Lust's Rhythm (Heart of Fame Book 10) (8 page)

Jed’s stomach clenched. “I don’t know. I’m thinking it has everything to do with my reputation.”

She frowned. “But he, of all people, should know a reputation is just that—an opinion, not the truth. I’ve read about Dad’s reputation when he was younger and he wasn’t an angel. I’m surprised Mum ever let him back into her life at times. So what’s so horrible about yours?”

Letting out a slow breath, Jed sat up. Chloe ducked as he swung his leg over her head, smoothing her palms up his thighs when he’d settled into a slightly slumped sitting position, his legs framing her shoulders and sides.

She searched his eyes in the direct, unabashed way she had before, an intimate connection he was already completely enamored with.

“So?” She shrugged, looking up at him, the warmth of her palms a gentle caress on his thighs. “Do you have any ideas?”

“I suspect,” he began, before stopping. He scratched at his check, the bristles there rough under his fingertips. “I suspect it has something to do with what happened when I was first getting attention in the rock world.”

Chloe frowned. “You mean that paparazzo in Melbourne?”

Jed huffed out a shaky sigh. Of course she would know of the paparazzo incident. Everyone in the world did. One moment in his early career, the
only
moment really, he wished he could go back in time to change. No, that was wrong. He wished to hell he could go back and prevent his agent from milking that moment just as much. It may have helped his career, his sales, but…

“The pap,” he said, resting his hands on the backs of hers, his chest tight, “had done his research on me. I can’t remember his name. He was an older guy. Had a reputation for being a wanker. Holston something… No, Carl Holston. That was it. Holston had dug up not only stuff about my Christian rock band days, but stuff about my family. About the life my mum and dad led before Dad deserted us.”

He stopped once again. An invisible band wrapped his throat. Crushing at the hot lump trying to choke him as he spoke.

“He said something to you that you didn’t like?” Chloe asked, although Jed knew it wasn’t really a question. Chloe Blackthorne was more famous than he was. She’d grown up in the paparazzi’s crosshairs. She knew what it was like to be hounded by the media, provoked and antagonized for the slim chance of capturing the money shot.

“He said something,” Jed confirmed. “Quite a few things, in fact. I ignored most of them. I was twenty-eight at the time, but I was still naïve to the world I was entering. My first single was getting some pretty good airplay, Broken had appeared on the
Today
show, my official YouTube page was going off, ‘Storm Clouds’ was climbing the iTunes charts…but I was still clueless.”

He snorted out a low, mirthless chortle. “Clueless and with a temper. That was me. So when he called my mum a drunken whore, I saw red.”

“He did
what
?”

The stunned shock in Chloe’s voice tore at something in Jed’s soul.

He gave her a small smile, wanting her to know he appreciated it. Theirs was a surreal life not even close to average and normal, but her pain for him made him feel, on a level he didn’t really comprehend, like a real person.

“I’d ignored all his jabs at me being an altar boy, about how I must have been the priest’s favourite. But when he called Mum a drunken whore…well, he could see he’d finally got under my skin.”

“What did you do?”

“I told him to back off. This was way before I had a bodyguard. Or any kind of minder. I was out with the guys, it was close to two a.m. We were celebrating being a successful rock band. I was sleep deprived. I’d had a couple of drinks. None of those are excuses for what happened next, though. They just…” He scratched at the bristles on his jaw once again. “I just need you to know where I was at.”

Chloe nodded. She didn’t remove her hands from his thighs. He would love her forever for that.

Love. Yep. He loved her.

Talk about unexpected.

“What happened?” she prompted, her voice gentle.

“When he saw me react, he kept going on the mum thing. Threw her arrest record at me, the fact she’d been caught drunk driving when I was only four and in the car, asked if I knew she’d been in a commune when she fell pregnant with me. I kept walking, but I also kept telling him to shut up. I finally snapped when he said she most likely spread her legs for anyone who came along.”

“Jesus.”

Chloe’s hoarse whisper scratched at the room’s silence.

Jed’s stomach lurched. A sour taste coated the back of his throat. The memory of that night had never left him. Of what he’d done to the pap.

Every time he replayed it in his head, however, his fist smashing against the man’s jaw became a rolling pin against his father’s head.

