. Our breathing gets heavier, our bodies reacting to each other, and all I want is more of her. I slide my hand into the back of her panties when she drags her mouth from mine.

  “You’re trouble, you know that?” I laugh but it’s strained because fuck if I don’t want to take her fast and hard right now.

  “Me, trouble?” she feigns innocence with a bat of her eyelashes, nipples front and center in my line of vision. “I’m just a challenge to handle, rocker boy, and oh how I like to be handled.” The laugh she gives me is seductive and could probably make a weaker man come on the spot but I’m holding out for the whole experience.

  I pull her toward me so that I can taste her, get a little fill of the temptation before she denies me with that challenge I can already see blazing in those come fuck me eyes. Just when she starts letting me take the lead, reacting to my every action, I tear my mouth from hers even though it kills me so that I can leave her wanting a little bit more. “Believe me, I know how to handle you.”

  She looks at me with her hazy caramel eyes, lips swollen from our kiss, and cheeks flushed. She sighs heavily, body tensing as my fingertips graze the slick flesh between her parted thighs. “I get what I want first,” she says holding up the eyeliner, “then you get what you want.”

  Damn she’s good. Just when I thought I was in control, she handled me like nobody’s business, but that’s cool. In the end I’ll get everything I want.

  Always do.

  Living the dream.

  Chapter 18

  QUINLAN

  I’ve been running in slow motion all day—it’s ridiculous. I feel like I’m ten steps behind from my first class of the day and I’m completely okay with it because I’m traveling through time on cloud nine.

  And all because of Hawkin.

  He kept me on the phone all morning, talking about everything and nothing until I looked at the clock and screeched at the time. He makes me feel like a damn teenager with a first-time crush. It’s rather ridiculous. I know how this story is going to end but hell if this girl, who doesn’t believe in fairy-tale endings, isn’t going to wear the glass slipper for the short while it fits.

  And this glass slipper is more the stiletto with red sole variety.

  I trudge across campus, actually getting a breather for the first time all day but I’m still moving at a clipped pace. I’m eager to get to the seminar early so that I can see Hawkin before the masses claim him.

  I’m a greedy bitch because as far as I’m concerned the lazy Sunday afternoon we spent playing Guitar Hero after I rewarded him for letting me make him into an eighties band lead singer wasn’t enough. Neither was falling to the sofa in laughter after I beat him at the game where we then tested the couch springs, or the no shirt, no shoes dinner of Chinese takeout we had on the back porch before he left to go home.

  I’ve prided myself on being a woman who is never needy, rather I’ve always been the one glancing at the clock to see how long my date-for-the-night has been at the house because he’s way overstayed his welcome, and yet the other night I didn’t want Hawkin to go. But after our fifth or sixth good night turned into lustful groping kisses, he finally left to go back to what he deemed to be his “fucked-up reality.”

  I nod to an acquaintance as I wonder just what that reality is for him. I know there’s bad blood between him and Hunter causing a rift between the guys in the band but every time I’ve tried bringing it up to him, he conveniently changes the subject. Just as he does when it comes to the rest of his family: his mother, if he has other siblings, extended family. He’s closed off but hides it well, always shifting into stories about the band or a show or a snooty celebrity he has inside dirt on.

  I sense he doesn’t trust easily—and that’s understandable with the public position that he’s in—but I get the hint that there’s more to it than that. How much more, I’m unsure.

  The stupid smile remains on my face even when my thoughts veer to Luke and how he proved himself to be the gentleman I knew him to be. How when I called him Sunday evening to see how he was feeling and to apologize again, he actually picked up and we talked for a short while. I explained I wasn’t trying to lead him on, give him false hope by calling, but rather if he was comfortable with it, I’d love to keep him as a friend because he really is a good guy.

  Axe stands at the door as I approach the theater and that causes my smile to spread even wider because that means Hawke is inside. I feel a slight relief that maybe, just maybe, Hawkin feels this euphoric giddiness that I do and that’s why he arrived early when he never has before. And just maybe he’s done that because he can’t wait to see me.

