The Girl's Got Secrets (Forbidden Men #7) (22 page)

When I wrapped my hands around air as if gripping a ginormous invisible penis, I realized what I was doing and what I’d just said. “I mean...” Oh holy hell, that had to be going too far, even for a gay guy.

I gaped at Asher, bracing for him to kick my ass or throw me out of our hotel room, or something, but he only threw back his head and laughed. “Holy shit, you are so fucking funny. That has to be the gayest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

Gulping, I cringed backward. “Yeah, sorry.”

“Meh, don’t worry about it.” Still laughing, he wiped tears from his eyes. “But, wow, you are definitely one hundred percent gay, aren’t you? I mean, you
really
prefer guys.”

“Um...
yeah
,” I drew out the word as if that shouldn’t be so hard to believe.

He shook his head. “That’s just so strange. You don’t even like boobs? I mean...
boobs
, man.” He feigned squeezing a pair. “They’re just so...” He made a hungry sound in his throat. “Breastly.”

I shrugged. “Eh.”

Still with the head-shaking, he studied me as if I was some odd, unnatural specimen. “Okay, fine. What about pussies then? Seriously, no way can you have a dick and turn your nose up at one of them. They’re all wet and warm and tight. They were freaking
made
to hold a cock, and they feel like heaven when you slide into one. And the flavor. Have you ever even
tasted
a pussy?”

I wrinkled my nose. “Eww.
No
.”

He lifted his hands. “Well, there’s your problem. You have no idea what you’re missing.”

Narrowing my eyes, I said, “Are you trying to turn me hetero?”

“No.” Then he laughed as if laughing at himself. “Well, I didn’t think I was. I was just trying to figure out what you didn’t like about women. They’re freaking perfect, all soft and feminine and good-smelling.” He sucked in a breath and closed his eyes. “There’s nothing like sinking into one while you’re sucking a nipple into your mouth. And then warm, smooth legs go and wrap around your waist until she’s digging the heels of her feet into your ass. It’s just...nirvana.”

Heat traveled up my thighs until my pussy was so wet and aching I had to squeeze my legs together under my covers.

Asher opened his lashes and glanced at me from glossy, lust-covered green eyes, letting me know the vision he described affected him as much as it had affected me. I wondered how big his monster cock was now, and how it’d feel if he was on top of me, sliding it deep between my legs as he sucked on
my
nipples.

Dios.

I shuddered, noticing he was doing the same thing.

“Sorry, I just...love women,” he murmured before glancing away as if suddenly uncomfortable.

Which made me think of the stench of perfume that had clung to him when he’d entered the hotel room only half an hour ago.

My lust soured, then died completely.

“Yeah, I can tell,” I muttered. When he glanced at me with a confused frown, I said, “You smelled like a dozen whores when you came in. I’d have hopped into the shower first thing to wash off all that reek too if I’d been you.”

Chuckling, Asher didn’t take offense. He merely shook his head. “That actually came from only the one woman. The blonde. Monique.”

I snorted, wishing Monique an awful untimely death. “Well, Monique has quite a habit of rubbing her perfume off on other people.”

Asher rolled his eyes and muttered, “You’re telling me.”

My mouth fell open as I stared at him. Finally, I said, “Oh, I’m sorry, man. Did Monique not do it for you in the bedroom?” The skank’s pussy had probably been so well-used it hadn’t been nearly tight enough for him.

“Huh?” He glanced at me as if I was insane. Then he shook his head. “No. We didn’t have sex.”

“Uh-huh,” I mumbled, not buying it.

He scowled. “I’m serious.”

I rolled my eyes. “So... What, then? You just smell like her because—”

“Because she wouldn’t stop rubbing against me like some kind of cat in heat,” he snapped, glowering hard.

“Right. So you’re saying you love everything there is about women but when one rubs against you
like a cat in heat
, you don’t take her up on the offer? Gally certainly would.”

“Do I fucking look like Gally?”

When I realized just how pissed and irritated he was with this line of questioning, I blinked and pulled back, amazed. “You’re really serious, aren’t you? You
didn’t
screw her.”

“No, I did not.”

