Manhunting Read online

  “You seem pretty ‘Nick Stack’ to me.” Swallowing, she gave up fighting the pull of his magnetism and let it drag her closer. “Sound like him, too.” She licked her lower lip. “Except…maybe, better.”

  “Better?” His mouth drew up on one side, into the most decadent expression she’d ever seen. “How’s that?”

  “Fuller. Earthier. More complex.” She squeezed her thighs together to quell the burning ignited between them. “Just more you.”

  “More me? You mean, like that last song?”

  “Especially that last song.” Her face flamed—from his breath curling over her skin or the memory of what that song had done to her?

  “That was my new sound, my real sound. I’ve worked long and hard develop a whole different voice in jazz, and I’m trying to cut a new record deal. Rereleasing that old schlock will only confuse things.”

  “I don’t think anyone will be the least bit confused,” she said, her throat tight and her tongue—its mind clearly on another duty—a little clumsy. “They’ll hear Nick Stack’s rough velvet tones and think—”

  “Yeah? What will they think?”

  His mouth grazed hers, shunting thought onto a sensual side track.

  “What I always think when I hear your voice.”

  “Which is?”

  “‘Do me right,’” she quoted his lyrics, shocked to hear it come so bluntly out of her mouth. “‘Tonight.’”

  Sweet Jesus. Had she just propositioned him?

  Then he supplied the next line, pouring it between her tingling lips.

  “‘Yeah, bay-bee.’”

  That unabashedly erotic refrain, half spoken, half sung in the deepest, sexiest part of his range, turned her blood to syrup. The bar, the other patrons, the upscale, old-school propriety of the place—suddenly nothing mattered but her desire for the feel and taste of him.

  As their lips collided, the lightning that was produced shattered all the inhibitions holding her back. Her hands flew to his hair; his sank around her waist. She pressed closer, wanting every solid, sexy inch of him against every aching, hungry inch of her.

  Pleasure seared down the back of her throat like a triple shot of single malt, leaving in its wake only a half-coherent vow that she would not regret whatever came next. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. A dream come true.

  She ran her hands down his neck and shoulders to biceps that were flexed hard and filled with the same tension she was feeling…just as the waiter arrived with their drinks and gave a muffled cough that could have been either disapproval or recognition.

  They broke apart and Nick slid to the edge of the booth, tossing some bills onto the table beside the untouched drinks and pulling her along.

  The elevator doors opened the very instant he pressed the button. It was no surprise that the minute the doors closed, he pressed her back against the wall and kissed her until vertigo set in. She was oxygen deprived and panting as if she’d just finished the Boston Marathon by the time a discreet ding announced they had arrived on the tenth floor.

  The elevator doors were closing again before he reached out to stop them and pulled her out into the hall. Whipping out a key card, he led her past several rooms to a pair of ornate doors bearing a classy suite name.

  “We paid for this?” She glanced around a parlor furnished with a baby grand piano, a full-size bar, and ultra-plush sofas that probably cost more than her car.

  “Habit. From the old days,” he said, ripping off his jacket. “Demand the best and you get treated like the best. Record label logic.”

  “That actually works?” She watched the way his shoulders flexed and his shirt tightened across his lean muscles. Have mercy. She could die on the spot, this minute, and consider her life fulfilled.

  “Today,” he said, prowling toward her with an appreciative look that made her flush with pleasure. “Today it’s working just fine.”

  A heartbeat later he was kissing her witless and she was running her hands possessively over those memorable shoulders and up that broad back. His kisses were long, lush and lubricating enough to free all the rusty impulses she had refused to exercise ever again until it was right.

  And, baby, this was right.

  Her legs trembled and her intimate muscles clenched as he peeled off her jacket. Her skirt stayed in place, caught between their straining bodies, until he gave a wicked laugh and backed off enough to let it fall. She fumbled with his shirt buttons but soon was kissing her way down a slice of bared skin. He tasted of salt and a sharp, clean tang of arousal. She was suddenly starving for more.

