Authors: Erin Nicholas
It was strange. He kept calling her Seattle and she liked it. Not because she loved Seattle. She did, but there had been some not so great times there too. But because it felt—intimate. No one else called her that.
Being intimate with Marc was a bad—tempting, but bad—idea.
Then she remembered the rest of his words. “I’m not being agreeable to win you over.”
“Talking about having sex with me isn’t going to win me over either.”
Sabrina glared at him. “I wasn’t talking about having sex with you. But,” she said as a thought hit her and adrenaline surged, “if I did have sex with you, it would make you want to do anything I want for the rest of your life.”
She wasn’t sure where the bravado came from. She knew for a fact that having sex with her didn’t exactly make men fall at her feet. Maybe Luke, but he’d been—she could admit it—pretty much at her feet already. And she hadn’t hung around for long after to see how it went. Paul had high-tailed it in the other direction, in fact. Maybe not because of the sex, but that certainly hadn’t slowed his departure. Still, there was—and always had been—something about Marc that made her want to push him, no matter how dumb that was.
Marc leaned in and his voice dropped low. “Having sex with you would be a diversion while I’m far from home and on edge. Trust me when I say that I’m not worried about the rest of my life.”
She leaned in too and narrowed her eyes, in spite of the fact that her stomach flipped simply in response to his husky voice. The sexual chemistry between them was not one-sided and while she doubted there would be worshipping from either of them, she wasn’t going to let him be quite that nonchalant.
“I don’t think it’s sudden hero worship,” she said.
He seemed to lean closer. “You been harboring secret desires for me for years? You should have said something.”
“Why?”
“I could have helped you out. Then you could have left Luke alone.”
“I did leave Luke alone. Like a few thousand miles and four years alone.”
“Not soon enough.” Marc’s jaw tightened, but then he paused and visibly relaxed. “But if you and I were getting it on, Luke would have been pissed off enough to stay away from you.”
She’d been a virgin until she was twenty and she’d had no sexual feelings for Marc that she remembered, but now thinking about having sweaty, new, teenage sex with him on a blanket by the river or in the backseat of his car made her thighs clench and rush of heat flow from head to toe.
“You would have risked pissing Luke off that way?”
Marc’s gaze flickered to her mouth, then slid lower, over her body, then back up. “As a dumb, horny teenage boy? Very likely.”
“And now?”
“I’m not a teenager anymore.”
“What about the dumb and horny part?”
“Some times more than others.”
He was kind of funny. Which also surprised her. “How about now?”
“Feeling dumber by the second.”
That definitely caused a stomach flip. “Funny, I’m feeling one of those things too.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m always wound up after I perform.”
“Wound up?”
“You know, wound up, energized, stimulated…”
“You get…stimulated…every time you sing?”
“I thank God for D batteries every night,” she said without batting an eye. She didn’t know how she was keeping her cool exactly but it was fun to see his pupils dilate and his lips part as he sucked in a quick breath.
“Is that right? You’re so independent you don’t even need someone for orgasms, huh?”
It shouldn’t be that easy for him, but just the word orgasms from him and she was nearly panting. Unwilling to let him get away with teasing her like that—because she was going to be wishing for those batteries pretty quick—she said, “You get what you pay for with vibrators and I have high credit limit on all my cards.”
“I’m okay with watching.”
She cleared her throat before she could think about it. “Who said you’re invited?”
“They only had one room open tonight.”
That tripped her up. She hadn’t even thought about that as a possibility. And there were complications far beyond her being able to use or not use her plastic BFF.
“I thought you were concerned about being in a hotel room with me tonight.”
“I am.” He sounded frustrated. “I thought we were going out so we’d be so tired we wouldn’t be thinking of anything but sleep.”
Yep. That had been the plan.
Of course, none of her plans had worked out for months so she wasn’t sure why she’d thought this one would.
“You’re not tired?”
“That’s not the first word to register, no,” he said.
The desire on his face was clear.
