Coming Undone (13 page)

And he wasn’t about to let little Priscilla Jayne Morgan be the exception to his rule.

He was hard-pressed to keep that affirmation in the front of his mind where it belonged, however, as he slid his hand up under her dress and finally brushed his fingertips against the lacy panties stretching the thinnest of barriers between him and a little slice of heaven. They came away damp with her arousal and it didn’t matter what he did to keep hold of the situation—he could feel his grip slipping another degree.

“Again,” he repeated in desperation and insinuated his fingertips beneath the scalloped hip band. The next thing he knew they were sliding between buttery feminine folds.

“Oh!” Her hips arched up off the bed.

He sucked for a breath he hoped would actually penetrate beyond the superior lobes of his lungs. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on the feel of her hot flesh beneath his fingers. He feathered the slippery little nugget of her clitoris, then stroked his fingers downward. When he reached her opening, he gently circled the ring of muscle guarding her entrance until her thighs began to clamp down on his hand and restlessly spread apart, close around him and sprawl open. Then he eased his forefinger inside.

“God,” he breathed, and it was a benediction rather than a curse. Bowing his head, he rested his forehead against hers. “You feel so good,” he whispered. “So hot and wet. So tight.”
Very
tight, now that he’d mentioned it. The way that molten sheath clamped around the single digit he’d slipped in her you’d think nothing larger could possibly fit. He raised his head to stare down at her. “How long has it been for you?”

“Huh?” Her eyes slowly focused. “I don’t know, a year? Maybe two.”

And he’d float an educated guess here that she hadn’t exactly been working the bars on a nightly basis before that. Or that her version of working them had meant singing onstage with a nice, wide protective gulf between her and a club full of interested men. “Sweet,” he murmured and kissed her.

She kissed him back with the boundless enthusiasm that made her Peej and his tongue soon developed a synchronized rhythm with the finger he pumped in and out of her. When she began making little squeaky noises and thrusting her hips up off the bed, he flattened his palm against her plump, wet cleft and ground the heel of his hand over her clit.

She went off like a rocket.

Then she went limp, her beautiful rump hitting the spread, her legs sprawling akimbo and her arms flopping heavily to her sides. With a final lingering pass up the creamy furrow of her sex, he slid his hand up to stroke her stomach. “You still breathing?”

A faint sigh was his only response.

“O—kay.” Propping his head in his hand, he looked down at her. Her cheeks were flushed, her pretty bottom lip had gone slack and her eyes were closed. Her breasts were bare but her skirt still covered her to midthigh. White lace panties pooled around her right ankle, and he vaguely remembered her thrusting them down to give his hand more room to maneuver.

It occurred to him he hadn’t gotten to view what he’d been touching. He was just starting to contemplate inching up her skirt and seeing what sort of damage he could do with his tongue when she crawled up out of her indolent sprawl. Climbing onto her knees, she gave his unsupported shoulder a shove and knocked him onto his back. She swung a leg over his hips and settled astride him, for an instant simply sitting squarely on his dick.

He stared spellbound up at her bare breasts, pleasure firing every atom of his being. Showcased by the red cotton hug-her-ribs smocking and the now drooping top she’d slid her arms from, they were all subtle curves and projectile nipples. Tearing his gaze away, he looked past them into Peej’s determined amber eyes.

“You’ve got too many clothes on,” she said and pointed to his shirt. “Take it off.”

He unbuttoned his shirt down to where the skirt of her dress billowed over his lap. She looked down the length of her nose at him and daintily grasped two fistfuls of fabric to raise it out of his way. He unfastened the last button and pulled the tails from his waistband. Crunching up, he shrugged it off his shoulders, wrestled it down his arms and shook it free. He lowered himself back on the bed.

Her hands immediately smoothed over his bare pecs and, electrified by her touch, he looked up. P.J. was watching her fingers slide over him.

“You’ve got a gorgeous chest,” she said dreamily without lifting her gaze from her hands, which she used to outline his collarbone before trailing along the bony ridges of his shoulders. “Great shoulders.”

Then she scooted down his body to trace her fingers along each muscle of his stomach. “
Really
great abs.” Lying flat between his spread legs, she bent her head and kissed his stomach while her hands unbuckled his belt and dealt with the button on his waistband.

He jerked, his hands reaching for the silky fall of her hair. “P.J.”

“It’s okay,” she whispered and lowered the zipper on his jeans.

No, it wasn’t. He had to get control here or things were going to go to hell. Fast. “I’m kind of on edge, baby.” And her breath on his fly threatened to shove him right into the abyss.

