Cover Me: A Rock Star Romance (8 page)

“Thank you,” I said, stroking her hair. “You’re amazing.”

She sighed and wrapped her arm around my hips. “You get me worked up.”

“I could reciprocate.”

“That’s not on the syllabus.”

“Not today…”

“Maybe not ever.”

We’d see about that. I had all the time and patience in the world. I never gave up and always got what I wanted. “Am I supposed to know you’re all worked up and just let you suffer? That’s not something I can do.”

I grabbed her arms and pulled her up so she was lying on top of me. I held her face and kissed her, sucking her bottom lip and sliding my tongue across hers. “Let me touch you again.” I ran my hands down her sides and lifted her cover-up. Her knees fell to either side of me. I dug my fingers under her bathing suit bottoms and kneaded her ass. She rocked against me. If she was as turned on as I’d been, this wouldn’t take long. Hell, I was starting to get hard again already.

I rolled us over so she was on her back and tucked my hand in the front of her bottoms. Her legs parted wide for me and her eyes closed. I parted her lips with my fingers and spread her wetness through her folds. With the tip of my index finger, I massaged the nub of her clitoris, watching her face contract and her mouth fall open in pleasure. Her hips started rocking. I rubbed faster, massaged her deeper. Her breathing came in quick gasps. “So close,” she said on a whimper, and grabbed my wrist. “Yes. Like that. We both went faster and faster until she was wild and desperate, on the verge of bursting.

I slid down her body and slipped my other hand in, pushed my fingers inside her and rubbed while continuing my assault on her clit. “Oh God!” she cried, arching her back. “Fuck!” Her body spasmed and shook. She clenched her breasts and thrust against my hand until the last shock of orgasm washed over her.

I wanted to keep my hands on her for the rest of the day, but pulled them out of her bathing suit bottoms and fell back on the cushion. “Watching you come is like… I don’t even know. Like nothing I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing before.” I turned my head to see her sleepy, sated eyes blinking slowly. “Why haven’t we been doing this forever? What the hell is wrong with us? This feels so right, doesn’t it?”

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” she said. “It was always you that was the problem.”

“I’m the idiot,” I said. “That’s why. You’re the brains.”

She rolled on her side and tucked her head under my chin. “You’re catching on.”

I tickled her side, making her squirm and pulled her even closer. “I heard you playing last night,” she said.

“You did?” I wasn’t sure when she got to her parents’ house. “What did you think?”

She looked up at me and for the first time since I stepped foot into The Scene the other day, the hint of wariness was gone from her eyes. “I think you’re finding yourself again.”

I dipped my head and kissed her. It felt like I was finding myself again or the man I missed out on becoming. “Have you had to make a lot of sacrifices in your life, Bess?”

Her brow scrunched while she thought about it. “Not really sacrifices, no. Have you?”

“Yeah. A lot of them. How many people do you know who can’t walk on the beach without hiding under stairs and behind umbrellas? I can’t complain, right? I got what I always wanted. I’ve filled arenas, been on the covers of magazines, won awards, but I still think of my parents’ place as home, because I haven’t made one for myself.”

I took a deep breath and chuckled. “Poor me, huh? The guy with everything.”

She rose up on her elbows to see me better. “Don’t beat yourself up over a little introspection. Thinking about what you don’t have or what you want for yourself doesn’t diminish what you’ve already got. You know, I interned for the nightlife editor at Encore Magazine in college and something she said still echoes in my head all the time. She told me that even when you’re on top, it’s still not enough. Someone else is always getting something more—more recognition, more awards, more readers, more exclusives.” Bess clasped my hand. “With people like us, there’s never enough. We need that next fix like it’s our drug.”

“That’s exactly it.” I closed my eyes, comforted by having someone who understood. “It’s exhausting.”

She rested her head on my shoulder. “Then it was a good time to step out of that world and take a break. You always do your best when you listen to your instincts.”

Bess knew me so well. For almost ten years I surrounded myself with people who claimed they knew what was best—for me, for my career. I pushed back and fought when they wanted me to go in a direction I knew was wrong, but lately, like with Adrian, I’d grown too tired to fight anymore and I questioned my instincts. “It was time to get away and regroup,” I said, more to myself than to Bess.

