Seduction by Song (20 page)

My heart constricts, jealously mixing with the knot of guilt that’s made its home in my body. I kept telling myself that it was necessary, that Romeo had to choose someone else—there was no reason to be jealous.

As the familiar chords of “Why I Need Your Love” begin to play once more, I look up as Romeo approaches the edge of the stage. I wait for him to extend his hand to some lucky girl.

Instead, he simply stops. He closes his eyes and stands perfectly still, missing his cue. His band mates are clearly annoyed behind him, but they loop the intro dutifully. Finally, with a few seconds left before his mark to sing comes around, he reaches down and grabs me by the arm.

Without extending an offer, without giving me any warning, Romeo pulls me up on stage with the force of one hand.

I’m too stunned to do anything but move with him when he pulls me along into that same old song and dance. He locks his eyes onto mine like he always does and drags me in closer with each step, with each beat. I’m powerless to resist him. Even though it’s only been a day since I last saw him, I missed him so much that I can’t help but be swept away in his song.

When he tips me back and kisses me hard, I wrap my arms around him and kiss him right back even though I
know
I should know better by now.

The kiss is short-lived. I hear the music stop, abruptly, and I hear someone shouting backstage before the sound and lights are cut off. Then, I’m suddenly being ripped away from Romeo and a dark figure is moving in between us.

“What the
fuck
do you think you’re doing?” Dante shouts. From where I am, in the dark, I can see him prodding Romeo in the chest. “I told you what this bullshit is doing to our sales. Just fucking
look
at that crowd out there!”

Romeo snarls and knocks Dante’s hand away. “And
I
told
you
that you don’t get to talk to me like that.”

“I will quit right now,” Dante says, lowering his voice in an attempt at sounding threatening. It pales in comparison to the danger in Romeo’s tone, though. “I swear to God, Ortiz, I will walk off this stage right now.”

Even in the dark, I can see Romeo cross his arms and straighten his back in a great display of power.

“Do it,” he says. “You’re nothing without me. You want to leave? Leave. You’re replaceable.”

“I’m your
oldest friend
, you son of a
bitch
!”

The fight is over before the last word is even out of Dante’s mouth. Romeo doesn’t back down. Dante doesn’t say anything else. Even if I don’t know all the politics behind this band, I know enough to realize that Dante’s been defeated. Romeo is right. He
is
the lead singer in every sense of the word. He draws the crowd, the contracts—everyone else is replaceable.

Dante skulks back to his position not long after that little explosion. Romeo stays perfectly still. When the lights come back on, he isn’t looking at me. He looks—vacant, almost, like he’s regretting something. The look lingers in his eyes for a second before passing as though it had never been there.

Before the sound comes back on, their stagehands having smartly cut the microphones when they noticed Dante starting to boil over, Romeo turns to me with that charming smile on his face. We both know it’s not completely genuine, though. Not this time. Not after that fight.

“Meet me after the show,” he says. He means it as a command, I’m sure, but it comes out sounding almost like a request.

I nod. I would never refuse him anything.

Chapter
Twenty Four

After the show, I’m led backstage by a security guard as I am every night. To my surprise, it’s that English driver—Jonathan, I remember Romeo calling him—who greets me instead of Romeo.

“Mr. Ortiz must attend to some business,” he says, bowing as he sweeps an arm out to gesture for me to follow him. “He has asked me to take you to your lodgings for the night.”

I blink. Lodgings? I suspect that means a hotel, but Romeo couldn’t possibly know where I was staying. (Logan only knew where I was, Maddie confessed earlier, because she couldn’t resist making a Twitter update about our trip with our location stamped on it. Romeo, of course, wouldn’t have seen this.) Hesitantly, I follow Jonathan as he leads the way out into the parking lot.

“What do you mean by lodgings, exactly?” I ask as we approach his limousine.

Jonathan opens the door for me. “Mr. Ortiz has booked a room he believes you will enjoy.”

Oh
. I breathe out a sigh of relief. It wasn’t so much that I was worried about Romeo knowing where I was staying, but that I was afraid Logan would still be waiting outside of my room for me to return. This night was working out so much better than I expected. The girls would return to the room and run him off—although he was a bastard, he would never physically hurt a woman. He would back down.

I cringe after a moment when I realize what I just thought.
This night was working out so much better than I expected?
I roll my eyes. Way to be selfish, Erin Gouchet. Romeo has a huge fight with his band mate—and his oldest friend, if Dante could be believe—and I think this is a
good
night?

I sigh, turning towards the window to watch the passing lights. Orlando is beautiful at this time of night. If only Romeo were here with me, I could ask him why he insisted on choosing me each night he sang even though he clearly knew it upset his band mates and his fans. If he were here, I would ask him to hold me in his arms while we enjoyed the soothing music Jonathan played through the speakers of the car.

If Romeo were here, everything would be better.

I’m still lost in thoughts of him when the limousine rolls to a stop. Jonathan appears at my side to open my door again, moving more quickly than I would have expected him to be capable of moving. (I don’t mean he’s out of shape or anything, but he
is
getting on in years.)

He hands me a hotel key card and a pamphlet detailing the amenities provided by—.

My eyes went wide as I saw that we had stopped in front of Disney’s Animal Kingdom Villas. I had dreamed of staying here when I came to Orlando with my family, but I knew even as a child that it would be much too expensive to get a room—especially when my parents were already paying so much for tickets into Disneyworld. I always remembered those beautiful balconies, shaded by a straw overhang, and the exotic animals that roamed the grounds. I never saw these things with my own eyes, of course, but I read them in a pamphlet just like the one I was holding now.

