Chapter Ten
When I hit the last note, Dave walks over and says, “This gal is quickly on her way to becoming the next Adele. Give a round of applause for Jane Black, fresh off her Grammy win for Best Album for Crushed.” Then he cuts to a commercial, thanks me, and walks back to his desk, where he prepares to tee up tomorrow’s show in the closing credits shot. We’re quickly shuttled offstage, where various show producers say their thanks.
The best part of being on his show today is that Dave doesn’t interview his musical guests. They just get in, perform one song, and get out. So I don’t have to answer any questions. I button my coat, grab my bag, and tell the band I’ll see them at the nearby Roseland Ballroom for our gig in a couple hours.
I open the heavy green backstage door to the Ed Sullivan Theater. A handful of folks are waiting for me, asking for an autograph, wanting to say hello. I mingle for a minute, but most of the crowd is waiting for a glimpse of Rob Lowe, who went on before me but hasn’t left yet.
I push past the crowd, then do a double take when I notice Matthew at the edge of the group, clearly waiting for me, a look in his eyes that is both determined and lively. He is wearing jeans, black Vans, and a faded green T-shirt with the words Grilled, Roasted, Flamed, Burned running in a list down the front of it. He has on his beaten-up leather jacket, too. I take him in, his dark hair, pure blue eyes, the trace of a five o’clock shadow on his face. I wish he didn’t have to look so good, so coolly put together without seeming put together. I also wish my body didn’t start racing the second I see him. Reflexively, I bring my hand to my chest, remembering how he wants to kiss the hollow of my throat. Imagining how I’d respond to his lips on my skin.
My brain says to walk away; my body smacks her upside the head. “I feel like I should think you’re stalking me,” I say to Matthew when I reach him.
“And yet you don’t really feel that way because you know what I’m actually doing is pursuing you,” he says, placing a hand on my back. It feels ridiculously good, and slightly possessive, which I love.
“You’re pursuing me?” I ask breathily.
He nods, his eyes darker, his expression serious, like the time before he kissed me on the street. He leans close to me, brushing my hair away from my neck, before he whispers, “Yes. I’m pursuing you.”
That word alone makes my blood sing with desire for him, even though I don’t know if he’s pursuing me as the reporter or as the man. Right now, with him so near to me that the rest of the people on this block disappear, I won’t be able to figure out the answer.
Maybe the answer is both, but I have to know. I have to test him. “I meant what I said. I can’t do the story.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“There’s nothing I can do to convince you?”
“No.”
He’s crestfallen. He flubs his lips, blowing out a long stream of air. Then he holds his hands up as if he’s accepting surrender. “So be it. You leave me with no choice then but to buy you a drink right now.”
I furrow my brow. “Why do you say that?”
“If you’re not going to do the story with me, then one, I need to drown my sorrows, and two, I don’t have to hold out any longer. So let me take you to Simone’s around the corner, since the owner’s my best mate; it’s right near Roseland, and I can do some of those things I promised I’d do in all those e-mails you were supposed to erase. Then we’ll get you to the club in time for your show, and hopefully if I’m doing it right, you’ll be ridiculously f*cking turned on while you’re singing, and I will at the very least have the pleasure of watching you perform and knowing I brought you to that state.”
Oh. My. God.
I don’t think I can move. Or speak. Let alone breathe.
That is the sexiest thing anyone has ever said to me, and I am dying to yank him against me and kiss the hell out of him right here on Fifty-Third Street. Because he passed the test I didn’t even realize I was giving. But he passed it with flying colors, and it seems he likes me for me. I press my teeth against my lower lip and manage a sharp exhale.
“We need to go to Simone’s this second,” I say.
Once inside the swank bar with its silver tables, dark red walls, and low chrome lights overhead, we grab a small table near the back. “Just so you know, I’m going to see your show tonight,” he says.
“I gathered.”
“I bought a ticket two weeks ago. I bought them before any of this. Because I wanted to see you perform, because I like your music.”
“Don’t you just know the way to my heart,” I tease.
The waitress appears to ask for our drink order. I tell her I’ll have a Sam Adams; Matthew says he’ll have the same. “Thank you so much, Mr. Harrigan,” she says to him, then walks away.
As soon as she’s gone, his hand is on my thigh and he strokes my leg with his thumb. I might combust from the sensation.
