Frustrated, she met his eyes again. “If you want me, you have to take me as I am right now, not how you wish I’d be. I’m not Eliza Doolittle. You’re not Henry Higgins, you can’t make me over, change me.”
“So, if I say it’s all or nothing?”
She removed her hand, flattened it on the white table cloth and rocked back in her chair, dropping her eyes. She felt him tense for her response. “Then it’s nothing.”
“You’d walk away from this thing, whatever we have, that makes me want to forget my manners and screw you on the table right now?”
He spoke low voiced, close to her ear, but she felt his words hit like the roar of a stadium audience. They blew out her senses and left her momentarily blind, fumbling to remember who she was and what she wanted.
“I’m not the one making demands. I’ll take you exactly as you are, Jake. I think you’re perfect.”
The sixteen-year-old boy still a part of Jake wanted to leap to his feet and announce to the restaurant that this girl—this mad, brave, talented rock star—thought he was perfect. The twenty-eight-year old heard her words and felt a wave of conflicted feelings threaten to dump him on the shore. He could no sooner walk away from Rielle than let himself drown. But whatever she was running from—whatever she thought needed to be hidden, weighed him down, like swimming fully dressed.
He had a mouth full of sand. He said bluntly, “Let’s go,” signalling for the cheque.
Back on the bike, he thrilled to the touch of her arms around him. There was no distance between their bodies, and she moulded her curves to him as he weaved through the traffic, her hands pressed against his chest, the helmet he’d bought her occasionally bumping lightly against his.
She had no idea where he was taking her, but she trusted him and that in itself was something vibrantly alive and real between them.
He drove into St Kilda and parked the bike. They were back in the same street outside the same laneway they’d shot the video in.
Now it was dark and deserted; a laneway used by delivery vans and garbage disposal trucks, a place for unease to lurk. He wasn’t speaking and he was beginning to make her curiosity harden into something less compliant. Still, when he pulled her into the dark and backed her up against the coarse brick wall, she went willingly. But when he spoke, his words came from the place his fears lived, the place where he rejected taking risks with impossible odds.
“You’re a bitch, Rielle. I should have seen you coming.” He pressed against her, one hand on the wall, one on her face, stopping her from dropping her chin as his words bit. “I should’ve run a bloody mile.”
He saw defiance widen her eyes and it sliced through him. He dropped both hands to his sides and stepped back. “Now it’s too late, game over. You win. You’re under my skin; you’re in my head. You’ve drugged me and I’m terminally addicted to you.”
Rielle reached for him, but he took another step back, ran his hand through his hair. A yellow light from a nearby neon sign bathed her in a dirty glow. All or nothing, kiss or kill, pleasure but certain heartbreak. Everything about this confused him, even his responses to her were beyond his understanding. Like the Bolt from the Blue gig, she was outside his experience and dangerously out of control. One minute he had her captured against a wall, and the next he remembered she played games and was a rock star with the world at her feet and he wanted to walk away cursing and not look back.
She saw it; his conflict, his indecision. “Jump, Jake.”
He knew that was the choice. Leap into this thing with her or dive away and never regret it, but decide it now. No more trying for a better hand, no more point scoring.
He snatched her elbows and dragged her against his body, finding her mouth and kissing her hard. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he shuddered as he hugged her close. When he broke away to take a breath, he said, “I’ll take anything you give me, anyway you give it and I promise I’ll never ask for more than you want me to have.”
Rielle used her hands and her lips to show him she’d jumped too. She kissed him like she was chasing fame, like she was sacrificing ordinary, like he was the world tour. Pent up desire flooded through his centre, heating his fingertips, railroading his senses with need for her. He forgot where they were when he tore at the buttons on her shirt. He didn’t think to stop when she let him slide her jacket off and tear the shoul
der of her top down so his lips could tease her nipple.
Their touching was a frenzy of sensation: warm silken skin and sharp nipping, scraping teeth, hard grips and soft strokes. Jake found last night’s milk crate, kicked it deeper into the shadows and sat, pulling Rielle onto his lap to straddle him. He had her bare to the waist, his hands everywhere, his lips following, his heart on stage making music you could scream to.
“This is what I wanted to do last night and to hell with who was watching.” His voice was shredded with want.
She panted, throwing her head back to let him lick a path from breast to ear. “I knew it. You bastard, you made me wait. You made me need you.” In the dark, she was a live flame in his hands, sparking heat, feathering, undulating against his body. Setting him ablaze. Jake was white hot, without cogent thought, functioning only to adore and possess her.
The headlights from a truck entering the opposite end of the laneway stopped Rielle’s hands on his jeans zipper; woke them from their dazed passion; both of them blinking in surprise. She laughed and he pulled her against his chest to hide her nakedness as the headlights flared and switched off, the driver’s startled face visible a moment and then gone.
Rielle shimmied back into her top and Jake found her discarded jacket. “We’re not finished.”
In place of an answer, she twisted her fist in his open shirt and dragged his mouth down to hers.
Back on the street among the crowds eating at sidewalk cafes, Rielle laughed. There was insanity in Jake’s eyes, there was promise in his hand as he dragged her past shop fronts and restaurants and dodged waiters with drinks trays. He alone could make her feel the same exhilaration she felt when fifty thousand people screamed her name—this extraordinary man—a roadie.
A rock star for her heart.
The touch of his body between her legs and through her ribs and chest on the ride back to the hotel made her feel electric, like pure energy crackled in her veins, like she could fly if she wanted to.
In the hotel foyer, she was recognised by fans and stopped to scrawl her signature on a man’s shirt and pose for some hasty pictures. Once Jake would have stepped back, given her space, now he kept a hand on her shoulder, his action saying, “She is mine”.