He drew her shirt up over her head and dropped it on the floor, baring every inch of her skin, and she trembled. Not from the cold; Dustin was more than enough to keep her warm. From the simple act of being seen. She couldn’t remember the last time she welcomed being so exposed. She spent half of her life pretending to be open, the other half hiding away the parts she was ashamed of. The last time she hadn’t felt torn apart had been a decade ago, just like this, Dustin’s arms around her, lips against her skin.
His teeth nipped at the column of her neck, his growls reminding her of all the times she’d tried to forget. She didn’t want a memory. She wanted this moment. Right now.
Faith stripped his shirt away in one quick movement. His belt came next, collapsing to the floor with a loud clang. She leaned forward and kissed him with abandon, lips and tongue tangling together until neither of them could breathe.
“Fuck me,” he whispered, completely unbidden. Wonder and disbelief shaded his voice, unsure if this was even real.
“I’m getting there,” she answered, her hands searching for his hips.
And then he was inside of her. She threw her head back and screamed, not able to hold it in any longer. A quick rhythm she shouldn’t have remembered, strokes of his hand she shouldn’t have wanted. “Yes!” Finally, yes. Everything, yes. The world was falling back into place. She just… needed…
“What’s wrong? Is everything okay?” The door to the study slammed open, and Peter entered. “What the hell?! Oh God!”
Faith saw his reflection in the window, holding a bat, and reality crashed back into her. She looked over her shoulder at him and saw only confusion. How the hell had she thought this was a good idea? That any of this was a good idea?!
She grabbed her borrowed shirt from the floor and put it on, already in motion, never daring to even look at Dustin. “Couldn’t you have at least tried to be quiet?” Peter backed up out of the way, and she ran up the stairs. Just as the fabric fell back into place, she looked up to see a shocked teenager staring back at her.
Faith slammed the door of her room and leaned against it for a moment before racing towards the bathroom. She turned on the shower and stepped under the spray, the shock of the cold water making her numb. She peeled off the soaked shirt and shook, now trembling for completely different reasons.
What was she doing?! They were essentially strangers, hadn’t seen each other in ten years. They couldn’t get through ten minutes of conversation without being at each other’s throats. She had divorce papers awaiting his signature in her purse. Jackson had been right; she never should have come back.
Faith didn’t know how long she stood there, letting the water try and wash her away. The recriminating thoughts were on a loop, berating her foolishness and naiveté. When her teeth started chattering, skin soaked through with ice, she got out and looked at herself, satisfied with the drowned rat she saw in the mirror. Nothing about her looked or felt attractive. She committed the feeling to memory, planning on bringing it into battle when she saw Dustin next.
She dried off and glanced at her drenched shirt with distaste. There was no way she was putting that back on. Well, she’d already streaked across the house naked once tonight. She could do it again from bathroom to bed; the moon afforded enough light she didn’t even need to turn on the lamp. Once under the covers she held her breath, listening for any arguing downstairs. She cringed, thinking about having to face them tomorrow…
Faith went still, her senses suddenly on high-alert. Something wasn’t right. A familiar hand reached towards her, skimming over her hip, and she exhaled sharply. Lips brushed her shoulder ever so softly. “I thought you were never going to come out of there.”
“I almost didn’t.”
Dustin turned her from her side, laying her back against the pillows. “That would have been a shame.” She couldn’t see him, only his silhouette in the darkness, but didn’t need to. His head dipped down towards her but he never made contact, his forehead just inches from her own. He wasn’t touching her with anything but his gaze.
“I don’t think I can be quiet,” she finally whispered.
Dustin ran his hands down her arms. He circled her wrists and raised them above her head, palms against the headboard. “Who said I wanted you to be?”
“Peter – ”
“Peter can go fuck himself,” he murmured, his lips falling against the top of her breast. She arched her back, and his tongue licked across her nipple before taking it into his mouth. She whimpered but bit her lip to stifle the noise as he turned his attention to the other one, running the pad of his thumb over her breast until her arousal was painfully clear.
