Taste Me (19 page)

His entire body jerked at her words. She longed for his plundering, ransacking mouth to crash down on hers, to take her down, take her over, but instead, Lukas’s eyelids drifted closed, and he breathed deeply, in and out, in and out, like he was meditating, or worshiping the aurora.

Damn the man
. She tightened her arms around his linebacker shoulders, squirming to get his attention. He dragged her more tightly against his body, clamping his hand on her ass. His body radiated heat like a blacksmith’s forge, and when he opened his eyes again, his irises had softened to molten gold. Scarlett half thought that they’d drip on her as he bent his head and slowly—too slowly—brought his lips back to hers. She gasped at the first touch, gasped again as his rough suede tongue caught her breath. He tasted of coffee and desperation and a dark flavor entirely his own, and damn him, he knew exactly when to coax, and when to plunge and take. Her body moistened, softened. Jealousy nudged as she wondered exactly how many women had tasted that wicked, wicked tongue.

What had started off as a languid, gentle kiss quickly turned urgent and feral. Lukas was barely holding on. Teeth clicked as they dove at each other, and when he felt Scarlett’s tongue chase his back into his mouth, the groans he’d been throttling back escaped like a living thing. Dragging her against his body, he angled his head for better access. He could feel her heat, her wetness, the give of her intimate lips spreading for him. Smell her arousal as she readied for him. It wouldn’t take much at all to just bully through the clothes, to—

She pulled back, audibly sucking in breath.

Shit, he’d scared her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

“Nothing’s wrong. I just need some air.” When she unwrapped her long legs from around his waist, he felt the loss like an ache, but he set her down, and watched her step away. He wasn’t surprised she wanted to call a halt to things. He’d crowded her, moved in too fast, and she was—

She was taking off her sweater.

He blinked and shook his head to clear it. No, this wasn’t his fevered imagination; she was drawing the soft sweater up her torso and over her head, uncovering pert breasts covered by a sheer black knit camisole that he barely had time to appreciate before she whipped that off too, leaving her wearing only clingy pants, fiery red hair, and soft white skin.

He swallowed heavily. Were they really going to do this? Was he?

All the old arguments flagellated him as she turned away and walked to the bathroom, her tight ass shifting under the snug pants. She was too young? Not anymore. She didn’t know what she was doing? As if. The night Annika had died, Scarlett had tested his hardness and length like a connoisseur, and just now, she’d rubbed against him like a woman who knew exactly what satisfied her.

As for hurting her? It was probably inevitable—but he’d hurt himself far worse in the process, because if he did this selfish thing, he’d have to get over her all over again.

As if you got over her the first time.

Steam rose from the shower, billowing out of the open bathroom door. The rhythm of the falling water changed as Scarlett stepped under the shower head. When she started humming, her voice bouncing off the rough tiles, he moved toward the bathroom like a marionette on strings. Despite his certainty that making love with Scarlett would be the most selfish thing he’d do in his lifetime, a sense of inevitability settled in. Ignoring the sexual tension between them wasn’t working. Maybe it was time for them to work it out of their systems with a vengeance.

Like you’d ever get enough.

When he entered the bathroom, Scarlett was stroking his pine-scented body wash over her long, lean body, rivulets of water turning his functional soap to exotic suds. Bubbles clung to her stiff pink nipple like a dollop of whipped cream. She crooked a saucy brow. “I thought you said you needed a shower.”

Lukas worked the stretchy compression shorts down his clenched thighs and dropped them to the floor. He vaguely registered her indrawn breath as he reached into the medicine cabinet for condoms and stepped into the tiled enclosure.

He survived losing her the first time. He’d probably survive again.

***

Nearly a half hour later, the water still ran hot, but Scarlett was standing in the shower alone while Lukas did… whatever had driven him from the shower like a fire had been lit under his very luscious ass. Her body was humming, and the slight soreness between her thighs left her in no doubt that she hadn’t imagined his presence. But… had her memory been that faulty? Her dreams that outrageous?

Where was the flash, the fury?

He’d been so gentle with her. Her eyes narrowed. Too gentle. Damn it, he’d held himself back. His brain had been in the driver’s seat the entire time.

