Seduction by Song (28 page)

“
God
,” I say, again and again between murmurs of his name as he cups one hand at my breast, rolling his thumb over the sensitive tip of my nipple. “Romeo—
Romeo
, I’m going to come—!”

He pushes himself up a little, fixing his eyes on mine again as he takes my hands and pins them to the seat on either side of my head. “Let me see it, Erin—do it.”

I groan at the words, my inner walls twitching and spasming as I’m brought to orgasm on command. He muffles the sound of my name against my hair as he thrusts in once more, coming inside of me just as I reach my own climax.

Sated, we lie together breathing each other’s air as my arms find their way around his shoulders after he loosens his grip on my wrists. I hold him to me, enjoying the way our erratic breathing makes our bodies move against one another. We exchange slow, lazy kisses for several long minutes before Romeo finally peels himself away to begin slipping into his clothes.

It’s then that a sharp rasp comes at the driver side window. My eyes go wide and I cover my breasts, instinctively—we had both managed to slip into our jeans, but neither of us have gotten our shirts back on yet.

“What do we
do
?” I hiss, as quietly as I can.

Romeo shoots me a grin and passes me my shirt, waiting for me to get it on before starting to roll his window down. “Don’t worry about a thing, babe.”

I worry at my lower lip, knowing that—even half-dressed—our disheveled state makes it pretty damn obvious what we were just doing. I peer over at his side of the car once he’s gotten his window down all the way, and groan inwardly when I see that my
worst
nightmare about this whole—admittedly erotic—situation is coming true.

A stern looking police woman is frowning in at us.

“I’m sure you lovebirds know you’re violating several laws of public indecency here?”

I cringe, shrinking back in my seat a little. She couldn’t have been more than a few years older than me, but something about her matronly tone made her seem like a disappointed professor. The way she lowers her sunglasses is practically
identical
to the way one of my old professors would look at us over the rim of his glasses when we didn’t finish our reading.

The bewildered blink that ensues is definitely not very professor-y, though.

“Romeo
Ortiz
?” she says, sounding shocked and suddenly years younger than just moments ago.

I blink, too, though I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised—Romeo
is
famous after all.

Next to me, Romeo flashes her a charming grin as though he were completely comfortable in his own skin. And I did mean
skin
. He had handed me
my
shirt, but totally neglected to put his own on.

“That’s right,” he says, his voice as smooth as velvet. “Suppose this means you won’t be needing to see my license?”

The woman is completely charmed for a moment—but only a moment. She shakes that enamored look off of her face a second later and clears he throat. “No, Mr. Ortiz, I suppose I don’t—though that has more to do with the fact that you
won’t
be getting a ticket.”

Romeo shoots a smile over his shoulder at me.

“I’ll need to take you and your lady friend down to the station,” she continues. “Public indecency isn’t something I can simply
ticket
you for.”

The smile drops off of Romeo’s face instantly and I feel horror course through my veins again. We were being
arrested
?

Before I can voice my fears, Romeo brings that charming smile right back up to his lips.

“Miss, I’m sure you know I’m in town for a concert,” he says, regaining his composure in an instant. “I’d hate to disappoint my fans, and you know I won’t be leaving town, so—tell you what. Why don’t I reserve a seat for you at the show. Front and center. You can keep an eye on me and, well, if you still want to take us in afterwards, there’ll be plenty of time for that.”

She looks skeptical, crossing her arms and frowning at us. Romeo takes the moment of silence to lean over to the glove compartment and pull out a pair of tickets.

“These are all access passes,” he says, offering them to her. “You’re welcome to bring a friend, of course.”

I can see her resolve cracking as the corners of her mouth twitch up into the beginnings of a smile. Even though it filled me with an illogical sort of jealousy to see Romeo flirting with this stranger, I couldn’t help but be impressed—and slightly intimidated—by how suave Romeo was with any woman passing through his life.

Finally, the cop nods and takes the tickets. “I’ll see you at the show, Mr. Ortiz. You as well, Miss—.”

I feel my face heat up as I search for the proper answer. I don’t want to
lie
to a police officer, but I dread the thought of my name ending up in a police report. Romeo saves me from answering, though, as he interrupts by gesturing to the notepad the officer pulls out to take down my name.

“As a token of my thanks, could I make out an autograph to someone special?”

The woman blinks, apparently caught off guard again, before she smiles and hands the notepad over, along with her pen. “Hamilton. Jenny Hamilton.”

Romeo writes out a short note to her and autographs a blank page for her before handing the notepad back over. “Thank you, Jenny. We’re running a bit late for sound check, but I’ll be seeing you tonight, yes?”

Flustered, she blushes and nods. Something that sounds almost like a
giggle
bubbles out of her mouth. “That’s right, Mr. Ortiz. Count on it.”

She leaves us be without even taking down our license plate number. I breathe a sigh of relief once Romeo rolls up the window and pulls on the rest of his clothes. As he begins to navigate the streets towards the stadium where he’ll be performing that night, I smile over at him and reach out to smooth his hair down.

“Very cool,
Mr. Ortiz
,” I say, teasingly.

He laughs and flashes me a devious smile. “Are you surprised, Miss Gouchet?”

Happier and closer than we’ve ever been, we make our way to the stadium together.

As I take my usual seat in the front row, I begin to feel more and more self-conscious without the girls. It doesn’t help that the cop we ran into earlier is seated right next to me, glaring at me once in a while as though I were some sort of heinous criminal. I could recognize jealousy in her eyes, but it was hard to fault her for that—Romeo
was
quite a catch.

