Strung Out (Needles and Pins #1) (71 page)

“I thought you said no one saw.”

“You’re going to need one looking out for your interests soon anyway. I’m just saying it’s time to think about who, before something else crazy happens and you’re wishing you already had one.”

She stared into a sky of black velvet and diamonds unable to comprehend the changes coming about in her life. The blessings and the curses more money than she could wrap her head around was about to bring. The decisions about to be on her shoulders.

“That’s not me. Today.” She was going in circles with this conversation, and she knew it. “I shouldn’t have said those things to her. I can’t believe I did it.”

Gage threw her off with his next words. “You know what I can’t believe? That you had all that crap going on as a kid. Everything you said made me want to shake the shit out of her.”

“She’s had kind of a fucked up life.”

“YOU’VE had a fucked up life.”

“It’s none of my business if she wants to do an interview for that documentary. I messed up. I’ve let everything build up, and I just went off on her. I should call her.”

“You’re not going to call her.”

She got to her feet with every intention of retrieving her phone from her purse, but when Gage, having followed her inside, realized what she was up to, he snatched her purse right before she grabbed it.

“The fuck?” She clamped her fingers on his wrist in an effort to force him to surrender her bag.

“If you still want to call tomorrow when you’re sober. Fine.”

They scuffled. She tripped over a small amp, and as he had been doing since the ice bar, he caught her. Her angry drunk phase cycled into the teary drunk phase. “God dammit, Gage. It’s my damn phone. Give it!”

Without warning, he flung the purse to the couch and scooped her to him until she fell over his shoulder.

His long strides ate up the distance, across the room, down the hall. She focused on the wet footsteps his soaked socks left on the polished floor.

“What? What the hell now?” She bounced as he took the stairs. “Why are you all caveman? Could you put me down…? Now?”

It was another half minute before he stopped, and her feet touched the floor. She found herself in the bathroom adjoining his bedroom. He reached inside the shower, and the water began to rain down.

“You’re freezing,” was his simplistic answer to what must have been her incredulous stare. “Your lips are blue. Don’t believe me?” He turned her to face the mirror, and she recoiled from her ghoulish appearance.

His wet tee shirt plopped to the floor, and he replaced the towel no longer around his neck with another, undoubtedly in an attempt to tame the chill bumps raised along inked muscle and flesh.

“Strip.”

“Strip?” she echoed.

While one part of her couldn’t believe he’d said that, another part of her ignited in response to that one word drifting past his sexy lips. Her ears savored his deep voice, with as much relish as her tongue had fed on the smoky vodka shots so delicious, she’d had three.

“The wet clothes. Get ‘em off.” And then, “They’re making you colder.” And then with a nudge toward the shower, “Or don’t. Just warm up before you get sick.”

That slight push was all it took for her to drop the robe and gravitate to the heavenly cascade of warmth. It was soon soaking through her clothing, through her skin, through her bones. She was being sprayed from all sides, and she tipped her head beneath one of the higher showerheads.

A groan pushed through her throat. She truly hadn’t realized she was freezing until the moment she no longer felt like a twenty-eight degree vodka shot. Her clothing began to weigh heavy, and she shrugged from her shirt, letting it collapse to a puddle in the corner of the stall. Opening her eyes, she found Gage’s gaze trained on her, almost trancelike.

Either she was too drunk to feel modest, or logic ruled enough to know her bra covered as much as her swimsuit ever had.

She unzipped her jeans and fought with them until she got one leg out.
Okay. Drunk
. She knew it now. Not only was she still off-balance with any quick movements, she was now down to her undies, made almost transparent with the water, with the shower door still open to Gage.

He flung his towel aside, stepped in, and saved her from falling for the umpteenth time of the day. Kneeling, he freed her remaining leg from the denim shackle and tossed the jeans atop her shirt.

Definitely drunk
. Standing before him in her wet lingerie, she felt empowered, not embarrassed.

“Fuck…” He swore. Water rivulets ran from the dampening ends of his hair down the contours of his skin. “Fuck… Fuck… Fuck me.”

“Finally?” She curved a smile of invitation, but didn’t dare touch him yet.

Yeah. She was drunk. But she had always been a drunk who lost inhibitions when it came to things she really wanted to do. Which meant, as much as she had wanted to say those horrible things to her mother, by the same token, she wanted Gage—inside her.

His dilated eyes snapped to hers, understanding her humor instantly. A flash of something crossed his face, and when his hand went to the front of his jeans for an adjustment, she realized the wet, heavy material must be causing discomfort.

“Strip,” she challenged, borrowing his word and hoping it had even a modicum of the effect on him that it had on her.

Ignoring her taunt, he crowded her so closely her back touched the graffitied tile. His forehead rested on the wall beside and just above her head, and his breath swirled around her along with the steam vapors.

His hands came up to rest on the wall on either side of her, trapping her. Yet, he was still warring with himself because they remained flat against the tile.

One of his markers lay on a tile shelf next to a shampoo bottle, and she stretched, reaching until she had it in her hand. Biting the cap off and pinching it between her teeth, she turned slightly… Enough to trace the outline of one of his hands with the purple ink. His brows raised, and despite being a horny bitch in heat, she wanted to giggle at his expression. Done, she pulled at his wrist until he lifted the hand. In the center, beneath the outline of his fingers, she scrawled, ‘touch me.’

Without looking up, she capped the marker, and when she tried to replace it, it rolled, falling to the floor. Ignoring it, she finally met his eyes, and her gaze dropped to his throat when his Adam’s apple bobbed with a gulp.

But he didn’t disappoint. His hands brushed the fabric of her bra. His fingertips drifted down her body to the waist of her bikini panties and then back up. She took the opportunity to unclasp the bra and let it slide down her arms to fall at their feet.