“Let’s get that heart rate on the rise.” How could he think coherently enough to sing right now? Desire she was sure she’d drowned sparked to life at his simple touch. Her body vibrated as his hand swept down her torso, long confident strokes making stops just under her breasts, against her ribs, right over her hipbone. His lips followed, nipping at the skin as he went, coaxing reluctant yelps of encouragement out of her with his mouth before stopping just below her belly button. His breath fanned across her stomach, lips sucking the sensitive skin there.
“Might be time to try you on for size.” His voice cracked, and she closed her eyes, unable to handle it any longer. She couldn’t reconcile this devilish man above her, singing the double entendres of her youth and actually meaning them, with the gruff adult that had wanted her as far away from him as possible. His tongue started to dip lower, making intricate patterns against her skin, and she no longer cared; he felt too good, too familiar, to worry.
He pressed the palm of his hand against the juncture of her thighs, kneading against her. She writhed with wanting, her hips rising up against his touch. His finger slipped inside, stroking more intimately; all she could do was gasp, panting silently as the pressure increased. Teasing her by never getting close enough to exactly where she needed him to be, skirting the edge of commitment.
“Eyes front, don’t forget to keep your eyes on the prize.” Words spoken right against her neck, perfectly in time with his fingers, one buried inside of her, one stroking her breast. He was playing her body like a guitar, lightly until he found the right chord. His finger pressed down inside of her for just the briefest of seconds before retreating, and her body strained against him, chasing the sensation. His lips skimmed across the curve of her jaw, falling against her clavicle as she writhed beneath him. He raked his teeth against her skin in a quick, sharp movement as he massaged her nipple, forcing her eyes open, feeling the sensation all the way down her body just like he knew she would.
He laid a trail of kisses against the exposed column of her neck ever so slowly. Her anticipation grew with every touch of his lips, punctuated by his throaty attempt to finish the song. “Puh-Puh-Puh-Puh-Puh-Puh-Pucker up.” He drew her leg up over his hip at the direction, placing her exactly where he wanted her as he slipped inside her.
Her breath caught as he rocked into her, remembering exactly how he felt, never actually able to forget. “Sing for me, Ally.” She was helpless to resist him as he started to move. She shrieked, one long note she hadn’t hit for a long time. He kissed her gruffly, stealing her moan for himself, before releasing her lips and entwining their fingers, encouraging her with every plunge.
She was louder than her clamoring heart, than the bed, than they’d been before. She didn’t care. Not as he looked down at her with desire-darkened eyes, his muscles tight and glistening as he strained against her. Not as he groaned, the guttural sound she’d missed, making her feel strong and powerful. She rolled her hips, disrupting his rhythm but drawing him in deeper, and his control slipped. It was all she needed to see to fall over the edge, remarkably fast, faster than she’d ever been. One last high note, torn out of her as she climaxed, the sound dragging Dustin over right along with her.
She closed her eyes again, trying to regain some composure. All she could think was how well their bodies still fit together. Th
ey’d written a song together, one she wasn’t going to soon forget.
Dustin rolled off of her but kept one hand holding hers, one thumb lightly stroking the inside of her wrist. “You remember…the first time we…” Faith panted.
He shifted to look at her. “Uh huh.”
“When I said…that…”
“Practice makes perfect.”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “I think you can stop.”
He chuckled, his lips whispering in her ear. “And here I was thinking I was just getting started.”
Chapter 10
Dustin stared at the ceiling, watching the sunlight break across it. He hadn’t slept a wink, just had lain beside Faith, listening to her breathe and waiting for his mind to quiet. His gaze wandered to the pile of lumber in the corner. He hadn’t even started Harmony’s window seat. Usually by now his mind was numb from manual labor, so exhausted even his thoughts didn’t have enough energy to keep him awake.
