Tie Me

Chapter Three

Kellen entered the bathroom and closed the door behind him. What the fuck was he doing flirting with a woman he’d just met, promising his libido something he had no intension of delivering? He’d let his guard down with this one. He couldn’t let it happen again.

He caught his reflection in the mirror over the sink and winced. Lord, no wonder Dawn had thought he was up to no good when she’d seen him on the beach. He looked like some pirate who jumped ship and swam ashore to avoid punishment for stealing the booty.

He had no plans to take any booty tonight, even if Dawn placed hers directly into his hands. And if he kept coming on to her the way he had been since she invited him into the house, he was pretty sure she would be prepared to do exactly that.

He struggled out of his wet jeans, leaving another puddle on Dawn’s floor, and found a towel to dry his hair, legs, and the rest of his body, taking note of a certain stiffness he was not prepared to deal with. Apparently he’d been lying about his shrinkage issue. How was he going to pull off a pair of thin boxer shorts with a semi?

He tugged the boxers up his thighs and hips, then peered down at his crotch and groaned at the spectacle he was making of himself.

“Down, boy,” he said and tucked his far too sensitive cock down the leg of the shorts. “I know she’s hot, but you can’t have her.”

He pressed on the obvious bulge in his shorts. Her shorts, he reminded himself. Did she wear panties under them or had these recently been against her bare flesh? What did the hidden treasure between her thighs smell like? Taste like? His mouth watered, and he swallowed before giving himself a mental shake.

Snap out of it, stupid.

Great. Now his bulge was a full-blown, burgundy-and-blue-plaid tent.

Shit.

Maybe he should put his jeans back on and tell her the boxers were too small. They were definitely form-fitting, and his condition made them downright uncomfortable. Or maybe he should jerk one out real quick so he could think about something other than fucking a sensual redhead into a coma. Or maybe he should wrap Sara’s wrist cuff around his misbehaving cock as a reminder that when he’d committed to her, he’d promised to never have sex with another woman. Ever. Or maybe his big head should remind his smaller head who was in charge here.

Who was in charge here?

Kellen settled for imagining the pair of drunk girls who’d been trying to get him into bed the night before. It took a minute, but his remembered disinterest did the trick on his libido. Mostly. It was only after he had his wayward cock somewhat under control that he realized the borrowed shorts didn’t have a pocket to hold his recently removed wrist cuff.

Double shit.

He retrieved the leather band from his jeans and stared down at it. The urge to return it to his wrist overwhelmed him. He still had a cuff on his other wrist, but it wasn’t a reminder of Sara, so it didn’t count. He’d bought that one at the mall when he was sixteen and thought it made him cool. It held no emotional significance, was just an ordinary scrap of leather. But the one he’d removed earlier possessed the ability to yank his head out of the clouds and return his feet firmly to the ground.

He hoped.

Perhaps the best thing to do was leave Dawn’s house as soon as possible. Why’d he come here anyway?

Dawn’s song. The melody played through his head, and he smiled. That song possessed a power all its own.

He wanted to hear it again. Wanted to watch her play it for him. For as jumbled and confused as Kellen’s thoughts were now, her song had given him a moment of peace and clarity. Even if it was a temporary condition, he wanted those feelings again. He needed them. Even more than he needed Sara’s reminder on his wrist.

“Coffee’s ready,” Dawn called. “How do you take it?”

Jeez, the bathroom door was thin.

Triple shit.

Had she heard him talking to himself about her hotness?

“Black!” he called, glad he’d decided against jerking one out. What if she’d heard him gasping and moaning through the door? She already suspected him of being a dangerous criminal. If she’d discovered him masturbating in her spotlessly clean bathroom, she’d have pegged him as a depraved pervert as well.

Kellen tugged a brush through his hair until it lay flat, resting against his shoulders. He hoped she didn’t mind sharing such a personal item as a hairbrush with him. Maybe it wasn’t hers and had come with the house. Kellen checked to make sure he wasn’t sporting wood again, shoved the wrist cuff into his jeans pocket, and retrieved his wet towel from the floor. He gave the cuff one last squeeze, took a deep, calming breath, and then opened the door.

The bathroom faced the kitchen, so there was no missing her. Dawn stood leaning back against the counter, sipping from a cream-colored coffee cup. There was something intensely erotic about the way she encircled the cup with both hands and brought it to her mouth as she watched him over the rim. Those hypnotic hazel eyes. All that thick red hair. That loose, white dress. Her bare feet with ten perfectly manicured hot-pink toenails peeking from beneath the hem of her long skirt. Everything about her was erotic, and she wasn’t even trying. His cock throbbed in appreciation of her femininity.

