Rock & Roll Nights: The Lila and Rivers Edit

32. Lila

32

LILA

“ I think…” I said, jotting something down, then scratching it out and jotting down something else. “I think if we use something like this, it works better.”

Rivers strummed out the line of notes he’d just created and hummed, then sang the words I’d written. They weren’t a lot different from what we’d had before, but I’d changed them to a different order, and it felt right.

“You’re right,” he murmured. “They sit in the music better that way. But what if…” He reached out and scratched out one word, replacing it with something else, then played the line again. When he turned his smile on me, it was beautiful. Almost cherubic. “That’s it,” he murmured. “That’s it right there.”

I returned a gentle smile of my own. “You’re right. Now we just have to get the bridge done.”

“And we’ll have a whole song,” he finished, glancing down at the paper.

I looked down as well and frowned at what we’d written. It was another love song, there was no doubt about that, but it was sort disguised with anger and hurt and heartbreak. Lots of darkness with some love shining through. The hope of love, I corrected myself. The story of a boy and a girl who had known each other for ages and had lived through the worst pain possible but had come out the other side and managed to find each other again.

A couple that had separated and thought they’d lost each other. Cut off contact. Found other ways to live. Pretended to forget the other existed. Only to come back together in the end like they’d somehow planned it that way, although neither had thought it was possible. It was a story of young love and mistakes, miscommunications and betrayals, and the loss that came about when you didn’t appreciate what you had. It was a story of growing because you were forced to and learning how to stand on your own two feet when the person who had been your foundation was suddenly gone.

And that part broke my heart. Mostly because I could see how much it was breaking Rivers.

In the end, though, the lyrics had the couple finding each other again. Scuffed up and bruised from having been forced into the world on their own and not quite the same people they had been when they’d known each other before, but undeniably drawn together like magnets. Two people that life couldn’t keep apart.

Two people who had fought to find their ways back to each other, because they knew in their hearts that was where they belonged.

It was a redemption story made song, and I thought it was probably the most dramatic thing I’d ever written. Not that it had been all me; it had Rivers’ fingerprints all over it. And I wondered, not for the first time, what had happened to him to give him so much depth. Who had he been before he broke into the music business? What had helped to build him into the person he was?

Who had hurt him so much that he didn’t know how to believe in his own value?

Or was I just imagining that part of him?

“Give me a story from your childhood,” I said suddenly, letting my thoughts become words without bothering to think about it. “Something no one else knows.”

His mouth quirked, but the smile didn’t touch his eyes. “Something no one else knows? So that would mean something only I know?”

I returned the small smile. “I guess that would fit the definition, yeah. Though I’m not stuck on those parameters.”

He thought about it for a moment, his face going completely blank and then even darker. Whatever he was remembering, he didn’t like it much, and for a moment I thought maybe this had been a bad idea. But then he found something he did like and gave me a quick flash of a smile.

“I learned how to play guitar by studying books,” he said. “I didn’t have anyone to give me lessons, but I was convinced that I needed to know it. So I went to the library every day, found books on music instruction, and practiced.”

Okay, that hadn’t been what I was expecting. “Did you have a guitar?”

“No way. No one to buy me one.”

Right, I wasn’t going to ask. “So how did you practice?”

“I drew a picture of a guitar, strings and everything, and cut it out. Then I held it in front of me and practiced on it. There wasn’t any sound, but I learned the movements and the positions for my fingers. Then I’d go to the guitar store and pretend I was actually planning to buy a guitar.”

I almost laughed but stopped myself right in time. “And they believed you?”

He leaned in and dropped his voice. “It was a small town. They didn’t get much traffic. They were desperate for a sale and probably bored out of their minds.”

“So you literally learned how to play guitar by learning the finger positions on a piece of paper and then practicing those motions on guitars you pretended you were going to buy. Even though you didn’t have any money to buy them,” I interpreted, allowing myself to look incredulous. “How long did it take you?”

“About three months on the paper. Another three in the store.”

I whistled softly. “Six months to teach yourself how to play the guitar in the most backward way possible. You actually are a phenom.”

