Lust's Rhythm (Heart of Fame Book 10) (3 page)

She lifted an eyebrow at it. “Love the shirt.”

He grinned. “It’s a classic.”

“Classic pain in my arse,” she answered. “Think we need to take it off ASAP.”

He burst out laughing. “Because you can’t wait to get to the action? Or because you don’t want any thoughts of your father entering your head while we’re doing—”

She snagged the front of his T-shirt in a tight grip and yanked him into her suite. “Both,” she answered, a second before capturing his lips with hers.

She didn’t let him linger on the kiss. Just as she felt his passion really flare up, she released his lips and his shirt and almost skipped backward.

“You haven’t told me how hot I look,” she reproached with a playful grin as she continued to walk backwards away from him.

With a slow smile, Jed closed the door behind him, leant against it, and folded his arms across his broad chest, crossing one ankle over the other. “You look okay.”

She came to a halt and gasped in mock indignation. “Okay? That’s the best you can do?”

He lifted one shoulder in a shrug.

Chloe’s tummy gave a little flutter, not just because it was the sexiest shrug she’d ever seen, but because he was doing exactly what she’d hoped he would—having fun with her.

She was going to bonk him like crazy as soon as possible, but that didn’t mean she didn’t want to have some fun with him first. Foreplay was all the more enjoyable when it included playful flirting.

“Try harder,” she said, resuming her backward walk, her gaze holding his.

He raked a slow look over her and straightened from the door. “You look all right.”

“Harder.”

His lips twitched as he began to walk towards her. Steady, modulated paces that matched her own. “You look good.”

“Harder.”

“I like your pants.”

Chloe’s tummy fluttered again. Not so much at his opinion of her hot pants, but at the open hunger that flared in his eyes as he took them in. “Harder,” she repeated, watching him follow her.

“I’ll like them even more when they’re on the floor.”

It wasn’t just her tummy that clenched this time. Her pussy joined in, a tight throb of anticipation that made her want to press her thighs together.

“Just my pants?”

Jed did another one of those sexy shrugs. “We’ll see.”

She arched an eyebrow. “We’ll see?”

Before he could respond, she moved her hands to the concealed zipper of her hot pants and lowered it.

His gaze dropped to the newly exposed flesh of her lower belly, and the equally exposed, waxed-smooth flesh just below that.

He sucked in a slow breath. A breath that became a ragged groan when Chloe slipped her fingers between her open fly and the curve of her sex.

His jaw bunched. His Adam’s apple jerked up and down his throat.

“The lip gloss is nice.”

Chloe slowly trailed the tip of her tongue over her top lip. “It’s mango-coconut flavor. Wanna taste?”

His chest swelled with another breath. His stare tracked the path of her tongue as she licked her bottom lip.

“And I like these pants,” she said, lengthening her backward stride as she smoothed her hands over her hips. Down the curve of her backside.

Jed watched her hands, a feral intensity igniting in his eyes.

Chloe’s pussy contracted at the heat, at the hungry desire in their depths. Her heart quickened. Her breasts grew full with impatient anticipation.

Pivoting slowly on one heel, she presented him her back, rubbing her arse cheeks with splayed fingers as she smiled at him over her shoulder. “I think they fit me well. Show off my butt. What do you think? Do you like my butt?”

His nostrils flared. His stare jerked up to hers.

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Well?”

“Your butt’s okay.”

The casual attitude of the declaration was undone by the strained tension in his voice. Chloe chuckled, smoothing her hands high enough on her backside to then slip her fingers between her skin and the waistband of her pants.

She slid her hands lower, over the curve of her butt cheeks, the action causing her pants to inch a little farther down her hips.

Jed’s stare moved to the treble clef tat for a second before returning to her backside.

“I’ve been told it’s very bitable,” she offered, sliding her hands out of her pants and slowly turning back to face him.

“Who’s told you that?” Something dark flickered in his eyes as he met her gaze. Was it jealousy? The desire to sink his teeth into her butt? The desire to smack the shit out of whomever may have done so before him? Whatever it was, it sent a flurry of excitement into Chloe’s core.

