Lust's Rhythm (Heart of Fame Book 10) (11 page)

Chloe let out a wry snort. “I’m a Blackthorne, Dad. Did you really think I’d be normal? I’m just as ruled by my heart and my soul as you and Josh are, and I am completely and totally okay with that. I need you to be as well. I need you to trust me, trust my heart. And trust Jed.” She flicked Jed a quick look. “He’s not who you think he is, in the same way you’re not who most people think
you
are.”

Nick said something. Chloe’s lips twitched. “Dad, Uncle Aslin told me all those stories about you trashing hotel rooms when you were in your twenties were just bullshit stories your agent made up. He told me you spent most nights in your hotel room when you were on tour, watching cheesy sci-fi movies on your laptop.”

Jed bit his bottom lip to stop his surprised laugh.

Josh, it seemed, didn’t bother, his chuckle soft but definitely filled with delight.

Jed gave his new brother-in-law a quick glance. Josh gave him a look back that said,
Whoa. Who knew?
, his lips twitching like his sister’s.

Returning his attention to Chloe, Jed studied her face. Strained to hear what Nick was saying to her.

He couldn’t make it out. But she wasn’t angry. Or frowning. That was something, right? Maybe he was going to survive after all. Maybe.

“I do, Dad,” she said, the words thick with an emotion that stirred something deep in Jed’s gut. “I really do. As much as you love Mum.”

A beat of silence followed, and then she burst out laughing. “Grounded, Dad? Really?”

He said something else, something that made her smile wider. “Yeah, yeah, Dad. Whatever.”

She caught her bottom lip again at his unheard response, and then let out a low sigh, nodding. “I know, Dad. I love you, too. And Mum. More than you’ll ever know.”

And with that, she tossed the phone to Josh. “Bugger off, big brother,” she said, snaking her hands up Jed’s back even as she grinned at Josh. “Dad said you can go now.”

Josh caught his phone with one hand, shoved it back into his pocket, and cocked an eyebrow. “Did he now?”

Chloe nodded. “He did. But he told me to tell
you
, Jed, that if you do anything to hurt me, he won’t just destroy your career, he’ll make sure no one ever hears from you again. Or knows where to look for the body.”

Jed blinked. Chloe grinned. “He’s all bluff. Aslin Rhodes, his old bodyguard, would hide your body, so that’s at least one person who’d know, right?”

“Oh, well,” Jed pulled a contemplative face, “that’s something, I guess.”

She giggled. And then wriggled out of his arms. “Oh, oh, wait, Josh. Before you go, take a piccie of this.”

She turned her back to her brother and gently removed the bandage covering the tattoo of the guitar/cello.

“Jesus, sis,” Josh groaned. “
Now
Dad is going to kill you.”

Chloe grinned up at Jed. “No, he won’t. He knows exactly what it’s like to be in love.”

Josh snorted, withdrew his phone, snapped a shot, and then shook his head.

“Make sure you tell him Jed and I got matching ones when you send it to him.”

“You are asking for trouble, Chloe,” Josh chuckled.

Chloe closed the minute distance between her and Jed, slid her arms around his waist, and snuggled against his body. “No, now I’m asking to be defiled by my husband.”

“And on that note,” Josh spun on his heel, and crossed the suite to the door, “I’m out of here. See you at dinner next Sunday night. At Mum and Dad’s place. It’s your turn to cook, remember.”

“Tinned spaghetti on toast, then?”

Josh turned at the door and gave Jed a pained look. “Please tell me you can cook?”

Jed nodded. Then waved his hand in a so-so motion. “I can whip up a mean chicken and chorizo paella when I need to.”

A smile stretched Josh’s lips. “Welcome to the family, Jed Brody. See you at dinner Sunday.”

“Good—” Jed began, a heartbeat before Chloe rose up on tiptoe and silenced him with a hungry kiss.

He heard Josh groan a second before the sound of the door clicking shut filled the room.

And then he didn’t hear anything else but his wife’s moans of pleasure.

There was, after all, some serious post-wedding defiling to be done.

Wedding present number five, coming right up. The Untouchable was about to be well and truly touched.

