Making Trouble (7 page)

“Sweet little peach.”
Rob leaned in, elbows on the piano keys jarring as he nuzzled his way between my legs. I parted them further, panties still pulled aside, watching him rub his stubbly cheek against the smooth, sensitive skin of my sex. His mouth found me, hands pushing my dress up high on my hips, tongue probing deeply.

I moaned and arched, feeling the
piano key cover nipping at my lower back, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything anymore—not the fact that we were in Katie and Tyler’s new house, that there were tons of people there and anyone could walk in at any minute. I wasn’t worried about the piano and my weight on the keys, or the way my heels were digging into the edge of the polished, lacquered bench under my feet.

All I could feel was the hurried beat of my heart and the throb of my clit under the probe of Rob’s lapping tongue. I had challenged him—
promises, promises
—and he had taken me up on it, sitting me right up on the piano and going to work. And he was making a mission of it. He made my whole body burn with need, his fingers, still hooked in the crotch of my silk panties, twisting and thrusting deep inside.

“Oh God, Rob!” I fisted my hands in his hair, his tongue making circles
, face buried between my legs. I couldn’t stop it. My climax surprised me, but Rob was ready for it, fingers pumping, tongue flickering against my sensitive clit. “Oh baby, yes! Yes! Now!”

Somehow
he knew. His mouth was fastened to my sex and I arched as I came, my thighs pressing piano keys, making harsh music as he brought me to a quick climax. My body shuddered in his arms—they were wrapped around my hips—and I spread my legs even wider, my high heels digging into the wood of the piano bench.

“Oh my God!” I panted, barely recovered as Rob knelt up and kissed me, mouth slanting across mine, the taste of my juices thick on his probing tongue. I felt his erection, hard and insistent, straining against
his chinos as he rocked between my thighs.

I didn’t have time to even think before he was unbuttoning and unzipping his
pants, his mouth still on mine as he slid quickly inside of me. I gasped in the midst of our kiss, clinging to him as he thrust, rocking us both on the piano. I couldn’t do anything but hang on, my sex still throbbing, swollen and fat around his length.

Rob raked his teeth along my bottom lip, growling low as he grabbed my hips for even more leverage, his pelvis taking over completely, thrusting hard and fast and furious. I heard the music playing in the other room, the sound of people laughing, but it was distant, and I hoped it stayed that way.

But the truth was I didn’t care. The Queen of England could have walked in at that moment and I wouldn’t have cared. Rob had that effect on me. Whatever it was he wanted—and luckily that was often me—he went after. There was no arguing with him, and I didn’t want to, even if some part of me worried about Katie or Tyler or one of their guests walking in and discovering us.

“Stand up,” he insisted.

I just blinked at him, clearly not moving fast enough. His hands were rough as he maneuvered me, swinging my ass around and bending me over the piano. He pushed my dress up over my hips so he could watch himself slide into me from behind. I glanced over my shoulder at the dark look of lust on his face as he slowly filled me again, every sweet inch of him. I bit my lip, trying to keep from crying out as he grabbed my hips and drove in hard, burying himself deep, but it was no use.

“Oh Rob! Oh God, yes!” I cried, giving up on the idea of trying to be quiet.
I grabbed onto the edge of the piano, trying to steady myself as he fucked me up against it, the bench tipping onto its edge on the plush, white carpet behind us. Thank God it wasn’t hardwood!

“I want you to come again for me,” he panted into my ear, hands roaming over my dress, freeing my breasts from the low-cut front and my bra simultaneously. They spilled into his hands, his palms grazing my hard nipples, his fingers, calloused from years of guitar playing, playing me as skillfully as any instrument.

“Yes,” I whispered, grinding back against him, deep into the saddle of his hips, my panties still pulled to the side and soaking wet. “Oh yes, yes, fuck me, baby, fuck me until I come for you again!”