The momentum of the moment shifted. He filled his hands. Control was gone. Squeezing, pinching, playing, she watched him watching his hands until her eyes closed overwhelmed with the ecstasy of his touch, and his face landed in the crook of her neck. He licked a trail like a necklace, and then followed the lines of an invisible pendant, landing between her breasts with his tongue. A moan tore through her lips, her fingers curved into his hair, and she shifted, longing for the attention of his kiss to be a little to one side or the other.

When he turned his chin, claiming with his tongue, teeth, and lips, the area he’d already claimed with his hands and fingers, she lost her breath. Her pants echoed in the space. The sensations were overwhelming and the back of her head banged the tile as she arched beneath the attention of his mouth. Crazy thoughts made their way into her head. Like if it felt this good
here
, what would it feel like
there
?

As if reading her mind, he licked a path to her navel and sucked at the sensitive skin of her waist. Sure, she had envisioned it for a second while tumbling through a fog of ecstasy, but could she really let him go down? And again, as if he was tapped into her mind, he straightened, fusing his lips to hers.

She wasn’t sure if her groan was one of disappointment or a reaction to his skillful tongue playing with hers. His kisses seemed to taper off until he was pressing his lips into her neck again. She was on freaking fire, and she felt a warring tenseness creeping into his limbs again.

“I want you.” In case he didn’t take her words seriously enough, she went right for the fly of his soaked jeans and licked a water rivulet from a mouthwatering pec. “Don’t stop… Please… I want you so much.”

He made no move to halt the downward slide of his zipper or the curl of her fingers over the fit of his briefs. Still, he raggedly whispered a denial. “Not like this. You’ve been drinking. Way too much. Way,
way
too much.”

“So?” And then she paused, horrified. “I’m not going to throw up on you or anything.”

His husky chuckled bounced around the walls. “Fuck it, Scar.”

“Mean it, this time?”

“You’re killing me. Fuck. Killin’ me here.”

And then with no preamble, he cupped the back of her wet panties, pressing her to his wet briefs. They ground and humped like virgin teens while kissing one another crazy. But when he allowed enough space between them to slip his fingers inside her silky drawers, his touch was anything but virginal.

The talents acquired from a rock star life of sexual exploits came as naturally to him as any of his other finger skills honed with excessive practice. He played her body as if it were one of his guitars, sliding his fingers up and down, twisting in exactly the right rhythm and finishing with a hook that had her shriek echoing through the chamber.

The shake, shake, shake
of the bed―Rascal scratching―woke her, but she didn’t immediately open her eyes. Memories of the night before paraded through her mind. Moments after stars had lit the backs of her eyelids and her legs had jellied, she’d watched fascinated as he’d finished himself off before she’d even recovered enough to offer her services.

Wait, that wasn’t completely true. She could have taken over, but the sheer primal beauty in his sure and fluid movements had held her obsessive.
Up, down, up, down, twist, Up, down, up, down, twist.
His eyes had locked with hers, and he had been his own driver to paradise city.

After crossing their thin dotted line in the shower, they’d both pulled on clothing from his closet, and had fallen almost directly asleep in his huge bed where Rascal had eventually crawled between them.

Stretching her legs, she blinked the sleep from her eyes as she opened them to find Gage’s face inches from hers, his eyes on her.

Her neck and face heated as she got her thoughts in check.

What was he thinking on so seriously?

She’d fallen asleep to his adoring gaze, and now had woken to something different. Something oddly akin to guilt was swimming in his assessing stare.

“What?” Her inquiry came out a whispered breath.

The corners of his mouth quirked but never quite made it to a smile. One of his fingers lifted to trace her cheek, but the gentleness of the action was accompanied by a sad glimmer in his eyes instead of a sweet one.

Equal parts of panic and empathy warred inside her. If he had brought her aboard this ride only to regret it, she wasn’t going to recover easily at this point. By the same token, she understood if it was confusion he was feeling, because she had enough of that emotion bubbling inside her own caldron of emotions.

“Don’t think. Just take it a minute at a time. Remember?” she reminded.

“Maybe that was stupid of me to say.” His finger had dropped, and he remained still, the only movement being his lips forming those scary words, and the slight flex of his scruffy chin and jaw.

She couldn’t meet his gaze anymore, and she couldn’t speak past the achy lump building in her throat. Pushing up, she sat, staring down at the large Fire Flight tee shirt covering her frame. Beneath it, she could feel the pair of his boxers she’d stolen from his drawer rather than stumbling to her own room for clothing.

“Why? Why would you say that?” she inquired over her shoulder, willing her voice not to waver. A low hum had begun in her ears, and was slowly increasing to drown out the rustle of Rascal as he bounded from the bed, crossed the room, and nudged the door open.

Gage was quiet for several breaths and then he said, “I’m starting to rethink it all…” The hum grew louder. “That this thing between us probably won’t work out and…” The hum became a vibration she could physically feel. “That maybe I had my own agenda in mind and not…” His thought faded and he looked up, as if he too were hearing the drone of distortion in her head. “Dammit! Is it already ten?”

Twisting, he fumbled around on the nightstand and cursed again, oblivious to the shredding of her heart. Swinging out of bed, he spanned the room and she eyed his movements as he snatched up and pilfered the pockets of his wet jeans from the bathroom floor. The humming had become a palpitation. She lifted her eyes to the ceiling, finally understanding. A helicopter approach.

“I guess my phone is still down by the pool.” He zipped on clean jeans. “Can you be ready in fifteen minutes?”

“For Arrowhead?”

“Yeah. Throw together what you need. We’re flying straight there, so you don’t really have to dress like we’re going anywhere.” He spoke while sprinting out of the room, barefoot and shirtless, presumably to retrieve his phone.