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‘Are you going to manage?’
‘Don’t know. Are you offering to give me a hand?’
Somehow, she didn’t think he meant with the taps. Immediately she released her grip, pulled both her hands under the duvet and tucked them under her bottom. ‘Probably best if I don’t. You said yourself, you’re not interested in being jumped.’
‘What if I’ve changed my mind?’
‘You haven’t.’ He was just feeling lonely and he was drunk.
‘Why’d I kiss you then?’
‘Because you were being kind. Kissing me was nicer than slapping me as a reminder to pull myself together.’ If he really wanted her, he’d remember that in the morning.
‘I only slap women’s bottoms,’ he remarked absently.
Even though she didn’t think he meant anything by it, the notion still left her feeling strangely tingly. Not that she found anything remotely erotic about punishment.
‘Are you sure you don’t want to get dirty with me?’
‘I thought the idea of washing was to get clean.’
A brief, wan smile stretched his lips. He turned and walked back to the stairs, only fractionally unsteady on his feet. ‘You’ll come if I holler, right? In case I slip over.’
‘I’m sure you’ll be fine.’
‘But if I’m not, you’ll come, won’t you, Dani? It probably won’t look good if I smash my head open in the shower the same night the group split.’
‘I’ll come,’ she promised, and sincerely hoped he wasn’t going to cry wolf. Seeing him naked would probably fry what few brain cells she had left.
Chapter 8 (#ulink_8b335ddf-f37e-5feb-b393-810bb3f455e8)
Xane staggered downstairs.
What the hell had happened? A short while ago, he’d been ready to swear off love for ever. He intended to lock himself in a darkened room, get blind drunk, pass out on the floor and not wake up until Thursday. Instead, there was a pleasant buzz in his veins that had very little to do with alcohol and far more to do with the girl on his sofa.
Talk about being confused.
It was probably just his battered heart looking for something, anything, to cling to; being worshipped by a pretty girl sure beat being lonely. And Dani wasn’t like the chicks that normally sneaked backstage to accost him. All they ever seemed to want was to strip him bare and use him as a life-sized masturbation aid. The fact that he was a person, with a past and a future, with opinions and sensibilities, entirely passed them by. Most of them didn’t even care which member of the band they were with. They just wanted a rock star. And, with the exception of the odd one who wanted him to sing while she went down on him, they didn’t give a fig about his music.
Not only had Dani opted to keep her clothes on, he’d also lay money on her being intimately acquainted with every word, every chord and riff that he’d ever released. Also, she seemed to see through his guise to the real him.
Maybe that’s why he was intrigued. She was right; he did pour everything into his music.
Of course, he’d spoilt things by attempting to get physical with her. He’d blame the alcohol, but actually some habits just died hard.
Not that he’d meant to kiss her. He’d … well, he’d panicked, and did what he always did, opened his mouth when he ought to have kept it closed. Even that oughtn’t to have led to anything – but the taste of her had got to him, all sweetness and innocence. He’d felt her apprehension, even as her excitement took over, and then he couldn’t stop himself. His heart might be bruised beyond recognition, and his head knew exactly how bad one-night stands were for his soul, but neither had apparently informed his cock of that fact, hence the growing wedge in his pants that was making it difficult to walk. All of which left him with a hard on and nowhere to put it.
No big surprise there either, since he’d been acting like a Grade A prick from the moment he and Dani met: accosting her, using her as a taxi cab and then lumping her in with Black Halo’s usual class of groupies. It was a miracle she hadn’t slapped him yet, and no surprise at all that she wasn’t interested in servicing his ache. It wouldn’t surprise him if she slipped into the night while he was down here, and drove home.
He’d have to applaud her good sense if she did, right after he’d lamented not grabbing her number. He paused, hands braced against either side of the narrow stairwell. Maybe he ought to get that now, except it’d make him look even more of a dick. Better to stick to plan A and clean himself up.
Xane misjudged the bottom step and landed on his arse. God, he was a mess. A stinking, fucked-up mess. And a fool too for thinking that alcohol might right everything. Alcohol had never worked for him for blotting out pain. It only added to it. If he’d really wanted to lose himself for the night, he ought to have lurched back to the hotel with Ash and double-dipped with whoever his lead guitarist had managed to pick up en route. They could have made one gloriously long and sordid night of it, and he wouldn’t once have thought about Steve, or Elspeth, or the band, or been tempted to prod his heart to see if it hurt.
It always fucking hurt! That’s what unrequited love did to you.
Nor would he be stuck in purgatory with a girl he fancied but who wasn’t going to spread her thighs on command.
He actually liked her for that.
Besides, sleeping with her because his day had been shit, and he felt like shit, and she was the only thing around in his life at the moment that didn’t start with ‘S’ and end with ‘it’, wasn’t a great plan. It’d render the act and both of them cheap.
But then, he was pretty cheap. Much as he liked to kid otherwise. Ash might be known as the Black Halo playboy, but Xane had enjoyed easily as many partners.
