I shushed her, because if our waiter really did walk in on us, I thought I might kill him.

I closed my eyes as she started to move, pleasure overtaking my body, insinuating itself into every pore.

The world dissolved. Only sensation remained. And the perfect harmony of our movements, the feel of flesh on flesh.

I circled my hips, rising up and down to match her steady rhythm. The girl made love like she danced. It was hypnotic. Intoxicating. I couldn’t remember why I’d ever signed on to be away from her for days at a time. This was what I craved, what I needed, the only way I felt whole, and the only real peace there was to be had since Jared had died.

I could never get deep enough, rocking her harder and harder on top of me. Our movements became jolting and urgent as we reached that fever pitch together.

She began to shudder with her climax, and I let myself go, holding her hips hard enough to bruise, buried deep, I came. Hard. My whole body shook, my breath shuddering out of me in great heaves.

I didn’t think I’d ever been through anything that intensely pleasurable in my life. And so of course, I wanted to do it again almost instantly.

Danika dislodged herself from me slowly, lazily, flopping down on her back next to me. She looked utterly relaxed. I loved doing that to her. She was an anxious person, and I loved fucking her until she couldn’t so much as finish a thought.

“Oh my God,” she said quietly, her eyes drifting closed. “That was…out of this world.”

“I missed you,” I told her, moving on top of her.

“What are you…really?”

I just grinned as I steered myself to her entrance with my hand. “Really. You look sleepy. Go ahead and sleep. Don’t mind me.” I drove into her.

She’d started to laugh at my words, but it turned into a drawn out gasp.

I started thrusting. I had used all of my restraint the last time. This one was a quick, hell bent fucking. I rocked inside of her, cramming deep when the harsh, rushing waves of release began to take me. She was with me, but that was more luck than skill on my part. I’d lost all control.

She lay limp as I tied her back into her tiny bikini. We’d pushed our luck enough. I didn’t want her to be exposed as we gloried in the aftermath.

“I missed you,” she mumbled, touching my hand. No sooner had she spoken then her eyes drifted closed. She was done, passed out, sated, completely oblivious to the crowd outside.

I grinned.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

TRISTAN

We spent the next few days almost entirely in bed. Danika ditched out of work, forgot about studying, and when Monday rolled around, skipped all of her classes. She dropped everything for me, to be there for me when I asked her to. It was just what I’d needed to feel sane again.

I left once on Monday to grab some groceries, leaving Danika passed out in bed.

To my delight, she wasn’t passed out when I got home.

I heard the bath running as I opened the door to my bedroom, stepping in to find a sight in my bathtub that had me salivating.

Dean called it a porno tub, and he wasn’t wrong, considering how many bodies you could potentially fit into the thing. At the moment it was filled with a vision too exquisite to ever grace the small screen.

Danika smiled when she saw me, arching her back like the vixen she was. The woman had me wrapped around her pinkie and she had to know it. I was hard before I’d fully shut the door behind me.

“Glad you made yourself comfortable in here,” I told her, my voice hoarse with unadulterated lust.

The glow of candles played over her flesh as she shifted restlessly in the water, the pert globes of her breasts rising above the surface like a decadent offering.

She didn’t say a word, just lifted one leg, balancing a heel on the edge of the tub. There were no bubbles in the bath, and I moved closer, my gaze intent on her body in the clear water. My jaw clenched hard as she slowly raised her other foot, spreading her legs wide, giving me a perfect view of paradise. “Are you waiting for an invitation? The water’s nice, I swear.”

I shrugged out of my shirt, fingers going to my jeans, fumbling with the button. I felt like a horny teenager, clumsy with lust. Only Danika could do that to me.

“We’re going to make a mess,” I warned her.

“What’s this huge tub for if you can’t even make love to me in it?”

“You have a point. We should probably eat before we have sex again. We’re going to make ourselves pass out.”

“You poor thing.” Her tone was mocking, and she moved as she spoke, sitting up and reaching over to clasp one firm hand around my throbbing cock. My eyes shut and my head fell back as sensation superseded my ability to think or speak.

I moaned, arching into her hand. I let her play with me over my jeans, fumbling with my zipper when I couldn’t stand the light teasing anymore.

She made a delicious little humming noise as I sprang hard into her hand, stroking me, once, twice.

I pulled away, stripping in a few swift moves.

I stepped into the bath, between her widely spread thighs, savoring the view, every bit of it, as I sank down to my knees in the water.

I reached for her, grasping her round breasts into my hands, kneading softly until she moaned and writhed for me, her hands on the rim of the tub keeping her chest above the water.

“Drain the tub a bit,” I ordered her gruffly. “I don’t want you to drown.”

One of her hands moved behind her, fumbling with the drain as I climbed on top of her. I rubbed our bodies together, my hands gripping her thigh, jerking them wider as I moved between.

