Rock Courtship

  A husky laugh. "It's your fault. All those buttoned-up shirts and the way you watch me with your gorgeous eyes." Licking over his nipple, she bit lightly at it. "How am I supposed to resist the temptation?" She began to lick and kiss her way down his ribcage.

  Sated though he was, it felt good, really good, to have her caressing him. "I'm being selfish," he said, still not moving.

  Thea ran her nails up his thighs. "You go on being selfish," she said over his deep-throated groan. "I'm having fun."

  "I love your idea of fun." In truth, David loved everything about Thea, wanted to shout his devotion from the rooftops--but he wasn't certain Thea was ready to hear it yet, and he could be patient now that she was his.

  He would speak with his touch, his loyalty instead.

  Continuing to kiss her way down and across his body, she blew on the skin she'd wet. He tugged her up to ask for another kiss. The scent of her was intoxicating. His recently satisfied cock grew heavy and hard again. "Let's have a different kind of fun," he said and slipped his hand between her thighs. What he discovered had him uttering a shaky "Baby, you're drenched."

  No woman had ever wanted him so much.

  Hips rising and falling on his fingers, she said a breathy "You taste good."

  After that, the only words they spoke were whispered and rough, their bodies hot with need and the air musky with sex.

  "I hate how women come on to you."

  David blinked awake from the half-doze he'd fallen into with her in his arms. "Thea?"

  "I feel stupid and jealous and I can't make it stop," she muttered, her head on his shoulder and one hand on his chest.

  He had no idea how to handle this. Thea was so confident and so strong that he'd never expected it to come up, but he knew it was important that he--they--deal with it. Because she'd trusted him with her exposed heart, and he knew exactly how difficult that must've been for her after what the fuckwit who'd been her fiance had done to her. "I wanted to kick your ex's balls into his throat every time I saw him, and then I wanted to drive my fist into his preppy face."

  Eyes wide, Thea lifted her head, her throat marked by his kisses and the stubble on his jaw. "Since when?"

  Taking a deep breath, David admitted his secret. "Since the first goddamn time I saw him."

  "David... I was with Eric when I took over the band's PR."

  "I know."

  Her gaze sheened wet, Thea touched her fingers to his cheek. "Really? That long?"

  "Yeah."

  "David, I--"

  "It's okay." Closing his fingers on the slender bones of her wrist, he pressed his lips to the delicate skin above her pulse. "I know you, Thea. I knew you were faithful to that bastard, that you didn't look at me the same way." It had killed him at the time, but now he wanted her to feel the same unwavering loyalty for him.

  Maintaining the intimacy of the eye contact, she said, "Do you remember holding me in my office while I cried about six months before I ended my engagement?"

  "It broke me up to see you so sad." He'd dropped by to pick up a schedule she could've as easily e-mailed him. Fact was, he'd wanted the chance to see her, have her smile at him.

  Then he'd looked into eyes that were always vibrant, and the bruised pain he'd seen there had him drawing her instinctively into his arms. "Thea, hey, what's wrong?" he'd asked, the need to fix it for her, to slay her dragons, a visceral need in his gut. "Baby, has someone hurt you?"

  Her initial resistance to his hold had crumbled with his question and she'd sobbed quietly against his shoulder. Each tear had been a hot poker to his heart. He'd wanted so badly to do something, make it better. But all he could do that day was hold her tight.

  Afterward, she'd been too embarrassed to meet his gaze. Seeing how fragile she was feeling, he'd stifled his need to demand answers and left. Neither one of them had ever mentioned it again, and while their friendship had remained strong, a subtle new barrier had grown between them in the aftermath.

  That barrier hadn't fallen until she broke it off with her ex. "You finally going to tell me what happened?" David asked, hoping to hell he never made her cry that way. He'd fucking cut off his arm before causing her such pain.

  Chapter 12

  Thea spoke past the thickness in her throat. "Eric and I had a fight that morning," she said, thinking back to one of the most painful times of her life. "He didn't say anything terrible"--the ugly words hadn't come till right at the end--"but I knew that day that I'd made a mistake, that he wasn't the man I'd believed him to be."