  “Briefs,” she whispered as she sank her hands between his jeans and his tight, muscular buttocks. “I would have guessed commando.”

  “Overrated,” he murmured as his mouth migrated down the side of her face and neck to her shoulder. “Zipper rash.” Then while nuzzling her throat, he gave the back panel of her bra a tug. “Undo it.” When she met his gaze, there was an odd glint in his eye. “After today, I’m not going anywhere I’m not invited.” His voice dropped to a whisper and his eyelids lowered to produce a very focused smolder. “So invite me.”

  That multilayered request tugged her heart wide open. It was now or never, all or nothing. She dropped her bra and held her breath. His appreciative groan sent a shiver of exultation through her. His fingers closed around her breasts as if they were national treasures.

  When he bent to rake her sensitized nipples with his tongue, her knees gave. Laughing with a wicked edge, he wrapped his arms around her naked waist and hauled her up onto her toes, against him. Every tug of his mouth at her breasts sent a sweet spear of arousal straight to her sex.

  They stumbled through the bedroom door, still joined, and sank together onto the bed…knees first, then hips, elbows and shoulders. She shivered as he rolled her onto her back, nipping her breasts and running his hands up her bare sides, giving extra attention to every part that made her breath catch.

  Skin against glorious skin and stroke upon quivering stroke…sensation poured through her in torrents. He shifted to the side, nibbling his way down her body. Her every muscle—even her lungs—contracted when his fingers began to strum her slick, swollen flesh and jacked her response to a whole new level.

  She pulled his mouth up to hers and pressed wantonly against those fingers, urging them inside her, seeking what they could give—needing, demanding, breathless—until her nerves shorted, muscles seized and reality blurred.

  For a moment she floated out of body—expanded, freed—before sinking back into a steamy haze of need.

  “Now, Nick—” She reached for him.

  He sucked in a sharp breath and his hand closed around her wrist.

  “Give me a minute, babe.” He rolled to the side and the sound of the foil ripping brought her halfway back to reality. “Like the song says—” he gave her a wink “—there’s nothin’ like ‘a sharp-dressed man.’”

  That unexpected thoughtfulness gave her a glimpse of the man behind the public guise, a man who kept one foot firmly on the ground even when his hormones were leaving planet Earth behind. As she brushed his hands away, taking the condom and rolling it down the length of him, his eyes went molten and he turned to ribbed steel beneath her hands.

  With a growl, he pulled her beneath him and settled purposefully between her legs. The weight of him, the feel of his body blanketing her, his heat molding her, turned her breath to gasps.

  Pleasure saturated her as he raked her sex with his, pausing along the way, tantalizing her with the hint of fulfilling her desire. Then he pressed slowly, centimeter by delicious centimeter into her, parting her, filling her to heart-stopping perfection. He moved so rhythmically, drawing her to meet each stroke, to luxuriate in the feel of being penetrated, filled and claimed, to seek that elusive blend of position and pressure that would bring release.

  “Samantha,” he muttered, adjusting each movement until he found the precise angle and thrust that wrung helpless shudders of response from her
. “Samantha…Samantha…Samantha…”

  She crashed through every sensory boundary, shattering. When her thoughts reassembled and her vision returned, she was holding him fiercely while aftershocks of pleasure rumbled through them both. He finally slid to the bed beside her, murmuring her name over and over as if trying to brand each sensation with her identity.

  When she turned to him a moment later, he was watching her with a soft smile.

  “Wow,” she said. “You’re really, really good at this.”

  “Practice makes perfect,” he said, his smile dimming.

  “Then you must have practiced a lot.” It was said lightly, but as his gaze clouded, she wished she could take it back.

  “That’s how rock legends are made, and there was a time I wanted to—” He paused to meet her gaze. “I won’t lie to you, Sam. There were lots of women. That’s just part of the package with me. Somehow I managed to make it through that stuff healthy and relatively sane. So I have no desire to be a legend anymore. It’s enough for me to be a good musician and songwriter. And someday, hopefully, a good man.”

