The Kissing Game (Innocent Series Book 9)

by Kendall Duke

Shame. Rejection. Pain.

  But that was okay, I told myself—that’s exactly what I was supposed to do with those emotions: pour them into music.

  I sat down at the drum set and moved the snare over, then adjusted the toms. I tightened the base and got up and found another cymbal, then sat down and pumped out a couple quick pops. I was in the mood to do something with the snakes kicking around in my belly, the brutal side-effect of looking at your life without any blinders on, and picked up the pace. After a minute I was warmed up, and then I dove full-on into some speed metal.

  When I was sweating, I turned it back down and did some more traditional rolls, some cascading beats that echoed perfectly around the room. She was right; the acoustics were sensational.

  After all of that, I was ready to play with some harmonies and pick out the sounds that were left in there, cleaned up and calling to me. I got up and froze. Benji was staring at me, open-mouthed, from the entrance.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “Drums,” I said, leaning down and looking at the electric guitar by my feet.

  “Yeah, thanks,” she said sarcastically, stomping over to me. “I didn’t know—I mean, seriously, what was that?”

  “Speed metal,” I said, putting the guitar around my neck and plucking the strings; it needed to be tuned. I sat down on the amplifier and fiddled with the levels for a second. “Good for mellowing me out.”

  “Mellowing you out?” She blew out a long breath. “That was…”

  “Fast,” I said, and she nodded emphatically.

  “Uh, yeah. Yes. That was like… Was it Tool, or something?”

  “I wish,” I said, smiling at her. Her eyes immediately softened, and it made my breath catch. I hung my head over the guitar and started picking at the tuners. “It’s just… Metal. I love metal—if somebody doesn’t l-love Tool, there’s something wrong with them, but that was just regular old heavy metal.”

  “But, like, at a million RPMs.”

  “Well, it was regular old speed metal.”

  “What else can you do?” There was something in her tone that made me look up at her through my bangs. “You don’t play drums like that in any of the Groovebone songs.”

  “No,” I said, shrugging, “it didn’t fit. And hey, just between you and me—don’t say Groovebone,” I told her, and she cracked an incredulous smile. “Tony came up with it, and I swear to God it makes me want to throw up every time I hear it.”

  “I’m pretty sure it’s the dumbest name I’ve ever heard for a good band,” she agreed, and I nodded.

  “He was really in to… I mean, it’s obviously a…” I stopped, unsure how to continue.

  “He’s a tool, and he wanted girls to hear the name of the band and think ‘Sex!’” Benji raised an eyebrow and put her hands on her hips. I nodded.

  “I got voted down.”

  “What was your band name choice?”

  “L-literally anything but that,” I said, and she snickered. “I’m serious. Anything.”

  “Okay,” she said, and then she didn’t move for so long that I looked up at her again. “I’m just wondering,” she told me, as if I’d spoken out loud, “if… I guess, given what I can infer about him… Were you living that rockstar lifestyle too?”

  I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant. “How so?”

  “Sex, drugs, rock-n-roll?”

  “Maybe,” I said, “for a while.” I put the guitar down and studied her for a second.

  She reached down and moved my hair out of my eyes again, just using the tip of her index finger, and when her skin touched mine the heat of it lingered long after she was gone. I bit my lip; I had a fashionable haircut, but I only liked it because it made a good shield. It functioned as a veil, almost, where I could see out and no one else could see in. And people didn’t touch me like Benji did—I scared the shit out of most people without even trying.

  But not her.

  That felt amazing, because as fearless as she was, she was still dealing with the after-effects of being attacked. Getting hit makes you afraid of getting hit forever. But it seemed like she wasn’t afraid of me.

  Good.

  “I just…” She sighed; her eyes hypnotized me, and we held still for a long moment, just looking at one another, before she shook her head and took a step back. “I know I come across as pretty tough, but I’m… I guess I’m intimidated. The more I find out about you, the more I—”

  I held my breath, waiting for the end of that sentence for so long that I finally had to inhale. She took another tiny step back. “Benji—”

  “I play,” she said softly. “It’s just a hobby, but I like to. But you’re almost… You’re some kind of prodigy, aren’t you?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I just got l-lucky early on and have had more time to practice.”

