Blame It on the Bass (18 page)

“You checking out my arse back there?”

He started at her quip, jerking his stare up from her butt. “I was.”

She tossed him a look over her shoulder. “Well, this is awkward. I was actually kidding. How did you get that red spot on your head again?”

“Head-butted a ghost,” he answered, walking past her to head for the kitchen.

Pulling a face, she followed him. “
And
there’s obscure statement number two.”

He laughed, opening the refrigerator to extract a chilled bottle of Moët. “I like to be an enigma.”

She pursed her lips and shook her head. “Oh, please don’t. One enigmatic man in my life is enough, thank you very much. I like the idea of having a simple gay guy as a friend.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “I’m not sure how to take that.”

She smirked. “True. You’re not like any other gay guys I know. For starters, none of them have suggested I sleep with them and their boyfriends.”

Filling two crystal glasses with champagne, he slid one across the granite bench toward her. “Until you came along, I was pretty much as cut-and-dry gay as they come.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. Licked her lips. Picked up her glass. “To keeping things simple,” she said, her gaze meeting his over the crystal rim.

He tapped his glass to hers. “To sexual tension.”

Without waiting for Sonja’s response, he raised his glass to his lips, tipped back his head and swallowed the alcohol in a single gulp.

“To sexual tension,” he heard her murmur as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Thirty minutes later, they were outside on the deck, soaking up the warm autumn sun as they gazed at the harbour, their second bottle of Moët resting in an ice bucket on the table behind them.

Forty minutes after that, after discussing what they thought of the latest Spielberg film and how it compared to his early stuff, Corbin found himself completely and utterly at ease. “Levi still prefers Spielberg’s earlier work,” he said, missing his lover greatly. “
Jaws
is his favourite. It’s the film that made us realize we were meant to be together.” He let out a wry snort. “On our third
date
, when Levi was still in the closet and I wanted to kiss him in public more than anything, I stopped myself from doing so by talking at length about the mastery of the film’s screenplay, how Spielberg gave birth to the whole concept of the summer blockbuster, and how the film held a mirror up to American attitudes of the time. A good hour later, I realized he hadn’t said more than a few words. I apologized, thinking I’d fucked up completely. Who wants to kiss a guy who won’t shut up about a movie from the seventies, right? Even a private kiss?”

“There’s nothing wrong with private kissing,” Sonja pointed out. “Or talking about
Jaws
.”

Corbin chuckled. “Levi said the same thing, sans the private kissing part. In fact, he told me he wanted to talk about it some more after he did something.”

“What was the something?”

Heat pooled low in Corbin’s belly. “He kissed me. Right there in the café. In front of anyone who wanted to watch. Leaned forward in his seat, cupped the back of my head in his hand and kissed me. A slow, lingering, open-mouthed kiss.”

“Damn.”

The shake in Sonja’s whispered exclamation echoed the tremble in Corbin’s stomach. “After that, well…he wasn’t in the closet anymore. I met the band, he met my family and a few months later, we bought this place and moved in together.”

“So tell me,” Sonja said, rolling the stem of her empty glass backward and forwards between her thumb and fingers. “What happened? Where did things start to unravel?”

Corbin studied his own half-full glass in his hands, the bubbles in the champagne floating to the surface somehow mocking him. His mouth grew dry. His chest grew tight. “Our baby daughter died.” The statement left him on a calm whisper.

Beside him, Sonja hissed in a swift breath. “Your what?”

He closed his eyes.

“Corbin?” Soft fingers touched the back of his shoulder. “Did you just say what I think you said?”

He stared at the yachts bobbing up and down on the water. A constricting vice wrapped his chest. A ball of hot loss churned in his gut.

The fingers on his shoulder slid down his back. From the corner of his eye, he saw Sonja studying his profile. “You and Levi had a baby daughter?” Shock filled her voice. “I didn’t… I never read anything about…”

“Very few people knew about Isabella and her mother,” he said, the words somehow dry in his mouth. “Levi and I made sure the media and press learned nothing about our plans to become parents. Even our agents didn’t know. I told my family. Levi told the band. That was it.”

