Feverish (Bullet #3) (23 page)

“That’s when I really became Jet. Before, Jet
was just kind of a way to be a bad ass onstage, you know, to kind
of get over my nerves of being in front of an audience. He still
was. I didn’t want to get hurt again. But you gotta realize…I was,
like, twenty-four or something. I was horny. Goddamn. I could have
had sex twenty times a day. Porn helped. I’d put in something—and
it varied. What worked one day sucked the next.” Emily grimaced.
“Sorry. You get the idea—the porn made it to where I didn’t need a
girlfriend. I didn’t have to worry about a fucking messy
relationship, right?

“It was pretty lonely, though, and pretty
boring. Jet was full blown by then. I discovered when I was Jet, I
could fuck a woman and not give a shit. It kept me from getting
hurt.

“A few years later, though, I let my guard
down. There was this woman I let in. We were friends at first, but
she was something else. She was safe-ish…she had a boyfriend and
didn’t seem interested in me—until she was. Jet had that effect on
women. We were actually together for a while. It was great while it
lasted, but…well, she saw the porn too. I used to keep it on these
bookshelves. Part of it was to scare women away—and it worked. I
hadn’t wanted to scare her away, but I thought she loved me for who
I was. Aw, she did. It just didn’t work. She loved somebody else,
and I was kinda just rebound guy.”
Fuck.
He did it again. He
told her something he shouldn’t have.

Still…she was listening and she wasn’t saying
anything. Should he keep going? “So…the porn now? Just a reminder.
You need to know? I wanna watch porn, I got my computer, and I got
Pay Per View. I don’t need DVDs anymore. And if you had really
checked out my movie theater, you would have booted up the computer
and found movies on there. And under the skirt of the table are
DVDs me and my buddies watch. No porn.”

Emily seemed hesitant, but she said, “Still,
why do you have to keep it?”

Clay smiled. “You think Goodwill would like
seeing that as a donation?”

She laughed. “Okay. You got me. You could
throw it away.”

“Yeah, I guess I could. It’s not hurting
anything, though.”

Emily didn’t say another word at first. “So
why don’t you have visitation with your daughter?”

“I do.”

“I’ve been here close to two months and have
never seen her.”

“She’s in some kind of summer camp. She’s
gonna be here in two weeks. I can’t wait for you to meet her.” He
searched her eyes. “That is, if you plan to still be here.”

“I just have a question. Who slept with
me
?”

“What do you mean?”

Emily took a deep breath. “You talked about
Jet and Clay. Has Clay ever had sex with anyone other than
Abby?”

“Oh, yeah. He loved Val too.” He finished the
whiskey in the glass. “Sorry. You probably didn’t need to hear
that.”

“So…who slept with me?”

He swallowed. Oh, God. This was either gonna
make or break him, and he didn’t know that he had the balls to do
it. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. Didn’t
matter—he was already splayed out on the table, and all she had to
do was chop his head off. “Clay.”

She searched his eyes, and he saw her eyes
soften. “Then I’ll stay.”

Chapter Twenty-four

EMILY FELT BAD about making Clay bare his
soul, but she felt better too. She’d been thinking he was a
complete perv. She knew guys liked porn but the amount he owned was
completely crazy, what appeared to be an obsession. Hearing his
story, though, made it better. It was more in the past, and she
thought she could deal with that.

She probably wouldn’t have felt quite so bad
if she had been more serious about their—whatever it was.
Relationship
felt like too strong a word, but
friendship
didn’t quite cut it. Still, she wasn’t serious at
all. He was her guy
for now
. She still wasn’t sure about her
future, with or without Bryce. She didn’t think Clay was the right
guy for her in any capacity—but he was a hell of a lot of fun, and
there was no denying how great he made her feel.

