She gasped.
“Is that because of what I said or what I did?” he asked.
Because they hadn’t done that yet…said that four-letter word that starts withL.
“Both,” Willow replied, squirming as he teased her with his finger. “You can’t just… I mean, we haven’t…”
But when he dipped that teasing finger inside, Willow lost all ability to speak, let alone reason whether or not it was too soon to say the thing that he’d just said.
He rolled her onto her back and brought his lips to hers. “I don’t say things I don’t mean, Wills,” he whispered against her. “And I don’t hold backwhen I’m so goddamn sure about something…or someone.”
He slid out of her, so achingly slowly against her sensitive skin that Willow thought she might break into a million tiny pieces.
“Ash,” she whimpered, grabbing his wrist.
He always drove her blissfully mad, but this was different. The combination of his words mixed with his touch held a potency she wasn’t prepared to handle.
He had to have known it, too, because instead of stopping, he swirled his finger over her swollen center, and Willow bucked against him, gasping for air as her throat tightened and she wasn’t sure if she was about to have the quickest and greatest orgasm of her life or if she was going to burst into tears.
The former came first, and as the final wave of ecstasy rocked through her, the bedroom door flew open without so much as a warning knock.
“One hour until the missus arrives, Mr. Murphy!” Sloane announced. “Time to clean up your…mess and get yourself presentable so we can make the official announcement with a photo.”
Ash flew out of the bed, stark naked with a full erection, and crossed his arms as he stared at his manager/publicist. “What the hell are you talking about, Sloane?” he asked, and to his credit, he sounded almost as gobsmacked as Willow felt.
Sloane laughed, unfazed by her naked andstill-aroused client. “Come on, honey. I appreciate the show you’re putting on for your little groupie, but you signed off on this last week—your ticket to a UK fandom.”
Something clicked in the recesses of Willow’s memory, a conversation she’d had with Ash early on before she’d even let him kiss her, let alone do the things he’d done to her last night and had begun to do again this morning.
“How do you put up with that?” she’d asked him once after Sloane had whisked him out of a local bar where their two bands had been unwinding after a show. She’d needed him for some international conference call that was supposed to garner him a sponsorship deal with an up-and-coming whiskey brand. Or maybe it was a sports drink. The product hadn’t mattered, but Ash’s take on it had.
“I learned quickly that everything I do is some sort of transaction,” he’d told her. “Everyone wants something from me, and Sloane makes sure I get something in return.” He’d shrugged the whole situation off at the time, and so had Willow. Now, though, she suddenly realized thatshehad been his something in return. For what, though? Willow opening for him on the summer leg of his tour?
“Oh god,” Willow said out loud, realization hitting her like a fist to the gut. “I’m one of them,” she added, stumbling out of the bed and wrapping herself in the bed’s top sheet.
“One of what?” Ash asked, and she could hear the panic in his voice, but the only sense her brain could make of it was that Sloane had beaten him to the punch in telling Willow that she’d served her purpose, on the tour and in his bed, and he was trying to save face.
“Good, good,” Sloane replied, all smiles. “We’re all on the same page. Willow, I’ll make sure you get back toyourbus discreetly while Ash gets ready to greet his wife, and then we can finish our last few summer dates as one big, happy family.”
“Willow, wait!” Ash pleaded as she swallowed her pride and mermaid walked toward the smiling Sloane who would lead the way.
She gave him one backward glance and almost broke when she saw him scrambling back into his jeans as if he was going to chase after her and noticed what looked like genuine fear in his deep-blue eyes. But then she remembered that Ash Murphy had been a professional performer since his early teens, and she—apparently—had just been part of the show.
“For what?” she asked him, and for one tiny second she hoped he might actually have something to say that would change her mind.
But he just stared at her, speechless, the man of a thousand beautiful words that fans across the country—and now, she guessed, across the Atlantic—stood in line to hear.
“That’s what I thought,” Willow replied, answering her own question.
And then she turned back to Sloane, letting the other woman lead her out of Ash Murphy’s sight, her only saving grace that she hadn’t told him she loved him too. She knew better than to say those words out loud because she knew all too well the damage they could do.
She loved her mother, and her mother died.
She loved her brother, and the State of California separated them for seven years.
She dared to think she could possibly love a man who was already in love with a career and fandom with which she couldn’t compete, and in the span of seconds, it had destroyed her heart.
Willow did not finish the tour. And she never heard from Ash Murphy again.