“Excellent.” Her hand disappeared into his pants and his hips shot off the mattress when he felt her fingers clamp around his cock.

“Holy shit! Holy fucking sh—” Air hissed through his clenched teeth. He had to take charge here quick.

But God, it felt so good and he wanted so bad to see her hand on him.

A wish that was granted when she took advantage of his raised hips to yank his Levi’s down around his thighs. His dick sprang free to point at the ceiling and she promptly wrapped it once again in her competent little fist.

Looking down, he saw its head push through her grip as she began a stroke that ended at the very root of his shaft. Oh, God, oh, God. He had to get a handle on this before he embarrassed himself. He was a glacier peak, he told himself, impregnable and remote.

Yeah, right.

He was fucking Mount Vesuvius. Ready to blow.

“I’m not going to last,” he admitted as his hips instigated a rhythm that pushed him in and out of the snug tunnel her palm and fingers formed. He fumbled for his wallet in his sagging back pocket and, wrestling it free, fished out his lone rubber. She thrust out a peremptory palm and he slapped the condom in it.

The minute she had him suited up and her dress removed and sent sailing over the side of the bed, he grasped her nearest thigh and urged her to straddle him. He held her full, firm ass in both hands while she slowly impaled herself.

The feel of her wet, muscular heat slowly parting to accommodate his length and the sight of him disappearing inside her had him sucking for breath. She lowered herself in careful increments and he had to grit his teeth against the urge to slam her down with one powerful jerk of his hands and thrust of his hips. “Aw, Jesus, Peej. You’re killing me.” The control he took such pride in was hanging by a thread, and to distract himself he released her butt and raised his hands to toy with her nipples.

A wordless exclamation exploded out of her and she dropped the last couple of inches, seating him fully inside her. “Oh!” She blinked startled eyes at him.

“Yes,”
he said fervently and ground up into her.

“Oh,” she said again, only this time it was with a duel syllable, ohmigawd-this-feels-so-
good
rising inflection. Bracing her hands behind her, utilizing the power of her strong runner’s thighs, she rose up his length then sank back down. Rose up and sank back down.

And oh, God, he was too close. Close to losing his mind. Close to coming like a fire hose.
Have to see to Peej’s needs first,
his last remaining brain cells insisted even as he thrust up into each descending slam of her hips.
Gotta get her over.
Still determinedly manipulating her right breast, he brought his right hand down to delve between the wet folds that rose from where she engulfed him. He ran his thumb up and down the slippery cleft before zeroing in on her clitoris.
That
he plucked in concert to the firm tugs on her nipple and the rhythmic slaps of their bodies meeting and retreating.

“Jared?” Passion-blurred eyes stared down at him and he felt the beginning ripples of her orgasm gathering force. “Oh, God,
Jared?
”

Thankyouthankyouthankyou.
“That’s it, baby,” he panted. “Come for me.” He gentled his touch between her legs, firmly gripped the pink spike of her nipple. “Please, Peej, I need you to come, because I don’t think I can hold out any long—”

His breath exploded from his lungs as she contracted around him, a beautiful furnace-hot wet-velvet clenching fist that emptied his mind and shattered his control. The last thing he saw was P.J. clutching her breasts and throwing back her head, a hoarse moan purling from her throat. Then his eyes blurred and he was a fucking machine driving for his own satisfaction. He pounded, pounded, pounded up into her. Then, shoving deep and holding there, he roared out her name and came.

And came. In jet after jet of scalding sensation. Until, exhausted, he collapsed back onto the mattress.

Slowly his vision cleared and he stared up at her perched astride his hips like some wet-dream equestrian mastering the English saddle.

Then she melted atop him like a Dalí watch, resting her head on his chest as she made subtle adjustments to find the optimum position. “That was amazing,” she said in her raspy voice. “You really know your way around this sex stuff, don’t you?”

He wrapped one arm around her waist and curved his free hand around the warm swell of her left buttock to hold her close, wanting to stay inside her as long as possible. “It helps to have the right partner,” he replied, pressing a kiss on the top of her head. A contentment he’d never known radiated from his heart clear out to his fingers and his toes and he turned his cheek to rest against her shiny brown hair. “How’d you get to be so damn sweet?”

“Hmm?” she murmured. Then he felt her lips tilt up against his pectoral. “I told you, I’m a peach.”