Stimulated, Book 1

Morpeth, Australia

“
Y
ou know they’re going to call the big guys in for this, don’t you?”

Sliding her fingers over the smooth, solid length gripped firmly in her left hand, Phoebe Masters flicked a sideward glance at the tall streak of stunning blondeness beside her and bit back a sigh. “I don’t want the big guys.”

The blonde—a.k.a. Sami Charlton, a.k.a. BFE (Best Friend Extraordinaire), a.k.a. Australia’s most successful female motocross rider—let out a chuckle. “I don’t think you’ll have a choice, Pheebster. Your studio’s been gutted. With a fire this bad you know they’re going to call in the investigation team. If Dad was alive he’d tell you the same thing.”

Phoebe’s stomach lurched and she ground her teeth. Damn it, when she’d upped and moved from Newcastle to the utterly parochial, completely charming historical village of Morpeth six months ago, she’d planned to never see the
investigation team
again.

“And I don’t believe for a second that you don’t want to see them.”

Sami’s calm statement made Phoebe’s pulse pound just a little harder in her neck. She bit back another sigh. Here she was, standing in the smoking, charred remains of what was once her studio, the place she spent every day blowing molten glass into artworks of stunning beauty, with the acrid, wholly jarring stench of scorched wood and wet timber stinging her sinuses with every breath. Reminding her with no uncertainty that everything she held dear and valuable was destroyed—and she was thinking about Damon Hunt and William Bradley.

“I don’t want to see them,” she grumbled, glaring at the object she gripped in her hand, the only thing salvageable in the heartbreaking mess. A long, thick shard of glass that, thanks to the fire, now looked like a massive, slightly demented glass dildo.

“See who?”

The gruff male voice behind Phoebe made her jump, the glass length almost slipping from her fingers as she did so. She pulled a face, wrapping her fingers tighter around the accidental dildo like it was her one and only life preserver. “No one.”

“The investigation team from Newcastle,” Sami said to the elderly man now standing on Phoebe’s left. “This has to be arson. There’s no other explanation for such an accelerated burn of materials designed to withstand high temperatures, don’t you think?”

The old bloke’s wiry salt-and-pepper eyebrows rose up his creased forehead and he tugged at his somewhat scruffy firefighter’s uniform with calloused hands. “And what would you be knowin’ about arson and accelerated burn, missy?”

Phoebe let out the sigh she’d been holding back for the last five minutes or so. “Captain Kilgour,” she placed her fingers lightly on the prickly old firefighter’s arm, “this is my best friend, Sami. Sami’s dad was the commander of the Newcastle District Fire Investigation Unit.” She turned and gave Sami a pointed look. “Sami, this is Keith Kilgour, the captain of Morpeth’s fire brigade.”

Kilgour squinted at Sami. “Was?”

Sami nodded. “Was.”

Phoebe knew her best friend wasn’t going to expand on her answer. The death of her father in a house fire still hurt Sami deeply.

Kilgour’s eyes narrowed even further before he returned his attention to Phoebe. “Well, much as I hate the idea of those upstart buggers from the city coming here and tellin’ me my business, the young missy is right. There’s somethin’ about the feel of the place I don’t like.” He sucked in his checks and smacked his lips. “It tastes wrong.”

Sami nodded. “Too bloody right.”

Phoebe frowned, ignoring the fluttering little knot in her belly at the “upstart buggers from the city” coming anywhere near her. “So what you’re telling me,” she grumbled, crossing her arms over her breasts, “is I can’t start cleaning up until the investigation team—”

“William and Damon,” Sami interjected.

Phoebe gave her a scowl. Damn, she was one for providing details today. “Until the Newcastle team come up and—”

“Work their magic,” Sami finished for her, a grin playing with the corners of her lip-glossed mouth.

Phoebe scowled harder. Were it not for Captain Kilgour standing beside them, Sami would be finding herself the recipient of a bloody good punch to the arm. Work their magic? Under no circumstances were Will Bradley and Damon Hunt working any kind of
magic
on her again. Ever.

“That’s right, Ms. Masters,” Captain Kilgour agreed, giving Phoebe what she suspected was supposed to be a reassuring smile. “The Newcastle boys will need to take a look at this before you can touch it.”

