Savage Rhythm (15 page)

It was her. Fuck him, it was her that did it. Declan had damn good instincts, and he knew his sense of danger wasn’t wrong. Molly was… He felt that pull, all over again, only this time stronger than he’d ever felt it before. And that physical connection he’d known was there since day freaking one had been beyond anything he’d ever dreamed of. He’d
known
what she was feeling; he’d
felt
it. He had no freaking clue how that was possible. Every time she’d come it’d torn through him, leveling him. There was nothing normal about it.

It was more than that, though. He’d actually felt it when she was afraid, freaking out, felt safe, or whatever, and he thought—felt—like he’d known why she felt those things. He understood what scared her better than anybody, how terrifying it was when the world spun out, how exhausting it was to keep everything going. How she needed a release from that. And while he was used to reading people, it had never been quite like that. Never so raw.

It shook him.

Whatever. He had to get over it. He knew how this shit ended. And he didn’t get involved, for good reason, and he’d promised her that. Promised
himself
that. This D/s thing would be amazing for both of them, she’d get the world out of it, she’d get a book. And Declan would get used to the fact that he’d lose her eventually.

“Mmm,” she said, burrowing her face into his chest just a little more. The way her body shifted against his, all smooth, soft curves, got him going all over again. “What’re you doing?”

“Writing.”

Molly looked up, propping her chin on his chest, her brown eyes looking very, very interested. “A song?”

“Yup.”

“Can I hear it?”

“When it’s ready.”

She accepted that way too quickly. He’d expected to have to fight her off, the way he normally did, and that it would end with her pinned under him and him inside her, the way it inevitably would if she teased him while naked and in bed. Instead his beautiful new girl was looking down, tracing tiny little patterns in the ink on his chest. His Dom instincts kicked in.

“Freaking out because you finally gave in?” he asked.

“Maybe a little bit,” she said quietly. “But it’s passing, I think.”

She slid her hand over his chest and down his abs, so low his cock jumped, then back up to his neck, his face. He let that go. Plenty of time for instruction later. “This helps,” she said.

He grinned. “Good.”

“Um, Declan?”

“Yeah.”

“How did you know?” she asked, taking even more interest in his ink now. “That I needed you to…”

“Take you like an animal from behind before we—”

Declan saw her look away and felt her tense before he even got to the end of that sentence. So the intimacy was still tough for her. It wasn’t going to change overnight. Something to work on.

He said simply, “I felt it.”

“Felt it?” she said, looking up with a smile on her face. “Like, you are the sub whisperer?”

“Not with all subs,” he said, smoothing her hair out. She rolled fully onto him, her breasts pushing into his abs, his half-hard cock pushing into her belly, her legs between his. He made a mental note: He’d make her scream again before she left this room.

Declan held her hair and made sure she was looking at him.

“Not with
any
other sub. Just you. But the rule is you fucking talk to me when you feel something like that. I don’t know why I got it anyway, but it’s not safe, to rely on something like that, and I’m not playing games with your safety. Or mine. You fucking tell me when you feel something like that in the future, you understand?”

Molly licked her lips. Afraid and aroused. And brave.

Man, she was a woman.

“Yes,” she said.

“You liked getting spanked too damn much,” he said. “Next time I’ll have to do it in front of an audience or something if I want to get my point across.”

Oh,
that
got a reaction. He’d never get tired of how big those brown eyes could get.

Molly wiggled her hips, just enough to tease his rapidly hardening cock, and Declan tightened his grip on her hair.

“Careful,” he warned.

She was smiling. “So how does this work now?”

“Now you get more rules.”

“Do you get more rules?”

He smiled. “No.”

“Hmm. I dunno about that,” she said, though her body said otherwise. Molly seemed to know it, too. She tried to look stern. “I have a job to do.”

Declan tried not to laugh.

“Think of it this way,” he said. “Domination and submission explores your stuff. Interviews explore mine. Your mind is your own, except when you’re naked.”

