MirrorMusic (4 page)

“Mmm, not a bad idea, I’ll see what the guys think.” He
paused. “
Pumpkins and squeals, she tastes like a meal
,” he sang
throatily.

“Don’t you dare,” I said, shocked that he might take my
stupid idea seriously.

His grin dropped and he reached out and tucked a lock of
hair behind my ear. “You look amazing,” he said in a soft voice. “Even better
than I remembered.”

My skin tingled where his fingertip had brushed the small
patch behind my ear. “You don’t look any different,” I said, although that
wasn’t strictly true. He looked more handsome, if that was possible. His jaw a
little squarer, his eyes greener and he’d taken to sporting a dense layer of
stubble. “And I don’t understand,” I carried on in as stern a voice as I could
muster, “why you were so desperate to see me after all this time.”

“I’ve
always
been desperate to see you. I just got
caught up in the roller-coaster ride the band has taken us on over the last few
years. It’s only now we’ve managed to catch our breath and get used to what
happened when we were first catapulted into the limelight.” His gaze captured
mine. “It’s only now I’ve had the chance to sit and figure out what’s really
important to me outside the insane world of the music industry.”

He dipped his head and his lips hovered over my mouth. “And
it’s you, pumpkin, you’re what’s important to me, it’s always been you.” His
lips settled on mine again, the tip of his tongue searching and caressing.

I kissed him back. I couldn’t help it, it was instinctual,
my body was taking what it needed with no consideration for my vulnerable
heart.

“And you still taste so good too,” he murmured. “So damn
good.” He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close. My hands rested on
the muscles of his chest, absorbing the heat of him and feeling his small,
tight nipples beneath my palms. His embrace was calmer now, steadied, as if our
frantic union in the car had allowed him to regain some kind of control. It
felt so right to be in his arms. Loved, protected. I melted into him, and
through the towel his steely erection prodded my stomach.

“Robbie, no.” I pushed at him and took a step back. “What’s
going on? We can’t do this. We can’t just meet up and have sex. I can’t get my
head around it.”
Or my heart.

His arms fell to his sides, his mouth damp and shiny from
our kiss. “But I want you back,” he said simply. “For good.”

“We’ve been there, done that. It didn’t work, remember?”

“But we loved each other so much and there’s still something
there, a lot there. Hell, I think we just proved that.” He dragged in a deep
breath and his brows pulled together. “Jenny, you’re the first thing on my mind
when I wake up and the last thing on my mind when I go to sleep at night.”

I shook my head, hardly daring to believe his words. He was
describing my first and last thoughts of each and every day.

“It will work this time, it has to,” he said softly.

I rubbed my hand over my forehead. I was hot, hot and
bothered. My clothes felt damp on my back. “But you’ll still accuse me of
seeing other guys even when I’m not. Still want to check up on me. And I can’t
stand that, you know I can’t, it’s what destroyed us last time.”

“I’m different, I’ve grown up.” His forehead creased. “It
was hard for me then. You’d gone off to uni in Edinburgh and left me in
suburbia. Everything was new and exciting for you, you were a student, working
hard and playing hard in a big new city.” His voice lowered and a muscle flexed
in his cheek. “You were playing without me. I got the dregs of you when you
came home, tired and with piles of study to do over the holidays.”

“But that’s how it was at uni, I had to study during the
holidays to get top grades, you knew that.”

“You were supposed to study there, while you were away. The
holidays were
my
time with you. I couldn’t understand why you hadn’t got
the work done in term time. The same old thought kept coming back to my
head—you hadn’t done it because you were seeing someone there, someone who took
up all your time and energy.”

I sighed. We’d had this conversation too many times. It was
like picking at an old scab until it oozed blood. “You know I’m not the sort of
girl who’d cheat and lie, I couldn’t even fake it to Mrs. Baker that time she
accused me of hanging out behind the bike shed with you. I got us both a week
of detention because I blushed and stammered so much she knew full well where
I’d been
and
what I’d been doing.”

