Pushing up her thigh after quickly taking care of protection, he circled the head of his cock against her core. “I am so proud to have you as mine, Thea.” More kisses, her body melting for his. “I want to strut down the street telling other men to roll their tongues back up because you belong to me and I’m keeping you—and any dickhead who wants to try his luck had better be ready to get that head taken off.”
He thrust his thickness inside her in a slow, inexorable push that had her nails digging into his shoulders. “I know that’s Neanderthal behavior, but I don’t give a shit.”
Holding him close, Thea kissed him with the violent power of the emotions in her veins. She couldn’t speak them yet, couldn’t even think about them too hard without her chest hurting and perspiration breaking out along her spine, but she was getting there.
“No matter what,” she whispered, “you were always my friend.” Her safe place. “I never cried with anyone else. Only you.”
A tremor ran through him, his head falling forward. Then he loved her, this rock star who’d been her anchor for so long that she didn’t know what she’d do without him.
Time passed both too quickly and with excruciating slowness. When Thea was with David, it raced by, their days together ending in a heartbeat. In contrast, the pace was glacial during their separations, each minute taking forever. Thea did what she’d always done to cope with emotionally intense situations: she worked. However, now it wasn’t so much drowning herself in it as using it to fill a void.
“Only a week to go until I can fly in and see him again,” she told herself after David messaged her from Washington.
Her phone rang before she could message back, the number that of the man who headed Schoolboy Choir’s legal team. “What’s up?” she asked, unworried. She was friendly with the entire team, and one or the other of them would often call her up to ask her if she wanted to join their weekly Friday lunch.
“We have a problem.”
She straightened in her chair at Bailey’s tone, stopped checking e-mail. “Talk to me.”
“An eighteen-year-old just walked into our Manhattan offices with her lawyer. She’s five months pregnant and she’s claiming David is the father.”
It was a punch to the diaphragm, her lungs screaming for air. “Any proof?” she asked on autopilot, somehow managing to sound normal. Not at all as if her world had just been smashed to pieces with an iron bar.
“According to my associate there, she’s got a pretty but inexpensive amethyst ring on her ring finger,” Bailey told her. “I remember David picking it up from the jeweler’s because I was with him that day. Girl says he promised to marry her.”
It was Thea’s worst nightmare come to life.
“They’re apparently from the same neighborhood.” Bailey’s voice was cool, professional, but she could tell the girl’s claim had caught him by surprise. “She says she met him while he was visiting his parents.” A harsh exhale. “If it wasn’t David, I’d say it sounded like he sweet-talked her to get sex, then walked out, but Jesus, it is David.”
Thea couldn’t go there, couldn’t think of this as being about David. Her David. She had to just think “client” or she’d shatter. “Is the girl threatening to go public?” she said, falling back on what she knew, on what she could handle.
“That’s the implication if we don’t settle and settle big.” Rustling sounds on Bailey’s end that indicated he was moving around. “Look, I have to call David, and then I have to fly to New York to handle this. I wanted to alert you in case her lawyer’s already leaked the news to the media. He’s a bit of a hotshot.”
“I’ll take care of it.” Thea might be numb from the inside out, her skin like ice, but she’d do her job.
“Thanks, Thea. I’d appreciate a call if you catch even a hint of anything related—I need to know exactly how dirty they intend to play.”
“Wait,” Thea said through the metallic flatness of her emotions. “The girl. What’s her name? I’ll need it to track the story.”
“Naomi Hughes. I’ll get Rebecca to e-mail you the rest of the details.”
Hanging up, Thea just sat there motionless and cold deep inside until the e-mail from Rebecca popped into her inbox. She forced herself to click on it, scrolled down to the photo of a scared-looking and very, very pretty girl.
Doe-eyed Naomi Hughes had long dark hair and a belly that wouldn’t have showed if she hadn’t pulled her pale pink shirt tight over it as she cradled her hands beneath the bump. Her features were fine, her luminous skin dusky brown, and her height a diminutive five-two according to Rebecca’s notes.