Strung Out (Needles and Pins #1) (30 page)

I climbed out and wrapped snugly into the robe before sinking down onto the outdoor couch. Heat radiated from the electric fire pit Gage had clicked on, and I edged closer to it. “I can’t believe I drank that much. I made such an idiot of myself.”

“It’s not the first time one of my cars has been puked in. I promise.”

“I’m not talking about that. Well I am. But worse than that… the things I said to her… and on a public street… and in front of a man you’re doing business with…”

“Again. I promise you. Jax’s been in the business long enough to see way worse. And as for the public, this is L.A. They’ve seen worse too. But it’s probably time for you find a publicist.”

“I thought you said no one saw.”

“You’re going to need one looking out for your interests soon anyway. I’m just saying it’s time to think about who, before something else crazy happens and you’re wishing you already had one.”

I stared into a sky of black velvet and diamonds unable to comprehend the changes coming about in my life. The blessings and the curses more money than I could wrap my head around was about to bring. The decisions about to be on my shoulders.

“That’s not me. Today.” I was going in circles with this conversation, and I knew it. “I shouldn’t have said those things to her. I can’t believe I did it.”

Gage threw me off with his next words. “You know what I can’t believe? That you had all that crap going on as a kid. Everything you said made me want to shake the shit out of her.”

“She’s had kind of a fucked up life.”

“YOU’VE had a fucked up life.”

“It’s none of my business if she wants to do an interview for that documentary. I messed up. I’ve let everything build up, and I just went off on her. I should call her.”

“You’re not going to call her.”

I got to my feet with every intention of retrieving my phone from my purse, but when Gage, having followed me inside, realized what I was up to, he snatched my purse right before I grabbed it.

“The fuck?” I clamped my fingers on his wrist in an effort to force him to surrender my bag.

“If you still want to call tomorrow when you’re sober. Fine.”

We scuffled. I tripped over a small amp, and as he had been doing since the ice bar, he caught me. My angry drunk phase cycled into the teary drunk phase. “God dammit, Gage. It’s my damn phone. Give it!”

Without warning, he flung the purse to the couch and scooped me to him until I fell over his shoulder.

His long strides ate up the distance, across the room, down the hall. I focused on the wet footsteps his soaked socks left on the polished floor.

“What? What the hell now?” I bounced as he took the stairs. “Why are you all caveman? Could you put me down…? Now?”

It was another half minute before he stopped, and my feet touched the floor. I found myself in the bathroom adjoining his bedroom. He reached inside the shower, and the water began to rain down.

“You’re freezing,” was his simplistic answer to what must have been my incredulous stare. “Your lips are blue. Don’t believe me?” He turned me to face the mirror, and I recoiled from my ghoulish appearance.

His wet tee shirt plopped to the floor, and he replaced the towel no longer around his neck with another, undoubtedly in an attempt to tame the chill bumps raised along inked muscle and flesh.

“Strip.”

“Strip?” I echoed.

While one part of me couldn’t believe he’d said that, another part of me ignited in response to that one word drifting past his sexy lips. My ears savored his deep voice, with as much relish as my tongue had fed on the smoky vodka shots so delicious, I’d had three.

“The wet clothes. Get ‘em off.” And then, “They’re making you colder.” And then with a nudge toward the shower, “Or don’t. Just warm up before you get sick.”

That slight push was all it took for me to drop the robe and gravitate to the heavenly cascade of warmth. It was soon soaking through my clothing, through my skin, through my bones. I was being sprayed from all sides, and I tipped my head beneath one of the higher showerheads.

A groan pushed through my throat. I truly hadn’t realized I was freezing until the moment I no longer felt like a twenty-eight degree vodka shot. My clothing began to weigh heavy, and I shrugged from my shirt, letting it collapse to a puddle in the corner of the stall. Opening my eyes, I found Gage’s gaze trained on me, almost trancelike.

Either I was too drunk to feel modest, or logic ruled enough to know my bra covered as much as my swimsuit ever had.

