My Soul To Keep (Soul Series Book 1) (42 page)

She sucks in a breath, her cheeks flushed, her full pink lips pressed tight together.

“I knew you wouldn’t like it.”

“That’s a shit reason for not telling me. And you’re damn right I don’t like it. Videos and jobs are one thing, but meeting Dub outside of that, not cool.”

“This
was
work. What else would it be?” She turns on the bench to face me, folding one knee under her. “I know you don’t like him.”

“I don’t like him because he likes
you
.”

“We talked about that.”

“Oh, did you? So he admitted he’s using jobs to get closer to you?”

“He’s not, Rhyson, and for you to say that makes me think you don’t believe in my talent.”

“Bullshit.” I stand up and pace away from the piano. “I offered to sign you to Prodigy months ago.”

“You’d barely heard me sing when you offered, and warned me against being a dancer who sings.” Her eyes narrow and her nostrils flare. “So consider that before you accuse someone
else
of making me offers just because they want to fuck me.”

I won’t be sidetracked by logic.

“Why were you out with him?”

“He wanted to show me some of the finalized footage from the video and to talk about some other jobs he’d like to book me for.”

“No agenda there.”

“I knew you’d respond this way.” She turns to put both feet on the floor, dropping her head in her hands. “That’s why I didn’t tell you we were meeting.”

I hate her keeping things from me.

“So what happened?”

“We were done eating and all these photographers crowded around.”

“Shocking. That’s why I told you—”

“I know. To take Gep.” She looks up at me. “I should have.”

“So then what happened?”

“We took off for Dub’s car, and obviously he’s faster than I am. He grabbed my hand—”

“Sure he did.”

“So I could keep up, and that’s how they got those pictures of us holding hands.”

“His car? You rode with him?”

“He dropped me off at my apartment so I could pick up some things, and San brought me here, just like I told you.”

“You brought things to stay here?”

“Yes, of course.” She sits up, leaning her back against the piano, locking our eyes together. “I told you I would.”

I make my way back over to the piano bench, settling beside her and walking my fingers across the small space separating us until our hands clasp.

“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen,” she says, eyes sorry and sober.

“I know, baby.” I pull my hand over her silky ponytail, passing my open palm over her shoulder. “But you have to remember, the stakes are so high at this level. It’s the cost of playing this game.”

“I don’t want to play a game. I just want to be with you.”

I smile at her, leaning in to drop a kiss on her lips.

“Same here, but it’s not that simple for me. You’ll see soon enough. It’s only a matter of time before things break for you.”

A wide grin spreads across her face.

“Speaking of, I’ve got some great news.”

“What news?”

“Dub said—”

“It’s already awesome.”

The look she warns me with threatens bodily harm.

“Dub said Luke’s team loved me in the video, and when he told them I sing, they invited me to audition for
Total Package
.”

Great. This just gets stickier and stickier.

“I don’t like that show, Kai.”

“Rhyson,
come on
.”

“No, Pep. I’m serious. I don’t like John Malcolm.”

“You don’t like anyone. That’s the guy Dub said wants to meet me.”

“I’m sure he does. They invited me to guest judge this season, but I turned them down. I didn’t want Luke to go on, and I don’t want you to do it.”

“You can’t make these decisions for me.” Her face falls, and she breaks the contact between our hands, clasping hers in her lap, a sigh leaving her lips. “You don’t get to map my career out like some Svengali.”

“I’m not.”

“No, you’re not.” She glances back up at me, a stubborn set to her mouth. “You’re my boyfriend, not my manager.”

“I want what’s best for you, Pep.”

“I bet that’s what your parents said to you too, right?”

“Don’t do that.” I clench my fists on the piano bench on either side of my legs so I don’t shout at her. “It’s not the same.”

“It is. You needed to make your own way, and so do I.”

“I know what this industry can do. How it can eat up people and spit them out. I won’t let that happen to you. I won’t risk you. You’re the most important thing in my life, Pep.” I pause before looking her in the eyes. “Do you know that? Can
you
say that?”

I immediately regret my confession. Little by little she has crept into even the broken places of my heart. She has taken me over, usurped even my music, and it shakes me how completely I love her. And there’s not a doubt in my mind that she loves me too, but not like that. Not over her career. Not yet.

“It’s not fair of you to ask me that from your position, Rhyson.” She runs her hands over the hair smoothed into a tight ponytail, looping her fingers at the back of her neck. “Like Bristol said, you’re already a star. A brand. You’ve got nothing to prove and nothing to lose.”

She swallows and drops her hands back to her lap.

“We both have an incredibly strong desire to perform. To create. The difference? Yours has been at full boil most of your life, and mine has been simmering. Delayed over and over. You can say I’m more important because you’ve had it. You’ve tasted it. I haven’t.” She quickly swipes at the tear rolling down her cheek, but not before I see it. “At least let me taste it before you ask me to choose you over it.”

“I would never ask you to choose me over it.”

She blinks at me through tears, wrecking me, condemning me because on some level, that’s exactly what I want.

“When you try to dictate to me, to tell me what I can and can’t do to advance my career, you ask me to choose. I want to please you more than anything, Rhyson, but I have to do this. I’m auditioning for
Total Package
and doing anything else I feel will give me a shot.”

