I panic at the question, not sure if he means what I think he means. “Down where?” I know it’s a stupid question, but I can’t help but ask it.
“I’ll show you. You tell me to stop if you don’t want me to.”
He’s suddenly gone from view and the weight of his body shifts to my lower legs as he settles himself down there. And then his tongue is on my clit and I spasm with the pleasure the simple touch brings.
“Tarin!” I gasp.
“Yeah,” he whispers, moving his tongue around some more. His hands slide up from my knees to where his face is, stroking my inner thighs. The combination of sensations is maddening. I can’t stop my hips from moving in a sensual rhythm along with his tongue.
My ability to think rationally quickly disappears in the wake of his touch. I can’t even tell what he’s doing down there, but whatever it is, it’s bringing me closer and closer to something that’s going to rock my world. “Tarin! Please stop,” I say. I sound almost like I’m crying.
He stops immediately. “Am I hurting you?” His voice is full of concern.
“No,” I gasp out. “You’re going to make me finish too soon.”
He crawls up towards me with a devilish gleam in his eye. “Sorry,” I say, feeling bad that I’m ruining such a great time, that I’m such an amateur at this whole thing.
“Sorry? Sorry for what? Sorry I’m so awesome at licking your pussy that you’re going to come?”
“Don’t say that word,” I say, giggling like a schoolgirl.
“What word? Pussy?”
“Stop,” I say, still laughing, but now also trying to crawl away from him.
“Why? Does it make you uncomfortable?” He grabs me and forces me back under him.
“It’s a dirty word,” I say, embarrassed that I’ve actually said that out loud. Truth is, I don’t hate the word. It makes him seem darker when he says it, though. Maybe that should make him less attractive, but it doesn’t. It has the opposite effect and now I’m worried that I’m going to fall even more for him than I already have. All for the love of pussy.
“But you like dirty words, don’t you? I know I do.” He’s teasing me now, his eyes crinkling at the corners with his smile.
“Are we still having sex?” I ask, trying to distract him.
He leans to the side a little and then uses a hand to guide the tip of his cock over to my entrance. He moves it around, settling it between my folds before putting his hand on my breast under him.
“I don’t know,” he says, just before pushing himself into me a little. “Are we?”
A whimper sneaks past my lips and I nod. “Yes, I think we are,” I whisper, lifting my legs to give him better access.
“Yeah, I think we are too,” he says, pushing in more, reaching under my ass to pull my folds apart and bury himself deeper. “Oh, god, yeah. We’re definitely having sex right now. Jesus Christ…”
His eyes close and he’s lost in the sensations. The expression on his face tells me he’s as bad off as I am in this whole thing. I’d cry with joy if I wasn’t so overwhelmed with the heat and wanting to just scream.
“Sex now, cry later,” I whisper as I close my eyes.
He stills. “What’d you say?”
I shake my head rapidly, hating that I said that out loud. “Never mind. Just … do this.” I pull on his ass, trying to force him in.
“Do what?” he asks.
I open my eyes and he’s smiling down at me again. He’s evil.
“You know what. Have sex with me.”
He pulses in once and then stops. “No, I don’t like that word. It’s too sterile. Tell me what you want to do.”
“Have sex,” I say, gasping when he pushes into me hard and fast. My body responds greedily, arching up for more.
“Nope. Not that word. Use another one.”
“You’re trying to get me to talk dirty, aren’t you?” I pull his ass harder and arch into him. We both moan together.
He massages my breast and pinches my nipple between two fingers. “Say it and I’ll do it. It’s that simple.”
I buck underneath him, trying to force him to do what I want from underneath, but I can only get so much satisfaction that way. “Please, Tarin. Don’t tease me.” I’m sweating from the exertion and anticipation.
“I want to hear you say it.” He goes dark on me, all the humor gone to be replaced by pure sexual need. Playtime is over, and maybe it should scare me but all it does is make me want him more. I cannot get enough of the dichotomy that is Tarin, warm and tender one minute, dark and dangerous the next.
