Rough Rhythm: A Made in Jersey Novella (1001 Dark Nights)(5)

Panic spread dots across his vision. “No.”

There was calculation in her expression, but a thread of desperation he’d never witnessed in Lita before. A hint of hysteria. Gone was the sarcasm and wit he’d come to rely on. The difference held him in thrall as she toed off her boots…and peeled the T-shirt over her head, leaving her in a black bra and jeans. Jesus Christ. The flesh behind his fly fought to be free of its denim prison. Needing her. Forever needing her. His lungs couldn’t find satisfaction, ripping at the air to no avail.

“Enough.”

Shaking her head, Lita’s tongue danced across her bottom lip. “Maybe I’ll ask the new manager to call me that name.”

The world turned a dangerous color of red, blood pumping in waves behind his eardrums. James had traversed the room to tower over Lita without a conscious decision. Inside him, something shook, a rattle of chains against a cage, warning him to pull back, but he couldn’t. Couldn’t. Visions of another man’s hands on Lita’s skin were all he could process. James’s hands circled her biceps, lifting her off the bed and tossing her backward into the mattress’s center, finding perverse pleasure in the way her little figure bounced, green eyes widening.

James crawled over Lita, the bed dipping beneath his knees. “The new manager is a woman. Did you think for a second, after everything, that I would overlook a detail so important?” He planted his fists on either side of her head, every inch of his skin feeling raw, exposed. I’m starving. “I had no plans to manage a band. Not until you. Now I’ve spent the last four years deciding where you slept. Where you ate. It’s not normal. Not good for you.”

“James,” she whispered, falling back on the bed beneath him. “We—”

“Stop.” He devoured the indentation of her belly button with his gaze, the slope of her ribcage. God, he would sell his soul for a single lick. To feel that shudder against his tongue. “These things I do to keep control, to keep you in places that allow me to sleep at night…that need only grows. Eventually I would stop you from being Lita and you would hate me for it. I would hate me, too.”

“I couldn’t.” She turned her head and laid her lips on his forearm, severing his heart in eighteen places. “I push you to it. I’ll stop. I promise I’ll stop pushing if you stay. If you just…kiss me, you’ll know that everything is going to be fine. Please?”

Begging was so uncharacteristic for Lita, so unusual, that James wasn’t prepared for the pleasure that skated over his senses like a revelation. He loved hearing her pleas? God, what a sickness he had. “I want bad things.” Was that his voice? “Need them.”

Lita pushed up on her elbows, bringing their mouths close. “Bring it.”

Her husky challenge untethered urges he’d held in check too long. Electric energy scratched at the insides of his veins, an unnamed force gripping him by the nape. If he didn’t release some of the mounting pressure, he would implode. What was left of his common sense twisted around, turned inside out, reasoning that if he exposed some of the need to Lita, she would make this easer. She would stop begging him to finally f*ck her and start begging him to leave.

Too late to turn back. Coming to his knees above her, James curled his right hand around her throat, exerting just enough pressure to keep her still. Pink, teeth-marked lips popped open to suck in a breath. A breath James could feel being inhaled against his palm. So perfect. “There’s my little plaything.” He adjusted his grip. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Lita’s eyelids fluttered down to conceal her gaze, an acknowledgment of the pet name he’d growled in her ear so long ago in the dark. Just once. But it had been enough to remain poised on his tongue ever since, pleading to be uttered aloud.

James leaned down to inspect the curve of her cheek. “If another man called you his plaything, Lita, I would gut him.”

Beneath him, Lita’s stomach dipped and lifted, making contact with his abdomen and calling attention to the position of his ready cock. A few quick maneuvers of their clothing and he’d be seated in her look-but-do-not-touch *. And Christ, he’d looked. She’d paraded that sweet spot around him in every manner of thin material known to man. Spandex, ripped denim, threadbare cotton. Just for his eyes. His torment.

“You haven’t been f*cked since we met. I’ve seen to it. Do you know how?” Damning himself, James dropped his hips into the cradle of her thighs, choking back the moan that emerged from his mouth, savoring the answering moan Lita let loose. “I put the fear of God into them. I paid them to f*ck off. I’ve used my fists on a few that proved…overeager. Whatever it took.”

Craving the sight of her body, James released her throat and trailed fingertips down the center of her chest, tracing the front snap of her bra. His mouth turned to a desert at the idea of sucking her nipples, but no…no, that would be too sweet. Too pleasurable. She would like it. And his mission was to make her understand. This…him…was not what she wanted. With regret screaming in his head, James trailed his fingers lower, down her trembling belly, to tuck inside the waistband of Lita’s jeans. Not here, either. No touching here.

“Who’s going to stop them now?” Her winded—and somewhat hesitant—

question interrupted his fevered thoughts. “The men. Who will stop them?”