“Where’s the pool house maid?” he asked.
“I told her to take a break. She was staring at you.”
Dante grabbed a towel, dragged it over his skin quickly, then secured it around his hips. “You sent her away so you could be the only one staring. Greedy as fuck, aren’t you?”
“Guess I am. For you.”
Damn, when she talked to him like that…Heat rushed him. Neither adrenaline nor the ninety-degree night was to blame. It was all him. His bones were red-hot iron, his blood liquid fire searing veins and flesh. “Say that again, Chelsea.” When she opened her mouth, he interrupted, “Give me your panties first.”
Luring him closer with a crook of a finger, she retreated into the living room. The chandelier rained trails of gold down on her dark hair and licked her skin. He barely registered the wood tables and glowing lamps he passed as he hunted her through the open room.
She stopped in front of the sofa. The fireplace was dark and the wide television mounted above it only an empty black screen. Good. He wanted none of that. No sounds or sights would compete with Chelsea for his attention.
“We’re going to do it like this,” she told him. “Lie down.”
He’d been primed to put her flat on her back, but her demand paralyzed him. “Why?”
“Because I need you to understand something. I need you to listen.”
“And obey your orders?”
She smirked. “That too. So lie down.”
“Didn’t I put a demand of my own out there first?”
“All right, then. How about this? You lie down on this couch and I’ll give you my panties.” When he stretched out across the cushions without further debate, she laughed a little. “Seems we’re always negotiating.”
“That’s how folks on opposite sides make sure they walk away with something they want, Chelsea.”
A frown wrinkled her smooth skin. “What if we could get over the past? We wouldn’t be on opposite sides anymore.”
The past wasn’t what separated them. His agreement with Delilah—his reason for being in Atlanta—was. She didn’t know that and his lies continued to blind her. Too fucking selfish to arm her with the truth, too cruel to give her a fair fight, he grasped the edge of her skirt and pulled her closer. “Take them off.”
She sighed, recognizing he’d deliberately avoided her question. Instead of persisting, she bent forward and reached under her skirt. Finally she slid a strip of black fabric down her thighs.
“Thong,” he said. “Nice.”
“Shut up.” She teased him, dangling the underwear over his face. “Sit up a little. There’s something I want to do.”
“You’re being real secretive.”
“No, I’m not. You’re overly suspicious. I gave you good reason to be, and I can live with that. Take a risk with me tonight, okay? Try to trust me.”
Dante reclined against the arm of the sofa and planted a foot on the floor. Sprawled like this, he couldn’t disguise the bulge under his towel even if he wanted to.
She brushed the underwear over his face, and when he made a move to capture it with his teeth, she yanked them out of reach. Again, she baited him, skimming the fabric across his lips and touching it to his nose. “You like it.”
“Fuck, yeah, I do. Smells so goddamn good. Your pussy’s all slick now, isn’t it? You’re dripping for me.”
“I’m not dripping.”
“Take off that motherfucking skirt and let me decide.”
“You’ll just have to wonder.” She looped the thong around his wrist where it joined the rubber band. “Wait here. I need to grab something.”
“Better be a condom.”
“Did anyone ever tell you you’re bossy as hell?”
He caught the front of her shirt, pulled her down, and kissed her. “You like me bossy. You like me challenging you.”
“Shut up,” she whispered into his mouth. “You piss me off.”
“And I make you wet.” Dante worked his hand under her skirt, sliding a determined finger between her pussy lips. Hotter than hell, she spread her thighs to welcome his entry. “Jesus, I knew you’d be like this. Fuck, Chelsea, listen. Just listen.” He thrust his finger in and out—hard, fast, refusing to quit. “Hear that? Hear your pussy sucking on my finger?”
She nodded. Moaned. Rocked against his hand. “Drive it deeper.”
“No.” Shit, it was so painful to stop when he wanted to grab her hips and prop her on his face. He wanted to fuck her with his tongue, work her clit with his nose, drink her juices because he was so damn thirsty for that pussy. “You said you had to get something. Go get it.”
