“No way,” I laugh, batting her hands away playfully.

“You did say anything….” She lets the word trail off, desperately trying to hide the victorious smile from spreading on her lips when I realize she just backdoored me into doing this.

Fuck if that’s the kind of backdoor entry I prefer.

“So I let you put guyliner on me and then I get ice cream?” I quip, leaning back on the pillows behind me as I adjust my dick that’s at a constant state of semi-arousal with her around. She nods her head once. “I think I need a little more than that, Trixie,” I challenge back.

“Like what?” she giggles as she climbs astride my lap with pencil ready to demasculinize me while at the same time igniting my fire with the heat of her pussy sliding over my dick.

“Like this,” I say as I fist my hand in the back of her hair and pull her toward me. Her soft lips hit mine and I don’t hold back as I slip my tongue between her lips and take what I want.

She responds, all tongue, hands, mouth, and fuck am I not primed and ready to go. Our breathing gets heavier, our bodies reacting to each other, and all I want is more of her. I slide my hand into the back of her panties when she drags her mouth from mine.

“You’re trouble, you know that?” I laugh but it’s strained because fuck if I don’t want to take her fast and hard right now.

“Me, trouble?” she feigns innocence with a bat of her eyelashes, nipples front and center in my line of vision. “I’m just a challenge to handle, rocker boy, and oh how I like to be handled.” The laugh she gives me is seductive and could probably make a weaker man come on the spot but I’m holding out for the whole experience.

I pull her toward me so that I can taste her, get a little fill of the temptation before she denies me with that challenge I can already see blazing in those come fuck me eyes. Just when she starts letting me take the lead, reacting to my every action, I tear my mouth from hers even though it kills me so that I can leave her wanting a little bit more. “Believe me, I know how to handle you.”

She looks at me with her hazy caramel eyes, lips swollen from our kiss, and cheeks flushed. She sighs heavily, body tensing as my fingertips graze the slick flesh between her parted thighs. “I get what I want first,” she says holding up the eyeliner, “then you get what you want.”

Damn she’s good. Just when I thought I was in control, she handled me like nobody’s business, but that’s cool. In the end I’ll get everything I want.

Always do.

Living the dream.



Chapter 18


QUINLAN

I’ve been running in slow motion all day—it’s ridiculous. I feel like I’m ten steps behind from my first class of the day and I’m completely okay with it because I’m traveling through time on cloud nine.

And all because of Hawkin.

He kept me on the phone all morning, talking about everything and nothing until I looked at the clock and screeched at the time. He makes me feel like a damn teenager with a first-time crush. It’s rather ridiculous. I know how this story is going to end but hell if this girl, who doesn’t believe in fairy-tale endings, isn’t going to wear the glass slipper for the short while it fits.

And this glass slipper is more the stiletto with red sole variety.

I trudge across campus, actually getting a breather for the first time all day but I’m still moving at a clipped pace. I’m eager to get to the seminar early so that I can see Hawkin before the masses claim him.

I’m a greedy bitch because as far as I’m concerned the lazy Sunday afternoon we spent playing Guitar Hero after I rewarded him for letting me make him into an eighties band lead singer wasn’t enough. Neither was falling to the sofa in laughter after I beat him at the game where we then tested the couch springs, or the no shirt, no shoes dinner of Chinese takeout we had on the back porch before he left to go home.

I’ve prided myself on being a woman who is never needy, rather I’ve always been the one glancing at the clock to see how long my date-for-the-night has been at the house because he’s way overstayed his welcome, and yet the other night I didn’t want Hawkin to go. But after our fifth or sixth good night turned into lustful groping kisses, he finally left to go back to what he deemed to be his “fucked-up reality.”

I nod to an acquaintance as I wonder just what that reality is for him. I know there’s bad blood between him and Hunter causing a rift between the guys in the band but every time I’ve tried bringing it up to him, he conveniently changes the subject. Just as he does when it comes to the rest of his family: his mother, if he has other siblings, extended family. He’s closed off but hides it well, always shifting into stories about the band or a show or a snooty celebrity he has inside dirt on.

I sense he doesn’t trust easily—and that’s understandable with the public position that he’s in—but I get the hint that there’s more to it than that. How much more, I’m unsure.

