Evanescent Ink (Copperline #4) (9 page)

“You can stay, you know,” I murmured after a bit, after I caught my breath and my pounding pulse had mellowed. “Sleep here.”

The moonlight filtered through the curtains, illuminating the soft curves of her naked body. I trailed my fingertips along her hip bone and down along the ink on her thigh before looking back up at her guarded expression. For the slightest second, there was a flicker of something in her eyes. Something I didn’t understand, but that made my chest swell heavily and my breath catch.

She dropped her gaze and I felt her fingernail tracing along the tat on my chest. With a faint twist to her lips, she gave a tiny shake of her head.

“Sleeping over is girlfriend shit, Drew. That’s not really what we’re doing here.” She looked back up at me, recovered from her pensive moment, and slowly smiled with a wicked light in her eyes. “I’m here to get you off. To help you forget, remember? Let’s not complicate it.”

I wasn’t entirely sure how that made me feel. Maggie had never wanted to sleep over either, generally because she usually took the extra girl or girls home, so that had made sense. Sorta.

But Raven…

I lifted my hand to comb my fingers through the dark purple streaks of her hair, satiny smooth and fine. I realized I wanted her to stay, more than I ever had with Maggie. I knew that was ridiculous, but I did, and it stung a little that I seemed to be the only one who felt that way. That made no fucking sense, so I brushed it aside and rolled her underneath me.

“So maybe I want you to get me off again, over and over. All night. Maybe I want to get you off.” I leaned down and kissed her neck, nipping gently, delighted by the resulting shiver that rippled through her.

“Mmm… you’re very persuasive.”

“I’m also curious,” I whispered against her ear.

“About what?”

“You.”

She pulled back a little, wary and uncertain. Trapped by my body, though, she could only get so far away. “What about me?”

I brushed the hair from her eyes and looked down at her. “Where you’re from. Why you came here. What did you want to be when you grew up?”

She narrowed her eyes at me in a teasing manner. “You first.”

I knew she was avoiding my probing questions, but maybe if I started talking, she might talk too.

Just maybe…

“That’s easy,” I grinned. “I wanted to be a rockstar.”

She smiled, probably thinking that she had won. That she had avoided answering me.

“Well, you did it.”

“Not really. Not like I always dreamed. Money for nothin’ and all that. That’s what I was always aiming for.”

“You’re really good, though. I used to listen to you guys when you did your college radio show.”

“No shit?”

Raven laughed, low and throaty. “Really,” she whispered, and her hands glided down my arms to intertwine with my fingers. “You have very talented fingers, Mr. Massey.”

“Fuck…" I sorta breathed. “That’s kinda hot when you call me Mr. Massey.”

I felt her small, bare foot skimming up my leg. Her hips pressed up into mine.

“Mmmm, Mr. Massey,” she murmured.

With a sound that was half laughter and half moan, I set a quick kiss on her lips. My junk was already ready for round two, but I was on a bit of a mission here. While I couldn’t explain it, I just needed to delve a little deeper into her psyche. To share more than just the physical bliss. As amazing as that was, it seemed it was just skimming the surface of something simply phenomenal underneath.

Something I craved.

“Where are you from?” I probed as she feathered tiny kisses along my shoulder.

“I grew up around Portland. How about you?” It was like a ping pong game. I asked a question, she batted it back to me.

“Born in Colorado, moved around a lot as a kid. So, Portland, huh? When did you move to Montana? Must have been a while ago if you listened to us on the radio.”

Ball in her court.

“I was a sophomore in high school. So how’d you end up here?”

Tap. She batted it back.

“I graduated from high school in Twin Bridges,” I said, mentioning the small town I’d lived in that was about an hour away. My lips trailed from her neck across her collarbone, always moving, even while I talked. Trying to distract her, relaxing her with my touch to help her share. “Came to Butte for college mostly because it was close and I was kinda lazy. Decided school wasn't for me, so I quit and opened Ink.”
And back at her.
“Leaving your hometown in the middle of high school must have been a bitch, huh?”

“Kind of a relief, actually.” She paused for a second as my lips began to venture down her breast, then veered off to skirt past the hardened nipple. “I bet moving around so much was a lot tougher as a kid, though.”

She was good at this.

“It wasn’t so bad. Gave me plenty of time to practice the guitar. Music was a way to find other people like me. People who didn’t quite fit the mold.” I drew the hardened bud into my mouth, and she moaned quietly. Then I lifted my head and gave it another shot. “Where did you finish high school?”

“Anaconda,” she replied distractedly, referring to another small town just a little northwest of Butte.  “So, is your family still in Twin Bridges?”

“They never really stayed in the same place for very long. Practically vagabonds.” Trying again to steer the convo back to her, I kissed her, then focused my gaze back to catch hers. “You moved from Portland to Anaconda? Did you have some massive culture shock?”

“A bit. What made you stay here in Ophir?”

“The Mofos. They kinda became roots. Little tiny fragile roots, but they were roots. Something just happened when we got together. Something that made me feel like I belonged somehow for the first time in my life.”

“You are pretty close. You all lived together at one time, too, right?”

“That was my idea. I had it in my head that we’d get super motivated and practice all the time, then venture off to find fame and fortune.”

“Rockstar dreams.”

“Yeah. I was so jacked when I got us the spot at the Copperline. I was just sure some high-power music exec would hear about us. Come rushing to us with a contract to record and go out on tour and shit.”

“You know there’s not many music execs in Montana, right?” she smiled.

Our back-and-forth had shifted to become more talk and less touch, yet it felt so incredibly comfortable just sharing.