“But we…Uh, okay, yeah,” she mumbled, sounding confused and looking as if he’d stolen something from her. She’d clenched him tight and might’ve been close to coming hard around his finger. “Be back in a minute.”
As her footsteps faded, Dante held his hands in front of him. He had her thong around his wrist and her slick fluid on his finger. It broke him, and as he brought his wrist to his nose to breathe in her scent, he opened his towel and spread her warm wetness over his cock. With her in his nostrils and on his skin, he began to jerk his dick in his fist.
His eyes closed. His grip squeezed. His heart thundered.
Fuck. Yes. Fuck yes. Fuck…Yes…
“God damn, yeah,” he groaned.
“I hate to interrupt,” Chelsea said, returning to the room and proffering a frosty bottle of beer, “but I thought you’d like to put your hand around this.”
She sounded turned on and his cock knew it. When he released it to take the beer, it stood at stiff attention.
Chelsea lowered to her knees and stroked his damp chest. “I was searching for you because I want to give you something.” As he brought the bottle to his lips, she took his cock into her mouth. Saying nothing, he watched her drop a dollop of spit onto his tip and work it down his shaft. The texture of her tongue, the light scrape of her teeth—it shoved him out of his fucking mind.
The cold beer flooded his throat as the heat of her mouth seared him. Grunting, swearing, splashing his drink all over the goddamn place, he figured he wasn’t all that good at nursing a beer while having his dick sucked.
But he didn’t sacrifice either luxury. Throwing back the beer, he watched her head bob over him. He guided her, smoothing her hair, pushing her farther and tugging her back to demonstrate what he wanted. Eventually she pushed her hand under her skirt, getting off on her fingers while she sucked him straight to heaven.
Dante thought he could draw this out, get her out of her clothes and have the taste of her pussy join the beer on his tongue, but her orgasm rolled through her, forcing moans that vibrated on his dick. He fired off one spurt after the next, splashing her throat harshly, leaving his mark on her.
Chelsea was breathless when she let him go. She used a corner of his towel to wipe her mouth. “That was—”
“Intense as fuck?” he grunted, guzzling the last of the beer. Fucking her in any capacity was as dangerous and risky as Russian roulette. Yeah, he knew from dumb-ass experience. “Hell, Chelsea.”
“I was going to say ‘a lot.’ ” A naughty sparkle filled her eyes. “I was thinking about ordering dinner, but that pint of jizz I just swallowed should carry me through to breakfast.”
“You need to eat food. Woman can’t live on jizz alone.”
“Don’t underestimate the power of a woman determined to prove a man wrong.”
“Chelsea, this isn’t about underestimating. I’m serious as fuck right now. I want you to eat. Give me your word you’ll take care of yourself.”
She unwound her underwear from his wrist and put it on. “Okay.”
“Just saying that so I’ll shut the hell up?”
“Partly.”
“If you want me to trust you, then your word needs to mean something.”
“Then what I have to give you should prove I’m being genuine.” She leaned over and kissed him before taking the empty bottle. “
A pool house blow job wasn’t what I’d planned to give you. Go put on something that’s not drenched in sweat and come to my office. We can have dinner brought up and you’ll rest easy tonight knowing I stuffed myself on gourmet steak or something.”
Dante was quick about it. He went to the guesthouse, showered, and took no detours as he sought the main house’s executive floor. It was still strange to walk through these halls and not see another Bishop. The company felt unfamiliar, like a friend who’d turned.
Chelsea had been the friend who’d turned. Seven years ago he’d kept her so close to the heart that she hadn’t needed to reach too far to rip it out. Back then he’d suspected she was his sister’s protégé, but after Chelsea and the others had cut Delilah out of the company he’d known his fuckup was underestimating her. What he’d told Chelsea in the pool house was gospel—he didn’t underestimate her now. She was capable of anything, including giving him what he’d come here for.
Intrigue quickened his stride, and he opened her office door without knocking. The smile that brightened her beautiful face told him she didn’t mind that he had the manners of a pissed-off bull.