“We’re staying here?” I ask, breathlessly.

Jonathan nods, and smiles the slightest bit. “Good evening, Miss Gouchet.”

I return his smile and wish him a good night as well before setting out to find our room. It takes a while, perhaps because I keep getting purposefully lost just to take in all the sights around me. By the time I finally find out room, I’m already so amazed and impressed that I didn’t think I had any energy left to get excited over what was waiting for me on the other side of the door.

I was wrong, of course.

My eyes went wide at the suite that greeted me. It was decorated beautifully and larger than my whole apartment back home. It had one of the balconies I read about and, just as I approached it, a giraffe passed by so close to me that I could have reached out and touched its neck if I stretched a little.

Before I’ve even explored every room of the suite, I hear someone clear their throat behind me. I spin around and find myself face to face with the only thing this picture was missing: Romeo.

“You missed rehearsal,” he says when he sees me beginning to move towards him.

I stop dead in my tracks, blinking at him. I can’t decipher his tone—he doesn’t seem angry, or annoyed. Simply—complacent. I smile, or at least try to. “I’m sorry. I—could we sit?”

His shoulders slump a little. He seems
tired
, more tired than I’ve ever seen him. He nods after a moment, though, and comes closer to let me lead him over to the couch. I keep his hand in mine and squeeze reassuringly as we settle down.

“Dante—.”

A low growl bubbles up out of Romeo’s throat before I can say anything else. “I don’t want to talk about Dante tonight.”

I want to argue, but he sounds set in his decision. I nod after a second’s thought, knowing that it’s only fair. He must have dealt with Dante’s problems with him after the show, and it’s probably the last thing he wants to think about now.

“Let’s not talk,” I tell him, quietly.

And
that
seems to be the right thing to say. He wraps his arms around me and just hugs me for a moment before pulling back to catch my mouth, licking slowly past my lips and across my tongue. I sigh against his lips and pull him in closer, finally relaxing now that I have him close again.

I knew we would have to talk about his band and everything that happened today, but it could wait.

Romeo stands me up in the middle of the living room and strips me down to my panties. He covers my breasts with his hands and pulls me against him, my back to his chest, as he sucks a deep, red mark into the skin at the crook of my neck. I’m wet and moaning already, and he’s barely even touched me yet.

He lets go of me to strip, jerking his head towards the door leading to the bedroom afterwards. “Stay here. I need to get a condom.”

Although that order sends a shiver down my spine just like all the orders before, I shake my head this time. “No,” I say as I his hand in mine. “I trust you.”

He looks surprised for a second before that dark, heady lust storms into his eyes again. He nods and kicks off his pants and boxers, pulling his shirt off as well.

“Move with me,” he whispers, settling his hands on my hips and turning me so that my back is facing him again. He guides me forward until we’re at the balcony, and I freeze for a moment. We weren’t in some secluded clearing in the park now. Any other guest at the hotel could look out of their balcony and see us here. It
is
rather late and the chances of that are slim, but—I shiver.

The thought of being seen with Romeo like this is strangely thrilling. Arousing, even.
Yes
, the instinctual part of my brain says,
let them see. Let them see how much this god of a man wants you.

I reach back to curl one arm around Romeo’s shoulders, pulling him closer to me and letting him press me up against the railing of the balcony. He drags my underwear down until I can kick them off and presses his erection between my thighs. I groan and shift against him, completely lost in the feel of him so close to me—even if someone were to look, it was too late to turn back now.

“
Dios
,” Romeo says under his breath, muttering the word against my skin. It could be a curse or a prayer, but either way, it was for me. I drop my head back and let him turn me around until we’re facing each other. He kisses me again, then again, until we’re both struggling to breathe through lips that are swollen and slick.

I wrap my legs around him instantly when he lifts me up, positioning his cock at my wet folds. “Yes,” I whisper, lower and quiet. “
Yes
. Do it.”

He holds perfectly still, teasing my entrance yet not quite
entering
me. “Magic word, Erin.”

I groan and try to lower myself onto him, but he holds onto me and makes sure I can’t more until I say, “
Please
.”

He drops me, his cock entering me harshly as the force of my fall pulls me down onto him. I moan, so loudly that I hear the animals behind us scatter. Romeo pins me back against the railing, seemingly ignorant of all those eyes on us. He begins to thrust into me, lifting my hips up and letting the weight of gravity pull me back down onto him. He enters me more deeply than ever before in this position, and the lack of even a condom between us makes everything feel infinitely hotter under my skin.

I gasp, short and sharp, each time he thrusts up into me. My arms scrabble to find purchase around his shoulders when the railing begins to feel dangerously unstable behind me, but Romeo keeps a firm hold on my hips as though to reassure me that he would never let me fall as long as I remained in his arms.

He takes his time with me, bowing his head to kiss at my neck, my breasts, and finally my mouth. He pulls out every few thrusts to rub the head of his cock against my clit, making me moan and beg for him to fill me up again. He keeps me from reaching climax for what feels like hours, prolonging this easy state of ecstasy we’ve both fallen into in each other’s arms.

Finally, he begins to thrust up in earnest, faster and harder. I hear his groans fill my ears, the sound of it only making me cry out louder. His length feels bigger and bigger in me until I’m numb with pleasure. With only a sharp groan to warn him, I come, my legs quivering with the force of it. He groans as I clench around him and climaxes at almost the same time, emptying his seed inside of me and leaving me feeling hot—protected.

Wordlessly, he pulls me back inside until we can collapse on the couch. He pulls the beautiful afghan draped over the back of the couch over my shoulders and holds me close.