by Karina Bliss
He’d loved Mel a long time, and she’d loved him. And they wouldn’t have the five kids they’d joked about, they wouldn’t live in the same neighborhood they’d grown up in, and he wouldn’t be in the stands when she finally won gold at the Paralympics—because she would.
Beside him, Dimity shifted. “You’re sad and it’s keeping me awake. You’ve been sad ever since you talked to Mel’s fiancé.”
“She’s happier with Kevin. I’m letting her go.”
He expected her to argue, but she said nothing.
“You saw it,” he guessed, rolling onto his back. “The way she looks at him.”
“I don’t understand how she could prefer him,” Dimity said in the dark. “I guess he could have hidden talents.”
“If you say, like being great in bed, I’m kicking you out of it.”
“I wasn’t going to say that,” she assured him. “What are the odds you have the same hidden talents?” He laughed. It helped.
“Mel said I should ask myself why I took our breakup so hard.” He needed a woman’s perspective. No, he needed this woman’s perspective, astringent and insightful.
“That’s interesting, so did your mother.”
He was startled. “You talked to Ma about it?”
“No, she talked to me. She’s been worried about you and was telling me how glad she is you’ve got a new girlfriend.”
“What did you say?”
“That I’m toying with you.”
He twisted toward her.
“Just kidding. That we’re having a lot of fun.”
“You’re certainly the only bright spark in my life right now,” he conceded. “In a ‘light fuse, dive for cover’ kind of way.”
“Is there any other kind?”
He snorted. “So I’m lying awake trying to work out what Mel meant.”
“Really?” Dimity sounded surprised. “I think it’s pretty simple.”
“Yeah, Dr. Love, what’s your theory?”
“You gave up a lot to join the band. Mel was the last link to your old life.”
Seth knew it was the truth because her words sank into him without resistance.
How much of his devastation at losing Mel had been because she represented a way home if he needed it? Too much, he suspected. “That makes my noble sacrifice in giving her up a lot less impressive.”
“Exactly why I avoid self-awareness,” she said. “It leads to humility.”
“I changed my life and everyone changed theirs.”
“They don’t call it the brave new world for nothing.”
“No.” He rolled onto his side. “Goodnight, Dimity.” She’d given him something to think about. He’d needed to break free, chase a music career, and there were consequences to that. He’d hurt people. Mel had moved on. So had his father. And that was Seth’s problem to deal with, not theirs.
Dimity said quietly, “Is there anything I can say to make it better?”
“No.” She didn’t need to sugar-coat things. It was a relief to be able to be honest. A few seconds later, Seth felt her tuck the sheet between them and then carefully place an arm across his chest to clasp his shoulder. “This is a hug,” she said. “Tell anyone I’ve gone soft and you’re dead.”
“Thank you,” he said gravely. She stayed a minute then got twitchy and moved away, leaving him smiling. The honey badger was scared of hugs. Just as well. Her warmth had permeated the sheet, he could still feel the imprint of her soft breasts rising and falling against his shoulder blades. What’s wrong with you? She’s trying to comfort you. Whether it was her hug or the relief of accepting the truth, his mind was easier.
“Was the phone call okay…with your mother?” Seth risked getting his head bitten off.
“Little pitchers have big ears.” Not a bite, but a definite snap in his direction.
“They’re in proportion to the rest of me.” He willed his hard-on to go down. “I wasn’t trying to listen, but this house has no soundproofing.” He waited.
“Floyd, her new husband, heard her say it wasn’t convenient for me to visit, and thought she might have hurt my feelings. Helena and I laughed about it.” Her self-mocking tone invited him to laugh, too, but he was recalling the flat note in her voice when she’d said, “Of course I know I’m welcome.”
“And did she hurt your feelings?”
“God no, not for years,” There was genuine amusement in her voice now. “Do I come across as vulnerable to you?”
Their friendship had survived sex, but it wouldn’t survive any hint of pity. “No.” That’s why his parents’ suburban house intrigued her. She wasn’t judging, she was yearning.