She scoffed. “As if it would be any other way.”

Declan sat up suddenly, hauling her up with him so that she straddled his erection. He made sure she could feel it nestled in her folds. She groaned slightly.

“That’s one of the reasons I like you, sweetheart,” he said, moving her hips for her to wet his cock. “The reason I trust you as a sub. Your mind is your own. But your body…”

And he flipped her over onto her back, pinning her arms above her head, letting her feel the weight of him between her legs. She was so slick, moving against him mindlessly now, making tiny little sounds while he held her down.

“Your body is
mine
. Always. At any time. Mine.”

Her breasts rose and fell rapidly with her shallow breaths, and he could see her fighting to keep the thread of the discussion. Damn, he loved to screw up those complicated, intellectual thoughts of hers.

“But not during interviews,” she finally managed. “Otherwise this will always happen, and I won’t get anything I can use, and I’ll be a huge failure, and I just cannot…”

Declan growled. It made sense. “Not during interviews. But there’ll be a time limit, because fuck me, Molly, but if you think I can handle being alone with you in this room for too long without being inside you, you’re insane.”

Her breath hitched.

Big brown eyes. Rosy pink nipples. Wet lips.

Damn.

He reached for the nightstand again. “Put this on me,” he ordered gruffly, giving her a condom. “And say thank you.”

Her fingers shook with excitement and he had to help her. It was…he never thought he’d use the word ‘adorable,’ but Jesus, that’s what it was. He was going to take that adorableness and turn it inside out before he was through. As soon as they got the condom rolled down he pushed her down, flat on her back, grabbed her legs, and hauled her down to him. Then he lifted both of her legs up to her head and sunk slowly into her, as deep as he could go.

That’s when she said thank you again.

~ * ~ * ~

Molly felt like she was hallucinating. She’d never come that much or that hard in her entire life. She’d never even allowed herself to hope that she could experience anything like that with anyone else, and then
bam
, one after the other. Declan freaking Donovan.

She actually
might
be delirious from the whole thing. He’d barely given her any time to rest, only to check in, see what she was feeling. As if he didn’t already know. He was right, though: she needed to actually say it, even if the idea made her feel kind of queasy with anxiety. Still, she felt completely, unreasonably safe.

And satisfied. Oh God, so satisfied. And yet she still wanted more. That shouldn’t be possible, should it?

He hadn’t even left her in peace in the shower. Instead she’d felt a hand come between her legs, and then she was pressed up against the shower wall, wet and slippery and screaming.

She’d barely had time to think. And that, honestly, was a good thing. Molly didn’t trust her brain with this, not even a little bit. That same anxious tendency to try to control for every little contingency that had gotten her through the bad times would only screw her up now. Overthinking this would just…she could already feel the panic. And yet, when she let Declan guide her in this one area, she felt…serene.

Maybe this was exactly what she needed to write this book. And to move on in her own life. Maybe this was exactly right.

For now.

She just had to make damn sure to protect her heart. Like, for example, not getting weirdly jealous about whomever it was Declan texted every day. Which was absolutely not what was happening. Molly just had a professional curiosity. There was still so much she didn’t know about Declan and what had happened to break the band up that anyone important to him was a possible lead. Anyone who had known Declan before he became famous, anyone who might have seen him develop those walls he’d built so high around himself.

Someone like Soren.

Molly watched Declan on his phone, oblivious, that look of worry on his face. She’d ask him about it eventually. Find out who it was. Strange that she felt ok about asking him about his mom, but somehow she knew that this, whatever was happening with the person he texted with, this was a tender thing. She had a hunch it was because his mother’s death was in the past—as much as it could be, anyway; Declan felt like he’d dealt with it, the way he’d talked about it. He’d said it couldn’t hurt him anymore. Molly wasn’t sure she believed that, but she had a feeling that whatever situation kept him tied to his phone for a few minutes each day—that still had the power to hurt him. And she didn’t want to contribute to that.

