CHICKEN MARBELLA, MASHED POTATOES and green beans on the table. Crème brûlée on the counter, ready to be finished off after dinner with the small torch she’d borrowed from catering.
Kiki happily surveyed the results of her efforts as she heard the treadmill winding down at the other end of the bus. Dev was finished with his workout, and after a quick shower they would sit down for yet another of her home-cooked meals.
Over the past week, she and Dev had fallen into a routine that broke all of her rules with its undertones of coupledom and domestic bliss. On the way from Venice to Rome, Dev had asked her to stay in his bus with him for the remainder of the tour, and the rest of the crew had even treated her as if nothing was amiss, likely too intimidated by their boss to do otherwise. During the mornings she and Dev worked side by side on the bus, with him stroking her thigh as she tooled on her laptop or covering his phone to kiss her while he was on a call. After that they either spent the travel time in a state of fevered lust or, if it wasn’t a travel day, went their separate ways for a while and came together again for dinner, conversation and sex before Dev’s show. Each day was finished off with a final round of passion and another night spent entwined together on the bed he’d bought just for her. It was heaven, perfect, better than anything she ever could have dreamed of.
Each day of this is just bringing you both closer to disaster and heartbreak, the voice at the back of her head kept reminding her. And yet here she was yet again, successfully blocking it out.
Dev came out of the bathroom wearing a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. Kiki couldn’t help but stare as he pulled up a chair and grinned at her offerings. Even dressed completely down, he was the epitome of sexy. “You’ve outdone yourself again,” Dev said as he circled his left arm backward.
“Are you okay?”
“Just my shoulder. It gets sore sometimes when I play a few nights in a row and forget to correct my posture.”
“Sounds like you need a massage.”
“I could see that going sideways very fast.” He grinned as he loaded up her plate for her.
“That’s the whole point.”
“So, what, this morning and—” he glanced at his watch “—two hours ago wasn’t enough for you?”
“Not nearly.”
“Not that I don’t appreciate the offer, but would you believe I’m the only living being who doesn’t like massages?”
“You’re kidding. What’s that all about?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because Bix is always hounding me to get them.”
Bix. Kiki weighed her response carefully before speaking. “Finally something he and I agree on.”
Dev lifted his eyes. “Like I said, he’s not exactly Mr. Charisma. But he does care about me.”
Kiki decided to drop it. Bix had always been standoffish with her to say the least, avoiding eye contact and refusing to acknowledge anything positive about her working relationship with Dev, such as the streamlined press communications she’d implemented and his huge social media boost since she’d taken over. But even if she found Dev’s words hard to believe, she had to accept them at face value. He’d known Bix a hell of a lot longer than she had, and she had to assume that anyone in Dev’s position would have learned to weed out the leeches from the tried-and-true pretty quickly.
Dev cut into his chicken and took a bite. “This is incredible.”
Kiki waved his compliment away. “I cheated today and took the chicken from catering because I didn’t have time to get to the grocery store. Speaking of which, do you ever find it weird being in all these cities and not really experiencing them?”
Dev laughed. “I forget where I am sometimes.”
“That happened to me for the first time today. I got in the taxi and forgot what language I was supposed to be trying to speak. I had to look around at the street signs to remember I was in Hamburg. It was so weird.”
“Welcome to my life.”
“Really, I don’t know how you do it.”
“I’ve heard there are worse jobs out there,” he said with a half smile.
“Yeah, but still. To do what you do and not collapse under the pressure? It’s a miracle.” She gave him an admiring look, but he was busy salting his mashed potatoes. Modest as usual, she thought.
“Is that truffle I taste?” he asked as he tried the potatoes. “Seriously, where did you learn to cook like this?”
“I don’t really know. It seems like I just always knew how. Dad worked long hours, and after Mom left...” She shrugged. “There was a lady down the street who used to watch me after school. I remember standing on a stool in her kitchen and watching her cook, and after that I started asking Dad for cookbooks. I think the responsibilities made me feel like a big girl. On the weekends I started taking over the laundry and vacuuming. I remember the first time I tried folding Dad’s clothes. I must have been around seven, and they were probably a mess. But he hugged me hard enough to crush me. I didn’t understand then why he had tears in his eyes, but I do now.”
Dev shook his head. “That’s incredible. So much responsibility for a little girl, and yet you never complained.”
Kiki laughed. “Yeah, well, I probably created more work for him in the beginning, but eventually I figured it out. And then Deirdre came along. I guess I never really thought about it until now, but she probably made me feel a little bit replaced in my dad’s life. Even though she was only doing exactly what she should have been doing, which was giving me my childhood back. Anyway...” Kiki searched her brain for a change of topic. For someone who’d never been big on talking about herself, she was doing an awful lot of it these days.
“Do you ever think about trying to find her?” Dev asked suddenly.