“Hey.” She came around the desk to hug him. “All right, so how do I say this?”
“Just say what you need to, Chelsea.”
“You’re good at making me feel like I can take chances and put myself out there.” She withdrew, laughing nervously. “Uh, okay, well, I know I keep brushing off this whole loss-of-appetite thing, but honestly, it concerns me, too. I think it’s more of what I’m used to—damaging myself to cope with stress.”
“Look, Chelsea, maybe you should be talking to somebody.”
“I’m talking to you.”
“A professional. A therapist.”
“Dante, I’d like to think I can feel safe to talk to a friend about this.”
She elected him to be that friend. He wouldn’t reject her, because, fuck him, he cared about her, but this was more than using sex and guilt to get her stake in Devil’s Music. This was her health.
Shit.
“This past week, I’ve seen you put all of yourself into working with Lex Lazarus. That day in the boardroom, when you told her you were taking her to Coca-Cola, my ovaries fell in love a little bit.”
“Tell your ovaries I’m real flattered, but keeping her here is part of my job.”
“Uh-uh, it’s not. Your job is to write an album. You protected Devil’s Music’s investment. She was ready to run back to Louisiana and you gave her a reason to stay. She trusts you, and I do, too.”
But I don’t deserve it.
“Anxiety kills my appetite,” she said. “When our artists started to screw over the company, anxiety declared war on my body. I couldn’t—can’t—stop thinking about what I did to you. South Sound, my dealings with Delilah—that’s business. But you and I were in a relationship. We were in love and I should’ve protected that.” She went behind her desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a box. “I don’t want to keep living like this. Maybe, if I right a wrong, some of the pressure will ease. So I hope you’ll accept this.”
Dante opened the box, revealing a folder.
“The pages are all in plastic sleeves, but I’m not going to risk messing them up,” she said. “They’re already so brittle and delicate, and I’ve got lotion on my hands.”
Brittle? Delicate? What the hell? He lay the folder on her desk and opened it, revealing the first of many small, creased, yellowed pages. Some were charred and missing portions. Reading the published print, he identified hymn text. Crowding the edges of the pages were notes written with a hesitant hand. Lyrics.
“Chelsea?”
“It’s Solomon Coin’s hymnbook. The slaves sang spirituals, work songs, you see. It’s said that Solomon’s master’s wife used to bring biscuits and a harmonica to the slave cabin. She set their songs to music and she taught Solomon how to read and write. He wrote his own hymns on those pages. After he died she gave the book to a minister.” She turned a pair of tear-misted eyes on him. “Generations of people thought the book had burned with the church during the Civil War, but it survived. Someone returned it to my great-grandma Becca. She never married, and when she died in the fire here, my grandpa found the book in her things. He eventually gave it to my dad. I didn’t even know the history until my mom tried to get the book in the divorce settlement. Dad gave it to me and I’ve been keeping it in a vault at my bank. Now it’s yours.”
Jesus, he didn’t deserve this. “I can’t take it, Chelsea.”
“I know it’s not an even trade, but these pages mean more to me than anything. I took Devil’s Music from the Bishops. I own something that’s a part of your family. So take a piece of my family. Take the hymnbook.”
Dante carefully turned the sleeves, examining the pages. He held tangible history in his hands. This was bigger than the Bishops’ legacy. The Coins had existed and lived and died here long before his grandfather had purchased the plantation. A woman had come to the slave cabin to help Solomon Coin put music on the page. Chelsea came to the guesthouse almost every day to help Dante experiment with lyrics and flow.
Continuity bound him to Chelsea. This was dark, twisted destiny. It fascinated him even as it terrified the most fearless corners of his soul. Nothing suggested Chelsea had made the connection herself. Could be she was resisting it.
Some said history repeated itself. He figured it was sometimes left unfinished, meant to be picked up again years, decades, centuries later.
Dante handled the plastic sleeves gently, returning them to the folder and securing the box. She hadn’t given up her shares of the company. She’d given him a revelation.
