Love's Rhythm Read online

  Lauren closed her eyes and dropped her face into her hand. “Just you. I’ll give Josh a call from your place.”

  “Okey dokey, teach. Be there soon.”

  Jennifer disconnected, leaving Lauren alone.

  Not alone. There’s an unconscious rock star behind you, remember?

  She pulled a face, ignoring the way her pulse fluttered at that little fact. Her pulse and her pussy.

  Tossing her phone aside, she raised her other hand to her face and rubbed. Her pussy. Bloody hell, she was pathetic. Whatever the reason he was here, Nick sure as hell wasn’t here to bonk, and she wouldn’t let him if he was. She was over him. Had been for fifteen years.

  If she were lucky, Nick Blackthorne would leave Murriundah before everyone got all squealy and silly, and she could go back to being over him quick smart. If she were really, really lucky, he’d leave before Josh knew he was even in the town.

  What are the odds of that happening?

  She snorted. “None.”

  “You talking to me?” a low, croaky voice asked behind her, “or are you still in the habit of talking to yourself?”

  Lauren’s heart—way too happily entrenched in her throat—smashed harder, as if trying to escape her all together. She didn’t blame it. She’d like to escape herself right now as well. She lifted her head from her hands—slowly—and reached for her satchel.

  “You going to brain me with that again?”

  Nick’s question was uttered with a husky chuckle—his voice still weak and somehow fragile.

  That’s ’cause you knocked him out, Robbins. And let him lay sprawled on the cold bloody damp ground for the last ten minutes or so.

  “Nice bag, by the way,” he went on, the words a little stronger. “Who gave it to you?”

  She turned, glaring at him. “You did, you idiot.”

  He laughed—another husky chuckle—as he pushed himself upright. “I know, I know. Just trying to break the ice.” He pushed at a clod of dirt stuck to his jacket’s lapel before giving her a quick grin. “Although somewhat less violently than you did.” He pushed himself to his feet, unfurling to almost his entire six-foot-one frame. And then, to Lauren’s horror, his eyes rolled, his cheeks paled and he staggered sideways.

  “Hey!” She leapt to her own feet, reaching for him just as he was about to kiss the dirt again. Guilt crashed over her. “Hey, hey.” Her hands found his arms, her fingers curling around his biceps, halting his tumble.

  He blinked, his full weight hanging in her grip for a second, pulling her forward a step closer to him. Close enough for his scent to thread into her quick intake of breath.

  God, he still smells so damn good.

  The thought just had time to register in her whirling brain and in her traitorously fluttering sex before Nick’s hands came to rest on her hips. Hands that were warm and firm and there, so there.

  “Lauren,” he murmured.

  She looked up into his face, into his glazed eyes. Her lips parted to say something cutting, pithy, witty—God, anything would be better than nothing—when he leant toward her, those angry-sky eyes of his growing intense with clarity, and then his mouth was on hers.

  Lord, he still kisses…

  His tongue dipped past her lips, seeking and finding hers with little resistance. He tasted as good as he had fifteen years ago—toothpaste and coffee and him. He tasted as good. He smelt as good. He felt as good.

  A groan vibrated deep in her chest, echoed by Nick’s. Her nipples hardened and her pussy throbbed. Her eyes fluttered closed and she snaked her arms around his neck and buried her fingers in his hair…a fraction of a second before his lips slid from her mouth, down her chin and he crumpled to the ground again. Stone-cold unconscious once more.

  Chapter Three

  Nothing was in focus. Or coloured. Come to think of it, everything was white and fuzzy and bright. Way too bright. And way too fuzzy. And…muffled, like his head was stuffed with iridescent cotton wool.

  Nick groaned, squinting and blinking at the brightness. His head hurt. Why did his head hurt? And where was he? Why could he smell disinfectant?

  He rubbed at his eyes with his hands, letting out another groan when thick licks of pain lashed through his head. Jesus, what the fuck had happened? Where the hell was he?

  Satchel.

  Lauren.