  “No, that’s bullshit,” she said, staring at me. “I heard you, Leo. That’s not normal drum playing—people work their whole lives to get good at playing a 4 by 4, and that was… I don’t even know what the fuck that was.”

  “It’s better with two pedals,” I tried to explain, but she cut me off with a wave of her hand.

  “I’m going to go back to the kitchen and finish dinner, and when I come back you’re going to show me what else you can do.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want you to,” she said, her eyebrow raising at the challenge as she looked back at me over her shoulder.

  “Do you always get what you want?” I stayed where I was; it wasn’t what I wanted to do. I wanted to get up and put that perky little ass of hers on the piano and suck on every inch of her smooth, pale skin. I wanted her to forget about dinner and erase those two small steps, then take two more and sit down on my lap. Wrap her legs around my waist and let me—

  “Most of the time,” she said, and sauntered away.

  “I bet you do,” I muttered, and started picking out a melody on the guitar. I didn’t bother hiding my stare as she walked off, her jeans hiding nothing. She was in bare feet, a t-shirt, her long hair pulled up in a high pony-tail, and I’d never seen anything sexier. I ignored my body’s hungry response to the view and focused on the song I was already writing.

  She came back in half an hour and smiled at me from the door; if her exit was the sexiest thing ever, that smile was the cutest. “You hungry?”

  “Yep,” I said, and although I was positive we weren’t talking about the same thing I followed her anyway. No right-thinking man is going to turn down home-made porkchops and biscuits.

  I went down to the kitchen and looked around. This was an incredible house—the high ceilings made the acoustics perfect for recording in the big open area in the front, an area that must have once been a living and dining room, and someone had opened into a single giant space—and the kitchen was exquisite, just like the rest. The highest ceilings you can imagine, with track lighting spaced out and low-hanging copper lamps over the sink and kitchen table. The appliances were well-worn but less than five years old and good models. The paint was new, glossy trim on the beautiful antique moldings. “This house is amazing,” I told her, and she grinned up at me and gestured to the round table in the center. “It doesn’t seem l-like a bunch of musicians live here,” I told her, and she shrugged as we sat down.

  “I think I mentioned my brothers?” I nodded, cutting a bite of the porkchop and dragging it through the gravy on my plate. “Well, this place is leased under my name, so I’m more of a pit-boss than a room-mate.” I snorted into my food while she laughed at my reaction. “I love living with musicians,” she continued after we settled down, “but I expect them to behave like adults. I’m not a fucking kindergarten teacher, you know? Or a maid. So if someone acts like a diva, they’re gone.”

  “Someone besides you, you mean,” I said, and her jaw dropped open as she hurled a napkin at me before we both collapsed in laughter again.

  “I am not a diva,” Benji said, still giggling.

  “Just a l-lit
tle,” I said, enjoying watching her loosen up.

  “I’m just…” She waved her hands in the air, searching for the right word.

  “Bossy,” I said, and she threw another napkin at me. I ducked and kept eating my porkchop, which was criminally delicious. “Benji, this is really good. Thank you for making me dinner.”

  “Aw,” she said, “that was so sweet it almost made me forget all your name-calling.” She chucked one more napkin at me and I caught it in mid-air, then daintily wiped the corners of my mouth. “You’re sassy, you know that?”

  “Me?” I was genuinely surprised, so much so that I laughed again. “Did you just call me sassy?”

  “You are,” she said, giving me a jaunty toss of the head.

  Something occurred to me, and it took me out of the moment: we were flirting. We were definitely flirting.

  Did that mean… What the hell did that mean?

  “Hey,” Benji said, her beautiful dark eyes widening, “you still there? I didn’t think that would be some kind of game-stopping assault on your masculinity, there, bud.”