I buried myself in her slowly, her tight sheath clasping each inch that I gave her, making my vision blur with the perfect pressure.

“So fucking tight,” I said through gritted teeth. It was too much. Just too fucking much. I could have died like this, delirious with pleasure, and never regretted it for a second. “I swear your cunt was put on this earth to drive me out of my fucking mind.”

Water lapped over the sides of the tub as I stroked in and out of her slowly, leisurely, her nose and lips barely above the water line, her eyes squeezed shut tight and submerged.

I barely made a full lap before I started to come, premature in my absolute, body consuming pleasure. It was just too much sometimes, the utter completeness of it. It was a mystery I ever kept any control of myself, buried inside of her like this. It was sheer dumb luck that she followed me as I shook and groaned with my own death throes.

My mouth stayed glued to her ear even after the water ran out, the tub empty, whispering over and over how much I adored her.

“I shudder to think what kind of action this porno tub has seen.” I could hear the smile her voice as she spoke against my cheek.

“Dean has you calling it a porno tub too, huh?” I asked sternly, finally pushing up on my arms to look at her.

“Dean? Hell no. I basically hear white noise whenever he opens his big mouth. I call it a porno tub because it’s a porno tub. You could fit six people in here.”

That had me hardening my jaw and studying her.

“Watch a lot of porn, do you?”

She rolled her eyes at me, pursing her lips in that adorably bratty way of hers. “I don’t, no, but my ex used to watch it all the—“

I stopped her before she could finish, feeling that now familiar red cloud of rage overtaking my vision. I tried to grasp a handle on it, but it was elusive. “I don’t want to talk about skinny jeans, and I sure as fuck don’t want you to tell me how he liked to get off—“

One soft hand to my cheek had me shutting my mouth, and feeling like a jerk.

“I don’t want to talk about him either. Calm down, okay? I get it. I like to pretend there was never a Nat, so I get it, but you can’t turn into a caveman every time I say the wrong thing.”

I nodded, moving to stand, closing my eyes and groaning with the slow pull out of her before making it to my knees and then my feet in the wet tub.

I stepped out before helping her do the same. “Well, the good news is, I think you get a five minute break before I attack you again, but what will we do with all that free time?”

She laughed, giving me a fond look and a kiss on the chin.

I stayed for an entire week, ignoring my phone, ignoring the world.

“Fuck ‘em,” I told her. “This is what I need. I can’t go back without more.”

She smiled that smile where I saw myself and forever in her eyes, and gave me everything. She was selfless, my Danika, keeping nothing for herself.

I thought that too brief respite would help me. It made perfect sense to me that after a week of filling myself up with Danika, I’d stay full for a while. It would buy me some time, before I started to feel so empty again.

It didn’t work that way, not at all.

It was just the opposite.

The contrast unraveled me faster. What I’d left behind, the constant using, the highs followed by the strung out lows, only the lows were more unbearable than ever. I couldn’t exist as me, couldn’t stand how that felt.

Not without her.

Most days, I needed chemical assistance to even get out of bed. There was always a party, always something to do with our record label, something that lasted until morning. And our studio sessions always seemed to get later and later, and less and less productive.

This is not a good place for me to be, I thought, at least once a day. There were no brakes at our little band crash pad in L.A.

“It’s like I’m watching a fucking gnarly flashback scene from an episode of Behind the Music,” Adair, the replacement lead guitarist said to me one night, as we caught Dean snorting coke off some groupie’s bared stomach in the house’s tiny kitchen.

I laughed. In spite of myself, I was starting to like the guy.

Adair was very tall and lean, with flinty gray eyes, and crazy unruly brown hair that was dyed blue half the time. He wasn’t far behind Dean on the drug and groupie binging scale, but he had a point.

“You have to finish a fucking record to ever get on any damn show, and thanks to that hot mess across the room, that is not happening for us.” I sounded bitter.

I was bitter.

Adair poured us each a shot of whiskey. I’d lost count of the shots I’d had that night, but I grabbed the glass with one hand, my other still holding my cigarette, and clinked glasses. “Bottoms up,” I muttered, downing it. “Here’s to getting out of L.A. as fast as fucking possible, no thanks to Dean.”

“It’s not so bad,” he mused. “Worse for you, since you’re the only one with a girlfriend. But, hell, I don’t feel sorry for you.”

He caught the look on my face and grinned. “Don’t try to kill me or anything. I know the deal. Everyone has warned me not to talk about her. Well, except for Dean. Dean has given me some spectacularly bad advice about telling you…well, never mind that. But you know, I’ve seen her, and you don’t have such a rough deal. Hell, even I would go without pussy a few days a week for a girl like that.”

My empty fist clenched, but I could tell that he wasn’t trying to offend, and I took a long drag off my smoke as I tried hard not to let my temper broil. “So tell me, what has everyone been telling you?”