He should have been tired. He’d kept Faith up for hours, burying himself in her instead of his buzz saw. Peter was going to kill him for that, but damn, he had forgotten how much that voice affected him. He enjoyed hearing her sing, but he also just loved listening to her speak. Her sound unlocked a piece of him, making him nauseatingly sentimental. With that voice, nothing she told him could ever be bad.
She’d never told him they had lost a girl. Knowing Faith, she’d surely named her the minute she found out. They’d had a daughter, and he didn’t even know her name. She’d never said anything.
She never said anything. The doctor told them the news; they cried. Not together though. She cried; he held her, trying to be strong. He cried after, in the bathroom, where no one could see. It had taken years and two girls with pigtails before he realized they weren’t mutually exclusive. You could be both soft and strong – Peter did it every day.
He’d taken Faith home, held her hand as he drove, and she’d never said a word. She’d been silent as he tucked her into bed, as he lay down beside her, as he whispered his love against her hair. Not a sound from her lips when he found her loading things into the car, when he screamed at her to stay, when her car peeled out of the driveway. He remembered getting his keys from the house and seeing the marriage license torn into pieces, thinking how he could stop his life from crumbling apart if he could only catch her.
The next thing he remembered was waking up in a hospital room, in pain. It wasn’t the pelvic fracture or broken arm that hurt the most; it was meeting Peter’s eyes and knowing she wasn’t at his bedside. She’d haunted him ever since, constantly eluding him.
Now he’d caught her, if only for a moment. He had no idea what happened now. Just like when they were young, he was so ignorant of what came next. The girls’ bedtime story was all the thought he gave it, and there was nothing of reality there; time stopped after the happily ever after. He’d spent so much time thinking about rewriting the past he had no idea what to do with the present.
She shifted next to him, waking up. “What was her name?” he asked.
“Meyer,” she murmured, not needing him to elaborate.
“Damn it, Faith. How could you not tell me?”
“I knew for maybe thirty hours.”
“No,” he said, turning to look at her. “You knew for ten years.” She refused to meet his eyes, and he sighed, getting out of bed and pulling on his discarded jeans.
“What do you want me to say?”
“What do I want you to say?! I don’t know, Faith; let’s try anything at all.”
“That day was really hard on me.”
“Yeah, and it was a walk in the park for me.”
She inhaled sharply at his sarcasm. “It killed me knowing that. Why would I do that to you? Willingly inflict pain…”
“You don’t think I was in pain? You obviously weren’t paying attention.” He pulled his shirt over his head and turned to the bed. Part of him ached to join her, swollen lips and heavy-lidded stare, desire sitting jauntily across the surface of her skin. Part of him ached to save her, looking lost and disheveled, a little bit broken. Part of him ached to rail at her, to release the ball of agony that sat upon his chest.
Anger won. “But that’s right; all you ever cared about was you.”
Her eyes flashed fire, and he felt both elation and sorrow for putting it there. “What a novel sentiment. Personally, I can’t believe you lasted eighteen hours before pulling out that tired refrain.”
“Must have been too distracted with your sudden appearance to think straight. I’ll do better next time. Mind filling me in on why you’re here yet?”
Faith pulled the covers more tightly around her. “I told you I was just passing through.”
“Just passing through, right. Took you a decade to fit that into your pop star schedule. But obviously I was mistaken about your priorities?”
She scowled. “It doesn’t even matter what I say. Because you never trusted me enough to actually hear me. I’m sure you’ve concocted lots of nefarious ulterior motives for me being here anyway. You’re the one with the wild imagination.”
He growled, a laugh nowhere near humorous. “Yeah, I imagined everything, didn’t I? Your career was the most important thing to you. More important than us, definitely more important than me.”
“That’s untrue. And unfair.”
“Really? How do you remember it then? Because I remember my wife taking a knife to our vows and my heart the same night our child died. But hey, sorry my affection was too much of a burden for you.”