Should have jerked one out after all.

Walking awkwardly, Kellen clutched his laundry to his waist, hoping to hide what was going on in his shorts.

Her shorts.

Fuck! Stop thinking like that, moron. You’re going to rip her shorts in half if you get any harder. How are you going to explain that to her?

Excuse me, Dawn. I seem to have damaged your shorts with my raging hard-on. Do you have something a bit hardier I could wear? Perhaps something made of thick leather or stainless steel.

“Do you want me to throw your jeans in the dryer?” she asked.

“No thanks.” He didn’t want her to discover the wrist cuff hidden in his pocket, and he needed the jeans to shield his arousal.

Dawn turned and lifted a red cup from the counter. She walked toward him and offered him the coffee. Squashing his jeans and towel against his belly with one hand, Kellen extended his free hand to accept the cup.

“Thanks,” he said. Damn, his voice sounded all gruff and slightly breathless. Was she aware of the not-so-little problem going on behind a pair of wadded-up jeans and a damp towel? Did she have any idea how much he wanted to lift her up on the counter and fuck her until he couldn’t think straight enough to feel guilty about breaking his vow to Sara?

Dawn stared into his eyes and brushed her fingers over his in a slow, sensual caress as she handed off the cup. She wasn’t making his devotion to abstinence easy, that was for sure.

A spattering of freckles graced the bridge of her nose, and thick, dark eyelashes made the green flecks in her hazel eyes stand out. He tried not to look at her pouty lips and wonder what she tasted like. Did she enjoy soft, gentle kisses or did she prefer the deep, plundering assault on her mouth that he craved? He wanted to sink his hands into all those thick, red curls, tilt her head back and… and…

Small talk! He needed to make small talk.

“So where are you from?” he asked.

She blinked and took a startled breath. Was she thinking along the same lines he was? He really needed her to be a frigid bitch at the moment, but doubted she was the type. The vibe she gave off was warm and inviting. He couldn’t remember the last timed he’d wanted to be invited into a woman’s warmth, all slick and hot and snug. His cock throbbed with interest.

Oh, for fuck’s sake, woman. Say something. I can’t be thinking like this.

“Originally or lately?” she asked.

“Both.” Please stop looking at me like that with those exotic cat-like eyes. Kellen was used to women showing their interest in him. What he was not used to was losing control of his convictions and feeling anything in reciprocation.

“I was born in Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia. I’ve been in Los Angeles for several years now.”

“Do you like it there?”

She shrugged and took another sip of her coffee. “It’s not as humid as it is here. And then there is Hollywood.”

“Ah, so that’s why you moved out there.”

“The job market for classical music composers is fairly small.”

He swallowed a gulp of coffee. “Did you always want to write music for movies?”

She grinned at him. “In my rebellious years, I wrote music for video games.”

“You had rebellious years?”

She lifted her eyebrows at him, which had him picturing all sorts of naughty activities she probably had not been involved in during her rebellious years, but damn if he didn’t want to rebel with her now.

“Don’t we all?” she asked. “At least until we grow up.”

“Wait. Do you mean we’re supposed to outgrow that?”

“Are you still rebelling, Kellen?”

He chuckled. “Some would like to think that, but no, I don’t have anything to rebel against these days.” He took another drink of his coffee and then nodded toward his cup. “This is really good,” he said.

“If you think that’s good, you should try my French toast.”

His stomach growled in agreement. He’d had dinner before the show with the rest of the band—and in a bizarre twist of fate, with Owen’s new love interest, Caitlyn—but that had been many hours and whole lot of physical activity and emotional turmoil ago. Kellen covered his noisy belly and managed to drop his fabric cock shield in the process. Luckily, their inane conversation had reduced his tent to a slightly enthusiastic bulge.

Dawn’s gaze slid down his torso, and he tensed, trying to think of more small talk, but he’d pretty much lost his mental capacities.

When she drew her gaze up his body to meet his eyes again, she smiled and said, “Sounds as if your stomach is in agreement.”

Had she noticed he was filling out her shorts more than he should have been?

She headed for the fridge, which meant he wouldn’t be hearing her song again anytime soon. It also meant that they would be spending more time in each other’s company, which, as far as his quickly failing defenses were concerned, was a bad idea.