He half smiled at the memory of me letting him touch my
breasts over the top of my school shirt that day. “I know that now.” He stepped
closer again. “Because I’ve been there, been immersed in a career, going after
what I wanted with such single-minded focus that it consumed my every waking
moment.” He reached for my hand and rubbed his thumb over my knuckles. “I
understand what you were going through, what your studies meant to you and how
time-consuming it was.”

I looked at his anxious face, at the way his eyes had narrowed
and his brow had furrowed. It was older than the face I’d last gazed at in the
flesh. There was nothing boyish about his features anymore. Robbie was all man.

“You have to believe me,” he said.

My heart churned.
What should I think?
Four years ago
I’d walked away from him. Shut the door and left him alone and devastated. It
wasn’t because I hadn’t loved him, it was because I couldn’t cope with the way
he loved me. The way he couldn’t let me chase my dreams without him.

“We’ve both achieved what we dreamed of,” he said, tilting
my chin with his finger. “We’re where we want to be and,” he set his jaw
determinedly, “it’s time for us to be together again.”

A bolt sealing the doors to my heart slid open.

“Turn around,” he said, pressing on my shoulders. “Look in
the mirror.”

I allowed him to twist me until I stared at the mirror
behind the bed. I was more disheveled than I thought, my blonde hair tangled
and tufty and my hoody damp and drab.

“We were meant to be,” he whispered in my ear, the stubble
on his cheek brushing my temple. “Look at us, even after time apart we look so
right.” He caught my gaze in the reflection. “We feel so right. It’s always
been Robbie and Jenny, Jenny and Robbie, always, it’s our destiny. All you have
to do is say the word, just say yes to us.”

I swallowed and leaned back into his hard chest, my body
light and small next to his.

“I just don’t know how else to be,” he murmured, “without
you. Without the one person in the world who truly knows me. ”

The doors to my heart began to creep open. He was getting to
me. Big-time.

“When I sit alone thinking of all Manic Machines has
achieved it just doesn’t feel real,” he went on.

“But it is real, you just have to look at the wall of awards
and discs and photos.”

“It’s not real,” he said, curling his forearm around my
waist and pulling me back against him tighter. “Because I haven’t told you. I
haven’t shared it with you.” His other hand smoothed my hair over my shoulder.
I tilted my head and he pressed his lips to the side of my neck. I was glad he
was holding me, as his delicate touch made my legs feeble. “That’s got to
change,” he whispered. “I’ve got to have you back in my life, sharing this with
me. Everyone else has just been treading water until you were back in my arms
again.” He paused to drag in a breath. ”You’re the one thing missing, Jenny,
and you’re the one thing I want and
need
the most. Please, let’s try
again, let’s make it work this time.”

Those doors protecting my heart flew wide open. I’d spent so
long shutting them tight, saving myself from him, but the touch of his lips and
the heat of his words had blown them off their hinges. There was only one
answer I could give him if I was going to be true to myself. “Yes,” I said, “we
can try again.”

“Really?” He lifted his head to look at me in the mirror.

I smiled at the apprehension on his face. “Yes, really. And
I want you back too. I miss Jenny and Robbie.”

He slid his other arm around my waist. “Thank god for that,”
he said on a sigh.

“But it has to be a new us,” I said as he nuzzled his face
into my neck again. I squirmed at the delicious fluttering trailing over my
hypersensitive flesh as he kissed my ticklish spot. I had to lay down rules. Be
strong for both our sakes. “We have to start afresh, get to know one another
all over again. What just happened in the car, that was the old Robbie and
Jenny, lust-crazed. We have to take it slow and steady, like adults.”

“Suits me.” His fingers curled beneath the base of my hoody.
“I’m keen to get to know every single bit of you all over again as slowly or as
quickly as you want me to.” He lifted upward and I raised my hands and let the
heavy material slip over my head. “I’ve thought of nothing else for more months
than I care to admit, it’s been quite obsessional.”

He’d obsessed about me. The way I had him.

“And,” I said, watching as my hoody landed on top of the
black jeans and t-shirt he’d worn on stage—now in a heap in the corner. “You
have to promise to trust me. I am where I say I am, doing what I say I’m
doing.”

