Home. It’s funny how we’d sort of slipped into the habit of calling her place home. I practically lived there at this point; I wondered what she’d think if I suggested making it more official, though.
Shaking my head, I tucked the phone back into my pocket. “I have to go. My girlfriend needs me.”
She sighed. “God, I hate her.”
But her words lacked any heat, there was a sparkle dancing in her eyes. “Don’t worry about the band, Tor. I’ll talk with them tonight, see what’s up.”
Grabbing my gear, I nodded to one of the sound tech guys who was busy scrambling to get ready for the next band. The night was electric, my mood high. Life was good, and it was hard not to dwell on what might happen down the line. But Ida’s death had taught me perspective, it wasn’t always easy, but sometimes you had to learn to appreciate what you had right now.
Just as I was getting ready to go, a man in an expensively tailored suit walked up to Zander and they shook hands.
I stood there, watching as Zander became entranced by the devil in the dark suit. Lilith rubbed my arm as my sneer grew.
“He would destroy my love of this. I know what he wants, but I just don’t think it’s in me.” I glanced at her from the corner of my eye.
She nodded. “Have faith, my Norwegian friend. Now go to your insanely hot girlfriend and tell her I said hi.”
Arriving home almost two hours later thanks to an awful accident on the highway, I didn’t bother knocking. I opened the door, knowing she’d left it unlocked for me.
Jamie turned with a big smile on her face. The apartment smelled amazing.
She stood at the stove wearing a chef’s apron and hat, barefoot and pregnant. There was definitely a joke in there somewhere, though I wouldn’t make it.
“Hey, Viking.” She winked. “Guess what I made y—”
Kicking the door shut behind me, I rushed to her, hauling her slight body into my arms and pulling her in for an all-consuming kiss.
She purred, dropping the spoon she’d held and wrapped her arms around my neck. Feeling alive, happy, I poured my feelings into that kiss. Teasing her lips with my tongue, sucking her own into my mouth when she opened on an excited little moan.
She smelled of spices and orange blossoms.
Head dizzy with both the fog of lust and the desire to blurt out how I was really feeling, I placed my forehead to hers and breathed her in.
“Wow, that was a nice hello. Maybe I should miss your shows more often,” she teased.
I grinned, setting her down gently before shaking my head. “I quit the band.”
“You what?” Her glittering blue eyes widened. “But you love that band, you love music. Why would you quit?”
Placing my palm over her stomach, I stared at her deeply. “Because there are things that matter much more.”
“But babe,” she said, covering my hand, and my soul trembled to hear her use that term of endearment, “isn’t it—”
Lifting her hand, I gave it a gentle kiss and then shook my head. “I couldn’t in good conscience remain, Jamie. The band is on the cusp of going big. I sense it.”
She gave me a perplexed look, and I knew she couldn’t grasp what I was getting at.
“We get too much bigger and that would mean touring, that would mean traveling from state to state to state—I’d rarely see you.”
“I could come with you.” She smiled sweetly.
“But the baby, Eskelde. That is no life for our child. I’ve lived among musicians for years, and it’s fine for me. For a single man or woman. But relationships fracture, they break, the business consumes it. And I will not leave you to raise the child on your own. It is not my way.”
She didn’t speak, just stared at me with her mouth open a fraction of an inch and I thought that maybe I’d said or done something wrong, especially when tears began to gather in her eyes.
“Jamie?” I wiped at the wetness beginning to leak from the corners with my thumbs, perplexed by what I could have done.
She laughed, swatting my hands away, and then got strangely quiet, giving me a deep, thoughtful look. I swear something powerful passed through her gaze, something I’d never seen in her before when she looked at me. Something that made me scared to hope, to believe that it could be what I possibly thought it was. Leaning up on tiptoe, she tugged my shoulders forward so that I could bend to her level and when she kissed me there weren’t fireworks and passion like what we usually shared, but something raw and necessary.
Gripping her biceps, I poured my heart into my woman, knowing I was so far gone for her it was terrifying and exhilarating, and I hung on tight because I’d lost someone vital to me before and had nearly not survived it.
When she finally broke away she wore a dreamy smile. “I cooked you dinner. I felt good for the first time in days.”
I finally noticed what was cooking on the stove. I grinned, recognizing it instantly.
“Farikal.”
“Yes.” Her eyes widened. “Do you have any idea how hard it was find to lamb at this time of year? I mean, this is Austin, you’d think they’d have it in more specialty markets, but jeez, I had to call six different stores before—”
“I love you, Eskelde.” The moment I said it she stopped speaking. Instead she swallowed hard and gave me big eyes.
Immediately I wanted to take it back. We’d only technically been together a little over two months; maybe she’d still not been ready to hear it. But she had to know how I felt—I’d made it more than obvious.
She closed her eyes, but moved into my body. “Say it again,” she whispered.
And when I wrapped my arms around her and felt her trembles I knew she felt it too.
“I love you.”
Jamie didn’t say it back, but her smile spoke louder than any words could have.