Kiki’s heart skipped a beat as she stalled for time. “She was living with Dad last time I checked,” she said, forking her green beans.
Dev smiled patiently. “I mean your mother, Strawberry.”
Kiki took her time chewing. Even if she wasn’t ready to tell him the exact truth, she wasn’t going to lie to him, either. “I’ve thought about it. I mean, I’ve looked, actually. But she doesn’t seem to want to be found. Nowhere obvious, anyway. My father—he always says that I might not like what I find. I mean, what if I meet her and she’s this person I totally can’t relate to, or she’s downright horrible, and I regret it? You can’t unsee or unknow something once you’ve crossed certain lines.” Her mouth felt dry. She took a sip of sparkling water, wondering if she dared tell Dev the one piece of information she had on her mother. But a glance at his face told her she was going to do just that. He was looking at her intently, not just like he wanted to absorb every word she was willing to share with him, but like he wanted to pull all of her pain into himself so she wouldn’t have to feel it anymore.
It was wrong. She was letting him have feelings for her when all she had in store for him was disappointment. But she was so far gone herself that the thought of either telling him the truth or ending things sent her down a hole of emptiness so deep she hardly dared contemplate it. Appetite suddenly gone, she put her fork down.
But Dev remained undeterred. “You have a theory about why she left, don’t you?”
God, how did he do that? How did he know things about her that she barely acknowledged herself? “I, uh...” She lifted her napkin to her lips, dabbed at nothing and replaced it in her lap. Her heart was thudding. “I have a cousin who’s a few years older than me. James—his mother is my mother’s sister. They were the last link I had to my mother after she left. James and I used to talk about her a lot, and he was so patient with me even though I’m sure I drove him crazy asking the same questions over and over again. Anyway, he let it slip once that about a year before my mother left, she called his mom one night in a panic and asked her to come and meet her. She was a single mother, so she had to drag James along with her—he was about eight at the time. They ended up in this really dodgy apartment in a bad part of town, and James said my mom was...acting really strangely. Like as in, totally skitchy and freaked out and asking for money.” She shook her head, lost in thought. “James told me he thought she was on drugs. I asked my father about it, but all he would say was that you never know a person completely, something like that. And then I guess he had a word with James, because he wouldn’t talk about it after that. It was all just shoved under the rug.”
Dev’s gaze didn’t waver from her face. “So you think she might have left you because she had a habit?”
“Sure. I mean it doesn’t explain why, exactly, but it’s the only thing that makes any sense.” She shook her head. “I don’t know, but that conversation really affected me. I never did drugs. Even as a teenager—I didn’t even try pot. I wondered if I might have some predisposition to getting hooked, and that terrified me.”
Dev put his knife and fork down. Moving his chair to one side, he patted his thighs. “Come here.” Kiki walked over to him, and he pulled her into his lap so she was straddling him. “Can I tell you something?”
“A deep, dark secret hopefully. Something that makes me feel a little more normal.”
He moved his forehead to touch hers, making his face go blurry. “I admire you so much,” he said hoarsely. “Everything you’ve been through makes you even more amazing. There’s nothing about you that’s normal, and I love that.”
Kiki’s throat felt thick. God, how she longed to give herself over to this man, to succumb to the constant pull toward him she felt in her body, her mind and yes...her heart. But she couldn’t. Doing so would be horribly unfair to him, and the longer she waited to put an end to this, the harder it would be for both of them.
But not tonight, she thought. Tomorrow.
“Can I tell you something?” Kiki asked, moving her face back and cupping his jaw with her hands. “You need a flaw. Seriously. I’m getting kind of sick of looking for cracks and not finding any.”
Was it her imagination, or did a shade pull briefly over his eyes? He brought his mouth to hers and kissed her deeply. “Maybe you just bring out the best in me, Strawberry. Now, you promised me a massage.”
“I thought you didn’t like them.”
He grasped her hands and pressed them flat to his, pushing her back playfully. “I’m willing to let you change my mind.”
She could already feel him hardening at the place their groins met. “I see I’m not the only one hoping for a happy ending,” she said, rocking her pelvis back and forth against his growing thickness. “Can I even ask if you have any massage oil on hand without your mind sinking into the gutter?”
“Not a chance. And no massage oil.”
“Well, I noticed coconut oil in the kitchen, but it’s kind of...not a good idea.”
Dev raised an eyebrow. “How come?”
“It breaks down condoms.”
“Now whose mind is in the gutter?”
“Guilty.” She grinned.
“Okay, so...” He trailed off, and it took her a moment to understand what his silence was suggesting.
“Um, are you—?”
“You’re the only woman I’ve been with in over a year,” he said, his aqua eyes electric. “And I’m clean. You?”
Kiki’s mind was spinning. She wanted to feel him like that—God, how she did—but it was another step that would bring them closer together. Another promise made with her body that the rest of her wouldn’t be able to fulfill.
