Blame It on the Bass (15 page)

Stripping off her sweaty clothes, she dumped them in the overflowing dirty-clothes hamper, showered—cold water—washed her hair and then, in a fit of impulsiveness, shaved her pubic area down to a thin line. She’d pay for it later with the grow-back stubble, but for now…

For now what? Who do you think is going to see it?

Her belly knotted. Her pussy contracted, willing and eager to be filled by a cock. Levi’s cock. Or Corbin’s. Either would suffice. Or both.

“Great,” Sonja muttered, drying herself off with savage force. “In the space of thirty-six hours I’ve become a nympho. Awesome.”

Ignoring underpants—as all good nymphos do—she pulled on a pair of loose, purple tracksuit pants and a snug Sex Pistols tank top.

It was time to let the slush pile kill her libido.

Except when she opened her laptop, she found herself scanning query letter after query letter looking for…what? Something that didn’t seem to be there.

Huffing a breath into the damp strands of her hair hanging over her face, she twisted her lips in exasperated resignation, picked up her mobile phone and dialed a number from memory.

“Red,” her boss answered on the first ring, a smirk in his voice. “To what do I owe the pleasure so early on a Sunday morning?”

Sonja scrunched up her face. She was going to regret this. She just knew it. “I’m in the mood for a male-male-female submission, Tony,” she said, ignoring his lame nickname for her. Seriously, she’d stopped being a redhead two years ago. “Do you have any in your inbox you’re thinking of reading?”

Tony’s responding chuckle was dirty. “I bet that’s what you’re in the mood for.”

She frowned. “Tony, if this is another lame attempt to flirt with me, you’re—”

“Oh, I think you’re way out of my league now, Red.”

“Of course I am,” Sonja snapped. And then blinked. “Wait. What do you mean by that?”

Tony chuckled his dirty laugh again. “You haven’t seen the news today, have you? You’re on the front page of the
Sunday Telegraph
. You and your famous boy—”

Sonja killed the connection. Her heart pounded. She jerked to her feet, her stare locked on her phone.

And then, with a furious swipe and jab of her thumb, she dialed Levi’s personal mobile number.

“Sonny.”

A shiver of carnal delight swept up her spine and into her nipples at the deep timbre of his voice. She ignored it. “Your address,” she said. “Give it to me.”

“Why?”

“Because I want it. Now give it to me.”

“There’s something
I
want, Sonny, but you aren’t very—”

“Give it to me, Levistan,” she ground out.

“One forty two Bourkenbac Wharf, Wharf Road, Woolloomooloo.”

Sonja couldn’t stop her wry snort. “Figures you’d live in one of the most expensive places in town.”

“What’s going on, Sonja?”

She ignored his flat question. “Are you home now?”

“Yes.”

She hung up, grabbed her keys and purse, shoved her feet into a pair of thongs and then stormed to her car. She was angry. Really angry.

Why? You don’t even know what Tony the Tool was talking about? Maybe it’s just you and Levi and Corbin walking together?

Grinding her teeth, she fired up her old Mazda’s engine and tore away from her home. She needed to get her hands on a paper.

Three blocks later, she pulled into a service station and, stealing herself for whatever revelation was to come, hurried into the counter and snatched up a copy of the
Sunday Telegraph
.

Staring at the image on the front page, her mouth turned dry.

But her pussy…damn it, her pussy grew damp instantly at what she saw.

The photo had obviously been snapped from a distance using a zoom lens. It was grainy and a little blurry, but not enough to cast any doubt on what had been photographed. Her, outside Mizuku, being kissed by Corbin, their hips and bellies pressed together, their eyes closed, even as Levi held her palm to his lips, watching them both with obvious, nay, undeniable desire.

Above the image, the headline asked,
Ménage A Who?

The pun was neither funny nor clever nor linguistically accurate. A detached part of Sonja’s editor’s mind rebelled against the lazy play on the term
ménage a trios
. Another less detached part applauded whoever had decided the best way to point out to the paper’s readers the woman in the image was an unknown was to use the word
who
.

