WE WERE BOTH quiet in the shower, learning each other, taking advantage of the wet, easy glide of the soap on skin and kissing long and passionately under the spray. Parts that had been neglected in the three previous sessions, I explored. I traced his tattoo. I was fascinated by the design, the way it flowed when he flexed his sleek muscles. He turned to face me and crouched so I could reach his head. I sudsed up the thick layers of his hair, discovering that he purred like a panther when his scalp was massaged.
Returning the favor, he washed my hair and when he was done I was so relaxed I laid my wet head back onto his strong shoulder, only reanimating when he reached around my body and soaped my breasts. I don’t think it was any surprise to him that my tits were an important erogenous zone.
Afterward, we dried off and stood on the bathroom rug side by side, me with the towel wrapped around my body and tucked together between my breasts, him with one draped around his narrow waist. I made him smile through his beard of white shaving cream when I commented about how much his hair dripped and how I had noticed that he never dried it properly. He rinsed his face and watched me closely as I combed out my hair. Snagging one of the complimentary lotions from the counter, I propped my foot up on the shelf below the sink to slather lotion onto my calves and thighs.
"So that's why your skin is so incredibly soft," he said low like he had discovered an important key to the universe or maybe just to me.
I smiled and nodded, pleased by his compliment and a little in awe of our ease together. Domesticity after mind blowing sex with him didn't feel awkward. It felt exactly the way it should be.
"Let me do that for you,” he offered, and I passed him the small tube.
"Not your usual scent," he commented as he poured a generous amount onto his hands.
"No."
"What is?" he asked, lifting one of my legs and placing my foot on his flexed thigh while I balanced by placing my hands on his strong shoulders.
"Dark Kiss from Bath and Body Works." My breath caught when he started to rub the lotion into my calf. He turned even a mundane ritual into something sensual.
"I couldn’t identify anything beyond the fact that I liked it and that it made me hard every time I got a whiff of it."
"Then I’ll buy a gallon." My voice was husky, the long smooth strokes of his lotion slick hands warming other parts of me fast.
He finished on one leg, and I readily offered him the other. His hands went higher on this one, up my thigh, beneath the hem of the towel. My pulse hammered. My breaths shortened. Within moments, he had both our towels ripped away, and a condom rolled on his cock. I spread my legs as he moved into position behind me, my hands gripping the bathroom counter, his on my hips yanking me backward into each deep stroke, taking me and giving me yet another mind blowing and soul shattering climax while our eyes were locked in the mirror.
A quicker necessities only rinse-off shower followed.
While I was blow-drying my hair, I heard him in the other room placing a call to room service. When I was finished and came out of the bathroom wearing one of the hotel robes, I discovered him in one of the midnight blue high backed chairs by the window.
"Come sit with me," he said.
"Sure." I crossed the room and started to scoot past him to sit in the other chair, but he grabbed me and pulled me down onto his lap.
"Not that far away." He threw a hand over my legs, arranging me across his lap so he could see my face. "Right here. Though I would prefer to hold you in the bed. I don’t trust my willpower where you're concerned, and I really want to ask you about the music you wrote and about this." He reached in my robe and drew my necklace out, looking into my eyes as he touched the pendant. "I have a feeling they’re related."
"Everything's related to music with my family."
"It was the opposite with mine. My dad loathed music after my mum left him."
"Was she a musician?"
"She fancied she was, but she fancied her drugs more. I went looking for her once." His expression clouded. "I wish I hadn’t."
"I’m sorry, Lucky." I laid my hand against his smoothly shaven cheek. He covered it with his own, then brought it down to his mouth to kiss it. My heart flipped in my chest from the way he looked at me.
"And your father?" He might want to know everything about me, but I had just as many questions for him. I captured his hand in both my own. "You said Sky came with you on tour after he died. What happened to him?"
"Lung cancer." His eyes glassed, and I watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. "He had three months from the time he was diagnosed until he was gone. I was over here in the states, in LA. About to go on tour. I flew home and spent most of those last three months with him. My bandmates were so incredibly cool about it. He and I made our peace with each other." He shrugged one shoulder. "It should have been easier knowing we weren’t at odds at the end. Knowing he smoked like a chimney, and that there was a good chance something bad like that would happen to him because of it, it should have been easier to let go. But it’s never easy, is it?" His fingers twitched in my hold, but his gaze on me didn’t waver.
"No." I cleared my throat. "No, it’s never easy. You’re right. I’m sorry for your loss."
"Thank you. I knew you would understand. Lots of people wouldn’t. They’d say we weren’t close for a long time. They’d say he had it coming with the cigarettes."
I shook my head, denying it.
"Sensitive. Empathetic. And beautiful."
It was my turn to swallow hard. "Thank you."
"It’s the truth. I hope there can always be truth between us, Raven. I get lied to enough in this business. I think you’ve been around my world long enough to understand that."
I nodded.
"So I knew you had some talent from all those sexy skits at the after-parties. But not that you write music. Tell me about that."