“Tell me what you want me to say, and I’ll say it,” I whisper. Grinding my clit up against the base of his cock is building something in me, and I know it’ll only take a little effort on his part to throw me into the abyss. I’ve only ever been there once before, but now I want to live there. I’ll do just about anything he wants at this point, and I think he knows this. Something about the way he’s staring down at me tells me he knows he’s calling the shots. The tides have turned and the coin has flipped. By degrees, the servant has become the master and the master has become the servant. I never even saw it coming.
“Tell me you want me to fuck you,” he says in a menacing tone.
I pause, watching his jaw pulse out with the restraint he’s exercising. I know he wants me as much as I want him, but for some reason he needs to make me do this. The old Scarlett, the one who was hired to straighten his life out would have balked. The Scarlett I am now, the one who wants Tarin in a whole other way does not.
“Fuck me, Tarin. I want you to.”
He pushes in hard once and growls. “Say it again.”
“Fuck me, Tarin, please.” I gasp the last word out as the feel of his length sliding into me brings me higher and higher into the clouds.
He pushes in several more times. I feel him growing even harder inside me, his cock getting bigger somehow, stretching me, making me groan with the ecstasy I sense just outside my reach.
“Please … please …” I can’t make sense anymore. Words just come out that I have no control over. “Tarin …” Our movements are getting faster, more hurried, both of us rushing towards the end.
But as we get closer and closer to the finish line, I don’t want the end to come. It’s the journey that is taking me places, the things happening on the way to orgasm that suddenly mean the most. I never want this to be over.
His hands are traveling up and down my body, while kisses rain down around my face and neck. He can’t seem to get enough of me as he bucks against me wildly and squeezes and pulls and strokes and shouts. I’m yelling now too and hanging on for dear life. Nails dig into his back as I feel myself falling, falling, falling…
“Scarlett!” he shouts, pulling my hair with a fisted hand and smashing his heavy body into my much smaller one.
“Tarin!” I gasp as I feel myself flying off the cliff. Wave after wave of strong, pulsing, shivering orgasm rock my body. I moan, I shout, I cry, and the two of us turn the bed into a tangle of sheets and legs and arms. The smell of our sex comes up around us and just adds to the sensual atmosphere. One last scream from both of us brings us to the end, and once again, the tears flow from my eyes.
When we finally come down to earth a few minutes later, Tarin is still inside me but lying almost diagonally. I’m spread eagle on the bed, staring at the ceiling as my vision comes back into focus. The only sounds in the room now are our heavy breaths as we try to get oxygen into our lungs.
He reaches over and tries to pet my head, but instead mashes my face a few times. He’s talking but his mouth is mushed into the covers so it comes out muffled. “You’re so pretty,” he says. “And I love your pussy too.”
I slap him away and try to roll him off me. “Go away, dirty boy.”
He laughs, lifting himself up by his arms and looking over at me. “You like it.” His hair is pressed in on one side and he’s sweaty. He should probably look ugly to me but I’ve never seen such
a beautiful man in all my life.
I slap his back. “I like you. That’s it.”
He falls to the side, slipping out of me and lying on his back, his lower body still over my legs. “Man. That was awesome. I’m in love.”
I slap him again, this time hard on the arm. “Don’t you dare.”
He crawls off me and sits on the edge of the bed, taking off the condom and putting it on the wrapper on the nightstand before turning back to lie down by me. “Don’t I dare what? Love you?”
“No, stupid. Don’t you dare tell me you do like that. It’s rude. It’s not a casual word and you don’t love someone just because you have good sex with them.”
He play-frowns. “I’m sorry. You like the romantic stuff, huh? And by the way, it was great sex, not just good sex.”
“All girls like the romantic stuff, idiot.” I’m trying to be offended, but he’s so damn cute right now it’s impossible. His hair is pure trauma and he’s pouting like a little boy. He actually looks worried.