“Helena isn’t maternal in the way your mother is.” Dimity had obviously picked up his ambivalence. “I accepted years ago that wanting her different wouldn’t change anything, so I adjusted my expectations.”
You mean you stopped wanting. She was breaking his heart. And their friendship balanced on a knife’s edge. One word of sympathy from him and it was over. “That was sensible.”
“Uh-huh.” Dimity was silent a few minutes, then chuckled. “What’s really interesting is that Floyd actually made Mom worry about offending me.” There was humor in her voice, a touch of wonder. “I had nothing to do with getting them together and I might end up with a stepfather I actually like.”
* * *
Seth took a long time to get to sleep. As Dimity waited for his breathing to become slower and more regular, she fought her body’s yearning for him. Damn sensory memory. The hug had been a bad idea. Her motives had been pure until she’d lain against him and felt his heat and the curve of his ass through the carefully tucked blanket.
She considered lust a build-up of tension, easily managed with a one-night stand, a vibrator or her hands. Like crying, you found a way to release the pressure, and moved on.
Turned out it was very hard to move on when the body that had given you so much pleasure lay sleeping next to you. Their friendship had survived one hook-up, but two would be taking a risk of kamikaze proportions. Seth was sad, he was conflicted, he was her buddy…and she wanted him inside her more than she’d wanted any man in her life.
Desperate for relief, she shifted position and tried to think about something else like her plan of attack tomorrow with Zander. But even machinating couldn’t distract her. Desire weighted her limbs, buzzed across her sweat-dampened skin.
The heat in Auckland was different from LA—damper, humid, almost sensual. Careful not to wake Seth, she peeled the covers off and freed her legs. The satin shift she wore for modesty slithered against her body as she rolled onto her back. She ran her hand over it, her palm coming to rest on her belly, and listened to Seth’s breathing deepen.
This physical reaction whenever he was close had to stop.
She could bring herself off in five minutes, she was so ready. Her core was tight and aching, her breasts felt full and sensitive against the satin. One stroke would do it. Maybe two. Slowly, painstakingly she drifted her fingers farther down her belly and fanned them on her sex, pressing her forefinger experimentally on her clitoris. It was swollen under her touch.
“Are you machinating?” Seth said in the dark, and she froze.
“Uh-huh.”
She gasped when his hand covered hers, low over her sex.
“That’s what I thought,” he said hoarsely.
They lay there, not moving. Suspended between insane and sensible. The silence grew, softened, and his hand over hers was warm and heavy, not quite heavy enough. She resisted the urge to wriggle. There was no need to talk about all the reasons this was a bad idea. Sex once was scratching an itch, sex twice suggested a contagion. Seth was mired in family drama and she needed to focus on saving their world. More importantly, they had to work together.
“Dimity.” She heard the doubt, sensed his struggle to do the sensible thing, and was suddenly worried he’d win it.
“If you take your hand away now I’ll kill you.”
He
laughed, low and husky, and it vibrated through his hand, then through her hand and into her pelvis, and made her gasp. He stopped laughing. With a groan he rolled over and covered her body with his own, trapping their hands between them.
They both stilled as a sound came from his parents’ bedroom, feet hitting the floor, then a minute later an unmistakable tinkling sound. The toilet flushed, the pipes in the wall creaked. Dimity resigned herself to celibacy. Seth would chicken out for sure, in his place she’d probably do the same—
“No screaming tonight,” he whispered in her ear.
“You wish.” She started tugging her hand free to give him better access but he was already moving, the bedsprings creaking as he eased down the bed. Dimity lifted her head as he slid her nightgown up to her waist, twisted his fingers in the cords of her G-string, and tugged. The seams gave. This man took far too much pleasure in destroying her expensive clothes. In a whisper, she hissed, “You still owe me for that shir—”
His tongue, rough and wet, swept along her cleft in a bold stroke that sent a jolt of heat spearing through her and would have shot her off the bed if he hadn’t been holding her thighs apart.