The stupid smile remains on my face even when my thoughts veer to Luke and how he proved himself to be the gentleman I knew him to be. How when I called him Sunday evening to see how he was feeling and to apologize again, he actually picked up and we talked for a short while. I explained I wasn’t trying to lead him on, give him false hope by calling, but rather if he was comfortable with it, I’d love to keep him as a friend because he really is a good guy.

Axe stands at the door as I approach the theater and that causes my smile to spread even wider because that means Hawke is inside. I feel a slight relief that maybe, just maybe, Hawkin feels this euphoric giddiness that I do and that’s why he arrived early when he never has before. And just maybe he’s done that because he can’t wait to see me.

Axe greets me warmly as he opens the door for me, and once inside I walk quickly across the atrium. I pull open the doors housing the interior with high expectations and nerves running rampant but for the first time, they’re from anticipation and not from loathing the guest lecturer.

The straight punch of lust I feel the minute I see him is like nothing I’ve ever felt before. A ball of bound energy radiates through me, causing a slow burn of desire and a definite bang of lust between my thighs. I falter momentarily in my movements, wanting to appreciate the sight of him but at the same time wanting to run down the steps and taste his kiss again.

Hawkin sits with his Verbz on, head down, hand beating to a rhythm I can’t hear, eyes closed as he becomes a part of the music. I know he’s stuck on some lyrics for a song he and the guys started writing the night he left my house so I assume he’s still working through his creative roadblock. Regardless of what he’s doing, the man is a visual orgasm in his worn jeans with a hole in one knee and his shirt of choice today has a Van Halen logo on it.

How many old-school rock shirts does he have?

And then the memory hits me and I chuckle as I walk down the stairs unbeknownst to him. The dark eyeliner I put on him in addition to his hair I tried to tease as best I could. What the press would have paid to have pictures of him like that as we battled on Guitar Hero. As we laughed so hard until we ended up moaning together.

I hit the lowest step, my eyes trained on him, and the desire coiling tighter in my core with each step. I’m suddenly worried that maybe I’m making more of this than he is, that I’m going to be caught off guard when he sees me and then where will I be? I shake off the thought that is so unlike me, hating the insecurity it brings. And I clear my head in perfect time because Hawkin glances up and sees me.

Surprise passes over his face but the wide grin and warmth that softens his eyes the minute he sees me clears away all worry and is an aphrodisiac all in itself.

“Hey,” he says, pulling the earphones from his ears and straightening up as I close the distance between us.

I step in front of him, nerves humming, hands twisting together, and his eyes locked on mine. “Hi,” I say tentatively when all I want to do is step into him and press my lips to his. But I refrain, not wanting to take whatever this is somewhere he doesn’t want it to be. “Sorry to interrupt …” My voice trails off, while his eyes darken with lust as he flicks them over the low V neckline of my shirt and down the length of my legs and back up.

“You’re not interrupting,” he says. Does he still want me? Was it a one-time thing? Why aren’t you kissing me? “Do you think you could go check the PA connections? They don’t seem to be working properly.”

I glance over to the podium where nothing is turned on and back to him, ego and hopes confused and slowly deflating, the rendezvous I was hoping for nonexistent despite my initial surge of optimism. “It’s not on. You need to—”

“No.” He cuts me off in a stern voice as he reaches out to grab my bicep. My eyes flash up to meet his, catching that half-cocked smile that lifts up a corner of his mouth when he speaks. “You need to check in the room over there, Trixie. Now.”

Oh. OH! Took me long enough to get what he’s trying to say and his eyebrows rise in amusement the minute he knows I understand what his intentions are.

And hell if I don’t love bad intentions when they’re of the sexual nature.

Looking up at him from the veil of my eyelashes, a diminutive smile plays over my lips. “Yes, Professor Play,” I respond in the most innocent voice possible—which is harder than hell considering I passed over being innocent a long time ago. Besides, breaking the rules is so much more fun sometimes. I make sure my hips are swinging up the goods I have to offer him as I saunter to the small alcove where we shared our first kiss—and my senses are already so heightened chills race over my skin when I hear him behind me.