And, to my immense satisfaction, Cash smiled down at me and discarded whatever had been holding him back all this time.
“Let’s get you out of that skirt,” he said, pushing me into the changing room.
He slid the privacy curtain closed behind him, then rounded on me with that same new look in his eyes.
A look of pure, unrestrained desire.
28
Roxie
“I have to have you.”
Cash spoke softly, but the words might as well have blared through a loudspeaker the way it thundered through my chest.
My back hit the wall of the changing room, the thin panel shivering with the force of it, and I pressed my palms out flat to steady the vibration, feeling the hollow sound travel through the cheap wood. Back in the store, a bell chimed as the front door opened. Someone laughed near the racks of pre-loved jackets. It was business as usual everywhere.
Except in here.
Cash’s mouth found mine, fast and certain, like he’d been holding it back for too long. For too many arenas, too many shows, too many smiles shared across the tour bus. My fingers slid into his hair, and he made a sound that I swallowed into my mouth before it could escape.
“Shhh,” I breathed against his lips, half a warning, half a dare. “We can’t make any noise.”
His smile brushed my cheek. “You think I’m going to make noise?”
“Depends on how much willpower you have.”
“Mhmm…” He groped my ass and pulled me tight against him, the bulge in his pants a promise of what I was in for. “I think I like it when you’re bossy. You can be the new band mom.”
The floor under my feet was uneven, one of the tiles rocking slightly when I shifted my weight. I became aware of every small thing. The gap at the bottom of the curtain where shoes might pass by. The hum of the fluorescent light overhead. Cash’s hands on me, all over, warm and steady, as if he could hold the whole room still by grasping me firmly enough.
He leaned in again, and I met him halfway, keeping the kiss shallow, careful. My pulse was a steady bassline in my ears, and I wondered if he could hear it, too. I was pretty sure even the cashier could. The mirror caught the way my cheeks flushed hot, the way his eyes tracked it with a hunger that made me instantly wet.
Cash knew how much I wanted him, and there was no hiding it. Not anymore.
My hand slid down his arm, feeling muscle under the worn fabric of his jacket, and he inhaled sharply, the sound cutting off when I pressed my mouth to the corner of his jaw instead of where he wanted it.
“You’re doing that on purpose,” he murmured. “Teasing me.”
“You’ve been teasing me for weeks,” I replied, exploring his body with my fingertips. “Suggestive smiles. Light touches. Hugs that linger longer and longer each time.”
“Maybe.” I felt his laugh against my neck.
Whatever minuscule space was left between us vanished. The wall at my back was cool through my shirt, a contrast to the heat of the bass player pressing in on me, sweeping me up into the grip of his relentless passion. His forehead touched mine,and for a second, neither of us moved as we listened hard. For footsteps, voices, anything that would tell us we’d gone too far. That we had to reel it in and go back out there with this insatiable need still throbbing, begging to be satisfied.
But all I heard was his breathing.
His hand lifted, hesitated, then found my hip through the thin fabric of the thrifted skirt. My body reacted before my brain caught up, a small, betraying movement that made him still completely.
“Roxie,” he said, quiet enough that it felt like a secret.
I didn’t answer, just tilted my head and kissed him again, deep and hard, and he followed, his hand tightening just enough to tell me he was done pretending he had any control over this.
The mirror caught us in pieces. My skirt bunched at my hips. His jacket slipped from his shoulders and managed to make it onto a hook on the wall, while mine hit the floor, discarded and forgotten. The look in his eyes when he opened them again, focused and warm and entirely mine in this borrowed little square of space.
The curtain rustled when someone brushed past outside, and we both froze.
“Shit.” His eyes were wide, but still on fire.