Over and over.

He swiped a hand over his mouth and let out a slow sigh. “I hit him. Broke his jaw. Almost broke his nose. He ended up in the hospital for a fortnight. Underwent reconstructive surgery. Charges were never filed—I still don’t know how my agent made that happen. What happened after though…”

He swallowed. Who would have thought less than twelve hours ago, when he was touching down in LA to attend the Grammys, he’d be baring the poison of his soul to the woman of his dreams while they were both naked?

“My agent convinced me,” he went on, his mouth dry, that sour taste boiling in his gut, “to let word of the confrontation leak to the media and gossip sites. ‘We’ll spin it well,’ he said. ‘Keep the nasty details out of it, of course. The chicks will fucking cream over you after this. Trust me.’ He said it would triple the sales of my single, maybe even more. Before I knew it, I was the new bad boy of Australian rock, with a reputation for anger and violence and disrespect, and ‘Storm Clouds’ was Number One on every chart that mattered.”

Slumping farther back on the sofa, he huffed out another sigh and gave Chloe a wry grin. “I’m pretty certain that’s why your father doesn’t want you having anything to do with me. He’s worried I’m a violent prick. Your brother said as much tonight.”

A frown pulled at Chloe’s eyebrows, her fingers gripping his thighs a little harder as she straightened her spine. “What did Josh say?”

Jed chuckled at the prickly waves suddenly radiating off her. “He said he had issues with a guy who has
my
issues sniffing around you.”

She narrowed her eyes, her stare holding his. “Josh can go suck a lemon,” she declared. “And so can Dad.”

Jed raised his eyebrows. “I’m sorry? A lemon?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she shoved herself to her feet, climbed onto the sofa, straddled his groin, tangled her hands in his hair, and kissed him.

Senseless. Until he could hardly draw breath and was harder than he’d ever been in his life.

When she lifted her head, cupping his face in hands that were warm and tender and at the same time trembling, he gazed up into her face, his cock so close to penetrating her heat, his heart thumping.

“How serious were you about marrying me?” he murmured.

Chloe brushed her thumb over his bottom lip. “Very. Know anywhere we can do it now?”

T
he twenty-four-hour wedding chapel in Long Beach declared itself the “cutest little wedding chapel in California”.

Chloe didn’t care one iota that that statement was a tad optimistic.

All that mattered was that she was now Mrs. Jed Brody.

She wasn’t drunk. She wasn’t high.

She was totally and completely happy and in love.

The man her father had told her she was never to get involved with was
nothing
like his reputation and
everything
she wanted.

Everything.

Articulate. Sensitive. Gentle. Wild. Strong. Wounded. Talented. Funny. Sarcastic. Sexy.

“Thanks, Ralph.”

At Jed’s voice, she turned from the view of the lantern-lit koi pond through the bay window of the chapel and watched her husband shake the hand of the celebrant who’d declared them husband and wife ten minutes ago.

Ralph looked incredibly spry for someone who’d just officiated a wedding at 3:45 a.m. Of course, they’d given him warning they were coming via a phone call. It had taken them almost ninety minutes to get there, partly due to their taxi driver getting lost once, partly due to the fact they ended up bonking like rabbits in the shower as they were getting ready to leave the hotel, partly due to the fact they’d swung buy an open pawn shop on the way and bought two slim gold wedding bands for their fingers.

Chloe had apologized for waking Ralph when they arrived. He waved her off with a wide smile and promptly informed her he’d married two couples in the hour previous to their arrival.

“It’s a booming trade, love,” he’d said with a wink as he led them into the chapel. “Especially in the wee hours of the morning.”

Fifteen minutes later, after some lovely words about love from Ralph, and vows from her and Jed that included the words
truth
,
honesty
,
passionately,
and
laughter
, he pronounced them married. His wife-slash-organist witnessed it. And threw white and pink rose petals over them when they sealed the deal with a kiss.

Done.

Chloe didn’t think it was possible to be happier, but at the sight of Jed smiling his thanks at the celebrant—a simple, normal thing for a guy to do at his wedding—her heart exploded with warm joy.

Wow. She was married to that guy. He was her husband and she was his wife. Wow.

Unable to stop herself, she broke out in a wide grin and wriggled with delight.

