Getting Played (Heart of Fame #7) (27 page)

Blackthorne

She'll either make them or break them

Blame it on the Bass

© 2014 Lexxie Couper

Heart of Fame, Book 6

After a horrific accident robs rock legend Levi Levistan and his long-time partner, Corbin, of their dream of becoming parents, Levi is lost in a sea of grief. Until he runs into an old high school flame and their chemistry reignites.

Corbin Smith is intent on bridging the chasm between their hearts. But witnessing his lover’s steamy onstage kiss with another woman jolts him to the core with sexual arousal. And he realizes the key to their healing is standing in Levi’s arms.

As an erotic romance editor, nothing much unsettles Sonja Stone. She’s not even surprised at her body’s powerful reaction to Levi’s kiss. But when Corbin approaches them, eyes smoldering with hunger, his suggestion shakes her to the core.

Sensing their unspoken wounds, Sonja agrees to take a chance on a threesome. Their union is explosively perfect, but something is holding Levi back from sealing their searing emotional connection. Something that could destroy their love once and for all…

Warning:
This book contains angst, torment, sarcasm, humour, scorching m/m sex, searing m/f sex and explosive m/m/f sex.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
: Blame it on the Bass

“I want you to sleep with me.”

Sonja’s stomach dropped at Levi’s declaration. Prickling heat razed her entire body. Her nipples puckered. Her pussy throbbed. She blinked. “Sorry?”

Surely she’d misheard him?

He took a step closer to her, his gaze holding her frozen to the spot. “I want you to sleep with me. And Corbin.”

Sonja burst out laughing. She stumbled back a step, holding her arms to her belly. “Oh boy, Stan. I see your sense of humour is still messed up.”

Levi crossed the threshold in one step and closed the door behind her. “I’m not joking, Sonny.”

The bubbling guffaws died in Sonja’s chest. She frowned, her brain refusing to comprehend the words coming out of Levi’s mouth. Holding up a hand, she backed another step away from him. “Wait, wait, wait.” She shook her head, staring up at him. “You’re serious?”

He leant his back—broader than it used to be at school, she noticed—against the door and nodded. Sonja didn’t know if it was the beard, the tousled waves of dark honey-blonde hair or his unreadable eyes, but for the first time since he’d appeared back in her life it really truly dawned on her they were grownups now. Adults existing in a world of adult rules. And adult Levi was most likely used to getting whatever he wanted.

She drew in a wobbly breath, her mouth dry. Unfortunately, the same state couldn’t be said for her sex. Already it was growing heavy and damp at the notion of doing stuff with Levi and his boyfriend.

Corbin. Corbin Smith. He’s a famous, successful Hollywood screenwriter. And gay. Openly and proudly gay. Think about that, woman.

Gnawing on her bottom lip, she folded her arms again and fixed Levi with an unwavering stare. “So you’re telling me you want me to have sex with you and your boyfriend.”

“Partner. And yes.”

“Your gay partner. I just need to make sure I’ve got all the facts straight here before we go on.”

Levi crossed his ankles and nodded. “My gay partner. Yes.”

Sonja’s pulse thumped hard in her ears. “You, Levi Levistan, want me to have sex with you and your gay partner? The man who came into Do Re Me last night and busted you kissing me. The one who seemed pretty bloody miffed about it. That gay partner?”

Levi nodded once again.

“And how does your gay partner feel about this? Can’t imagine he’s a fan.”

Something hungry glinted in Levi’s eyes. “Corbin was the one who suggested it.”

Sonja raised her eyebrows. “He what?”

“He suggested it. After we made—” A haunted expression twisted Levi’s face. “After we fucked. After I fucked him.”

For a split second, Sonja forgot how to breathe. Every cell in her brain deserted its normal function to process Levi’s ludicrous claim. A heavy weight strapped around Sonja’s chest. Her stomach clenched. Her throat tightened. Words failed her. No, not just words. Thoughts. There was no way in hell she had the ability to comprehend what Levi Levistan was telling her.

