She snorted. “I have to admit, it still blows my mind that you wrote ‘Dirty’ and those other tracks. Even your early stuff. I’m surprised it came from you.”
He drained the last of his drink. “Why, because I’m white?”
Alexis burst into uninhibited, helpless laughter. “Kind of, yeah. Sorry.”
“I’m surprised that voice, that unbelievable perfect talent, comes from you,” he said.
She scrunched her face. “Oh, because I’m deaf?”
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“You’re not.” And she wasn’t offended in the least. In fact, she appreciated that she could astound him, a man who understood that to hear was the same as to touch and that sensation had more to do with perception than disability.
He didn’t ignore their differences any more than he treated her as defective because of them.
“I don’t want you to go back to Washington,” she announced.
“Did you ask me to come here because you thought a song, some weed, and a Coke would change my plans?”
“I thought it would remind you that you belong here. You’re good at this—good with me.”
“Holding on to one person won’t help you survive in this business. Maybe that doesn’t matter jack shit to Alexis, but Lex Lazarus better get it into her head quick.”
She’d learned that lesson already. He just didn’t know. “Don’t leave.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Really?”
“Atlanta wants me for murder. If I run from this or if I get taken down, I lose everything.”
Jesus.
“No one is taking what’s mine,” he went on.
“You’ll stay, even though Chelsea says she doesn’t want you here?”
“Chelsea’s mine. She can’t change that. Neither can I.”
The possession in his eyes gave her pause. Did Chelsea know that Dante Bishop had claimed her?
“I would fucking hate it if someone said that about me. I want free will. I want…freedom.”
“Then you signed with the wrong label.”
She fell silent. She cast her eyes downward so she couldn’t read his lips, and now her world was totally quiet.
When she saw him step aside in a quick stride, she turned and saw the CFO in the studio—gun in hand and pointed at Dante.
“Jesus Christ! Joshua, no.” People would say the weed made her stupid in the head, or she was just crazy, but Alexis jumped in front of Dante, putting her body between his and the barrel.
“Visiting hours are over,” she saw Joshua say, and then Dante set her aside and strode casually out of the studio as though he hadn’t been on the cusp of losing his life.
Her heart bounced from her throat to her stomach, again and again. This was the Devil’s Music, she had to remind herself. People communicated through violence and coercion. Betrayal was as necessary as air.
And Lex Lazarus was a part of it…engulfed in it.
When Dante left, Joshua looked at her expectantly. “Why did you force me to pull out my gun to protect my company?”
“I invited him here to listen to a track, not to be slain in the studio of his family’s company,” she said. “You asshole.”
“You’re confused.”
“Actually, I’m not.”
“You’re high.” He pointed to the tray where she and the people who’d been here earlier had rolled blunts. “Smells like a cheap-ass party in here.”
“Now it smells like an entitled bastard with more money than humanity.” She shrugged, feeling Dante’s words sink in a little deeper: Holding on to one person won’t help you survive in this business.
“If I keep insulting you, will you shoot me?” she said, raising her eyebrows. He’d danced and drunk hard at Opera, but she thought he kept himself locked away from everyone else.
“No.”
“Then why are you still holding the gun?”
Joshua shut the studio door. He set the gun on the tray. “Still nervous?”
“I never was.”
“I want to hear the track.” He sat down with his hands linked loosely between his knees. It was too dim in the studio to see all of the shadowy and electric shades in his gray eyes.
Alexis stood in front of him, considering. “The CEO already approved it, if you’re thinking about cutting or changing it just to screw with Dante Bishop.”
“He’s a grown man. He doesn’t need you to fight his battles or take his bullets. Watch your own back. Chelsea let him cloud her vision, and that only got her a bullet in the chest.”
“That’s not her fault. It’s not his, either. That was—it was a bad night. It was a night from hell. But they aren’t to blame.” She shook her head. “All of you—you’re deafer than I am. You don’t listen. You don’t hear each other or even yourselves.”
“I’m sitting here to listen to a song, not a lecture, damn it.”
He sat there like a king. If he was a king, what was she? A servant? She lived in a palace and wanted to feel like a queen…just once.
Why shouldn’t she…just once…make the most of the opportunity she’d been given?
“Does Emma still think I’m hiding something?” she asked.
“Are you?”
In other words, yes, Emma still believed Alexis was hiding something from the Devil’s Music. When she’d signed the contract, she’d signed away every part of her.
“Where could I possibly be hiding anything?” she replied, straightening her shoulders and grasping the zipper on her jacket. “In here?”
Joshua’s hands were no longer linked. Suddenly they were braced on his knees and he was watching her with a harsh expression reserved for the soulless. “Zip that jacket and put the track on, Alexis. I’m not playing.”
She threw the garment on the floor of the studio, pushed down her pants. “Am I hiding anything here?” Naked, she turned around in front of him and bent forward.
His hands found her hips, squeezed, and she closed her eyes. But then he released her.
Alexis started the track, felt music vibrate through her, and she straddled his lap. He was hard.
“Listen to my song,” she said, grinding him.
His cock might be hard, but he wasn’t participating. Still, she moved on top of him. “Joshua, I’m not high. This is all me.”