She had to wonder about what he’d said: domination was a release for him. Was it a release the same way submission was apparently a release for her, at least so far? The only tangible, meaningful thing she knew about his past kept floating to the forefront of her mind: his mother’s suicide.

Jesus. Yeah, that was a big one. She couldn’t even imagine, feeling that kind of loss, that kind of abandonment. How would that shape a man? Is that where he learned to watch people so intently, so carefully? How to read people?

Molly felt a tiny twinge that maybe Declan’s ability to read her moods and thoughts was tied to the most traumatic incident of his life rather than some innate magical connection, but she quickly snapped out of it.
Don’t be so selfish
. Whatever experiences had shaped Declan in the end he had chosen to become the man he was. Molly firmly believed in free will.

And she
definitely
believed in Declan’s will.

And she trusted him.

Oh, fuck it.

“Who are you texting?” she asked.

He looked up sharply. “You’re already working on question credit,” he said. “That’s gonna have to wait until you earn some more.”

“Evasive,” she said, propping her head up on her elbow. She was wearing one of his shirts and her cutoffs, though it looked like she was wearing nothing at all, the shirt coming to mid-thigh. She kind of liked the effect. She could tell he did, too.

“Women who test the rules,” he said, giving her that wicked smile. “Get disciplined. And you’re probably a little sore already.”

She was, in fact.

And she kind of loved it.

So much so that she’d kind of forgotten that they were on a tour bus, in the middle of a tour, with a bunch of other guys on the bus. Right up until it stopped.

chapter
16

Molly hadn’t realized how close they were to the next show, another surprise showing at one of the first clubs where Savage Heart had ever played in Hoboken, New Jersey. She also hadn’t realized how close they already were to New York City—and to the original Club Volare.

Declan had said they’d go there. And now she’d be there as a sub.
His
sub.

How on earth was she supposed to think about anything else?

She’d better figure it out. She only had so much time to corner the rest of the guys and try to get as much out of them as possible, and that time was running out. Now was actually kind of a great opportunity—they were stopped at random buffet restaurant somewhere off the highway in Ohio before they headed on to New Jersey.

Ugh. The guys.

They obviously—obviously—all knew exactly what she’d been doing in Declan’s bedroom for…God, how many hours? She’d avoided them, going straight to her bunk to get a shirt and then just kind of hiding, and now, at a freaking buffet line off I-70, was the moment of truth.

Never mind that she hadn’t totally figured out how she felt about everything. Declan had blown her apart, and she was still putting the pieces back together, trying to figure out what it all meant, or if it had to mean anything. But now she had to do it in front of an audience, too.

The guys were all heaping their plates as high as they could. All of them millionaires, and all of them still excited by all-you-can-eat buffets. She shook her head. At least Declan wasn’t there—he was talking to a roadie about something involving equipment. For some reason, she really felt like she had to navigate this alone. She didn’t even know how she and Declan would interact in public now, but she needed to set a tone for herself.

Molly took a deep breath and braved the salad bar.

Brian—being Brian—was the first to say something, taking precious concentration away from the shrimp pyramid he was carefully constructing.

“Long interview, huh?” he said, smiling evilly.

Gage coughed. “You must’ve gotten his whole life story. I mean, you’re done, right?”

Erik, poor, sweet Erik. He gave her a look of picture perfect innocence and said, “You must have enough for a book now.”

Then he smiled.

“You guys are all assholes,” Molly said, laughing in spite of herself. She stabbed at some cherry tomatoes, a motion she found weirdly soothing, given her embarrassment. She knew her face was at least that red.

“It’s about time,” Erik said.

“We do not need to know any details,” Gage said, inspecting some ribs. “You know, whatever kinky shit you’re up to, don’t feel like—”

“Speak for yourself,” Brian said. He looked genuinely offended. “I need some fucking details.”

Molly threw a cherry tomato at him. “You know, Brian,” she said, as sweetly as she could, “you’re about due for another interview.”

He grinned back. “One of your special interviews? Sign me up.”