Somethin' Dirty: Country Fever, Book 4 (15 page)

“Come with me. So close. So good. Sooo…” He jerked into her body, come rushing up.

She threw her head back and shuddered all over. Cream soaked him, and her pussy clamped down on him. He pumped his cock into her harder as spurts erupted from him.

What he wouldn’t give to go bareback with her. The condom felt like a huge barrier between their bodies but also their souls.

As the sexual haze faded, he stared at her beautiful reflection. High color, red marks, two hickeys. Her flavors on his tongue.

She was sweet with his mother, great with Lyric. Smart, funny and amazingly talented.

He wanted her all to himself.

Forever.

He pulled free of her body and spun her into his arms. She melted against his chest, still quivering from her release.

The notes of the song he’d written long ago rumbled from his throat.

Her muscles stiffened until she was a small sheet of board wood.

He rubbed his jaw over her bare shoulder, marking her again.

“Did Lyric’s mother like that song?”

Shaking his head, he rubbed her back to calm her, just as he would a skittish animal. “That song was once for her, yes. But I soon realized it was bigger than her. She didn’t deserve it. So I gave it to Lyric. But I think it’s meant for someone else.”

She tilted her face up to him, and he stared into the confused depths of her eyes.

“I have an urge to run to the jeweler’s. Better make it quick before you go off to Nashville and find some country crooner. I want to see you in something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. Then I want to do somethin’ dirty.” He quirked a brow.

She jerked from his hold and grabbed her nightshirt. Then she shoved through the bathroom door.

Lyric snuffled and started batting the air at her rude awakening.

“Nola.” He followed her into the bedroom, where she was throwing on panties and jeans. Her eyes were wild.

He pointed a finger at her. “Don’t you leave.”

She tossed her head. “I’ll go if I please. But it won’t be right now. Get dressed and take care of the ranch. I’ve got Lyric for the day. Just don’t expect me to stay tonight. I have someplace to be.”

He stared at her, ignoring Lyric’s grunts of anger.

She continued, “I don’t belong here. I’m not your woman.”

“You afraid you might like it?”

A purple stain climbed her face. She stomped past him to the sink, washed her hands then gathered Lyric out of her nest. The baby stopped fussing immediately, but Nola was far from finished.

“I don’t need a husband.”

“Maybe not. But I think you’d like it fine,” he drawled. Suddenly making her admit how great they were together was more important than anything in the world.

“I don’t want a husband,” she bit off through clenched teeth. She flounced out of the bedroom with Lyric, heading for the nursery.

He trailed after her, still buck naked. “I make you feel things. Don’t deny it.”

“You do not.” She laid Lyric on the changing table and started removing her diaper.

“You like being in my house. I see you peeking at me from the windows when I’m working outside.”

Her words were constricted. “Do not!”

“And you loved when I licked you…” he lowered his voice, “…there.”

She jerked her head his direction and glared at him. “Don’t talk about it around Lyric. You’ll corrupt her!”

He laughed, a genuine joy that washed from the pit of his stomach.

“And go get dressed, for God’s sake!”

He started across the room. “You’ll be in my bed tonight, Nola. Don’t think about denying me,” he shot over his shoulder. The last thing he saw was her eyebrows drawn low like thunderclouds over her stormy glare.

She wasn’t in his bed that night.

Nola ran her palms over her glittery top and silky mini-skirt. It felt good to be dressed up and without a spit-up stain on her T-shirt. When she raised a hand to pat her hair, her bangle bracelets slid down her forearm.

The Hellion was hopping tonight. Tourists were starting to descend upon Reedy, and that meant fresh listeners. Tonight she was going to sing her own music. She’d already set it up with the guy who ran karaoke. He’d unplug for two songs, where it would be only Nola—guitar and voice.

God, she wished someone she cared about would hear her. She’d always had Molly or a friend in the crowd. Tonight she was truly solo.

Nerves zipped around her stomach like a hundred butterflies. She glanced at the big clock over the bar sporting the beer logo. She was on in two songs. Was it enough time to call Molly and get her over here?

Forget it. I can do it alone.

She’d been working on these songs for months. Her CDs were in Nashville even now, hopefully getting some attention. But she really needed to be there to market herself.

She shifted on her spike heels and focused on the karaoke singer. An older guy in boots and western shirt was belting out a Johnny Cash tune. The crowd cheered him on, and one woman who was young enough to be his daughter gave intermittent shrill whistles for him.

Were they a couple?

It was impossible not to think of Griffin. He was nearly twenty years older than her. In ten years, that would be them. She’d still be young and he middle-aged.

Somehow she knew he would never look like that guy onstage. Griffin would age like fine whiskey—more silver strands weaving through his beard and a few more lines on his face, but his eyes would still glitter like the youngest man’s. And his physique…

Heat coiled in her core. What he’d done to her on the bedroom floor still made her blush. The memory had struck her several times throughout the day, and she’d find herself aching for more of that taboo kiss.

Stop it.
After his mention of marriage, she’d mentally run like hell. She didn’t need a proposal when she was on the cusp of fulfilling her dream of getting a record deal.

The Johnny Cash crooner took his bow to loud applause, and Nola added a few claps and a smile. Johnny Cash was always a favorite here.

A tall woman in boots and jeans took the stage. Her first note was off-key, and Nola lost interest. She stared across the crowd, picking out those she knew from high school or from around town.

“Not working at your father’s office anymore?” a man leaned close to say over the caterwauling of a Carrie Underwood song.

Nola glanced at him. He was in his thirties, a cowboy-type with tobacco tucked in his cheek and a beer in hand. “Uh, no.”