“I get all that now, I’m not twenty and ridiculously
insecure anymore. I won’t fuck up over something so stupid.” He lifted the
butterfly necklace sitting in the hollow of my throat. “You still wear this?”

“Sometimes.” I watched his reflection turn it over in his
big fingers and felt the chain tug the base of my neck. “When it’s your
birthday, Christmas, anniversaries, you know, when I’ve felt the need to be
close to you.”

His lips tilted. “Anniversaries of what?” he said, laying it
gently back on my skin.

I swallowed as he smoothed his hands into the dips of my
waist, tracing the outline of my body. “You know…firsts.”

“Firsts?”

“First kiss, July 8, first cinema trip March 4, first time
we…” I sighed.

“First time we…?” He began to pull my thin t-shirt upward
the way he had my hoody.

“The first time we made love.”

He paused and his eyes sparkled in the mirror. “In the tent,
at the bottom of my garden.”

“You remember?”

He slipped the top over my head and tossed it aside. My hair
fell around my shoulders, a couple of tendrils landing over my white bra. I
hadn’t planned on putting my underwear on show tonight so it was nothing
special, but it was clean and neat.

“How could I ever forget?” He gave a small groan. “I
performed terribly.”

“It was both our first time and it wasn’t that bad.”

“Yeah, it was. But I’m pleased to say, not counting my lack
of stamina in the car just now, I’ve improved considerably.” He rested the flat
of his hand at the base of my neck, over the butterfly on my necklace. I was
sure he’d be able to feel my pulse. “A lot of my improvement is thanks to you.
We had fun practicing, didn’t we?”

“Mmm,” I managed as he slid his hand down over my right
breast until he cupped me through the thin material. “We did.”

“And these babies,” he said, smoothing over my other breast
so he supported them both, “were the stars of all my teenage wet dreams. Right
from that first day I spotted a bra through your school blouse and realized you
were going to grow a set I wanted to see them, touch them, kiss them.”

“You did, plenty of times.”

“Yeah, but it took me a few years to get there.” He released
my breasts, pulled back slightly, and the next thing I knew my bra was sitting
at my feet. “It took me a while to persuade you to let me do that.”

“That was in the alley, between Mr. James’ and old Gerty
Drew’s, June 29.”

He grinned and let his thumbs brush over my tight nipples.
Darts of pleasure shot through my chest and settled low in my belly. My nipples
strained for his touch and I watched in the mirror as he lowered his head over
my shoulder and studied his own delicate caresses. “I just about went off in my
pants that day,” he murmured.

I sucked in a breath as my breasts grew heavy with need and
my pulse rate picked up even further.

“You’re even more exquisite than I remembered, Jenny. I want
you so bad, not just for a quickie, I want to savor making love to you all
night long, and then again tomorrow night and the next. Do you remember what we
said?”

I turned in his arms and pressed against his hot chest and
hard pecs. “What?”

“That we would be each other’s first and last.”

I gave a small nod.

“We promised,” he said. “Not just that night in the tent but
a hundred more times over the years.” His lips brushed mine. “Have me back,
Jenny, be mine and we can pick up where we left off and start being each
other’s last, right now, tonight. I don’t want anyone but you, ever again.”

I slid my hands around the base of his neck, my soul
swelling with joy and love. My stomach clenched, I could hardly breathe. Never
in my wildest dreams had I dared to hope that he still felt the same way about
me as I did about him. I pushed to my toes and pulled his mouth to mine. “Yes,”
I said breathlessly onto his lips. “Yes, I want to be yours again and I want
you to be mine, forever.”

His eyes shut, his long lashes resting on his cheek, and he
blew out a slow breath. “You won’t regret it, I promise.”

And then we were kissing, hard, fast and urgent and I forgot
all about my slowly rule. His hands were at my jeans, tugging and popping open
buttons. A hunger grew inside me. A hunger that couldn’t be ignored, not for
another moment.

He shoved at my jeans and knickers, dragging them down my
thighs. I gasped as he stooped to take my nipple into his wet, warm mouth.
Arched into him and groaned for more. “Sit down,” he said on a rush of breath,
urging me onto the bed. He knelt in front of me and slid off my sneakers.
Tugged away my jeans and underwear completely.