Who indeed? Holy fuck, just who
was
the woman being kissed by the famous Hollywood screenwriter while the even more famous rock star watched on as if waiting his turn? Surely not Sonja Stone? Simple editor of erotic romance and fan of karaoke?

Couldn’t be. Why would Sonja Stone be on the front page of a newspaper available all over the bloody country?

“Hey?” a male voice shattered her stunned stupor. “That’s you!”

She jerked her stare up from the image to the teenage boy gaping at her from behind the service counter. “No, it isn’t.”

He laughed, an expression of delighted awe on his acne-pocked face. “Yes, it is. Wow, what’s it like to kiss—”

Sonja turned and fled to her car as fast as she could.

“Keep the paper,” the teenager called at her back, laughter in the shout. “Nice arse, by the way.”

Grinding her teeth again—damn, she was going to crack a crown soon—Sonja yanked open her driver’s side door and tossed the stolen newspaper onto the front passenger seat.

“Oi!”

The laughing shout jerked her stare to the attendant watching her from the door of the service station.

He grinned at her from behind his raised phone. “Say cheese.”

Biting back a curse, Sonja dropped into her car, slammed the door, started the engine and tore off, heading for Woolloomooloo.

She didn’t answer her mobile when her boss rang. She didn’t answer it when her best friend rang. She definitely didn’t answer it when her mum, followed by her dad only a few minutes later, rang. After the sixth call—this one from a distant relative she hadn’t spoken to in years—she turned the damn thing off, flung it on top of the paper and floored the accelerator.

Finding an empty parking space close to the luxurious apartments only the super-rich could afford, Sonja flung her car into it. Clenching her jaw, she snatched up the paper and her phone, climbed out of her car and slammed the door shut. Her old clunker of a car, with its dented back bumper and faded paint, looked out of place amongst the Jags, Porsches, Audis and—God help her, was that an Aston Martin?

She
looked out of place just as much as her car did. Which only hammered home the fact the fantasy her deluded mind kept taunting her with was exactly that—a deluded fantasy.

That didn’t slow her down however. Nor did the curious looks from the people in their designer-label attire entering and exiting the wharf’s gated walkway.

In fact, not even the alarmed shout from one of them impacted on her pace as she slipped through the opening.

She was on a mission.

To confront Levi.

She didn’t rightly know what about yet, but she’d be damned if she ended up on the front page of a nationwide newspaper without making her ex squirm along with her.

The bastard showed up in her life out of the blue, sang a few songs with her, threw her for a fucking loop, made a fucking unbelievable suggestion to her and
she
ended up being on the front page of the
Sunday Telegraph
for the whole country to see? Oh yeah, there wasn’t a hope in hell she
wasn’t
going to make him pay.

Storming up to apartment forty-two, she balled her fist and rapped her knuckles on its brushed-steel door.

She refused to turn and admire the breathtaking views of the Sydney skyline and its harbour while she waited.

Nope. Not ever. Not happening.

The door swung open to reveal Levi, dressed in nothing but a pair of black denim jeans, unbuttoned but not unzipped. His hair hung about his head in tousled, damp strands. His skin damn near glowed with bronzed health.

Sonja’s breath caught in her throat. Fuck, she remembered all too easily how much she loved raking her fingers through the fine dark-blond hair on his broad chest. The hair that traversed the sculpted muscles of his pecs from nipple to nipple. How she loved to follow that hair as it trailed down his torso, over the six-pack of his abs to the shallow dip of his navel. And lower. Right down to his—

“Have you seen this?” she burst out, thrusting the newspaper at him. Damn, she wished her heart would slow down.

Without a word, Levi took the folded newspaper. Flipped it open. Studied the front page.

Sonja waited for a reaction. One that didn’t come.

She looked past him into his home. Holy shit, was it gorgeous. “Where’s Corbin?”

“Working.”