My breath caught in my throat, and hope flared in my chest. “Why not?”

“Because...” He seemed too flabbergasted to continue.

Unable to let this drop because I was dying of curiosity, I pressed, “Because...?”

“I was tempted, sure,” he relented on a shrug. “Feels like it’s been forever, and I’ve been craving sex like you wouldn’t believe lately, but...”

No way could I drop this issue, so I said, “But what?” Then it hit me. Oh dear Lord. “You have an STD, don’t you?”

“Jesus.
No
!” He sent me a dark look, then pointed threateningly. “Okay, fine, I’ll talk, but if you ever repeat anything I’m about to say to Gally or Holden, I will kick your ass to Ellamore and back. Got it?”

I sniffed out a laugh. “What do I look like? Some kind of gossiping girl desperate to tell everyone else your personal business?
Please
.”

His shoulders relaxed before he rolled his eyes toward the ceiling and reluctantly admitted, “It’s just...I’m not really a fan of one-night-stands.”

My mouth fell open. Leaning his way, I cupped my hand around my ear and said, “Say again?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Laugh it up, fucker. It’s just not my thing. Okay?”

I lifted both hands. “Trust me, I’m not laughing. I’m just shocked is all.” And really impressed.

He glanced away, looking humiliated. “Pathetic, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t say it was pathetic either. It’s just...
unusual
for a guy in your position.” A very good, amazing unusual. “Which makes me extremely curious as to...why?”

He sighed and rolled his gaze to the ceiling. “I knew you were going to ask that.”

“Well?” I lifted my eyebrows, letting him know I still wanted the answer regardless. “For someone who
loves
women so much and is craving sex...” I started.

“I do love women,” he insisted. “I just want one to want
me
instead of...” He rolled his eyes. “Asher Hart.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came. After a second, I said, “
Aren’t
you Asher Hart, though?”

He growled and frowned at me. “Yes, but...Christ, I don’t even know how to explain it.” When he grabbed his hair in supreme frustration, I took pity on him and decided to stop playing dumb.

“You want someone who appreciates the man within, not just a groupie wanting to score with the lead singer of a band.”

Dropping his hands from his hair, he gazed at me as if he’d just discovered a kindred soul. “Yeah,” he murmured. “Exactly.”

I nodded, letting him know I understood. “So you don’t just want a physical connection. You want something...deeper.”

He looked down at his hands. “Oh, trust me. I love the physical connection. And I’ve done the one-night-stand thing because it seems to be the only thing women want from me. It’s just...I don’t know. All my friends at Forbidden have these incredible women that they’re all devoted to and completely crazy about. And when I watch them together, it just looks so...”

“Nice?”

He blew out a breath and glanced at me. “Makes me wonder what a real relationship would be like.”

That confession had me blinking. “What? You’ve never been in one?”

He shook his head. “No. You?”

My lips quirked. “With a woman? No.”

Snorting out an amused sound, he muttered, “With a
guy
, then?”

“Well...sure. A couple times. I mean, not tons but...three or four meaningful enough ones.”

Focusing on me as if he’d just discovered I knew the secret meaning of life, he asked, “What’re they like?”

I crinkled my brow. “Relationships?”

“Yeah.”

Blowing out a breath, I ran my hands through my hair, startled when my fingers met the short fake tendrils of my wig. For a minute there, I’d forgotten I was Sticks, the guy drummer. I’d just been Remy...talking to Asher.

“It’s...” Mentally reminding myself I was a guy here, I tried to think up a male way to describe it, but a second later, I just blurted out, “At first, it’s nerve-wracking as hell. You’re always afraid to show your true self. You just want them to see what you think they’ll like, so you’re always on edge, hoping to impress him and trying to figure out if you even like him in return. Even though it’s kind of thrilling and exciting too. But then...then something finally clicks, and you realize you have this...thing...this amazing thing in common with each other that you don’t really have in common with anyone else. Pretty soon, you’re opening up more of yourself and discovering that more parts click, and before you know it, life is amazing and you’re thinking about them night and day. You can’t wait to see them again, and you love everything about everything.”

Asher cracked a dreamy grin as if he were imagining what I described, and he liked the visions it produced. “Really?”