“Are you really going to kiss me here in Simone’s? In a bar, in public?”
“Would it bother you?”
I shake my head. “No. The opposite. I have a feeling I’d like it.”
Then he bends his head to my neck, but he doesn’t kiss me. He inhales me. I draw in a sharp, hot breath as he trails his nose from my collarbone to my ear. “You smell so good. What the hell is it that you’re wearing? You smell like a tropical island.”
I can barely think straight. “Um, it’s this lotion. Coconut Dream is the name.”
“Mmm,” he whispers. “It’s insanely f*cking sexy. But then, everything about you is.”
My entire body is ablaze, and maybe this is a dream. A hot, blissful dream because nobody has said I’m sexy in years. Nobody has been turned on by the way I smell in ages. And now this man who I’ve dubbed eminently lickable is doing just that to me. He’s licking my neck, and it’s the hottest thing in the world, his tongue on my skin, and he’s tasting me, exploring me, like he told me he wanted to do. I stretch to the side, exposing more of my neck for him, wanting more of his touch. He reaches my ear and nibbles lightly, playfully. “I was right,” he whispers.
“About what?” I ask in a hazy voice, my eyes still closed.
He traces the edge of my ear with his fingertip, and I shiver. “About this earlobe,” he answers. “It tastes delicious.” Then he runs his hand down my neck, splaying his fingers across my skin, pressing hard into my collarbone, gripping me in a way that feels thoroughly possessive and full of need. His need for me, to touch my body, to claim me, and it’s so foreign, but so heady.
“And you haven’t even kissed my lips yet,” I tease.
He shakes his head against me, and laughs once. “There are so many parts of you I haven’t tasted yet. But I want to.”
That’s it. Put a fork in me. I’m done. I am officially turned on beyond any and all reason. “It’s working,” I say in a low, ragged whisper.
“My plan to get you thoroughly aroused before you take the stage?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve barely even started.”
Then he plants a rough kiss on my lips, kissing me hard, tugging on my lower lip with his teeth, before he breaks the kiss, stands up and says, “I’ll be right back.”
I watch him walk to the bar, buzzed on the way my lips feel bruised, and the fantastic way his ass looks in those jeans. Then he disappears behind the bar, leaving me in this wound-up state, wondering how I’ve gone from the butt of the Grammy Awards to the object of this hot, British, possibly royal, rock critic’s lust and affection. But there’s not much room in my brain for processing, because Matthew returns a minute later, reaches for my hand, laces his fingers through mine, and pulls me up. He guides me to a back hallway, opens a door marked Office, then closes it behind us.
“Your buddy’s?”
He nods. “John-Alistair’s bar. I’m meeting up with him after your show for a beer. But let’s not talk about him right now. Let’s just be grateful for good mates.”
He leans against his friend’s desk and pulls me close to him, threading his fingers through my hair, giving a quick tug.
“I love your hair,” he says, then drops his hands to my hips. “And your hips.” Then moves his hands to my breasts, squeezing through my sweater, and I nearly cry out from the sensation, the sharp, sweet pleasure that shoots through my body. “And the way you move,” he whispers, and it’s not lost on me that he loves what makes me a woman, all the parts of me that Aidan could never ever want. It’s such a delirious thrill to be desired like this. Not by just anyone, though, but by him. By this man who I’ve always thought was hot as hell, and now I’m learning is funny, kind, polite and relentless in his own way.
He tugs me closer, so I’m standing between his legs, and then his hands are on my face, and he kisses me more. The first time he kissed me, it felt like a dream, like I was floating on a warm, hazy horizon. Now, he’s touching me with the kind of kiss that leads to more, to frenzied, fevered quickies on desks if I were to let it go there. He kisses greedily, his tongue exploring my mouth, his lips meshing with mine as if he’s wanted to kiss me for so long. He has the slightest bit of stubble on his jawline, and I love the rough, sandpaper feel against my face.
He closes the remaining distance between us, so we are snug and airtight, and I’m lost in lust, flooded with desire in every corner of my body. I groan, but then the sound is erased as he kisses more, and harder, in an all-consuming way that makes me so insanely aroused that I grab his hips and quickly shift positions.
Now I’m seated on the edge of the desk, and he’s between my legs, and we could so easily f*ck this way if we wanted to.
“I like it better this way,” I whisper, as I run my fingers through his soft hair.
