Lust's Rhythm (Heart of Fame Book 10) (7 page)

Letting out a low chuckle, he sat up and rubbed at his wrists.

“Does it hurt?”

He shook his head at her question. “Nope. Not at all.”

She smiled. “Good. So you’ll let me do it again on our wedding night?”

He leant forward and captured her lips in a quick kiss before shuffling off the bed. “Hell, yeah.”

It took him barely a minute to dispose of the used condom and clean himself up. He heard her moving about the bedroom, heard the distinctive hiss of a bottle of soda being opened.

Jed allowed a moment to study himself in the mirror.

The story of his tattoos had never been shared. They’d been asked about often in interviews and by fans. He’d always stayed silent about them. The secrecy contributed to his reputation. There were fan theories out there, and—according to his agent, some seriously twisted and erotic fan fiction about them as well. He never corrected any of them. As his agent had pointed out, it added to the whole “Jed Brody, bad boy rock star” package.

That he was about to share the significance behind the ink with Chloe stirred something profound deep inside him.

Love? Are you seriously in love with her? Not just lust, but love?

Letting out a shaky sigh, he exited the bathroom.

Chloe sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed, waiting for him. She’d wrapped one of the scarves around her head in what looked like a futile effort to control the untamed curtain of copper-auburn curls that was her hair. Another scarf hung around her neck, fixed in a loose Windsor knot. The other two were nowhere to be seen.

He crossed to the bed, crawled onto it, and flattened her to her back with a hungry kiss that turned into wild guffaws into her mouth as she attacked his ribs with tickling fingers.

“Okay, okay,” he laughed, rolling onto the bed beside her. “Fog, fog!”

Giggling, she stretched out on her side next to him and played with his feet with her toes, fingers tracing the webs of the redback spider tat once again. “Clever man. I am an expert tickler.”

He grinned back at her. “I’m defenseless against tickling.”

“Oh, good to know. Now…” She brushed a finger over his heart, right where the distinct red shape on the spider’s abdomen was inked into his flesh. “Tell. This one first.”

Jed’s throat grew thick. Tight. “My dad abandoned me and my mum when I was very young. They were both pretty wild back in the day. I have very vague memories of insane parties taking place in our house, of the cops bursting into them. I remember Dad hitting Mum more than once. She took it all, no matter the broken bones and shattered cheeks. Half the time back then, I think she was too drunk to know he was hurting her.”

“Jesus, Jed,” Chloe whispered, stunned horror in her eyes. Her fingers on the spider tattoo had grown still. “I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

He shook his head, his smile genuine. “It’s all good. My wife should know the tragic backstory of the man she marries, yes?”

He expected her to laugh, to point out they really weren’t going to get married. Instead, she nodded and pressed her palm to his chest, directly over his heart. “Yes, she should. Go on.”

A heavy pressure wrapped his chest at her words. A feeling of intangible happiness rolled though him.

“He left one day to go to work,” he continued. “He was a security guard at our local shopping centre—and never came back. Mum cleaned up her act, got a job, and did everything she could to raise me right. To apologise for the life she’d given me when Dad was still around.”

Chloe studied him. “And the spider represents the poison he’d injected into that life?”

Jed nodded, another warm swell of happiness flowing through him at the fact she understood. “He came back when I was almost eighteen. I came home from school one day to find him in our kitchen, off his face drunk, and laying into Mum with his fists. Her shirt was torn open, her skirt ripped. She had scratches on her throat, her chest. Her lip was bloody and swollen. I picked up the closest thing on the table and beat the shit out of him with it. It wasn’t until he fell to the ground that I realized I’d been hitting him with a rolling pin.”

“Did you kill him?”

The memory of that afternoon washed over Jed, bringing with it the familiar mix of hate, guilt, and relief. “No. But we never saw him again after that. As far as I know, he died in a gutter somewhere a few years ago.”

“Jesus,” Chloe whispered again.

He gave her a wry smile, sliding her palm to the tattoo of the ornate cross on his side. “Which brings me to this one,” he said, watching her gaze move over it. “After Dad left us the first time, Mum found religion. Big time. She moved me to a Christian school. I was in the church choir, and then a Christian rock band. That’s where I was discovered. A record-label scout heard me singing at a school talent contest when I was seventeen. Believe it or not, there’s actually an album out there in the world with me singing all about the grace and beauty of God.”

