CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Corbin

I’d undressed Aimee down to her bra and panties and had covered her with kisses, but she seemed distant. Withdrawn. Leaning back against the headboard on my bed, I backed off, and stroked her forehead. “What’s going on inside that sweet head of yours, Aimee my angel?”

She shook her head, those long, dark curls of hers tumbling over her naked shoulders. “I know, I’m distracted. It’s not you, it’s—”

“Me,” I said, finishing her cliché. “Tell me.”

A long, deep sigh emanated from somewhere deep within. “My mom shared something with me today. Something important. A secret about my father.”

Leaning forward, I placed a soft kiss on her shoulder. “You don’t have to tell me unless you want to. I’m here, though.”

She toyed with a strand of her hair, staring off into space. I wasn’t sure she’d open up again, but she heaved a deep breath and started speaking. “I always knew my birth father was a one-night-stand. Some random rocker my mom met and never saw again. She didn’t even remember his name. Supposedly,” she added harshly.

I massaged her temples, doing my best to silently communicate I was there for her. “I hear that tone in your voice.”

“I must be shaking all over.”

Whatever she wanted to tell me, she needed some time to lead up to it. I rubbed her arms and while she was shivering some, at least there were no goosebumps. Something had upset her, and to a significant degree. “Whatever it is, it’s going to be okay. If you need to shake, then do that,” I said.

She stilled but leaned into my arms. “My mom could have died out in a cold field if someone hadn’t found her and brought her to the ER.”

“It’s got to be scary knowing you almost lost her.”

Aimee laughed bitterly and wiped at her eyes. I looked away for a minute and tried to give her a moment of privacy. I knew her more now, and she seemed to be the type who didn’t want anyone to worry about her, who felt she needed to hide her feelings.

Maybe that was why we got along so well.

“I think she’s going to get better…it’s just this feeling I have. It’s like she’s different, like something had just changed in her.”

“That’s good,” I said, keeping my voice low and soothing. Leaning down, I kissed the crown of her head.

“You know how I know this time it will be different?” She turned and gazed at me with limpid eyes. “This time she told me the truth.”

“How so?”

“She told me who my father is. I now have his name.”

Her simple statement had me floored. “She knew all along?”

She nodded, then dipped her head to catch my gaze with hers. “You know who Grandy Love is, right?”

Shock and guilt traveled in unison up my spine. “Your father’s Grandy Love? The Grandy Love? Holy shit!”

“Yep, that’s the one. But he doesn’t know about me. He has his own family.”

“Yeah, his wife Constance and his kids. Ella is twenty-two and Gabriel just turned seventeen.”

“I have a brother, too?” She sounded shocked. “How do you know all this?”

Now wasn’t the time to tell her I knew the Love family well because I’d hung out with them when Point Break opened for The Lovewilds a few years back. And now wasn’t the time to tell her about Point Break, even though I’d planned to on the way back from the hospital. I’m glad I kept my mouth shut. Learning her father was a world-famous rock star and so was her boyfriend on the same day would have been way too much. Especially since her mother had been in ICU. Aimee was strong, but I didn’t want to add to the burdens she was already carrying.

“What do you want to do about that?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Nothing. He doesn’t know about me, and it’s going to stay that way.”

“Aimee…”

“No. He might not have known about me, but he clearly didn’t want my mother. He’s not going to want me, either.”

“Aimee! You can’t know that. You—”

“Corbin, I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, sharply. “Not now. Not ever. You hear?”

“I hear you,” I said mildly. But I knew Grandy. Not well, but well enough to know the man was damned decent. He and his wife had a fantastic marriage, and even behind the curtains with the fans going crazy he was polite but never went after any of the girls who threw themselves at him—and a lot did. He loved his two kids, and I couldn’t see him rejecting Aimee. Not at all. But I couldn’t tell her all this without admitting who I was, and two shocks in one day was one too many. I wouldn’t push the issue now, but later, after I’d had a chance to admit to Aimee who I was, I’d let her know her father would welcome her with open arms.

That’s what she was afraid of. That, just like she said, he wouldn’t want her. But Corbin refused to believe that for a second. He knew how special Aimee was. So would Grandy.

“You’re being very nice to a girl who just found out she’s a bastard child of a rock star who never knew about her. A girl who’s unwanted.” Aimee emphasized her point by stroking her fingers through my hair, and I groaned at the touch. That woman was a damn temptress, and she knew it.

“You’re not,” I said, holding her chin and staring deeply into her eyes. Aimee couldn’t just laugh this off or try and avoid this, us. Our connection mattered, and she couldn’t get away from that. “Unwanted, that is. That’s why I care about you so much. You’re strong. Stronger than anyone I’ve ever met. Way stronger than—” I caught myself before I could say Kara’s name, but Aimee noticed.

