CHAPTER 18

ALICIA

Jared was parked in the small lot out back, and he guided me to his SUV with a protective palm placed on my lower back. The feel of his hand there, big and warm and like I was something worth protecting to him, was amazing.

He handed me his keys after digging them out of his pocket and clicking the lock. The SUV was pretty much standard edition for people in his position, pitch black with black leather seats and black windows.

“I’ve always wanted to know, is there someone who gives you one of these as a ‘Welcome to the club, you made it’ gift?”

Confusion briefly marred his features. Then his lips twitched into an amused smile as he pulled back on the handle to the driver’s side door and helped me in. “Sorry to disappoint. I bought this bad boy all by myself.”

Shutting the door behind me, he quickly rounded the front of the car and slid in beside me. I had his address programmed in my phone, but he gave it to me anyway, and most of the words he spoke on the way to his house where his softly given directions.

Looking pensive, his eyes were locked on a point on the horizon, and I wondered what he was thinking. Examining his profile, the sharp angles of his stubbled jaw, and the white button-up shirt that was rolled up to his elbows to expose the dark tattoos that lived on his skin, I wished that I could develop the ability to read his mind.

Jared surprised me tonight in more ways than one. First, it surprised me that he had the definite makings of a gentleman when on a date. Then, he surprised me by being open and honest, really listening to me as if what I was saying was important to him, those dark eyes intrigued and only on me.

There were plenty of people staring at him at the restaurant, but I didn’t think that he even noticed. Our server was clearly a fan, gaping at Jared every time he neared our table, his hands trembling as he delivered Jared’s drinks, but the man himself looked at me and only at me for the entire duration of our dinner.

When he smiled tonight, it was exactly that. Not the cocky smirks or the flashy grins that I’d grown used to from him, but wide or playful genuine smiles that could light up the sun if he cared to aim them at it. Instead, they were all aimed at me and had the same effect. Being the sole focus of his attention was intoxicating, and it made my nipples pebble and my body come to life.

All thoughts of resisting him if he tried to sleep with me had dissipated under that gaze, gone with the wind as surely as his demeanor tonight hadn’t been that of the Emperor of Rock, but Jared Larsen himself. And that man? I couldn’t believe how much I wanted him.

I wanted him so badly that it was uncomfortable, and while I kept trying to convince myself that sleeping with him was a bad idea, my body wasn’t listening. My nipples were aching for his touch, my heart throwing itself against my ribs, and my seam slick while my core felt painfully empty. And he still hadn’t touched me.

“Eyes on the road,” Jared said, glancing to my side of the car to find me still staring at him. “I promise you can look as much as you want for as long as you want once we get to my place.”

My cheeks heated from embarrassment, but I snapped my eyes back to the road. He was right, that was where they should be, but I couldn’t help sneaking a few sidelong glances at him along the way.

“Sorry,” I told him once I managed to get my embarrassment over being caught under control.

“Don’t be. I like having you look at me, but it would put a bit of a damper on the night if we wrecked the vehicle. Paperwork and all that. It takes long, and there are much better things we could be doing with that time.”

My hammering heart skipped a few beats, and heat of a different kind than embarrassment surged through me. Sucking my lips between my teeth, I wet them with my tongue and released them, not aware that Jared was watching me until a low groan came from his side of the cab.

“Just get us home,” he said, his eyes now unashamedly running over my body, so heated that I could practically feel them burning into me.

When we finally reached his house a few minutes later, Jared’s demeanor shifted again, to something more like it had been in my office that one day when he’d gotten me all hot and bothered from all the way across my desk. As soon as my feet hit the ground, Jared grabbed my hand, and I struggled a bit to keep up with his long strides, but I managed.

Producing a key from his pocket, he unlocked the door and led me inside. Before I could fully process that Jared’s house wasn’t exactly what I would have expected from him, his hands were on my hips, his eyes locked onto mine as he walked me backward until my back hit some kind of surface. I thought it might have been a staircase.

But all I could see was Jared, and all I could feel was the heat radiating from his body to mine as his arms caged me in. He leaned his head down until our lips were so close together that if I lifted my chin even slightly, we would be kissing.

“I want this, Alicia. I want you.” As if to emphasize or prove his point, he slammed the lower half of his body against mine so I would feel the hard length of him straining to get out of his pants. One of his hands gestured between us as his eyes stayed on mine. “But if this is going to happen, you need to understand that as badly as I want to fuck you, as much as I’m dying to slide into you and to make you come so hard you can’t see for a full minute, I don’t want a relationship. This isn’t the start of anything serious.”

Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, I remembered having a conversation with the band where they’d all assured me that they were straight with the women that they slept with and that everyone knew what they were getting into. Jared certainly stuck to that rule. I simply had to decide if I would be okay with that. This was what getting that talk felt like.

