My customer service smile was getting a workout. Everyone thought I was with Darren, and we fell naturally into a brother/sister routine we’d honed since we broke up. The musicians took a break, silencing the background noise. Our klatch of artists didn’t notice. We just kept talking about getting shafted, f**ked, disrespected, kicked in the ass. Stuff we all had in common.
And Kevin. We talked about the missing status of Kevin Wainwright.
I felt Jonathan’s hand on my back. Even through my dress, I knew his touch. His fingertips just grazed me, and I wanted to melt under them.
“That dress makes me want to destroy you,” he said in my ear.
I faced him, and I noticed his hand left my back. I felt suddenly cold. “Missed your opportunity last night.”
“I’ll take you when you’re ready and not a minute sooner.” He pressed his lips together, looking at me as if he’d swallow me whole once the moment of readiness came. “I have someone here who swears he’s heard your voice on some scratch cut one of his acquisitions people brought him.”
I looked behind Jonathan and found the guy I thought was Harry Enrich talking to three other people I didn’t recognize. “The president of Carnival records?”
“Eddie’s boss.”
Jonathan and I stood together, looking at each other, no words passing between us. I saw the blue flecks in his eyes and the laugh lines at their corners.
“I could introduce you,” he said. “Or you could remind him of the cut he heard.” He glanced at the empty piano, then back at me.
“I could prove I’m not Bondage Girl?”
He nodded. “The song can be what you want. Sing it.”
“You’re releasing it?”
“Yes.”
“What if I sang something else?”
“Your call. I’ll never hold you back again.”
“Jonathan.” Leaning into him with my eyes half-closed, I whispered it so softly, I doubted he even heard me.
“Go,” he whispered just as softly. “Take what’s yours.”
He stepped back, and I felt at once totally alone and totally powerful.
Eleven steps to the piano.
I could do the new song, “Crave/n/” He’d recognize my voice, maybe, but I’d be Monica.
Six steps to the piano.
But if I did “Collared,” he’d know who I was right away.
Bondage Girl.
Two steps, and limited time to get the song out before the musicians came off their break.
I slid onto the bench and started with a B-flat scale, then my fingers decided the song for me.
CHAPTER 29.
MONICA
The hotel carpet silenced my feet. The sconces lining the hall cast warm light on the wainscoting, and the elevator got smaller in the distance as if it was stepping away from me. I felt as though I was walking down the center aisle of a church after receiving a benediction that actually conferred a blessing.
I touched his door when I walked past it. Just once and exactly in the center. I slid the keycard through the reader. The green light flashed, and I opened my door.
A single lamp lit the living area, and the first thing I checked was the door between our rooms. It was closed. I touched it, pressing my whole hand to the wood, then I knocked. I breathed three times before the door opened.
Jonathan stood there, jacket open, tie undone, shirt open halfway. A glass of whiskey with a single ice cube hung from his fingertips. “How did it go?”
“You left.”
“It was your moment.” He leaned in the doorframe, but his bare feet were still on his side. “Which song did you pick?”
“I did ‘Collared,’ but different. Less bondage. More sweet.”
He took a sip of whiskey. “And?”
I looked for a negative reaction and saw none. “They demanded another. So I did ‘Craven.’ Went good. Real good. I wish you were there.”
“I’m here now.”
He was, in all his straight-shouldered, commanding, controlled beauty. Right there in front of me. Close enough for me to smell whiskey and leather.
“I’d like to go to Seoul with you,” I said without thinking. Even as it came out of my mouth, I knew it was the right thing. I felt a press of tension flow out of me in a flood from the rightness of it.
Jonathan looked at the floor, and I couldn’t see his face. Had he changed his mind? A little tension returned until he picked up his head and looked at me. His smile went wide, and he touched his chest.
“Goddess.” He looked as though he wanted to say more but didn’t have the words.
“I have to figure out what to do about work. I might lose my job.”
“I can smooth it over with Debbie.”
“Do not.” I held up my finger. “It’s my responsibility.”
“You’ve made me very happy.”
I had a snide response at the ready, but instead I said, “I’m glad.” The ice in his glass clinked, and I looked at it wistfully. He held it out. I parted my lips, and he raised the glass to them and tipped a little liquid in, his fingertips at the bottom so they didn’t touch my face. The whiskey stung my tongue and burned my throat. Hot and cold swirled in my chest at the same time.
“Thank you,” I said. “I should be getting to sleep.”
“Of course,” he said, stepping backward into his room.
“Not like I’m tired or anything.”
“Right.”
“But there’s this no touching rule, and if I spend another second with you, I’m going to lose my mind and try to take your clothes off. I’m tired of being the one with no self-control around here.”
He just looked at me, up and down, a little smirk playing at the corners of his mouth. I knew that look; Jonathan calculating the game, imagining all of its possibilities.
“I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Your choice. We wait until we get back to L.A. We talk. We agree you never turn your back on me again unless I cheat on you or hurt you, neither of which will happen. We rush off to Korea, and I’ll probably have you on the plane or in a car or something. I don’t even know. Or the other option, and this is a terrible idea...”
He stopped.
“Go on,” I said, a little excitement building between my legs.
“Right now, you agree never turn your back on me again unless I cheat on you or hurt you.”
“And?”
“When this ice cube melts, the no touch rule is rescinded.”
I cleared my throat and looked down. My hands were at my sides, fingers twitching as if I was playing a stringed instrument. “Jonathan.”