Текст книги "Rock Redemption"
Автор книги: Nalini Singh
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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 22 страниц)
Chapter 40
Kit had gone from worry to panic to fury in the space of the past few hours. When Noah didn’t make it home by the time he should have, she’d figured he and David must’ve ended up hanging out. She hadn’t started to really worry until he was an hour late. That’s when she’d sent the first text message, to no response.
Feeling fear walk cold fingers up her spine, the memory of the incident with Becca yet fresh in her mind, she’d called David, discovered that Noah had left the gym long ago. She’d tried to be logical, to not panic as she called and messaged him, but had just started thinking she needed to check the hospitals when she received his response.
I’m fine. Don’t wait up.
The cold arrogance of the message stunned her. Not about to take it lying down, she called back at once—to be told Noah’s phone was either switched off or out of range. Kit had a very good idea which was true.
So angry she could barely think straight, she put on her running shoes and pounded out her anger on the pavement. Noah still wasn’t back by the time she returned, and all the food had gone cold. Showering, she changed into shorts and a tank top, and making herself a plate, took it out into the garden.
The peace of it soothed her, and made every part of her hurt with stabbing pains. Because if Noah had hit a wall at some point today, then things could well be far worse than him just acting like an asshole to her. She might wake to tabloid reports of him getting drunk or breaking up a place... or fucking some random woman.
Anger burned her throat.
Putting down her fork, she dropped her face in her hands and breathed deep.
“Kit.”
Her shoulders grew stiff at that familiar male voice, her emotions caustic. Too furious to look at him, too afraid of what she might see, she forced herself to pick up her fork and eat a bite.
Noah slid onto the bench beside her, moving until his thigh and arm pressed against her own. She smelled sweat, as if he hadn’t showered after the gym, but the rest of it was just Noah. No alcohol, no clinging tobacco smoke, no perfume.
“How mad are you?”
“Depends.” She stared out into the garden. “What did you do?”
“I went to a seedy strip club and sat in the parking lot telling myself that was what I deserved. Not a home, not with you. Just a dirty place I couldn’t ruin with my ugliness, with people who couldn’t give two fucks about me.”
His words made her hurt for him, but she was braced for a blow herself, waiting for him to tell her the rest. Because she’d hit her limit. She’d told him her line in the sand. If he’d crossed it, she wouldn’t be able to forgive him. Not this time.
“I opened the car door to get out,” Noah said, breaking her heart, “and then it hit me what a fucking idiot I was being. I was about to let what that bastard did destroy the best thing in my life. I was about to permanently damage my relationship with a woman who loves me even when I’m a surly, bad-tempered and moody son of a bitch. So I pulled the door shut and hauled ass home.”
He put his hand on the back of her neck, and the touch was oddly tentative for Noah. “So, how long are you going to be mad?”
Relief was a roar of blood through her veins. Not pulling away from his touch because, even with anger lingering inside her, she knew he’d take that as a rejection, she said, “I’ll let you know when I’m not mad anymore.”
He groaned. “Open-ended? That’s cold, Katie.”
Dropping the fork onto her plate, she turned to face him, and then she did what she’d wanted to do since the instant he’d told her he’d shut the car door and come home. She wrapped her arms tight around him. “That’s for coming home,” she said as his own arms wrapped around her so hard she could barely breathe. “The mad is for making me worry and for thinking you couldn’t come back to me just because the demons were awake.”
He shuddered out a breath and then, without prompting, told her what had set him off. “Dumb, huh?”
“No. It just caught you by surprise.” She glared at him. “What’re you going to do the next time something hits you sideways?”
The answer was immediate and so sure she believed it. “Find you.”
“Good.” Pulling back, she looked up into his face. “We need a pool.” She didn’t want to wait six months, wanted Noah to know his place was right here. With her.
His eyes filled with that luminous, astonishing light, his smile delighted as he held her face in his hands and pressed his forehead to hers. “Infinity?”
