My Heart's Beat (Hard Love & Dark Rock #2) (5 page)

Chapter 9

Anne

There was blood on my knees.  I didn't even feel it.  All I felt was Trace.

I felt his arms, strong and firm, holding me as if I didn't weigh a thing.  I felt his chest, broad and muscular and warm against my hand.  I felt the powerful thumping of his heart—the rhythm of life itself, pulsing against my palm.  I felt the charge of his bare skin against mine where our bodies touched—my arm across his shoulders, his hand gripping my thigh.

I felt his lips against mine, soft but insistent, hungry for the taste of me.  I could feel it in his kiss: this man wanted me.

And I wanted him, too.

In that moment—as our mouths moved against each other, speaking our desires without using words—I didn't care about anything else.  I didn't care about the scrapes on my knees, or the pain in my ankle.  I didn't care about the emotional baggage he carried with him, or the burden that my own inexperience seemed to be.  I didn't care about Joey's seizure, or Ronnie's jealousy, or Becca being wild and drunk at the party by herself, with no one to keep her out of trouble.  I didn't care about any of that.

Him.  Me.  The desire we shared in that moment.  Nothing else.

"Trace," I whispered.

"Yes, Anne?" he whispered back, his lips so close to mine that I felt the breath in those words.

"I don't want to see the doctor."

"But what about your ankle?  What about your knees?"

"They're fine.  It's nothing."

"You sure?"

I nodded my head.  "And I don't want to go back to the party, either."

"No?"

"No."

He paused.  The silence like a question.

"Trace," I said, my own heart beating harder, "take me to your room."

He kissed me again, and not so softly this time, the hunger and insistence less restrained.

And then he was running across the street.

"Trace!" I said, laughing and breathless.  "Don't run!  I'm too heavy.  You'll drop me."

"I would never drop you, Anne," he said.

Trace streaked past the valet station, running like a football player, his teeth bared in a wild grin.  I laughed and clutched at his neck and buried my face against his throat, beneath his chin.

In the lobby there was a mild commotion when we came through, people turning their heads to look, someone saying "She's bleeding."  A photographer who'd been sitting in an easy chair near the piano stood up quickly, pulling a camera out from under the jacket he'd held in his lap.  He got off a few shots before a hotel bellhop stepped in front of him, deliberately blocking his way.

Trace made it to the elevators, hit the up button and slipped inside the first one that opened.  I looked back at the lobby, saw a few people coming our way.  Trace pressed the floor button, and then jammed his thumb down on another button to close the doors, and the elevator shut before anyone got near.

I laughed, feeling almost giddy, as if we'd made some great escape.  Trace looked down at me, grinning ear to ear.

"I love it when you laugh," he said.

I felt myself blushing.  "I love it when you kiss me," I said.

So he did.

When the elevator doors dinged open, he leaned forward, peeking out.  It seemed strangely quiet.  He slipped out of the elevator and started carrying me down the hallway.

"Do you think the party's over?" I asked.

"Probably not."

"Then why is it so quiet?"

"We're actually one floor up from the party," he said.  "I figured we'd sneak down the stairway from this floor, so we wouldn't have to pass through the hall where the party is."

"Clever fellow."

"I know a thing or two about avoiding crowds, I guess," he said.

He carried me to the end of the hall, and pushed open the door to the stairwell by leaning against it with his back.

"You don't have to carry me, you know.  I can walk down the stairs on my own."

"I'm not letting go of you until I've got you safely in my room," he said.

I didn't try to argue with him.  I liked the feeling of being held in his arms.

On the landing of the next floor down, he pushed open the door and slipped through.  Bernstein was still in the hall by Joey's door, about three doors down from the end.  He raised his head at us, looking curious.

I waved my hand.  He waved back.

Trace stopped at the first door.

"The keycard's in the back pocket of my jeans," he said, still holding me.

I reached around his waist, feeling the taut muscles of his side against my forearm.  I slipped my hand into his pocket—thrilled by the firmness of the flesh on the other side of that denim—and got the card.

I was blushing again when I slipped the card into the door lock.

The door lock whirred and clicked, and a little light flashed green.  I gripped the door handle and pressed it down, and Trace carried me forward into the room.

It was smaller than the suite where the party was going on, but the design—the wallpapers and curtains and bedspread and carpet—were all the same.  Except for a single suitcase against the wall opposite the bed, it didn't look like anybody had been in there since the maid had prepared the room.

The bed alone was huge, probably close to half the size of the dorm room that Becca and I shared.  Trace carried me to it, and set me down on the edge.  He started to straighten up again, but I slipped my hands into the hair at the back of his head, pulling his mouth down to mine.

We kissed again, my heart beating so hard I felt breathless.  I was in his private room, on his bed.  Just me and Trace, alone.

His hands cradled the sides of my face.  His lips moved on mine.  I hooked my heels around his ankles, holding him between my legs.  My heart was starting to race.

He sucked my lower lip between his teeth, nipped it gently.

And then he straightened up and stepped back.  I nearly cried out in protest.

"Let me get something for your knees," he said.  "I'll be right back."

He disappeared into the bathroom.  He was only gone for a second, but waiting for him made me feel almost crazy.

When he came back he carried a wet facecloth and a towel in one hand, and a little first-aid kit in the other.  He kneeled in front of me, gently touching the wet cloth to my bleeding knee.  My dress was so short that he could probably see right up it, and the thought made me feel both embarrassed and turned on.

A visual from earlier that night appeared in my mind's eye: his head between my thighs, his mouth and his tongue on me—on my pussy.  A rush of desire tingled between my legs at the memory, and I caught my lip between my teeth, and pulled in a gasping breath.