In fact, she didn’t know that she’d had that
much fun having sex
ever
. The guy was a master in the
bedroom. Well, more
out
of the bedroom. They didn’t do it
much there. They’d done it on the washing machine, out back in his
pool one night, in the shower, in the office, the living room, the
stairs leading to the basement, the kitchen (twice), the hood of
his car, the music room multiple times, once hanging on his big
amp, and then another time in his room with her sitting on his
dresser. Even in bed, she didn’t think they’d done it the same way
twice. He made her feel so good. Some days she could hardly wait
for Mary to get the fuck out of there, and Clay had gotten good at
shooing Brian and other occasional visitors out the door
mid-afternoon so they had the house all to themselves.

No, she couldn’t bring herself to try the
theater downstairs. No matter what he said, she just couldn’t bring
herself to go there yet.

One afternoon at four o’clock, the house was
quiet. She’d finished the work she’d planned for the day, but she’d
been thinking about Clay all afternoon. If he’d walked in the
office door, she might have jumped on him even if Mary had still
been in the house. She was feeling a little hot, a lot out of
control, and she was wanting him again—wanting his mouth on her,
his hands getting a little rough, finding new ways to bring her
pleasure. He was like a drug, and she needed a fix.

She went to her room to change clothes into
something a little more comfortable. If the house hadn’t been so
eerily quiet, she might have considered putting on a little
lingerie to surprise him. She walked over to her dresser, and as
she opened a drawer, she saw a card with her name on it. It looked
like Clay’s handwriting, but she hadn’t seen it that much. She was
curious as hell.

She opened the card, and it was simple. Just
white linen, and it had a gold
S
stamped on the front. It
seemed formal. She opened it, expecting an invitation of some kind
printed inside, and it was, but it was handwritten:

Jet requests your presence. Please come to
my room at your earliest convenience.

She almost started laughing. It was cute and
funny. And, for some reason, she was feeling even warmer than
before. Clay had told her less than a week ago that she’d never
been fucked by Jet, and now maybe he was willing to show her that
side of himself. She felt her nerves get a little tingly, and she
didn’t want to linger. She was wearing a white sundress—not exactly
sexy—but she couldn’t wait.

She kept her cool and walked down the hall
with a steady gait. When she got to the living room, she saw that
his bedroom door was open, so she walked over to it. He wasn’t in
there, though, not that she could see. So she called for him.
“Clay?” She walked into the room a little bit and saw something on
the foot of the bed. She got a little closer and saw a rope coiled
up. Her heart started beating a little faster and she wondered what
it was for. “Clay?”

She heard his voice coming from the bathroom.
“Sorry, but Clay’s not here. I thought you were coming to see Jet.”
He came out of the doorway in all his glory. He wasn’t wearing a
shirt—nothing unusual there—but he was wearing ripped jeans, dark
sunglasses, a choker, and his guitar was strapped on. It was then
that she noticed he had a small amp plugged into the wall next to
the desk. He picked up a cable and plugged in his guitar. “I wrote
you a little something…just to kind of give you an idea of how you
make my blood boil.” He cleared his throat. “Let me know what you
think.”

At first, she almost expected him to start
singing, even though she knew that wasn’t Clay’s thing. He sang for
his band, but he didn’t go solo. And he didn’t this time either. He
started playing the backdrop to a song, a steady rhythm, but then
she recognized it was a bridge of some kind, building to a solo.
And what a solo it was…it moved her with its passion and energy,
and if Clay had ever been able to capture the essence of Jet, he’d
done it then and there in his music. She took a deep breath as she
felt her pussy clench against nothing but itself, aching for him
again. It was damn hot.

He looked at her, a smirk on his face, also
pure Jet, and she felt feverish then—not just hot and bothered but
beyond. She felt like she was falling in too deep, that there would
be no cure for what he was doing to her, and she started to think
that maybe she didn’t want it to end. But she took another deep
breath, wanting to stay in the moment, and she bit her lower lip.
She could see him raise his eyebrows even under the sunglasses, and
then he lifted his guitar up so that the shaft pointed up and
almost in her direction. He stuck out his tongue and licked the
side, and damned if she didn’t let out a soft moan. She couldn’t
help it. She was helpless already, and she thought he knew it.