I try to ignore her, instead focusing on the show Romeo puts on. He glides across the stage, as magnetic as ever. I can’t help but worry as the end of the show approaches, though, about who he would choose to come on stage with him. He couldn’t
possibly
choose me again. It was clear enough that such a habit could be detrimental to his career.

And Santiago made it
very
clear that any decline in his ticket sales would mean the end of our relationship or the end of Romeo’s contract.

I try to reassure myself that Romeo would do the right thing for the sake of his career, but I’m overwhelmed with jealousy every time I imagine another woman up there with him. Without fail, that image would morph into that which was splashed across the magazine Logan showed me—the one of Louise cuddling up to him so closely, her ringed finger displayed boldly against his chest.

Before I know it, the first chords of “Why I Need Your Love” begin to ring out through the stadium and Romeo is approaching me. My heart beats faster in my chest and I will myself to shake my head, to direct him elsewhere.

He doesn’t need to be told, though, as he extends his hand to the seat next to mine. Relief floods my whole body as he invites the cop we ran into earlier up on stage. Her face lights up as she steps up on stage and she practically swoons as Romeo begins to serenade her. The jealousy I thought I would feel is blissfully absent. Of
course
Romeo would choose her—not for any romantic reasons, but simply to win her over and make her forget about the charges she wants to press against us.

It seems to work beautifully, too. When she returns to her seat next to me, she gives me a huge, genuine smile.

“You won’t have to worry about your secret, honey,” she says to me over the sound of the music. “It’s safe with me—this has been the best night of my
life
.”

And it’s suddenly easy for me to smile, too, as I sway with the rest of the crowd to the encore. This wild ride with Romeo hasn’t been without its ups and downs, but it feels like we’re on our way to a huge up now.

Chapter Thirty-one

After the show, there’s such a media circus backstage that it takes me a good fifteen minutes to make my way to Romeo’s side. He sweeps me away into his dressing room to hide out for a while until we can sneak away, hidden from the public eye. He whisks me away in his rented sports car again, making me keep my eyes closed as we near our destination.

“It’s a surprise,” he insists each time I ask where we’re going.

I sigh, giddily, and resign myself to the wait when I realize he’s not going to crack.

When I’m finally allowed to open my eyes, I gasp as I see that we’ve stopped outside the Blue Bamboo—a luxurious restaurant that I had read rave reviews about. I blink down at myself a few times when Romeo comes around to open my door for me, and I shake my head as he extends a hand to help me out.

“Romeo, I can’t,” I whisper. “I’m not dressed for such a fancy place.”

Romeo rakes his eyes down my body before smiling and reaching down to pull me out of my seat. “You’re beautiful,
mi amor
. You could be wearing nothing at all and still be beautiful—in
fact
…”

He trails off seductively and grins when I laugh, slapping his playfully on the arm.

“Oh,
fine
. If I get kicked out at the door, I’ll have you to blame.”

I don’t, ultimately, get kicked out at the door. Although everyone else inside is dressed rather fancily, the host that greets us seems to be keen on bending over backwards to please Romeo—he doesn’t even give me a strange look for being dressed so casually in what is obviously a fine dining restaurant.

We have a luxurious feast, more extravagant than any before. Sure, room service was amazing, but this was
gourmet
. Romeo orders the award-winning sea bass with mushroom strudel and ginger wisps for us and I couldn’t have made a better choice if I deliberated over the menu for hours myself. Each morsel melts in my mouth, and I practically have to moan with every bite I take.

“I don’t say this lightly,” I tell him, very seriously, “but this is almost as good as my
father’s
cooking—and my father was a
chef
.”

Romeo laughs, wiping at his mouth as he raises his glass to mine—he had picked the perfect wine to complement our meal, too. “To the finer things in life.”

I clink my glass against his. “You bet I’ll toast to that.”

Afterwards, Romeo has me cover my eyes again as we set out for the next surprise he has planned for us. I can’t stifle a yawn as we drive, since it’s well past midnight—the restaurant had stayed open late
just
for us after all its other guests took their leave.

Much to my delight, Romeo allows me to open my eyes to the beautiful sight of the Omni Hotel—another pinnacle of luxury in Jacksonville. I smile over at him, grateful to be able to relax for the night.

“I don’t know if I would have made it through another exhilarating excursion,” I joke as we take the elevator up to our room—the penthouse suite, of course. “I think I’m just about ready to pass out.”

Romeo laughs and takes my hand, drawing me closer to press a slow, sensual kiss to the crook of my neck. “Oh, I think I can snap you out of that.”

I grin and shove him playfully before stepping out of the elevator at our floor. The suite is just as luxurious as the last, decorated plainly, but beautifully, in simple shades of blue and white. A bottle of champagne is chilling in the center of the living room and Romeo helps me pop it, both of us laughing as bubbles spill out all over our hands.

We sip at our drinks as we talk, our conversation once again reminding me of yet another reason I’m so enamored with this man—he’s able to hold a deep, insightful conversation with me like no one else. He genuinely cares and listens when I talk about my father, about how I worry even though he’s a strong man—he just seems so
lonely
sometimes, with Logan almost never coming home and Mom living all the way across the country in California with her new husband. He listens with rapt interest when I talk about the advancements I’ve made in my dissertation—which I haven’t been working on as much lately since I’ve been following
someone
across the state.

“Well, are you complaining?” he asks, that charmingly teasing smile coming back up to his lips.