  The two words floated through his head, disconnected and confusing. Lauren? Lauren Robbins? Satchel? Why was he thinking of Lauren Rob—

  It came back to Nick. All of it. In a smashing wave of colour, smell and bone-crunching touch—driving to Murriundah, to the small public school he’d once attended thirty-odd years ago, seeing his old girlfriend walking across the playground carrying the bag he’d given her, trotting up behind her with a nervous smile on his face, his heart thumping, saying her name…

  “She hit me,” he uttered on a moan, rubbing at his face some more. “She hit me with her satchel.”

  “You scared me.”

  The soft feminine voice stroked over his ears and, eyes flinging open, Nick sat bolt upright.

  Pain exploded in his head, sharp and white and blinding. The cotton wool turned to steel wool, making him wince. The fuzziness turned to blurring vertigo, making his stomach lurch, and then everything cleared and he was staring at Lauren Robbins perched on the side of the bed he was stretched out on.

  Bed.

  Lauren.

  Those two words didn’t float through his head, disconnected and confusing, they positively rushed at each other, their intention undeniable. He was on a bed with Lauren Robbins. A soft bed.

  She frowned at him, her deep-auburn eyebrows coming together above eyes a crystalline-blue. “Nick?”

  A blur of sensations suddenly swirled through him—Lauren’s body pressed to his, her arms around his neck, her lips moving over his as his tongue stroked over hers. A kiss? Had he kissed her? Had she kissed him back? When?

  He blinked. A wave of dizziness rolled over him, turning everything fuzzy again. The cotton wool in his head made the air sound like flesh scraping over a mic turned up to maximum. He licked at lips dry and tingling, raking an unsteady hand through his hair. “I feel like shit.”

  “The life of a rock star?”

  He couldn’t miss the edge in her voice. Lowering his hand, he gave her a lopsided smile, doing his best to ignore the way his heart thumped harder at the creamy perfection of her skin, the smattering of freckles on her cheeks. God, he’d loved those freckles. “If you mean a life of debauchery and drug use,” he said, keeping his own voice relaxed despite the rather enthusiastic blood flow making its way to wholly inappropriate parts of his body given the situation, “you’re only half correct. The last time a narcotic and I had anything to do with each other was the time you and I shared a joint behind Mrs. Forester’s garden shed.”

  Lauren’s cheeks flushed pink heat and she let out a sigh, rolling her eyes. “Of course you would remember that.” She poked a finger at him. “Your father blamed me for that right up to the day your parents moved back to Newcastle.”

  Nick laughed, the throb in his head echoing the hiccupping beat. “It was your fault. It was your cousin who gave it to us.”

  “And your cousin who ratted us out to your dad.” She glared at him, her freckles a darker shade thanks to the blush still tainting her cheeks. “Why I thought sharing a joint with a cop’s son was a bright idea is beyond me.”

  He grinned at her. His heart beat just a little harder, his groin noticing she still looked gorgeous when indignant. “Because you wanted to get in my pants?”

  She rolled her eyes again, crossing her arms across her breasts—breasts, he couldn’t help but remember, that were heavy and full and divine to fondle and suckle and…

  His cock jerked in his jeans. His damn near fully engorged cock. Shit, now was not the time to get an erection.

  Huh. Lauren Robbins is in the same room as you. That was once the perfect time to get an erec—

  “I didn’t wa
nt to get into your pants,” she grumbled. “You wanted to get into mine.”

  “Still do.”

  The confession was out before he could stop it. It hung on the air between them, undeniable, irrefutable and bloody well discommodious. How he felt for Lauren Robbins had no bearing on the situation. It was not why he was here. That he wanted to lay her flat on this bed—her bed? It didn’t smell like her—and reacquaint himself with her lush, beautiful body held no sway over his actions. That he wanted to lose himself in her full, giving mouth, her round, bountiful breasts, her long, firm thighs, her tight, warm pussy had no influence on his behaviour at all. It couldn’t. He was here to ask her to a wedding and tell her he was sorry for breaking her heart. That was it. Nothing else.

  And yet your dick is as hard as a bloody pole and your pulse is slamming in your throat. Remember this, Nick? This is the way you used to feel every night—every night—when you were together. Every night when you made love to her. Before you up and left.

  “Lauren, I didn’t mean to—”

  “Why are you here, Nick?” she cut him off with a whisper.

  “So, the famous Nick Blackthorne is awake?”