He shrugged, looking partially humble and partially impressed with himself. “I mean, there’s a reason I have that reputation.”

“Yeah, right. It would have been easy for your publicist to put that out there and make it a reputation. It didn’t have to be true for that to happen.”

“But it would have been hard to maintain if I then got on stage and didn’t play my own music,” he pointed out. “Even harder if I hadn’t been able to go on any show or live venue and make shit up without any warning.”

“Okay, that’s fair,” I allowed. “I mean I always believed you were a phenom. I wasn’t questioning it.”

“You were absolutely questioning it!” he said on a huff. “You just said it could have been my publicist making shit up!”

“I said it could have!” I protested. “I didn’t say I believed that!”

He scoffed. “You basically said you didn’t believe I could actually play the guitar.”

“Okay, that’s an out-and-out lie,” I said.

“Whatever. Now I see what you actually think of me. So fair’s fair. Give me one of your childhood stories. How did you learn to play guitar?”

I almost didn’t want to tell him. “My parents wanted us all to have hobbies. So when I decided my hobby was going to be guitar, and two of my sisters wanted to do the same, we got lessons.”

“That easy? Did you go to a school for it or something?”

“No. The teacher came to our house.”

He looked shocked. “Really? Right to your house? How often?”

“Three tines a week,” I said quietly, feeling somehow guilty for admitting it, like I had done something wrong by having the upbringing I had.

Now it was his turn to whistle, though his face had turned sort of wistful. “So that’s how it is to live in a house where the parents actually love you.”

Okay, what?

“Huh?”

His face shuttered as quickly as it had opened, and the wry, sarcastic expression replaced the dreamy look he’d been wearing a moment earlier. “Nothing. Just interesting to hear how the other half lives.” His mouth turned up into a smirk. “So I guess that means I worked harder to learn guitar than you did.”

“Excuse me? I worked really hard to learn guitar!”

He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, right. You probably practiced for about two weeks before you could do anything you wanted on it.”

“Which would mean I’m probably better at it than you,” I shot back.

He swung his guitar between us and scooted so close to me I could feel the brush of his skin against mine, our hands on our instruments exact mirrors of each other. And then he leaned in, his face filling my vision until he was all I could see. His dark eyes. Those thick lashes. Incredibly lush lips.

I jerked my gaze up from his lips to his eyes and caught my breath. I hadn’t seen him smolder like this since the time we made out in the hallway. I’d been in my pajamas then, and desperately aware of how bare my legs were.

Those legs were bare now, too, and burning with awareness.

“Care to prove that?” he whispered.

My mind stuttered. Prove what? What had we been talking about?

Oh, who was better at guitar.

“Any time,” I whispered. “You don’t scare me, Rivers Shine.”

Instead of answering, he ducked and captured my mouth, his lips hot and wet and demanding, and I opened for him and let him in without thinking about it, my body reacting without any help on my brain’s part. God, he was intense. Like kissing someone who was on fire. I’d forgotten what he did to me when he was this close, and the groan he forced from me was pure need and desire.

And the moment I let it out of my mouth and into his, everything started moving at warp speed. His guitar was thrown to the side and mine jerked out of my hands, tossed to the ground. His hands were on my arms, running up my shoulders and then into my hair like they had a mind of their own. He grasped the threads of my hair and pulled, forcing my head back and my mouth open. His tongue delved swiftly into my mouth, and it was all heat and demand and pure, overwhelming desire.

“Lila,” he whispered in a breath against my lips.

I didn’t know whether I could respond at all. The heat of him, the demand that I respond, had stolen my breath away, and my voice was nowhere to be found. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t understand. I couldn’t see anything but him.

I didn’t know what we were doing, but I knew I wasn’t going to stop it. I’d waited a week for him to touch me again, been in the depths of despair at his sudden absence from my life, and now here he was right in front of me, his lips on mine and his body so close I could feel him vibrating with need.

