The hostess nodded. “The bass guitar player is the leader. He owns this place. They started out just jamming on Sunday nights, a change from whatever work they do during the week. But they’re so damn good they just caught on.” She looked toward the door. “Excuse me. I have people waiting. But signal if you need anything.”
Ten years.
Ten years?
How had he kept this secret from her all this time? And why?
She took another healthy swallow of her wine then opened the envelope. A square card slid out.
“Dear Jill,
I hope you enjoy the music. I’m sorry I never told you about it, but it was just a hobby and I didn’t think you’d be into it much. My mistake. I have hated every one of the past ten months and all the losers who have thrown dirt on an important moment in your life.
But I won’t do that, if you give me a chance. I love you, Jill. I want to be the drummer in your life. Forever. Just give me a chance.
If you don’t want this, just finish your wine and the hostess will get a taxi for you. But if you think there’s a chance you could love me the way I love you, then sit back and enjoy the music. I have something special planned for after the last set.
Love,
Charlie
Conflicting emotions battled through her. On the one hand, she had an overwhelming urge to cry at the intensity of the emotion expressed in the note. On the other, an unexpected thrill teased at her. Like a video on fast forward the past ten years raced through her mind. Charlie, who was always there. Charlie, who put up with her bad moods and teased her out of them. Charlie, who made her laugh when she needed to.
In an instant, she remembered dancing with him in July, jammed together on the tiny dance floor, the press of his hard body against her. His masculine scent teasing her nostrils. His hands warm on her body sending unfamiliar signals. Had she been missing out on something all this time?
An unfamiliar emotion swamped her, nearly bringing her to her knees. It squeezed her heart and heated her blood. Made her breath catch in her throat. Her heart beat faster. Holy cow! Was this what love was all about? Was she in love with Charlie? Had she been all this time and been too stupid to see what was right in front of her eyes? What if he hadn’t been smarter than she was about this? Had the courage to take this step, even though she might have rejected him?
She would have to say a silent prayer every day for the rest of her life that he’d had the strength and the smarts she had not. No wonder he’d been so critical of her plan. She’d left out what counted the most—real love. Not the stupid infatuation she realized now was what she felt for Ray Bonda. Not the physical attraction she had fleetingly with other men.
This was real. An image flashed through her mind, of her and Charlie years from now, still cuddling on the couch, watching a ball game and making quiet, delicious love. How had she missed this all along?
Because I was fixated on an ideal and not on what’s real.
As if on cue, the band swung into “Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places,” and her mouth widened in a grin. She looked at Charlie and saw him watching her, even as he kept up with the tune. She nodded at him and winked. Then she blew him a kiss. And his lips widened into a huge smile.
She was hardly able to control her impatience as she sat through the rest of the evening. Sexual tension gripped her body, her eyes glued to Charlie’s hands as he played the drums. Whenever he looked up at her, the hunger in his eyes was unmistakable. Heat flared in her pussy, and her inner walls throbbed as if every beat of the drumsticks was his cock thrusting inside her. Charlie the pal was gone, replaced by a hot, masculine, mysterious, hungry male who intended to make love to her in a most delicious manner. To bind her to him forever.
When Charlie came to the table on a break, bent down, and gave her a scorching kiss, she vibrated at the contact. The instant his lips touched hers, her entire body caught fire. Her pussy throbbed, her nipples tingled, and her breasts ached as his tongue danced in her mouth. When he broke the contact, she had trouble focusing for a moment. Then she touched his cheek and traced her fingers against the strong line of his jaw, this very precious man whose love she had nearly squandered in her stupidity.
“Oh, Charlie,” she sighed.
“I took a big chance, kitten. I was scared to death of losing you to one of those idiots you ‘interviewed.’ You have no idea how many times I wanted to say something.”
“If you had, you could have saved us both almost a year of misery.”
“I’ll make up for it later,” he promised.
****
Jill was still in a daze when Charlie ushered her into the hotel room he’d reserved.
“After tonight, I want us together at your place or mine—or ours. But I wanted this to be something special.”