She narrowed her eyes, not just at his ambiguous tone, but at what she’d noticed tucked under his other arm. “I didn’t think famous rock stars did their own laundry,” she said, indicating the stack of folded clothes. Damn, his biceps were the perfect size and shape. The tat of a stylized dragon curled around its sculpted bulge only emphasized that.

“I’m packing.”

She jerked her stare up to his face. “To go where?”

With a soft sigh, one she assumed she wasn’t meant to hear, he turned and walked into his living room.

Rolling her eyes, Sonja followed, closing the door with a pointed thud before catching up with him as he entered what was obviously his and Corbin’s bedroom. A massive king-size bed dominated the middle of the room, constructed of brushed steel and black leather. One entire wall of the room was glass, providing a view of the calm water beyond. On the other walls were framed movie posters and Nick Blackthorne tour posters.

On the bed was an open suitcase, half filled with neatly folded clothes. Beside the suitcase was…

Sonja frowned. What was that? A riding crop?

“I’ve got to fly to Seattle,” Levi’s statement jerked her stare from the long, thin black object. “There’s a singer we need to check out.” He placed the clothes in his arms into the suitcase and then smoothed his hands over them.

Sonja’s heart thumped into her throat. A hot lick of disbelief joined her simmering anger. “Really? Just like that? Our photo’s on the front page of the
Tele
,
my
photo is on the front page of the
Tele
, along with the lamest headline pun ever written, and you’re just heading off? Out of the country?”

He didn’t raise his attention from his suitcase.

She glared at him, ignoring the sublime way the muscles in his back and arms and shoulders rippled with his slightest move. “What would have happened if I’d said yes last night? If I’d spent the night screwing you both? Would you still be—”

He turned from the suitcase so fast Sonja forgot how to speak. Or maybe it was the molten need in his eyes as he grabbed her wrist that stole her words? Or the way he hauled her hard to his body? His hard, hot, half-naked body?

Or maybe it was the way his lips brushed hers in a taunting caress as he murmured, “Guess we’ll never know, will we, Sonny?”

He let her go with the same abrupt speed he’d grabbed her with.

She stumbled back a step, her breath short. Shallow. She stared at him, the wanton throb in her sex awoken by his manhandling tempered by the dark shadow of desolate conflict in his eyes. “Levi.” She caught her bottom lip with her teeth. “Don’t…”

She stopped, her pulse rapid. Don’t what? Don’t go? Don’t stop roughing her up? Don’t
not
kiss her?

He cocked an eyebrow, his gaze unreadable again. “Don’t tell me not to go, Sonja, unless you intend to strip naked right now, climb onto that bed and spread your—”

The sharp slap of Sonja’s palm striking Levi’s cheek silenced him.

Their stares clashed. His nostrils flared. He opened his mouth, but before he could utter a word, Sonja spun on her heel and strode from the room.

Only to collide with Corbin as he walked into it.

“Whoa,” he laughed, steadying her with a gentle grip on her upper arms. “I didn’t know you were here, Sonja. What’s going on?”

She flicked a scowl over her shoulder at Levi, who stood at the foot of the bed watching them both. “I forgot how big a jerk your boyfriend can be.”

“Ahh, that.” Corbin slid a quick look toward Levi who, Sonja noticed, had resumed packing his suitcase. “Yeah.” Turning back to her, he gave her a warm smile. “Hey, my muse is being a bitch. Want to come brainstorm with me over coffee so I can pick that editor’s brain of yours? My treat.”

“My taxi gets here in ten minutes, Corbin,” Levi’s low voice came from the bed.

Sonja’s stomach clenched at the ambivalent tone in the statement. She knew that tone. It was the same tone he’d use after his father would spend the night beating him. Or worse. The kind that said,
I’m fucking hurting but there’s no way I’m going to let anyone know.
“You okay, Stan?”

His shoulders tensed. A muscle in his jaw ticked. He didn’t lift his stare from his suitcase. “Yeah, just peachy, Stone.”