Chloe’s eyebrows shot up. “There’s
what
? How is it I don’t know anything about this?”

Jed grinned. “I have a very good agent who has spent a lot of time and money making sure Jed Brody and Jedidiah Smith—my father’s last name—are never connected.”

Her lips parted. A frown pulled at her eyebrows. “And you’re telling me?”

“I trust you.”

She didn’t say anything to that. Instead, she drew her face closer and brushed his lips with hers.

For a moment, he fought the need to deepen the kiss. To capture her lips completely. His body ached to do so. It was only sheer willpower that stopped him.

That and the fact that telling her about the tattoos right now felt…important.

Finding her gaze, he smiled again. “Mum was religious, but I questioned it. All the time. When Dad came back, when he…when he tried to rape her, almost beat her to death, I knew I was done with God. The day I told Mum I was quitting the band, that I was changing schools and not going to church with her…”

“It tore you apart?”

The tender sorrow in Chloe’s voice caressed Jed as surely as her hand on his side. “We recovered, Mum and I,” he said, chest tight. “But the wound between us has never truly healed. I’d also torn a part of who I was out of me. And there’s the story of the cross. I got that one first, by the way. Before the spider. It was my first tat when I moved out of her home. Of everything I’ve done in my life, I think that tattoo and what it represents is the one Mum’s the most disappointed about.”

“Parents,” Chloe uttered, her soft grunt wobbly.

“They make us who we are,” he said, tracing the back of his knuckle down the side of her face.

He’d shocked her. Shaken her. He could see that.

“They do,” she answered back, her voice husky.

“Let me ask you a question?”

She nodded, her eyes unreadable.

“Are you really spoilt? I just don’t get those vibes from you. Feisty, yes. Supremely confident and self-assured, sure. Self-aware, absolutely.” He touched her cheek again when she let out a wry snort and gave him a sheepish smile. “Spoilt, though? No. I don’t think you are.”

A wistful expression crossed her face and she let out a sigh. “No,” she said, shifting a little on the bed beside him. “I’m not spoilt. No more than the average daughter, I guess. Mum would have had a conniption if Dad had tried to spoil me, and to be honest, Dad didn’t try. I grew up knowing he was famous, that Josh was famous, and when I was old enough to understand what that meant, I realized I was famous for being a part of their family, which was weird. By that stage, I’d heard the word
no
enough as an answer to requests for things Mum and Dad considered unnecessary indulgences that I was pretty grounded.”

Jed studied her. It dawned on him, as her voice played with his senses and her words played with his heart, that he loved hearing her talk. The fact she was sharing something about her life, her family…it felt special. It made him feel special in a way screaming fans and Number One hits didn’t. A profound connection he’d never truly felt before until now.

He wanted to kiss her for that. But later. For now, he wanted to talk with her more. “Did they approve of you becoming a musician?” he asked, curious about her decision to become a cellist in a family of rock gods.

“There was no pressure to follow Dad or Josh into music,” she answered, that wistful look becoming a warm smile. “In fact, for a while I wanted nothing more than to follow in Mum’s footsteps and become a teacher, although I was thinking more visual arts teacher in a high school rather than kindergarten teacher.”

“What changed your mind?”

She let out a soft laugh. “A musical-instrument workshop at school when I was eleven. One of the instruments I picked up in that workshop was the cello. It was love at first sight.” Her eyes twinkled. “Kind of like us.”

Jed grinned. “That powerful, eh?”

“That powerful. I came home from school and asked Mum and Dad to buy me one.”

“And they did?”

“Yeah. On the proviso I pick up our dog’s poo in the backyard every day for the next six months.”

Jed burst out laughing. “Oh man, I would give good money to see you picking up poo.”

“Told you I wasn’t spoilt. When it was obvious I was talented at playing the cello, the serious lessons began. But even when I was accepted into the Sydney Conservatorium of Music after high school, I wasn’t allowed to be a diva brat. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to express my appreciation to Mum and Dad for that. They are the best parents ever.”

Best parents.

A shaky sigh escaped Jed before he could stop it.