“I’m serious. You were dragged from pillar to post, didn’t have a single advantage and never got a day’s nurturing out of your old lady in your life. But not only are you a rising star in an impossible industry, you
are
a peach. You’re funny and warm and kind. Your band loves you and I’ve heard more than one roadie say you’re the nicest performer they’ve ever worked for. So how did you get to be such a sweetheart?”

She’d been wiggling around, but now she stilled. “Umm,” she said nonchalantly. But an instant later, a warm drop slid across his pec and down the curve of his ribs to the sheet.

His heart slammed in his chest and his head jerked up, chin dipping to look down at her. “Are you crying?”

“Hell, no,” she said gruffly, but another drop slid down his ribs.

“Ah, baby, don’t do that. I’m sorry. Was it what I said about your mom? I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“No!” She rubbed her wet eyes against the swell of his chest then lifted her head to look up at him. “No, you didn’t. That was one of the nicest things anyone’s ever said to me.”

Aw, hell. She
was
sweet—giving and open and talented and an all-round better person than he.

And he had a feeling he was so screwed.

He didn’t doubt for a moment that tomorrow he’d regret letting his guard down. Yes, sir, tomorrow he was going to have a stern talk with himself about professional ethics. Once again he would gather his defenses. Rebuild his walls.

But for today he merely tightened his arms around her.

N
ELL WAS JAZZED AS SHE
headed down the tunnel to the arena, her clipboard in hand. No one had been around this afternoon to appreciate her Cinderellalike transformation but that was about to change. Primed to show off her new do and duds, she was through sitting in the tour bus all by her lonesome. She had work to do, people to see. Hell, she was mere moments away from a captive audience and she intended to capitalize on it.

Sometimes a woman simply had to strut her stuff.

It had been a long time since she’d felt like strutting anything, but she felt attractive tonight. Smart. Stylish. Almost…sexy.

Showing her badge to the guard, she tested her wiles by making eye contact and shooting him a flirtatious smile. She got an appreciative grin in return.
Oh, yeah.
Striding through the arena’s backstage area, she beamed.
Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present Nell Husner. Tour manager. Songwriter extraordinaire.

Last of the red-hot mamas.

Hey, who cared if the guard was eighty-five if he was a day?

Gigs that ran at the same venue for longer than one night were rare on this tour, but this was day two of one of them. That meant she didn’t have to reinvent the wheel, which made her workload lighter than usual. She made her usual rounds and checked to see that everything was running with the same efficiency she’d set in place yesterday. But this evening felt as if it were more about having her ego stroked than doing her job. Because everywhere she went people complimented her on her makeover.

She could hardly wait to hear what Eddie would have to say about it.

He hadn’t yet arrived when she strode onto the stage, but that was hardly news. Hank was there, however, and she crossed the stage toward him.

He had his butt perched against a wooden stool, his left leg stretched out and his foot in its scuffed boot planted firmly on the floor to brace himself. His right knee was raised to support his banjo, his boot heel hooked over one of the stool’s higher rungs. Head bent over the instrument, he adjusted the second fret, his hat brim concealing all but his lower lip with its little underlying soul patch and the strong angle of his chin. Then almost as if he felt her scrutiny he looked up.

For an instant he merely gave her a blank look, as if she were a stranger who’d wandered onto the stage by mistake. Then slowly he straightened and rose from the stool. Without looking behind him, he reached back to set his banjo on the seat he’d just vacated.

“Holy shit,” he breathed. “Nell? Is that you?” He watched her approach with intent eyes then walked a circle around her. Stopping when he came full loop to face her once again, he looked her over from head to toe, then reversed the journey back to her face.
“Wow.”
Then he shook his head, dull color climbing his throat. “Sorry. I’m not exactly Mr. Articulate. I must have been standing in the wrong line the day they handed out the silver tongues.”

“Could have fooled me,” she said as warmth radiated from her heart to her farthermost extremities. “
Wow
is exactly the way I’m feeling today. That makes you sound pretty darn eloquent to me.”

He pursed his lips in a silent whistle. “You look fantastic. Well, you always look great. But now you’re even…more so. I didn’t realize you were so—” his hands sketched a vague outline of her curves “—uh, so…”

“Plump?” Some of her pleasure dimmed and for the first time she felt uncertain about her decision to give up her comfortable baggy clothing. “Fat?”

“No, are you kidding me? Lush. Man, God, so lush. Did you hang on to your old clothes? Because I think we oughtta cover you back up. You’re giving me a heart attack here.”

She grinned at him. “I decided I’m shooting for the red-hot-mama look.” A zaftig red-hot mama perhaps, but still.

