LENA

The Booker I’ve grown accustomed to is back. Unlike the past several days, during which his lovemaking was bossy and underlined with anger and unquestionable hurt over his mother’s betrayal, he now is tender. Where his kisses were hard, hot and deep, they now are soft and—

Okay, the hot and deep part hasn’t actually changed. But his mouth now entreats where the past few nights it was very much I’m in charge.

When it comes right down to it, I love his kisses any which way I can get them. Oh, but this—

Booker is propped up on one forearm, casting a shadow down half my body. He’s flung a heavy thigh over mine, and his wide-palmed, capable hands imprison my wrists against his beautiful bedspread. All the while, his amazing lips—oh, my—feel somehow softer and fuller than usual as they delicately press and tug with devastating effect at my own.

They slide away before I’m ready. I can’t gather the wits to tell him as much, however, because Booker’s mouth is already pressed to the curve of my jaw below my ear. It’s a spot that has drawn greedy moans from me since the first time he kissed me there back in high school. Then he slowly drags kisses, with an occasional hint of teeth, lightly down my throat.

He licks the delicate hollow at its base. “You have too many clothes on,” he murmurs and removes them from me as if he has more hands than an octopus has tentacles.

The way I, apparently, possess an equal number of needy, highly sensitized zones. Zones that have me moving to the beat of a pulsating need when he takes sweet his time pinching, tugging, stroking and penetrating with his fingers, his lips, his tongue.

Without warning, Booker pushes away from me. He tears off his own clothing, then grabs me up again and rolls onto his back. I find myself sitting with my knees on either side of his hips, blinking like a demented rabbit at the abrupt change of positions. He grins up at me.

“You’re in charge. You know what to do?”

I shuffle my shins against the luxurious spread on either side of his thighs, glance down at his sex, which is pointing somewhere between the ceiling and his chin, then quickly look back at Booker’s face. “Sort of.”

“I trust you to figure it out. Unless—” His brows scrunch together. “Would you rather I be in charge?”

That puts a poker up my spine. “Again? No, sir! You’re right. It’s my turn.” I can feel my face flaming, but I sit a little straighter. Shift forward a bit and strop my girl parts against the rigid length of his cock. And, oh, boy, that feels so good I find myself wriggling for more.

I manage not to let my eyes roll back in my head, though—I’m darn proud of that. Instead, I look at him through lowered lashes past my snootily raised nose and demand, “How hard can it be?”

“Real damn.” He raises his hips to nudge me with something extremely hard indeed.

I cut loose a laugh that ends in a loud, inelegant snort and slap my hands down on his chest. “Give me one of those rubber thingies.”

He looks pained. “Please. They’re rubbers. Not thingies. Never thingies, okay?”

I blow a disdainful breath out the side of my mouth.

Booker laughs, a sound I’m thrilled to hear again, then twists slightly to reach into the bedside table drawer. I ride the movement like a one of those Barnum and Bailey bareback horsewomen.

He rolls back and hands me the rubber. I carefully rip the packaging, then study its contents a moment. Reaching out, I slide my hand around his man part (Okay, okay, so I still have a little trouble with the language options he gave me) and balance the rubber atop it. It tips slightly, looking like a jaunty little cap, and I blow out an exasperated breath. Then I meet Booker’s gaze.

“Fine,” I say. “I don’t exactly know how to get this from here—” I tap the little disk atop his tip “to down to here.” I squeeze the base of his sex in my fist.

“You’re killing me, here.” Booker contracts his hips, dragging a portion of his length a short way through my grip, before thrusting up to push it back where it was. The rubber falls off and he slaps blindly at the spread until he finds it again. He shows me how to put it on and I smile inwardly to see him sweating by the time the job is done.

He watches me suspiciously. “With all the readying, you’re probably out of the mood. I should get you back up to speed.” He reaches as if to grab my waist and lift me off him.

I slap his hands away. “Don’t you worry about me, I’m rarin’ to go!” And I am. It’s emboldening knowing I’m wanted this much, and I raise up onto my knees and align my entrance to the upright column in my hand. Carefully, I lower myself.

And go about showing him exactly what a girl can do when she’s put in charge.

* * *

It’s been several hours since I got to be boss, yet I’m having one heck of a hard time wiping the smile from my face. I can’t help myself, I just feel on top of the world. Because, you know what? Maybe this time I am not going to default to the runner behavior Will accuses me of. I feel as if I’m where I’m supposed to be when I’m with Booker. And danged if he doesn’t seem equally happy to be with me.

I’ve just finished my final song and am making my way toward Booker’s table where I last saw him from the stage. I’ve gotten better at not being sidetracked by fans, courtesy of the aiming-for-my-goal trick he taught me. But a silver-haired, barrel-chested gentleman, smelling of Brilliantine and expensive cigars, suddenly rises from his table to block my way.

“Miss Baker,” he says in a mild, refined voice. “I apologize for intercepting you out of the blue, but I’m Chester Moss. I own The Black Door in Los Angeles.”

Struck speechless, I simply gaze up at him. Everyone in this business knows about The Black Door. It’s the biggest legit lounge on the West Coast.

“If you can spare me a few minutes,” he says, when I continue to stand there in silence, “I would love to discuss a business opportunity with you.”