“You don’t have to do that,” he said. “I can make myself a sandwich when I go home.” Which was an outright lie because there wasn’t a scrap of food in Sara’s house. He’d be lucky if he found a year-old granola bar in the pantry.

“I want to cook for you,” she said. “I’m trying to dazzle you with my impressive skills.”

Done.

So he drank coffee at the breakfast bar while she whipped up a batch of French toast.

“Tell me about your band,” she said as she used a whisk to beat an egg, milk, and vanilla in a bowl.

“Where should I start?”

“At the beginning.”

“It’s a long story,” he warned.

“Good, because that caffeine high I warned you about is starting to kick in.”

“So you want my long, boring band story to lull you to sleep?” he teased, feeling a bit more relaxed now that there was a wide counter between them. He was horny as hell, but he didn’t think his cock would be able to hammer its way through several inches of wood and granite. When Dawn added butter to the warming pan and licked a stray smear from her finger, he decided he shouldn’t bet on that certainty.

“No, I want you to entertain me.” Her completely innocent comment had Kellen imagining not-so-innocent ways of entertaining her.

What the hell? He hadn’t reacted this way to a pretty girl since his lust-fueled teenage years. Was this what it felt like to be Owen? No wonder he was always begging to try out Tony’s newest sex club. This perpetual state of arousal was downright distracting.

“Um.” What had they been talking about? His band. Right. “We’ve been together as a unit for about seven years now.”

“What do you call yourselves?”

“Sole Regret.”

Her eyes lit up, and a broad smile spread across her face. “That sounds familiar,” she said. “Maybe I do remember the announcement of your nomination at the Grammy’s.”

“Was it accompanied by a really long air-horn blast?”

She laughed. “That was you?”

Kellen shook his head. “Owen. He isn’t into proper etiquette at award shows. He also yelled, ‘You suck!’ during the winner’s acceptance speech.”

Dawn laughed. “I remember that. Didn’t they ask him to leave?”

“We all had to leave. Owen’s a bit loud and outspoken when he’s been drinking, and we’d started celebrating our sure-win the night before.”

“Oh,” she said, her lips in a beguiling pout. “He must have been terribly disappointed.”

She sliced a piece of bread from a loaf, soaked it in the egg mixture, and then carefully laid it in the sizzling butter.

“You wouldn’t know what that was like,” Kellen said.

She glanced up. “Why do you think that?

“Well, because you won your Grammy.”

“But I didn’t win the World International or the Peabody Mason Piano Competitions, did I?”

“Never heard of either of those.”

“I also didn’t win—”

“Dawn, you have a fucking Grammy. I’ve heard of that one. Celebrate your victories.”

She gaped at him, her spatula gripped tightly in one fist. For a second, he thought she was going to smack him with it.

“I don’t like to lose,” she said.

Fire sparked in her voice, in her face. The rapid rise of her passion caused certain body parts in the room to rise. Again.

“Name one person who likes to lose,” he said.

She sucked in a little gasp and blinked at him. He suspected that no one dared to call her out on anything, which inspired the urge to find all her buttons and push them repeatedly, see just how brightly her fire could burn.

“But I really don’t like to lose. It’s almost pathological.”

He appraised her closely for a moment, looking beyond the sexual creature that had his full attention to the tense, slightly uptight, a-bit-too-proper woman he’d overlooked until now, what with the hormones swirling through his body. She seemed to cling to control a bit too tightly. He’d love to bind her and see how she responded to giving up complete control. To him.

“There’s only one way to ensure you never lose,” he said.

She flipped over a perfectly browned piece of French toast with her spatula. “What’s that?”

“Don’t compete.”

“Well, that’s not going to happen. I have a competitive streak a mile wide. I have to know if…”

She met his eyes, and the fire in them surged. Would rendering her defenseless with ropes cause that fire to burn brighter, dampen it, or extinguish it completely? He predicted she’d ignite under his meticulous attention as he included her body in one of his creations—where bondage became art. And he doubted she’d be the only one to ignite if he played with that particular fire. He took a deep breath. He needed to find focus, which was entirely impossible with her looking all defiant and tense. He wanted to draw both the defiance and the tension from her body and teach her how to relax.

“You have to know if you’re the best,” he completed her sentence.