Melted by that smile no one else in the world ever saw, she fisted her hand in his T-shirt. “I saw one with waterfalls that I like.”
“We can get waterfalls.” A tender kiss followed by a wicked one. “As long as you promise to wear string bikinis and stand under the water.”
“It could be arranged.”
Still smiling, he said, “I need to shower.” He ran his hands down her arms. “I’ve made you sticky too.”
“Want to shower together?”
His eyes widened, and she realized this too would be a brand-new experience for her debauched rock star.
“Yeah,” he said with a slow smile. “Will you soap my back?”
“If you ask nicely.”
Noah hadn’t ever showered with a woman before. Watching Kit pin up her barely dry hair, her sleek body naked, he started to think he might just like this. Then she turned on the water and stepped in, shooting him a playful look over her shoulder, and he knew he liked this.
Stripping off his own clothes, he got in behind her and bent to kiss her neck, his hands on her hips. He knew she was still technically mad at him, and he deserved it, but she loved him too. Even when he fucked up, she still loved him.
He could always come home.
She wouldn’t kick him out just because he was imperfect. The only thing he had to do was take care of her heart, a heart she’d entrusted to him. He could do that—crossing her line in the sand held absolutely no appeal when on this side stood his Kit who wanted to build a home with him.
“Hey,” she said in mock reproof when he ran his hands up to cup her breasts. “I thought you wanted to shower?”
“I am showering,” he said, feeling young for the first time in an eternity. “With a gorgeous woman I intend to lather up.” He took her fluffy loofah from her, on which she’d squeezed some girly-smelling body wash, and began to run it over her body.
Leaning back into him, Kit let him do what he wanted, and what he wanted was to worship her. She smiled up at him, and for the first time in his life, a sexual situation was playful. He held the eye contact, kept returning to it, and he had fun. When she stole the loofah from him and tried to cover him in her perfumed body wash, he threatened her with all kinds of revenge.
Laughing, she swapped the loofah for the bar of plain soap he preferred and began to soap him up. He wasn’t sure he’d like that part, but he did, because… well, because it was Kit. It was as simple as that.
Sinking into her, he pressed her to the wall and kissed her. She was still smiling and he tasted it as they kissed, as he ran his hand down her stomach to slide two fingers through the liquid-soft flesh between her thighs. He hadn’t lied—he wasn’t very good at the foreplay stuff, hadn’t really ever done it before her, but he wanted to touch Kit, wanted to explore with her.
“Tell me what you like,” he said, bracing his other arm above her head.
She shivered as his fingers brushed a particular spot. “Oh, that’s good. Do that.” There were more whispers after that, more smiles, more kisses.
At one point she gripped his wrist and said, “Noah, oh please don’t move.”
He didn’t move. He just upped the pressure.
Back bowing, her breasts lifted up as if for his delectation, Kit came on a little scream. Noah’s cock was pulsing, but he was kind of addicted to seeing Kit orgasm, so he decided to continue his education in foreplay by pressing one hand to her lower back and bending his head to her breasts.
He licked, he sucked, and after a while, Kit’s gasped breathing turned even more ragged. “Can I touch you here again?” he asked, cupping her between her thighs. She’d pushed him away earlier, saying it was too sensitive.
A moan as he rubbed his stubbled jaw over her breasts. “After that orgasm, you can do whatever you like, Noah St. John.”
Feeling like a damn god, he stroked his fingers deep into her, listened to her answers to his carnal questions, and had the reward of feeling her clench convulsively on his driving fingers as she came again with shocked suddenness.
Yeah, that was hot.
Drawing out his fingers from her possessive grasp, he lifted her up against the wall and entered her with his cock. He was hard as stone, and with Kit so honey slick and sated around him, he could’ve pounded her balls-deep and it would’ve been fine. But Noah found he had an unexpected patience today.
His balls might be turning blue, but damn, his cock liked being inside Kit.
