In front of his stool, I wipe the heels of my palms under my eyes, having no idea what to say.
“I love you,” Shawn says first, his voice carrying through his mic and filling the entire room. He stands up and dries the rest of my tears with the gentle pads of his thumbs, and I know he’s going to kiss me.
“I love you too,” I say when his lips are halfway to mine, and he pauses before dropping them the rest of the way. Just a second, just long enough for me to lose myself in the promises in those green eyes, and then his lips claim mine.
The fans explode into applause, but Shawn kisses me like they’re not even there. He kisses me like it’s just us—in a kitchenette, on the roof of my apartment, on top of a penthouse suite. He kisses me in front of everyone, and in my heart, in his arms, on a stage for all to see, I know—
I know where we’re going to be six years from now.
Epilogue
Shawn
“YOU’RE GOING TO make me late,” I say, and Kit giggles against my mouth. I love that sound—because I’m the only one who can make her make it, and she hates that she can’t stop me from doing it every chance I get.
“Go.”
“Seriously,” I say between kisses, too lost in the feel of her—of her long hair slipping between my fingers, her satin lips seducing mine, her sexy thighs cradling my hips. I force her farther onto the kitchenette counter as I press tighter between her legs. “We need to go in.”
“Then stop kissing me,” she orders, her voice a convictionless, breathless moan that makes me swell against the inviting heat of her.
I break my lips from hers to press them to her throat. “No.”
Her fingertips scratch into my hair as she gives control without really giving it. She plays me just as well as a six-string guitar, knowing exactly how to touch me to get me to do whatever she wants. I’m sucking at the curve of her neck when I finally get her out of her jeans.
“Tonight’s important,” she reminds me as I tug them down over her thighs, her knees, her ankles. And in the back of my mind, I know that. Jonathan Hess is waiting inside Mayhem with paperwork, but Jonathan Hess can wait. If Kit and I go in now, neither of us will be able to concentrate. We’re doing this for the show, the crowd, the band.
Or at least that’s what I tell myself as I tug her panties down with her jeans. She kicks them off the tips of her black-painted toes, and I step back between her legs. “I love you,” I say as I palm her ass in both hands, dragging her to the edge of the counter.
“I lov—” Her voice catches as I sink deep inside her, and she finishes with a low, sexy, “Shawn.” Her moan is as deep as the path I pave inside her, her dull nails scratching over my scalp with every single inch. I peel them away and kiss the calloused pads of her fingers one by one, each lingering touch of my lips making her wetter until I’m seated all the way inside her, until I’m just as breathless as she is. My forehead glues itself to the shoulder of her T-shirt because she just feels so. fucking. good. She feels fucking amazing.
How we are now is nothing like how we were our first time. Now, when she says my name, I know she means so much more than Shawn Scarlett. When she looks into my eyes, she’s seeing more than her own name in lights.
I should’ve seen it back then—the way she looks at me, the way she probably always has—but I was a blind man until she walked away . . . two, three, four times.
My fingers hook under the hem of the shirt separating me from her skin, and I impatiently tug it over her head. Then I’m reaching for her bra, she’s grabbing at my shirt, and we’re locked in a battle of wills as I try to strip her of her clothes at the same time she tries to strip me of mine. Both of us end up laughing, and I eventually let her win.
She continues giggling until I cup her breast in my palm and slide my thumb across her nipple. And at the quiet gasp that grabs her, at the look in her eyes—that dark, bottomless look that spells desire in the black of her gaze—I bend down and suckle a pink tip between my lips. Her back arches, her thighs squeeze, and I . . . I’m barely holding it together as her pretty little nipple pebbles beneath my tongue.
I take my time—because I have to with her if I’m going to last—teasing one blushing pebble and then the other before teasing her by asking, “How are we going to celebrate tonight?”
The soft moan that purrs from her mouth is more than I can handle. With her nipple still perked between the seam of my lips, my eyes travel up over the delicate curve of her neck, the line of her chin, the pink of her cheeks. Under thick lashes, she stares down at me, and I make a show of parting my lips and tracing my tongue over her in long, slow strokes that she watches for only a moment before her eyes flutter closed.
“Open them.”