“Any way you like is good for me,” he says, and I pull him closer, feeling how hard he is, and I want to sing, I want to cry, I want to shout because he’s as turned on by me as I am by him. He pushes against me, and I am ready, so ready to shove all these papers to the floor, lie back on his friend’s desk, and slam him on top of me. I want him in every way right now. I want to feel him inside me. I want him deep within me. I want to know the kind of wild release I’d feel with him. I wrap my legs around his waist and rock into him. He responds instantly, pressing himself between my legs, harder, more desperate, and I know he wants this too.
He breaks the kiss for a moment, giving me a sly raise of the eyebrow. “Your legs wrapped around me? I could get used to that.”
But yet, I know I’m not ready to go any further. My body might be screaming to be taken right now, but I can’t fully trust my hormones or my brain or my heart. So I put on the brakes. For now. “Me, too,” I say. Then I place my hands on his chest. “And I am so immensely turned on right now, but if we keep doing this I’m not going to be able to stop.”
He nods. “Okay. I’m completely fine with whatever you want to do,” he says, breathing out hard, his eyes still full of lust. But he inches away slightly, and I find myself even more attracted to him, since he’s such a gentleman.
I glance around once at the surroundings. Here we are in his friend’s bar, grinding against each other with our clothes on, making out so hard that I have whisker burn from his stubble, and he has thoroughly tousled hair. And it hits me. He’s here with me even though there’s no story. He might have wanted a story, but he also wanted me. The mixed messages aren’t so mixed anymore, and besides, the first decent song I wrote came from the first kiss with him the other night.
Maybe this is the right step. For my career, for his career, for my record label, for my fans. For me.
“Matthew, I’m going to do the story,” I say, then I grin instantly, waiting, watching for the words to register.
“You are?”
I nod, watching as that liveliness, that sparkle I saw earlier outside the Ed Sullivan Theater, takes over his beautiful blue eyes.
“Seriously?” he asks, doing his best to keep his enthusiasm in check.
I hold my hands up. “What can I say? You were convincing.”
“Apparently I’m pretty damn brilliant at this stalking thing.”
“And the kissing thing,” I add.
“So I won you over with my kisses?”
I shake my head. “You won me over because you kissed me anyway. But I have one condition. I don’t want to tell the story about my gay ex-husband. I want to put everything with Aidan behind me.”
He nods several times, his voice shifting back to his professional tone. “I completely understand and I’m going to be totally straight with you. No pun intended,” he adds with a wink, and that earns a tiny smile. “I’d be lying to you if I said the story will not mention how your marriage ended. It probably will. In one line. I can’t ignore it, but your ex-husband is not why I want to do this story. He will not be the focus of this story. You will. Your story, who you are, your music. What makes you tick. What makes all these fans connect with you.”
“Good. That’s what I want.”
“Jane,” he says softly, hooking me with his pure blue eyes. “You have to know, you are more than your marriage. You are more than what happened to you. You are so much more than the way your marriage ended. You are an engaging, captivating, and insanely f*cking talented rock star.”
I beam. I am ear to ear with a grin. I need to remind myself of that more often.
“And listen,” he adds, “this will be about the future. It’s about what’s next. It’s about you in the studio making an album. It’s a behind-the-scenes story about how art gets made.”
Then he turns serious. “But the thing is, we should probably cool it while we’re working on the story.”
My jaw drops. “What?”
“I know. I know,” he says, sighing heavily, as he scrubs a hand over his jaw. “Trust me. I don’t want to cool it with you. And it’s not as if this is some company policy at Beat. But it’s important to me. I want to be above the board when I do my job.”
My heart sinks, but I understand. “I get it. I do.”
“But then, when we’re done with the story, I would really like to take you out and date you and do all sorts of other things to you that hopefully result in you calling out my name at the top of your lungs with your hair in that wild crazy mess, like it is right now.”
I swat him playfully, because it’s the only way to get my mind off the possibilities he’s painting. “Why don’t we go have our beers, and then I need to sing my dirty, lusty heart out over at Roseland?”
“I cannot wait to watch you perform, knowing I gave you that rosy glow in your cheeks, and that I fully intend to bring that look back in a few weeks when we’re done with the story.”
He offers his hand to shake. “To articles? And then to proper dating?”
I take his hand, wishing and hoping the article is finished quickly.