She felt inexplicably cheated. She yearned to open her mouth and ream him out, to scream at him, but… what would she say? “Fuck me like you mean it?” “You can’t break me, damn it?”

Unless she didn’t make him as mindless with lust as he made her.

They’d spoken no words, made no promises. It didn’t seem fair to be pissed at him for giving her three glorious orgasms.

But she was. Scarlett reached for the bottle of body soap that stood on the ledge. Her eyelids drifted closed as she sniffed. Here it was, the origin of the dark mossy scent that so intoxicated her when Lukas let her get close enough. And yeah, he’d gotten close all right, lifting her and pressing her back against the rough green and beige tiles, the breadth of his body spreading her knees wide. The first kiss of the broad head of his cock against her wet core had rocketed through her like an earthquake. She’d tried to hurry him up, to just get inside her already, but he would have none of that. Instead, he’d buried his head in the crook of her neck and slowly, gently, tunneled himself into her, pressing the very breath from her lungs and leaving her gasping for air. She’d waited for his big body to pound into hers, but instead she’d gotten gentleness and ruthless control. Yes, he’d found his own release, but he’d barely stopped quaking inside her before he’d withdrawn from her body, quickly showering off, stepping out dripping wet, muttering something about needing to get back to work.

Had he thrown her a pity fuck? Poor Scarlett, with nothing but a tacky yellow vibrator for company? “I’m a sex demon with outrageous skills and time to kill, so I might as well help Scarlett out with her little problem.” No. Lukas wouldn’t do that.

Would he?

Scarlett mentally played back the scene from the shower. Lukas’s eyes had been on her face, on her body, the whole time, wholly attuned to her pleasure—but taking the bare minimum for himself.

Sasha was right. Stupid, stupid man.

“I’ll… be downstairs,” the stupid, stupid man called from the front door, not waiting for her to answer before it softly closed behind him. He’d set a speed record for dressing, unless he’d walked out the door wearing nothing but a towel.

So frantic to get away.

It was just as well, because right now she had no earthly idea how to deal with him. How would she ever convince him that she not only could take what he could dish out with that big, bad body, but that she yearned for it? Demanded it?

Stepping out of the shower, she grabbed a bath sheet, dried off, quickly yanked on her yoga pants and a Ramones T-shirt, and pulled a wide-toothed comb through her damp hair. Before Lukas had come upstairs and distracted her, she’d had the wisp of a song in her head. As long as she had the place to herself, she might as well get a little bit of work done.

Loose-limbed and energized, she walked to her work area, smirking at Lukas’s big, wet footprints marching from the bathroom to the bedroom to the front door. On her desk, her iPod still shuffled away. Picking it up and clapping it on her head, she rolled her eyes when Sigmund treated her to Adam Lambert’s “Whataya Want From Me.”

She couldn’t let Lukas back off, back away. A frisson of excitement bumped low in her abdomen. She refused to live the way she had during the last year—hell, the last decade. By the end of this, either she and Lukas would be together, or they wouldn’t. No more living in this gray netherworld.

She glanced at the door.
Enjoy this respite, big man, because it’s the last one you’ll get.
Until he came back, she could channel her current lazy satiation into a—

Her mixing software’s Record button glowed bright red. Her jaw dropped. Snatching off her headset, she stopped the recording, dragged the slider back, and clicked Play.

Heavy breathing, his and hers. Her thready moan, his muttered curse. Even with the laptop’s middling sound quality, she distinctly heard each collision of their lips, slippery, wet, and erotic. “Oh, my.”

Inspiration hit.

“C’mon, c’mon, don’t lose it,” she muttered as she quickly started another recording and snatched up her acoustic guitar, mindlessly playing the melody that exploded in her brain, fully formed. She visualized the layers they’d record: Stephen’s syncopated taps down at the bottom. Tansy’s steady bass line, pulling the song along. A slow, steady tension from Joe’s rhythm guitar, a screaming lead from Michael—and her vocals surfing on top of all of it, as waves fought to the beach, crashed, and finally came to rest.

“Undertow,” she whispered. She snatched up her notebook, opened it to a blank page, and scribbled down the words pounding in her head.

Get them down. Edit later.

Finally, the words flowed.

“Can I help you, sir?” an unsmiling man wearing nondescript scrubs asked from behind the desk the moment Stephen stepped off the elevator on the top floor of the hospital.

