I let out a noise somewhere between a moan and a yelp because as he’d delivered that news, he’d found a tender spot under my big toe and pressed into it.
“Wait,” I said, my entire body tensing. I hit the Pause button on the recording. “Are you telling me Shayla West recorded your sex tape?” The sex tape that was still mentioned occasionally on late night television. The sex tape that had landed Vonn’s ex a starring role in a reality TV show.
The woman had made a career out of being a rock star’s girlfriend. She and Vonn had gotten together for a few years over two decades ago. They’d never married, but they had a daughter together. Laney was twenty-nine and a model/actress/activist.
“Why’d you stop the recording?” he asked looking amused.
“Because that’s deeply personal,” I said, exasperated.
His blue eyes glinted in the firelight. “Yeah. It is.”
I got his point. My job was to drag deeply personal stories out of him and show them off to the general public. Because he was there to entertain.
“Turn it back on, Brooke.”
“I don’t think this is a good idea.”
He squeezed my foot. “Turn it back on, babe.”
Reluctantly, I did as I was told. I rubbed at my forehead and tried to focus. “That tape came out years after Laney was born. After you and Shayla broke up.”
His fingers worked my foot, but his eyes were on me. “I got wasted. I fucked a girl I didn’t know. I was so far gone I didn’t notice the camera or the fact that she kept angling us toward it. When she came at me through my manager two months later it was with a pregnancy test and that tape. If I didn’t do right by her, she’d leak the tape.”
I wanted to punch Shayla West in her lousy face.
“Not that she needed the blackmail. I would have stood up for my kid no matter what. We made it work. At least for a while. It was a business arrangement. She raised Laney while I was on the road, and I made sure she had all the money she needed. She surprised us both and ended up being a good mom. Lucky for me because I was gone. Either in the studio or out on tour. I was the guy who would come home every few weeks with presents before disappearing again. I was living my dream, and family just got in the way of that. Eventually, Shayla got tired of being ignored. She got pissed. We split. She sold the tape.”
“She took advantage of you.”
“We took advantage of each other,” he countered. “It could have been a hell of a lot worse.” He kneaded my foot with slow, gentle strokes.
“In what way?”
“I could have been the bad guy. Too wasted to know or care about the signals. Too full of myself to worry that a girl might say no. I could have made a woman feel the way Shayla made me feel. Used. Ashamed. Violated.”
He peeled off my sock, and the contact of his fingers on my bare skin made me feel dizzy. “That was the last time I had a drink. The last time I fucked a stranger.”
“Does your daughter know?”
Vonn didn’t break eye contact as he shook his head slowly. “No one but me and Shayla. Now you.”
He gestured for my other foot. When I gave it to him, he pulled that sock off too and pulled both feet into his lap. My feet were in Vonn Barlowe’s lap. I was suddenly sure that I had suffered a concussion and that any minute now I was going to wake up in a hospital bed.
“Vonn?”
“Yeah, babe.”
“I’m sorry that happened to you. You didn’t deserve it.”
He gave my feet a squeeze. “Least I learned from it. Now, how about you tell me why you’re sitting around here like you’re the curator of some family museum instead of out there living your life.”
“Um. Ouch,” I said, trying to pull my feet back, but he merely tightened his grip.
I saw a wink of dimple. “Come on. What are you doing alone on Christmas Eve in a four-bedroom farmhouse full of memorabilia taking care of a horse that’s not yours?”
I laughed then. “It may not look it, but I’m mid-transformation. I call it my Becoming.”
This time when he returned my foot to his lap, he settled it higher. Against the rigid outline of his cock. My insides went molten. The rush of arousal between my legs was warm, wet, instantaneous.