Rock Chick Reawakening (Rock Chick 0.5)(42)

In the beginning, I slept in his big bed, him in his guest room, or the times we were at my place, he insisted on sleeping on the couch.

Giving me hope, about two weeks ago, I got him to messing around in his bed, and even though he stopped the good stuff, he didn’t leave. He got on his pajama bottoms (silk, drawstring, navy-blue, f-i-n-e, fine) and joined me there.

And from then on, we slept together.

Without, it was important to add, sleeping together.

He held me when we slept. Or he didn’t move all night if I cuddled up to him.

That was good.

But I will repeat, we slept together without sleeping together.

That was bad.

He’d slid into second base repeatedly. And he was good at that in a big way. And once (giving me more hope), with his fingers over my panties, he’d given me the very good stuff.

But only once and that was it.

Mostly, he stopped the festivities before they got too heated, turned me into his arms or let me snuggle into him, gave me a soft kiss on my nose or forehead, and then we went to sleep.

And I’ll repeat something else.

That was it.

For over five weeks.

We’d had conversations about this. Twelve of them to be exact. (Yes, I was counting.) And I was getting nowhere except to know really well Marcus thought we should “take it slow.”

I hadn’t had a drama since my first time eating at his dining room table. I’d never had another nightmare. Not to mention, he knew I was no fragile flower. And I was giving him every indication I was ready to move us forward.

I understood why he wanted to take it slow and that was sweet.

But this wasn’t slow.

This was alarming.

Because, see, shit like this messed with a girl’s head.

A man doesn’t want down her pants, that speaks volumes.

Or, more to the point, it makes a girl ask a lot of questions that might not seem logical to some, but to a girl, they were as logical as it could get.

For me, these questions were two in particular.

The first, was I the damsel in distress in place of the sister he’d wished he could save? And part B of that question, was he in denial about that, thinking he was doing the right thing when he was not?

Or second, was I a kind of employee he was looking after to keep safe while they kept looking for the guy who did what he’d done to me?

And no one had said anything, so I reckoned he was still out there. Detective Jimmy Marker had called at least ten times to share that he was disappointed with the progress of the case, but he had no intention of giving up so they were still looking.

Sure, the illogical part in all of this was that it had been way more than five weeks where Marcus had been sweet to me, kind, thoughtful, attentive, gentlemanly, generous, and even sexy. That should speak volumes too.

But, I mean, in my life, one of the many things I’d learned was that if a guy wants it, it’s offered, he takes it. Especially if it’s offered repeatedly.

So Marcus not taking it had to mean he didn’t want it.

Now he’d seen me doing my thing on the stage and he’d seen it a lot. He was sweet as usual when I got in his limo with him after work. Complimentary. Touchy. Kissy. Nice. He hadn’t acted, not once, like watching me do my gig made him think I was skeevy. Not even close.

In fact, it was the opposite.

It could not be said when he first started coming to the club it didn’t make me feel all kinds of special, not only that he’d come, but that his eyes never left me when I was onstage, like he was transfixed, spellbound.

And not just in the beginning, that kept right on going, in actions and words, he gave me the sense he was proud of me. Proud that, at the end of the night, the woman he was watching onstage was going to be escorted to his limousine and she’d be spending the night in his bed (even if they didn’t do much there).

But he was total class. He had a penthouse. He belonged to a country club (one he had not taken me to, by the way). He worked a lot and said things into his phone like “dividends” and “shift those investments around” and “the rate of return on that is not what I’d hoped, let’s consider alternatives.”

And I was, well, a stripper.

I had a Porsche but I didn’t have a limo or a penthouse, and even though I raked it in (with him paying me, but I could have done it my own damned self if he hadn’t taken off a set, a song on each set, and the lap dances), I’d never have that. I’d never belong to a country club. I’d never tame my hair, ease up on the eyeliner, and trade my platforms for Valentino’s Rockstud in order to fit in with that set.

So maybe in the throes of the situation he’d gotten himself into a spot—being a gentleman and being the kind of gentleman Marcus Sloan was—a spot he couldn’t get out of, dumping the chick who’d recently been raped after realizing she didn’t quite fit at his side.

I didn’t need that shit.

I needed to start looking for houses, dining room tables, and checking out china patterns.

And I didn’t need to do it with a broken heart (though, I wasn’t letting myself go there, but I had a strong feeling that ship had sailed).

Because even without the good stuff, everything else was good stuff with Marcus Sloan. And I was not talking about the fancy restaurants, the penthouse, the limo.

I was talking about his sweet. His attention that, even the times he was on the phone, he still made it clear if I was in his sphere, it was always on me. His touchy. His kissy. His arms around me while I slept. His warm, hard body the perfection it was to cuddle into. The easy way that came often that I could make him laugh. The beautiful way he looked at me every time he gave me the same.