Strung Out Read online

  “Almost ten years ago, I walked in here and picked a fight with the biggest, baddest, meanest drunk I could find.” He turned and offered her a smile. “Nicolai saved my life and kept me out of jail.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “I was looking for a way out.” He glanced across the room without seeing anything. It was hard to admit he’d been a coward ready to run from his responsibilities. But it was the truth. “I didn’t want to go into the family business, but I couldn’t find a way to tell my father.”

  She reached out and placed a hand on his forearm. Her fingers were a warm weight against him. “What happened?”

  “Nicolai offered me a job.”

  “Here?”

  He nodded. “I quit school and started bartending. Without school I had no dorm, so I lived upstairs to avoid moving back home and listening to my father rail at me for being a failure.”

  “You weren’t a failure.”

  “Maybe not, but I still ran.”

  Her blue eyes took on a faraway look. “We all run from responsibility sometimes. That’s why mothers willingly let their five-year-old children grow up in foster care.”

  A vise closed around his heart, squeezing painfully until he wanted to gasp with the pain of it. “Their loss is my gain.”

  “How so?”

  He reached out and took her hand, meshing their fingers and bringing them to his lips. “Whatever happened before is responsible for the sequence of events that included us being together that night.”

  A soft smile tugged at her lips. “You don’t seem like the type to believe in fate.”

  He swung both hands out to encompass the room. “I own this place. And that was all fate.”

  Talia blinked in surprise. “You own it?”

  “I worked for Nicolai for almost six months, living in one of the apartments upstairs and hiding from everyone I knew. Eventually Desiree found me and convinced me to come home. My father had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and Aasen Investments was in danger of a takeover. About the same time, Nicolai got into a bit of financial difficulty.”

  Two drinks and a basket of french fries appeared on the bar behind them. “I had a gambling problem,” Nicolai supplied. “This clown bought my debt and kept me on to run the place.”

  “It wasn’t that simple,” Erik reminded him.

  “Nope. I had to join a twelve-step program and stick with it. I’ve been in recovery for nine years, six months, and five days.”

  Talia flashed Nicolai a smile that reminded Erik why he could never get enough of her. “That’s an amazing accomplishment. It takes a remarkable amount of personal strength to go through something like that and get a grip on it.”

  “God, I love this woman, Erik.” Nicolai sighed and wiped his hand on a towel. “If you screw it up, I swear I’m going to keep her myself.”

  Nicolai’s ridiculous claim on her didn’t seem to bother Erik if his chuckle was anything to go by. His green eyes were filled with warmth, and he looked more relaxed than she’d seen him since that first night. It was obvious he was far more comfortable away from his corporate world than he was immersed in it. So why did he insist he belonged in a boardroom full of stiffs?

  It was definitely a question worth asking, but for now she was going to have to attend to her demanding stomach. The scent of fresh fries was mouthwatering, and she hadn’t eaten in what her stomach was convinced to be decades.

  Picking up the ketchup, she squeezed a generous amount into the corner of the paper basket and then liberally dipped a golden fry before savoring the taste on her tongue. As she’d expected, it tasted like ambrosia from the gods. She picked up another one between thumb and forefinger. “I could live on bar food.”

  “You know,” Erik drawled, “I don’t think I’ve ever actually watched a woman other than my sisters eat fries. They’re all too health conscious.”

  She swallowed and reached for another. “They’re all crazy.”

  Erik threw back the last of his beer and nodded to Nicolai for another. “I think that’s probably an apt description.”

  Thoughts of Sara and her two giant dates flickered through her mind. “Can I ask you about Seth and Joshua?”

  A wicked grin kicked up the corners of his mouth. “Ask away.”

  “Do they actually share women?”

  “Yes.”

  “At the same time?”

  “Yes.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “Think about it.” He leaned over until she could smell the sweet barley on his breath. “A mouth for each nipple, one set of hands to hold you wide open and another set to finger fuck your pussy, and when you can’t take it anymore, you have one cock to keep your cunt occupied while another slides in and fills your ass.”