  He pulled her into the curve of his body and nuzzled her neck. She sighed and welcomed that honesty into her soul.

  A good man. Now, there was a concept.

  And at that moment she thought he didn’t have far to go.

  5

  SHE AWOKE SOME TIME later to a quiet, darkened bedroom, feeling as if she’d just finished a triathlon and come in first. For every ache, there was a stunningly thorough sense of satisfaction to compensate. The bed beside her was empty and she sat up, registering a slice of light coming from the mostly closed sitting-room door. Soft strains of music reached her.

  Nick? At the piano? His statement that he was a different man with different music suddenly took on a larger meaning. He expressed himself through music. If he felt anything like she did just now, making music was the very place he’d go.

  Spotting a hotel robe flung across a nearby chair, she snagged it and headed for the bathroom. The warm spray of the shower felt wonderful, and by the time she donned the fluffy robe again, she felt ready to face him.

  He was indeed at the piano when she padded barefoot into the parlor. Halfway across the sitting room, she was stopped in her tracks by a dreamy piano concerto. Liszt? Mozart? Schumann? One of those classical guys. Nick was playing with his eyes closed, totally absorbed, looking as if every note resounded in his soul.

  As she listened, he began to vary the tempo and emphasis of certain phrases, giving them a more contemporary sound. The transition to another style was seamless, natural, almost effortless. Drawn to this glimpse of him in the grip of a very different passion, she moved silently to the piano and watched as he transitioned back to the classical mode.

  Her concept of him changed yet again. He was a true musician. This wasn’t garage band stuff; this took training and discipline as much as desire. And to be able to shift so easily, so creatively between styles…

  He was a man of unexpected depths. Just seeing him like this, soul-bared, expressing himself honestly, joyfully in music, was enough to topple the rest of her defenses. In that moment, she felt a connection to him unlike any she’d felt to a man before. It seemed like her entire life had been preparing her for this moment. Nothing had ever seemed so right.

  NICK OPENED HIS EYES and was startled by the sight of Samantha leaning on the piano, her eyes luminous with wonder. He had pulled on jeans before heading to the piano, but at that moment he felt more than naked; he felt exposed in a way that made every nerve in his body go strangely quiet. Claiming that inner calm, he focused on her flushed cheeks and tousled hair. In her eyes he saw warmth, acceptance, recognition. She liked what she saw and heard. He relaxed in a way he’d never experienced with a woman.

  “You didn’t learn that from old Eric Clapton albums,” she said.

  “Juilliard.” He ran a complex finger exercise up and down the keyboard to demonstrate. “For a while. Until I fell in with bad company.”

  “Rockers?” She leaned her elbows on the piano top.

  “Guitars.” He chuckled. “My piano teacher was horrified.”

  “How did we not hear that you were a ‘serious’ musician?”

  “When you’re a Top Forty rocker, you don’t exactly want that kind of stuff getting around. It ruins the fast-and-loose image.”

  “So you’re a classically trained musician who pitched the ‘purity of art’ for commercial success,” she said.

  “Guilty as charged.” He launched into a jazz improvisation. “It was all fun and fame games at first. Then I got bored and felt trapped and tried to do something more original.” He felt a reflex tightening in his gut at the recall of old battles, but forced it to relax again.

  “But it didn’t work,” she concluded for him.

  Perceptive woman.

  “I got taken to school about the reality of the music business.” He paused in the middle of a promising melody line. “And I found out I still had a hell of a lot to learn, about music, about myself.”

  “So that’s why you haven’t recorded for a while?”

  “It would be easy to say yes.” He took a deep breath, wondering if she would understand. “But the truth is, nobody wanted anything from me but the old pop-rock schlock. I doubt they even want that anymore.”

  “Hey.” She scowled. “A lot of people loved that ‘schlock.’”

  “Yeah. Pimple-faced adolescents, dance-club studs and hard-bangin’ groupies.” Sarcasm crept in. “Quite a stellar musical legacy—‘helping frat boys get laid since 1996.’ Now available in sound bites—” his voice went TV-announcer resonant “—coming to a valentine near you.”