It was a long, slow session full of romantic bullshit, and afterward, when they were drying off, Noah realized he’d made love to Kit. Not fucked her, not had sex. Made love. He’d always thought that was a dumb phrase, but not today. Today it felt exactly right.
Towel wrapped around her body and tucked over her breasts, Kit came over to him and, linking her hands with his, said, “We’re going to be okay.”
“Yeah,” Noah said. “We are.” He was still going to fuck up, but since he wasn’t about to hurt Kit, wasn’t about to give her up, the fuckups would be manageable. And if she kept smiling at him that way, as if he delighted her… Yeah, well, maybe he wouldn’t fuck up that much after all. “I love you, Kit. I will always love you, and I will never mess this up.”
It was a vow.
Epilogue
Twelve months later and Noah was in Kyoto, Japan, paying up on his wager. He’d even made it a point to learn about the red tape he’d have to clear to get the plant back home. But, though this was his forfeit, he wasn’t alone on his walk to possible humiliation at the hands of a cantankerous gardener. His lover and best friend walked beside him as they went down the narrow and twisting street at the end of which lived a seventy-year-old man with the reputation of being a bad-tempered oni, or Japanese demon.
Dressed simply in skinny blue jeans, canvas sneakers, and a striped blue-and-white tee, her hair pulled back in a sleek ponytail and large sunglasses on her face, Kit nonetheless looked like a movie star. A very famous movie star whose work in Redemption was getting serious buzz even while the movie was still in postproduction.
“What?” she said, turning to him with a smile.
Lifting their linked hands, he kissed her knuckles. “Just admiring the most talented woman I know.”
“Says the man who wrote the megahit song not only of the year but of the decade.” She wore her delight for him on her sleeve, just as she admitted her love for him without hesitation when asked by the media.
In claiming him so unabashedly, in making it clear she was proud to have Noah St. John as her man, she’d healed things inside him that had been broken so long he’d thought they’d stay that way forever.
“Yeah, that little sparrow’s doing well.” It was a song that still made him hurt, but alongside the pain, he felt a quiet pride—in a way, in setting “Sparrow” free, he’d set himself free too. “There, isn’t that the right place?”
They looked carefully at the kanji the hotel concierge had written out for them, compared the characters against those on the gate. Taking a deep breath when they proved identical, Noah raised his hand to knock.
Three hours later and Kit had never laughed so hard in her life. The little old gardener had turned out to be a fan—not of her, of Noah and Schoolboy Choir. Over the moon that Kit wanted one of his plants, he’d invited them to stay for dinner with him and his utterly sweet wife. After which he’d offered Noah not sake, but an alcohol so potent it smelled like paint thinner to Kit.
Then the gardener had proceeded to drink the bad boy of rock under the table.
Grinning as she poured a thoroughly drunk Noah into a cab while carefully handling the plant, she got them back to the hotel and up to their room.
“Love you, Kit,” Noah mumbled, nuzzling at her as she keycarded their door open and put the plant safely on a little table nearby. “Got your plant.”
“I love you too, but you need to get in bed before you fall asleep against the door.” She managed to push and prod him to the sprawling bed.
Falling flat on his face, he lost consciousness.
It struck her then. This was exactly how it had all begun. With her getting a drunk Noah into bed. But that was the only parallel. This time she pulled off his boots, managed to get off his belt and jeans, even his T-shirt and, after removing her makeup and changing, slipped into bed beside him.
As she pulled the comforter over both of them, she thought back to that night and knew she could’ve never imagined this one. Not just tonight, but all the nights that had led up to this. Noah, her stubborn rocker, had not only kept his word, he’d kept his word so well that the tabloids had thrown up their hands in disgust and stopped following him.
Oh, he was still plenty bad. Put him onstage and he was pure sex and heat and a broken guitar or two. But when he came off that stage, he looked only for “his girl,” for Kit. All that energy and drive he’d spent on hurting himself? It had now become a fidelity and a devotion that made emotion choke her.