Chapter Fourteen
Third Month
Jamie
I frowned as I stared at myself in the mirror. I didn’t look pregnant, just fat. I couldn’t zip up my jeans and I had a bigger belly than I’d ever had in my life. The morning sickness was finally beginning to go away and I was definitely feeling more human, less weepy.
Most days.
There was a knock at the door, and then a bang.
“Jamie!” Tor’s powerful voice boomed.
I smiled. I loved how he sort of dominated my tiny apartment. Everything felt right when he came over. Which was basically every day and every night if he wasn’t working.
“In the bedroom,” I called out.
“Love.” He sounded disgruntled. He came tromping in a moment later and my heart literally skipped a beat when he walked through. Dressed in form-fitting jeans that showed off his deliciously muscular physique and a black t-shirt that looked painted on, he was oh so yummy looking.
The guy was fine. And all mine. I still couldn’t get over that fact. His golden hair was pulled back in a knot, highlighting the sharp planes of his scruffy jaw He’d taken to letting his facial hair grow out a little once I’d casually mentioned liking a little man fur on a guy’s face.
“God, you’re hot,” I whispered like a love-struck teen with a giddy, stupid smile on her face.
His full bottom lip twitched and then he growled. “How many times am I going to have to tell you to lock your door? What if someone comes in here and tries to—”
“Charming.” I snorted. “You worry too much. I’m surrounded by frat boys on all sides. If I scream they’d come running.”
“Exactly my point.” He narrowed his deep blue eyes. “You’re too trusting, Jamie. I swear that if something ever happened to you, I would—”
Walking to him, I poked him in the chest until he plopped down onto the edge of my bed and gave him a lifted brow. “Fine, I’ll start locking the door. It’s just that you don’t have a key and it’s easy.”
&nbs
p; “Then give me a key.” He shook his head and chuckled.
My heart sped. Give him a key. “Wow, wouldn’t that make this thing like seriously official?” I teased.
He rolled his eyes. “This is seriously official. Do you think I would do this for somebody I don’t love? No.”
Oh, I shivered every time he said that to me. I’d still not said it yet, not because I didn’t feel it. At this point I was so far beyond in love it was kind of tragic. But fear always kept my lips firmly clamped.
“So what you’re saying is you want a key?” I whispered huskily, stepping in between his parted legs and wrapping my arms around his neck.
Immediately I sensed the shift in his mood go from playful teasing to full-on arousal. It was really getting hard to ignore my need for him.
Cocking his head, he gave me a strange look. A mix between shock and wondering whether I was teasing, because I knew when he’d said it he’d not actually expected me to have one available for him.
Not to mention the fact that I, unlike him, was much more gun-shy and prone to skirting around the issue of our relationship. Trying to define it or plan too far into the future with it usually gave me the willies.
I swallowed hard, palms suddenly going clammy. I’d gotten a set of keys made for him. One to my car and my home, at the time it’d felt like the natural evolution to this thing and not something I’d overthought either.
Because that was my way. And he knew that about me, I was a free spirit prone to going whichever way the wind blew me. It just so happened that this time it was blowing me closer to him, to us.
But maybe it was too soon. Maybe it’d really only been a joke for him. I mean, I knew Tor wanted us to be more…I dunno, more everything. More visceral than we already were, but he was always so careful not to push me too far.
“It’s…it’s not like you’re ever at your place much anymore anyway,” I stuttered, coming up with an easy out in case he said no.
His hands were firm, but not hard as he grabbed my arms, tugging them toward his chest. I planted my palms against him.
“What are you asking me?” His words were slow and measured, thoughtful.
Just like him. In the weeks since we’d decided to actually get serious I’d noticed that Tor never really did things without considering every aspect and angle of an issue. He didn’t speak rashly like I did.
All. The. Time.
A quirk of mine I thought must sometimes totally annoy him.
I knew when he was really listening to me because it would take him a while to reply.
I wet my lips, experiencing an electric, giddy thrill as his eyes zoomed into the movement. The air sparked with tension, crackled with our unspoken desires.
There was one of two ways I could go with this thing. I could answer and say that I was tired and too lazy to get up every time he knocked on my door, so now he could just let himself in, or…I could say what I was really thinking.
A thread of hair had slipped out of his knot. Brushing it back behind his ear, I smiled when his lashes fluttered. His Adam’s apple rolled. Nervously scratching my nails along his whiskered cheek I whispered, “Move in. With me.”
He didn’t say anything, but his fingers dug into my wrists a little.
Blue eyes sparking like hottest flame devoured me. His scent of soap and sandalwood cologne wrapped me up in a heady fog of sensual desire. My nipples tingled and puckered, ached.
Not from the pregnancy anymore either, but from an overwhelming passion I’d buried so far down deep that I’d thought myself incapable of ever feeling like this again.
“Yes.”
My eyes widened. “What? Just like that? You’re not going to take hours or days to—”
Tugging on me until I spilled onto his lap, he stole my lips, silencing the rest of my words with a powerful, hungry kiss. His hands were all over me and mine were all over him, sliding beneath his shirt, scratching at his nipples until he hissed and nipped at my bottom lip.
“Behave,” he moaned.