His words scramble in my mind for an instant before I get a grasp on them. “Okay.” I shrug and take a seat in the chair he pulls out for me.

Ten minutes later, I walk away in a daze. Booker is no longer at his table and I make my way backstage, desperate to talk to him.

When I hit the deserted hallway to his office, I laugh out loud, do a little dance and hug myself. Chester Moss just offered up my long-time fantasy on a sterling silver platter, all tied up with a big red ribbon. So, isn’t it funny how I find myself with zero interest in accepting his proposal? He urged me to think it over and I’m clutching the business card he thrust into my hand. In addition to The Black Door’s professionally printed contact information is a handwritten phone number of the Olympic Hotel where he’s currently lodging.

I grin to myself as I approach Booker’s office. I can hardly wait to tell him about this. Maybe I’ll let him wiggle on the line a little before I let him talk me out of it.

I poke my head in his office and see him sitting at his desk staring into space.

“Hey,” I say, stepping inside. “You’ll never guess what—”

Booker looks up at me, and his dull, dead-eyed look stops me in my tracks. I rush across the room. “What is it? More problems with your mother?”

“What? No.” He sits up, and in next moment it’s as if that look never existed. He’s once again Booker Jameson, suave owner of the Twilight Room. He flashes me a strained smile. “Sorry. I...might have been thinking about her. I was definitely woolgathering.”

He’s saying everything right, but something feels off. Before I can pin down what, precisely, Booker says, “So—” An expression I can’t identify flashes across his face. “Were you saying something when you came in?”

“Omigod, yes!” I laugh like a loon. “You are never going to believe what just happened?”

“I’m not, huh?”

“Not in a million years!” I’m laughing myself silly again and, knowing I must sound like a crazy person, I try to get a grip. Still, Booker will just have to excuse me, because I have never received and refused an offer quite like this one before.

Booker’s still sitting at his desk, so I round it to his side and hop up to sit atop its solid corner. Leaning back on my hands, I cross my legs and twirl my uppermost foot, pretending to be the sophisticate whom, even if I live to a ripe old age, I likely will never be. “I was coming to your table after my set when this man stopped me. He introduced himself at Chester Moss of the Black Door in L.A.” I look at him expectantly, but he merely stares at me with no expression at all.

What on earth? I falter, but then gather myself. “He offered me a gig there and, Booker, the terms are crAzy.” I wiggle my eyebrows at him, waiting for the negotiations to begin.

Pushing back from the desk, he rises to his feet. “So, are you leaving right away?”

“W-what?” I seem to be having a tough time processing this conversation.

“You should,” he says in a voice so cool we might as well be strangers. “I have found once an employee decides to leave, they don’t work for shit. So, you might as well go pack up your stuff.”

Employee? That’s all he has to say? He sees me as an employee who is going to shirk my job until I can go to my new and improved one? Suddenly cold to the core, I wiggle off the desk. “Then that’s what I’ll do,” I say through frozen lips. But I walk extra slowly as I leave his office, waiting for him to call me back. To say, “Gotcha.”

Something.

Apparently, however, he has said everything he plans to say.

Back in my dressing room, I find myself turning in slow circles, trying to figure out what to do next. I was downright visionary earlier this week when I told Clara I need a bigger suitcase. Of course, at the time, I was talking about sometime far, far down the line. I have added greatly to what I owned when I arrived, though.

I walk over to the closet and look at the clothing within, both old and new, but shut the door again rather than start pulling them from their hangers. I wander over to my dressing table and fiddle with my makeup brushes, then pick up the wire cage holding the champagne cork from the standard Henry gave me. I turn it over and over in my hands, before carefully setting the thing back down again. I glance over my shoulder at the bejeweled star attached to the outside of the still open door. This doesn’t make a lick of sense.

I freeze. It doesn’t make sense. Shoving aside my hurt, I consider the reasons why.

Booker punched Will because he thought his one-time best friend might be my lover. After I spent the night at Clara and Dot’s—before I basically moved in during this mess with his mother—he asked me if I was coming home. Not coming to his house; home, he said. And every time after that, as if it’s mine as well as his. So, what is this don’t let the door hit you in the butt beeswax?

The knot in my belly slowly unwinds and I quit feeling so dang cold. Booker thinks he’s giving me my shot at fame and glory—I know he is. As if my career is what I want more than anything else in the world.

Well, the devil with that. I storm from the room, not bothering to close the door behind me. If someone wants to rob me blind, let ‘em. It’s only stuff. Well, if they take my door star or champagne cork, I will eventually go gunning for them. But I can’t be bothered over anything else.

When I arrive at Booker’s office and see he is right where I left him, I stop in the doorway to look him over. But smooth Booker is nowhere to be seen. Instead of busily tearing into tasks with his usual single minded industry, his always squared shoulders are slumped, his elbows are on his desk, with no regard for the papers they’ve knocked out of place, and his hair is standing on end as if he’s been plowing his fingers through it. I can’t see his face because it’s buried in his hands.

Praying to the heavens I’m not fooling myself—that what I think is true isn’t merely an illusion I badly want to be the truth, I step silently into the room.

But I don’t take any particular effort to close the door behind me quietly.