I unzipped my jeans and fought with them until I got one leg out.
Okay. Drunk
. I knew it now. Not only was I still off-balance with any quick movements, I was now down to my undies, made almost transparent with the water, with the shower door still open to Gage.

He flung his towel aside, stepped in, and saved me from falling for the umpteenth time of the day. Kneeling, he freed my remaining leg from the denim shackle and tossed the jeans atop my shirt.

Definitely drunk
. Standing before him in my wet lingerie, I felt empowered, not embarrassed.

“Fuck…” He swore. Water rivulets ran from the dampening ends of his hair down the contours of his skin. “Fuck… Fuck… Fuck me.”

“Finally?” I curved a smile of invitation, but didn’t dare touch him yet.

Yeah. I was drunk. But I had always been a drunk who lost inhibitions when it came to things I really wanted to do. Which meant, as much as I had wanted to say those horrible things to my mother, by the same token, I wanted Gage—inside me.

His dilated eyes snapped to mine, understanding my humor instantly. A flash of something crossed his face, and when his hand went to the front of his jeans for an adjustment, I realized the wet, heavy material must be causing discomfort.

“Strip,” I challenged, borrowing his word and hoping it had even a modicum of the effect on him that it had on me.

Ignoring my taunt, he crowded me so closely my back touched the graffitied tile. His forehead rested on the wall beside and just above my head, and his breath swirled around me along with the steam vapors.

His hands came up to rest on the wall on either side of me, trapping me. Yet, he was still warring with himself because they remained flat against the tile.

One of his markers lay on a tile shelf next to a shampoo bottle, and I stretched, reaching until I had it in my hand. Biting the cap off and pinching it between my teeth, I turned slightly… Enough to trace the outline of one of his hands with the purple ink. His brows raised, and despite being a horny bitch in heat, I wanted to giggle at his expression. Done, I pulled at his wrist until he lifted the hand. In the center, beneath the outline of his fingers, I scrawled, ‘touch me.’

Without looking up, I capped the marker, and when I tried to replace it, it rolled, falling to the floor. Ignoring it, I finally met his eyes, and my gaze dropped to his throat when his Adam’s apple bobbed with a gulp.

But he didn’t disappoint. His hands brushed the fabric of my bra. His fingertips drifted down my body to the waist of my bikini panties and then back up. I took the opportunity to unclasp the bra and let it slide down my arms to fall at our feet.

The momentum of the moment shifted. He filled his hands. Control was gone. Squeezing, pinching, playing, I watched him watching his hands until my eyes closed overwhelmed with the ecstasy of his touch, and his face landed in the crook of my neck. He licked a trail like a necklace, and then followed the lines of an invisible pendant, landing between my breasts with his tongue. A moan tore through my lips, my fingers curved into his hair, and I shifted, longing for the attention of his kiss to be a little to one side or the other.

When he turned his chin, claiming with his tongue, teeth, and lips, the area he’d already claimed with his hands and fingers, I lost my breath. My pants echoed in the space. The sensations were overwhelming and the back of my head banged the tile as I arched beneath the attention of his mouth. Crazy thoughts made their way into my head. Like if it felt this good
here
, what would it feel like
there
?

As if reading my mind, he licked a path to my navel and sucked at the sensitive skin of my waist. Sure, I had envisioned it for a second while tumbling through a fog of ecstasy, but could I really let him go down? And again, as if he was tapped into my mind, he straightened, fusing his lips to mine.

I wasn’t sure if my groan was one of disappointment or a reaction to his skillful tongue playing with mine. His kisses seemed to taper off until he was pressing his lips into my neck again. I was on freaking fire, and I felt a warring tenseness creeping into his limbs again.

“I want you.” In case he didn’t take my words seriously enough, I went right for the fly of his soaked jeans and licked a water rivulet from a mouthwatering pec. “Don’t stop… Please… I want you so much.”

