“All the better to please you with,” he said with a shaky grin, his voice ragged. And then he cursed under his breath and laid a hand on her wrist to stop her, gently drawing her hand out of his shorts. “Your touch is heaven. But the first time I come for you, Nella-bella, I want to be with you, in you.” He leaned forward and kissed her, fierce and hungry, his tongue stroking into her mouth with urgent need. Then he pulled away, breathing hard. “I need a moment. You’re wrecking my self-control here — why do I fall apart when you touch me?”
It shocked her a little, that he’d admit to so much vulnerability. But it was also a gift and a huge turn-on to know how intensely she affected him. “Don’t know. But yeah, I want to ride that explosion when it happens.”
He found his margarita on the edge of the hot tub and took a drink. The way he bit his lower lip told her that her words hadn’t helped him cool down. Ride that explosion. The air between the two of them was charged with sensuality.
She took a drink too, waiting for his next move. I need a moment, he’d said. She could see his chest rising and falling as he breathed hard, as though he couldn’t get enough air.
“Talk to me,” he said. “Tell me something, ask me something, doesn’t matter what.”
“Okay.” Nell tried to think of something that could serve for conversation. “I think your crying angel tattoo is beautiful. You want to tell me more about it? How come it has a broken heart at the bottom?”
He looked away from her, the lust in his eyes shifting into something more complex and bittersweet. “And the Smidge logo that you’re too polite to mention? You want to know what happened, don’t you?”
Crap. That was the wrong question to ask, wasn’t it? “You don’t have to tell me. I’m just making conversation. I really do think your ink is gorgeous.”
Eamonn sighed. “Thanks.” He knocked back the rest of his drink and gazed out into the dark, toward the rain and the river.
“You can tell me, if you want to,” Nell said softly. “I’ll listen.” She wanted to touch him, to close the distance between them and erase the trouble from his mind, but some small doubt held her back.
He was silent for a while, then said, “You know I wasn’t their first bassist, right? Angel and Blade were best friends in school, and Dice was their neighbor down the street. They performed at school dances and did gigs in local bars before they were even legal to drink, I guess, and one of their friends played bass okay, but maybe not up to a pro standard, or maybe he wasn’t hot enough, didn’t fit the look. I don’t know. So, the label persuaded them to drop him, and pushed me on them instead — their hired eye candy.”
“More than that, surely.”
“Oh, I’m a competent musician, no doubt about that, but Angel and Blade never really let me in. Even when we were at our worst, high all the time and barely able to keep everything together, they watched out for each other and tried to protect Dice from the worst of it and I was on my own.”
“But you didn’t leave them?”
“No.” Something stark and lonely was etched across his face for a moment and then was gone.
“So, they dumped you? Kicked you out? Why?”
He forced a laugh. “Forget it. Let’s just go to bed. A truly epic fuck will help me forget.” He slid toward her, swirls of displaced water eddying around him. She wanted to reach for him, knew it would be epic, needed that release maybe as much as he did. Instead, she slid away, keeping a bit of space between them.
“Tell me,” she said, aching with regret. “I think I need to know.”
“Fuck me. You’re not going to let this go, are you, ninja woman?”
She wished that she could. But she needed to know. “I can’t.”
“I wanted to feel like I belonged, okay? But as Angel got clean and Blade was working on it, we didn’t even party together anymore. Smiles for the media, efficient rehearsals and performances, that was it. Trying to fill that void with sex worked for a while.” He shrugged. “It felt less like being abandoned after a show if I was busy screwing my brains out. And there were always groupies up for it. That’s their calling, right? Didn’t feel so bad if I was making some girl’s night.”
He trailed his fingers through the water around him as though bemused by the colored lights and jet bubbles.
She reached over and shut off the lights and jets. “Just tell me,” she said.
“Well, I found Blade alone. He was mucking around with his guitar, maybe writing a song, I don’t know. And I wanted to get my bass and jam with him, craft the song together. But he stopped playing when I walked in, put his guitar in its case like he couldn’t bear for me to be a part of that. So I offered the only thing we’d ever really done together — said let’s go out and get trashed. Just booze, he said, because he was supposed to be getting clean. But I’d only ever felt part of Smidge when we were all high.”
Nell felt sick. “You knew he was a recovering addict and you encouraged him to relapse?”
Eamonn was silent for a moment, then he nodded. “It didn’t seem so terrible at the time,” he muttered.
“Ugh.” She hoisted herself out of the hot tub, shivering a little in the cool air, and grabbed a towel from