“Her mother?”

Corbin dropped his focus to the glass in his hand. Watched the sun glint off the crystal in a dance of glorious light. Watched it bounce off the surface of the champagne the same way. With a slow breath, he drained the glass.

“Where is the mother?” Sonja asked, confusion in the question. “Is she Levi’s… I mean…how… Why isn’t she here now?”

“Connie was a surrogate,” he said, the alcohol slicking its way to his churning gut. “Both Levi and I contributed sperm. We didn’t know—didn’t want to know—whose sperm fertilized her egg. She was a wonderful young woman we found via a long, very secret search. There was no money involved. Just a promise to allow her to be a part of Isabella’s life if she wanted.”

“Was?” Sonja whispered. “Jesus, Corbin, please tell me you’re using past tense because—”

“Connie was killed in a car accident on the way to her last obstetrician’s appointment at the hospital. Isabella was due the following week. She was in labour when the paramedics found her trapped behind the wheel of her car.” He watched the tiny beads of residue champagne slide down the interior of his glass, pooling at the bottom. Talking about Isabella…about the accident…it felt like someone was ripping out his heart. “Neither Levi nor I were in the country at the time. We were both due back later that week. An SUV ran a red light and smashed into her, hitting the driver’s side door at approximately forty-six miles an hour. The paramedics arrived a few minutes before she died, strapped in her seat. They did all they could to try to deliver…to save Isabella, but…but they couldn’t. The story of our baby daughter died with them both. To this day, the media—the world—knows nothing of what Levi and I have lost.”

“Fuck…” Sonja breathed.

Corbin lifted his stare from his glass and returned it to the boats and sun and life beyond his deck.

“The funeral was a private one. The wake, somber. There were no other celebrities to draw attention to the proceedings. Just Levi, me, my family and the band. As far as we know, the only reason Carl Holston made an appearance was because he’d been tailing Nick. Thankfully, Rhodes, Nick’s bodyguard, ran him off without too much fuss.”

Sonja’s hand slipped from his back. He grabbed it before she could pull it away, needing the contact. Even if he couldn’t look at her, couldn’t bring himself to let her see the anguish in his face, he needed to feel the warmth of her palm against his.

He thought of the funeral, of Isabella. Of everything that happened after that fateful car accident. He and Levi had decided to keep their loss from the press. The world didn’t need to know of it. Levi had declared it for the best as he’d dressed for the funeral and Corbin had sat on the end of their bed, his eyes hot with tears.

And then Levi had told him crying would not bring Bella back and their relationship unraveled.

Licking at his dry lips, Corbin let out a ragged breath.

Levi didn’t want anyone knowing any of this, so why was Corbin telling Sonja now?

He didn’t know. He just needed her to understand. To not cast judgment on Levi. To…to share his grief.

Oh Christ, he needed someone to share his pain. After all these months…

A dry, hollow snort escaped him. He closed his eyes for a second before finally turning to face her. A wobbly smile pulled at his lips. “You know what Levi is like, Sonja. You know he doesn’t let anyone really…
in
to his heart. Doesn’t really let anyone see his soul. When Isabella died, when our daughter died, something inside him died too. But he wouldn’t share his hurt with me. I wanted to go through it together, to talk about it to each other. I didn’t want to be alone in my pain, my grief, and Levi was…is my world, my reason for breath, and I needed to be in the moment, no matter how fucking horrible it was, with him. I needed that. I needed to him to share it with me. I needed to know he was as affected by our loss as I was, but he wouldn’t let me feel it with him.”

“And your relationship fell apart?”

He nodded. The compassion and sorrow in her eyes tore at his control like raw strips of flesh from his body. “And our relationship fell apart. I don’t even know if Levi still…” He stopped. Shook his head. Swiped the back of his hand over his lips and turned back to the water.