He made no move to halt the downward slide of his zipper or the curl of my fingers over the fit of his briefs. Still, he raggedly whispered a denial. “Not like this. You’ve been drinking. Way too much. Way,
way
too much.”

“So?” And then I paused, horrified. “I’m not going to throw up on you or anything.”

His husky chuckled bounced around the walls. “Fuck it, Scar.”

“Mean it, this time?”

“You’re killing me. Fuck. Killin’ me here.”

And then with no preamble, he cupped the back of my wet panties, pressing me to his wet briefs. We ground and humped like virgin teens while kissing one another crazy. But when he allowed enough space between us to slip his fingers inside my silky drawers, his touch was anything but virginal.

The talents acquired from a rock star life of sexual exploits came as naturally to him as any of his other finger skills honed with excessive practice. He played my body as if it were one of his guitars, sliding his fingers up and down, twisting in exactly the right rhythm and finishing with a hook that had my shriek echoing through the chamber.

The shake, shake, shake
of the bed―Rascal scratching―woke me, but I didn’t immediately open my eyes. Memories of the night before paraded through my mind. Moments after stars had lit the backs of my eyelids and my legs had jellied, I’d watched fascinated as he’d finished himself off before I’d even recovered enough to offer my services.

Wait, that wasn’t completely true. I could have taken over, but the sheer primal beauty in his sure and fluid movements had held me obsessive.
Up, down, up, down, twist, Up,
down, up, down, twist.
His eyes had locked with mine, and he had been his own driver to paradise city.

After crossing our thin dotted line in the shower, we’d both pulled on clothing from his closet, and had fallen almost directly asleep in his huge bed where Rascal had eventually crawled between us.

Stretching my legs, I blinked the sleep from my eyes as I opened them to find Gage’s face inches from mine, his eyes on me.

My neck and face heated as I got my thoughts in check.

What was he thinking on so seriously?

I’d fallen asleep to his adoring gaze, and now had woken to something different. Something oddly akin to guilt was swimming in his assessing stare.

“What?” My inquiry came out a whispered breath.

The corners of his mouth quirked but never quite made it to a smile. One of his fingers lifted to trace my cheek, but the gentleness of the action was accompanied by a sad glimmer in his eyes instead of a sweet one.

Equal parts of panic and empathy warred inside me. If he had brought me aboard this ride only to regret it, I wasn’t going to recover easily at this point. By the same token, I understood if it was confusion he was feeling, because I had enough of that emotion bubbling inside my own caldron of emotions.

“Don’t think. Just take it a minute at a time. Remember?” I reminded.

“Maybe that was stupid of me to say.” His finger had dropped, and he remained still, the only movement being his lips forming those scary words, and the slight flex of his scruffy chin and jaw.

I couldn’t meet his gaze anymore, and I couldn’t speak past the achy lump building in my throat. Pushing up, I sat, staring down at the large Fire Flight tee shirt covering my frame. Beneath it, I could feel the pair of his boxers I’d stolen from his drawer rather than stumbling to my own room for clothing.

“Why? Why would you say that?” I inquired over my shoulder, willing my voice not to waver. A low hum had begun in my ears, and was slowly increasing to drown out the rustle of Rascal as he bounded from the bed, crossed the room, and nudged the door open.

Gage was quiet for several breaths and then he said, “I’m starting to rethink it all…” The hum grew louder. “That this thing between us probably won’t work out and…” The hum became a vibration I could physically feel. “That maybe I had my own agenda in mind and not…” His thought faded and he looked up, as if he too were hearing the drone of distortion in my head. “Dammit! Is it already ten?”

Twisting, he fumbled around on the nightstand and cursed again, oblivious to the shredding of my heart. Swinging out of bed, he spanned the room and I eyed his movements as he snatched up and pilfered the pockets of his wet jeans from the bathroom floor. The humming had become a palpitation. I lifted my eyes to the ceiling, finally understanding. A helicopter approach.