Reckless Love: A Billionaire Baby Steamy Fantasy Multicultural Love Story Rockstar Romance (3 page)

CHAPTER TEN

Leo

“So, Victor, are you ready for this marriage thing?” Leo asked, coming upon his brother in the dressing room.

Viktor straightened his tie. “Sure, I suppose so. By the way, has anyone told you, that you sound just like an American now?”

Leo snorted. They had, in fact. He got teased about it fairly often, but that’s what came from being a man of the world, not just a British fop. “Don’t be silly. Seriously, why are you getting married anyway? Is it just to keep mother happy?”

The sides of Victor’s mouth turned downward. He looked at his younger brother with what appeared to be disdain.  “I think not. Has it ever occurred to you, brother, that some people actually really do fall in love? That it’s not all about one groupie after another? The next fuck?”

Something inside Leo hardened. “Is that all you think I am,
brother
, just a voracious consumer of blonde after blonde?” His eyes narrowed. “There’s more to me than that. You know I was in love once.”

“For how long, ten minutes?” Victor turned to him. “You may be my best man, but you’re certainly not the best one to give advice on these sort of matters.”

“Who’s giving advice?”
Fucking Victor. Such a twat. Always thinks that he’s better than everyone else
. “I wouldn’t dare. It’s not like you’d listen to me.”

“Well that’s bloody well right. Especially in matters of love.”

“I’m sure you know everything there is to know. See you at the ceremony.”

Leo turned on his heel, and walked out the door. The tuxedo was already chafing him. What he wouldn’t give to be wearing an old ripped T-shirt and jeans right now. Sitting in a Texmex place in Austin. Putting his feet up on a café patio in San Francisco. Clubbing with a smoking hot chick in New York City.

Grabbing that cellist woman and kissing her.

Tradition is binding,
he thought
. Just like marriage. It’s a trap, and Victor is so far in that he can’t even see it.

Leo
had
been in love once. Long ago, with a young girl from the village. In private school, there wasn’t much chance to meet girls, but Leo was doing his best to game the system to be able to leave every Thursday for a couple, or a even sometimes a precious few, hours. He would bribe the porter and hang about one of the shops, hoping to go unrecognized, since there was a girl there who had caught his attention – fully. Her name was Julia. And she was beautiful – dark hair and eyes, full lips, white teeth. Of course, he had tried to ask her out and for some untold reason she had refused him, not particularly callously, but it was what happened afterward that caused him the pain. She had used him for several months for money, rides here and there, whatever she could get out of him, before he had finally come to his senses and cut contact with her. It was shameful. And when the headmaster had found out there was hell to pay.

Since then, his heart had closed.
It was a miracle that it was ever open in the first place
, he thought
, after his upbringing. It was easier to ‘voraciously consume blondes’ as Victor had put it.
Why bother putting all that time in when you could get all the reward for practically nothing? Sing a song on a big enough stage, and the world was your bordello.
Enough money and you could have anyone.

He prowled around the estate waiting for the guests to arrive.
It wouldn’t be long now before the family would be eyeing him as they always did, judging him for his lifestyle. Well then where were they when he was sent off to private school? Boarding school? If they didn’t like what he turned into, perhaps they should’ve played a role in his upbringing. Fuck it. I like what I’ve become. And I have a hell of a lot more fun than these people.

In the distance he heard the cello again, its soaring lines, its soft moans. He could feel his cock’s almost Pavlovian response to the music, imagining who was playing it, who was coaxing those sounds from its body.
At least that would be one thing that would be entertaining today. Watching that woman.
If he were honest with himself, he’d been waiting for that since the first time he saw her. Not that he gave a shit about the music that she would play – fusty old classical music – but at least looking at her, even being in the same room as her, would relieve the pressure and boredom.

Momentarily he pondered if she ever felt the same.
Probably not.
She must’ve chosen the life of a classical musician.
For him music was so different – it was a release, throwing off the bonds of his inherited life.
Freedom. Recklessness. Thousands upon thousands of screaming fans, all wanting him.
Not bar lines, dead composers, dusty, crumbling sheet music.
Everything that came out of his mouth they cheered.
So what if he was alone in the end of the day? What did it matter anyway? Like they say, you don’t pay a hooker for the sex, you’re paying her to leave afterwards.

At least that’s what Nigel always says – and he’ll be single forever. And that is the way to be
.

It’s too bad this wasn’t one of Origin of Species’ concerts, and not this string quartet
, he thought, his cock still straining at his jeans
. I could use a groupie right about now.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Jasmine and Leo

The ceremony was underway.  Jasmine trembled a little on the stage, and it wasn’t just from stage fright. She was doing her best to avoid the relentless stare of Leo, who’d had his eyes fixed on her for the entire ceremony thus far. It was all she could do to stop herself from putting down her cello and going over to straddle him, put her arms around his neck and kiss him hard.

In her mind, she could almost feel him underneath her, hardening, his hands coming around to snake his fingertips slowly up the front of the bodice of her dress. Her face flushed. She could sense her heart rate rising as she stared at her music, her bow trembling in her hand.

She had never felt like this about anyone before. Nobody had really made a dent in her before this man, who had barely spoken ten words to her. But it wasn’t about the words, the ceremony, the man. Even if he were devastatingly handsome. It was about the way she felt when she looked at his face.