When Noah St. John decided to love, she thought as she snuggled up to him, he went all the way. “I’m so lucky to have you,” she said, pressing a kiss to his jaw.
Thick lashes lifted, a moment of pure clarity in the dark gray as Noah wrapped his arm around her waist. “Meant to ask you to marry me, put the ring in the plant soil, but gardener made me drunk. He’s so small. What happened?”
Half laughing, half crying at his adorably astonished expression, Kit kissed his jaw again. “You can ask me tomorrow morning.”
Cuddling her close, he said, “Will you say yes?” It was a sleepy mumble.
“Yes,” she whispered on a smile of pure happiness as he fell back asleep. “I’ll say yes.”
I hope you enjoyed Kit and Noah’s story! If you’d like to read a special extra scene featuring them, swing by my website www.nalinisingh.com and join my newsletter. You’ll receive the extra scene as part of your Welcome newsletter – and keep an eye out for future newsletters, as I often send out free short stories, deleted scenes, and sneak peeks.
Talking of sneak peeks, I’m already at work on Abe and Sarah’s story and should have more news for you soon! If you’d like to read other stories in the Rock Kiss world, check out Rock Addiction (Molly and Fox’s story), Rock Courtship (David and Thea’s story), and Rock Hard (featuring Molly’s best friend Charlotte). An excerpt from Rock Courtship is included on the next page.
Any questions or comments? You can contact me at any time through the e-mail address on my website. You can also find me on Twitter & Facebook – xo Nalini
Special Excerpt from ROCK COURTSHIP
Since he’d sacked out for so long, David didn’t have much time before he had to head to a downstairs conference room for the interviews. He’d steeled himself for the inevitability of coming face-to-face with Thea, but the sight of her still threatened to gut him.
Scowling, she strode over on sky-high red heels worn with a sleeveless and tailored black dress that ended just above her knees. “Did you put ice on that eye?”
He made himself speak, act normal—he’d become pretty good at that after the length of time he’d loved her. “Yeah, past few hours.”
“What about last night?”
He shrugged.
Her glare could’ve cut steel.
Thankfully, the first reporter arrived a second later, and David spent the rest of the time making light of his new and hopefully short-lived notoriety. Interviews complete, he slipped away while Thea was talking to Abe, and once in his room, used his phone to do some research.
He had no idea how to write a memo, and if he was going to do this, he had to do it properly. The only question was, was he going to do this? Putting down the phone, he got up and, going to the living area of the suite, got down on the floor and began to do push-ups. It was an easy motion for him regardless of his bruised ribs. Like most working drummers, he had to stay highly fit or he’d never last an entire concert.
He usually put in gym time every day, often went running with Noah or Fox, or did weights with Abe. Today, the familiar, repetitive motion of the push-ups cleared his mind, helped him think.
He only wanted Thea with him if she wanted to be with him.
Thea had made it clear his interest wasn’t reciprocated.
But, as Molly had reminded him, Thea also had a first-class bastard of an ex. David didn’t know exactly what had gone on between Eric and Thea, but he could guess, given that Eric had publicly flaunted a new fiancée within two weeks of the breakup. A silicone-enhanced airhead who simpered and giggled on Eric’s arm and didn’t have an ounce of Thea’s feminine strength.
If fate had any sense of justice, the bimbo would divorce the fuckhead a year down the road and take Eric for every cent he was worth.
So, he thought, pumping down on his arms, then pushing back up, his body held in a punishingly straight line, it could have just been his timing that had led to her rejection. He’d waited six months after the breakup—until he’d thought Thea was okay, but what if she hadn’t been at that point? He knew exactly how good she was at putting on a professional, unruffled face.
Hell, he’d once seen her handle a press conference with panache when two hours earlier, she’d been throwing up from food poisoning. What if she’d still been pissed off with the entire male sex that day in her office? Was it possible she’d have rejected any man who walked in and asked her out?