There were indeed rose petals on the bed, and champagne in a cooler on the nightstand. Charlie poured some into the two flutes waiting and handed one to her, touching his to hers.
“To us, Jill. Kitten. If you love me half as much as I love you, I’ll be happy for the rest of my life.”
He barely allowed her the one sip before he set the flutes aside, cradled her face in his palms, and gave her a kiss that seared her to the soles of her feet. He licked her lips with gentle strokes, tracing the seam and nibbling at the corners before easing his tongue inside. She threaded her fingers through his silky blond hair, answering him thrust for thrust, her tongue dancing with his in an erotic tango.
He shifted one hand to slide it down her back, pulling her hips against him so his swollen cock pushed like a steel rod into the mound of her pussy. Heat flashed through every inch of her body like a fiery punch. The pulse in her cunt pounded like the drums Charlie played so skillfully, the beat reaching every single one of her nerves.
“Drummers definitely do it best, you know,” he murmured, sliding his lips along her cheek to the tender spot behind her ear.
“If you told me before, we could have saved a lot of time and trouble.”
“But then you might have written me off.” He was busy with his hands, unbuttoning the silk blouse she wore, pushing the sleeves down her arms, trailing kisses along the skin following the path of the fabric. “You might have said, oh, that’s just good old Charlie.”
He expertly flicked open the front clasp of her bra, freeing her breasts. Shoving the straps down along with her sleeves, he brought them around behind her and looped everything together so her arms and hands were effectively immobilized. Holy crap! Was sweet, wonderful Charlie into bondage, too? If she’d been aroused before, now she nearly exploded with the fire of her arousal. Damn! How much more was there to discover about Charlie, a man she’d nearly lost through her idiocy?
Lowering his head he bit each nipple, gently but hard enough to send more of her juices to her pussy. She arched up to his mouth, and he gave a low, sexy laugh.
“That’s my girl. And I have you at my mercy.”
He kneaded her breasts, licked the nipples, wrapped his tongue around each one, nibbled them again, then soothed them with slow licks until she was sure she’d go mad if he didn’t tear off the rest of their clothes and throw her naked on the bed.
“Please,” she begged.
Again that sexy chuckle. “Please what?”
“Please—please take off my clothes. And touch me.”
“Touch you?” he teased. “Where would you like me to touch you?”
“You know where,” she cried.
“Tell me, or no touching.”
She swallowed. “Touch my pussy. Put your fingers inside me.”
“And?” He nipped at her nipples again.
“And—and touch my clit.”
“With my hands?” he asked. “What about my mouth? Would you like to feel that, too?”
“Yes. Yes, yes, yes.”
It stunned her that she could be so uninhibited with him, this man she had thought nothing more than a friend, but who aroused her more than all the others together.
“Let’s see what we can do about it, then.”
Leaving her arms bound with her blouse and bra, he removed the rest of her clothes. Placing them carefully on a chair, then laying her on the bed on top of the rose petals she’d dreamed of. In a blink he was out of his clothes, naked before her, the muscular hardness of his body and the swollen length of his cock stunning her.
“Later,” he told her, climbing onto the bed, “I’m going to let you put your mouth on my dick and suck it hard. I want to feel those soft lips around it. Would you like that, kitten?”
“Oh, yes.” Indeed she would. She could almost feel her lips wrapped around that astonishing hard length, taste his cum on her tongue and in her throat.
“But not yet. First, I want to taste that very sweet pussy I’ve hungered for all these years. Then feel myself inside you.”
And oh god, she wanted that, too.
Kneeling between her thighs, he spread the lips of her cunt as if opening the rose petals on the bed and drew his tongue over every inch of the surface in slow, lazy licks. He lapped and tasted, swirled his tongue around her clit before nipping at it the way he’d done with her nipples. Sliding his hands beneath her ass, he lifted her to his mouth to thrust his tongue inside her and she cried out with the pleasure of it. Low in her belly, her orgasm unwound like a tightly coiled spring about to be released. Her blood raced, her muscles quivered with the need for release. She could hardly breathe with the craving to feel him inside her, filling her. Fucking her.