She was wound up from performing and he was clearly turned on by—whatever. There had been underlying currents all day.
Inevitable
seemed to be the word registering for her.
“Are you doing this to piss Luke off so he’ll stay away from me?” she asked.
Marc thought about that. It would work. No doubt about it. Luke wouldn’t stand the idea of Sabrina with another guy but especially his best friend. The problem was, Mark didn’t need to fake one ounce of what he was feeling for her at the moment and that was a huge flashing neon sign that read
Big Trouble
.
Clearly dumb and horny went together for males even after their teenage years.
“Are
you
doing this because you feel the need to constantly drive me nuts and you know I think this is a bad idea? Or is it the horny-from-singing thing?”
She looked up at him, searching his eyes. “Which do you think works better?”
He got it. It was easier if there was a reason other than truly wanting each other. It was easier if there was an excuse. But part of him wanted her to be so hot for him she couldn’t do anything other than beg him to take her. Which they both knew was a lot closer to the truth.
Probably.
Marc didn’t like that twinge of insecurity. She hadn’t just gotten off stage when there’d been sparks flying between them in the motel room, or the diner, or the grocery store parking lot. But she had been tired. And stressed out. And hungry. And a million other things that might explain her acting out of character. A million other things besides a wild and crazy chemistry between them that she couldn’t deny.
Leave it to Sabrina to put doubts like these in his head. He was going to have performance anxiety if he wasn’t careful. It would be typical that he’d get Sabrina naked and then not be able to follow through.
That
wasn’t going to happen.
“Do you always have sex after you perform?”
She grinned up at him. “Define sex.”
He leaned in, almost touching her lips with his. “If you don’t know the definition maybe you’ve been doing it wrong. I can help with that.”
There
. He hadn’t imagined the quick little breath she took or the way her pupils dilated.
“I meant… I mean… I um…”
And he wasn’t imaging her having trouble forming words. Determined to affect her, determined to prove she was affected and determined to make sure
she
knew it as well as he did, he threaded his fingers through her hair, cupped the back of her head and urged her forward into a kiss.
The kiss wasn’t passionate or hungry like a spontaneous lustful kiss should have been. It was more deliberate than that. It was slow and thorough.
For a fleeting moment he thought maybe this would be enough. Enough to prove that the heat between them was simply a matter of imagination, a myth that could be easily dispelled. Wanting her made no sense, so maybe it wasn’t even real.
It took three seconds for him to realize that it was not only real, but he’d made a very serious error.
Wanting to kiss her was bad enough. Actually doing it was the dumbest thing he’d ever done.
Because now he would never want another man to kiss her and he’d never want to kiss anyone else.
No wonder Luke was such a mess.
Luke.
Fuck.
He pulled back, looking down into her dazed expression.
He couldn’t do this. He did not want Sabrina with Luke, but he couldn’t have her himself. She just needed to be far away from both of them. As soon as possible.
He stared at her for ten full seconds. “Dammit,” he muttered. He pulled back swiftly as images of mythological sirens came to mind.
“Dammit?” she repeated. “What’s that mean?”
“It means that I shouldn’t have done that.”
She crossed her arms. “Regretting kissing me isn’t very complimentary.”
“I didn’t mean for it to be,” he snapped.
She slumped back in her seat. “Well,
that
isn’t going to help me sleep tonight. It’s going to be even worse. Thanks a lot.”
He almost smiled, but caught himself. He liked that she was affected because he sure as hell was. But he couldn’t find her funny, or interesting…or anything else positive. Their bickering was supposed to be irritating, not fun.
“I can run out for more batteries,” he said. “But that’s it. This is a bad, bad idea.” If kissing her was such a big a deal that he was feeling possessive, then sleeping with her might ruin his life.
“I’m not doing
that
with you in the room.”
He wanted her to because that was the self-destructive type of idiot that he was, but he said, “Probably a good idea.”
“And
you’re
not going to do anything like that either.”
“Anything like what?” he asked.
“You know.”