He paused, body tensed to keep himself off the floor as hope uncurled inside him. Because Thea hadn’t dated anyone since the breakup. That wasn’t just wishful thinking: he’d accidentally overheard her business partner at the PR firm, Imani, talking to another mutual friend on the phone a week before the band left LA—he’d been in a conference room early for an interview, the door open to the corridor where Imani was on the phone.
He should’ve called out and let her know he was inside, but he hadn’t been listening at first; it was hearing Thea’s name that had caught his notice. And then he couldn’t not pay attention.
Imani, happily married to a surgeon, had apparently tried to set Thea up with a colleague of her husband’s, only to be stonewalled. “I know Thea’s over Eric,” the other woman had said, “but whatever el slimeball did, he might have put her off men permanently.” A sad sigh.
David wasn’t sad about Thea not dating. He was ecstatic. Because it made it easier to believe that it had been his timing at fault. Like Imani, he didn’t have any fears that Thea was still in love with the dickhead—no, she was too smart to put up with that kind of bullshit. That didn’t mean the bastard hadn’t hurt her; a woman as strong and as independent as Thea rarely allowed herself to be vulnerable, and David had a feeling her ex had used that rare, beautiful trust against her.
Fuck, but David wanted to kick the shit out of him. But more, he wanted to make Thea happy. Even if it meant taking a beating himself.
Getting up off the floor, he grabbed his phone and began to type out a memo on the tiny screen. It took him hours of drafting and redrafting to make sure it said exactly what he wanted it to say. He was still working on it when the band headed out to the concert location—where he saw the last person he’d expected.
Thea, now dressed in sleek black pants that hugged her butt and a soft, silky T-shirt of midnight blue under a dark gray blazer that nipped in at the waist, had come to say good-bye to Molly since the two women had missed each other that morning. Narrowing her eyes when she saw him, Thea ostensibly spoke to the entire band—but he knew the words were directed at him.
“If you want me to continue putting out fires for you,” she said, “do not do anything that interrupts my vacation.” A blistering look that was very definitely focused on David. “And next time someone tells you to put ice on a bruise, you listen!”
Then she was gone, her luggage already in the trunk of the car that was taking her to the airport for her flight to the Indonesian island of Bali, home to her parents and little sisters. He watched her step inside the car, its taillights fading far too quickly into the night.
Even then he didn’t send the memo.
No, he waited until the minute before the concert was about to begin before pushing Send and turning off his phone. At least this way, he wouldn’t be able to torment himself by checking for a response until after the show.
Thea had barely sunk into the comfort of a cushioned armchair in a quiet corner of the airline’s frequent-flyer lounge when her phone chimed. Putting down the glass of champagne she’d allowed herself in anticipation of the first real vacation she’d taken in over a year, she picked up her phone. It was impossible for her to simply ignore it—hazard of having a profession where a single leak or news report could change the trajectory of an entire career.
You never knew if it would be for good or for bad until it happened.
Seeing the message was from David, she felt her abdomen tense. He’d hardly spoken to her today, not that she could blame him. She’d been so worried about that eye of his that she’d snapped at him twice when all she’d wanted was to grip his jaw and check for herself that he was okay. He’d probably written her a nice, polite apology for not contacting her as soon as he was picked up by the cops… Only the thing was, Thea had had it up to here with David being polite to her.
He was polite to her when she had meetings with him and the rest of the band. He was polite to her when she called to ask him his views on particular publicity options. He was polite to her when she joined the band for dinner as a friend and not their publicist. He was always polite.
And nothing else.
Her hand clenched on the phone. If he’d been that way from the start, she wouldn’t have known any different, but David hadn’t just been polite to her when she came onboard the Schoolboy Choir team. He’d been sweet and funny and warm. So many times toward the end of her relationship with Eric, when her ex-fiancé had done or said something that hurt her, it was David she’d called.