It was too…too unbelievable.

She opened her mouth. Closed it again.

Nope. Not a single word.

At the door, Levi watched her. Waited.

She remembered this side of him well. It was one of the sides that had driven her crazy when they’d been hot and heavy at school. The side that let nothing show. No hint of what was going on in his head. Or his heart.

Experiencing it again, she remembered all too easily how much it pissed her off.

Pricking anger crashed over her. Suffocating her shocked stupor. “So this is how famous rock stars do things, is it? You just open your mouth and expect whatever it is you say to happen? You just make a call, get an address and turn up at your old girlfriend’s home and suggest a threesome? This is you now, is it?”

Levi didn’t say anything. Just watched her.

She threw up her hands. “Of course it is. Money, fame, groupies. Why wouldn’t you expect it? And I didn’t exactly fight you off in the bar, did I? So yeah, I can see exactly how that equals, ‘hey, Sonny, I know it’s been a while, but wanna be in a threesome with me and Corbin?’” She stopped her rant. Folded her arms over her breasts and glared at him.

“You know,” he said, expression unreadable, “when you wave your hands around like that I can see your—”

“Fuck you, Levistan,” she snarled, spinning on her heel and storming away from him.

Her heart felt like a sledgehammer in her throat.

She stomped into her living room, fighting to calm the charged energy thrumming through her.

The nerve of the guy. Coming to her home and suggesting something so…so…

Enticing?

An image shot through her head from her last dream, the one responsible for all the pushups. Levi tracing his tongue up Corbin’s spine as Corbin’s tongue teased her right nipple.

Her feet tripped over themselves. She stumbled a step, careened off the arm of her couch and plonked down with a grunt on the armchair situated beside it.

“Damn you, Stan,” she muttered, scrubbing at her face with trembling hands. She knew he’d followed her into the living room. She could
feel
him. It was like he was a big, annoying magnet, an undeniable force that pulled on every fibre and molecule in her body.

She didn’t lift her head when warm, long-fingered hands smoothed over her shoulders. “I’m sorry, Sonny,” he murmured, his breath warm on the back of her head.

Letting out a huff—she was going hyper-ventilate soon with all the ragged, shaky, huffy breathing she’d been doing since he arrived—she shrugged off his touch. She didn’t want to. She’d always loved the feel of his warm palms on her body, even when she was too inexperienced to truly understand the significance of the response.

Hell, the first time they’d spoken in the schoolyard he’d helped her up after she’d walked straight into a pole while staring at him. He’d been sitting outside the music block, plucking out a rhythm on one of the school’s acoustic guitars, his focus on the strings, his shaggy blonde hair hanging around his face, and she’d walked past him—an enthralled fifteen-year-old with an all-encompassing crush—unable to look away. Until she’d hit the pole and landed on her arse.

He’d hurried over to her and smoothed his hands around her upper arms, worry in his eyes even as a friendly smile played with his lips.

From that moment onward, she’d been defenseless against his hands.

Did he remember that now?

“Seriously, Stan.” She finally raised her head and glared at him. “What you’re doing, what you’re asking me to do, it’s a bit fucked up.”

He sat perched on the edge of the coffee table in front of her, looking at her, so close his knees brushed hers. The faint caress of denim on Sonja’s bare skin sent a ripple of wanton sensations through her.

Levi, the perceptive bastard, didn’t miss her body’s reaction. A knowing light danced in his eyes and he leant forward, holding her gaze with his. “And yet, you’re turned on by the request.”

“I’m not going to sleep with you and your boyfriend, Levistan.”

“But you want to.”

Her belly clenched. Not just at the calm confidence of his statement, but at the truth in it.

His music moves the world. Can his love move her heart?

Love’s Rhythm

© 2012 Lexxie Couper

Heart of Fame, Book 1

Nick Blackthorne knows all about words of love. They’re the reason he’s the world’s biggest rock star. The irony? He turned his back on love a long time ago, lured away by the trappings of fame.