  The horrible feeling in her gut had grown and grown with each minute that passed. "When you came in, I was in the middle of trying to convince myself that it had simply been a bad fight, that we'd get through it." She laughed and it was a sound that held no humor. "No one can say I'm not stubborn."

  David ran his fingers through her hair. "Not stubborn, just willing to fight for your relationship. I would've thrown a goddamn party if you'd left him, but I know it must've been tough to think it had all been a waste."

  Laying her head against his shoulder, the feel of his fingers caressing her hair and nape deeply comforting, she said, "That was part of it, but it wasn't everything." She paused, took a shaky breath.

  "Hey." He wrapped his arm more firmly around her, his other hand cupping her cheek. "We don't have to talk about this all tonight if it hurts."

  "No." She shook her head. "I need to tell you." Inhaling a steadying breath, David's scent a warm embrace, she said, "I'd met Molly well before that fight happened, discovered all the awful details of the damage my biological father had done." Molly didn't like to talk about the past and Thea didn't blame her for it, but the media coverage from the time had been so unrelenting that Thea had been able to answer many of her own questions.

  "Patrick Buchanan broke vows like they were made of glass, left bloody shards all over the place." He'd destroyed his wife, scarred Molly so deeply that Thea's sister carried the shadows of those scars to this day. "I couldn't bear to think I was like him in any way. I was not going to walk away just because things were hard."

  "Ah, baby." David rubbed his chin over her hair. "I didn't know that about your biological father."

  Fox, Thea guessed, had kept Molly's confidence. It was nothing less than she'd expected. "My mother," she began, "was a maid in the Buchanan household." And then, for the first time in her life, she told someone the entire, sordid story.

  Eric had known only the bare bones of it--that she'd discovered a half sister, wanted to build a relationship with her. She didn't know why she hadn't told him everything. After all, they'd been happy at the time. Maybe because it had felt disloyal to her mother, given the fact Eric hadn't seemed to connect with Thea's family.

  Or perhaps her subconscious had seen the fractures in their relationship she couldn't. Not then.

  Because David hadn't even met her parents and siblings, and yet it didn't feel wrong to tell him. She'd seen how he treated his own mom, knew he'd treat hers with the same affection and respect, regardless of anything. And even if they went down in flames, their relationship unable to survive the pressure cooker of a rock star's life, David would never use her secrets against her.

  "I'm glad the piece of scum is dead," David said after she completed the painful story, his voice low and taut. "Otherwise, I'd be tempted to kill him myself."

  She spread her hand over the strong, steady beat of his heart. "I did find Molly, so it was worth it in the end." Thea and Molly had liked one another from the first despite being two very different women. "It was like a first date when we met for coffee after I flew to New Zealand." She smiled at the memory. "I had to pretend I was in the country to set up a satellite office, just to take the pressure off."

  "Family's important, isn't it, Thea?"

  She nodded. "It can screw us up too." A raw confession. "Having learned exactly how worthless Patrick Buchanan had been at keeping his promises, I couldn't just walk away from Eric when the cracks began to appear."

>   "I get it." Shifting so that he was braced over her, David stroked her hair off her face. "You don't still think that way, do you? You're nothing like Patrick Buchanan. You never break your word about anything. You stick."

  "Yeah," she said. "I do." It had taken her time to get her head screwed on straight and it had been her sister who'd helped her see the truth. "Molly eventually guessed what was going on inside me, reminded me that where Patrick had thrown both of us away, I'd done the opposite."

  You came looking to nurture a relationship with me, to build something new, when Patrick only destroyed.

  Thea had needed to hear those fierce words, could believe them when they came from a woman who had grown up with Patrick's selfishness.

  He seriously messed me up, Thea, her sister had added. Don't you dare let him do the same to you.

  Every cell in Thea's body wanted and hoped for Molly and Fox to make it, for her sister to slam the lid on the ghost of Patrick Buchanan once and for all. "The irony of it all," she told David on the heels of that passionate thought, "is that the day I found Eric in bed with his floozy, I'd gone over there to break it off with him."