Mortified contrition flooded Chloe’s face and she pressed her palm to her mouth. “Oh, Jed,” she said into her hand, her voice muffled. “That was so thoughtless of me. I’m sorry. Fuck. I’m so sorry.”

He shook his head and leant forward enough to place a soft kiss on her lips. “It’s all good. I’m at peace with my childhood, honest.”

Her eyebrows dipped in a frown. He could see she was upset with herself.

“I’m good,” he reassured her. “Promise.”

She lowered her hand from her mouth, her gaze locked on his face. “You don’t have to tell me about the wings if you don’t want to.”

He let out a laugh as husky as her voice. “Scared?”

She shook her head. “No. But I hate that I’m making you recount all the shit and hurt you’ve been through.”

“The shit and the hurt also make us who we are, babe.”

She studied him, searching his eyes for something. He didn’t know what, but he didn’t look away. He was with her now. One-hundred percent. All the way. He was hers. He wasn’t going to hide anything from her.

It was liberating.

Wonderful.

“Tell me about the wings,” she said, the words barely more than a breath.

He smiled. “The wings are fucking cool. And they completely cover up a scar I have on my back from a mole that needed to be removed when I was twenty.”

Chloe blinked.

Jed stretched his smile into a grin. “True.”

She blinked again. “So, two soul-wrenching reasons and one ‘’cause they’re cool’ reason? Really?”

He grinned wider. “Yep.”

She frowned. “I don’t know whether to slap you, tickle you, or kiss you senseless.”

“All three sound—”

She silenced him with the third option before he could finish.

It didn’t take long for the kiss to become more. At some point, after long, glorious, delicious minutes of foreplay, during which he made her come twice with his mouth, and Chloe almost made him come with hers—and a mad dash to his discarded jeans to find his wallet and the condom inside it—he sank into her sweet heat.

Their orgasms claimed them at the same time. He’d never experienced anything so perfect. So powerful.

Sometime much later, after a shower that turned into a water fight of epic scale, and a room service order of ham-and-pineapple pizza and chocolate chip ice cream, they curled up together on the suite’s biggest sofa, Chloe tucked into Jed’s body, and watched the most cheesy, trippy, B-grade sci-fi horror movie Jed had ever seen on television.

“Kill him!” Chloe yelled at the screen as a petrified astronaut fought with an alien clearly created on someone’s home computer. “Kill him, kill him, kill him!”

She wriggled against Jed with every excited order, her naked butt mashing against his groin. All he could do was laugh. And hug her closer.

And wonder if he was dreaming.

How had this happened? How was he, Jed Brody, sharing a moment of sheer contented, romantic, blissful life with the Untouchable? How was every fantasy of normalcy he’d ever had now coming true with her?

He’d never felt more relaxed, more happy, and more real than he did now.

The sound of Chloe’s laughter, the feel of her body next to his, their mutual enjoyment of a movie no one else he knew would waste time on…everything was exactly what he wanted.

And he was living it now. With the only woman he wanted to live it with.

How had that happened?

And what did he have to do to make sure it didn’t end?

On the screen, the woeful CGI alien overpowered the terrified astronaut.

“Boo,” Chloe protested on a laugh. “Boo.”

He tucked her closer to his body and kissed her cheek. “Told you so.”

She twisted in his arms to grin up at him. “Yeah, yeah, I know you reckoned the alien was going to win.”

He grinned back. “I’m a closet B-grade sci-fi cinephile. I should have warned you about that before you agreed to be my wife.”

Fisting her hand in the hair at the back of his head, she tugged his face to hers and smacked a loud kiss on his lips. “I love that you’re a closet B-grade sci-fi cinephile,” she declared. “So is Dad. But don’t tell anyone. It’ll ruin his cool reputation.”

An image of
the
Nick Blackthorne watching cheesy low-budget sci-fi movies in the dark filled Jed’s head. He grunted, the sound wry even to his ears. “At least that’s one thing he might approve of about me.”

He didn’t realize he’d muttered it aloud until the smile on Chloe’s face faded.

Fuck.

Shifting suddenly, she snatched up the remote, turned off the television, and then dropped to the floor, kneeling to face him where he lay on the sofa, her bent elbows resting on its edge near his chest. “Why
does
Dad think I need to stay away from you? He’s never said, just that you’re
off-limits
.”