  That made me snort again, which fortunately brought me back into the moment. “No, no—although no one’s ever said that, that’s not what I was thinking.” I went back to my porkchop, still smiling to myself. Sassy. What the hell?

  “So,” Benji said, “this is the part where you tell me what you were thinking, especially since I can’t see more than a quarter of your face because of that goddamn hair-cut.” She blinked at me expectantly when I glanced up at her.

  “I don’t want to tell you what I’m thinking,” I said, and she frowned.

  “Why? We both know these are the best porkchops you’ve ever had in your life.”

  “No, Benji,” I said, cracking open a biscuit and sopping up the gravy. “You’re not wrong though. Damn, girl.”

  “That’s right,” she said, leaning back in her chair with a satisfied expression. “You might be a rich and famous rockstar, buddy, but I make some mean biscuits. Not everyone can be this talented.”

  “I’m not that rich.”

  “Shut up,” she said dismissively, and I shook my head down at my plate as another laugh bubbled up inside of me. She was going to make me choke on my damn dinner. “Everyone who says that is rich as hell. ‘Not that rich’ is the most obvious reference point for rich people there could be.” She stopped and pointed a finger accusingly at me. “You’re dodging the question, anyway.”

  “What question?”

  “What were you thinking?” Her eyes were so dark they almost looked black, as if the iris and pupil bled into one another and created a perfect pool of shadow. Fringed by those lashes of hers, they wouldn’t have been out of place in a Caravaggio painting. “Leo. Seriously.”

  “I was thinking a couple things.” I put down my fork and leaned back in my chair, chewing on my lip. “But there’s not a single one I’m comfortable repeating.”

  “Leo.” She put her fork down too, and now she seemed a little… Nervous. “Please?”

  “I was thinking nobody’s ever called me sassy before,” I said, hoping that put her at ease. Not really, from the look on her perfect face. “I… I guess I just realized that maybe you were… We were flirting.”

  “Huh?”

  Now it was my turn to be embarrassed. “I mean, I don’t know, I guess I l-l-l—”

  “Of course I’m flirting with you,” she said, staring at me. “You’re a goddamn rockstar, Leo.”

  Right. “Okay,” I said, and went back to the last bit of my biscuit.

  “Hey,” she said, and by the time I looked up at her she was pulling out the chair beside me as she tentatively laid her hand on mine and settled into it. “I’m sorry. That fell pretty flat.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, wishing she wasn’t so unintimidated by me for once. I didn’t want to pull my hand away though; it was almost as if I couldn’t.

  “No, it’s not.” She reached up with her other hand and brushed my hair out of my eyes again, her fingers just barely touching my skin. I felt my eyes close as I drank in the barest touch, fluttering beneath the weight of my wish. “I hurt your feelings, didn’t I?”

  “You called me sassy and now you expect me to admit to hurt feelings?” I raised an eyebrow at her, forcing myself back into the present and trying to give her a reassuring smile. Still kinda felt like shit, but I didn’t want her to know that. “Are you a sadist?”

  “Nope,” she said, gracing me with a small smile of her own.

  “Then relax,” I said, shrugging but still unable to move my hand away from hers. “No big deal.”

  “I’m not flirting with you because you’re a rockstar,” she said suddenly, and I couldn’t help the way my eyes were drawn to hers, the magnetic pull of her so strong I had to keep from leaning into it. “I’m flirting with you because I like you, Leo. Because you’re hot as hell and wrote my favorite album—which I would love even if it never made you famous—and you make me laugh. Because you’re not scared of me.” She sighed. “And… You don’t scare me, either. You… You feel right. Like I can trust you.”

  I wanted to pull her into my lap, to hold her close, to feel her ribs tucked beside mine, our hearts side by side. Instead I bit my lip and sighed. “I l-l-like you a l-lot, Benji.” There it was, the real problem. “I was in a band, and I’m not now. I’m probably going to go back to doing construction. So if you just l-l-like guys in bands, or Groovebone, or whatever—”

  “That’s not what I said at all,” she told me, and then pulled my face towards hers, one careful hand on each side of my face. She brought her own closer to mine, daring me to look away. “You’ve got a stutter, you’re not deaf.”