  Thea hadn't meant to confess the rest, but held so safe and protected in the cage of David's body, it spilled out. "He called me a ball-busting bitch who should've been born with a penis." The words had always hurt more than the fact Eric had clearly been cheating for weeks before she discovered his duplicity. "Said he'd needed a real woman to fuck."

  A growl of sound from David's throat. "I swear to God I'm going to break his goddamn face if he shows it anywhere near my vicinity." Kissing her on that harsh promise, he said, "Wimp has no idea about real women--he wants a pretty doll."

  Another kiss, his cock growing hard against her. "Me, I like my woman so tough grown men whimper and hide when they see her coming their way."

  David's vow made the scary emotions inside Thea grow even bigger. Because where Eric would've made the words a sly insult, there was nothing but possessive pride in David's voice.

  Pushing up her thigh after quickly taking care of protection, he circled the head of his cock against her core. "I am so proud to have you as mine, Thea." More kisses, her body melting for his. "I want to strut down the street telling other men to roll their tongues back up because you belong to me and I'm keeping you--and any dickhead who wants to try his luck had better be ready to get that head taken off."

  He thrust his thickness inside her in a slow, inexorable push that had her nails digging into his shoulders. "I know that's Neanderthal behavior, but I don't give a shit."

  Holding him close, Thea kissed him with the violent power of the emotions in her veins. She couldn't speak them yet, couldn't even think about them too hard without her chest hurting and perspiration breaking out along her spine, but she was getting there.

  "No matter what," she whispered, "you were always my friend." Her safe place. "I never cried with anyone else. Only you."

  A tremor ran through him, his head falling forward. Then he loved her, this rock star who'd been her anchor for so long that she didn't know what she'd do without him.

  Time passed both too quickly and with excruciating slowness. When Thea was with David, it raced by, their days together ending in a heartbeat. In contrast, the pace was glacial during their separations, each minute taking forever. Thea did what she'd always done to cope with emotionally intense situations: she worked. However, now it wasn't so much drowning herself in it as using it to fill a void.

  "Only a week to go until I can fly in and see him again," she told herself after David messaged her from Washington.

  Her phone rang before she could message back, the number that of the man who headed Schoolboy Choir's legal team. "What's up?" she asked, unworried. She was friendly with the entire team, and one or the other of them would often call her up to ask her if she wanted to join their weekly Friday lunch.

  "We have a problem."

  She straightened in her chair at Bailey's tone, stopped checking e-mail. "Talk to me."

  "An eighteen-year-old just walked into our Manhattan offices with her lawyer. She's five months pregnant and she's claiming David is the father."

  It was a punch to the diaphragm, her lungs screaming for air. "Any proof?" she asked on autopilot, somehow managing to sound normal. Not at all as if her world had just been smashed to pieces with an iron bar.

  "According to my associate there, she's got a pretty but inexpensive amethyst ring on her ring finger," Bailey told her. "I remember David picking it up from the jeweler's because I was with him that day. Girl says he promised to marry her."

  It was Thea's worst nightmare come to life.

  "They're apparently from the same neighborhood." Bailey's voice was cool, professional, but she could tell the girl's claim had caught him by surprise. "She says she met him while he was visiting his parents." A harsh exhale. "If it wasn't David, I'd say it sounded like he sweet-talked her to get sex, then walked out, but Jesus, it is David."

  Thea couldn't go there, couldn't think of this as being about David. Her David. She had to just think "client" or she'd shatter. "Is the girl threatening to go public?" she said, falling back on what she knew, on what she could handle.

  "That's the implication if we don't settle and settle big." Rustling sounds on Bailey's end that indicated he was moving around. "Look, I have to call David, and then I have to fly to New York to handle this. I wanted to alert you in case her lawyer's already leaked the news to the media. He's a bit of a hotshot."

  "I'll take care of it." Thea might be numb from the inside out, her skin like ice, but she'd do her job.

  "Thanks, Thea. I'd appreciate a call if you catch even a hint of anything related--I need to know exactly how dirty they intend to play."

  "Wait," Thea said through the metallic flatness of her emotions. "The girl. What's her name? I'll need it to track the story."