“Kiki?”
She cleared her throat. “I was tested recently,” she said, her voice catching slightly. “All good.”
Dev nodded at her slowly. “And...birth control?”
She forced herself to keep her gaze steady. He wanted this. She wanted this. In the morning she’d tell him the truth about herself. But tonight, she was going to enjoy him as if they could last forever. “It’s taken care of.”
“You’re not going to make this easy for me, are you?” Dev said as Kiki pulled her jeans off, revealing the baby-pink thong that matched her bra. He was sitting on the bed, stripped down to his boxers as she undressed.
“I’m just making myself comfortable. Now lie down,” she commanded, pushing him backward. As she straddled his waist, Dev looked at the ceiling, determined to keep himself under control for at least a few minutes. Kiki dipped a hand into the coconut oil, rubbed her hands together and smoothed it over his shoulder. “How’s this?” she asked, holding his arm up to access his traps. “Torturous enough for you?”
“Sure, but for all the right reasons. You get one more minute before you’re riding my cock,” he groaned. Predictably, he was already rock hard as the slippery strokes brought to mind another part of his body he’d much rather she be stroking. And thinking about fucking Kiki was so much better than thinking about what she’d just told him about her mother. So much better than lying here trying to convince himself that prescription drugs were nothing compared to the hard stuff she’d probably been into, and that Kiki never had to find out because he was going to quit anyway.
Just as soon as the tour was over.
He closed his eyes, determined to push everything but her out of his head. It didn’t take much. Just the thought of what they were about to do, of how it would feel to be inside her with no barrier between them, had his mind exactly where he wanted it to be.
He opened his eyes in time to see Kiki unclasp her bra and toss it aside, apparently having given up the pretense of anything therapeutic coming out of this session. Using the oil she still had on her hands, she brought them to her breasts and started circling them teasingly. He went to reach for her, but she pushed his arms over his head. “Stay still,” she commanded. He watched her, prepared to have his mind blown.
Inching herself backward, she slid over his aching cock until it was in front of her. Then she started stroking him with her slippery hands as she landed her flickering tongue on his head. He bucked up as her hands came down again and again, one after the other, pulling at the base of his erection to make it stand perfectly upright. She spoke to him softly. “Do you know how good you feel inside me? How perfectly you fill me up? It’s going to feel so amazing when my pussy is wrapped around your cock. It’s going to take all your control not to come as soon as you feel how wet I am for you.”
It was too much, just right, not enough. He opened his mouth to tell her how much he wanted her, how incredibly beautiful she was, how he never wanted to be without her, but she brought a hand over his mouth. “Shh...this is all about you, rock star. All about how much I worship you. I never thought I’d say that, but I do. I wish we could just fuck all day long. Are you ready for me?”
He nodded mutely, afraid of what might come out of his mouth if he dared open it. He was always the one in control. Feeling his power was what enabled him to do everything in his life—write songs, perform, deal with other people’s expectations, fuck. But right now, giving all of his power over to this woman felt like absolute perfection.
Kiki rose up and leaned forward, positioning her pussy over his face. “No touching, but I thought you might be curious to see how wet I am.” He looked up at that glistening beauty, aching with every cell of his body to feel her. To make her experience the same desperate need that was pulsing through him with every agonizing fill of his lungs.
But he knew she was, because her barely controlled breath told him so. “Kiki, God—”
“Shh...get ready. Here it comes.”
Straddling his hips, she slowly lowered herself until his head was buried inside her. A groan escaped his lips at the incredible feeling. “More. Please—”
Kiki cut his request off by driving herself downward on his cock. She rose up slowly, and then she repeated the motion again and again—up slowly, down hard—until he was ready to lose his mind. The slipperiness of the oil was like the icing on the sweetest cake, bringing him closer and closer to what he knew was going to be the biggest and best fucking orgasm of his life.
“You like that?” she panted, anchoring herself to his pelvis and rocking back and forth with subtle movements. His balls were begging for release.
“God, yes.”
She pushed her fingers into his mouth, and he sucked them hungrily. “I could do this all night,” she teased, slipping a nipple between her fingers. “Or I could let you get on top of me and fuck me for all you’re worth.”
That was it, just the golden ticket he needed. Moving with the speed of a man possessed, he rolled her until he was on top, and then he grabbed her thighs and squeezed them together so her pussy felt even tighter on his cock. He was gasping for air along with her now, their panting breaths mingling as one as each cry brought them closer...and closer...
The world shrank to just the two of them, each climbing toward their ultimate pleasure and yet knowing it could only be reached because of the other. In that moment, sex took on a new meaning for Dev. When he closed his eyes he knew without a doubt that it was Kiki. Now and for always, the only person on earth he wanted to feel this close to. And together they reached that earth-shattering moment of mutual release, driven by their entwined minds and hearts as much as their physical bodies.