  The erotic picture he painted was almost too much. Her nipples puckered against the fabric of her dress, elongating and pouting for a mouth to suckle them. Lower, a pulling sensation began in her belly and culminated between her legs in a rush of creamy heat.

  He lowered his lips to the shell of her ear. “I can smell how wet you are.” One hand lowered to her thigh, skating up the sensitive flesh on the inside of her leg until he’d nearly reached the apex and the dampness that seeped from her bare pussy. “Does that interest you, Talia? Do you want two men to pleasure you at once?”

  Did she?

  Talia remembered her earlier thoughts. Her ruminations on trust and loyalty and the strange bond she felt with Erik that had never developed with anyone else in her life provided an easy answer to his question.

  “No.” She stared up into his face and willed him to understand her honesty. “I don’t want anyone but you.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  There was still a stranger in her bed. He had to be a stranger. It’d been less than a week and a half. It wasn’t possible to really know someone that quickly. Regardless of how she felt inside, logic told her Erik Aasen was still a stranger, and someone she shouldn’t be so eager to trust with her heart. But the heart wasn’t at all logical. Or so she’d begun to realize.

  Dawn crept into her cramped apartment through the broken blinds and across the warped wood floor. It slowly caressed the form of the man sleeping in her bed. The pale light burnished the smooth skin of his bare thighs, inched over his tight ass, and dipped into the hollow of his back before advancing toward his broad shoulders. Talia kept still and silent, not wanting to destroy this moment, this tiny piece of time when Erik remained motionless, his intellect quiet, and his face utterly honest.

  Her eyes drifted closed again. Her body was exhausted from days of emotional turmoil and the four prickly pear martinis Nicolai had pressed her into drinking. It had been such a surreal evening. A nightmare that had turned into a stirring confession of the things Erik kept hidden from those closest to him.

  The secrets that make me love him even more than I already do.

  But the man who lived behind the mask, the one who slept beside her, wasn’t the man Talia was marrying. It was the confident businessman who’d knelt in an airport, bold as brass, and proposed marriage after she’d refused to be his kept mistress. And since the moment she’d said yes, it was Erik Aasen the society son who had smiled for the reporters, pandered to his family, and made excuses to his friends. All because the woman who truly suited the man behind Erik’s social mask didn’t fit behind a mask herself.

  Unable to remain still any longer, Talia sat up and dangled her feet over the edge of the sagging mattress. Her gaze drifted around the familiar apartment, lingering over her worn furniture and the threadbare area rugs strewn over the scarred floor. She didn’t have much, but she’d worked hard for what she did have.

  It was difficult to imagine what someone like Erik saw when he walked into her place. Yet other than his pronouncement that she deserved more, he’d never once complained. Not about the miniscule bathroom, the general clutter, or the bed that was barely a step up from the floor.

  Growing up in foster care had
taught her a lot about feeling comfortable in your environment. By the age of ten Talia had been aware that she and any temporary siblings all had a certain way of arranging their things in order to make some semblance of home. She’d had very little, but what she’d been able to accumulate had a specific place in every new room. Changing the little things about an environment made you comfortable.

  Erik had never wanted to change anything about her apartment because he was already comfortable in her life. She couldn’t explain it. But the two of them fit. And it was only when the jagged edges of Erik’s other life started chipping away at them that their perfect fit began to fail.

  She stood and grabbed Erik’s dress shirt from its resting place on the back of her only chair. She pushed her arms through the holes and buttoned up just enough to keep it on. The tail of the blue and white pin-striped shirt sat just below her butt, and she had to roll the cuffs twice in order to free her hands.

  A shaft of sunlight struck the open lid of her piano. The ancient keys gleamed black and ivory, the discoloration of age hidden by the sun’s brilliance. Drawn to the instrument, Talia ignored the bite of the cold floor on her bare feet and took a seat on the wobbly bench.