  I almost physically recoiled from the hard words, but she held me fast. “Benji, you—”

  “I know what you heard. But what I said was that I like you, Leo,” she told me, and then her voice was so soft, and I realized she was still just as nervous as I was. “I like you so much. It might not be glamorous to you any more, this whole thing where you have lots of money and women throwing themselves at you all the time, but I’m intimidated by it. Even if I’m not intimidated by you. I am so scared,” she whispered, “of men these days I can barely stand to have one near me, but you—” A tear was winking in the corner of her eye. “I keep wanting to touch you Leo,” she whispered. “And it scares me how much you don’t scare me, is all.”

  “Benji,” I said, and then I gave in and ran my hands over her arms, I touched her shoulders, and when she didn’t pull away I dragged that chair over and scooped her right out of it. She fit perfectly in my lap, her legs hanging over the side as I wrapped my arms around her and pressed her into myself; in a way, I was trying to protect her from what had already happened, even though I couldn’t. No one could. “It’ll get better,” I said, stroking her cheek with my fingertips. I wanted to touch her everywhere, to reassure her somehow. “I’ve been in a lot of fights. They suck, but they fade over time.”

  “I’m just so sick of feeling like this,” she whispered. “I hate thinking about it—it sneaks up on me, all the time. Someone will move too fast, or be somewhere I wasn’t expecting and I just… I get so scared.”

  “Yeah, that’s going to take a while.” I sighed. “In my first foster home, three of the other kids waited for me to fall asleep and then they… Well, I still don’t sleep without l-locking my bedroom door. They gave me this,” I said, pushing my hair all the way back from my forehead so she could see it. “Took a couple stitches. But that was the l-l-last time anyone got the jump on me. You’ll be okay,” I said, brushing my lips against her temple and holding on tight, the instinct to comfort her overwhelming my caution. No one was ever going to hurt her again; I didn’t care what happened between us, I just knew I needed to protect her. And I would. “Promise. And I… I mean, whenever you need to talk, you can always talk to me.” I closed my eyes and forced the words out. How to phrase it? My heart was going a million miles an hour. “I’ll always be there fo
r you, Benji.”

  She leaned back and looked up at me, and it took everything I had not to kiss her. Everything.

  But then she kissed me instead, and the world tilted on its axis.

  ~~~

  Benji

  He felt so good.

  His body was hard and strong beneath mine; I could feel the rhythm of his heartbeat under my ear when I leaned against his chest. His fingers were so long, wrapping around every inch of me, here and there and everywhere—around my calf, tucking under my arm… I realized I had other places I wanted him to touch. Badly.

  And I think I was ready for it.

  I had two boy-friends in high school. A lot of guys came on to me, and some of them I had to put in their place while others met my brothers and then they were much more respectful. My whole life, I’d met men who wanted one thing from me, and it wasn’t to take care of me. If anything, that made me a challenge—my independence, my direct speech, my unwillingness to take a bunch of crap… They saw that as some kind of joke, just like my size. Everything about me was a cliché, a package made up for them to unwrap and exploit. So I really didn’t have a lot of patience for men.

  And then I left high school, joined the real world, and it got even worse. I got busier, louder, angrier, they got pushier. Meaner. And even with four brothers that I adored and respected, I’d honestly forgotten that men could be… Good.

  Kind. Gentle, even.

  And Leo—fist-fighting Leo with the scabs on his knuckles and ancient scars from the stitches in his forehead, Leo with the tattoos and the stare that could frighten a biker—Leo was gentle with me.

  I felt him freeze, his lips touching mine for the first time, and then his fingers ran over my body, finding all the delicate places to hold me—the underside of my knee, the small of my back, wrapping around to barely touch my ribs. We were pressed against each other, tightly, and I pulled my legs in so I could straddle him. When I touched down, sitting front to back, and he pulled me in closer… I had to catch my breath. The kiss grew so deep and heated I could feel myself arching in to him, and then… I felt him. Below.