Steel Lust (11 page)

“I don’t cook ever,” he admitted, groaning in protest as she
stood and went to the duffel bag they’d abandoned on the counter.

“So we’ll order in.” She got Norma Jean’s water bowl out of
the bag and filled it in the sink.

Leo put food in her dish and they found a spot that would be
easy for Norma Jean to find that was also kind of out of the way.

“Where did she go anyway?” he asked, going to get his
suitcase and her bed from where he’d left them in the foyer. Her bed wasn’t
there.

He turned in a circle, but he didn’t see it anywhere.

“What the hell?” he muttered. He was sure he’d brought it in
with him.

“Leo,” Joy called to him from the hall leading to her
bedroom. “I found her,” she said with a smile, gesturing through the door to
her spare bedroom.

Norma Jean’s bed was wedged in the doorway of the room, but
Norma Jean was lying on the spare bed looking rather pleased with herself.

“What are you doing in there?” he asked, and she rolled onto
her back and showed him her belly. He looked at Joy. “I’ve never seen her on my
bed. I’ve never even come home to find the blankets wrinkled like she’d been
sleeping on it while I was gone.”

Joy moved the bed into the room and went to rub his dog’s
belly.

“She likes it here.” She smiled up at him. “Although I have
to say I’m relieved she didn’t stake her claim to my bed. I don’t know if I
would’ve had the heart to throw her out so you and I can roll around on it
later.”

Something he didn’t realize had been tight in his chest
loosened and went warm at what she’d said. “You don’t mind her being up there?”

She waved him off. “Not at all.” She reached for him, took
him by the hips and pulled him close, looking up his body after giving the
bulge still straining against his zipper a suggestive glance. “Maybe you could
show me the hip roll thing now since she’s made herself at home.”

Norma Jean huffed out a sigh and rolled onto her side with
her back to them.

“Well, I guess we could—”

But Joy was already up and leading him out of the room by
the hand.

“See? Now those are the kind of people you want to see in
amateur porn, not the skank with ingrown hairs on her badly shaved pussy,
sucking off an old guy with saggy balls and a pot-belly.”

Joy stopped browsing the shots of Jamie and Leni she’d just
transferred from her camera to her computer and turned to her assistant.

“‘Excuse me sir, but it looks like you have an
awfully
big late fee,’” Kelly said in a breathy porn voice. “‘I don’t think I can let
you have those books until you…take care of this.’” Kelly puffed out her chest.
In a deep voice she said, “‘I don’t have any cash on me right now, darlin’.
Maybe we can work this out…’” She made a smarmy porn face. “‘Another way.’” She
faked taking off glasses with a dramatic sweep of her arm. “‘Why, what did you
have in mind…
stud
?’”

Joy lowered her eyebrows and turned back to her computer.

“How long has Brandon been out of town?” she asked.

Kelly slumped into the chair next to her. “Is it that
obvious?”

“Everything turns into a porn scene when he’s been gone
longer than a week.”

“I pick him up from the airport at seven tonight. And he’d
better not be jet-lagged because he’s totally getting the naughty librarian
treatment when we get home.
Wow
.”

Joy had clicked on her favorite shot of the day.

“Jesus, he’s pure, raw animal, isn’t he?” Kelly asked,
meaning Jamie.

He’d talked Leni into taking off her shirt to show off her
nipple piercings. It turned out her tits were pretty hot too—small but firm and
high with heavier-gauge hoops held closed by deep red glass beads that
contrasted beautifully with her smooth, ivory skin.

In the picture he was standing behind her, her back to his
chest. She had her arms around his neck and her head turned to the side. He’d
been covering her breasts with his hands, giving her time to change her mind
before he’d slid them up the undersides of her arms, exposing her. The killer
shot had come when he’d looked directly into the camera with the dirtiest
cat-that-ate-the-canary grin she’d ever seen.

“Yeah, I’d kill for video of those two being leaked to the
Internet,” Kelly sighed.

Joy dropped the picture into her editing file and moved on
to several of Leonardo.

“So, things are going pretty well with you and the rock
star,” Kelly observed, going back to putting lenses in their cases.

Joy shrugged. “For now.”

“Oh here we go. What’s wrong with this one?”

Joy turned to face her again. “What does that mean?”

“You always find
something
wrong with every guy you
date so you don’t have to let him in close enough to have a relationship.”

Joy laughed one short, derisive laugh and shook her head.
Kelly had no idea how much she’d opened up to Leonardo compared to the men she’d
dated in the past.

“What? Do you think I’m off-base here?”

“No,” Joy admitted. “Not at all. I can see where you would
get that idea, but there isn’t anything wrong with him.”

Which worried her more than if he’d been the biggest creep
she’d ever met.