  How long had it been since she’d played? Several days at least, maybe even since the birthday party. So much had happened since then. It almost seemed as if she were no longer the same person who had sat down at the Coltons’ piano with just the hope of seeing Erik again.

  Regardless of how long it had been, it seemed like decades. But a few hours were too long to someone so used to expression through the harmony of soul and music that flowed through an instrument.

  * * *

  Erik reached for the alarm clock, but his hand dropped into space. Disoriented, he rolled onto his back and blinked his eyes a few times to rid them of sleep. When they blearily focused on the water-stained ceiling of Talia’s apartment, the previous night’s events came rushing back. The disastrous dinner party, drinks at Jack’s, and then drifting off to sleep with Talia’s curves nestled against him.

  He became slowly aware of the music. The soft tones were no doubt the reason for his fumbling attempts at turning off an imaginary alarm clock. But the gentle swell of notes sounded nothing like the harsh voice of the morning show host on the local radio station. The radio show was just annoying enough that Erik found he couldn’t sleep through it. What he heard coming from the other end of the apartment had the opposite effect.

  Careful to remain quiet, he left the bed for the frigid floor. Cool air raised gooseflesh on his naked skin, but the sight of Talia playing the piano wearing nothing but his dress shirt made him forget the temperature in the room.

  Her position at the piano gave him an enticing view of her backside. Graceful knees bent and legs tucked beneath the piano, she worked the pedal with the toes of her right foot. The curve of her spine was lost in the drape of the fabric. But the tail of the shirt rested just above the surface of the bench, her movements causing a delicious peek of her smooth buttocks to wink in and out of sight. The angle of her neck allowed her hair to drape around her shoulders and bare a hint of soft skin at her nape.

  Unable to resist, he approached on silent feet and pressed a kiss to the back of her neck. She tensed in awareness, and he moved his lips to her ear. “Good morning.”

  Her song paused. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “Don’t stop.” The music resumed, and Erik inhaled deeply of her familiar scent. “No matter what, keep playing.”

  Her breath caught as he lifted her hair away from her neck and pressed a full kiss on her warm skin. He nipped lightly before moving on to her ear and then back to the skin of her shoulder visible beneath the oversize shirt.

  Her fingers danced quickly across the notes, drawing forth a melody that matched the urgency in Erik’s blood. “I love this shirt on you, but it’s definitely in my way.”

  Over her shoulder, he could see the rise and fall of her creamy breasts as he unbuttoned his shirt and bared them to the cool air of the room. Rosy nipples puckered into tight buds before his eyes. Slipping his hand beneath the tail of the shirt, he cupped a breast and brushed the pad of his thumb over her sensitive nipple.

  The contact made her stumble across the keys, but she managed to pick up the threads of her song and continue.

  Rolling her nipple between thumb and forefinger, Erik slid the other hand beneath the loose shirt and caressed her hip, kneading the soft flesh just to feel the warm resilience. She squirmed on the bench, obviously struggling.

  Erik nuzzled her ear. “What is it you’re playing?”

  “I-I don’t remember.”

  He laughed. “Do you want to play, or do you want me to play?”

  The notes stopped abruptly. “I want you.”

  Her husky plea shattered his self-control. He spun her around on her bare bottom to face him. She looked up with hunger in her gaze, and he nearly lost himself in that moment. His erection bobbed up and down against his stomach, nearly bursting with need.

  She reached out a fingertip, running it along the underside of his cock from base to crown. “It’s so hard.”

  “A constant state whenever you’re around.”

  Her slender hand wrapped around the shaft and pumped experimentally. “Could I make you come like this?”

  He groaned, unable to articulate a response. Her hot little hand clamped down on his cock, and his balls burned with seed. There she sat, tilted back and bared for his pleasure, and he was about to spurt like some adolescent boy.