Who was I kidding? Only myself if I thought for one second that I was walking away from him right now.

“I understand.”

Jared sucked in a deep breath, then let out a low hiss as he rocked his hips against mine, causing a moan to escape from my lips at the delicate pressure on my aching clit and at the sounds he was making.

I’d never been with a guy who was particularly vocal before, but I was already sure that that was about to change. It was slightly distressing how much that turned me on.

He dropped his head to my ear, letting the very tip of his tongue lick its shell and gently nipping at my earlobe.

“Thank God,” he breathed, bringing one of his large hands to rest on the side of my neck as his thumb traced my jaw. “One last thing. Are you on birth control?”

I could barely think by that point, as completely surrounded by Jared as I was, and his question caught me somewhat by surprise, but I nodded. “I am.”

“Good. That’s good.”

He lowered his mouth to mine, the hand on my neck moving to cup my chin and lift it, my lips parting in the moment before he sealed his over them. Almost like that moment in a movie when time stopped, his lips were all I knew.

His wet, delicious taste. There were faint traces of alcohol, but the rest of him was all Jared. The slide of his tongue and every wondrous second of his lips on mine made me feel like pure starlight. It was a mix of sensations so heady that I couldn’t keep track of them all.

I sighed, savoring every second of this luxurious kiss. Our lips glided together, our tongues touching, exploring, and our breaths mingling. Jared groaned, a carnal and masculine sound that made my knees weak.

He steadied my slight wobble with a hand on my hip, his other roping into my hair as he deepened the kiss, tasting me more insistently. He nipped at my lips, and I let out a little moan as our kiss shifted and became harder. Faster. Closer. My breaths were becoming pants by the time he stopped kissing me.

“Come with me,” he said against my lips, gathering up my hand and leading me up the stairs to his bedroom.

A part of me wanted to pause to take in the lived-in space—the baby grand piano that sat in the corner, the neatly-made bed, and the clothes strewn all around it—but my world zoomed out of focus and narrowed on Jared instead. He beckoned me over with the crook of his finger to where he’d come to a stop in front of his bed. Ambient light from outside shone through his windows.

My feet were carrying me toward him while my brain was still trying to process that one entire wall of his bedroom was made of glass, his bed positioned up against the wall beside it so that if you lay on your side while in it, the view would be nothing short of spectacular.

The view was forgotten as Jared tugged me into his arms and kissed me again. He only stopped again when I was breathless and wanting, desperate to push him back onto his bed and have my wicked way with him.

His lips curled into a knowing smile as his hands dropped to the edge of my dress, bunching the material in them as he waited for me to answer his unasked question.

“Yes,” I breathed. Not five seconds later, my carefully selected dress was on the floor, and I was standing in front of this world-famous rock star in nothing but my underwear and my heels.

“Fucking hell,” Jared groaned as he took a step back and surveyed every inch of me. Emboldened by the hunger in his eyes, I put my hands on my hips and made a slow turn, remembering that he’d promised I could look my fill, too. I hadn’t yet fully completed my turn when his hands were on me, deftly unhooking my bra and rolling off my panties as he kissed me like I’d never been kissed before.

My hands flew to his back, feeling the thick ropes of muscle flex under my fingers before I found myself on my own back. Our kiss didn’t break as Jared’s hand danced down my side, igniting the skin where he touched it and leaving a light smattering of goosebumps in its wake.

His body was hard as steel against my soft one, his weight pressing me into his mattress as his hands continued their eager exploration. Mine wanted to do the same. I wanted to touch him more than I’d ever wanted anything. My fingers found the hard, plastic nubs of his buttons and fumbled to undo them when Jared grunted, “Let me.”

Sitting back on his knees, he reached both hands behind his back, grabbed hold of his shirt, and pulled it clean off, throwing it carelessly aside. I wanted to look at him. I wanted to catalog each one of the dark lines of ink on his chest so that I could recall them for all of posterity, but I wanted his skin on mine more.

Grabbing his face between my hands, I pulled his mouth back to mine and moaned when my nipples touched his hot skin for the first time. He kissed me deeply as his smooth hand cupped the side of my breast and stroked the skin underneath it. His touch lit me up in previously unknown ways as he shifted so that he was lying slightly to my side.

Bracing himself on one of his forearms, his hand tunneled through my hair to grip the base of my neck while his free hand was still on my breast, now drawing circles around its peak.

I groaned loudly into his mouth when he brushed the hardened nipple with the pad of his thumb and then tugged at it. I could feel him smiling slightly against my lips before he lifted his head and asked, “Sensitive?”

I nodded, and his smile grew even wider. “Excellent. Good to know.”

When he lowered his mouth again, it wasn’t to resume our kiss. His lips traveled along my jaw, the scruff of his goatee tickling slightly as he nuzzled my neck, and his hand still teased my nipples until it was replaced by his warm mouth. My back arched into him, anything to get closer.

