What He Bargains (What He Wants, Book Nineteen) (65 page)

The others laughed, except for the keyboardist, which Raven took note of.

“I’d still be curious to hear his opinion,” she said.

Rory fidgeted nervously before answering. “Well…I mean…I really liked what I heard. It just needed to be stripped down more, I think.”

“See what I mean?” Hec laughed, as he lit his joint. “That’s dead wrong. Dead wrong.”

“How so?” Raven pushed.

“Because,” Hec said, as he inhaled sharply, holding the marijuana smoke in his lungs before finally blowing a cloud out explosively from his lips. “Nowadays, the trend is towards more production, harder beats, more instrumentation—not less. The stripped down sound isn’t happening. Electronic music is the biggest music around right now—the hottest shit—and that stuff is the opposite of stripped down.”

Jake folded his arms. “So, you think I should scrap the new songs?”

“Look, man, it’s your call,” Hec told him, passing the joint to the bassist. “All I can tell you is that I don’t think this new stuff will bail you out of the hole you dug for yourself.”

Jake’s gaze hardened and Hec seemed to realize the blunder he’d just made.

“You think I’m trying to bail myself out?” Jake asked him.

“That came out weird. I’m just saying—“

“What are you saying?” Raven asked him.

Hec turned to her. “Look, I don’t even know who you are.”

“My name’s Raven.”

“Yeah? And what do you know about making music? Do you even play an instrument?”

“No.”

He rolled his eyes. “But let me guess. You’re a model, so that means you’re Albert fucking Einstein, Mozart and Jimmy Iovine all rolled into one.”

“I’m not a model, but I’m flattered you think I could be,” she smiled.

Jake stood up, his shoulders flexing. “Hec, you better get the fuck out of here before I see if I can put your head through this glass window. My bet is that I can, but we can always find out for sure.”

Hec stood up, his eyes wide, making him look like a sixteen year old boy as he backed out of the room. “Come on guys. He’s as nuts as they say he is!”

The rest of the group began filing out after him.

“Wait,” Raven said, touching the keyboardist on the arm. “Could you hang out for a second?”

He nodded, completely mellow, as if he saw this kind of thing every day, and sat back down again.

Rory was also leaving, but Raven stopped him, too. “Will you get in trouble if you stay here with us?”

The young guy considered it. “I don’t really give a shit,” he said, grinning. “Hec is a total asshole.”

“Good,” Raven laughed.

After Jake saw the others out of the house, he came back to the control room.

Raven stood up. “I think that guy Hector was an idiot,” she said. “I think he’s completely wrong about your songs. He doesn’t understand what you’re trying to do.”

Jake sighed. “Listen, it’s so amazing that you believe in me. But I just don’t think I can do this right now. My head’s just not in the right place.”

“Rory,” Raven said. “Tell us your honest opinion. Do you think Jake has good material here or not?”

“It’s good,” Rory told them. “It could be great. I don’t know, but I think we should try and figure it out.”

The keyboardist smiled. “This is some far out shit,” he laughed.

Raven looked at Jake again. “The songs you played for me last night—just you and your guitar—they didn’t sound anything like what was happening with that entire band in here today. It doesn’t need to have all those bells and whistles, Jake. It just needs you.”

He swallowed, his eyes seeming to get moist. But then Jake cleared his throat. “Okay,” he said. “This is how it’s going to be. Rory will produce and engineer these tracks, and Phil’s going to accompany me on some additional instrumentation. Phil, you can play most of those instruments, right?”

Phil chuckled. “I can do it all, man.”

“Good. Raven, you sit right next to Rory. I want you to listen, because I’m going to let you have the final say on how this stuff sounds and what we need to do. I’m going to depend on you to be my ears in there, okay?”

Raven’s heart leapt, but she just nodded calmly. “Of course.”

“Let’s get to work, then,” Rory said, clapping his hands.

And they did.

I
t was nighttime
, but finally they’d finished for the day and Rory and Phil, the keyboardist, had left.

Raven was tired but happy, because she felt like the session had gone incredibly well once Hec and the other idiots had been jettisoned. Of course, it occurred to her that she’d never actually even seen a studio session before, so how did she know what was good and what was bad?

