Lick (Stage Dive, #1)(32)

At some stage I’d dozed off. How I’d gotten up to bed I had no idea. David must have carried me. One thing was certain: I could smell booze.

“It’s almost five in the morning,” he said. “Roll over.”

“Tired,” I mumbled, staying right where I was.

The mattress shifted as he straddled my hips and put an arm either side of my head, bending down over me, covering me.

“Guess what?” he asked.

“What?”

Gently he pushed my hair back off my face. Then he licked my ear. I squirmed, ticklish.

“I wrote two songs,” he said, his voice a little slurred, soft around the edges.

“Mmm.” I smiled without opening my eyes. Hopefully he’d take that as being supportive. I couldn’t manage much more on less than four hours’ sleep. I simply wasn’t wired that way. “That’s nice.”

“No, you don’t understand. I haven’t written anything in over two years. This is f*cking amazing.” He nuzzled my neck. “And they’re about you.”

“Your songs?” I asked, stunned. And still dazed. “Really?”

“Yeah, I just …” He breathed deep and nipped my shoulder, making my eyes pop open.

“Hey!”

He leaned over so I could see his face, his dark hair hanging down. “There you are. So, I think of you and suddenly I have something to say. I haven’t had anything I wanted to say in a long time. I didn’t give a f*ck. It was all just more of the same. But you changed things. You fixed me.”

“David, I’m glad you got your mojo back, but you’re incredibly talented. You were never broken. Maybe you just needed some time off.”

“No.” From upside down, he frowned at me. “Roll over. I can’t talk to you like this.” I hesitated and he slapped my butt. The non-tattooed cheek, lucky for him. “Come on, baby.”

“Watch it with the biting and spanking, buddy.”

“So move already,” he growled.

“Okay. Okay.”

He climbed off me onto the other side of the mammoth mattress and I sat, drawing my knees up to my chest. The man was shirtless, staring back at me with only a pair of jeans on. How the hell did he keep losing his shirt? The sight of his bare chest brought me to the dribble point. The jeans pushed me right over. No one wore jeans like David. And having caught a glimpse of him without them only made it worse. My imagination went into some sort of sexual berserker rage. The pictures that filled my head … I have no idea where they all came from. The images were surprisingly raw and detailed. I was quite certain I wasn’t flexible enough to achieve some of them.

All of the air left the room. Truth was, I wanted him. All of him. The good and the bad and the bits in between. I wanted him more than I’d ever wanted anything before in my life.

But not when he’d been drinking. We’d already been there, made that mistake. I didn’t know quite what was going on between us, but I didn’t want to mess it up.

So, right. No sex. Bad.

I had to stop looking at him. So I took a deep breath and studied my knees. My bare knees. I’d gone to sleep wearing jeans. Now I had only panties and my tank top on. My bra had also mysteriously disappeared. “What happened to the rest of my clothes?”

“They left,” he said, face serious.

“You took them?”

He shrugged. “You wouldn’t have been comfortable sleeping in them.”

“How on earth did you manage to get my bra off without waking me?”

He gave me a sly smile. “I didn’t do anything else. I swear. I just … removed it for safety reasons. Underwire is dangerous.”

“Riiiight.”

“I didn’t even look.”

I narrowed my eyes on him.

“That’s a lie,” he admitted, rolling his shoulders. “I had to look. But we are still married, so looking is okay.”

“It is, huh?” It was pretty much impossible to be mad at him when he looked at me like that. My foolish girl parts got giddy.

No. Sex.

“What are you doing up that end of the bed? That’s not going to work,” he said, totally unaware of my wakening hormones and distress at same.

Faster than I’d have thought possible given the amount of booze on his breath, he grabbed my feet and dragged me down the bed. My back hit the mattress and my head bounced off the pillow. David sprawled out on top of me before I could attempt any more evasive maneuvers. His weight pressed me into the mattress in the best possible way. Saying no under these conditions was a big ask.

“I don’t think we should have sex now,” I blurted out.

The side of his mouth kicked up. “Relax. There’s no way we’re f*cking right now.”

“No?” Damn it, I actually whined. My patheticness knew no end.

“No. When we do it the first time we’ll both be stone cold sober. Trust me on that. I’m not waking up in the morning again to find you’re freaking out because you don’t remember or you’ve changed your mind or something. I’m done being the * here.”

“I never thought you were an *, David.” Or at least, not exactly. A jerk maybe, and definitely a bra thief, but not an *.

“No?”