This is a battle I can’t win.

Yet.

I know I’m right. John Malcolm is slimy and opportunistic, and the thought of him exploiting Kai makes me want to beat him like a piñata. But I have to be careful how I help her. If I push her on this, I’ll lose her. I know it, but everything in me wants to protect her from those who would hurt her, who would use her. I want to cut off those roads I know from experience have bridges that are out, but I can’t if she won’t let me. So for now, all I can do is love her, and show her in every way she’ll let me.

I pull her across the bench, settling her softly curved body onto my lap. She lays her head on my shoulder, pushing her fingers up into my hair. I kiss every part of her I can reach. Her cheeks, her chin, her neck. And she kisses me back, desperation in every touch between us. It’s taken all my life to find this, and there’s no way I’ll relinquish it. She grew up with unconditional love, but no fame. I grew up with fame, but no unconditional love. I don’t know when we’ll be in sync or when we’ll need the same things at the same time, but until we do, I’m determined nothing will separate us.

“I want to play something for you.” I intersperse the kisses I leave on her lips with my words.

She snuggles closer, pulling her knees up under her in my lap and running her nose along my neck.

“Let’s hear it, Beethoven.”

With my inspiration pressed against my heart, the song that’s been blocked all day flows out of me like I sliced a vein open and let it run out of my own body. My fingers find the notes that have eluded me. My lips find the words.

You’re hot like Pepper on my tongue

Baby, you’ve singed me

And everything that I’ve become

Is from this heat you feed me

You burn

You burn

You burn

A hole straight through my heart

And I yearn

I yearn

I yearn

For you to consume me

I keep playing the melody, oscillating from tender to sensual even when I run out of words. The notes speak for me, and I lift my eyes from the keys, waiting for her to hear. Hoping she hears.

“Pepper?” Kai pulls back, her eyes wide and awed. “Is that . . . is that song about me, Rhyson?”

How do I tell her my whole album is about her? That every song in my head, every lyric I conceive lately, grows out of the intimacy we share? The connection we have?

“Yeah, it’s about you.”

“I don’t know what to say.” Her lips tremble. She bites the bottom one, looking at me like she just saw her first sunrise. “Thank you.”

“Promise me something, Kai.”

“Anything.” She should be more careful with that smile because it makes my heart stop.

“No more secrets.” I brush a finger over her dark, straight silky brows. Over the high cheekbones. Over the lush line of her lips. “We choose to believe each other. To trust each other no matter what. Deal?”

Something flickers across her face before she shutters it. I don’t want to question it because questioning it would mean she may have more to hide. Questioning it may mean I have reason to doubt her when she nods yes. When she smiles before she finally speaks.

“Deal.”

I’ve never been a guy who fantasized much. By the time I fantasized about something or someone, I had it. I owned it. I fucked it. But this girl, her I didn’t even dream about because my subconscious didn’t think she was possible. What’s between us, I didn’t know was out there. And now it’s all I want.

I turn on the piano bench until my back is against the piano, ignoring the discomfort of the keys pressing into me. I reach for her, lifting her until she sits across me, one leg on either side, her chest pressed into mine. I push the small top with its built in sports bra over her head, leaving her breasts high and naked, the nipples tight and pink.

“That’s probably a platinum single I just wrote for you, young lady.” I bend my head to suck on one nipple and then the other, waiting for it to go hard in my mouth and for her to shudder against me. “I think you should thank me better than that.”

A wicked grin looks surprisingly right on her sweet mouth. She leans away from me, sliding off the bench and to her knees between my spread legs on the floor. She flicks my belt buckle open, eyes melded in a glance with mine.

“I think you’re right.” She slips her hand inside my jeans, squeezing and sliding me less-than-gently, the roughness of her touch exactly what I need. “I really want to thank you, and I have a lot to be grateful for.”

God, that feels good already. My voice scratches in my throat, but I manage to rasp out the last intelligible words I’ll say for a while.

“Well, Pep, you better get started.”

“YOU COMING OR WHAT?” RHYSON POKES
his head into the music room.

I’m at his piano, even though I don’t play. This spot always seems to inspire him, and maybe it will help me by osmosis. I’m seated on the bench, head phones in my ears, phone in my lap. Song on repeat. I pull one earplug out, tilting my head.

“Coming where, babe?”

“Remember you said you wanted to roll with me down to Wood.” Rhyson pulls a navy blue beanie over his messy hair. “Marlon and I are working on his song. You still wanna listen in?”

“Oh, yeah.” I roll the headphone wires up. “I was just listening to my song for the
Total Package
audition next week.”

He doesn’t respond. He just drops his head and fixes his eyes on the floor. The audition has remained a point of contention between us. Dub confirmed the details for Tuesday. I’m singing Jessie J’s “Masterpiece.” Ironically, it was Rhyson’s suggestion. He heard me practicing Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful” and in bed that night told me it was trite and predictable. This while my eyes were rolling in the back of my head from a third orgasm. I asked him—after, of course—what he’d suggest instead. I was shocked when he actually gave me his honest opinion. He’s kept his distance while I’ve rehearsed it, though, leaving me to Grady’s tutelage.