Maybe it was like Hec said, and she was just some wannabe producer chic who had screwed Jake up yet again.

Jake went upstairs to have a quick shower and came down wearing just his swim trunks. He looked hot—there was no other way to put it, and once again, Raven lost her breath for a moment.

I can’t believe Jake Novak is standing here, in front of me, half-naked.

“You feel like going for a night swim?” Jake asked.

Raven glanced over to the pool. “Right now?”

“Not here—the beach. We can walk for a bit, maybe take a dip…”

She felt something stirring excitedly in her belly. “Yeah, sure. That sounds nice.”

“Good. Go get your little bikini on, I’ll wait here impatiently.”

She giggled, shaking her head, and as she ran by he spanked her ass, and she shrieked, but kept running up the stairs. She was happy, giddy really, as she changed quickly into her bikini, marveling at just how much skin was visible in this outfit.

I might as well be wearing dental floss.

But she liked that, too. She wanted to be wearing next to nothing, just like he was. Everything inside was ready to burst, since she hadn’t been close to Jake in nearly a week’s time.

Raven ran back downstairs and found Jake waiting by the back entrance with a bottle of wine in his hand. He looked absolutely dashing, as if the day’s session had given him new life.

They walked out through the back entrance and then made their way down to the private beach, which was totally dark at this time of night. The moon and stars were bright overhead, casting light onto the water, making it glimmer in the darkness.

“It’s so perfect out here,” Raven said, shivering not from cold, but from Jake’s nearness as they walked by the water’s edge. She could feel cool, wet sand between her toes, and then the warm water lapping at her feet.

Jake took a deep breath and then exhaled. “This feels fucking amazing!” he shouted, whooping and spinning in a circle with his arms outstretched. “Damn, I feel like I’ve been reborn.”

Raven laughed, as Jake handed her the wine bottle. “Did you drink this whole thing already?”

“No, I hardly even had a sip. I’m drunk on life, and drunk on you,” he told her.

Raven took a long swig from the bottle. “I’m glad you’re happy.”

“Happy’s not the word for what I am right now,” he said.

They continued walking, looking out at the bright lights along the outskirts of the beach, where the strip was, and all the tourists. Distantly, she could even hear faint music playing from miles away.

“Jake, I think you’re doing something beautiful with your songs,” she said. “It’s courageous of you, and I just admire you so much.”

Jake stopped and grabbed her around the waist with both hands. His touch electrified her instantly.

“The beautiful thing here is you,” he said softly.

“I love you so much,” she told him.

“Not only do I love you,” he said, “but I need you. I need you because when I see you, I want to be something more than what I am. I want to be better. I want to make you happy, Raven.”

“You do make me happy.”

“Come on, last one in…you know how it goes,” Jake said, suddenly darting into the water. The moonlight glinted off his bare skin as he dove under the waves and reemerged again, further off now.

Raven set the bottle of wine down, laughing, and went in after him.

The water was fantastic, a little bit cool at the very first, but then quickly it felt almost like she was in the bath. She licked the salt from her lips as Jake swam over to her, grabbing her around the waist and picking her up so that she wrapped her legs around his lower torso, hooking her feet just above the ankles.

She was practically floating, while the upper half of her body was mostly out of the water, pressed against Jake’s chest, while his hands held her back for support.

He leaned in and kissed her, gently at first, and then more deeply.

Smaller waves washed over their bodies as the moonlight glistened across the top of the water, illuminating everything, especially Jake.

She opened her eyes and felt that she’d somehow awoken into another dream, another vision of paradise, of perfection.

It was timeless. It was pure love.

After a short time, Jake set her down and pulled her by the hand, walking back to the shore, and then lay Raven down on the beach.

The sand was cool, almost cold, against her back. She shivered, but then Jake was climbing on top of her, his warm body like an oven, heating her up again.

His hands ever so slowly peeled off her bikini top, and then his tongue was flicking her nipples, his mouth sucking them until she cried out, but her voice was drowned out by the waves that crashed nearby.

It was so dark and private, she knew nobody could see them in this place, with the moon now even hid behind some clouds.