“You’re wrong, Cor,” Sonja stated beside him, her hip nudging his, her fingers squeezing his hand. “About Levi not letting anyone in to his heart. You’re there. So there. Every time he looks at you, I can see it. He devours you with his eyes. He just…he’s just fucked up, is all.”

Corbin closed his eyes and slumped his shoulders. “And I can’t seem to un-fuck him. How can I when I still hurt so fucking much?”

“Hey.” Sonja touched his chin with gentle fingers. “Hey, Hollywood. Look at me.”

He resisted Sonja’s attempt to turn his head toward her. He couldn’t look at her now. Not when he could feel the hot sting of tears in the back of his eyes.

“Corbin,” she said, firm command in her soft voice. “Look at me.”

He did.

She cupped the back of his head with her other hand, tugged it down to hers until their foreheads pressed together. She gazed up at him, so close he could see the flecks of green in her blue eyes. “I’m here. For you. For you both. You don’t have to hurt any—”

He crushed her lips with his.

He couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t stop himself. The urge—no, the
need
—to kiss her didn’t just overwhelm him, it took utter control of him. The need to feel her lips move against his, the compelling urgency to taste her warmth with his tongue, to connect with her,
live
with her was the only thing that mattered.

He slanted his lips over hers. The unfamiliar texture of soft, full lips slicked with gloss—sweet, like strawberries—detonated in his brain. Soft lips, smooth skin, delicate perfume…no stubble or tickle of a beard. No scent of Levi’s Hugo Boss cologne. Just full, womanly lips, a floral scent, the subtle taste of strawberries and Sonja.

His head spun. His heart raced. His cock throbbed, flooded with eager blood. He buried a hand in her hair, wishing the champagne glass he held in the other wasn’t there. How could he hold her close with a glass in his hand?

Hold her?

Hold
her
?

Reality smashed into him. A fierce fist to his gut. He sucked in a gasp, tense with shocked disbelief, and then moaned—swirls of surreal pleasure filling his head—when Sonja parted her lips and stroked her tongue along his.

He moaned, captured her tongue with his mouth and thrust his hips forward, pressing his erection to the soft plane of her belly.

It was so different. So…so…unbelievably different.

She whimpered, leaning into him. Her breasts crushed to his chest and a current of alien response shot through him. Breasts. Full, round, tipped by hard nipples…

He dropped his champagne glass, uncaring that it shattered at their feet, and closed his palm over her breast. He needed to feel the amazing swell of all that flesh against his palm, like he needed to feel her lips on his.

Her breast melded to his hand, her nipple brushing the very centre of his palm.

And once again, reality hit him. Not a smashing fist this time, but a shearing blade through the exotic pleasure of the new. The different.

He jerked his hand away. Tore his lips from hers. Tightened his fist in her hair and squeezed his eyes shut. “Christ, Sonja,” he ground out, confusion and aching desire warring in his soul, his body. “I…I shouldn’t have done that.”

Her hot breath fanned his lips. Her heat radiated from her. Her thighs pressed to his. Her belly, to his erection. She didn’t say anything. Not a word.

Sucking in a steadying breath, he opened his eyes and gazed at her.

For a heartbeat. Just one. And then he was kissing her again.

He couldn’t stop. A fire blazed through him, uncontrollable and unquenchable.

Sonja groaned in capitulation to a pleasure he was suddenly awakened to, the sound low and raw and wonderful. He squeezed her breast, the sensation of all that soft fullness under his fingers, in his hand detonating fresh flares of tight heat in his groin.

It was so different. So heavy and lush and incredible. Nothing like holding and kissing Levi. Levi with his hard, muscular body. Levi with his flat nipples and sculpted six-pack.

Levi with his beard that rasped Corbin’s lips and chin as they kissed and felt like fucking heaven scratching against Corbin’s inner thighs as Levi sucked Corbin’s cock down to the balls…

Christ, if Levi were here with them, right at this second, touching him…watching them…Corbin would fucking blow in his jeans.