Rob groaned, rolling his hips and sinking deep again and again, reaching around with one long arm to slide his hand between my legs, palm
grinding against my mound. I whimpered and rocked faster, matching his rhythm, lost in the music we were making, the sound of our bodies slapping together, the chime of the piano as we banged against the keys again and again, our breath coming in harsh pants, Rob’s moans and my cries ringing out in sweet harmony.

“Ohhhh fuck! Sabrina!” He rubbed his palm against my crotch, my sex on fire with the friction, building up to a delicious climax. “Ahhh baby, you feel so good. I can’t…”

“I’m going to come!” I panted, my breath fogging the highly polished black surface of the piano in rhythm clouds. “Oh Rob! Now! Now!”

He growled and grabbed me, both hands between my legs, lifting my spasming body fully onto the piano, sliding me across the black expanse of the instrument. My silk dress slid easily across the surface as
Rob climbed up onto it with me, rolling me to my back in one swift motion. We were on top of the piano fully now, Rob aiming and finding me again with one deep thrust, making me cry out and cling to him.

“You ready, baby?” he whispered in my ear, grinding, rutting deep
, his chinos and boxers down to his knees as he fucked me on top of Tyler’s baby grand piano. “I’m going to come so hard for you.”

I whimpered, nodding against the damp skin of his neck, sucking and licking at his bobbing Adam’s apple as he arched against me. Rob let out a loud roar as he came, his hips moving all on their own, driving me even further across the surface of the piano. In the other room, I heard an explosion of laughter, and I hoped it would cover up the noise we were making. I held him close as he gritted his teeth and shuddered between my thighs, his breath sweet with alcohol on my cheek. I held him until his body slowly stopping shaking in my arms, kissing the damp curls over his ear, licking the salt from his sideburns, wanting to keep him here like this, with me, forever.

He was mine, but the rest of the world still didn’t know it, couldn’t know it.

“What is that beeping?” Rob’s head came up and he frowned, looking around the big, empty room.

“My phone.” I laughed, seeing my purse sitting on the edge of the piano. “Can you reach?”

He stretched a long arm out and grabbed the strap, sliding my purse across the surface until it hit my hip. I dug deep, finding my iPhone and lifting it out, squinting at the screen.

“Text,” I informed him with a smile, still reading, my heart hammering in my chest, even harder than it had been just a moment before.

“What it is?” Rob frowned, looking at me with concerned eyes.

“I…” I swallowed, blinking at the screen, then at him, still too stunned to speak. “It’s Arnie.”

“What now?” Rob roll
ed his eyes. “He wants you to dye your hair blonde and sing country songs?”

“No, he wants me to open for Jimmy Voss.” Saying the words out loud made them real. My stomach did a flip as I looked into my husband’s widening eyes.

“You already opened for Voss,” Rob scowled. I knew he wouldn’t want me to go, not really, no matter what he said.

“On tour.” I shook my head at his misunderstanding. “Jimmy Voss wants me to be his opening act
on tour.
”

Two months and thirty
cities. I saw the realization dawn on Rob’s face, my own conflicting emotions mirrored there. It was an incredible opportunity, an amazing honor, and how in the world would we survive, the two of us, separated so soon after we’d just said “I do?” This was still so early in our marriage, and besides—I saw the look of anger flash in his eyes—Rob wanted to take me on tour with
him
, with Trouble. He didn’t want me touring with another man.

“That’s amazing.” He smiled, but it
didn’t quite reach his eyes. “
You’re
amazing.”

He leaned in and kissed me, soft and tender and oh, so sweet. I knew then that he was going to let me go. He would let me pursue this dream, even if it meant doing it without him.

“Are you going to do it?” he asked softly, twirling a bit of my hair around his finger.

“I don’t know.”
I whispered the words, the truth.

I really didn’t know. Yes, I wanted it—but I wanted Rob, too. I realized suddenly, faced with a new alternative, that I wanted exactly what he wanted—to go out onto the road with Trouble, to play sing with Rob. But that wasn’t possi
ble, and we both knew it. Still, he was my everything, and I didn’t want to be apart, not for so long. Would he resent me, even if he swore he wouldn’t? Would our relationship, so new in the scheme of things, be able to weather the time and distance apart? Was it worth it, leaving my husband, even if it was just for a few months, to pursue this once-in-a-lifetime dream?