He didn’t miss how she shifted on the seat as if suddenly uncomfortable.
“Make sure.”
“You’re not going to…relieve yourself…either. We both get…relief…or neither of us does.”
She was entertaining him. She was miffed that he wouldn’t
relieve
her as she put it. But he sighed. “You know we can’t sleep together.”
He thought she was going to argue and didn’t know how much convincing he could take before he took her upstairs.
But she said, “I know. It’s crazy. Justice is too small. We can’t have sex and then try to have a normal life when we’ll be running into each other all the time.”
“It’s not about Justice.” She wasn’t coming back to live in Justice anyway. “It’s about Luke.”
She huffed out an exasperated breath. “It’s all about Luke. Good Lord, maybe
you’re
in love with him.”
“I do love him.” He said it quietly, not looking at her. But he felt her pivot in her seat to face him.
“I know you do. I do too.”
“You left him.”
“I had to.”
“Because you didn’t
love
him.”
She was quiet for a moment. Then said, “At that time in my life, what he wanted wasn’t what I wanted.”
He felt his blood pressure start to rise. “And now?”
“Now I don’t know. He’s not the reason I’m coming back to Justice, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“But he won’t believe that. He’s hurt that he wasn’t enough to keep you from leaving, but if you come back, he’ll think it’s a second chance.”
“I just want to go back to being friends. I can’t deal with anything else right now.”
“Then tell him that, Seattle. Don’t make him guess. He’ll keep hoping if you don’t
tell
him that you don’t want him.”
“I don’t know if I can.” She said it softly, almost sad.
Marc blew out a frustrated breath. That was it. She was getting on a plane in the morning. Period.
Chapter Five
She hadn’t lied about not being able to sleep. She tossed and turned, closed her eyes, then flopped onto her back and lay staring up at the ceiling.
She was wound up from performing and from Marc’s kiss. Her blood hummed, her skin tingled, her thoughts—every one of them deliciously dirty—played like a porn film. He tasted like cinnamon from the gum he used all the time. Hot and spicy and sweet…
She tried to think about something else.
But the only other thing that came to mind was the reason Marc was here with her in Laramie in the first place.
She was on her way home to Justice.
Which meant she was on her way to admitting to Luke, her dad, even herself that the music hadn’t worked out, her stardom hadn’t happened, she’d messed up big time and they’d been right. Right to think she’d be better off in Justice, with them, safe and sound.
And bored. And restless. And always wanting more.
No matter what had happened in Seattle, she didn’t regret any of it. She wished a few things had been different. She wished the band had stayed together and done something big. She wished they could have recorded an album with a major label. She wished that Matt Lauer wanted to interview her on the Today show.
She wished Paul had used a condom.
But there were a lot of things she wouldn’t change. The people she’d met, the things she’d learned, the fact that she’d truly been on her own for the first time in her life and survived.
And when she wasn’t puking or thinking about all of the things she didn’t know and hating the fact that the only responsible thing to do was move back to Justice, she thought that maybe this baby thing could be okay.
She didn’t know anything about babies, but the baby wouldn’t know anything about her either. She could start completely fresh, clean slate, all of that.
That was definitely appealing.
And she did know a couple of things about being a mom. Things she’d learned the hard way from losing her own—nothing can truly replace the role of a mother in a child’s life and she is the center of that child’s universe, for better or worse.
Her mom had divorced her dad when she was ten. He’d been awarded custody and her mom, needing a way to support herself, had decided to go back to college. She was accepted into a program out of state so her visits had been few and far between. Then she remarried and had more children and the gap between them widened. That hole had never healed completely.
That was the bottom line. Her mom had failed in a lot of ways as a mother, yet Sabrina had always loved her. Sabrina had never been the best at anything, but she would be everything to her kid for a long time.
She wanted to be deserving of that.
She clenched her fists, then forced herself to relax. She didn’t want to go to Justice and she would love to take Marc up on his offer of money and support. She could go anywhere, start over, try again.