“I figured one would be out on a hunting trip from LA or something,” I mused. “Maybe they would hear us on the radio. I knew it was just a matter of time.”

“And then it would be all sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll?”

“I guess it still was, just on a smaller scale. It seemed like enough, though. It fed the hunger. The parties. The girls. Maybe that's what killed me and Maggie.” I tried to keep the bitterness out of my voice, but it crept back in, poisonous and raw even as I lay here with Raven.

“Was she jealous?”

“Kinda the opposite. She liked it. Loved it. Provided it. She said she was priming me for the debauchery of rockstar life, for when I got big and famous. I thought I had it made and started to feel like it was enough. I got to play guitar on a regular basis… my girlfriend encouraged me to fuck other girls. What's not to love.”

“A lot of guys wouldn’t complain about that,” she laughed. “It’s kind of like a fantasy.”

“I didn’t mind it at first, trust me. I thanked my lucky stars and rubbed it into Justin’s face at every chance. I had a girl, my girl, yet I still got more pussy than him. It used to really piss him off.” I grinned at the memory, but it faded quickly as I continued on. “After a while, though, I guess it started seeming like I was just a tool. A toy. I was
her
chick magnet.” I choked back a harsh laugh, and studied Raven with mock wariness as she lay beneath me. “You don’t like pussy, do you?”

She laughed, and the sound seemed to chase away some of the pain that had just creeped back into me.

“I’m pretty set on dick, thanks,” she replied, “and you really know how to use yours. Your fingers are awesome, but your cock… it’s pretty fucking talented, too.”

I felt it swell a little at the mention. Like it was taking a little bow in response to the flattery. Raven’s eyes grew dark and serious, telling me she had felt the slight movement. Her tongue darted out of her mouth, and she caught her lower lip in her teeth. As quickly as it had appeared, the sense of loss had completely seeped out of me, replaced with a heated, carnal ache.

“How does it compare?” I asked.

“To dick in general?”

“To other apas. Other piercings you’ve tried.”

“Yours is the first apa I’ve had,” she murmured, “and it’s kind of amazing.”

“You’ve never had a guy with an apa before?” I asked. Raven exuded a worldliness. I figured she’d had all kinds of dick, modified and not.

“Not many guys are willing to go there. I dated a guy for a while who had a Prince Albert, but that’s it,” she admitted with a shake of her head. “I’ve done the procedure on guys and always wondered what it was like.”

“So tell me,” I breathed. “What is it like?”

“Really. Fucking. Awesome.” she said with a seductive smile. “I’d already had little fantasies about you, but then I heard you had an apa and… well, it made me even more curious.”

“You had fantasies about me?”

“Well, yeah. I sat there in my interview with you wondering what you were like.”

“Fuck me… you dirty girl.”

“I didn’t even know about your apa then.”

“This kinda blows me away. You always seemed so remote. So cool.”

“I’m pretty good at keeping shit like that under wraps.”

“Damn, I’ll say.”

“But, yeah,” she replied. “I went home after you hired me. I was living with my cousin, Lacey, at the time, and we got plastered. I told her how hot I thought you were. She bet me fifty bucks that I’d end up sleeping with you within a year.”

“I guess at least you won the bet.”

“You had Maggie.”

“But not just Maggie. I had a lot of other pussy, too, brought in by Maggie.”

“Yeah, but, as you’ve probably figured over the years, I’m not her type. She likes the classically gorgeous, white-bread, American model type.”

“True,” I nodded.

“She wouldn’t have wanted me, though, even if I had been an all-American girl next door. She knew I had a little thing for you, I think.”

I remembered back to that night in Ink. Raven standing up for me. Maggie saying she was done. Calling Raven a pathetic little freak.

He’s finally free if
you
still want him
, she had said.

“So that night at Ink… that wasn’t just a pity fuck.”

She shook her head, bringing her eyebrows together like I was out of my mind.

“I am
so
not fucking you out of pity, Drew.” She ran her hands up my back, arching into me and breathing life back into my arousal. “I’m getting a hell of a lot in return.”

“Yet you don’t want to spend the night.” It bothered me more than it should have. It made me feel a little used. Different than how Maggie had made me feel, but still. More than anything, though, I’d realized that Raven chased away my demons. If she went home, they might come back, reminding me of Maggie’s cold rejection. “You want to keep this a secret. We just work together and fuck on the sly.”

Even to my own ears, I totally sounded like a petulant little bitch, but I couldn’t help it.

Yet Raven soothed me with her soft understanding. Her free and easy brand of common sense and compassion.

“Drew, you just got out of a pretty serious relationship. I’d be an idiot to even think of hooking you right now because you’re still taken. So I’m your friend. I’m your distraction.”

“And you don’t think the fact that you’re constantly single and I’m constantly single is going to raise any eyebrows?”

“You just had your heart ripped out of your chest, remember? Everyone is aware that it might take a while before you feel like getting back on that girlfriend horse. As for me, half the people in Ophir think I’m a lesbian thanks to Justin.”

“True.” Justin had said things like that ever since Raven had started working for me. “Why
does
Justin think you’re a lesbian?”

Raven rolled her eyes and sighed in exasperation. “Because he hit on me and I didn’t go for him. And, on top of that, I don’t really… date. Therefore, by Justin logic, I must be a lesbian. I like to think I’d be the girl in a relationship, but he’s positive I’m a lesbian.”

“A lesbian who only likes dick?”

“That’s not exactly something I just spout out and tell people. Besides, it keeps guys from hitting on me all the time, so no biggie.”

“Damn Justin. He shouldn’t have hit on you. None of my friends were supposed to hit on you. I told all them that, him more than once.”