“Hey,” she said softly. “I told you my big secret. You tell me yours.”

I had two secrets to pick from. I chose Kara. Because the woman I was falling in love with deserved to know about the woman who’d nearly destroyed me.

“Her name was Kara Eklund. We grew up together. In high school, we dated. She was my first.”

“How long were you together?”

“From when we were fourteen until eighteen.”

“Then you broke up. Why?”

I bit back a grimace. “She played mind games on me. Multiple times. Messed me up in the head, you know? Totally fucked me over, actually.”

“You don’t have to tell me if it’s too hard,” Aimee said, concern in her voice. “I shouldn’t have pushed you to tell me a secret. It’s none of my business.”

But it was, and in more ways than she knew. “Kara first told me she was pregnant in our junior year. We’d abstained until then, and even though I used a condom, she claimed she’d gotten pregnant. She tried to pressure me to marry her, but I said no. I wouldn’t. We could raise the baby but I wasn’t ready to be a husband. I wanted to go to college, to study music.”

“Did she have the baby?” Aimee asked, her eyes wide.

“There was no baby. She was never pregnant. But she let me believe that she was, and then when I wouldn’t marry her, she told everyone in town, including my parents and my grandmothers, that I’d made her get an abortion.”

“Oh my god, that’s awful.”

“It gets worse. She’d always text, call, come over, and when I didn’t get in touch with her right away, she’d flip out. Like, completely flip. I was on pins and needles, never knowing what kind of whacked out thing she was going to do to me next.” I grew silent for a moment, letting the memories swim through my mind as I fingered the rock necklace around my neck. Used to be I’d get sick at the memories—that I’d feel like I was drowning any time I recalled my time in Hallvard Hill, but this time even the thoughts of what Kara had done didn’t trigger the same gut-wrenching reaction.

“You okay?” Aimee asked softly.

I jerked, bringing myself back to awareness. “Yeah. The memories aren’t nice, but it’s easy telling you, oddly enough. So there I was, with a girlfriend who was making my life miserable when my parents were killed in that car crash I told you about. Suddenly Kara was wonderful. She held me together during the funeral, helped me stay on top of my classes when I was crying too much to do homework, made sure my grandmas were feeding me well, everything. She was supportive, loving, totally there for me in a way I needed, but it was all fake.”

“I don’t get it. How could being there for someone be fake?” Aimee’s question was legitimate. It was something I’d tangled with for years.

“I got involved in a rock band. They were older and played actual gigs. I was good—really good. But Kara didn’t like that I wasn’t at her beck and call anymore. So she started with more mind games. More manipulation. She’d show up at gigs crying her eyes out, telling girls in the audience that I’d beaten her, that I’d raped her, that I was a monster. Then when I tried to break up with her, she threatened suicide. Time after time after time.” I blew out a sharp breath. “I couldn’t take it anymore. I left. Found a band that was on the road and joined up with them. Never looked back.”

“And Kara?”

I shrugged. After I’d hit it big, Kara had tried getting in contact with me again. It had taken me filing a restraining order to get her to back off, and only after she’d pulled some pretty psycho stalker-ass kind of stuff.

“So that’s why you’re a drifter. You’re rootless because your roots were cut out from under you.”

I’d never thought of it that way before, but somehow what she said made sense. “Until now,” I replied, nuzzling her hair. “I kinda like Pontmaison. And I sure as shit like having you in my bed.”

She giggled. “I know.”

“But that’s not the point. I haven’t had someone who cared about me the way you do. I’m not sure I deserve it, but it feels good and I don’t want it to stop.”

“You’re amazing, though. You basically outswam a gator to save someone you didn’t know. You’re nice to Miss Cecily—don’t think I don’t know you’re the one who hammered all those loose nails back in on the verandah for her—and you like my cooking. It’s not hard to see you. Or to know what a good man you are. And when you thought Brad was being a jerk to me when he brought me home and you beat him up for me …” She stopped then and shook her head. “No, I’m not ever thinking about him here. Not in our bed.”

“I certainly hope not,” I said, grinning back at her. “I have to admit that I love the way you say that.”

“Say what?”

“Our bed. They’re the best words on the entire planet.”

“I thought the best words on the entire planet were either ‘I love you’ or ‘chocolate’,” she teased.

Leaning over, I kissed her, feeling her tongue tangle with mine, enjoying the way her hair smelled like vanilla and cinnamon. That was Aimee, this wonderful mix of sweet and spicy. There was so much more to her than she saw, so much more she had to offer the world, and I had no idea how she couldn’t see it, but I needed her to know that I saw her, that I cared.