An invitation to a friend’s wedding is a stark reminder of how meaningless his life has become. When he enters that church, there’s only one woman he wants on his arm—the one he walked out on a lifetime ago. But first he has to find her, even if all she accepts from him is an apology.

Kindergarten teacher Lauren Robbins once had what every woman on the planet desires. Nick. Their passion was explosive, their romance the stuff of songs…and it took fifteen years to get over him. Then out of the blue Nick turns up at her door, and all those years denying her ache for him are shattered with a single, smoldering kiss.

But molten passion can’t hide the secret she’s kept for all these years. Because it’s not just her heart on the line anymore…and not just her life that’ll be rocked by the revelation.

Warning: Remember your first crush on a rock star? Now add smoldering sex, a raw and undeniable passion, soul-shattering orgasms. And secrets…

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Love’s Rhythm:

“Hello, Lauren,” a deep male voice said behind her.

Lauren squealed. An honest to goodness squeal. At the same exact second she spun on her heel and swung her satchel, weighed down with two textbooks, her uneaten lunch, car keys, half-empty water bottle, twenty-two hand-drawn self-portraits tucked in a sturdy cardboard folder, her purse and her iPad.

The satchel smashed into the temple of the man standing behind her.

There was a solid thud, a surprised
oof
, followed by an even more surprised, “shit, that hurt,” before the man went down like a bag of bricks, collapsing to the ground in one fluid, graceful drop. No, not just the man, the rock star. The rock star the whole world idolised, the one who’d grown up in this very parochial town with her.

The rock star who’d stolen her heart in that life she refused to think about.

Lauren’s mouth fell open. Her pulse turned into a sledgehammer. She stared at the motionless man lying at her feet, refusing to believe what her eyes were telling her. Nick Blackthorne was here in Murriundah, and she’d rendered him unconscious with the very satchel he’d given to her fifteen years ago.

“Oh, no.”

The words were a whispered breath. She dropped to her knees, the ground’s winter-damp seeping through the linen of her trousers as she reached out with one hand and gave Nick’s shoulder a gentle push. “Nick?”

He didn’t move.

Oh boy, Lauren, you’ve KOed the world’s biggest rock star.

She shoved him again, a little harder this time. “Nick?”

He didn’t make a sound. Not a bloody one.

“Shit.”

Her heart slammed into her throat, just as hard as the satchel had hit his head. She licked her lips and brushed a strand of his black hair from his forehead. He was just as gorgeous as always. Older, yes. He was almost thirty-seven after all, but the years looked good on him, so good. In fact, they suited him. When he’d been a teenager, he’d been god-like in his beauty. When he was in his twenties, that god-like beauty had verged on painful to look at. She’d spent many nights lying in the bed they’d shared for a year and a half, gazing at him while he slept, wondering at his perfection, her belly knotting with love, her sex constricting with longing. And then it had become just her bed, Nick nothing but a ghost in her heart.

She’d stopped reading articles about him somewhere in his late twenties, knowing each one would only make her stupid heart ache. But it was impossible to avoid seeing images of him. He kept popping up on the national news. Australia loved one of their own, especially when they’d won a Grammy or Billboard Award, or when they were dating Hollywood royalty or British royalty, something Nick Blackthorne seemed to do on a regular basis. Even worse was the local
Murriundah Herald
, the small newspaper constantly keeping the town aware of their famous
son
and his activities. Those images were hard to escape, and when she had let herself stare at them for longer than a heartbeat, she’d noticed his late twenties and early thirties only elevated his looks to a lived-in sexiness. The tiny seams around his eyes, the lines by his nose, they all heightened what she’d never forgotten—Nick Blackthorne was a sexy, sexy man. And now here he was, unconscious on his side in the Murriundah Public School’s muddy playground, looking even sexier than she remembered.