His hand now free, it started moving down between my breasts and down over my ribs, way too slowly for my liking. Air replaced the mattress beneath my butt for a second as my hips bucked impatiently and my legs opened farther.

Jared hissed when my thigh made contact with his still-covered erection, and he quickly angled himself away from it.

“Greedy, are we?”

Was I? I didn’t know. I just knew that I wanted—no needed—him to touch me properly. And I needed it now. “Please.”

“You don’t have to beg me for it, not tonight anyway.” He pinned me with his eyes, as wild with lust as I was feeling, and I tried to ignore the implications of not tonight, meaning that perhaps there would be more nights. “All you have to do is tell me. Tell me that you want me to make you come, and I’ll do it.”

I’d never used those words before, and I wasn’t sure if I could, but I could see he needed to hear me say them and that he wasn’t going to do a damn thing until he did. I focused on the frustration of him not touching me instead of the actual words I was about to say. “Make me come, Jared.”

A low growl rumbled from his chest, and the primal sound nearly pushed me over the edge by itself. It was nearly painful to wait for him, as wet and ready as I’d ever been, and when he finally touched me, I screamed out in relief.

It wasn’t a sound I’d ever made before, but I was so far gone that I couldn’t bring myself to care. Jared’s fingers moved inside me, hitting me just right as his thumb circled my aching clit. “That’s right, baby. Let me know what feels good. I want to hear you.”

And let him hear me, I did. My hips pushed down into his thrusts, meeting each perfect one. The rhythm we were creating together was too much for me to bear, and as if my body was an instrument he’d played all his life, he pressed his thumb down on my clit at exactly the right time and with exactly the right amount of pressure, and I came apart around his fingers.

White hot heat spread through me, the exquisite sensation of my orgasm ripping through me like lightning. Jared’s lips crashed down onto mine as he kissed me through it, but his eyes stayed open on mine, stroking my trembling body back down when I was done.

“Holy fuck, seeing you come was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” Jared rasped out, his chest rising and falling almost as fast as mine was.

Seeing him looking at me with such unadulterated need in his eyes, his throat working and his muscles looking as if he were physically restraining himself from ripping off his pants and fucking me for the rest of the weekend, was the hottest thing I’d ever seen. But I couldn’t find the words to return his compliment.

The only ones I could find were the ones I desperately needed for him to hear. “I want you inside me. Now, Jared. No more playing around.”

Jared’s eyes flashed with desire at my words, and he moaned. “I was going to taste you first. You’re killing me here, but I’ll give you what you want. I said I would.”

Thankfully, he made quick work of unbuckling his belt and kicking off his jeans and boxers at the same time. I involuntarily whimpered out loud when I finally saw him naked.

The man was a work of art. There were no other words to describe Jared Larsen in the nude.

I didn’t know where to look first. I could worship his washboard abs, and I could get lost in the deep lines between his hips. I could write poetry about the way the tattoo-covered muscles in his forearms rippled as he rolled a condom over the most glorious cock I’d ever seen.

If there was one male appendage in the world that deserved to be waxed lyrical about, it was his. It barely registered that he was sheathing himself, even after I told him earlier that I was on birth control.

“I promised you could look, but what do you want first?” he asked me, breathing as heavily as I was as his eyes swept over my body in much the same way that mine swept over his. “Look or feel?”

“Both,” I whispered, afraid that if I spoke too loudly, I would wake myself up from this impossible dream.

Jared lay down on his back and reached for me. “Same. You on top is the best I can do to make that happen for you.”

I didn’t waste any time straddling him, and he gripped the base of his beautiful dick, feeding himself into me as I lowered myself onto him. Our groans mingled in the air as he buried himself deep inside me, and sparks of light swam in my vision from the feel of having him there.

From the words Jared was rasping out, it felt as good for him as it did for me. My hips started moving of their own accord, even when I hadn’t fully adjusted to his considerable size. His eyes squeezed shut as I started moving, his fingers digging into my thighs as if he were composing himself.

It was only a split second before his eyes were on mine again, and he started moving with me. His hips lifted to set a pace so incredible that I fell apart three more times around him. Then he was quivering and tensing below me, finally following me over the edge at the same time as I nearly drowned in the waves of pleasure from my last orgasm.

“Oh fuck. Fuck, Alicia. Fuck.” He moaned as he emptied himself inside me, his features twisted into pleasured torment, and it was by far the sexiest “O” face I’d ever seen.

Collapsing onto his chest, my muscles were shaking, and my breathing was choppy and ragged. Jared’s arms wrapped around me, and we lay together in complete, but comfortable silence.

Without either of us saying a word, Jared rolled us so that he was spooning me. Talk about the impossible dream, if only for this one night. I cuddled up against his chest, put my hand on his, and fell asleep in his arms.