His eyes snapped to hers; his hands trapped hers. And he kissed her.
She hardly noticed when the song ended. This man occupied her senses, kissing her roughly, sucking at her breasts, diving fingers into her pussy.
When he went for the crotch of his pants, she stopped him. “You’re not fucking me.”
“It’s like that, huh?”
“Precisely like that. If you want inside me, I’m going to need some things.”
“Name your price.”
“Call off security. I feel like a prisoner here.”
“That’s for your protection.”
She stopped rocking on his hard lap. “You want to talk about protection when you were seconds from fucking me without a condom?”
“I’ll use a condom, but I’m not calling off security.”
“No deal.” But she didn’t leave him. She slowly slid against him. “What would she do if she found us like this? Pick up your gun and shoot us both?”
“Emma wouldn’t kill us, no matter how many reasons we gave her.”
“Not Emma.” She took his face in her hands, licked his lips. “Delilah Bishop.”
Joshua grabbed her wrists. “What the fuck?”
“I’m deaf, not blind. I saw the way you looked at her the night of the shooting. You wanted her. And you still do. What does Emma think about that?” She reached down to undo his pants. “Can you satisfy her when you’re thinking about fucking Delilah?”
“Alexis…”
“Tell me. How do you fuck your wife? Do you get her to orgasm? When you sleep with her, do you think you’ll say Delilah’s name while you’re dreaming?”
“Goddamn it
.”
“And what would either of them say if they caught us like this? You could buy and sell me a million times over, and I’m the one on your lap.”
“You just want a dicking and mine is the dick that’s available. Dante won’t take the bait.”
Alexis hadn’t considered coming on to Dante, because he and Chelsea clearly wanted each other. She couldn’t say the same for Joshua and Emma. She couldn’t explain why she was grinding a married billionaire’s lap and thinking about his wife.
“If you’re smart—” he warned.
“Oh, I am. Smarter than you, Chelsea, or Emma anticipated. Things are going to run a bit differently going forward. Let’s talk about what I want.”
Joshua quit talking. And it clicked that she’d made a misstep, come to him too boldly, released something that was better off restrained.
She was about to dismount, grab her clothes, and leave—but a fragrance that made her think of soft skin on linen invaded the studio. She turned to see the door close.
Joshua had been too distracted to notice the new scent introduced to the air or to even hear the door shut.
His pants were open and his cock arched up. Curious, she wrapped her hand around it. She hadn’t fucked a man since falling in love with Melanie.
She hadn’t meant for this to happen, but it was happening. She hadn’t meant to be a woman who rode another woman’s husband in exchange for freedom—but she was that woman now.
“No more security. No more lockdown,” she said to him, stroking slowly.
He gave her a measured look, and for a moment she thought she found an apology there, but he grasped her hips and brought her naked body down on his.
She gasped, wanting to push away and demand a condom, but all she could do was force her lips to form one word. Why?
“You wanted to know how I fuck my wife. I’m giving you what you want.”
—
Alexis was still lying on the studio floor, naked, when Joshua left. In time she’d come to grips with what they’d done here, and what she’d gained.
Bodyguards would no longer shadow her. She could come and go as she pleased, within reason, and within the guidelines of her contract with the record label.
It was a victory.
She’d been fucked, had been brought to a few powerful orgasms, and was certain the bite marks on her ass would linger for some weeks, but she was sated.
Yes, this was victory.
When she was dressed, she walked away as if nothing wrong had happened. It was sex, that’s all. She and Joshua were both adults who’d been pleasured.
Although she hadn’t felt like a queen. She felt like a servant who’d been fucked by a king.
Alexis stopped to wash her hands on her way to the executive suites. She bypassed the office she occupied, going to Emma Toledo’s instead.
Emma was alone, monitoring screens that revealed Devil’s Music data. Processing information from so many directions at such aggressive speed would crumple Alexis, but Emma appeared unfazed.
Alexis knocked.
What do you want? Emma signed.
Why didn’t you stop us? Alexis demanded. She’d detected Emma’s fragrance when she and Joshua were together in the studio. You saw us together.
I can’t control him.
Alexis narrowed her eyes, entering the office uninvited. “Emma, you saw me riding your husband and didn’t intervene. You’re in here working.”
Emma stood up, stepped closer, and signed as she talked. “Would you rather I take the scissors out of my desk drawer and stab you both?” But anger didn’t fill her eyes. Fear did.
Fear?
“The truth is,” Emma continued, “I’m not surprised that you’re screwing him. I saw you two dancing at Vitalz’s release party. For all I know, you had sex with him that night.”
“No…tonight was the first time.”
“It won’t be the last, will it?”
“I don’t know.” Alexis didn’t plan on having sex with Joshua again, but she couldn’t make promises. This world was unpredictable, and she was unpredictable within it. “Why aren’t you angry?”
“Why am I not causing a scene that’ll require even more damage control for this company? Hmm, I guess I just don’t know why.” The sarcasm was apparent in her exaggerated facial movements. “The Toledos don’t make scenes.”
“Are you going to divorce him?”
“No.”