Stephen smiled through the jitters. He needed a jolt, and a few steps beyond the big man’s shoulder, Andi Woolf’s hospital room beckoned like the Promised Land. His skin felt ready to explode off of his frame.

What would he do if he couldn’t talk his way past this guy?

Bits and pieces of last night’s debauched tour of the city’s underground sex clubs flitted through his mind. He’d blacked out again, but had somehow woken up in his own bed, clammy and nauseated, with a pack of paparazzi on the street and the beast sharpening its teeth on his ribs.

Stephen had tried to stay away from the hospital, he really had. It wasn’t like he had fond memories of the place, but after losing the paparazzi who’d followed him from home, he’d aimlessly cruised the hospital most of the morning, first spending some time with his little buddies down in Pediatrics, even sitting down and making a couple of friendship bracelets with them, posing for pictures with their families, signing some autographs. Surprisingly, he enjoyed the little buggers’ inane, cheerful chatter, and their endless questions had distracted him from how shitty he felt. After the kids had all gone back to their rooms, leaving him alone, he’d simply tailgated, making himself part of the anonymous stream of people pouring through the corridors of the Level One Trauma Center.

Unfortunately, the energy he absorbed passing Maternity, Physical Therapy, and the Chapel had been feeble, negligible. He couldn’t get into the Morgue due to a new security door, but the ER had hit the spot for awhile. Helicopters whapped and chopped overhead, and pain drifted from the curtained-off treatment rooms into the hallways. But it still wasn’t enough. Soon, an insidious mantra chanted in his head: S
he’s right upstairs. Right upstairs.

Hot chills shook his frame. “Sir, are you okay?” the nurse—bodyguard?—asked as he stepped out of the elevator.

Do I look like I’m okay, asshole?
Stephen nearly snarled in response, but he throttled it back. The guy was already studying him far too closely. The place was crawling with cameras they didn’t bother to hide.

He could smell her from here.

“Sir?”

“I’m okay,” he snapped.

But he wasn’t. Nothing had satisfied him since the day he’d shot out Crackhouse Coffee’s picture window—the day he’d made Lukas Sebastiani feel fear.

“Sir.” The man moved from behind the curved desk and stood next to him, no longer bothering to hide the menace behind a professional façade. Their heads both turned as Andi’s door opened and a middle-aged man emerged. Though impeccably suited and barbered, Krispin Woolf still looked rumpled. It was his face, Stephen decided. The man looked like he’d aged a decade in two weeks.

Woolf’s parental guilt, helpless anger, and curiosity wafted across the room as he looked Stephen up and down with imperious eyes. “Do I know you?”

Showtime.
“Likely not,” Stephen said, introducing himself and shaking the WerePack Alpha’s hand. “I’m a friend of Andi’s. I’ve been hospitalized recently myself, and haven’t been able to visit until now. I thought I’d stop by and see how she’s doing.”

The other man took in the line of stitches marching across Stephen’s forehead, and the yellow/green discoloration still mottling his eye. “You’re the musician who was with Annika Fontaine the night she was killed.”

Stephen didn’t quite know how to respond. Woolf hadn’t given the word “with” the judgmental sexual twist that some did, but that didn’t mean anything. “Yes,” he said.

Woolf tightened his thin lips. “If the police don’t catch this man soon, they’re going to get some help, whether they want it or not.”

Stephen barely managed to keep his face still. If the rumors were true, this man operated on the shadowy fringes of fair, right, and legal, even though no one had ever been able to prove anything. “How is Andi doing?”

“She’s still in a coma,” Woolf said stoically. “She won’t be able to talk to you.”

“But maybe she’ll know I’m there.” Excitement coursed through him. “Sir, why don’t you take a break? Go to the cafeteria, get a fresh cup of coffee. I’d love to keep Andi company for a while.”

Woolf stared at him for what seemed like ages, then finally gestured the guard back behind his desk and indicated that Stephen should follow him into Andi’s room.

As he walked into the room, the first thing Stephen noticed was the sunlight. It poured in through the wide-open curtains, and the bland, white walls were covered with cards and colorful banners. A profusion of potted plants and flowers stood on the windowsill, and spilled over to stand along the floorboards. And finally, there was Andi, his Candy Girl, lying motionless on the bed, looking for all the world like she was simply napping.