  Nick started at the new voice, the new female voice. He jerked back from Lauren a little, swinging his stare in the direction of the voice, the throbbing in his head dialing up a notch as he did so.

  A tall, willowy woman with hair darker than a moonless midnight and eyes the same inky black stood in the bedroom’s open doorway. Her eyebrows were raised, her lips looking for all the world like they were losing a battle with a grin.

  “I must admit,” she continued, crossing the room to stand beside Lauren, that same almost-grin playing on her lips, “I don’t know whether to go all fan-girlie and faint or laugh myself silly Lauren knocked you out with her handbag.”

  Nick chuckled, giving his temple a bit of a rub. “If I knew one day she was going to whack me in the head with it, I would’ve given her a clutch purse instead.”

  The woman raised her eyebrows even higher. “You gave it to her?” She burst out laughing, the sound bouncing around the room in unfettered peals of mirth. “Oh, that’s priceless.”

  Nick grinned, even as his head ached. “So was the bag. I bought it for her with the royalties of my first single.”

  “Really?” The woman plonked down on the bed beside Lauren, sending fresh waves of pain through Nick’s head. “That is so romantic.”

  Lauren let out a snort. “Romantic is calling your girlfriend for her birthday from the other side of the world without a woman in the background cooing and gahing your name.”

  The comment hit Nick like a fist. His grin vanished. He remembered the incident Lauren was referring to all too easily. It had been his second week touring the UK, a naïve twenty-one-year-old thrust into a world of adulation he wasn’t equipped to deal with, a second-story hotel room with a window he should have locked, a fan who wouldn’t take no for an answer. The woman—twice his age by the looks of her—had thrown herself on stage during that night’s performance, screaming Nick’s name. Carted off by the concert’s hired muscle, she’d promised to come to him later. She’d kept that promise, right in the middle of Nick’s eagerly awaited call to Lauren for her nineteenth birthday. Aslin had been employed the next day. Lauren had taken weeks to placate.

  Or so Nick had thought. It seemed she hadn’t been placated at all.

  Maybe you should go now, Nick. She hasn’t exactly made you feel welcome.

  So why did the memory of a kiss keep teasing him? The memory of Lauren’s fingers in his hair, her tongue touching his teeth, his tongue, her breasts crushed to his chest…

  His head swum. His cock throbbed.

  Had she kissed him? Out on their old school’s playground? Somewhere between braining him and him passing out…twice…had she kissed him? And if she had, what did that mean?

  “Err…” the new arrival perched beside Lauren said, looking decidedly unsettled.

  He gave her a wry smile, pulling himself more upright in an attempt to hide his rather insistent erection. “What Lauren is trying to say is I was a grade-A jerk back then. An innocent, rather clueless grade-A jerk, but a grade-A jerk all the same.”

  The woman flicked Lauren a sideways glance, as if waiting for her to join the tête-à-tête.

  Lauren didn’t. She pushed herself to her feet, wiping her hands on her thighs. Thighs, Nick noticed, that still looked amazing in snug pants. “I’m sorry I knocked you out, Nick,” she said, looking very much not sorry. “But Jennifer here says you’re going to be okay, so if I you want to tell me where your car is…?”

  Nick shot Jennifer a grin. “You say I’m okay? Are you a doctor?”

  Jennifer grinned back at him. “Vet.”

  He laughed, his head throbbing in time. “Of course you are.” He swung his gaze to Lauren where she stood, a few feet away from the bed, her hands tucked under her armpits, her teeth gnawing on her bottom lip. The urge to climb from the bed—he still didn’t know who it belonged to, but something told him it wasn’t Lauren’s—surged through him. Climb from the bed, walk to Lauren, capture her face with his hands and kiss her senseless.

  But he didn’t. He may be a rock star to the rest of the world, but right here, right now, he was just the ex-boyfriend who’d turned up unexpectedly, ergo, he had some explaining to do. And some questions to ask.

  “Are you married?”

  So, not taking the tactful route today, Blackthorne?

  He bit back a curse. Okay, the hit on the head obviously had done more damage than he suspected. Like destroying any ability he had to control what was coming out of his mouth.