“That isn’t – ”
“No,” Dustin said, reaching the end of his rope and stalking across the room to the door. “I waited ten years. Ten years to hear what you had to say for yourself. And I just don’t care anymore. Nothing you say is going to change anything. You left me. You left me on one of the worst days of my life. That says it all.”
Faith started shaking the minute the door slammed behind Dustin, like a leaf in the wind. Some things had changed in the last ten years, some hadn’t – he still didn’t fight fair. Their relationship had been far from perfect; their love hadn’t. She thought she was doing the right thing, the noble thing, by leaving, but maybe she’d gotten that all wrong. Maybe her grief had prevented her from seeing what was really there.
There was a knock at the door, and she jumped, too lost in herself. “Don’t come in. I’m not dressed.” Oh crap, she didn’t have any clothes.
“There’s a bathrobe in the closet,” the teenage voice said. Faith got out of bed, wiping the tears from her eyes and attempting to look closer to composed. She slid open the closet and found a fuzzy pink bathrobe. It was obviously meant for someone smaller but it adequately covered all the parts she wanted to permanently lock away.
“Okay, come in.”
Harmony opened the door, peering into the room with a tentative air that felt at odds with her bright smile. When she noticed they were alone, she entered completely. “I brought you these. Thought you might need them.” Faith looked at the clothes in her outstretched hands and felt oddly touched. “Better than staying in that bathrobe all day I think.”
Harmony walked as they talked, peering around the room as if something more fascinating than a half-dressed pop star was hiding in it. “Thank you,” Faith said. “I’ll put these on.” She made her way into the bathroom and closed herself inside. It didn’t stop Harmony’s voice from filtering through.
“I had to go pull some of Mom’s old clothes out of the attic, but they should fit reasonably well. Melody’s clothes would probably have fit – you saw her, you guys are about the same size – but when she’s at school the only things she leaves here are pajamas and prom dresses. I didn’t think either would fit the occasion. They’d make for a pretty good laugh, but no one seems much in the mood to laugh today.”
Faith stared at herself in the mirror, smoothing the clothes against her skin as she tuned out the idle chatter. She remembered this look – quintessential cowgirl. A pair of worn jea
ns, a little tight in the hips and gaping a bit at the waist. A snug white camisole under a blue flannel shirt. The only bra she had was black, so she left it with her other discarded garments. She glanced at them, piled on the floor, and felt revulsion just looking at them. Yesterday felt a million miles away.
“But Mel says that’s just my overactive imagination. Like it’s a bad thing. I say there’s absolutely nothing wrong with having an overactive imagination – life would be positively sleep-inducing without one. And really, it’s better than having an overactive bladder.” Faith pasted a smile on her face and opened the door, wanting to put as much distance as she could between her and her clothes, her reflection. Harmony was sitting cross-legged on the bed, staring at the door she’d come out of.
“Did you say I met your sister?” Faith asked.
Harmony’s eyes narrowed at her puzzled expression. “Yeah. When Uncle Dust went to visit her at school. She got autographs from you and Madison Duncan.”
Faith couldn’t hide her surprise. “Oh. The blonde with the purple streaks in her hair. I thought that was his girlfriend.”
Harmony laughed, almost falling on the floor. “Ew, no. No, no, no.” Her eyes turned pensive as she quieted down. “Well, I can maybe understand why you thought that though. Their age difference is eleven years. Mom and Dad were nine years, so theoretically, it could happen. Probably more regular in LA. But again, ew, no. Plus, Uncle Dust doesn’t have a girlfriend.”
Faith heard the meddling in the teenager’s voice and tried to hold her tongue. The best she could manage was not looking up as she inquired lightly, “He doesn’t?”
“Nope. Not at all. Nada. Zip. Zilch. I swear, he’s almost as bad as Dad is.”
“So just a house of unattached men then?”
“Believe me,” Harmony said, collapsing back against the comforter, “it is not for lack of trying. Those Andrews men are just stubborn as mules.”
Pucker Up Page 9