  “That’s a little harsh,” she said, caught between a smile and a scowl.

  “Yeah? How would you feel, if your best days were chopped up to use as punchlines in valentines?” The question came out harsher than he had intended.

  “My best work is the punchlines of valentines.” He tensed, his hands still on the keys until she smiled. “But I see your point. Put that way, it doesn’t exactly sound flattering.” She slid around the piano and looked at him with genuine warmth.

  “But you need to know, Nick, that we chose your music, your signature lines and phrases, because people recognize them instantly and love to hear them.” She paused for a breath. “I love to hear them.”

  The glow in her eyes registered “sincerity,” causing his heart to trip.

  “You were a fan back in the day?” he said, conjuring an image of a nubile young Samantha Drexel in a schoolgirl uniform, gyrating to his sexed-up music. His whole body snapped taut.

  “I slept beneath a poster of you on my dorm wall at Cornell,” she said. “Almost lost my virginity on the dance floor to ‘Make Me Yours.’”

  “You and half the teenage girls in North America.” He shook his head. “It’s a wonder I wasn’t stoned by village elders after each concert.”

  When he looked up, her expression was so unguarded, so earnest that he could actually see the young girl she had been. If only he had—no, if he’d met her then, she might have been just one more honey, one more anonymous night in a monotonous string of hotel rooms. He traced her cheek with his knuckles. Now she was more. But how much more?

  “A lot of people fell in love to your music, you know. Including me.” She nodded ruefully. “Twice. With the same damned guy.”

  “Same damned guy?” His gaze flew to her bare ring finger and he felt a slide of relief. “He’s not still around?”

  “No. Thank heaven. It was a college romance that I thought deserved a second chance.” There was a hint of pain in her face. “Turned out I was wrong.”

  “Thank heaven,” he echoed, making room for her and patting the bench beside him.

  “Play me something,” she said, tucking her feet primly under the bench, then laying a hand on his upper thigh. “One of your new songs. I want to hear more of the evolved you. The real Nicholas Stack.”

  “Okay
. But I should warn you that your hand—” he glanced at the supple fingers splayed across his leg “—is very near my restart button.”

  She leaned into his shoulder while purposefully tightening her grip on his thigh. “And your hands on those keys are near mine. Play.”

  With a sound that was part growl, part chuckle, he began to play, demonstrating the differences between his old sound and what he was doing now. Jazz was more fluid and free-form, he told her, then proceeded to show her how his megahit “Baby Tonight” could have an entirely different impact when done in that style.

  At the end of the song she looked up in amazement.

  “That’s what you want to do now?” She sounded as if she’d been holding her breath. When he nodded, she ran her hand down his arm and caressed his fingers. “That’s amazing! Why aren’t they following you around recording and releasing every blessed note you play?”

  He chuckled. “Good question.”

  “More.” Her eyes shone. “Play some more.”

  Savoring the excitement in her face, he warned that the next song was a work in progress, then began to unspool a provocative jazz number that had always made him think of a woman’s body swaying in invitation. She melted against him; he could feel her tensing and relaxing, responding viscerally at all the right places. She apparently experienced music with her whole body.

  He understood that kind of connection. It was the way he immersed himself in his music and experienced it with every part of his being. He closed his eyes, willing the song to touch and move her, wanting to share with her what he felt when he created it.

  “No lyrics?” she whispered dryly, her hand tightening on his thigh.

  “Not yet.” He poured the passion rising in him through the instrument, caressing the keys the way he yearned to touch her lush body.

  “It’s wonderful.” She laid a cheek against his shoulder. “It’s like you’ve captured a heartbeat. Mine. You could call it ‘Variations on Samantha Drexel’s Heartbeat.’ Play it again.”

  When she rose to stand behind him, he canted his head while he played and was rewarded with nibbles up his neck to his ear. Shivers shot down his spine as she circled him with her arms and ran her hands over his shoulders and bare chest, exploring him.