Trouble in the Making (15 page)

“Stop thinking so hard, baby. Do you trust me?”

“With my life.”

“Love me?”

“Without a doubt.”

“Mine.” This was his only statement, but it deserved an answer just the same.

“Yours. Mine?” Hers was a question. She was not the type of woman to be presumptuous or to take for granted that he might feel the same about her being possessive of him. He loved her, wanted her, but did he consider himself hers as much as she considered herself his? Did it work that way? Could it? Was it something she could expect from a man like him?

He was world famous. Women threw themselves at him, had done so for years, and though he may not tour anymore or be in the spotlight as much, women would throw themselves at him for more years to come.

She regretted the question the instant it was out of her mouth.

“I am.”

“Johnny, I don’t expect you—”

“You should expect everything, Liz. I won’t disappoint you. But, and I’m sorry to do this, I really have to go. People are still waiting on me.”

So it begins. Liz took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, making sure to smile up at him. “Okay, let’s go then.”

Johnny narrowed his eyes and crowded her into the soft-as-butter cushions. “Wait a second. I get it now. I get why you’re so compliant and easygoing about this all of a sudden. I know what you’re up to.”

Liz tried to inch back and blinked. “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t try that innocent act with me.” He wagged his finger at her. “You’re going to make me wear leather pants the rest of my life, aren’t you?”

She tried her best to continue feigning innocence but it wasn’t going to work. He knew her too well. “Mmmm. Yes. And maybe even make you keep your hair long.” Liz grinned and tugged on a strand for emphasis.

He winked and laced his fingers with hers. “Trouble.” He shook his head and returned her grin. “I knew you were going to be trouble the first day I laid eyes on you more than twenty years ago. Damn, baby. I just didn’t think you’d ever be my trouble.”

“Happy about it?”

“Happiness in the making.”

“You’ve been up all night. What are you working on?” Johnny kissed the top of Liz’s head and threaded his fingers through her hair, tugging until she looked up at him.

“Deadline,” she said with a hint of exasperation.

“Don’t snap at me. I know what a deadline is, baby. I’ve had them several times in my own career. I was wondering what specific deadline you were working on that kept you out of our bed last night.”

“Our bed, is it?”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I do believe I live here now.”

“Only part of the time.”

“So that’s the way you want to play this? Semantics? Before you’ve had coffee?” Liz smiled, soft and teasing. Her eyes were alight with near instant arousal and she puckered up for a lip-to-lip kiss. Johnny tightened his hand in her hair, making her wait. “I know you think because I’m completely smitten with you that I’ll let you just flirt and run roughshod all over me to get what you want.”

“And I’d be right,” she whispered.

Johnny fisted the strands in his palm harder, pulling a gasp of discomfort from Liz. “You deserve a spanking, my dear.”

“I do.”

“But you won’t get one. Not yet. I know you’re tired and stressed out and it would only be wasted at the moment.”

“You’re nothing more than a tease.”

“And you’re being a brat. I asked what kept you out of our bed last night.”

“Fine. My editor asked for a short story to include in an anthology. I think they wanted one more merely for the page count in print.”

“Thank you. Not so hard, was it?” Johnny gave her the kiss she’d been angling for and he loosened his hold. “Selling yourself short?”

“No.”

“Uh huh. Then why did you say it like that?”

Liz grunted and stood from her chair. “No reason other than I haven’t had coffee yet.”

She stretched, lifting her arms over her head and arching her back. He knew she was trying to work the kinks out from having stayed in one place for so long, but the way her move thrust her breasts forward had Johnny licking his lips. For three months, she’d been slowly driving him insane with her artlessness and her casual daily wardrobe of loose lounge pants and going braless under t-shirts. A man could only take so much.

After years of groupies and women throwing bits of satin and lace in his direction, years of barely there shirts and hardly there at all skirts, Liz’s uninspired choice of clothing was more than a little refreshing, and for some reason, it turned him on more than anything.

“What’s wrong?”

Her question called him back to the moment at hand. “I was just thinking.” He turned and headed for the kitchen, certain she would follow for that first cup of coffee. “I thought, like you did, that I’d have a harder time adjusting to normal, but it’s been easy.”

“But has it really been easy?” she asked as she held out the mug she used for deadline writing, her toes tapping on the tile floor as she waited.

It had taken him about a month to learn the coffee cup method. She had a rather large collection, various sizes, but he’d seen her use all of them at one point or another. The one she held out to him now was black with glittery purple swirls and a glittery purple swirl handle. He filled it for her.

“I think so. What I don’t like are the times I have to sleep alone because you’ve stayed up all night. You’ve done this several times over the last month.”

“I’m just busy.”

“I know you’re busy, but I wonder if there’s something else.”

“Something else?” She stopped pouring half-and-half into her cup and looked up at him. “Like what?”

“I don’t know, Liz. Avoiding me? Tired of sex with me? Tired of me being here? You lived alone for a long time, same as I had. We’re both having to adjust to this new life we embarked on. We didn’t wait a whole long time to move in together.”

“Well, now that you mention it. I am kind of tired of you pawing me every chance you get.” She rolled her eyes back and smirked, but then leveled a straight look at him. “There’s nothing. I’m not tired of you or avoiding you. Didn’t you have all night writing or recording sessions?”

He did. Many of them over the years. “Yes.”

“I think you’re restless.”

“Could be.” It was actually the most likely thing. He knew there was nothing wrong between he and Liz, but it was the closest thing to grab onto without looking too closely at himself.