  Her eyes lifted, and she met his gaze. “I want to watch. I want to make you come in my hands and on my body.”

  He ground his teeth together, fighting against the wave of arousal that dulled his ability to think. Shifting to one side, he rested his knee beside her on the bench and braced one hand on the back of the piano. With the other hand he forced her backward until her elbows struck the keyboard with a blitz of discordant notes.

  She made a noise in the back of her throat, excitement and anticipation all at once, as his hand stroked a long path between her breasts and down her belly until he reached her mound. Focusing on her pleasure kept his mind from splintering as she pumped his shaft and swirled her fingers through the silky liquid spilling from the tip.

  Her legs parted for him, and Erik slipped two fingers through her short pubic hair and into her slit. It was warm and moist, her cream flowing freely and dampening the insides of her thighs. Her clit was swollen with need, straining past the engorged labia and begging for attention.

  She used two hands on his cock, forming a tight tunnel and pumping it up and down his rock-hard shaft. Beads of sweat broke out on his shoulders, and he once again fought the urge to come then and there.

  Straddling her clit with his fingers, Erik worked her slit and teased the tight opening until her back arched and her body begged for penetration. A high-pitched, desperate cry slipped from her lips, and her hands clamped down on his shaft until the head flushed a deep color.

  Bracing his weight against the knee resting on the bench, Erik settled his hand over hers on his cock. He forced their hands to move in unison. When they’d eased into a rhythm, he pressed two fingers into her slick hole and rubbed her pussy with a matching motion.

  Her back arched harder, her body strung tight before him as though ready to break loose. Their gazes met and held as need and longing burned them both to ashes. His balls grew tight as his climax built into a towering inferno.

  Talia came hard and fast, her breaths shallow and her pussy pulling him deeper into its wetness. He was flooded with the erotic scent of her orgasm. His hand jerked irregularly on his cock, and she took charge of the rhythm. Her hands gripped him in a loving embrace, the motion carrying him past this threshold and beyond, until stars burst behind his eyes.

  She tugged his cock and cupped his balls. “Come for me, Erik.”

  As if by her command alone, a long stream of white semen shot from the end of his cock, bathing her bel
ly and chest in his essence. Emotion clamped a vise on his nervous system at the sight of her rapturous expression.

  “So beautiful,” she murmured.

  He managed to cup the side of her face with one shaking hand. “Yes, you are.”

  * * *

  Erik had no idea what time it was, and he’d have been hard-pressed to pinpoint the day of the week. But he did know without a doubt that he was late for work, missing meetings, and ignoring deadlines. Yet he couldn’t seem to care.

  Talia opened her mouth for a lusty yawn and snuggled closer beneath the thin sheets and blankets. “I feel seriously lazy.”

  He remembered her rules and quotas from their first night together. “Isn’t there something in that sex rule book about newly engaged couples and days officially dedicated to nothing but sleep and sex?”

  “I have no authority in that area. You’re the first man I’ve enjoyed spending this much time with.” She lifted her chin and cocked her head. “How about you?”

  “Nothing prepared me for you, sweetheart.”

  “That’s because good things come when you least expect them.” Her smile faltered.

  Chucking her gently under the chin, Erik forced her to meet his gaze. “What are you thinking about?”

  She pulled away and shook her head. “Nothing really. I was just thinking about the Jupiter Symphony. I hope they got my message about declining the audition. I don’t want to seem as if I wasn’t taking things seriously.”

  “It doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?” He pressed a kiss to her lips. “Your life is here in Boston with me.”

  She pulled away, shrugging off his touch. “It’s not a simple thing to walk away from a dream, Erik. And playing with the Jupiter Symphony is a step closer to being center stage at the Philharmonic.”

  He opened his mouth to say something else, to convince her she was center stage in his world, but her phone jangled in the corner. The ancient ringer practically vibrated the boxy unit right off the side table.