She was Mrs. Jed Brody.

Dropping a glance at her finger, she smiled at the gold band circling her ring finger.

It matched the band on Jed’s finger. Plain gold, no engraving. Simple and elegant and perfect.

Perfect.

Everything was perfect.

“My wife.”

She lifted her head at Jed’s low murmur just as his warm hands cupped her face and he brushed her lips in a gentle kiss.

“My husband,” she whispered back as he straightened.

“Ready to go?”

She pressed her hips to his and squeezed his butt with playful pressure. “Time to consummate the wedding, do you mean?”

He nodded, his groin pulsing against her belly. “Hell, yeah.”

“Then, hell, yeah,” she answered before kissing him with teasing quickness.

They exited the chapel, arms slung around other’s backs, hips brushing, incapable of looking anywhere else but at each other.

It wasn’t until a bright flash of light detonated on Chloe’s left that she tore her gaze—and grin—away from Jed.

“Fuck,” Jed muttered, tugging her closer to his body and raising an arm to shield them both. “Bloody papar…”

He trailed off as the group of giggling women on the footpath beside them—clearly a girls’ night gone wild—started snapping selfies of themselves in front of the chapel’s entry.

Chloe burst out laughing, even as her heart rate did its best to return to normal. “How’s that ego of yours, Mr. Brody?”

He hauled her harder to his body and pouted with melodramatic hurt. “Wounded, Mrs. Brody. Wounded.”

He kissed her before she could respond.

Behind them, the girls’ night party started singing “Going to the Chapel” as the most out-of-pitch choir Chloe had ever heard.

“C’mon,” Jed rumbled against her lips, “let’s get out of here.”

They started walking, hand in hand, their steps in unison.

“So…” Jed shot her a smile. “What would you like for a wedding present?”

Chloe frowned with careful consideration. “Umm…”

“A puppy? A Ferrari? A castle in Europe somewhere?” He scanned the immediate area, his frown comical. “I’m sure I can buy at least two of those things around here somewhere. But the puppy may have to wait until we’re back in Oz, I’m afraid.”

Chloe laughed, and then placed herself directly in his path and kissed him as he came to a halt.

God, would she ever get enough of him?

Pulling away, she squeezed his butt again—she would definitely never get over
it
, that was for certain—and then smoothed her hands up his back. “The puppy sounds perfect. But for now…”

He arched an eyebrow. “Castle in Europe?”

She shook her head.

“Ferrari?”

“No.”

“Oh God, please don’t tell me you’re a Lamborghini girl?” Mock horror flooded his face, even as he reciprocated her butt squeeze, his fingers kneading her backside with delicious pressure. “I’ll have to ask for an annulment if you’re a Lamborghini girl, I’m afraid.”

“I will never drive or own a Lamborghini,” she assured him with a smile. “No, I’m thinking something more…personal.”

Devilish mirth danced in his eyes. “Oral sex on the footpath?”

She burst out laughing. “Deviant.”

He grinned. “Well, yeah.”

“As inviting as that sounds,” she threaded her fingers through his once more and began walking backwards, “I’ve got something else in mind.”

He let her tug him along. “Which is?”

A taxi drove into Chloe’s line of sight and, with a grin, she dropped Jed’s hand and flagged it down with a wave of her arm.

“Get in,” she ordered as she opened the back door.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, doing exactly as instructed.

“That’s why this marriage is going to be perfect,” she said as she settled in beside him. “Because you know who’s in charge.”

“That, and the incredible sex,” he answered before capturing her lips in a searing kiss.

“That too,” she agreed when they both came up for air.

Leaning forward, she gave the driver—watching them both via the rearview mirror with what looked like a smirk on his face—the address of their destination, and then nestled herself back against Jed’s side.

“You going to tell me where we’re going?”

“Nope.”

“Okay.”

Chloe lost track of how long it took them to arrive. They spent the journey talking about puppies, of all things. Jed wanted a pet dingo whom he would call Baby. Chloe laughed at that so much she snorted, something she hadn’t done since she was a teenager.

By the time they pulled to a halt outside Angel Ink 24 Hour Tattoo Parlor, they’d decided their puppy was going to be
two
puppies, both rescue dogs, which they were going to call Groot and Rocket.