I just didn’t know.

My husband wasn’t happy and there was nothing I could do about it. I sat and watched
him from the balcony overlooking our pool. I saw him put on a happy face, teasing Sarah, the birthday girl, laughing at her response, but I knew him better than anyone. It was just an act. Tyler moving out had been a blow, but Sarah moving out was going to be devastating. Maybe it was because Tyler was his bandmate—he saw Tyler, sometimes, more than he saw me. But once Sarah had moved out, there would be no regular contact, no more casual TV nights, no more late night swims in the cool air around the infinity pool.

“Twenty-one!” Tyler came up behind Sarah, lifting her into his arms and swinging her around
, her long, dark hair following like a thick, black ribbon.

In light of Sarah’s drug of choice, there was no alcohol at this
twenty-one-year-old’s party. Daisy had put out bottles of sparkling grape juice and of course soda, but even Rob had forgone his usual glass of wine tonight. There was no sense tempting her on a day most twenty-one year olds spent celebrating by drinking until they puked.

Instead, there was plenty o
f food, a house full of people and a band playing out on the patio—Rob had gotten Indigo Girls to agree to come by and play later, Sarah’s all-time favorite girl group, although she didn’t know it yet. The infinity pool that ran around the entire length of the house was full of bodies and cars lined our long, lighted driveway. Rob had hired valets to park them on the perfectly landscaped lawn.

I would bet that Sarah didn’t know half the people there, although her friends from school, a close-knit group of girls who still had another year before they graduated, unlike our ambitious, overachieving little Sarah, seemed star struck by the spectacle. I didn’t blame them. I’d met only one of them before. Anne was a tall, gangly sort of girl with a ton of piercings and tattoos who liked to clomp around the house in motorcycle boots. She was the only one who seemed nonchalant about the whole thing, sitting in one of the patio chairs with a
Coke in her hand, watching Sarah’s interaction with Tyler and Rob.

I was too far away to hear what they were talking about from my perch up on the balcony, but they were all laughing. I wasn’t too far away to see the look in Rob’s eyes though. There was a sadness there I wished I could take away, but there was nothing I could do about it. Sarah had made up her mind, had finally announced not only her intention to move out, but her plan, already in place. She and Anne had rented an apartment and would be roommates, splitting an
exorbitant L.A. rent for a tiny three-bedroom place.

“Sabrina?”

I turned at the sound of my name, smiling at Celeste standing at my bedroom door, her hand poised to knock. I waved her into the room and she joined me out on the balcony, leaning against the railing and looking down at the party below.

“He wants her to stay,” I told Celeste, although it wasn’t anything she didn’t already know. Rob had enlisted everyone, from Celeste to
Jesse to Daisy to me, in his attempt to persuade Sarah from moving out.

“She won’t.” Celeste shook her head. “Not now.”

“Not now?” I glanced at her, raising my eyebrows.

“Oh.” Celeste shrugged. “I just mean, you know, now that she’s graduated. She’s got to go live her own life.”

“That’s what I keep telling him.” I nodded. “He acts like he’s losing a child.”

“No,
he knows what that feels like.” Celeste reached over and pulled the neckline of my dress aside to reveal a tiny inked handprint over my bullet hole scar. “And so do you. Does it still hurt?”

“The tattoo?” I
glanced down at her little hand, where it would have rested if she’d been nursing. Instead I had a twisted scar, a dark memory, and nothing else. “It’s healing. But you never get over losing a child.”

Thinking of Esther still made my chest instantly tighten. I missed her so much, some days I could almost feel her still inside me, alive, kicking my navel. I could remember the
weight of her, the way she waved her tiny arms and legs, how she struggled so valiantly to take a first breath. The way her dark little heart beat, so very briefly. I could see it through her translucent skin. I didn’t understand how you could love and miss someone so much who had spent so short a time in your life, but I couldn’t deny the feeling.