Stephen’s gut clutched as he stepped closer to the bed. Her eyes were closed, and her coloring was so pale that he could see capillaries threading under the skin of her lids. But her face was slack and relaxed, despite the tracheotomy tube protruding from her throat. A ventilator hissed rhythmically, and an IV needle was embedded in her left wrist. Her brown hair was slightly mussed on the snowy white pillow, reminding him of when he’d plowed his hands through it in the hallway the night they met.

“Look what that son of a bitch did.” As Woolf stroked Andi’s hand, there was a quick blip on the heart monitor, and then it steadied out again. “You know I’m here, don’t you,” Woolf said softly. “Yes, sweetheart, Daddy’s here.” To Stephen, he said, “She’s recovering, but she’s still in a medically induced coma. She keeps trying to tear the tubes out, don’t you, my little fighter?” he crooned. Woolf leaned over his daughter, kissing her silky cheek before stepping back. “It’s nice Andi’s friends are visiting. She has so many friends. Commander Lupinsky stops by every day.” Woolf’s expression hardened. “There’s no news, but he provides me with status reports nonetheless.”

No news.
It was the first information Stephen had heard from a reliable source. Rumors were running rampant, and of course the tabloids were having a field day printing whatever the hell they wanted to, but Lukas Sebastiani’s news blackout had held firm despite the determined digging of both human and Underworld press.

“Thank you for visiting my daughter.”

Stephen smiled gently and laid his hand over Andi’s. “You couldn’t keep me away.” The heart monitor blipped, and then steadied out again.

Woolf’s brow rose. “She must recognize you.”

“I hope so,” Stephen replied
. Not that we talked very much the night we met.

“Enjoy your visit,” Woolf said, walking to the door. As it closed behind him, Stephen overheard him telling the bodyguard, “She seems to be responding to him. Maybe she’s ready to come out of it.”

I hope not. The minute she does, I’m toast.

He didn’t know how long he simply stood there watching her, lying so still in the middle of the hissing and blipping around her, but he finally found the courage to touch her again. When he put his hand on her shoulder, the monitor bleated in warning. Excitement and apprehension battled, but he didn’t remove his hand. Instead, he leaned in toward her body, brought his head close to hers, and drew his tongue along the delicate shell of her ear.

A kiss.
Surely, even with the cameras picking up his every move, he could get away with a kiss. He brought his mouth to hers and nibbled his way in. Her nipples hardened under the flimsy hospital gown despite the revulsion he inhaled from her. Her mind might protest, but her body remembered him, responded to him.

Stephen inhaled greedily as the monitor kicked into overdrive. Leaning over, he licked her ear again. “I’m going to make you feel so good.” His head dropped to her neck, where her pulse raced under his tongue. He cupped her breast in his shaky hand.

Stephen. Child.

Huh? What—who—was that?
Release coiled at the base of his spine. He was going to come. On the monitor, Andi’s heartbeat jerked along with his body.

It took forever for the shuddering to stop, but when it did, Stephen lurched away from her bed. Groping wildly for the doorknob, he stumbled to the elevator with his hand over his eyes.

The guard stared at him as the elevator doors closed. Let him think Stephen was overcome with emotion. He was—just not the emotion the man might think.

After a quick stop in the first floor washroom to clean up, Stephen passed Madame Bouchet’s room. Thankfully, she was asleep. What the hell would he say to her?

Had hers been the voice in his head? Or had it been his conscience? That sorry, atrophied thing?

Reaching into his pocket, he grabbed one of the garish red and purple plastic bracelets he’d made with the kids, and placed it near her hand, where she’d be sure to find it when she woke up.

Just as well she was asleep. He didn’t want her to see him like this—stinking of semen and shame.

***

“I said I’m not touring anymore.”

“What?” Sasha yelped.

Scarlett lowered the phone. What was that clicking sound? Lukas had been downstairs at Sebastiani Security all day long. Again. “Can you hang on a sec?” Without waiting for Sasha to answer, she lay the phone down on the quilt beside Sigmund and clambered out of Lukas’s bed, where she’d spent hours refining the lyrics for “Undertow.”

The song still cratered into her brain.

