When her phone vibrated, she knew who it was before she answered.
This time, David delivered his memo over the phone line. “Hello, Ms. Arsana.”
The sound of his voice made her stomach flutter, her heart give a beat so fast it was almost painful. “Mr. Rivera.”
“Are you in bed?”
There was no question of using his question as a chance to shut everything down; they were long past that point. “I could be,” she murmured, getting up from in front of her laptop. “Given the right incentive.”
“Thea.”
His response had her sucking in a breath, abdomen tight. No one could make her feel as beautiful as David. Just the way he said her name… it had her toes curling against the woven carpet beneath her feet. Even her aching fear of getting this all wrong wasn’t any kind of shield against the reality of him.
Walking to her bed, she said, “That’s incentive enough.” It came out husky.
David’s response made her knees go weak. “I want to touch you.” Blunt words that held a stark masculine need. “If I was there with you tonight, you’d be wearing nothing but skin. I’d use my hand, my fingers, my tongue on you, drink you in like water.” Breath rough, he continued. “Shit, I might as well admit it—finesse would go out the window the instant I tasted you. Say yes, Thea. Say yes.”
Thea had frozen at his first words, hand clenched on the sheet. Now she released the sheet with a jerky motion and reached down to undo the tie that held up her cotton pajama pants. With David’s voice in her ear, there was nothing else she could do, her body screaming for him. “Yes.” Skin hot, she spoke over his groan. “I’m about to get naked for you.” The fear, the worry they’d mess this up, it was still there, but for now, it was buried beneath the white-hot flame that burned between them. “Talk to me.”
The words that came over the phone line were harsh and blue… and then, sinfully, decadently sexy. He told her exactly what he wanted to do to her in intimate, exquisite detail. And as she’d already learned, the Gentleman of Rock knew exactly how to arouse her to fever pitch. Unsurprisingly, she ended up in bed with her hand between her thighs while his voice seduced her to quivering pleasure.
When it was over, he blew her a kiss, and said, “I know exactly who you are, Thea, and you’re the woman I want. Only you.”
Chapter 6
Nearly six weeks, several delays, and hours of maddening, arousing, hot phone sex later, David looked around the room filled with supermodels, musicians, producers, A-list Hollywood actors, and other glitterati, and felt as if he would burst. The entire band was at the New York party because the hosts were good friends—albeit ones who tended to go over the top.
David had come so as not to be rude, but he wasn’t in a party frame of mind.
Glancing at his watch for the thousandth time, he caught Abe giving him the side eye. “I have to pick someone up at the airport,” he said, cutting off the questions before they began. “Where’s Noah?”
“I saw him with that Ethiopian model. The one in the perfume ad where she’s half-naked with a tiger. You seen it?”
“Yeah.” David was both surprised and not by the news. Noah went through women like some men went through beer, but David had thought he’d picked up an increasingly intense vibe between Noah and Kit, the talented actress who’d been friends with the members of Schoolboy Choir since the start of both her and their careers.
Still, it was probably better for Kit if she didn’t get involved with Noah. David loved the other man like a brother, but Noah’s loyalty to a woman lasted hours at most. Soon as the sex was over, he was gone.
It was something David had never understood about Noah, because in every other way, the guitarist was reliable and blood loyal. He never fucked around when it came to the music, never made things difficult for his bandmates, had once driven an hour in a snowstorm at four in the morning to pick David up when his car broke down.
And the thing was, all those women? They didn’t seem to make Noah happy.
David had brought up the subject once, worried Noah was in a bad place. The guitarist had held his gaze, then tipped his beer in David’s direction, saying, “I’m just a bastard, David. It’s genetic.”
That’s all David had gotten out of him, but two days later, Noah had written a song titled “Broken” that had fucking torn out David’s heart and become a number-one single around the world. David didn’t know how to fix what was broken in his friend, and neither did Abe or Fox. All they could do was be there for Noah should he ever decide to talk.