‘You’re screwed up, mate.’ He gurned at his reflection in the mirror. His stage face was smeared all over the place, and he’d already taken his contact lenses out, so the real him was creeping through the cracks. ‘Shower,’ he ordered himself. Then, if he was sensible, he’d crash out and leave that poor girl upstairs alone. It wasn’t like screwing her was going to mend the gaping hole in his chest. Just because she’d shown him a bit of empathy, a little compassion, didn’t mean she could fix anything.
Stripped naked, Xane stepped under the shower-head. For several minutes he let the water run over his tired limbs. Make-up washed away, the kohl leaving black tracks across his body. Only once his mask had flowed down the drain did he let his hand stray towards his remarkably stubborn erection.
Damn thing wanted some action, same as it always did when his emotions took a nosedive. Considering the years he’d spent conditioning it to do just that, he could hardly complain. Sex had always been a nice easy way of blotting out reality. He blotted out a lot of reality.
Yup, he definitely ought to have made a night of it with Ash. Pointless pleasure; his body knew all about that, even if it didn’t seem entirely right to be turned on after everything that had happened.
Xane closed his eyes tight and rewound the last ten minutes. He imagined he was back upstairs, stretched out above Dani on the sofa. Better that than dwelling on the lover he’d lost.
That kiss had seared him with its heat, but the lady had been in shock, so he’d refrained from getting gropey. Only now she was staring at him with her plump lips parted and her breathing unsteady. Desire filled her eyes. Yet she wasn’t the sort to make the first move.
‘Do it,’ he silently commanded. ‘Reach out and take what you want.’
Perhaps she heard him. Perhaps some other influence guided her hand, for she reached out to him, first touching his face, then his neck.
Xane braced one hand against the glass wall to maintain his balance, and then let his other hand wander. Each tentative caress, he imagined Dani making. She remained timid, but he liked her caution. She seemed eager to explore his body and to discover its secrets, rather than immediately zeroing in on his cock as though it were his only erogenous zone like most of the other lovers he’d known.
Her fingers lightly stroked the side of his throat. ‘Yes,’ he murmured in approval. His neck had always been sensitive. He could get off from being touched there alone. OK, from slightly more than a touch. He liked to be bitten, but even feather-light kisses were enough to make him tremble.
Her attention didn’t linger there. It swept downwards, encompassing his collarbone and shoulders, then the smooth expanse of his chest. She circled his nipples. Even wet them with her little pink tongue.
His nipples weren’t as sensitive as his neck, but no matter. Simply having her touching him was good.
Xane’s breath truly hitched when her exploration strayed just shy of his loins.
Oh, God, yes! he almost shouted.
Instead, he folded his palm around his erection. A few swipes of his thumb, and he was one hundred per cent ready for action. It sucked so much blood out of his brain, he actually felt woozy. Still, he had no worries about his ability to perform. He was ready to give her everything she wanted, and a few things she hadn’t realised she wanted yet.
Xane wanted to feel the puffs of her breath against his cheeks and hear the sharpness of her cries as she gave herself up to him. With her soft curves clinging to him, he could forget about the band and everything else. He could sink into the moment, exist for a time in a realm where there was nothing but pleasure.
However, Dani wasn’t done with her exploration yet. Instead of inviting him between her thighs, she kissed a slow pathway down his body, following the route her hands had already traversed. Her long hair tickled as it brushed his lower abs.
Fuck!
She paused, painfully close to his cock. If he persuaded her to turn her head a fraction, he could pump right into her mouth. Xane held back, stifling his urge to direct her. He suffered her teasing instead, imagining countless whisper-soft kisses on his inner thighs and around the base of his cock.
He wondered if she’d ever gone down on a guy before. His instincts said probably not.
God, to be her first … to feel her heat and her kiss, and know he was the only person she’d trusted like this. Most of the mouths he’d fucked were as dirty as their owners. Sometimes he figured that was all he deserved. Even his regular lovers were downright filthy beasts, but then, if he was being honest, so was he.
Xane pointed the shower spray at his stomach while he stroked faster.
‘Xane, I can’t.’ In his mind she was on her knees, her eyes shiny and bright when she looked up at him. ‘I do want to, but I can’t.’
‘One kiss,’ he coaxed. ‘I dare you. Just one dry press of your lips. You don’t even have to suck me. Just touch me. Draw your tongue along the slit.’
If she even did that much, he’d probably explode.
Desire and fear warred within her expression. ‘Like this?’ she asked. Her lips met the side of his shaft, then the underside. The tip of her tongue traced a vein upward to the tip. She didn’t suck him. She toyed with him, until he was nearly ready to grab hold of her hair and force the issue. If she’d only open her mouth instead of delivering all those infuriating kisses.
Xane reached for her, only for Dani to rise to her feet. Still, her merciless tease continued. Now with her hand she clasped his shaft and rode up and down the length until his need became so maddening, he lifted up onto his toes.
‘Are you going to come over my belly?’ she asked.