He raised his beer. “Can I get you a drink?”

“No, thank you. I’m up next.” She gestured to the stage. The woman strutted across the short length, the spotlights showcasing her ample cleavage and the sweat glistening there.

“I always come here hoping to hear you sing.”

She looked at the man harder, unsure whether to be creeped out or happy to have a fan. She tensed as he crowded into her space. Suddenly, she wanted Griffin very badly. No one would dare hit on her with him at her side.

“I’ll just…go get ready,” she said loud enough to be heard over the plaintive wail of the singer. She walked away from the guy, but could practically feel his gaze clinging to her ass.

Well, she’d better get used to attention, even if it was unwanted. If she became a star, she’d be lighting a spotlight on everything she did.

Still, she wanted the dream. Wanted it bad.

The singer exited the stage to a fair amount of applause, though Nola wondered if it was the audience’s joy that their hearing had been saved at last.

“Nola Brady is going to step out with somethin’ a little different. Give her a welcome!” the DJ intoned.

Jittery with excitement now, she circled the stage and grabbed her guitar from the case. The familiar weight of it and the pull of the strap across her shoulder felt good.

She stepped into the center of the stage, and the crowd stilled. She placed her fingers on the strings and opened her mouth. The first words that popped into her head were not her own, no matter how many times she’d rehearsed them.

Griffin’s song was inside her.

She gave a little stamp of her heel and firmly shoved his voice, his words, his damn lingering touch out of her head.

The first strum of the guitar grounded her. When the words burst out, her world righted itself. For weeks she’d been off-balance, thinking about diapers and formula and long, slow kisses.

This was her—guitar, stage. She played with the audience through her song, making eye contact, dancing and swishing her ass at a sassy lyric. Cheers erupted. She no longer stood in the shade, a player on the game board of the universe. She was full of life.

Her final chord rolled into the next song—a rowdy tune about a jilted lover getting revenge. The crowd loved it.

They loved her.

Glowing from the inside out, she ended to deafening applause. Whistles and catcalls met her bow. Then she sashayed off the stage, on a high unlike any she’d known before.

This was her calling. Griffin’s mention of marriage had thrown a temporary lasso around her, but she’d wriggled free and found herself again.

Then why are those bars of his song flitting through my head?

She shook herself and carefully placed her guitar back into her case.

“Buy ya a drink, pretty lady?” someone called to her.

She smiled and waved him off with a “thanks, anyway”. Another stepped up with a fruity drink already in hand.

If Griffin were here he’d know she liked a shot glass brimming with amber liquid rather than a drink bearing an umbrella.

“No thanks. I’m driving tonight.”

He looked hurt. She snagged a lady to her left and positioned the woman in front of the cowboy and his fruity drink.

“She looks thirsty,” Nola said. The woman nodded, smiling wide, and the man passed the drink into her hands.

Grinning, Nola grabbed her guitar and started to push her way through the crowd.

Someone blocked her path. She looked up into the face of the man who’d spoken to her before she sang. He gave her a broad smile.

It wasn’t that he wasn’t attractive. He just wasn’t for her.

Admit it. No one measures up to Griffin now.

She tossed her head to remove the thought. “Excuse me.”

“Sounded beautiful, Nola. Like a dream.” He leaned close. “And you look like a wet dream.”

Disgust roiled in her belly. “Please move out of my way.”

She could only hope the bouncer would walk her to her car. But sometimes Cliff sneaked off for a drink and a smoke with a cute girl. She cast a look around the bar for someone she knew.

The man sidled close, his beer breath fogging the air around her. He put his hand on her spine, low enough to touch her ass.

The ass Griffin had worked over until she’d lost all sense of reality.

Anger spiked in her. She didn’t need Griffin’s invasion. He was molding her thinking to fit his. That she belonged with him—to him.

And this guy…his family stones were about to meet the skewer of her high heel if he didn’t back off.

“Get away from me. I don’t welcome your advances.” Her momma had raised her to be polite. Sometimes you disarmed a situation with niceness more easily than with harsh words.

The man brought his face so close to hers she practically grew drunk on his fumes. “A pretty lady like you needs a hand out. You shouldn’t be carrying your guitar. Let me be your roadieee,” he drawled. He leaned in, his mouth gunning for her cheek.

She jerked to the side at the last minute, but not before his sticky lips glanced off her skin. “Get off!”

Before he could do anything more, she spun and pushed her way back across the bar. People congratulated her and even asked for more songs, but she was too furious with that guy to think about singing. She wanted to put some distance between them, then she’d slip out the back door.

An old friend from high school stopped her to talk, and she spent fifteen minutes discussing people she knew and her plans to go to Nashville. All the while she talked, she kept an eye out for the stalker.

Thoughts of Griffin’s warm, safe ranch filled her mind. Right now they would have made love twice and be cuddled up together under a cool sheet. He’d be seducing her into another round with those deep, chocolaty eyes and Lyric’s soft sighs of sleep would be emitting through the monitor.

By the time she was done talking, Nola no longer wanted her slinky outfit or fuck-me heels. She wanted a big man’s shirt and her bare toes gliding through the coarse hairs on the owner’s leg.

No. I want to go home.

She gave the friend a hug and grabbed her guitar again, prepared to make a break for the back door. But as she started forward, the crowd parted and she got a clear shot of the stalker standing against the wall where she’d have to pass to get to the back door.

“Fuck.”

She whirled and headed in the opposite direction, making a beeline for the front exit. People moved aside for her, and if they didn’t a little nudge with her guitar case did the trick.