She used her spatula to eject a perfect piece of French toast from the skillet onto a plate and then added a raw slice to the pan. It sizzled and hissed. Kellen inhaled the scent of vanilla and warmed bread. His mouth watered.

“I don’t need to be the best at everything,” she said, her attention on her task. “Just at what I’m most passionate about.”

“Would that be composing or playing piano?”

“Both,” she said.

“And does it make you happy to pursue perfection?”

Her gaze darted upward to find his.

He hid a grin. Another of her buttons found and pressed.

“That’s a very personal question,” she said, her voice a bit louder than necessary. “And how did we end up talking about me? I asked you about your band.”

“We’re talking about you because you’re more interesting than I am,” he said.

“I guarantee that I’m not.”

“We’ll see.” He chuckled. “I started playing guitar when my grandfather caught me fooling around with the vintage Les Paul that he’d won in a bet. I snapped one of the strings and thought he was going to skin me alive, but instead he punished me by forcing me to take lessons from a friend of his who played in a local band. I was thirteen. That’s the same year I met Sole Regret’s bassist, Owen. He wasn’t into music much. He liked to follow me to my lessons and watch, but he didn’t want to learn to play himself. Not until a couple years later when the girls started hanging around me because I was cool. So Owen learned to play in an attempt to attract girls. He’s very shallow that way.” Kellen winked at her.

“So you didn’t learn to play in order to attract girls?”

“Music is my escape,” he said. “I quickly became addicted to producing sound. It’s like a drug I can’t get enough of.”

He met her eyes and they gazed at each other. “I feel the same way about the piano,” she said. “I just would have called it a compulsion instead of an addiction.”

Sara had never understood this part of him. She’d thought of music as something that took him away from her. She seemed to think she was competing against music for his affection, not that it helped make him the man she loved. It was nice to meet a woman who understood how vital music could be to a person.

Dawn flipped a second piece of French toast onto a plate before adding a third to the pan. While it cooked, she set a tub of butter, a bottle of maple syrup, and his plate before him. He inhaled deeply.

“This smells heavenly.”

“My grandmother’s recipe.”

Kellen’s first bite had his eyes rolling into the back of his head in delight. “This is amazing. What’s the secret?”

“Vanilla,” she said. “And day-old, fresh-baked bread.”

“Lucky I happened along the day after your trip to the bakery.”

Her cheeks went pink, and she paid extra close attention to the toast sizzling in the pan.

Had he discovered another button? He wasn’t sure where to push. “Is there a bakery nearby?”

She shook her head. “I baked it,” she said. “Baking is a huge stress reliever for me.”

“Lucky me,” he said. “What are you stressed out about?”

She hesitated for a long moment and then let out a sigh. “Can you keep a secret?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m supposed to turn in a completed composition tomorrow,” she said. “I was commissioned for a piece to be used as the main theme in some feel-good summer blockbuster. I’ve been working on it for months and no matter how hard I try, I can’t get it right.”

“Maybe that’s your problem,” he said, trying to remember his manners and not talk with his mouth full, but the French toast was so delicious that he couldn’t stop shoveling it in.

“My problem?”

Oh, another button? Poke. Poke. Poke.

“One of many, I’m sure,” he said.

She leveled him with a heated glare, and he warmed from the inside out. He hadn’t even realized he’d been cold.

“Maybe you’re just trying too hard,” he said. “Sometimes the best inspiration hits when you aren’t paying attention. Let your subconscious write the music. It’s purer that way.”

“And what would you know about writing music?” she said, flipping her piece of French toast to an empty plate. She turned off the burner and reached for the tub of butter. He couldn’t resist moving it out of her reach.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Why did he get the impression that she was counting backward from a hundred so she didn’t slap the shit out of him with her spatula?

“I’ve written a few songs,” he said. “The band’s lead guitarist, Adam, is our main composer, but he allows the rest of us to come up with a note or two.”

“What do you know about writing piano music?”

“Absolutely nothing,” he admitted.

She collected her plate and moved around the counter to sit beside him.

“I’m sorry I’m so testy tonight,” she said. “I’m under a lot of pressure. I just… I don’t want to fail at my own dream.”

“You’re not failing,” he said. “You’re just a little stuck. It happens to everyone.”

She shook her head as she slathered butter on her French toast. “It doesn’t happen to me. I can’t permit it to happen to me.”

“Reality check, Dawn. It already has.”

“I can still finish the composition tonight,” she said.

“And if you can’t?”