If she continued to stroke her thumb over his slit like that, he very well might.
‘Wouldn’t you like to feel how wet I am?’
Greatly.
She guided his hand, the one he’d been using to brace himself upright against the cubicle, between her legs, where he found her slick heat, and made her swoon in turn.
‘I’m all ready for you, if you’d like to come inside.’
If he’d like to! ‘Babe, I’m desperate to.’
‘Then don’t wait.’
He wouldn’t. He wasn’t.
Their lips locked as his cock found its goal.
Wet. Slick. Glorious heat surrounded him. She was slender and so tight it almost hurt too well to move. Not that he could stop himself, the motion as instinctive as breathing. His need was too strong. It overwhelmed him, drove him, so that he shouted out her name, over and over, and she called out too, pouring words of need and encouragement into his ears, begging him to go deeper, to give it to her harder.
Even though he felt it coming, Xane’s orgasm still caught him like a whiplash. He roared as his cock jerked. The sound came from deep in his belly and he couldn’t seem to stop it, not until he was good and properly done.
His legs buckled beneath him, landing him on his knees in the shower tray. Pain screamed inside his legs, but he paid it no heed. For several minutes he rested, forehead pressed to the glass wall of the cubicle, trying to suck a lungful of air out of the humid environment.
‘You sad fuck,’ he muttered when he finally managed it, while the taste of his own tears mixed with the water spray.
When he eventually crawled out of the cubicle and through into the bedroom, it was on legs still composed of jelly.
The patter of feet sounded on the stone stairs. Then Dani stood right by him. ‘Are you all ri –’ She bent, but he still had to tilt his head to see her properly. Her heavenly legs went on for ever.
‘I heard a noise.’ She briefly pressed the tips of two fingers against his shoulder, and then equally quickly withdrew.
‘What noise?’ A loud buzzing filled his ears, but he guessed she couldn’t hear that.
‘A howl. It sounded as if you were hurt. You were yelling for me.’
‘I stubbed my toe,’ he lied, which naturally accounted for why he was on the floor. She didn’t need to know the sordid truth. That he’d been screaming over a fantasy he’d constructed about fucking her, because screaming in passion beat screaming in pain.
Xane got to his feet, using the foot of the bed for leverage. ‘It’s nothing. I’m OK.’
‘Um … Oh … All right.’
His movement seemed to be causing her some problems.
‘What I mean is …’ She clammed up. Xane watched in appreciation as her tongue peeped out and swept across her dry lips. ‘Um, do you … that is … do you need a towel?’ She gestured to the one lying on the bed within reach of his hand.
Xane picked it up and used it on his hair. He had no issues with showing a bit of skin, and he liked the way his full frontal nudity seemed to hijack her capacity for speech. ‘What?’ he asked innocently, in response to her wide-eyed stare.
He liked distractions. Distractions were good. Distractions meant he didn’t slip into a vat of poisonous memories that would only make him sick with loss.
‘Nothing.’ She half-turned away. ‘That is … you’re blond.’ She blushed a furious and deeply appealing shade of red.
Xane glanced down at his body. Sure, he was blond, but he’d spent so long dyeing his hair jet-black he often forgot that other people didn’t know that. ‘Nice to see you’re taking a meticulous account of my assets.’ He laughed, actually rediscovering his sense of humour from somewhere. It made the salt tracks on his face pull against the skin.
‘It’s not easy to avoid,’ Dani snapped defensively. ‘Oh, God, what am I saying?’ She covered her face with her hands. ‘I think I’d better wait upstairs.’
‘You could help me dry my back.’ He turned, presenting her with a rear view, and held out the towel.
‘Um, I’m not sure I should do that.’
What had ‘should’ to do with it? Fantasising wasn’t enough, Xane decided. He wanted to drown his sorrows with this girl. He wanted to know if she really was interested in him – Xane the person, not Xane the rock god. ‘My back doesn’t bite.’
‘The rest of you probably does.’
True. Nice that she realised it.
‘I think I’ll leave you to get dressed.’
‘I wasn’t planning to. It’s late.’
She straightened up. A startled gaze replaced her glow of embarrassment. ‘Yes, of course. I’ve stayed too long.’ She patted her outfit, but appeared to have left her mobile upstairs, so she couldn’t check the time. ‘I ought to get off.’
Yep, he’d definitely never met a fan like her before. And he knew it wasn’t lack of attraction holding her back, because she’d admitted the desire was there, and he could see it in her eyes anyway.
‘I’ll go fetch your duvet for you and then see myself out.’
‘Wait –’ too late, she’d already scampered off ‘– you’re welcome to stay.’ He probably sounded desperate, but … if she left now, he was doomed to a lonely night in hell, with nothing to distract him from mulling over Steve and Elspeth’s happy union, and the hole it had torn in his gut. If he could just manage to work his legendary charm, instead of acting like a prick around her, then …
Urgh! He bent over the sink feeling nauseous. A swarm of insane hornets had taken up residence in his skull. OK, he just needed to lie down a minute.