With a slow grin, she gave him back her own shrug.

His chest rose and fell with a deep breath. He hadn’t, she just realized, ceased walking when she had. He was almost on her.

So close she could smell the subtle scent of his cologne.

Licking her lips again, she resumed walking backward toward the suite’s bedroom. “But,” she said, sliding her palms up her waist, over her ribs, and then her breasts, “I’m not convinced about the top.”

“You’re not a fan?” Jed asked. She couldn’t help but notice he was walking faster, no longer matching her pace but drawing closer to her. She also couldn’t miss the very impressive bulge in his jeans. Nor the way his breath was growing shallower.

“Not really.”

“Then do something about it.”

“Okay.”

She hooked her fingers beneath the hemline of her halter top, and—without another word—pulled it up over her head.

“Fuck,” Jed moaned, the word low and guttural and thick with need.

She smiled, bunched the shimmery material into a ball, and tossed it to him.

“How’s that?”

He caught it, but only, Chloe suspected, by sheer reflex. He was too busy devouring what she’d revealed to him with his eyes. “That’s—”

“If you say
all right
,” she pointed a finger at him, “I will tie you up and spank you.”

“All right.”

She shook her head. “Oh, you are in so much—”

Jed destroyed the distance between them.

His lips took possession of hers, his hands buried into the wild mess of curls that was her hair.

She moaned her approval, the sound becoming a whimper as he pressed her to the doorjamb, the very impressive bulge in his jeans rubbing against the smooth curve of her sex with insistent pressure.

She rolled her hips and deepened the kiss, reveling in the thick steel of his erection.

He groaned into her mouth, one hand grabbing at her butt cheek to squeeze with ungentle urgency, the other smoothing up her rib cage to cup her breast.

Hot, tight need speared into her core and she arched into his touch, seeking out the button of his jeans with shaking fingers.

It popped open at her touch, no doubt helped by the force of his massive erection pushing against it.

Moaning in happiness and pure lust, she slipped her hand into his open jeans and wrapped her fingers around his length. His flesh was hot against her palm. It delighted her he wasn’t wearing boxers or briefs.
Commando all the way, baby
.

A raw growl vibrated through him at her touch and he tore his lips from hers. “Tell me, Chloe,” he ground out, face hovering but an inch from hers, his ragged breath hot on her moist lips. “Am I here because you’re rebelling against your father and brother? Or am I here because you
really
want me to fuck you?”

She gazed up into his eyes, her heart a crazy hammer in her throat. In her hand, his engorged cock pulsed. “Does it matter?”

An unreadable tension filled his eyes. His jaw bunched. “I can’t believe I’m saying this,” he said, confusion scratching at the words, “but it does.”

Chloe grew still at his answer. Her heart, already wild, thumped harder and faster. She swallowed, searching his eyes for…for…

What?

Something to show he was kidding?

What had started four years ago as a piqued sexual interest—before transforming into a rebellious sexual longing—for Jed due to her father’s recommendation she stay away from him, had become something far more complex as the years passed.

Something that influenced not only the music she listened to, but also the music she played, the music she wrote. Something that influenced her work.

The biggest response she’d ever received from an audience had been the night she’d played Jed’s first Number One hit, ‘Storm Clouds’ during the encore of a concert in London. It had been totally unplanned.

They’d both been in the city at the same time. She’d known where he was staying, and she suspected he’d known where she was staying.

They’d spent four years doing things that way: appearing in cities the other one was in; eating at restaurants on opposite sides of the street from each other; leaving parties as the other arrived.

The night of the encore performance in London, she’d planned to play her father’s mega-hit ‘Whispers in the Night’ to end the concert. Instead, on utter impulse, she’d played ‘Storm Clouds’.

The audience had gone wild. She’d looked up during the crescendo and found Jed in the second row. There. Watching her. Their eyes had connected. She’d damn near had an orgasm right then. She’d killed her favourite bow.

When the piece had ended and the standing ovation had calmed down, Jed had been gone.

That had been two years ago. Nick had called fifteen minutes after she’d left the stage and asked her if there was something going on between her and Jed.