Her lower lip trembled and she refused to meet his eyes, even though he was staring her down like a panther watching a tender young deer wander unknowingly beneath his tree.

“I’m not allowed to fail,” she said. “Absolutely not allowed.”

Allowed? Why would she say it that way? He placed a comforting hand at the base of her spine and she jerked so hard, she nearly launched herself straight off the stool.

“I can’t promise you anything, but I will help, if I can,” he said. “Relax, okay?”

“Easy for you to say,” she mumbled under her breath.

He removed his hand from her back, cursing himself for touching her as he could still feel the tension in her muscles against his palm. She picked at her French toast and after a moment of appearing defeated, straightened her shoulders and turned slightly to look at him.

“So you and your friend Owen became guitarists to seduce naive young women. What about the rest of your band? Did they also suffer from an inability to pick up girls based on their looks and personality alone?”

He sighed at her obvious subject change. “Owen didn’t really like guitar, so he switched to bass, which is the rock-band position least likely to get you laid.” Owen, however, had stopped having that problem soon after they graduated high school. “We’re not as shallow as I make us out to be.”

“Why didn’t Owen like guitar?”

“I’m not sure he was being completely truthful. I think he claimed that he didn’t like the guitar so he wouldn’t steal my thunder. He’s actually a good guitarist, but he has this way of putting everyone before himself. Especially me.”

“So he didn’t want to beat you at your own game.”

“Something like that.”

“How many are in your band?”

“Five. Jacob is the lead singer, and Adam plays lead guitar. They’ve been friends since they were young. They’re a couple years older than Owen and me. They’d started up a band with a drummer named Quint and were looking for a bassist to make up the fourth member of the group, which was called Desperation Normal. When Owen answered their ad on a bulletin board at a bar in Austin and agreed to join as their bassist, they had no intention of including me; they weren’t looking for a second guitarist. But Owen has a way of getting what he wants, and he refused to be a part of anything that didn’t include me, so they let me play along. Turns out two guitarists can be better than one. I couldn’t outplay Adam Taylor as a soloist, so I switched to rhythm guitar and let him have the limelight.”

“Are you satisfied playing rhythm guitar?”

“Yeah. I guess. I’m satisfied being a part of Sole Regret.” He never really thought much about why Adam played lead and he continued playing rhythm. It just worked best that way. “And then Quint met a girl, got married, and left the band. And Jacob recruited our current drummer, Gabe. Well, more like kidnapped him.” Kellen chuckled at those early weeks with Gabe and his constant whining about not having enough time to study for his quantum physics midterm. Perhaps the world had missed out on a fantastic engineer when Gabriel Banner had eventually dropped out of school after struggling to do everything for a semester—school, work, the band, and his girlfriend at the time. Missed out on an engineer, but gained one of the most skilled drummers to ever pound the skins. “We changed our name to Sole Regret a couple of weeks after the band was fully formed.”

“Why do you regret your souls?” she asked.

“Huh?” He looked up from his plate, which had somehow become empty while he’d been running off at the mouth.

“Your band’s name is Soul Regret. Why do you regret your soul?”

“Sole Regret. Sole meaning one or single.”

“Oh, one regret.” Dawn speared the final bite of her French toast. “You only have one?”

“Well, at the time. I was young.” He smiled sadly. He had dozens of regrets now, all centering around the things he should have done with Sara. He even regretted that he’d respected her too much to grope her early in their relationship. Maybe if he’d given in to those urges, he might have found the lump in her breast in time. Maybe her treatments would have been more effective. Maybe they could have saved her. Was it strange to regret not being after only one thing with the love of your life? Maybe, but he couldn’t help it.

“Kellen?” Dawn said after she’d swallowed her final bite.

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t you want to go home?”

He hesitated. How had she managed to pick up on that? “What do you mean?”

“Earlier when you said you would leave me alone and go home, you didn’t sound like you wanted to go.”

He shrugged. “There’s nothing there for me anymore.”

“But there’s something for you here?”

He dabbed his finger into a puddle of syrup and brought it to his tongue. “Yeah,” he said. “There’s you.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh.”

“And your song,” he added, before she got the wrong idea. “Are you going to play for me now? You’ve already spoiled my hungry belly with your fantastic French toast; why not treat my ears to something just as sweet?”

He winked at her and after a moment, she nodded.

“I think I’m ready,” she said. “Just don’t expect a miracle.”

“I won’t.” Kellen had given up on miracles five years ago.