"Sorry," Trace said, looking up at me.  He lifted the cloth from my knee.  "Does that sting?"

I shook my head "no."

He cleaned the other knee, and then dabbed at them both with an alcohol swab.  He tore open a band-aid for each scrape, and pressed them over the wounds.

And then he ran his warm hands up and down my legs, his palms gliding from my shins up over the tops of my thighs, making desire glow in my belly.

"The scrapes aren't bad," he said, his head still bowed, his eyes drinking me in.  "But it's still sort of upsetting.  You've got such gorgeous legs."

Finally, he looked up at me.

"You're beautiful, Anne," he said.  "You're so beautiful that it almost hurts me, makes me want you so much that I ache."

The look in his eyes—dark and deep, full of a longing that almost bordered on sadness—it nearly took my breath away.  I'd never had anyone look at me like that before.  It made me feel… sacred.

I raised my hands to either side of his face, cradling his jaw in my palms, feeling the prickle of his stubble against my sensitive skin.  I lowered my face to his, and kissed him again.

At first the kiss was almost chaste, his full lips pressing against mine gently, a sense of love blooming in my heart.  I closed my eyes and pulled in a long breath through my nose, drawing in the scent of him.  For a moment, Trace became everything I sensed, everything I smelled and tasted and felt.  It was like I was falling into him, sinking into Trace's presence like lowering myself into a warm bath.

But as the warmth and soft joy flowed through me, a hotter desire began to build in me as well, chasing on the heels of that first, gentler emotion.

Trace moved his mouth on mine, his lips pressing more forcefully, his jaw moving.  And the harder he kissed me, the more I wanted.  I met his growing passion with my own, kissing him so hard that it hurt me a little, bruising my lips.  And still I wanted more.

His hands slid up my thighs, slowly but surely, pushing the short dress up.  I shifted my weight, and he pushed the dress past my hips.  He caught hold of me there, squeezing my soft flesh, and moaned a hungry moan into my mouth.

His hands continued their ascent, from my hips to my waist to my ribs, pushing the dress up as they went.  I raised my arms, and he stood and pulled the dress over my head quickly, tossing it aside.  His lips came back to mine, pressing me back down onto the mattress as he crawled onto the bed above me.

I wanted to feel him against me, to feel his bare chest against mine.  My hands slipped under his shirt, tracing the grooves of his ribs, following the taut skin of his flanks to his broad, muscular back.

With my head on the pillow and his knees straddling my waist, Trace straightened up and pulled the shirt over his head.  I looked up at him, at the chiseled muscles of his abdomen, the broad power of his chest, the panorama of dark tattoos adorning his body.  He looked majestic and tragic and beautiful, like a god looming above me.  I felt a rush of heat go straight to my core, felt myself getting wet for him.

I reached up, my hands nearly trembling.  My fingertips touching his hard, flat stomach, feeling the power that lurked just beneath his thin skin.  My hands flowed outward to his hips, my fingertips dipping into the groove that angled down toward his crotch.  I traced that groove until it disappeared into his low-slung jeans, which drew my attention to the bulging package behind his fly.

Suddenly I felt nearly desperate to get at that hidden treasure.  I needed to see him, to feel him in my hands.  I'd already been denied the opportunity once that night.  I wouldn't let it happen again.

My fingers went to the button of his jeans, popping it loose.  I caught hold of his zipper and pulled it down, folding his fly open.  I hooked my fingers over the waistband of his jeans, trying to tug them down.

"Hold on," he whispered, "just a second."

But I couldn't wait any more.  The need to see him was like a fever, burning in my blood.

I tugged again, the jeans slipping another inch lower on his hips, revealing a teasing hint of dark curls.

He flopped down on the bed beside me, bracing his back and his heels against the mattress, lifting his hips up so that I could pull his jeans off.

I rolled up onto my knees, ignoring the twinge of pain I felt beneath the bandages, and jerked the jeans down over his knees.

Freed from the confines of his jeans, his cock came springing up toward my face.  For a moment I froze, startled.

In all honesty, I didn't have a lot of experience with boy parts, and what little experience I did have consisted mainly of a few drunken fumblings in the dark.  I'd never actually been able to take a good, long look at a real penis in my life.  And now I had possibly one of the most dreamed about dicks in the whole world—the one belonging to Trace LeBeau, Dark Rock God slash Megastar Sex Symbol—right here in front of me, all to myself.

And suddenly, I had no idea what to do with it.

"You okay, Anne?" Trace said.

I looked up at him.  I nodded my head.  And then I looked back down at his dick.

The first thought that came to my mind:
how in the world is that supposed to fit inside of me
?

It was long and thick, bigger than I thought it would be.  The skin on the shaft looked slightly darker than the rest of his body, as if it had caught a tan that the rest of him hadn't.  The head was smooth and round, a delicate shade of purple.  And his balls looked heavy and dense, held in a tidy sack just beneath the root of his cock.

Tentatively, I reached out for it, tracing a fingertip over the seam that ran along its length.  It felt hot to the touch, and as hard as wood—though the skin itself seemed surprisingly soft, like velvet.

As my finger came near the head, his cock seemed to jump, and Trace let out a low sigh.  A little drop of clear liquid oozed out of the slitted hole at the tip.  It glittered in the light like a jewel.

I looked back at his face.  He'd propped himself up on his elbows and caught his lower lip between his teeth.  His eyes watched mine, and somehow he managed to look both slightly dazed and very, very focused.

Something about his expression, the hunger and the focus, thrilled me inside.  All night long I'd felt overwhelmed—with desire, with awe, with fear.  But as I looked down at Trace's face, and saw the raw hunger there, the unadulterated need, a new feeling took hold of me.