Together their lips met, achingly gently, both of them sighing into it. The briefest catch and release, a hint of the wildest greedy passion and bone-deep contentment to come.
Wherever she led this, he’d follow. She pressed her lips to his again, another soft serve, another, another, each fleet and tentative. Jay kissed the half-smile on Evie’s lips and ate up her groan. Another, another, until her trembling tripped over her caution and she yanked at his hair and opened her mouth to him.
The crowd roared his name, the stadium roof lifted off. This kiss was a lyric sung for the ages; graffiti scored on eternity. It stole time and place and ripped out hurt and loneliness from the roots. Its intensity made him frantic to have more and more, while it grounded him in heat and need and possession, as if they were as essential as air and water and shelter.
At some point in the glory of it, he tipped back into the cushions of the sofa, pulling Evie with him, and the kiss became a function of their whole bodies. Lip to toe he needed Evie’s touch and he chased after it, tangling tongue on tongue while he twined their bodies as close as possible.
Pounding on the door wasn’t the only thing stopping this going further. The sofa was too short and the floor too hard and neither of them had enough critical-thinking faculties working to figure out how to deal with buttons and zips and boots.
Jay’s phone rang. Evie’s chimed. Whoever was beating on the door eventually gave up, but they brought the world back. Kiss by kiss, Evie’s body relaxed into his. Kiss by kiss, his pulse settled. They finished as they’d begun, breathing each other in.
“You did need that,” she said, voice smoky and lazy.
He maneuvered upright, Evie now on his lap. “My whole life. I love you, Evelette Violet Tice.”
“I know,” she said. Cocky little shit, where she’d earlier been hesitant in a way that had put plaque around his heart. “I don’t think I want to be without you ever again, Jay Endicott.”
“You don’t think?” The insult of that. He kissed a good dose of indignance into her and the gymnastics required to graduate to sex no longer seemed impossible.
She pushed away just when he figured out how to get her out of those damn skinny pants without dropping her. “What’s the protocol here?” she said.
He’d have to peel her out of them. Slowly. Boots had to go first.
“Is sex right before an opening allowed? Or are you supposed to preserve all the sexual energy for the stage like the musical athlete you are?” she asked.
“Allowed? What?”
Evie laughed and tugged on his hair. “You’re all lust-fogged and I’m sad to say I can’t take advantage of that.”
The thought of missing out woke him up about the same time as his phone rang and the person who didn’t value his own life highly enough started pounding on the door again.
Nothing foggy about what he wanted. Evie naked, lips locked on his, thighs either side of his, body ready for his. He’d make her come in all the ways she loved and all the ways they’d denied themselves.
Encore after encore.
But it wasn’t going to happen now.
He shouted to whoever was outside to give him five. Stood a
nd lowered Evie’s feet to the floor keeping hold of her hips. “It’s not called abstinence, drugs and rock and roll.”
“Oh, I see,” she said. “So you always had sex before a big gig.”
He snorted. He’d always been too uptight to even consider it before a show opened. “Always thought about having sex with you before a big gig. Usually spend the night puking. I’m thinking it’s time for a new tradition.”
She kept a hand on his chest. “I’m going to need a little more guidance on what that might be.”
He was going to guide her all the way onto his cock, but since he couldn’t do that now, he made do with taking her mouth again and making sure she understood exactly what kind of pre-show tension-release tradition he was going to insist on once he got her alone tonight.
And every other night for as long as she loved him.
NINETEEN
After all the sparring, teasing, the mental angst and the torture of physical longing, Evie was worried old-fashioned, sticking-it-in sex might be a thunderous letdown. After all, it wasn’t like it was their first time.
And it wasn’t like they hadn’t been having each other in all the other lovely ways possible. She had no complaints and she doubted Jay did either. Sexual satisfaction rating, a million stars.
Feels like the first time. Judging by the way she was biting her nails. The light changed, red to green. Hand back on the clutch, she focused on driving, swerving through the traffic, determined to have some quiet time to get her head together at the hotel before Jay got back.