I nodded. “And then he turns into a fucking lying bastard who rips your heart out, shatters your trust and leaves you a bitter hardened bitch of a human being.”

He blinked and pulled back. “Wow. Uh, I was not expecting you to end that way.”

“Well...” I shrugged. “It’s not happily ever after for everyone.”

He studied me a moment before murmuring, “What did the bastard do to you?”

I shrugged and began to play with the sheets that had bunched down to my lap. “He just...I mean, besides making me come to feel as if he was doing me a grand favor by being with me, he cheated on me with every woman who’d take him on and—”

“He slept with other
women
?” Asher tipped his head to the side in confusion.

Shit, I’d forgotten the gay thing again.
Grr
. Clearing my throat, I mumbled, “Yeah, he, uh, he’s bi.” And strangely, that lie felt really good to spew. Fisher would hate being called bi.
Ha!

Nodding as if understanding, Asher winced in sympathy. “Well, that had to suck. What else were you going to say he did?”

“Oh. He, uh…I wrote him a couple songs and...he stole them, sang them in his band and claimed they were his own.”

“Shit,” Asher murmured, compassionately. “No wonder why you didn’t want me looking at your notebook.”

I shrugged and held up the pages of lyrics I’d created. “Sorry, I wasn’t accusing you of being a plagiarist. I just...you know what? I know you’re not like him. Here.”

I tossed the notebook across the beds and into his lap. He picked it up, hesitation glimmering in his green eyes. “Are you sure? I totally respect your privacy, man. And I get why you’re—”

“Just read,” I mumbled. “If you even think about stealing any of my lines, I’ll just cut off that huge cock of yours and force-feed it to Gally.”

He laughed. “Fair enough.” Before opening the pages though, he tossed me his booklet.

A knot formed in my throat at his return trust in me. When he flipped open my notebook, I did the same to his.

A second later, I gave a low whistle. “Damn, these are amazing.”

“Ditto,” he murmured distractedly, too busy reading my work to talk.

I flipped the pages, growing increasingly stunned that he hadn’t already turned some—okay,
most
—of them into songs.

“Seriously, Asher. You have some wicked, awesome talent.”

“Hmm?” Distracted, he glanced up and right back down. Chewing on the end of his pen—something I totally did when I was stuck on a line—he returned his attention to my notebook. “Thanks, but I’m not writing worth shit these past few days. I keep getting stuck on this one line.”

“Oh, yeah?” I flipped to the last page. “Let’s see what you got.”

“Wait!” Tossing down my lyrics, he leapt off his bed and snatched his own from my hands.

I blinked at his sudden reserve. Then I grinned. “Oh, come on. Don’t hold out on me now. Sing me what you have so far.”

He shook his head. “I’ve never...I usually can’t sing my stuff aloud until I have an entire song fleshed out. It feels...weird.”

“Then speak it in words, because seriously, how the hell am I supposed to help if I don’t know where you’re stuck?”

“You don’t have to...” He must’ve read something in my expression because he gave a long-suffering sigh before he flipped through pages and silently read through the words. Then he shook his head. “Yeah, I don’t think I can just read it either. I’d have to sing it.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “Then
sing
.” I knew the man wasn’t afraid to sing in front of an audience, but he suddenly looked uncertain.

He sent me an uncomfortable glance. “Don’t carp on me if it ends up sounding shitty, all right?”

I rolled my eyes. “Try trusting me a little more than that, will you? I know nothing’s perfect the first time though.”

“Okay, fine.”

And he started to sing.

In a cappella, his voice was beautiful. I wanted to crawl onto the bed with him, right into his lap and let him sing to me for the rest of the night...or my life.

But I was a good girl. I stayed back and merely bobbed my head to the beat, then reached out and tapped the rhythm with my bare hands against the top corner of the nightstand.

He grinned, obviously getting into the grove, and began to sway to the tune as he continued the song until he stopped suddenly and shook his head.

“And that’s all I got. That’s where I’m stuck.”

His words were still flowing through me, the melody catching fire in my blood. I kept tapping out the beat and sang, “Until the stars fade away and the day swallows the dark.”