“I can smell the Grammy already.”
“Then we’ll have his-and-hers Grammys. Good plan.” Chance brushed her hair off her face. “Hey. I love you.”
“I love you, too. So much. More than is natural.”
He shifted his hand down her chest and cupped her full breast. “It feels pretty natural to me.”
His dog jumped up on the bed next to them. “Get,” he told Dolly. “Mama and Daddy have to pay the bills.”
Jolene laughed. “What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know. It just sounds like what you tell kids when you’re knocking boots.” He stood up and pulled the dog to the door and tossed her out and slammed the door shut behind her. “We don’t need an audience, and she’ll be happy as soon as she finds the sandwich on the table. Now, where were we?”
“Knocking boots.”
“Right. Third time’s the charm.” Chance paused, staring down at Jolene. “Damn. You are looking fine, JoJo.”
She was a sexy little package, resting on her elbows, shirt creeping up so he had a glimpse of a ribbon of her skin, showing off the dip of her waist. He had missed her. Leaning down, he gave her a long, questing, possessive kiss on her full lips. He breathed in the scent of her floral shampoo and brushed his mouth across her jawline, down into her neck. Her skin was warm, and she shivered in response to his touch.
Slowly, savoring, studying her features, he took in her pert nose, her plump lips, her sparkling eyes. Then he eased her shirt up over her head and drew her jeans down over her hips. She let him set the pace, and she didn’t speak. She just ran her fingers over his chest and licked her lips in a way that drove him crazy. He was hard, ready to take her, but wanting to appreciate her.
“Oh, baby,” he murmured, kissing the swell of her breast. “I want to taste every inch of you.”
Jolene sighed and reached behind her back, popping her bra open. “I could say about a million clichés right now, but all you need to know is that I love you. I love you with every ounce of my being, and when I’m with you, I feel whole.”
His chest tightened. He brushed a hand over her cheek, running his thumb over her lip. “I have no words big enough, so I’m just going to show you how I feel.”
There was no sense of time or place. Just flesh on flesh, his lips and hands moving all over her, wanting to touch and taste every inch. By the time he skimmed her panties down over her hips, she was panting, and he was enjoying the agonizing anticipation.
When he finally pushed inside her body in the ultimate partnership, Jolene was calling out his name, and nothing had ever sounded sweeter.
“Chance, yes.” Her eyes were glazed.
When she shattered, he went right along with her, and they were together, in harmony.
Epilogue
Jolene stood onstage at the CMAs, next to Chance, wearing a tiny sequined dress in cobalt blue and a huge grin. She loved moments like this, the crowd cheering, the lights hot on her face, her favorite guitar player by her side. This was the success she had dreamed of, taking the stage at the Opry, all of country music’s finest sitting down in front of her while she sang for them.
“Thank you, thank y’all so much!” she said into her mike, raising her hand in a wave and blowing the audience a kiss. “We’re so happy to be here.”
They were. She and Chance had managed to have another hell of a year, but this time it hadn’t resulted in guitars tossed and insults hurled at each other. Instead they had an album drop to great reviews and sales. They’d done a mini-tour. She’d had a huge hit with her Wayne Rush duet and they’d moved into a house they’d chosen together.
Everything was exactly what she had asked for out of life, and she was one lucky woman.
She turned to Chance. “So what do you say, Rivers? Should we sing these people a song?”
Her coworker, partner, boyfriend gave her a smile and a nod. He’d kept up his workout regime after they’d gotten back together, and he was still off liquor. Between the two, he had bulked out, with defined arm and leg muscles, and sexy-as-hell broad shoulders. She had to say, her man was downright yummy, standing onstage, his guitar in front of him, wearing cowboy boots and jeans that fit just right. She was going home with that, and it made her girl bits flutter to think about it.
Chance led in with his guitar, looking behind him briefly to cue the rest of their band, and Jolene swayed, letting the music slide over her. It had turned out that their biggest hit off the new album was not a song Tennyson wrote with Chance, nor was it the song they’d written at the cabin. It was the song they’d written the morning after they’d gotten back together.
It had been written the way all their best hits had been written—naked and in bed. Chance had been right about that all along. Hell, it made Jolene look forward to writing the next album.