“Then you’re okay with him cheating on you and fucking you while he’s thinking about—” Alexis stopped and drifted to a flower vase. White roses filled it. She touched one. It was so pure and she so vile beside it.
Emma appeared in front of her, her hands flying. Thinking about who?
No one.
Tell me, you bitch.
Alexis crumpled the rose in her fist, twisted it off the stem, and lobbed it at Emma’s designer shoes.
Looking into the woman’s face, she said, “Joshua fucked me the way he fucks you.”
“What?”
“I know what you like, Emma. I swallowed his come, because you swallow it. I let him bite my ass and my thighs, because you ask him to bite you. You tell him to ‘make it hurt.’ ” When Emma blanched and started to retreat, Alexis pursued her. “You climax when he puts a finger in your ass while he’s eating your pussy. You let him—”
“Enough.” Emma’s lips were red when Alexis had first met her. Tonight they were pink, matching her nails. She was like the rose at her feet—delicate and beautiful, but crumpled.
“I told you I know. How he fucks you. What you ask him to do. Go to him and you’ll smell me on his skin. We were completely naked.”
“Did he come inside you?”
“In my mouth. Each time. The same as he does with you.” She knew what it was to be Emma. She knew what turned her on. In an abstract way Joshua had taught her how to pleasure his wife. The intimacy of it tingled.
“So why are you telling me all this, Lex? Do you want more money?”
“I wanted freedom—no more security. Joshua gave me that already. It was part of our exchange.”
“So you fucked him in order to call off bodyguards who are put in place to protect you?”
“I’m a caged bird here.”
“If Joshua gave you want you asked for, why are you here giving me a full report? To see how far you can push me?”
“I said that I know how he fucks you, Emma. But there’s something I don’t know, and I’m not leaving until I find out.” Alexis used her hands to ask the question: Why do you ask him to make it hurt?
Emma, the CEO of a multibillion-dollar hip-hop label, was speechless.
Finally she responded.
Close the door.
Chapter 15
The first time a car slowed in front of Chelsea and a window lowered, she’d been coming out of a restaurant after a business meeting and her body had slung itself into a violent fright response. She’d fainted, pissing her dress, and had she not landed on a strip of grass along the sidewalk she might’ve found herself in the hospital again.
After the restaurant staff and EMTs left her alone, she’d found out the driver hadn’t ended up dying a fiery death and the passenger hadn’t been holding a gun. The couple had been tourists asking for directions.
Her parents had hassled her—Are you keeping up with your physical therapy appointments? Who’s your psychiatrist?—and she’d lied to appease them.
Chelsea resisted therapy. Wound care and armed transport were enough to remind her of what had happened, to confirm that she’d almost died and still might be at risk.
Her friends had taken turns warning her about appearing vulnerable in public and how it reflected on the company.
The next time a car decelerated in front of her, it was the top of the morning and she had just exited a company town car to start her workday at Devil’s Music’s Midtown recording studio.
Registering the other vehicle’s black paint and darkened windows, she wa
s forced into the recent past, forced to see Clint Jermaine lifting a hand in greeting, forced to feel a burst of pain that felt so real even though only a gust of summer wind had touched her.
Screaming, she dove to the ground.
“Ma’am! Ma’am, it’s all right—”
“Chelsea!”
“Sir, stand back. Put your hands where I can see them.”
“Chelsea, it’s me—”
“Sir, I will not warn you again—”
Dante. He was here?
Chelsea scrambled up, shuddering, peering past the crush of bodies surrounding her car and his. She gulped a sob, and somehow everyone heard her say his name, because the cluster began to break apart and the guard who was restraining him let him go.
“Chelsea, it’s me. I’m not here to hurt you.”
“I know.” She dropped her head. “I’m a fucking mess.”
“She doesn’t need an audience. Back the fuck off,” he growled to security.
“Careful, Dante. They have guns.”
He leaned close to her face. “So do I.”
“God, you too?”
“Let’s get you inside. Folks are coming over with their phones out.”
Even with Chelsea’s insistence, some of the security personnel shadowed them. The hulking men followed Dante and Chelsea into the recording studio lobby.
“I’m taking you to your office,” he said.
“No, you won’t be doing that,” one of the guards said. “You’re not permitted past the lobby, Mr. Bishop.”
“On whose goddamn orders?” he snapped.
“Mine,” Chelsea admitted, and she saw something splinter in his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Dante, who’d had an arm around her the entire journey from the street to the lobby, retreated.
“I’m the enemy now?” he asked her.
She was conflicted, torn down the middle and straight across. Everyone wanted part of her. Everyone expected her trust.
“I can’t forget what happened between us at the hospital,” she whispered.
“That I made you come with my mouth and then with my fingers? Yeah, I didn’t forget that, either.”
Her face contorted, and she felt tears gather. “No—that you came back to Atlanta to take my shares. I trusted you with everything and you were using me. When I was loving you, you were just fucking me. When I was hoping for some way to make you and me work out, you were waiting for an opportunity to stab me in the back. Turns out someone shot me in the chest first.” She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. “Why the hell are you even here?”
Sin for Me Page 23