Phoebe let out a shaky sigh. Damn it.

“I could take a look around, Dad.”

A younger version of Keith Kilgour, dressed in a pristine firefighter’s uniform that almost—
almost
—hid a paunch and narrow shoulders, sidled his way over the charred mess, giving Phoebe a wide smile as he plucked the glass shaft from her hands. Blue eyes tried hard to hold hers, the effort lost when Captain Kilgour barked out a laugh.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Harvey. You barely passed the last fire science and behavior training course.”

Harvey Kilgour’s fleshy cheeks glowed red and Phoebe suppressed a need to shuffle her feet. Since moving to Morpeth, she’d more than once had to decline Harvey’s eager invitations to coffee, lunch, dinner, breakfast, a trip to the local drive-in. Six months of being “courted” by Harvey. And that was the word he used whenever he asked her out,
courted
, as if their relationship was anything more than determined suitor and non-interested recipient. Several rejections later and he still hadn’t taken the hint. Still, seeing him get shot down by his father
was
a touch uncomfortable.

It wasn’t that Harvey was grotesque or repulsive; he wasn’t. In fact, he seemed quite personable in a slightly desperate, puppy-dog kind of way. He was polite, charming, had an old-fashioned sense of propriety and an almost boyish innocence about him. He’d turned up with handpicked flowers a few times, had offered to fix anything in her home or studio if needed. When she’d come down with that very nasty dose of the flu, he’d arrived at her door with a steaming boiler of vegetable soup so bloody delicious it was all she could do not to run her fingers around the inside of the pot when it was all gone. Soup he’d
made
. How could she say no to a guy like that?

How indeed? But she had. Often.

For reasons she couldn’t put her finger on, something in her belly told her to stay away from Harvey—or at least keep him at arms’ length. Something that made her feel…unsettled.

What? More unsettled than the way Damon Hunt and William Bradley make you feel? Is that even possible?

Yeah, but
that
unsettled had nothing to do with an inexplicable discomfort and
everything
to do with two tall, dark, sarcastic and alpha-to-the-extreme men awakening sexual longings she couldn’t deny no matter how hard she tried.

A shiver rippled up her spine and before she could shut it out, a flash of memory blinded her…

William’s towering form, buck naked and completely aroused, his dark blond hair a tousled mess, his eyes glinting with hunger as Damon impaled her on his equally impressive cock. Damon’s full lips traveling over her throat, his strong hands squeezing her backside, her moans of rapture a familiar soundtrack to a weekend spent—

“Better go write the report—”

“Can I walk you to the—”

“Time I hit the road—”

Phoebe blinked, the cacophony of voices jerking her from the wholly unsettling memory. Her heart pounding too hard for her liking, she looked at Sami, for the moment needing to focus on one thing, one speaker—and her best friend was the least…vexing. “You’re going?”

Sami pulled a face. “Yeah, I know. I suck. But I have a photo shoot with
Inside Motor-Sport
magazine this afternoon and a meeting with my agent in less than three hours.”

Phoebe shot her watch a quick glance. With the way her best friend rode the classic Ducati she loved like a…well, a
lover
, Sami would make it back to Sydney with time to spare, as long as she wasn’t arrested for speeding.

“Okay,” Phoebe grumbled, turning completely to the Amazonian blonde to give her a hug. “Next time come up for longer than just a night.”

Sami squeezed her back. “Hey, if some prick hadn’t burned your studio down I’d be mooching off you for brekkie and you’d be wishing I’d hurry the hell up and go home.”

Phoebe chuckled. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

Sami flashed the kind of grin that made her the darling of the motocross world—cheeky, sexy and very, very devilish. “Of course I am. Say g’day to Damon and Will for me.”

Phoebe’s belly flip-flopped. “Bugger off with you, Charlton.”

With another squeeze, this one a tad gentler, Sami turned on her heel and strode from the blackened mess of Phoebe’s studio, hips swaying. “Better still,” she tossed over her shoulder, swinging her helmet beside her leg like a schoolgirl swings her school bag, “give them both a kiss.”