Calamity, draped at the foot of the bed like a sultan, yowled as she jostled the bed. “Yeah, yeah,” she muttered. “Deal with it.”

Clickity-click.

She peeked out from behind the heavy velvet panel and saw Lukas sitting at his desk in front of the open window. He wore battered jeans and a T-shirt despite the autumn chill, and scowled at something on his computer monitor.

When had Lukas come home?

Over a day had passed since they’d had sex; her body still hummed like a well-oiled machine. He’d been up and out of the apartment by the time she’d woken up. Despite his physical absence, his presence had been everywhere: in the scent of the full pot of coffee he’d left her, in the toast crumbs he hadn’t wiped off the counter, in the damp towel hanging alongside hers in the bathroom.

Stepping into the shower that morning, finding it already wet from his use, had felt unbelievably intimate. She’d spent too many minutes imagining him running his hand over his body as he washed. How long would it be until she could use the shower without remembering being pressed between the cool sage tiles and his big warm body, with nothing to hang on to but him?

A frisson of excitement snapped down low. At his desk, Lukas swore, closed his eyes, and slowly inhaled before returning focus to his work. When he idly pushed a hank of hair behind his ear, she saw the buds nestled in his ears. At least she didn’t have to worry about him overhearing her conversation with his sister—who still waited while Scarlett mooned over her brother.

She crawled back into bed, shivering a little as she snuggled back under the warm blankets. “Still there?” she asked Sasha as she clamped the phone to her ear.

“You drop a bomb like that and then walk away? Damn right I’m still here. You’ve actually decided to do this.” Sasha’s voice sounded disbelieving.

“Yes.” Scarlett heard water splashing in the background. Sasha must be doing the dishes, a task Scarlett knew she hated. “Sasha, why don’t you—I mean we—” she corrected carefully “—get a cleaning service?”

“Now that Annika isn’t here to keep things scrubbed up?”

The verbal gut punch drove the air from Scarlett’s lungs. On the other end of the phone, she heard the water shut off.

Sasha took a shaky breath. “Damn. Damn. I’m… sorry.”

She wasn’t the only person who’d had Annika’s death upend the ground beneath her feet. “It’s okay, Sasha,” she said, injecting every lick of comfort into her voice she could.

“No, it’s not. It was a horrible thing to say. I’m a terrible friend.”

“Sash—”

“Sometimes I forget she’s gone,” Sasha interrupted starkly. “I hear Jack move around in her bedroom at night, hear the water running in her bathroom… and for just a minute, I forget it’s not her. Then I remember she’s never coming back.”

Scarlett pinched the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger. Silence hummed on the line, a silence that said everything. “I miss her too, Sash.”

“Yeah.” Sasha cleared her throat. “I really want you to come home.”

“I want to come home too,” Scarlett responded, though she didn’t know if it was entirely true anymore.

“About the cleaning service. I don’t want strangers pawing through our stuff. And let’s get back to the matter at hand.” Sasha’s sigh transmitted clearly over the line. “Are you sure about the touring thing?”

“Yes.” This one thing, she was sure about. She settled back against Lukas’s big, king-sized pillows as Sasha immediately launched into all the reasons she shouldn’t do this. Couldn’t do this. Consider the fans. The roar of the crowd.

Hell, consider the money.

Scarlett just listened quietly as Sasha talked herself through the shock. “Sasha,” she finally said, “I didn’t say I wasn’t going to perform again, or record again. I just said I wasn’t going to tour.”

A pause. “Oh.”

“And guess where home base is going to be? Underbelly’s going to make a mint.”

Scarlett could almost hear Sasha mentally counting money over the line. “I can see where that might be beneficial, but I still don’t get—”

“Sasha, even without assuming Annika’s role as the Siren Second, I… have to stop. Running away to the road isn’t healthy for me. It’s way too easy to just blank out, to channel other people’s emotions instead of feeling my own.”

On the other end of the phone, Scarlett heard Sasha sigh. “It just seems like such a damn shame.”

“But it’s the right thing for me to do, Sash.”

They both sat in companionable silence, until Sasha said, “Did Garrett shit a brick?”

“Yes, but you know Garrett. Before the end of our conversation, he had eleventy-thousand different ideas to capitalize on the situation.”