He lifts up his fingers and starts ticking them off. “Okay, so no casual I love yous, no dirty words during sex, and … you like it when I eat your pussy. Did I miss anything?”
I slap his fingers away and press my hand into his face, trying to push him away too. “Go away. You’re ruining the moment.”
He grabs my hand and pulls me over next to him, forcing me to cuddle up to his side with my head on his chest. My efforts to avoid the forced affection are futile. He’s way stronger than he used to be, and I’m really not trying all that hard.
“I’m sorry, babe. Let me try again, okay?” He angles his head to look down at me and I nod.
“Okay. First of all, that sex was magical. I’m going to write a song about it.”
“It passed the test?”
“Absolutely. A- plus plus plus. Now I know for sure.”
“What do you know for sure?” I’m pretty sure I know what he’s going to say but I play stupid just so I can hear it.
“That you’re my forever girl. You’ve got the whole beauty thing going, brains enough for the both of us, athletic skills in the ring - even though you let a teenager kick your ass once, but I’m willing to write that off as a fluke - and you can appreciate the kind of music I make. You’re the whole package.”
I squeeze him tight to me, more happy than I can express in words.
“Now it’s your turn,” he says, looking down at me again. “Am I your forever man?”
Some of the happy fades, replaced by worry. For some reason a vision of Austin pops into my head and I worry what he’d think.
“What’s the matter?” Tarin asks. “I’m not your forever guy? Dammit, I knew I should have made you come while I was down there.”
“Shut up,” I say, laughing slightly. “It’s not that. I’m just thinking … things I shouldn’t be thinking.”
“Austin.”
I sigh. “How’d you know?”
“It’s only natural. You were with him for a long time, he died a tragic death, and I was there. We’re all connected. Hell, if it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t even be here right now.”
The idea of Austin being the reason that we’re together is freaky. “What do you mean?”
“He’s the one who got me started in my career. Before he intervened, we were playing small clubs and getting ignored along with a million other guys. And he’s the one who invited me to that party in Chicago. If I hadn’t been there when that whole thing happened, who knows…”
“You agreed to work with me because you felt guilty.” I slide off to the side a little and reach down to his tattoo. Guilty. I trace it with my finger.
“Yeah. That was part of it. And then there was you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you.” He nudges me. “Don’t act like you don’t know.”
“Don’t know what?” My smile is back and it won’t go away.
“How sexy you are. You fucking rocked my world the minute you stepped into it. You’re like a disease.”
“Hmmmm. A disease. Now that’s sexy.”
He pushes me over and climbs on top of me. “Don’t make me sex you into submission, woman. Now that you’re my girlfriend, we’re going to have to lay out some ground rules.”
I arch an eyebrow at him. “Getting a little ahead of yourself, aren’t you?”
He reaches down and puts his hands on my waist as he lifts himself up higher. “Think so?’’
Before I know what’s happening, he’s flipped me over onto my stomach and he’s on top of me, pressing his hard cock into my backside. His lips are so close to my ear as he leans over, the hot air tickles me mercilessly.
“What are you doing?” I say, laughing into the pillow. I’m half suffocating in its softness, pushing up with my arms to arch my back.
He pushes my back down with one hand and positions himself lower to enter my folds from behind.
I moan long and low as he slides into the slippery wetness between my legs. He doesn’t have a condom on but I don’t care. I know he used them with all the fangirls he was ever with and I’m not going anywhere.
“I told you,” he says in a low tone. “I’m sexing you into submission.”
Five minutes later with the aching need built up again and the sweat pouring down both of our bodies I submit. “Fine! I’ll be your girlfriend.” I can barely breathe I’m panting so hard.
“That’s what I thought,” he says, stroking the orgasm out of me hard and fast. I cling to him to keep from falling into unconsciousness and weep when he’s left me completely spent.