She’d forgotten he dispensed with preliminaries.
“Shh.” His breath was warm against her sex. “We can’t make any noise, remember?” She didn’t even know she had. Worried, she grabbed a pillow—just in case.
She’d already been primed and ready to explode before he’d touched her, and had no defenses against his onslaught now. His joyful, lusty disrespect of her dignity was the most erotic thing she’d ever experienced. Pinned to the mattress, helpless to writhe or squirm away, with his tongue savoring the wetness of her earlier hunger for him, she blew like a skyrocket within five minutes.
She felt him kiss her inner thigh tenderly, then give it a playful bite. The bastard had the nerve to rub his mouth dry on her three-hundred-dollar slip as he levered himself level with her face and lifted the pillow she’d jammed against her mouth.
“You’re welcome,” he whispered with a chuckle, and she reached down blindly for his cock, needing to redress the balance that had swung suddenly and dangerously in his favor. Heard his quick intake of breath as she found it. Rock hard.
Grabbing the pillow, she thrust it at him. “You’ll need this.”
“Yeah?” His whisper rough, dark, shivery…male.
“Oh yeah.” Twisting, she took him in her mouth, just as he was, sitting back on his heels, knees spread wide. Greedy to torture him as he’d just tortured her.
He sank farther on his heels, bracing himself on the bed and gave himself up to her, the pillow scrunched under one fist.
She licked up the column of his throbbing cock, flicking her tongue around the head, and felt the mattress dip as he tensed. She worked him hard, wetting him with her tongue, using her hand to pump as she sucked, squeezing his balls. He arched and tried to move her as he came but she tightened her grip, milking him dry, swallowing every last spurt. Wiping her face against his heaving chest, she rose triumphant and took the pillow away from his face.
“You’re welcome.”
They sat on their heels in front of each other, like two yogi masters, and even in the dark she saw the suggestion of white as he smiled.
She smiled back.
Chapter Eleven
Seth propped himself up on one elbow and looked at Dimity sleeping. She lay as far away as possible from him in the bed, but under the sheet one toe touched his calf. When he moved his leg, she murmured, and then her toe found him again. It was oddly…sweet.
“You can’t hurt me, Seth, I’m not made that way,” she’d assured him as they’d resettled to sleep. He believed her. But there was that toe. Blonde hair tangled, face clean of war paint, her smooth, bony shoulder hunched protectively under his gaze. Even deeply asleep the woman was defensive.
And from what she’d revealed of her upbringing, he could understand why. Gently, he stroked her shoulder through the sheet and it melted like snow.
He had no idea what he and Dimity would do next, and it didn’t matter. There was something freeing in being with a woman for the adventure of it, unbound by expectations on either side. He hadn’t realized how Mel’s expectations had been weighing him down. Or maybe they’d only gotten heavy when he couldn’t make her happy. Dimity would never devolve responsibility for her happiness onto someone else.
Next door his parents rose—it must be six a.m. The shower ran, the toilet flushed, the wardrobe backing the wall between them rattled in a ritual that he recalled from his childhood. Silence fell over the house as they went downstairs. When he was little, it was a signal to jump out of bed and follow—there was too much space left without their solid presence.
Lying on his back, he put his hands behind his head. It had been years since he’d remembered that. Dimity muttered something in her sleep, and he dropped one hand on her shoulder again until it relaxed, in no hurry to leave this bed.
Relationships in the rock world tended toward casual. None of the Rage crew would bat an eye if he and Dimity had an affair, though some of his female fan base wouldn’t like it. Too bad.
He’d already disappointed a few by ditching celibacy. A month after his breakup with Mel he’d gotten tired of being the victim, and accepted a couple of the many offers he’d got to party. Sex had helped, at least until Mel blindsided him with news of her engagement.
Now that he’d figured out why he’d taken the news so badly—thanks to the woman beside him—he could refocus all his energies on getting right with his father. And then—his spirits rose—immerse himself in his career and his music without guilt. How good would that feel?