She’d never told him the real reason why she was calling, had always made it about work, but he’d made her feel better nonetheless. It had taken her several months to realize David was shy, but it wasn’t the kind of shy that left him tongue-tied or lost. He just needed a bit of time to get to know people, warm up to them. When he did, his loyalty was etched in stone, his support unconditional.
That support had helped her deal with far more than he knew.
And now… he was polite and reserved and she missed him. So many times, she had to fight the urge to take hold of those strong, solid shoulders and shake him, tell him to stop it!
Even though he was meant to be a client and nothing else.
Bracing herself for the horrible, polite message to follow, she opened his e-mail. Her mouth dropped open.
He’d sent her a memo.
And it had nothing whatsoever to do with the bar fight.
Reasons Why You Should Give Us a Shot
Introduction: In this memo, I, David Rivera, explain why you, Thea Arsana, should seriously consider entering into a relationship with me.
First, let me address what I believe is your main reason for not dating me: that I am a client. This can be easily remedied. You own an agency in partnership. Your partner, or, if Imani has no space on her books, one of your senior associates, can take over the Schoolboy Choir account. If you’d prefer not to move the account, you can have Imani vet anything that has to do specifically with me. (Speaking as a member of SC, we want you, no one else.)
Second, while I admit I am a couple of inches shorter than you and two years younger, I have absolutely no hang-ups about either. I don’t think such a small age difference matters, and I’m fairly certain my maturity levels are acceptable. I point out that I, too, am an eldest child. As for the height thing—I seriously love those heels you wear. Never will I be so stupid as to demand you wear flats.
Not when watching you walk in heels is one of my all-time favorite things to do.
I’m also in good shape. I realize I’m not as pretty as Noah, or as built as Abe, or have a dimple like Fox, but I have been told I have good teeth. Therefore, I’m not physically deficient.
Third, I think you’re hot. Extremely, combustibly hot. If I could, I’d keep you in bed for a week running, naked and mine, and I’d still not have enough. I think every part of you is hot, but I’m particularly turned on by your mind and your legs. You should see the fantasies I have of seducing your mind with my words while I stroke my hands over your legs, rub my fingertips along the inner skin of your thighs.
You don’t mind calluses, do you, Thea? They come from drumming so intensely over a long period. All that physical work also means I have plenty of stamina. I can go as long and as hard as you want, or as slow and as deep, or any combination thereof. Hard and deep. Slow and long. Hard, deep, long? I can do that.
Your choice.
Or if you prefer it gentle and lazy, I can do that too. (Though we’d probably have to burn things down to a simmer with a hard, fast bout or three first.)
I’d be careful as I stroked you, but I’m afraid my touch would be a bit rough, a fraction abrasive, especially when I reach between your legs and use my fingertips to squeeze that pretty, plump, hard little—
Thea closed her eyes, took a deep breath. It didn’t do much good, her chest heaving and her pulse a brutal thud against her skin. Mind filled with the potent erotic imagery he’d conjured up and thighs tightly clenched in a futile effort to contain the sudden throbbing ache in between, she stared up at the ceiling of the lounge.
All she saw was David’s hand on her thigh, the small scar he had across the first knuckle of his right hand a slash of white against the dark gold of his natural skin tone. His arm was hard with strength and dusted with tiny black hairs, muscle and tendon flexing under his skin as he teased and played with her clit using those callused fingertips before thrusting a single finger deep into—
She squeezed her phone so hard that she heard the case crack, her body rigid and nerves gone haywire. When it was over, she collapsed into her seat in stunned shock, glad that the curved shape of it and her position in a seating arrangement right in back had hidden her from view of the others in the lounge.
He’d made her orgasm.
With nothing but the pressure of her thighs on her needy flesh and his words. The damn man had figured out her weak point and he’d aimed his missile right at it: her mind.
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