“So what are you doing, hiding up here?”
Celeste nudged me with her hip.

“Hiding up here.” I laughed. “To tell you the truth, I’m avoiding Arnie.”

“Is he here?”

I nodded
down at the pool. “Can’t you see the moonlight shining off his bald head?”

She laughed. “So you haven’t made up your mind?”

“I… just don’t know.” I sighed. The decision had been weighing on me, hovering over me like a storm cloud. I wanted to sing—I definitely wanted that. It was a longing in me so strong it felt as if it had a life of its own. I couldn’t deny it anymore. I’d spent years teaching little kids the joy of music, and I had loved it, but once Rob had pushed me to admit how much I wanted to perform, it was like Pandora’s box had been opened. It wasn’t a want anymore, it was a need. But Rob… the thought of leaving him was almost as painful as thinking about losing Esther. It was completely irrational, but again, I couldn’t deny the feeling.

“It feels cruel, to leave Rob now, in
this big house, all by himself,” I murmured. Just thinking about it had me blinking back tears. I told myself I was being silly, and of course, Celeste reinforced that.

“I’ll be here,” she reminded me. “So will Daisy. And
Jesse. And it’s not like Tyler and Katie and Sarah will be all that far away. He won’t be all alone.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“So why not go?” she urged. “It’s a great opportunity.”

“I know.”
I knew it was—and I knew Jimmy Voss had made it happen. He had been the proactive one—he’d asked for me, personally. For some reason, he had taken a shine to me, and I was grateful. He was opening doors for me, and all I had to do was walk through them. It was an easy decision, not really a decision at all, except for Rob…

“But I’ll miss him so much…”
Damn. Stupid tears. I blinked them away.

“They say absenc
e makes the heart grow fonder,” she reminded me, smiling. “That certainly seemed to be the case when you were in Detroit and Rob was on tour.”

“Yes.” I smiled
too, remembering. Another open door I’d decided not to walk through. Rob had invited me on tour, and instead of dropping everything and running into his arms, like Katie had with Tyler, I’d stayed in my safe little teaching job, in my safe little suburban house, and I’d told him I’d wait for him. When the tour was over, we would see if we still felt the same. Of course, by the end of the tour, I knew I was pregnant, and everything had changed.

“Celeste… do you think we would have ended up together, if I hadn’t been pregnant?”

She took my shoulders and turned me to face her, looking into my eyes. She was a beautiful woman, probably ten years older than we were, dark hair and eyes that saw right into you. And she was one of the smartest women I knew.

“Sabrina,
I’ve been with him a long time,” she told me. “And I’ve never seen him in love like this, the way he loves you. I’m not a big believer in fate and karma and all that, but… when I see the way he looks at you, it makes me want to believe in things like soul mates and love at first sight.”

“Me too.”
I couldn’t help smiling. I knew she was trying to reassure me, but I still had my doubts sometimes. Things had happened so big, and so fast, it was hard to remember to breathe. “What about Catherine?’

“What about her?”
Celeste’s eyes hardened. She didn’t like Catherine any more than I did—and it was no wonder. We’d both nearly been mortally wounded by her jealous rage. Celeste carried a deep scar—she’d shown it to me—a result of Catherine’s mistaken belief that Celeste was sleeping with Catherine’s then-husband. Rob hadn’t been cheating on her with Celeste, but that didn’t stop Catherine from accusing her, from going after Celeste with a knife.

“Did he look at her like that?”
I asked softly, searching her eyes for the truth.

Thinking about Rob with Catherine hurt me almost as much as thinking about Esther. I could torture myself, looking at pictures of them together in
old magazines, and sometimes I still did. They made a beautiful couple. She was a model—so tall and blonde and perfect. It was hard to compete with that. She looked so angelic. It was hard to believe the dark wounds festering underneath that beauty hadn’t taken over from the inside out, but Catherine had shown no outward signs of her pain. She had just turned and taken it out on everyone else—especially those who loved her.