“Sometimes we all need to do that.” She traced her fingernails, aimlessly, over my chest. “Except I’d rather come back here and get back to what’s simple than get away to somewhere new.”

“Yeah, I would too. I mean, I came here because it was the first—the only—place I thought of, but that’s because it’s like you said: it’s simple. This is where I belong.”

“Where you can find yourself, reset your compass to true north.”

“True north,” I repeated. “That’s it. That’s the song.” Something that had shifted apart inside me clicked back into place. “I want to work with you on it, Bess. Like with Cover Me. That’s where it started and what I want to get back to.” I cupped her cheek and made her look up at me. “Will you do it? Will you work with me on the song?”

Her dark eyes clouded over and skittered away from mine. She sat up. Like the other night, I knew it was happening again. I was losing her.

Events come full
circle and moments repeat themselves. Déjà vu was real. I let Derek Bast back into my life and was faced with allowing him a second opportunity to drive a stake into my heart. Except I was prepared this time. I wouldn’t let him into my heart. Only my pants on a limited basis.

“Bess?” He sat up beside me and rubbed his hand across my back. “You make the friendship rules, remember? I’ll follow them.”

If I was in control, why didn’t it feel like I was? He couldn’t hurt me unless I let him, and there was no way I’d let him. “I’ll think about it,” I said. “Helping you with the song. I didn’t plan on staying. I have work to get back to.”

He brushed my hair back and traced my ear with his thumb. “Why did you come?”

There was no lying about it. We both knew my parents were gone. “To find out why you walked out on the deal and left Kurt. You didn’t mention it…that night. The next morning you, what? Woke up and decided to turn your life upside down?”

His thumb glided along the side of my face, down over my jaw. “Let’s just say I didn’t get a lot of sleep that night and had a lot of time to think about what I wanted.”

“Was it because I wouldn’t retract my review?”

His eyes followed his hand as he stroked my hair and let his fingertips caress the hollow behind my ear and trail down the side of my neck. “It was because you left. I don’t like being someone you don’t know or trust. I don’t want to be that guy. If you don’t know me, then I don’t either. If you don’t know me, I’m not Derek Bast from Santa Cruz. I’m whoever nine years of being in the music industry has made me.”

“The music industry has nothing to do with why I left.”

“No. That’s on me and I’ll figure it out.” He leaned in and traced the rim of my ear with his nose. “Have faith in me, Bess,” he whispered. “I’m not the teenage boy who used to overlook you. He needed to grow up and realize what was always there in the room across the yard.”

I felt my lips turning toward his, like they were magnetized. “What was there?”

“My true north.” He kissed me and my resolve shattered. My eyes watered with tears I refused to shed. My heart ached, begging me to stop being stubborn and love him like I wanted to. Trust him. Cherish and treasure him. Believe it was our time to be together.

He held the side of my face while he kissed me, his thumb resting under my chin, guiding me to him and keeping me there. My throat tightened with emotion. My eyes fluttered open to watch him kiss me, to memorize this moment. I stored away the golden tint of his tanned, smooth skin, and the sound of our mingled breathing and wet lips, pressing and parting again and again. The fan of his long dark lashes under his eyes, the bridge of his nose tilting against mine and the crease of his forehead, so serious and determined to convey his sincerity through his kiss. The thin veil of control was etched on his face, the struggle to hold back and let me keep the reins.

Our lips parted and he leaned his forehead against mine. “How long can you stay? You don’t have to help me or even see me or talk to me if you don’t want to after today. Knowing you’re over there inside the window listening is enough.”

I placed my hands on his cheeks and closed my eyes, willing my thoughts—the ones I wouldn’t let escape—to transfer from my mind to his. I wanted to stay forever if that’s how long he needed me. I wanted to let go of the past and dive headfirst into the future. I wanted to give him all of me—heart, soul, mind and body—and be open and vulnerable to him. I wanted to trust him. “I’ll figure it out. I’ll stay until you finish the song.”

And I’d get my emotions back in check. This wasn’t some fairytale. This was real life with a real man who had the potential to do real damage if I let him.