  Axe greets me warmly as he opens the door for me, and once inside I walk quickly across the atrium. I pull open the doors housing the interior with high expectations and nerves running rampant but for the first time, they’re from anticipation and not from loathing the guest lecturer.

  The straight punch of lust I feel the minute I see him is like nothing I’ve ever felt before. A ball of bound energy radiates through me, causing a slow burn of desire and a definite bang of lust between my thighs. I falter momentarily in my movements, wanting to appreciate the sight of him but at the same time wanting to run down the steps and taste his kiss again.

  Hawkin sits with his Verbz on, head down, hand beating to a rhythm I can’t hear, eyes closed as he becomes a part of the music. I know he’s stuck on some lyrics for a song he and the guys started writing the night he left my house so I assume he’s still working through his creative roadblock. Regardless of what he’s doing, the man is a visual orgasm in his worn jeans with a hole in one knee and his shirt of choice today has a Van Halen logo on it.

  How many old-school rock shirts does he have?

  And then the memory hits me and I chuckle as I walk down the stairs unbeknownst to him. The dark eyeliner I put on him in addition to his hair I tried to tease as best I could. What the press would have paid to have pictures of him like that as we battled on Guitar Hero. As we laughed so hard until we ended up moaning together.

  I hit the lowest step, my eyes trained on him, and the desire coiling tighter in my core with each step. I’m suddenly worried that maybe I’m making more of this than he is, that I’m going to be caught off guard when he sees me and then where will I be? I shake off the thought that is so unlike me, hating the insecurity it brings. And I clear my head in perfect time because Hawkin glances up and sees me.

  Surprise passes over his face but the wide grin and warmth that softens his eyes the minute he sees me clears away all worry and is an aphrodisiac all in itself.

  “Hey,” he says, pulling the earphones from his ears and straightening up as I close the distance between us.

  I step in front of him, nerves humming, hands twisting together, and his eyes locked on mine. “Hi,” I say tentatively when all I want to do is step into him and press my lips to his. But I refrain, not wanting to take whatever this is
somewhere he doesn’t want it to be. “Sorry to interrupt …” My voice trails off, while his eyes darken with lust as he flicks them over the low V neckline of my shirt and down the length of my legs and back up.

  “You’re not interrupting,” he says. Does he still want me? Was it a one-time thing? Why aren’t you kissing me? “Do you think you could go check the PA connections? They don’t seem to be working properly.”

  I glance over to the podium where nothing is turned on and back to him, ego and hopes confused and slowly deflating, the rendezvous I was hoping for nonexistent despite my initial surge of optimism. “It’s not on. You need to—”

  “No.” He cuts me off in a stern voice as he reaches out to grab my bicep. My eyes flash up to meet his, catching that half-cocked smile that lifts up a corner of his mouth when he speaks. “You need to check in the room over there, Trixie. Now.”

  Oh. OH! Took me long enough to get what he’s trying to say and his eyebrows rise in amusement the minute he knows I understand what his intentions are.

  And hell if I don’t love bad intentions when they’re of the sexual nature.

  Looking up at him from the veil of my eyelashes, a diminutive smile plays over my lips. “Yes, Professor Play,” I respond in the most innocent voice possible—which is harder than hell considering I passed over being innocent a long time ago. Besides, breaking the rules is so much more fun sometimes. I make sure my hips are swinging up the goods I have to offer him as I saunter to the small alcove where we shared our first kiss—and my senses are already so heightened chills race over my skin when I hear him behind me.

  When I step into the shadowed alcove, my stomach flutters with excitement, my sex already moist from the thoughts of what is going to happen next. I stand still in that silent state of suspended desire as I wait for his touch to ignite my skin. The sound of his breathing fills the space around me, and I’m not waiting any longer.

  Desperation has me turning to face him, and his mouth is on mine instantly. His lips bruise and brand, tongue claims and owns the moan his hands already gripping my ass from beneath my skirt coaxes from me. His kiss shows me how hungry he is for me, the groan he emits reflects a raw carnality that says he’s going to take without asking and hell if I’m going to stop him.