Chapter Forty-Six
TARIN AND I HAVE BEEN in bed all day and now it’s dinnertime. Jack hasn’t reappeared and we’ve decided cereal is the best way to build our strength for another couple days of escape from real life, before he has to go back to L.A. and I have to get on with the business of fixing the damage left behind in the wake of Austin’s death. Both of us have a lot of work ahead of us.
Tarin crunches away on his granola. “I’ve gotta do this European tour. Everyone’s counting on me.”
“I know. I’ll miss you, but you have to do it. You and Scott have worked so hard. You can’t let everything fall apart now. It’s only four months.”
“We all worked hard, you included.” He nudges me with his elbow and my next bite of dinner goes sloshing back into my bowl. “You could come, you know,” he says. “Travel Europe with me. Be backstage for every show.” He winks.
I roll my eyes. “As attractive as being your number one groupie sounds, I’m afraid I’m going to have to decline. I have to stay here.” I sigh, putting my bowl down on my nightstand. “I’ve been thinking about this for a while now, and some things Jack and Scott said are really hitting home for me lately. I think I need therapy.”
“What’d they say to make you think that?”
“Actually, it’s not just them. It’s you too.” I cross my legs and sit up straight, plucking at the sheets by my shins. “After Austin died, I just kind of threw myself into rescue mode. I blamed myself for his death, so maybe I thought if I could go out there and prevent it from happening to someone else, it would absolve me of that guilt I was carrying around. But no matter how much good I did, it never did anything to make me feel better about Austin.”
“The one who got away.”
“Kind of. He slipped away. By degrees, like you said. Maybe if it had happened all of a sudden it would have been so shocking I would have noticed it sooner and thought to do something. But it was like little by little he drew away and got colder, and little by little I let him change me too. Or I changed myself, I don’t know.” I shake my head, trying to figure it all out. “I just need to talk to a professional to help me work through it.”
“There’s nothing wrong with asking for help if you need it. I did.”
I look sideways at him, raising an eyebrow. “I don’t recall you asking.”
“People have different ways of asking for help. Some are cool with just walking
up and saying, ‘Help me.’ Others are more like back door people.”
“Back door people?”
“Yeah. They ask for help by showing how much they need it.”
“You’re definitely one of those,” I say, picking up my bowl and smiling.
“I don’t like asking for anything. That’s just who I am. Austin offered to help us out a bunch of times, but I kept turning him down. I didn’t want a handout. I wanted to earn it. I guess he knew how much I really wanted the help deep down, so he fucked up that band’s equipment and got us the show of a lifetime.”
“We both owe Austin a lot,” I say softly, watching the lumps of cereal floating around randomly in my bowl. The little lumps kept moving to be by bigger lumps, like they didn’t want to be alone.
“Yeah. We do.”
The mood has gone suddenly sober, but for some reason, that makes it easier for me to talk about Austin. “It’s hard for me to go from being really sad about him, then to angry, then to grateful in such a short period of time, especially when he’s not here to talk to about it,” I say, giving a voice to the thoughts that have been haunting me night and day for weeks.
“I hear ya. I’m the same with him. Memories of him are like a grab bag. One day I reach in and there’s a happy thought. The next time it’s one that makes me want to punch him in the face. He was a complicated guy.”
I look over at Tarin. “I think you’re a complicated guy, too. That’s what scares me.”
Tarin reaches over and palms my head with his big hand, wiggling my skull a little like he wants to force his words in. “Do not go there, you hear me? I’m not Austin. Never have been, never will be. It’s just you and me now. And Scott, okay? I’ll adopt him if I have to.”
I give him a watery smile, tears coming for about the tenth time today. “You’d do that?”
“Of course. I know you guys are a package deal.” He lets go of my head and puts his bowl on the floor. He takes my bowl and puts it there too, pulling me into his arms when his hands are free again. “Come here and give me some more of that love you were offering earlier.”