AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“So don’t.”
She swallowed hard. What could it hurt? It was just an old song sung in an empty studio. It didn’t have to be a big deal. She lifted her head. “Fine. One song.”
The smile that broke over his face was genuine and breath-stealing. “Thank you.”
Without another word, he led her to a stool in the studio and set her up with a microphone and an acoustic guitar. She took the instrument and stilled. “Holy shit, is this a Martin?”
“Yep, D-42. Geoff insisted we have one on hand even though we don’t record a lot of acoustic stuff.”
She stroked the neck of the instrument with more than a bit of envy, taking in the ebony fingerboards, the gold tuning gears, the gorgeous inlays. She loved her beat-up Yamaha. She’d had it long enough for it to feel like a family member, but she couldn’t help but covet the gleaming, high-end instrument. “She’s beautiful.”
“You look beautiful with it.”
That brought her back to earth, the anxiety rushing back. She was about to sing. For Pike.
Pike must’ve noticed the fear on her face because he dimmed the overhead light, making everything feel more private, intimate. He took the spot behind his drums and gave her a nod. “You start whenever you’re ready, and I’ll find the beat and jump in.”
She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Her fingers hovered over the frets, trembling. But after another few seconds, she mustered up enough nerve to pluck out the opening notes of “Dandelion.” The instrument was unfamiliar in her hands and took some getting used to, so she let the intro go long, not adding words yet and letting Pike get a feel for it as well. In a matter of seconds, he was tapping out a beat in time with her—subtle but rich.
The old lyrics came to her like they’d been burned into her skin, and she began to sing. The first few lines were shaky but as soon as she hit the chorus, her mind went to that place where it was only notes filling her head and fingers on strings and words pouring out of her. Pike’s drumbeats pulsed through her, deepening the original song, and the emotion behind the lyrics welled in her. She angled her head back and let her voice off the leash, allowing the song to sweep her away. She’d written the song after she’d left the group and Liam. But the song wasn’t about him. It was about the dream for her life exploding around her, her wishes for her future slipping away like dandelion seeds on the wind.
“Blow it away, blow me away. Watch us fade away.”
When she hit the final lines of the last verse, she didn’t even notice that Pike had stopped playing until she felt his lips on the back of her neck. Her fingers strummed and her voice sailed, a deep, cleansing ache in her chest. She didn’t stop until she’d come to the end of the song, but her body became liquid with each soft caress of his mouth.
When the studio was silent again, Pike slipped the guitar strap from around her neck and set the instrument aside, then his arms wrapped around her from behind, anchoring her. “Baby, I don’t even know what to say. I felt that all the way down to my gut. You’re … spectacular. So soulful.”
She looked down, her heart pounding behind her ribs. “Thanks.”
He pressed his nose to the nape of her neck, inhaling her. “Sing me something else.”
“What?”
“Anything. I don’t care what it is as long as it’s in your voice.” He pushed her hair all to one side and nipped at her ear. “Sing for me, Oakley.”
Twining threads of need and adrenaline snaked down her body and wrapped around her mind, holding her spellbound. She didn’t know what song to pick so she sang the first thing that came into her head—“Wicked Game.” It’d been a song she’d slowed down and revamped when Pop Luck was planning on doing a cover album. But she’d left before that album had come out and her song had been cut.
So as Pike kissed down her neck, she sang about the world being on fire and how no one could save her but him. But when he stepped around her, all hungry eyes and dark looks, and opened the top buttons on her blouse, she couldn’t hear the words anymore. Her voice switched to autopilot as her body went up in flames.
“Don’t stop,” he whispered before kissing along her sternum and palming her breast.
She continued to sing but with him sliding his thumb over the lace of her bra and nuzzling the curve of her breast, she kept going off key. Then he lowered to his knees.
She gasped into the microphone when he inched up her skirt and slipped off her panties, but she didn’t stop singing. The singing was anchoring her, weaving the spell around them, holding them hostage. She held on to the side of the stool and closed her eyes as he spread her knees apart. All of it seemed to be happening in a dream—the low lights, the song in her throat, the big, warm hands on her thighs. It’d been years since she’d been touched by anyone but herself, so she was half-convinced the man kneeling in front of her was pure fantasy. She’d wake up soon and he’d vanish like a specter.
But Pike wasn’t going anywhere. Her stomach muscles quivered as he moved closer, his breath balmy on her damp skin and anticipation a living, pulsing thing inside of her. He kissed her inner thigh and her voice caught on a word, but she swallowed past it and kept singing. Kisses trailed higher and higher, and his teeth nipped at the sensitive flesh. As he reached the apex of her thighs, her fingers curled against the wood of the stool and her breath went choppy. His tongue glided along her sex, grazing her clit, and she lost all sense of her place in the song.
“Keep going,” he said softly, his words punctuated with teasing licks against her flesh. “I want to hear that voice while I taste you. If you stop, I stop.”
Her pussy throbbed, and she whimpered. Fucking whimpered. “God.”
“What’s the matter?” he asked, drawing the tip of his finger over the lips of her sex, teasing her.
“I sound like one of my callers—panting and whining.”
“You sound fucking hot. Don’t be ashamed of that.” His fingers dipped into her heat and sent frissons of need through her. “Now sing to me while I lick this gorgeous cunt.”
Damn. The crude words didn’t shock her. She heard them all the time on the phone. But hearing Pike say them only made her desire burn brighter. He wasn’t talking to Sasha, he was talking to Oakley—inexperienced Oklahoma girl who’d grown up in a house where saying hell outside of Bible study would get you grounded. That girl went molten at the sexy, forbidden words.
