I ignored his jibe. "I doubt there were many pierced cocks in 19th century England, Jaxson. I was trying for a bit of historical verisimilitude."
"Yeah? Well whatever that means, I think it's too bad. Your Geraldine character seems like she would enjoy a piercing sliding against her G-spot. It would help her reach the… er… 'pinnacle of her pleasure,' faster than this lame-ass Tristan guy gets her."
I suddenly realized something. "Jax, you're like, at the end of the book. It's almost ninety thousand words. Did you even sleep?"
For the first time since I woke up, that cocky little smile slid off of his face. "Nah. Not really."
His beautiful face looked pinched too tight and the bags under his eyes were an angry looking shade of purple. My irritation melted away and I reached for him without meaning to. "Why?"
"I wanted to catch you before you woke up. So we could maybe talk about last night. Before you woke up and stormed off."
Did I say my irritation left? Never mind, it came flooding back in an instant. "Stormed off?" I repeated.
"Yeah, storming off without talking to me. It's kind of your thing," he shot back."
I flopped back down on my pillow. I couldn't believe how quickly he veered from being sweet and sexy to the most annoying person on the planet. "Oh, fuck off," I cried, pinching the bridge of my nose.
I felt him shift, lean forward. "We can, you know. All these things you wrote down…" His voice went lower. "Mmm… such vivid details, Bit. If I had known you were paying such close attention, I would have stepped up my game."
I clapped my hands over my ears. "Shut up!"
He leaned over me. I looked up at him, hovering over my bed. My breath was coming too quickly, my heart beating too rapidly. Realizing I was biting my lip, I licked them instead and his eyes went right to them. "It's given me a few ideas, frankly. How about it? Wanna do some research with me?"
His offer hung there, for one, two, three heartbeats before I finally came to my senses. I reached up and pushed him away. "Oh my God, get the fuck out of my room."
He stood up. "You never even heard why I was here."
"I don't care, get out." I flopped over to my side and waited until I heard the door close before I finally exhaled.
Chapter Sixteen
Jax
I stared at Lily's bedroom door, wondering how the fuck I had just gotten it shut on me again. I stayed up all night and into the late morning, wanting to apologize to her the minute she woke up, and yet somehow, I fucked that up as well.
Dammit, this wasn't happening again. I raised my fist to bang on the door, ready to batter it down if I had to, when my cell phone rang. I grabbed it out of my pocket, ready to hurl it down the hallway when I saw Bev's name. My heart, already in my stomach, splashed right down to my toes.
She was already talking when I pressed the green button. "… studio full of highly skilled, highly paid technicians and musicians, all getting paid to twiddle their thumbs waiting for you to show the fuck up. Where the hell are you, Jaxson?"
"I'm right around the corner," I lied, tearing down the stairs. "Calm down, Bev."
"Calm down? Do you know how much this is costing right now? Get here. Now."
"Yeah, yeah." I was sprinting down the lawn, but I didn't want her to know that. "Go take a Xanax, or something."
She hung up, but not before I heard her distinctly hiss, "Asshole."
I stopped in the middle of the lawn and stared at the phone. I had nothing ready. Bev had handled everything, booking the studio time and the musicians on nothing more than my promise that I'd have the album written by then. Then, meaning now. Today.
Fuck.
Maybe I was the flash in the pan everyone claimed I was. Maybe “Cocky” was an anomaly and I really wasn't a songwriter. Because fuck me if I'd been able to write a decent song since.
Part of me wanted to just skip it. Bail on them all and go get drunk with Annie's roadies. Pussy out and let them believe I sucked. I certainly believed it myself.
But I knew I couldn't do that. I had a reputation to maintain. Ever since “Cocky” dropped, the press wanted to see me swaggering. I wasn't allowed to fail. It would ruin everything.
I grabbed my keys and hopped into the 1985 Ferrari 288 GTO I bought myself with “Cocky” money and had painted a custom shade of electric blue. Like my hair. Image. I'd go to the studio and brazen it out. Fuck, maybe something would come to me on the drive.
Even I knew I was lying to myself. I was a panting wreck by the time I double-parked outside of the studio, a full hour and a half later than I was supposed to be there. Banks was standing on the sidewalk, smoking one of his hand-rolled cigarettes that smelled like dirt. I lifted my chin at him.
"You know, I honestly wouldn't give a fuck, since I get paid either way," he said coolly, letting a wreath of smoke billow around his head. "It's the fact that I have to show up to get paid." He stubbed out his cigarette against the building. "Must be fucking nice."
"Oh, give it a rest, Banks. You might think you're better than me, but who the hell is paying your bills right now, hmm?" The keyboardist my label had hired still clung to his classical training like it meant something in this world.
"Whatever. I turned down a pretty big name for this, Blue. I just want to get to work."
Bev was on the other side of the door. "You ready?" she asked crisply.
"Whaddya got for us, Blue?" Toad hopped up from the sofa in the lounge, his bass flopping around dangerously.
"Were you finalizing, or something?" Casper asked. He was trying to cover for me. I could tell. "That's why you were late?"
I nodded. "Absolutely."
"Well, everybody is ready to get down to work, Jaxson. Ready when you are."
I nodded again, feeling like I was moving upstream… or maybe caught in the undertow, the current dragging me toward that sound-proof booth with nothing to sing. I searched my head, wracking my brain for some little snippet to pull from the noisy static… but there was nothing there except a door shut in my face.
Chapter Seventeen
Liliana
Jaxson didn't come home last night.
I wished I didn't know this, but I did. I would have heard him if he had, because I spent the rest of the day locked in my room, writing like my fingers were on fire.
I wrote down exactly how the kiss felt, the press of his lips against mine, how they parted without my meaning to. How I sagged into him like I lost the ability to stand. How the bottom of my stomach dropped out like I was on a roller coaster and pleasure that was close to physical pain coursed out from every touch of his fingers on my skin. That's all that happened in the hallway—just a kiss—but on the page I was free to let it go further, just the way my body had wanted. On the page, I was licking and sucking a trail of kisses down his bare, glistening chest while his blue eyes never left mine—ah, fuck.
I swore I could feel his lips on mine a day later, like he had burned or bruised me. But that was ridiculous. This whole thing was ridiculous; he was going to be my fucking stepbrother in two weeks. I should fucking know better, but the minute I saw him, all of my carefully laid defenses fall apart.
I sat up from my laptop like it had scalded me. I needed to nip this train of thought in the bud. With my mind made up, I changed out of my schlubby clothes and emerged from my room.
"Mornin', Lil," Diggs croaked over his coffee. His big body was perched ludicrously on the small stool at the breakfast bar. "Didja sleep well?"