Derek sat back and shot me a cocky smile. “What if I never finish the song? Will you still be here?”

“Don’t push your luck.”

He chuckled and wrapped me in a bear hug. “I think this is our best Saturday beach trip yet.”

I backed away from the hug and gave an exaggerated look down at his crotch. “I can’t imagine why you’d think that.”

“What? Like it wasn’t good for you, Miss ‘Oh God! Fuck!’” he mocked, complete with a look of ecstasy.

Heat crept up my neck and flushed my face. I covered it with my hands. “Hey,” he said, pulling them down, “can I tell you how awesome it is to make you feel that way? It’s better that winning a Grammy. A million times better.”

I laughed. “Oh, I’m sure it’s that fabulous.”

He narrowed his eyes, lowered his chin and stared at me. An intense minute passed without a word. He didn’t even blink. Finally, he broke the tense silence. “Have you ever known me to lie? Believe what I tell you, Bess.”

Derek never lied. “Okay,” I whispered, hoarsely over the lump in my throat. I licked my lips and settled myself. “I have to admit it feels pretty good making you lose control, too.”

His eyes softened. “Making me lose it? I give it to you, willingly.”

“Can’t even admit to a single moment of weakness?”

He let out a snort of laughter. “If you only knew.”

“Oh, right. There was that time I talked you into stealing a beach umbrella. You were putty in my hands.”

“You use your power for evil,” he said, pulling me back down on top of him.

“It worked. I lured you into my lair.” I ran my fingers through his hair and stared into his light eyes, brimming with heat. I imagined myself in that exact position hundreds of times and never thought I’d actually end up lying on top of Derek’s warm, hard, smooth, perfect body gazing down at him.

He closed his eyes, enjoying my fingers running through his hair, my nails tickling his scalp. I bent my head down to kiss his chin, intending on following his jaw around to his ear, but caught myself. I jerked my hand away like it burned. What I was allowing myself was intimacy, not just an act of physical pleasure, not just sexual.

“I know,” he said, not opening his eyes. “It’s all too fast. Your rules, Bess. Don’t freak.”

“I’m fine.” I rolled off of him. “Just wondering what time it is.”

He rested his forearm across his brow and turned to me. “Got somewhere else to be?”

I turned from him. “What if I did?”

“That would be regrettable.”

“I don’t.”

“Bess?”

I picked at a thread in the hem of my cover-up. “Hm?”

“Do you
want
to forgive me?”

My head snapped back to him. He was leaning up on his elbow, watching me. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Let’s not pretend that you aren’t every bit as controlling as I am. I want you. You know it. You have all the control until you forgive me for whatever it was I did almost ten years ago that you haven’t let go of. When you do let it go, we’ll be on even ground.”

I spun around and shot up on my knees. “Will we be on even ground, or will you still want me and I’ll think you’re an arrogant ass?”

Before he could say another word, I bolted out of the cabana. How dare he try to minimize my feelings. This was
exactly
what I had a problem with all along—Derek overlooking my feelings.

“Bess!” he yelled, but I didn’t turn around.

He didn’t come after me.

I didn’t think he would.

Derek

S
treet lights lit
up the sidewalk, which was welcome since I risked life and limb navigating the trail though the vacant lot in the pitch black of night. After spending the whole damn day in that cabana waiting for the sun to go down, I still had to wait for everyone to leave the beach. My stomach was eating itself I was so hungry and my ass ached from sitting or lying down all day. Needless to say, I was in a really shitty mood.

So when the Halprin’s driveway was empty—no fucking Prius—I was ready to punch faces, break bones and draw blood. I didn’t matter whose.

Mom jumped up from the sofa and mauled me when I walked through the door. “Where have you been? We thought you were abducted! No note. No phone call. Your car’s here, but you’re nowhere to be found.”

“I didn’t think he was abducted,” Dad said, not bothering to look away from the T.V.

“Were you at the beach? Why didn’t you take a t-shirt? I hope nobody saw you.”

“Give it a rest,” Dad said, clicking the remote to turn up the volume. “He’s a grown man.”

She scowled at him and walked with me to the kitchen. “I saved you some dinner.”