He reached down, grabbed the backs of my legs, and jerked, pulling me smoothly underneath him, and before I could truly comprehend it, he was yanking my skirt up around my waist. Laying my legs even more bare in front of him. He pulled back and stared into my eyes, his eyebrows suddenly creased with concern like he’d just realized that maybe he was taking things too quickly.

“Is this okay?” he whispered hoarsely.

The way his voice broke told me there was only one possible answer.

“I mean you’ve gone from barely speaking to me to basically mauling me in the space of an afternoon,” I replied breathlessly. “What’s not okay about that?”

I caught the quick glint of a smile—barely a glimmer of it in his eyes—and then he was back on me, his lips fire on mine and his skin burning against me. And I was both floating and falling, my brain incapable of understanding how this was happening and my body telling me that it didn’t matter whether my brain understood it or not.

I was back in Rivers’ arms.

Nothing else mattered.

He slipped a hand down between us and then between my legs, and with a quick movement pulled my panties to the side. When he reared back to look at me again, his face was wicked. He was finished asking questions, now. He knew exactly what he wanted, and he was going to take it.

I bit my lip, trying to get ready for what was to come, but still wasn’t prepared when his fingers dipped suddenly into the wetness between my legs, spreading me and feasting on how badly I wanted him. I cried out and bowed up off the couch, every ounce of my focus coming to rest between my legs, and when he spread me further and slipped two fingers inside me, I nearly sobbed with the building tension. I bit down on his shoulder, unable to stop myself, and he groaned.

“Bite me like that, and you’re going to leave a mark,” he grunted, sliding his fingers in deeper.

I bit him harder.

And, like that was some sort of sign, he slipped his fingers out of me, stood up, and yanked his jeans off. He was hard and ready, his cock bobbing with desire, and I whimpered slightly. Some part of me was trying to remind my heart that this wasn’t a good idea and that I definitely shouldn’t be agreeing to it. I didn’t know what was going on with Rivers lately, but he’d been the opposite of forthcoming, and this situation was basically guaranteed to break me.

And fuck it all, I didn’t care. When he came back to me, I welcomed him with open arms, and when he murmured something about me being a bad girl for having bitten him, I allowed myself to grin.

When he slid his cock inside of me, not stopping until he was fully buried, I let myself close my eyes and tip my head up, reveling in the sensation of having him again and trying to memorize every last inch of him.

Because I might not understand what he was doing, and I might not know how he really felt about me. But I didn’t think I’d ever have the strength to say no to Rivers Shine when he wanted me.

* * *

Half an hour later, he pulled himself off me and stared at me, his chest heaving with breathlessness. We were both covered in sweat, and I was still floating somewhere above us, my mind on the way he’d slammed into me again and again and again like he was trying to prove something.

To either himself or me.

I fought to focus on his face, though, and bring myself back into the present moment.

“So, I’m thinking maybe we play this song at the show tonight. What do you think?”

It took me several long, tense moments to understand what the hell he was even talking about. Then it snapped back into place. Oh. The song we’d been working on before he jumped me.

Right.

“The song? Yes, sure,” I breathed. “We just have to finish it first.”

He nodded and rose up, sliding back into his jeans and then sitting down and scribbling on the sheets of paper like nothing had happened between us. I watched him…and tried to get my feet back under me.

So, I’d just let him have me on the couch in his bedroom, and now we’d be performing this song tonight.

Sure. Terrific. I mean, I’d agreed to it.

And I’d known when I did it that I was agreeing to a whole lot more than just the song. This whole afternoon had been about more than that, and yet here I was going along for the ride. It was a no good, very bad idea. I’d already seen where this road led, and when it came to Rivers Shine, it would be straight to heartbreak. He took me flying up into the clouds and then dumped me the moment he started to feel too much.

I knew it. I’d experienced it too many times to pretend he didn’t.

And yet I was making that same mistake again. I wasn’t even trying to hide it from myself.

But I was hoping that this time, it might be different.

This time, I might be able to keep him around long enough to actually reach him. Because I’d seen how much he wanted me when he kissed me. I’d felt the tension in his muscles and the need vibrating through him.

He wasn’t as finished with me as he’d been pretending.

I just had to figure out how to reach him.