“So what’s with the ‘for now’ nonsense? You think he’s not
serious about you?” She put the lens cases in a wire basket.

She clicked on a close-up of Leonardo and his face filled
her computer screen, every nuance of the deep-sea blue of his eyes, the fine
line of his nose and his beautiful mouth coming into vivid detail. Even in
pictures he made her heart thump and her body go hot. She loved the way those
eyes looked at her when it was just the two of them, the dirty things he said
and did with that mouth, the way his blond hair fell around his face when he
was above her.

“Where’d you go just now?” Kelly asked, waving a hand in
front of her face.

Back to bed, that’s where.

“It’s only been a few weeks, and he’s probably going to have
a summer filled with groupies,” she muttered, closing out of what she was
doing. “What’s going on between him and me is not that serious.”

But that was a lie and she knew it. She was up to her
eyeballs in crazy about him.

“It looks pretty serious from where I’m standing,” Kelly
observed.

Joy looked up with a smile, but Kelly wasn’t joking anymore.

“Whether he knows it or not, he’s serious. It’s in the way
he looks at you, the way he talks to you. All those things in your head, the
age difference, the fact that he lives two states away, are just things in your
head. They don’t matter to him, and they shouldn’t matter to you either.”

As if on cue, the door opened and Leonardo came into her
studio with Norma Jean.

“Were your ears ringing?” Kelly asked cheerfully, bending to
greet Norma Jean when he let go of her leash and she trotted over to them.

He gave Joy a puzzled look. “Should they have been?”

She smiled, her stomach fluttering at the sight of him.
“I’ll tell you later.”

“Are you coming out with us tonight?” he asked Kelly.

“Oh no,” Kelly stood and Norma Jean came around Joy’s desk
to greet her next. “I have a fiancé to pick up from the airport in a few
hours.”

He shrugged. “Bring him too. The more the merrier.”

“He’s been out of town a week and a half,” she told him
pointedly.

“Ah.” He tucked his hands into his pockets. “I see.”

Kelly turned to Joy. “I have a naughty librarian costume to
put together before I have to battle traffic to the airport, so I’m going to
bug out now. ’kay?”

Joy laughed. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Late morning?” she asked with a hopeful smile.

“Whenever you get here is fine.”

Leonardo shook his head at her as the door closed behind
Kelly.

“You are such a pushover.”

She stood and came around the desk. “Am not.”

“Does she always get her way with you like that?”

She slid her hands up his chest, reveling in the warm
solidity of him. “The rules around here are pretty loose to begin with.”

He touched his lips to hers. “Does that mean there will be
more desk sex?”

A shiver racked her body at the memory of the quick, hot
fuck they’d had the day he’d come to take her back to Ohio to get her car.

“I’m still trying to get my legs back from breakfast sex.
Ooh
…”
She sighed and brought her arms around his neck to steady herself as his mouth
moved to her ear. “And I need to take a shower before we go out tonight,” she
protested weakly, her eyes rolling shut and he bit gently on her earlobe.

“Can I help you wash those hard-to-reach places?” His tongue
slid down her neck.

“Jesus.” She clutched his hair as he grazed the curve where
her neck met her shoulder with his teeth. “You can have the easy ones too if
you want,” she panted.

“We should go back to your place so I can get started.” He
brushed his lips over her now heated skin. “It might take me a while to get to
all of them.”

She pulled on his hair until he raised his head and looked
at her. “Yes please.”

* * * * *

“I like your friends,” Joy told Leonardo, leaning close to
him and speaking below the din of everyone else talking at the table.

He smiled and slid his hand over her thigh. “You fit right
in.”

“They make it easy,” she said, widening her eyes as his hand
moved a little too high. “Do you think Oscar feels strange being the only
single guy at the table?”

Lust for Life’s third partner—who was just as gorgeous as Leonardo
and Jamie in his own dark-eyed, long-haired, bearded and tattooed way—was
seated at the opposite end of the table from them. He’d been mostly quiet
throughout the photo shoot, dinner and now drinks. When he did speak it was
worth it to listen. He was hysterically funny with the best kind of laid-back,
dry sense of humor.

“I don’t think Oz ever feels strange. He’s the coolest guy I
know. If he decides he wants to pair up with someone, he will,” he assured her.
He looked up and past her, and the warmth drained out of his eyes. “You have
got to be kidding me,” he muttered.

She knew who she was going to see before she looked.

Bruce and his wife had just come through the door and were
being greeted by the hostess. Deb spotted Joy instantly and split from her
husband to come over and say hello. With her gut churning at the sight of Bruce
twice in as many days, Joy stood and hugged Deb, whom she adored despite the
fact that she’d dragged her rotten husband over with her.