He nodded earnestly. “You hit your target.”

“And you say you’re not articulate,” she scoffed, giving his stomach a poke. The rock-hard surface made her recall the look of him with his shirt off and, heat stealing up her face, she immediately retracted her fingers.

One of the extra musicians came over and asked her to settle a dispute about the seating arrangement in the horn section. When she got back from forging a compromise that pleased both parties, P.J. and Jared had arrived. They looked different than they had a short while ago, more content somehow, less edgy. But Nell barely had time to register the impression before Eddie strolled onto the stage and blew it clean out of her mind. Her heartbeat picked up its pace.

He greeted P.J. first as he always did and complimented her sleekly straight hair.

“I’m enjoying it while it lasts,” P.J. said. “Which is pretty much until I have to wash it. I sure don’t have the patience to wield a blow-dryer for the time it takes to get it this smooth myself.”

Eddie turned to Nell. “And you, sweet thing. You’re looking particularly radiant tonight. You lose some weight or something?”

Heart stilling, she simply stared at him for an instant.

“Christ, Brashear,” Hank muttered. “Could you
be
a bigger idiot?”

Omigawd,
was her first clear thought.
He doesn’t know the first damn thing about me.
She’d spent nearly two years mooning over Eddie Brashear, with his dirty-blond hair and his bedroom eyes, and he had obviously never paid her the slightest attention in return. Which really shouldn’t catch her by surprise. She was a far cry from his usual barely legal blond bimbo.

“You are an idiot,” P.J. agreed and Jared stepped up to Nell, sliding an arm around her shoulders and walking her away.

“What?” Eddie demanded in a baffled voice. “What’s everyone so bent out of shape about?”

“Well, don’t I feel like a fool,” she murmured as Jared escorted her to the wings.

He squeezed her shoulders. “Don’t. Hank called it right. The guy’s a complete moron.”

Stopping in the shadow of the left wing, she stepped back to look at him. “Well, you know, thinking back, it occurs to me that this isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. I’ve simply ignored the fact that every compliment he’s ever given me has been a variation of the same theme. So who’s the real moron here, Jared?
You’re glowing
and
you’re radiant
are clearly the currency he expends on the plump, pushing-forty crowd. I’m the one who read into it what I wanted it to mean. Every damn time.”

He shrugged. “You can’t choose who you fall in love with.”

A sharp laugh that was dangerously near hysteria escaped her and she clapped her fingers to her mouth. She quickly got herself under control but her lips retained their crooked slant when she dropped her hand and looked up at him. “Well, here’s the thing. Being in love would at least be a decent excuse. What I felt for Eddie suddenly feels more like some crush a none-too-deep thirteen-year-old might have developed for the cute new boy in school.” She looked Jared in his pretty green eyes. “Which—and here’s how much depth I’ve gained at thirty-eight—is now stone-cold dead.”

“That’s actually a good thing,” he said without sentiment. “I’d hate to think of you carrying a torch for the guy. Because have you ever
looked
at the girls he hangs out with? They may be cute and they’re certainly built. But if even half of them have graduated from jailbait, I’d be very surprised. And talking about deep, don’t you have to wonder if that’s because he knows that one conversation between him and a real woman would send her screaming into the night?”

“Come to think of it, I don’t believe I ever have had an actual conversation with Eddie.” She smiled crookedly. “I was too busy lusting from afar.” Feeling much better, she reached out and gave his hand a squeeze. “Thanks, Jared. You’re a nice man. I, on the other hand, am not so nice. And I do believe I’m going to spend the night writing a new song. One about a man that a goodhearted woman thought was a diamond, but who turned out to be nothing but a pretty piece of paste.” A melody started tickling the back of her mind and she smiled. “I’ll have to give it some thought, because I especially want this song to be one of P.J.’s top sellers.”

“Whoa.” His eyebrows rose. “Let me guess—so Eddie can play it night after night on the next tour and hear it getting airtime on the radio and never have a clue it’s about him?”

She smiled at him approvingly. “You’re much quicker than he is.”

“And you are one diabolical woman. What will you name it?”

“I don’t know. Carly Simon already took ‘You’re So Vain.’” She shrugged. “But I’ll come up with something. ‘Eddie’s a Blind Jerk Jackass’ is probably a little obvious. I think I’ll shoot for something more along the lines of a little inside joke that only a few of my closest friends will understand.”

Jared studied her for a moment then shook his head. “Remind me never to piss you off.”