  "Naomi Hughes. I'll get Rebecca to e-mail you the rest of the details."

  Hanging up, Thea just sat there motionless and cold deep inside until the e-mail from Rebecca popped into her inbox. She forced herself to click on it, scrolled down to the photo of a scared-looking and very, very pretty girl.

  Doe-eyed Naomi Hughes had long dark hair and a belly that wouldn't have showed if she hadn't pulled her pale pink shirt tight over it as she cradled her hands beneath the bump. Her features were fine, her luminous skin dusky brown, and her height a diminutive five-two according to Rebecca's notes.

  Taking it all in without thinking too hard about how the girl was nothing like her, Thea looked at the birth date Rebecca had listed. Oh God, Naomi Hughes had only turned eighteen last week. Which meant that at the time of the sexual encounter, she'd been seventeen, only a couple of years older than the girl Patrick ha--

  Cutting off that thought before it could make her bleed, Thea scanned the rest of the information, then began doing broad-spectrum Internet searches using the data. Depending on the game plan devised by Naomi's attorney, it could equal anything from a major expose in a tabloid to the merest hint of trouble on social media, with no confirmed details.

  Thea found nothing on her first pass, but she kept digging. All she unearthed was the usual: fan sites dedicated to David, photos of him shared by women who gushed about how hot he was, and videos and blogs by drummers who dissected his style in an effort to emulate it.

  The Gentleman of Rock moniker, bestowed by a magazine article a number of years ago, was a recurring hit. There were also a couple of tell-alls Thea already knew about: two women he'd gone out with at the start of his career smiled coy smiles from old articles and spoke about how "hard-bodied" the Schoolboy Choir drummer was under his conservative clothes.

  Both had shared intimate details of their night with a young rock star.

  David had become better at picking more discreet lovers as he grew older and more experienced in this world--there were no more recent reports on his love life except for the fluff pieces made up by magazines looking to increase thei
r circulation. Even of the latter, there weren't many: David had succeeded in making himself of little interest to most paparazzi on a daily basis.

  All of what she'd discovered, added to the fact she'd had not a single call asking her to confirm or deny Naomi Hughes' claim, told her the girl's lawyer was waiting to see which way the wind blew before making his next move. David was safe for now. She'd make sure the alerts she'd set--

  A sharp, insistent tone pierced the air, the screen of her phone flashing with David's name.

  Chapter 13

  David felt sick to his stomach. Sitting on the edge of the hotel bed, he held the phone to his ear and listened to it ring. "Come on, Thea," he said, his gut a twisted mess. "Pick up, baby. Pick up."

  It rang once more, and then he heard Thea's cool, calm voice. "David."

  "It's not mine." He knew Thea's history would make it difficult for her to accept his word, but he wasn't about to just roll over and give up the best thing in his life. "I picked up that ring for my kid brother, Zeke. He was going to give it to Naomi." A simple favor because David had been in the city when the ring his brother had ordered had come in. "Zeke had a crush on her, but I know he never laid a finger on her and neither have I."

  "You know her?" Thea's tone remained unreadable, distant.

  Fuck. But at least she was talking to him. "Yeah." Naomi had come to his parents' home for dinner any number of times. "She's my brother's friend, and she's a fucking kid. I never looked at her as anything else." Bailey had told him the legal age of consent in New York was seventeen, so they didn't have to worry about the authorities, but that didn't change how David viewed Naomi. She was younger than Zeke, for fuck's sake.

  It had taken him a minute to even remember who she was; to him, Naomi had simply been part of Zeke's group of friends from around the neighborhood. "She turned my brother down when he asked her out, but there were no hard feelings." As far as David remembered, Zeke had ended up giving her the ring anyway, for a birthday present. "I don't know why she's doing this."

  "It hasn't hit the media."

  "I don't care. Thea, Jesus, talk to me." It felt like his entire world had fallen apart, the ground crumbling under his feet. "Tell me you believe me--or if you can't do that, tell me you'll give me a chance to convince you." The latter would hurt, would tear him to bloody pieces, but he could bear the pain because he knew how much Eric had wounded her.