  Lauren gaped at him. Jennifer snorted. “No, she isn’t, but she’s got a—”

  “Another appointment,” Lauren burst out, hurrying over to Nick. “So, if you can tell me where your car is?” She curled her fingers around his upper arm, just above his elbow and gave him a gentle tug.

  Two things happened at once. Dull pain laced through his head at the shift in position of his upper body and his breath caught at the sudden and altogether vivid memory of Lauren’s fingers against his arm in their old school’s playground a second before he kissed her.

  A heartbeat before she kissed him back.

  His gaze locked on hers. “You did kiss me.”

  “You kissed him?” Jennifer squealed.

  Lauren’s eyes grew wide. “I-I…”

  Nick rose to his feet, slowly, until he stood directly before her, their thighs brushing, holding her stare the entire time. “You kissed me,” he repeated on a low murmur. “Just like this.”

  He lowered his head and took her lips with his. They were soft, as he remembered them being. Soft and sweet and warm. He stroked the tip of his tongue over them, an exquisite tension spreading through his body as they parted. Her tongue touched his, hesitant, almost shy. It was enough. Enough to bring their past, their passion, their desire, rushing back to him. He groaned, low and unabashed, and plunged his tongue deeper into her mouth, his hands snaking around her waist to snare her shirt in two tight fistfuls. She whimpered in reply, the sound pushing him over the edge.

  With another groan—this one far more aggressive—he yanked her to his body, taking utter possession of her mouth as his hands roamed her back. She fit to his frame with perfection, firm and soft and lush. Nothing had changed. Her body against his ignited a primitive need in him he’d never been able to vocalize, not in song or word, no matter how many times he’d tried. It sparked a want beyond the physical.

  He raked his hands up her back and tangled his fingers in her spun-copper hair, shorter than it had been the last time he saw her but no less silken, no less intoxicating with its thick, unrestrained waves.

  Lauren moaned, her hips pressing harder to his. White-hot awareness shot through him, a sizzling tension that made his pulse quicken and his balls throb. He plundered her mouth with desperate greed, drinking in her breath, her equally hungry need. This…this… Why had he
walked away from this? Was he insane?

  She moaned again, her hands sliding up his shirt, slipping beneath his collar. Her skin touched his and there was nothing hesitant about the contact. She splayed her fingers over his shoulders, up the back of his neck and into his hair, pulling him deeper into their kiss. Her tongue mated with his, fierce and demanding. A noise sounded to Nick’s left—distant and unimportant—like someone coughing. But he didn’t care. Lauren was kissing him. His Lauren. His goddess. She was kissing him and grinding her sex against him and holding him as if she never would let him go again.

  Christ, she infused him with heat. With life. Why the fuck had he ever—

  “Ahem!”

  The word scratched at Nick’s senses, loud and filled with laughter. With a gasp, Lauren jerked away from him, staggering back a step as she swung her stare to the smirking woman watching them from the bed. Her cheeks filled with fresh pink, but it was her lips that caught Nick’s attention. They were swollen and glistening with his kiss. His cock gave an insistent little twitch in his jeans at the sight. He wanted to kiss her again. Kiss her and hold her and fuck her.

  “Guess that clears up my next question.”

  Jennifer’s chuckled statement pulled his stare from Lauren’s flushed face. “What question is that?” he asked, struggling to control his voice. And the urge to reach into his jeans and adjust himself. Fuck, he was in pain here, his cock swollen and pumped full of demanding blood and trapped at an odd angle.

  The vet raised her eyebrows. “How’s your head feeling?”

  For a split second Nick thought she was talking about the only head that seemed to matter at that very point in time, the bulbous one on the end of his dick trying to escape his jeans. He blinked, at a loss for words, before rational thought kicked him in the arse and realization dawned. He touched his temple to show her he knew what head she was talking about. “My head’s fine, thanks, doc.”

  “Good,” Lauren snapped, her voice far from controlled. “Then you can go.”

  “I don’t think so, teach.” Jennifer pushed herself from the bed and gave them both a steady look, her black eyes twinkling with barely concealed mirth as she turned to Lauren. “As Mr. Blackthorne’s medical practitioner I must insist he stay put for at least twenty-four hours.”