“Bored with the quiet? There’s no excitement here, Johnny, and no, we didn’t take the time to date as most normal people might have. You’re not normal, though. It’s not been easy for either of us, but I like waking up with you, going to bed with you, sharing coffee and food and—” She yawned into the word and blushed prettily when he smiled at her. “Sorry. I want you here. I am concerned, though, if you’re the bored one.”

He knew where she was going with her statements, with that look in her eyes as she sipped slowly at her coffee. She was strong in her own way, independent and unwilling to compromise on what she really wanted once she had the guts to go after it. She was also insecure at times and he hated that she might feel that way with him. “Not bored with you, Liz. You’re right in that it’s quiet. It’s downtime and I haven’t had any in years. Quite honestly, if I don’t have my hands on you, I don’t know what to do with myself.”

Liz smiled. “You’re coming off some sort of adrenaline high, is that it? You need constant sex to keep yourself occupied?”

“Working your way back to a spanking, I see.”

“Whatever works, rock star. What can I do? You’ve been in studios and you’ve dragged me to all the theme parks at least three times. We spent a week in New York, two weeks in Los Angeles. I’m not an on-the-go person like you are. I didn’t think you wanted that anymore anyway.”

“I don’t. I think… Hell, baby. I don’t know what I think.”

“Do you need to leave? Do you need to go back home to L.A.?”

He saw sadness in her pretty green eyes, but leaving her wasn’t the answer. “No. Home is with you.” He set his own coffee cup down, then pried her fingers from around hers before pulling her into his arms. “Maybe it is the transition. The restlessness I feel isn’t to travel or move around. It’s more a feeling that I need to do something. I didn’t enjoy the process of writing for another group, at being at their beck and call, on their schedule. That’s not something I want to do more of, but I love to write songs, so…”

“Hmmm. Okay.” She rubbed her face against his shirt and snuggled into his hold. “Like what? Jump out of an airplane? Throw a party? Have an orgy?”

“Oh my. An orgy? Is that something that’s really on the table?”

“Not with me it isn’t, but—”

He scruffed the top of her head with his chin. “Then why’d you offer?”“

“I didn’t offer. I just threw it out there to see what you’d say. The sex between us isn’t enough?”

“It’s not when you’re not in bed with me to have sex.”

“You know what the answer to that is then, don’t you?”

“Obviously not.”

“You get out of bed and come have sex with me wherever I happen to be.”

“Oh, really? I hadn’t considered that. But you see, I didn’t want to break your concentration or interrupt you with my need to paw you every chance I got.”

“Now who’s being the brat?” Liz stood on tiptoes and nipped at his chin. “Maybe you need a challenge. Creatively, I mean. You’ve been composing and playing all your life. You’ve designed album art and tour sets. Maybe what you need is a project, something to channel your energy. More than your body, your brain isn’t used to being idle.”

And just like that, the figurative light bulb flickered on above his head. He squeezed her tight. “God, baby, I love it when you put things into perspective.” Johnny kissed her on the tip of the nose. Liz was completely right. He needed a project. He needed to be doing something. It was when he felt best, when he felt he had a purpose and a reason for being. He needed to give back, to share his talents, to inspire and he needed desperately to create.

He and Liz had gone to an arts high school and he’d been drawing and painting and making music for as long as he could remember. When he didn’t have an outlet for those things, he slowly became unhinged and irritable, tired and restless. He knew the signs, but so many things had changed in the last few months that he’d overlooked them. “Thank you, Lizzie.”

“I can’t imagine this has been easy for you, this life changing move in both your professional and personal lives. Once the newness wore off, you’d have to get back to it, to living your life, whatever it is or consists of.”

Johnny nodded and wanted to jump and shout. This one small conversation with his overly tired lover had changed his whole outlook on the day. When he’d woken up, it had been from a night of tossing and turning, and he’d sought Liz out to ease that sense of…he didn’t even know what to call it. She was a thinker, an observer of people and surroundings. She had an uncanny insight into things that, once voiced, would be so logical and so simple. “When did you get so smart?”

“When I let you fall in love with me.”

“Let me, is it? You let me fall in love with you?” He wanted to make sure he’d heard her right.

“Of course.”

“And I let you fall in love with me too, yes?”

“Oh no,” she said with conviction. “You didn’t let me. I just did it.”

“Smarty pants. I’m thinking before you take a nap this morning, you’ll be receiving that spanking you seem to still be asking for.”

“And while,” she said just before having to stop for a yawn, “I’m napping, what will you be doing?”

“Thanks to you, I’ll be searching for a way to let off some of this creative energy.”

“Thanks to me?”

“Mmm. Yes. I think I’d like to look into doing something similar to what you do with your workshops.”

“Oh, Johnny. I think that’d be fantastic for you. I love that idea. And yes, if in thanks to me, I shouldn’t be receiving a spanking.”

“No? Then what?” Johnny smiled. Before she could say anything, she yawned again and leaned heavily against him. He reached down and lifted her in his arms. She didn’t protest the way he expected. She just wrapped her arms around his neck and laid her head on his shoulder. “Don’t think I don’t see how you’re playing me, baby,” he whispered against her forehead, where he placed a soft kiss.

“Hmmm?”

“You’re trying to get out of being in trouble for that attitude you had earlier and all this smart-aleck behavior. You know I can’t let you get away with it.”

“You could try,” she said when he laid her in their bed. A lot of light filtered into the room when the sun came up, but over the sheer panels on the windows, Liz had added a black damask panel set. Johnny closed them and the darkening made it seem as though it was night.

He slid into the bed behind her and pulled her close against his side. “What kind of example would I be setting if I let you get away with every little thing like that?”