"It's not a simple thing to tell." I pulled in a breath for courage and willed the tears welling in my eyes not to spill. I didn’t want to blubber all over him. It had been such a wonderful night. Probably the best I’d ever had. I’d never had a connection with any guy the way I did with Lucky. Not that I wanted to examine too closely the reasons for that. I told myself it was just the scorching hot sex. I told myself that it wouldn’t cut me deeply if the way he looked at me changed after I shared all of the details of my sad story. "I have to go back a ways to explain. So you won’t think I’m any more nuts than you probably already do." I gave him a shaky smile. "It’s not often you have sex with a girl and she rolls over and starts bleeding out concert music all over the hotel stationery."
"No. Never. You’re right." His right brow dipped, and his gaze intensified. "But it didn’t feel like just sex, Raven." His voice rumbled from deep inside his chest. "And those notes aren’t your everyday ordinary music. And I don’t think you’re nuts, not unless I’m certifiable, too." He framed my face, searching my eyes with his fathomless blue ones, stroking my cheeks with his thumbs. I was becoming addicted to him doing that. To the rough drag of his calluses on my skin. To the way he looked at me as if he saw the real me. To him. "You're not what I expected,” he told me. “What I thought I always wanted in a woman. You're so much more."
"Lucky." I exhaled. My heart wanted to take flight on those beautiful words, but it was buried beneath a mountain of baggage that might very well make him wish he could retract them.
"Angel, what is it? What can be that bad?"
"Me." I peeled his hands from my face. "I'm so messed up."
"You're not."
"I am. I'm just a high functioning fuck up."
"Raven, I..."
"Don’t. Don’t be so understanding.” So everything I need, I thought, glancing away.
The hotel room desk was in front of me, but I barely registered the details of its form. Remembering, my present reality faded as I cast my mind backward into the past.
"I wasn’t a well behaved child. Sure, my mom indulged me. She always wanted a girl. My dad not so much. But then he didn’t need me, not when he had the perfect son. I was just a source of contention between him and my mom. An embarrassment.”
My stomach churned as I recalled the details of our last phone call. “I settled down a little in high school, mostly because it became apparent that I had a talent for composition. He's a band director, you see. He lives and breathes music. My parents shared that love. It bound them together. But then she was gone." I pulled in a difficult breath and swiped at my wet cheeks, noting that Lucky had gone very still. Afraid he was already withdrawing from me, I forced myself to spit out the rest.
"My dad was devastated. I stayed home to help him. I turned down a scholarship to Juilliard. I went to a state school for a Bachelor of Arts in Education instead and took a teaching position in a nearby school system after I graduated. I don’t think to this day that he understands what a sacrifice it was for me to stay. To give up my one chance to get out from under his thumb, to find myself and my own way, to express myself through music. I actually think he sees my choices as failures, more proof that I lack ambition and direction."
My fingers curled into my palms. "The acting out I did in my younger years was nothing compared to college. Partying. Boys. Drugs. I made an art form out of misbehavior to force him to acknowledge me." My spine went rigid. I felt the warm soothing strokes of Lucky's hand over it, but I couldn’t receive his comfort. I was too caught up in the emotions of the past.
"If it weren’t for Hawk I never would have graduated. He rescued me on more than one occasion when I took things too far. My brother was the only one who could talk sense into me. He was going to medical school. He wanted to be an endocrinologist to help diabetics like my mom. He was always helping people. Helping me. I probably wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for him.” Blinking back tears, I licked my dry lips and forced myself to continue.
“One morning, after I had been up all night partying with Ivan, I heard my cell ring several times, but I was too wasted to answer it." My voice was as dull as the world was without the bright light that my brother had been in it. "Hawk’s car had broken down. He managed to get it to the shoulder and called a tow service. They told him it would be ninety minutes before they could get to him. He had been up all night on a twenty-four hour shift and didn’t want to wait that long, so he tried to call me." Tears spilled. I had replayed his recorded message so many times. "That’s the last time I heard his voice." The tears came one after the other now, rivers of regret running hot against my cold skin. "I was less than a mile away from where it happened." I clenched my hands into such tight fists that my nails bit into my palms. "They said he died instantly when the other car ran into his. I don’t know if I believe them. I think they tell you stuff like that to make you feel better. But it will never be better."
My voice broke on a sob. “If only I had picked up the phone when he called me.” Suddenly, I was surrounded, enveloped in strong arms as my body shook. I dropped my head to his chest and wrapped my arms around his waist. I wanted to burrow my way into his warmth. To be absorbed by him. To believe that the comfort he offered meant that the guilt I had revealed wouldn’t negate the approving words he had spoken earlier.
"Shhh." He stroked his hands down my back. I could feel the warmth of his touch through the robe. "It was an accident. It’s not your fault, Raven. From what you’ve told me, I’m sure your brother wouldn’t want you to feel like it was. Would he?"
I stilled. I lifted my head, blinked through my tears, saw the fierce sincerity in Lucky's eyes and allowed myself the opportunity to consider the idea that he might be right. The tears slowed. I licked my lips, tasting the pooled sorrow, the regret and maybe even a droplet of absolution. Because Lucky was right. My dad might never forgive me. I might not be able to forgive myself. But my brother would have. He was that kind of man. The best. Protective of those he loved. Responsible. Caring. A lot like the man holding me now.
"My brother would have liked you," I whispered and watched something bright flare in Lucky's eyes.