In one swift motion, he pulled the strap over
his head and leaned the guitar against the desk. Then four steps
and he was right there. He pulled the glasses off and tossed them
toward the desk too, and she had no idea if they’d hit the target,
nor did she care. She was mesmerized by him then, a paralyzed
victim ready for his strike. He took her face in his hands and
kissed her. It was slow, hot, and full of meaning. She thought
she’d come as soon as he touched her.

He ended the kiss and motioned his head
toward the bed but didn’t break eye contact. “That rope?” She
nodded. “That’s for you.” She felt her heart speed up again,
anticipating the unknown, and she couldn’t tell if she was excited
or scared. “You have Jet for tonight, and you can use that rope to
tie me down and do whatever you want.” She swallowed. Not exactly
what she’d expected…but she wasn’t disappointed. “So…where do you
want me?”

Inside her
was her first thought, but
no. She didn’t want instant gratification. She wanted it slow and
drawn out and sexy and sensual. She wanted to torment him a little,
gradually build him up before igniting his entire world on fire.
She found her voice. “On the bed.”

He smirked again, a sparkle in his dark green
eyes. “A little pedestrian, don’t you think?”

If she hadn’t felt so hot, she might have
laughed. She would have never expected a guy like Clay to use the
word
pedestrian
. Instead, she pushed against his chest with
her hand and said, “Oh, believe me. You won’t think that when I’m
done with you.”

He grinned, his eyes still glinting with
desire and playfulness, and he sat on the edge of the bed. “Where
exactly does madame want me?”

She smiled. “How about the middle, with your
head on the pillows?”

He shook his head. “All the possible choices,
and look what you’re doing.”

She wasn’t going to say anything, because she
was just turned on by tying him up, and for all his protesting, she
thought he felt the same way. So while he was smarting off and then
adjusting himself, she grabbed the rope from the end of the bed.
She uncoiled it, letting it drop loosely about her legs as she
examined his headboard. She didn’t see any practical way to tie him
to it. There was a mirror and shelves and nightstands. No bedposts
or anything practical for play. Made no sense with a guy like Jet.
But then she realized that, just like any other bed, it had legs
underneath the skirt. So she got on the floor on her knees and tied
one end of the rope to the leg. She didn’t make it super tight. It
didn’t need to be. It wasn’t like she really wanted to capture
him—the illusion was enough.

When she got up on the bed on her knees, she
saw that his arms were already almost in position. She tried not to
laugh. Instead, she lifted his right arm up a little and wrapped
the rope around his wrist several times, but then she realized if
she didn’t keep the rope tight, it would just fall off when it got
loose. Her lack of expertise was showing. So she took the end of
the rope and pulled it through the part that had already been
wrapped around his wrist, and she wound it around twice. Then she
took the rest of the rope and brought it over to his other arm. He
was quiet, but there was a twinkle in his eye.

She straddled him and then lifted his arm,
admiring the sleeve of tattoos decorating it. She smiled at him and
began winding the rope around his wrist like she had the other. He
too said nothing but she could tell he was enjoying every second.
Then she lowered herself off the other side of the bed and tied the
rope around the leg there. There was still some rope but not enough
to make it to his legs. She thought that would be okay anyway. She
didn’t need him completely immobile.

She got back up on the bed and straddled him
again. The sundress flowed around her and so she was sure he could
feel how wet she was through her panties but he kept quiet. She
leaned over and kissed him hard on the mouth, her hands cupping the
sides of his head, her fingers in his hair, and then she broke off
the kiss and licked his lower lip from one corner to the other. She
sucked on it then, drawing it into her mouth, and then released it
and started moving down.

No, she wasn’t going to do what just seemed
obvious or natural, but she wanted to lull him into thinking it,
and so she journeyed down his chest, licking and kissing along the
way, outlining tattoos with her tongue, playing with his pierced
nipples, feeling his sides, letting her nails graze his skin the
whole way down. When she got to the waistband of his jeans, she
grabbed them with her teeth and pulled, growling like a dog,
shaking her head. Then she scooted down his legs farther. She
unbuttoned his jeans but didn’t touch the zipper. She did massage
that bulging mass as she worked her way down, though, and he was
ready already. Oh, man, was he in for some torture.