“Catherine was… an infatuatio
n.” Celeste sighed, turning back to lean on the balcony railing, looking down at the party below. “I admit, he idolized her, but it was more of an obsession than anything I’d call love. I think… I think he felt obligated to her.”

“Why?”
I cocked my head, brow knitted.

She looked at me, lips pursed, like she was trying figure something out.

“Catherine was puppy love for him,” she said. “You know that first time you ever feel something, how powerful it feels, like no one in the world has ever felt this way before?”

I nodded.
Rob hadn’t been my first love. I’d been in love a few times before him, or so I thought. But, of course, once I met Rob, I knew what it felt like to
really
be in love. I’d never experienced anything like it, and I was pretty sure, if something should ever happen to him, or to us, if we somehow ended, I would never find anything like it again. It was that strong.

“But with you… I think he knows he’s finally
got something real,” Celeste went on. “He put Catherine on a pedestal but she never deserved to be there. You… you’re real to him, not some unattainable idol. And my God, if two people can go through what you’ve been through in the past year and still be as much in love as you are, well… it gives me hope, that’s all I can say.”

She smiled at me, reaching over to tuck a piece of my hair behind my ear. It was a sweet, tender, motherly gesture, and even that made me want to cry. I was too much of an emotional wreck lately. I felt everything so much—too much. It was like walking around exposed, vulnerable. Even this decision, this one thing—should I or shouldn’t I go on tour without Rob—felt overwhelming.

“How are things going with Jesse?” I asked, changing the subject. It was far easier to think about other people and their problems than my own.

Celeste just smiled, a small, secret sort of smile, her gaze finding him
in the crowd. He was sitting next to Anne but chatting with Daisy, who was arranged hors d'oeuvres. Just looking at all the food made my stomach growl. I’d lost fifteen pounds following the dietician’s instructions and David’s grueling workouts—much to Rob’s chagrin—and Arnie had hired someone to start taking in all my clothes to fit my new, svelte, tightly toned form.

“Are you going swimming?” I asked, glancing at the straps tied around Celeste’s neck underneath the dress she wore.

“Jesse insisted.” She rolled her eyes. “Although I drew the line at wearing a bikini. It’s one-piece suits for me from now on.”

“Does it make you self-conscious?”
I asked, touching my own scar. I tried to hide mine as much as I could. The tattoo helped.

“Only in public.
” Celeste shrugged. “Jesse… he doesn’t seem to mind.”

“You’re
a beautiful woman,” I told her, thinking of Rob, the way he would kiss my scar, like it was a talisman, a ritual. Maybe he did to remind himself. Every time I looked at it I felt something bittersweet—grateful to be alive, mixed with a sort of glowering anger at Catherine for what she’d done. “Do you know what Rob told me about my scar, after…?”

“What?”

“He told me this story about Japanese pottery makers. I guess they made these beautiful, intricate pots, and before they put them in the kiln, they mark each one.”

“Mark them?” She
frowned. “Like, they number them?”

“No.” I shook my head. “
They intentionally mark them with a flaw. Some imperfection.”

“Why?”

“Because it reminds them without flaws, beauty wouldn’t shine as bright, and that it’s their job to find heaven in imperfection. Anyway, that was the story he told me.”

“That’s beautiful.” She smiled.
“Did it help?”

“Him telling it helped.” I laughed. “And… h
im loving me helped.”

“I think it’s the
loving part that matters most.” She was looking down at Jesse.

“Yes, I think so too.”

“So, are you going to go swimming?” she asked, straightening up and turning to me with a smile.

“That was the plan.
” I jerked my thumb down at the party. “As soon as Arnie decides to get out of the pool.”

“Chicken.” Celeste laughed.

“You’re right, I am a chicken.”

“You know, you’re not going to lose him because you decide to follow your dream
. He only wants you to be happy,” she assured me. “That’s Rob’s biggest gift and his greatest fault.”