Dimity stirred, her ass brushed his thigh, and his daydreams fell to earth and got dirty. Seemed a shame not to take advantage of the fact that his parents were downstairs.
Rolling over, he spooned her and tuned his tone to earnest. “So, are we going steady now?”
She woke in a panic and would have fallen out of bed if he hadn’t already hooked an arm around her waist. He cracked up laughing.
“You bastard,” she hissed, pushing her tight ass against his groin as she reclaimed her share of the mattress. “Don’t scare me like that.”
Tightening his hold, he rolled onto his back, taking her with him so she lay on top. “I’m not scaring you, I’m teasing you.”
“Some things aren’t funny.” But she adjusted her position to make room for his hard-on. “Your parents…”
“Are downstairs.”
He loosened his grip around her waist and smoothed down her hair where it was tickling his chin. “I want to keep doing this with you.” Sliding his hand down her collarbone over the swell of her left breast, he palmed it lightly, feeling her nipple harden. “What do you say?”
“Sounds too much like being taken for granted.” But her tone was distracted.
He moved his attention to her other breast. “Only a fool would attempt to domesticate the mighty Honey B.”
She reached behind to touch him but the angle was wrong, so she raised her arms above her head. Her searching fingers found his cheekbones, then his nose and lifted to his hair. Tangling her hands in it, she tugged but Seth barely noticed because her movements had shoved her breasts into his palms.
She tugged harder. That’s right, she liked rough. Lightly, he scraped her nipples and she arched. “I’m interested,” she said. “As long as it’s just sex.”
“It’s not just sex.” He nudged his leg between hers, encouraging them open. “It’s friends with benefits.”
“Ugh, too cutesy.”
He slid his hand down her ribs to the indent of her belly button and circled lightly. “What would you call it?”
“Fuck buddies,” she suggested, opening her legs wider. For a woman who looked like spun glass, she had a mouth on her like a hard rocker when she wanted to keep things simple. “Only while we’re in New Zealand,” she clarified. “But we keep it secret from Zander and Elizabeth…the Rage crew.
”
“No.” He widened his touch circle around her navel, teasing her, and she dug her fingers harder into his scalp. “Our phony relationship was a crazy idea that caused nothing but trouble. No more lies.”
“It made your mother happy,” she wheedled. “And Kevin.”
He punished her by sliding his fingers close—so close—to where she wanted attention, bypassing at the last moment to caress her inner thigh. His cock throbbed painfully. He could spend hours torturing them both. “If we’re doing this, we’re doing it openly. Like grown-ups.” If she wanted him, she owned it, publicly. “That’s my deal-breaker.”
“No, that won’t work.” Lowering her arms, Dimity used her elbows to lift just enough to rub her butt against him. “I have a brand, an image as a tough bitch, and even a casual relationship with you will undermine that.”
He tightened the arm around her waist so she couldn’t move. “Because I’m the band’s nice guy?” He kept up the gentle caressing of her inner thighs, stroking everywhere but where she was slick and wanting.
“Partly.” She started tickling his shin with her big toe. “We want to keep your brand wholesome with your fan base, at least until we’re out of this mess.” He stopped caressing and she made a small sound of protest. “But mostly because everyone in the music industry knows I have a rule about not mixing my personal and professional lives. I don’t get hit on, and I’m treated as one of the guys.”
“Okay.” Holding his temper, he removed his hand from her lower belly. “I can respect the last part of that.” He slid her body off his and she landed with a small oomph on the mattress.
Confused, she looked at him. “We could still have sex now. One for the road?”
“Nope.” Cupping his aching groin, he got out of bed. “I’m protecting my brand.”
“Are you sulking?”
“No, I’m pissed.” He pulled on pants. “You want to keep your rule, fair enough. But don’t tell me who I have to be.” Grabbing a change of clothes, he headed for the main bathroom down the hall. “I didn’t jump out of one box to be put in another.”