Charlie lifted his head. “I could really do this forever, Jill, but I have to be inside you, right this minute. Okay?”
Thank god!
Finally!
He freed her from the bra and blouse, grabbed a condom from the nightstand drawer where he’d placed them when he reserved the room, and rolled it onto his cock.
“I’ll make it last as long as I can, but I have to tell you, I’ve waited so long for this I’m not sure how much I can hold out.”
“Just do it,” she gritted, planting her feet on the mattress and lifting herself to him.
He was large and thick, and he had to take his time easing into her, despite how completely wet she was. But once he was inside…holy crap!
He paused, taking a deep breath, his gaze locked with hers. “I’ve wanted this forever, Jill. I hope you know that.”
“I think I have, too. I was just too dumb to know it.”
He shook his head. “No. The time had to be right.”
Then he moved, slowly at first, an easy glide in and out, then faster, his breathing choppy.
“Touch yourself,” he told her. “Do it for me.”
She moved one hand until she reached her clit and stroked herself in a familiar movement. Up and down and around and around, sometimes a little pinch while Charlie drove into her again and again.
“God!” His jaw was clenched. “I can’t hold out much longer.”
“I’m there,” she cried, and she was. Rubbing herself furiously, she pushed herself right to the edge so when he thrust one last time, hard, they fell over the cliff together.
His body shuddered with hers, shook with the spasms, trembled with aftershocks. Then they were both still, arms wrapped around each other, Charlie eased himself to the side, taking her with him, his shaft still lodged tightly in her pussy. For a long time, they just lay there, hearts pounding, breathing stilted.
Finally, Charlie slipped carefully from her body, went to dispose of the condom, and returned to wrap her in his arms again.
“I want to be the one with you at your Christmas wedding, Jill. Will you put my name on the invitation?”
She gave a small, happy laugh. She could hardly wait to see her name on the formal invitation paired with the name of this very, very special man on those long-waiting invitations. To tell the world what a treasure she was marrying. “Of course I will. How could it be anyone else?”
****
December
Jill stood at the entrance of the main hall at the winery, her hand in the crook of her father’s arm. She held her specially ordered waterfall of red and white roses. Candles everywhere highlighted the masses of poinsettias. More were placed everywhere in the party room where the dinner would be held. Everything was exactly as she’d dreamed about it all these years.
But the best part had been Thanksgiving, when she’d taken Charlie to meet her folks. When he came to pick her up, he’d actually gotten down on one knee and held out a gorgeous solitaire diamond.
“I want to do this right, kitten. Will you let me be your November and December drummer? And your drummer for life?”
“I wouldn’t have anyone else,” she told him with tears in her eyes. “I love you, Charlie. I’m sorry it took me so long to realize it.”
“Just as long as you never forget it,” he grinned.
Jill couldn’t wait to begin their life together as husband and wife. She looked down the length of the aisle to see Mitzi, waiting for her as maid of honor, and Charlie’s brother as his best man. The string quartet she’d hired for the ceremony began the strains of the wedding march, but as she stepped forward, she heard something else, the unmistakable sound of drummers underscoring the strings. Her eyes widened as she saw, marching in from either side of the hall, twelve drummers in tuxedos, providing the percussion for the wedding march.
Charlie, of course. Making sure she had her twelve drummers drumming.
About the Author
Known the world over as the oldest living author of erotic romance and referred to by USA Today as the Nora Roberts of erotic romance, Desiree Holt is three times a finalist for an EPIC E-Book Award (and a winner in 2014), a nominee for a Romantic Times Reviewers Choice Award, winner of the first 5 Heart Sweetheart of the Year Award at The Romance Studio as well as twice a CAPA Award winner for best BDSM book of the year, and winner of the Holt Medallion for Excellence in Romance Literature. She has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning and in The Village Voice, The Daily Beast, USA Today, The (London) Daily Mail, The New Delhi Times, and numerous other national and international publications.
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