To make matters worse, Leonardo was standing, shaking
Bruce’s hand as though they were long lost friends.

“Wow, you look terrific,” Deb said, holding Joy at arm’s
length. “All rosy-cheeked and gorgeous as ever.”

The knot in Joy’s stomach softened. Because of Deb’s
father’s relationship to her parents as their friend and music producer, she’d
known Deb Lane-Allen all of her life. Even though there was more than ten
years’ difference in their ages, she’d always been good to Joy and her sisters.
Their families had spent many vacations together when Joy had been young. Deb
had always played games with them, taught them how to swim and ride horses, and
then how to wear makeup when they were old enough.

She was married to the biggest asshole walking the planet,
but she was also one of the sweetest, most generous women Joy knew. The music
industry was packed full of jealous, spiteful, hugely competitive people who
just barely qualified as human beings, but Deb still managed to remain
untouched by it all.

“I was just going to say it looks like Italy agreed with
you,” Joy said, having heard she and Bruce had spent the month of March there,
and hugged her again. “This is my boyfriend Leonardo.” Joy started with
surprise at how easily the word boyfriend had rolled off her tongue. “Deb used
to babysit my sisters and me while our parents went out on the town in Italy
and Greece,” she explained to Leonardo.

“And L.A., London, Paris,” Deb added, taking Leonardo’s
hand.

“You should join us,” Leonardo offered.

Joy gave him a wide-eyed look, but he didn’t seem to notice.
He glanced at Jamie instead and something unspoken passed between them.
Something that raised the fine hairs on the back of her neck.

“I don’t think so,” Bruce said easily. The look he was
giving Leonardo was ice-cold.

“No really,” Leonardo challenged, his smile brightening.
“How often does a guy get to talk to one of the most respected businessmen in
the music industry?” He pulled out one of the two chairs Jo and Gabe had
vacated earlier—with the excuse they wanted to enjoy a rare, baby-free night in
a hotel room—that were conveniently located between him and Jamie. “I promise
I’ll only talk shop for a little while.”

“I think it sounds like a wonderful idea,” Deb said, laying
her hand on Bruce’s arm, her touch showing her husband she’d made up his mind
for him. “You’re a musician?” she asked Leonardo, taking the chair that had
been his when he held it for her, putting her between him and Joy. And Bruce
between him and Jamie.

“I’m a singer,” he told her and then made introductions
around the table.

“He’s being modest,” Jamie said as they all sat. “He also
plays piano and guitar.”

“It’s not too awful when he gets behind a drum set either,”
Oz added, sending a ripple of laughter through the group.

“His band is going on a pretty major tour this summer,” Leni
chimed in.

Joy looked at Leonardo. She could only assume Leni was
talking about Grind opening for 30 Seconds to Mars, but he hadn’t said anything
to her about it yet. She could tell by the regretful look on his face that he’d
meant to tell her, so she raised her drink in toast as if she’d known all
along.

“To Leo and Grind getting their big break,” she called out,
and everyone cheered.

She was surprised that Bruce seemed genuinely interested in
the fact that Grind was a blues-rock band, and that he appeared to get easily
caught up in talking with Leonardo and his friends about music. It might have
had something to do with the amount of drinks they were consuming and the
lateness of the hour, but the more everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves,
the more she started to relax.

And then Deb excused herself to use the restroom. Jamie
leaned to Leni and whispered something in her ear, and suddenly Leni needed to
use the restroom as well. And did Joy want to make it a threesome and come with
her?

Joy looked at Jamie for some kind of clue as to what had
just happened, but he and Leonardo had both turned their attention back to
Bruce and the conversation they were having.

Joy stood slowly, pulse pounding through her ears and temper
flaring. She followed Deb and Leni to the restroom, burning with anger at being
played like a puppet and sick with fear about what might happen once she walked
away from the table. Questions raced through her head about what Leonardo had
told Jamie to make him act that way and what Leni may or may not have known.

Had Leonardo told his friends about her family’s precious
secret? Was it all about to blow up in her face?

“Can I borrow your lipstick?” she asked Leni, holding her
back as Deb went into a stall. “I love that color on you.”

The music in the bathroom was loud, but Joy turned on the
water as hard as it would run as Leni fished her lipstick out of her purse.

“What was that all about?” she whispered as quietly as she
could.

Leni shrugged. “I don’t know. Why would they want us all away
from the table?”

Joy looked pointedly at the stalls farther down the
bathroom. “I can’t say.”

Leni’s eyes narrowed, clearly not understanding.

All right, maybe she didn’t know.

“Is something going on between you and…?” She tipped her
head toward the stalls.

“No.” Joy waved her hands, making sure she didn’t continue
her thought out loud.

Leni’s eyes widened. “Her hus—”