I laughed, and then gave a throaty growl when his tongue twined with my own. I was tugging at his shirt, ready to rip the damn thing off when he shook his head and grabbed hold of my waist.
“Stop, Eskelde, stop. We should not do this.”
I was breathing so heavy my pulse was jumping in the back of my throat. “Yes, yes we should. We don’t have to have sex, we can just…”
“No.” He grabbed the corners of my face, planted a hard, bruising kiss and then shook his head again. “No. The baby. Your body.”
I knew he was suffering, the evidence of his arousal was poking me sharply in the behind, making me so antsy and hungry for so much more than this R-rated petting session. I wiggled my bum, grinning when I elicited a groan from him.
“Jamie,” he warned.
I nibbled the bottom of my lip. “I can at least help you.”
He chuckled, petting my left breast. It was so cute, too; I didn’t even think he realized where he was petting me. He just kept moving his hand up and down and shaking his head staring at the wall behind me with glassy-eyed determination.
“Yes, maybe you can. But not right now. We have a doctor’s appointment.”
“Boo.” I wrapped my arms around his neck. “I don’t like that answer. Give me a different one.”
He chuckled. “Gods, woman, you’ll be the death of me.”
I’m not gonna lie, knowing I wielded that kind of power over a living, breathing sex god like Tor filled me with a thrill unlike any I’d ever known before.
“Fine. Fine. I’ll play fair, but in all seriousness.”
“Hmm.” He turned to me, giving me his full attention.
It was both unnerving and exhilarating to be looked at like that. Like I was all he saw, all he wanted to see. I found myself being so damn grateful that I was at the club that night, that Tor for one of the rare few times in his life put away his natural tendency toward being gentlemanly and had forced me to stop and see him.
To never know this kind of happiness, it would have been a true shame.
“Just like that?” I snapped my fingers, referring to his yes to moving in.
He must have understood, because with lifted brow he nodded and murmured, “Just like that, love.” Grabbing my hand, he kissed the tips of my fingers.
I shivered in response and then smiled.
An hour later I was lying on the table and together he and I listened to the first heartbeats of our child.
And for just one moment, it was all so perfect.
Chapter Fifteen
Four months (Second Trimester)
Tor
It’d taken me about three weeks to move completely into Jamie’s tiny and cramped studio. I’d had to put most of my things in storage, but thankfully my lease had been coming up for renewal two weeks after she’d asked me to move in. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. Though, knowing her, she’d been aware of that.
To the outside world Jamie might seem flighty. Like a beautiful blonde ditz. But she wasn’t at all. Yes, she cracked ribald jokes. And yes, there were times that she’d do or say something to reinforce the stereotype of the dumb blonde.
But every bit of it was done on purpose. My girl was brilliant and smart, and so damn sexy. Even with her potbelly fully on display.
The buzzing of my needle filled the tattoo parlor as I worked the last bit of color into the redheaded woman’s upper shoulder.
“So you got a girlfriend?” she asked in a muffled voice, mostly because of the way she was lying on the table with her cheek pressed on top of her folded arms.
She was getting a tramp stamp of shamrocks surrounding an old Irish proverb.
“Yes, he does, sugar toots,” Zoe piped in from the workstation beside me. She was working on a Chinese Koi design in a yin-yang pattern.
Wiping at the drops of blood forming on the guy’s back with a white piece of gauze, she glared at my client.
The woman, Eve, chuckled. “Okay then. Just a question. Jeez, don’t get your panties all up in a wad.”
Zoe just rolled her eyes and turned back to her work. I chuckled.
“That’s her best friend,” I said by way of explanation.
“Well.” Eve shrugged as I finished up the last bit of green shading. “I just wondered.”
“Stop wondering,” Zoe interjected again, but didn’t turn around this time.
“My god, is she for real?” Eve laughed.
And when I saw Zoe’s spine stiffen, I chuckled. “She is.”
Rolling her eyes as I went to set my gun aside, Eve sat up on one elbow.
“Let me put some ointment on that first, and then you can go check it out in the mirror, see what you think.”
She nodded, still glaring at Zoe, who was now chatting with her client, a very tanned, very pretty brunette.
The redhead and the brunette had come in together, and I could only imagine the tales Zoe was telling.
Grabbing the ink goo, I smeared it all over Eve’s back and then pointed to the full-length mirror hanging in the station beside mine.
We’d finally hired not one, but two new artists. So far they seemed like they’d make a good fit, they had skills. Jeremiah was working three stations over while Candy was busily chatting him up about something to do with nail polish.
Or at least that’s what it sounded like from here.
Eve twirled, lifted up her shirt, and stared at her back. “Yeah, looks good.”
I personally wasn’t a fan of tramp stamps; they were about as sexy as the barbed wire/thorns arm bands of the nineties. But I wasn’t paid for my opinions, I was just happy she liked it.
Nodding, I grabbed some gauze and tap and motioned her back to me so I could wrap her up and get her out. She was my final client of the day and I needed to go check on Jamie. She was beginning to become extremely clumsy. Twice now she’d very nearly tripped down the set of stairs leading out of her apartment. I worried about her.
Rockers After Dark: 6 Book Bundle of Sexy Musicians Page 73