Like she knew his pain. And his joy. And wanted to know his pleasure. Intimately.

Leo tried to pay attention. It was his brother’s wedding after all, and he was the best man. It was his job to act as if this was the most important occasion in the world.
And perhaps it was the most important - but not for the reasons his brother thought so. But because of that damned cellist sitting up there.

Leo knew that Victor didn’t care about his life, nor did he care for his choices. And frankly, Leo felt the same way about Victor’s – they were very different people in that Victor had grown up earlier, at a time when his mother and father had even been in love, and committed to raising a family despite the complications – the underpinnings of it all. Leo had been more of a surprise born ten years later when the bloom was nearly off the rose. An accident.

Probably one reason they had sent him to boarding school so quickly.

So he had always felt this way: moor less, detached.

And one thing about this girl, was that she seemed more attached than anything he’d come across. Anyone he’d ever met.
He watched her lift her bow.
Were her hands trembling?
He thought he could detect something amiss, but as she started to play it all changed. As she embraced the cello, the sounds that emerged from her bow started not to seem like music anymore, although they were clearly, perfectly uttered with the others.

Every sound was now raw emotion – pure passion. It was if he could hear his own soul crying out in the low moan of the cello as it stretched for something that transcended the wedding.

Images fluttered through his head. Each sound brought about a feeling, which in turn made him remember. The downcast, heavy-lashed eyes of the girl he loved in boarding school. The smell of his mother’s perfume – Chanel No. 5. The clack of her heels as she left the nursery – left him alone. His father teaching him the finer points of being an equestrian. His first beer. His first blowjob. His first feeling of being alone in foreign country, needing someone. 

He wanted to shout, to cry. Wanted to pull the bow out of her hands, take her into his arms, tip her chin up with a smooth motion and claim her with a kiss. In front of all these people. Use the ring in his pocket, his brother’s ring, to place on her finger, sliding the diamond onto her sensitive, magical, long, latte-colored finger.

What the fuck am I thinking? For fuck’s sake Leo, get it together, you twat.

He looked down at the program, crumpling it in his hands.  The cellist – that kind of woman – would never want him. It was only the floozies, the groupies, the gold-diggers who chased him. Real women like that one on stage, the one playing like she understood humanity – they had no need for him. Nobody did.

He wished he could leave. Just walk out. Get on a plane. Or, run, grab her and her moaning cello, and go back to his room and spend all this passion, all his feeling on every inch of her skin.

He was jolted back into reality by the priest clearing his throat. Victor and his new bride, Eugenie, were exchanging vows and he needed to surrender the ring to his brother at any moment. He fingered it in the pocket of his trousers. Closing his fingers around the small band of gold, again he imagined slipping it on the cellist’s finger as he kissed her lips softly, but a little roughly. Bumping her mouth with his, gently, before catching her lower lip in his teeth and pulling against it softly, before running his tongue over the smooth flesh.

God damn these visions.

“Leo!” Victor hissed, motioning.

Shit.
He fumbled for the ring, attention on his brother. Still his eyes flashed toward Jasmine and he thought he saw a flash of a smile in her eyes. He grinned crookedly, sexily, guiltily, at her, and handed his brother the ring, which he slipped on his new wife’s hand with a smooth, practiced motion.

Victor
.

When the newly married couple turned toward the congregation, Leo noted that there wasn’t the vulgar display of applause, as you might see in an American church, but the surge of music from the string quartet felt like a triumph. Again he caught her eye, and saw that hint of joy, of abandon.

Jasmine couldn’t get his devilish smile out of her mind, the way he looked at her like they were the only two in the room, and this fueled her as her bow flew over the strings. She played her emotions of budding love, dreams, the mischievousness of his grin, the fact that he was still free out, onto the crowd.

The applause that was held back for the happy couple was held as well for the string quartet’s performance. Guests were confused. Usually wedding music was good, was proper, but it was never like this. Alive, spontaneous, beautiful. They filed out, awed looks on their faces, dreaming about the feelings that had somehow been awakened in them by the ceremony, and the music.

Kerry looked at Jasmine, face beaming. She didn’t say anything yet, but Jasmine could tell that she had won out.

“That was flawless!” came the whisper as Kerry bent down to adjust the music. They were to play one more piece and then their part of the ceremony would be over, with only the reception left. Excited, Jasmine tucked a curl behind her ear, and grinned at Kerry, before they launched into the next work. Her dark eyelids, shimmering with Kerry’s aqua eyeliner, closed in the ecstasy of the music.

Leo walked out slowly, savoring each moment of the passionate playing that washed over him. For just a moment he didn’t miss the shrill cry of the electric guitar, his own raspy vibrato, the driving beat of Origin’s drummer. There was just as much passion in this, and there was enough desire in him that frankly, it was a bit hard to walk. His pants were just getting a little too tight across the front.

His aunt, still sitting in the pew, had her eyes at his crotch level, and clearly saw something suspicious.

“Hello Auntie,” he grinned smarmily. “So… exciting to see you!”

She averted her eyes quickly, fanning herself with her program.
I’ll get this shit back to normal,
he figured, recovering his swagger.
If it kills me. Time for a post-wedding drink.