T
HE MAN SLAMMED THE
telephone receiver back in its cradle and stalked a short path from one end of his motel room to the other. This was wrong, just plain wrong! He should have won a ticket and a backstage pass to tonight’s Priscilla Jayne concert by now. Instead, even though he’d diligently called every time he’d heard the opening notes to “Crying Myself to Sleep,” he had yet to manage getting through to the radio station. It was frustrating, irritating, and the busy signal that assaulted his ear with every attempt was beginning to make him very, very angry.

“Forgive me, Father.” Sinking to his knees beside the bed he prayed for patience and the Lord’s guidance. He apologized for his lack of faith when he knew perfectly well that his quest was just and his Creator would provide the means to contact Priscilla Jayne in His own way and on His own schedule.

Early evening waned without the man ever reaching KPIX, but by then he had mastered acceptance. Because giving himself over to a higher power had opened a space in his mind that allowed an alternate idea to occur to him. He let himself out of his motel room and headed toward Hollywood Boulevard a half-block over.

He hadn’t been pleased about having to stay this close to California’s Sodom and Gomorrah and had kept his distance from the famous street. Given a choice, he’d prefer not to rub shoulders with so many sinners. He wasn’t made of money, however, and at least his motel was clean, within reasonable proximity to the place he needed to be and relatively inexpensive.

It was ironic, then, that this boulevard of broken dreams and perversions might now turn out to be exactly what he was looking for.

Except…Hollywood Boulevard wasn’t at all what he’d anticipated. Where were the string of tattoo parlors, the scandalous lingerie stores, the hookers and the dealers? He tramped street after street but saw nothing but a clean new shopping complex, an equally new metro station and restored hotels and shop fronts. He should have been pleased that such a corrupt town was cleaning up its decadent neighborhoods. And he was.

But for just this evening a decadent neighborhood had been the kind of place where he could reasonably expect to find what he needed.

He sure couldn’t find it in this new and improved district, and he was ready to call it a night and head back to the motel when he saw the devil’s handmaiden leaning against a light standard. He stopped short on the sidewalk. Glancing up at a street sign, he realized he’d walked all the way to the seedy beginning of downtown L.A. He stared at the woman on the opposite side of the boulevard.

Clearly she would know where he could find what he was looking for.

Still he hesitated, because even understanding that she was a sign sent to him from above, he didn’t want to approach her. With her huge shock of brassy hair, her makeup that looked as if it had been slapped on with a spackling knife, her inch-long squared-off fingernails painted a Jezebel red and at least six tattoos, she reminded him of his daughter, Mary. And that was a personal failure he didn’t care to revisit tonight.

Time was growing short, however, and he didn’t have many options left. All he could do at this juncture was command himself to keep his gaze above the woman’s neck. But her great, bulbous breasts in their low-cut, skintight, zebra-print top and her skirt so scandalously short it barely covered the essentials were lures designed to tempt the virtuous from their path. The long, muscular snake draped around her neck had more volume to it than her entire wardrobe combined.

By rights she ought to hang her head in shame. Instead, when she saw the disapproval he could not completely disguise, she mocked him with her salacious behavior. She laughed a husky siren’s laugh, proposed indecent act after indecent act and shook her whore’s teats in his face. He longed to take her in hand the way he once had Mary, to do what he had been unable to do for his own daughter and set her feet firmly on the road to redemption.

But he forced himself to swallow the inclination and be civil. He needed information and he’d learned the hard way that a soft voice was more effective than thundering threats of hell and damnation.

But if ever a female cried out for punishment it was this unrepentant harlot before him.

She refused to give him the information he sought until he paid her thirty dollars. When he then discovered that he would have to drive down to Yorba Linda for his purchase he longed to unleash the power of his righteousness upon her, to castigate and renounce her for the hell-bound sinner she was. He choked down that impulse, as well. Instead he thanked her for her time and hiked back to his motel. There he collected his uniform, tidied it with a lint brush and carried it out to his car where he carefully laid it on the pristine backseat. After consulting his map, he drove back to Hollywood Boulevard, where he turned left and headed for Highway 101.

There was an accident not far from where 60 East merged with 57 South and the snarled traffic barely inched along for the next forty-five minutes. The longer he was stuck in it the more he stewed about the store closing before he could get there. Why hadn’t he called for the shop’s hours before he’d set out to drive these heathen freeways?

But he received yet another reminder that the Lord was his Shepherd when he arrived with twenty minutes to spare before the store closed for the night.
Oh, ye of little faith,
he chastised himself as he marched through the door.