She’d answered
no
.

He’d responded with
good
.

That night, she’d masturbated herself to four mind-blowing orgasms to Jed’s album, thinking of him.

Had that raw power, that raw passion, been because of her father’s disapproval?

Was everything she felt for Jed, the lust, the desire to sexually enslave him, to make him hers—if only for one wild night—born from Nick’s wish that she stay away from him?

Or was it something more?

Something neither of them could fight?

Something beyond rebellious desire? Beyond carnal want?

Chemistry?

“Has my father threatened to destroy you if you come near me?” she asked, studying his eyes.

“He has.”

“And yet, you’re here now?”

Jed drew his face closer to hers. “I’ve fought it for too fucking long, Chloe. I can’t fight it anymore. If my career dies after this, so be it. But I’ve wanted you, on every level, since the second I first saw you.”

Chloe’s breath caught in her tight throat. An invisible band wrapped her chest. Her tummy knotted.

“But,” he went on, his voice almost a whisper, his fist in her hair relaxing…a little, “before I lose myself to you, I need to know. Am I here because you want to piss off your father, or am I here because you want me to make you moan my name in pleasure?”

“My father has no fucking clue you’re here, Jed,” she answered truthfully. “And until the day you ask me to marry you, he never has to know.”

His eyebrow lifted at her words. His lips twitched. Delight danced in his eyes, along with a hunger she recognized as equal to her own. “In that case…”

He crushed her lips with his.

She kissed him back, rubbing her palm up and down the length of his erection.

He growled into her mouth, snared her wrist in a tight grip, and yanked her hand free of his cock. Slammed her wrist to the doorjamb above her head and deepened the kiss.

A gasp tore from her throat. Hot excitement shot through her. Her pussy throbbed. Maybe he was naughtier than she’d thought.

Holding her wrist harder to the doorframe, he moved his lips to her jaw, his other hand capturing her breast as he ground his erection to the curve of her sex.

She rolled her head, eager for the bruising suction on the side of her throat she suspected he was about to give her. She wanted him to brand her. Wanted him to mark her as his.

Instead, he scored a line of nipping bites up to her ear. Teased her earlobe for a moment with his teeth.

Chloe squirmed, an impatient want thrumming through her. Thrusting her hips forward, she pressed her pussy against the underside of his rigid length, fisted her hand in his hair, and yanked his head backward.

“I don’t want to play coy, Jed,” she said, holding his stare.

His chest swelled with a ragged breath. “What do you want then, Chloe?”

For an answer, she released his hair and shoved her hand down his jeans, closing her fingers around his cock again. “This. Slamming into me as hard as it can. Think you can do that?”

Another choppy breath fell from him. That animalistic hunger flared in his eyes once more.

“I can do that,” he said, his grip on her wrist tightening.

“Then hurry the fuck—”

She didn’t finish. Without warning, Jed pulled her wrist from the doorframe and in one fluid move, slung her over his shoulder, caveman style.

Chloe squealed, the sound splintering into giggles of surprised delight.

Wordlessly, Jed crossed to the massive bed and flung her onto it.

She landed on the soft mattress with a clicking of teeth and a very undignified and far-from-sexy
oof
. Jed didn’t seem to mind. Before she could settle herself, he yanked her hot pants from her body, grabbed her ankles, and pushed her legs wide.

Liquid heat pooled in her pussy at the rough play. She let out a gasping laugh. And then a strangled moan as he suddenly bent at the waist and ran his tongue up the length of her seam.

“That’s what I’m talking about,” she panted, arching her spine at the exquisite pleasure radiating through her. “That’s what I want you to—”

He shoved himself off the bed and strode away.

Just like that.

Out of the bedroom. Into the suite’s opulent bathroom.

“Hey,” she protested. “What the fuck?”

His low laughter floated back to her from the other room. “Haven’t you heard about the joys of delayed gratification, Ms. Blackthorne?”

“Haven’t you heard about the wrath of a woman scorned, Mr. Brody?”

He appeared in the bathroom’s doorway to lean against the frame, and for a split second Chloe forgot how to breathe.

Fuck, he was stunning.