That I really was falling in love with her. That part of me, no matter how ludicrous it sounded, was beginning to think I already had fallen.

I stood then, hating that I had to break away from her, but there were a few things I had to handle first. To start, I locked the door of my bedroom. I didn’t think Miss Cecily was the type to check up on her visitors, but it was just smart and it muffled sound, which all of us would be glad for. Then I stripped fast and quickly rolled on a condom. Even if we were both clean, I didn’t want to complicate anything between us with an unwanted pregnancy, and that seemed smart.

But I was ready, feeling myself breathing hard, almost panting before her, as if I’d run a marathon. I needed to show my commitment to her as much for her sake as my own.

She seemed to understand that because while I’d been dealing with the latex, she’d slipped out of everything but her bra and panties. I appreciated that. Even if she wore nothing more than plain cotton from the Wal-Mart, it was more attractive than the lace and over-the-top vinyl and God knew what else I’d seen from groupies on the road.

Aimee grinned back at me, something feline and feral, something that stirred every part of me. “Sorry I don’t have any chocolate.”

Slipping onto the bed, I pinned her underneath me, and began to kiss my way down her shoulder, stopping to suckle at her nipples through the thin fabric of her bra. “That’s not what I want to eat tonight.”

Devilish hands reached low to stroke my cock, and I jolted. I had to think of baseball facts to keep myself from coming, a problem I’d rarely had in my life. It was all Aimee, everything about her made me ready for sex, up for anything. She was a goddess, come to life just for me, and I loved everything about her.

God damn, I loved Aimee. How the hell had that happened?

I wasn’t sure, but I did know that it felt right. Aimee in my arms felt like perfection. I’d seen how happy Abby and Liam and Tucker and Nikki were with simpler lives. The groupies who’d once made my bed dance were nothing, not when I had this amazing woman to come home to every night.

Reaching behind her, I flicked off her bra clasp with one agile gesture of my fingers. Then I let my tongue trail over her areolas, as I enjoyed the way her nipples pebbled at my touch. My tongue worked a fierce, frantic rhythm over her left nipple and then I sucked it into my mouth, giving it all the attention it deserved. She shuddered under me and called my name, stirring me on even more.

Reluctantly, I broke away from her juicy nipple and traced my tongue over her skin. I let it go lower, feeling out the low divot of her belly button, loving the way she mewled and moaned under my ministrations.

Then I got to her panties.

Hooking my thumbs under the waist band of her underwear, I pulled it down, glad that she was with me, that she was arching her hips up to accommodate me. It didn’t take long to pull them off her silky smooth legs and to enjoy my reward—that freed patch of trim brown hair over her pussy. Grabbing her legs, I spread them apart, all the while searching her eyes, still making sure that after all the trauma of the day, it was what she really wanted.

“I want you so damn much, Aimee Bodine.”

“Me too,” she said, her voice a whisper that appealed to my primal caveman side.

My cock teased her pussy, just feeling out the smooth lips, taunting her with every trick I knew. Aimee arched her back and dug her heels into the mattress.

“Don’t tease me, please,” she panted, and I couldn’t resist anymore, couldn’t ignore what I wanted any more than she could.

Lining up the head of my cock with her channel, I plunged into her, burying myself balls deep in the woman I loved. I stopped there for a moment with our bodies fully joined and my dick twitching inside of her, stopped there so I could bury my nose in her hair, take in the scent of her, feel her body fragile and soft beneath my own.

I was home.

She just didn’t realize it all yet.

I pulled my head back so that I could look into her eyes. See those gorgeous grey-green eyes gazing back at me. “Are you ready?”

“God yes,” she said, arching her own back, her inner muscles coiling around my cock and the pleasure of it making my eyes roll back in my head.

She was more ready than I was. I pushed my hips back and rocked into her again. Part of me wanted this to be frantic, to reseal the pact between us, to let her know that she was mine. But reason won out. This was more than something animalistic, more than some fuck on the road. This was about the two of us joined as one, about trusting each other.

So I moved slowly, thrusting in and out of her gently, and trying to show her with my body how much she meant to me. I needed her to understand me with my body, the way I couldn’t help her understand or accept my words yet.

She shuddered under me soon, her own orgasm spilling through her, but I continued more, pushing into her and kissing, scraping at her throat with my teeth. Aimee arched up her neck then and nibbled at my ear.

It was enough to leave me coming too, my body convulsing in heat and passion and need.

After all of it, I laid back in the bed, spooning her close to me and sometimes peppering her forehead with kisses. “I care about you more than you know, Aimee Bodine.”

She was half asleep by then, but she mumbled a “me, too.”

It wasn’t what I was hoping for, but it would have to do for now.