She could hardly see Jake herself, it had gotten so dark outside.

But she could feel him, feel what he was doing to her, and she wanted more.

He sucked her nipples, switching from one breast to the other, his hands encircling them, rubbing, massaging, and then squeezing. His fingers toyed with her nipples.

And then he was reaching down, pulling her bikini bottom off with one quick flick of his wrist. She was completely naked now, here on this beach, the waves crashing, the darkness complete, the night wrapping them like a blanket.

Jake wasn’t speaking, but she could feel him, almost as if he was talking to her through ESP. And what he was whispering was love, over and over again.

His mouth was on hers again, hot and greedy, his tongue thrusting, just as his cock pressed into her slit, pushing through, opening her up all at once.

She moaned, moaned louder, not knowing or caring how loud she was, because the ocean was much louder.

Jake began fucking her, his hips crashing into her hips, as his hands pushed her hands up and to each side, pressing her arms into the sand as he made her wet.

“Make me come, Jake,” she moaned.

He sped up, and his hips were wilder, his cock so wet from her juices, so slick, and soon her legs were wide open and she was bucking her hips in a ferocious orgasm.

He came along with her, and then he lay atop her body, breathing into her mouth, whispering “I love you,” in her ear, just like she’d known he would say.

T
hat night
, Jake held her close, his body melding into hers so tightly that she could feel his heartbeat mixing together with her heartbeat in the stillness.

Faintly, she could also still hear the waves washing on shore at the beach.

Raven drifted in and out of sleep, so peaceful that she forced herself to stay awake and savor it as long as possible.

I never want this to end.

His arms were so strong, not just because they were muscular, but because Jake was strong inside as well.

He loved her completely and she finally was able to accept it.

She eventually drifted to sleep and didn’t wake up again until the next morning. Jake woke up first, getting out of bed, humming to himself. Raven watched him as he grabbed his clothes and headed into the bathroom.

She smiled, thinking about how much his attitude had changed since he’d gotten back in the studio.

This is where he should be
, she thought.
This is what he needs to do
.

Raven got up soon after, and then they had a breakfast of coffee, bacon and eggs—that Jake made efficiently and quickly—eating fast, because Rory and Phil were due any minute.

It was during breakfast that Raven saw the story about her and Jake on her cell phone while she was browsing the web.

“Fuck,” she said, knowing she shouldn’t have been googling her own name. She’d done it out of habit, and then she turned up something awful.

Jake looked up from his plate of eggs. “What’s wrong?” he asked, his brow creasing.

Raven shook her head in disbelief. “Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse.”

Her eyes read the headline over and over again.

JAKE’S GIRL A REGULAR ‘YOKO ONO,’ CLAIMS PRODUCER

But the headline didn’t just call her Yoko Ono, the notorious wife of John Lennon who many blamed for breaking up The Beatles at the height of their fame.

The article was actually a series of quotes from Hec, the producer that they’d kicked out of the studio. Apparently, he hadn’t wasted any time in slamming them to the press.

Raven handed her phone to Jake. “I’m just warning you,” she said. “It’s bad.”

Jake took the phone and his eyes narrowed as he saw the headline. “Babe, I’m so sorry,” he told her.

“It’s not just taking shots at me,” she told him. “Keep going.”

He grimaced as he read further. “Raven has Jake under her spell,” Jake read aloud. “She’s got the poor guy convinced that he’s the next Ed Sheeran, when in reality his new songs are more like something out of The Wiggles. Only, like, if the Wiggles sucked.”

Raven put a hand up to her forehead. “This is not good. And it’s been picked up by all the major media outlets, people are passing it around. It’s basically gone viral already.”

Jake was still focused on her phone. He continued reading the article aloud, quoting Hec’s comments. “Novak’s clearly having a nervous breakdown,” Jake said, smiling bitterly. He took a breath and kept going. “Jake had a good thing going, but now he’s fired all the people who got him to where he is, and he’s just listening to this chick who has him wrapped around her little finger. Mark my words, Jake Novak will never have another hit song for the rest of his life.” Jake stopped reading, put the phone down and slid it across the table to Raven.