“Thanks,” he said, taking her hand in his.
“So you’ll keep the book? Good.” She sighed deeply, then laughed with amazement. “This is crazy, but I’m actually really hungry now. Want to stay and have dinner with me?”
“Yeah to dinner,” he said, folding his arms around her tight and looking at the box on the desk, “but let’s have it brought over to the guesthouse.”
Chapter 12
Dante submitted twenty-three songs, fourteen of which survived label meetings and focus-group feedback. With no track record or creative control, Lex Lazarus—or Alexis, as she was known among the circles of acquaintances who believed she was the CEO’s personal assistant—voiced no objections and molded her voice to complement whichever songs the label decided. She was being cooperative now, but Chelsea predicted that would change once Dante left for Washington next week.
Their easy rapport kept her in line. Without his presence to tame her temper, who the hell knew how combative she’d become? Without him on the grounds, dynamics would change. Alexis would have to put on her big-girl panties and continue business as usual. Chelsea would, too.
Which was why she was here now, pulling up to the carriage house instead of taking a limo to Opera. This week belonged to Vitalz. The group’s newest single, “Nasties,” had dropped days ago, surpassing a million YouTube views within twenty-four hours. The label had booked Opera for tonight’s celebration, and cars carrying VIPs and press were already crowding Crescent Avenue to drench themselves in liquor and revelry on Devil’s Music’s dime.
“Why aren’t you at the club?” Dante asked when he opened the door to her. His eyes stalled on her and she liked that all the effort she’d taken to shimmy into a sparkling silver dress rendered an unmistakably sexual reaction. He was dressed for a night in—jeans, Hawks T-shirt, bare feet. He held a lit cigarette.
She stepped inside without invitation, and when he shut the door she took the cigarette and rushed him for a kiss. It felt like a last kiss, and she didn’t like that. “Come with me to Opera tonight. Be my date.”
“Aside from the fact that the reason I haven’t been taking you out from the get-go is that my involvement with the label’s supposed to be under wraps, you told me you don’t bring dates to clubs. That leaves you open to hookups.” Taking back the cigarette, he sent her aw
ay gently, but the emotional impact was as harsh as if he had pushed her across the room. “What’s different tonight?”
“We have Lex Lazarus’s songs. Emma and the other producers on this project are going to hit the ground running next week. You’re leaving sooner than I thought you might. And that’s awesome for our project, but I didn’t have enough time with you. We didn’t have enough opportunities to be together.” Shit, she was droning on and on…
“We’ve been together almost every day from the night I found you sitting in a limo wearing nothing but lingerie.”
“That was a crazy night. Kind of sad, too.”
“I was an asshole to you.”
“You were.” She squeezed his shoulders. “Vitalz is slaying the Internet. Emma, Joshua, and I are optimistic about it. Tonight’s going to be a good night. I want to experience it with you. So go out with me.”
“Do Emma and Joshua know you want me on the guest list?”
She shook her head. “It’s my decision.”
“One that’ll affect this company. Y’all were in agreement that I’d keep a low profile until after I finished writing your songs. If I show up at the club with my hand on your ass, you can expect our pictures to be online in minutes. The industry’s going to demand answers.”
“You care what the industry will think of us?” She tried to peer past the shadows in his eyes but failed. If she could have a guess, she’d say it was his sister’s opinion he cared about. “You don’t want Delilah to know you’re with me.”
“It’s not Delilah’s business. But why put the suspicion out there to begin with? We don’t know what the fuck we’ve got going on here. Am I with you, Chelsea? If I am, then why am I making plans to go back to my goddamn farm?”
“Because that’s what we originally agreed to.”
“Screw the fucking agreements.”
If they pissed on the agreements, then he might stay in Atlanta…for her. It wasn’t fair of her to ask him to give up the peace of mind he’d found in Washington when she would continue to put Devil’s Music first. Men would come and go, but the record label was hers.
Sin for Me Page 18
