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  I am breathless, unable to walk, unable to speak. Somehow after years of throwing myself at well-connected musicians, I’ve gotten into the belly of the beast.

  I am in the insider circle within the recording industry, and I am alone with a man who might be able to help me find my father.

  Two

  I continue guiding Jack down the hallway to his bedroom and fight to contain my inner excitement. It wouldn’t be fair to pounce on him with what I want. I need to put him to bed, sober him up, and figure out how to stay here until morning so I can have a lucid conversation with him.

  I lug him through the doorway and switch on the lights. For a moment I stop, breathless again. This is Jackson Parker’s bedroom. I’ve been in a lot of musicians’ bedrooms—too many bedrooms, Jeanette would say—but I’ve never been in a room like this before.

  A massive king size bed sits facing a giant wall of glass with a stunning view of the ocean. Everything is spotless and subtly expensive, from the careless arrangement of rust and blue pillows on the bed, to the books and vinyl crowding the shelves, to the leather chairs positioned before the stone fireplace.

  The artful arrangement of posh furnishings, memorabilia, and family photos has turned this large flowing space into something tastefully luxurious, homey and yet intimidating.

  As we cross the bedroom, his hold on me grows tighter. He’s practically an octopus and nearly impossible to work free from so I can put him onto the bed.

  “Stop holding onto me. I need to put you down on the bed. You need sleep, Mr. Parker.”

  Jack frowns. “I need another drink and you can stop with that Mr. Parker stuff. Everyone just calls me Jack.”

  I guide him backward onto the bed and he takes me with him until I’m trapped across his chest. Jack laughs and the pleasant lines of muscles and warm flesh shimmy beneath me. His magnificent blue eyes lock on my face and begin to glow.

  “I thought you’d never join me, baby,” Jack whispers.

  He touches my cheek with a finger. The scent of him surrounds me—even drunk the man smells good.

  He tugs at my sheet. “All women should walk the earth wearing sheets. So sexy and convenient.”

  He reaches for the scarf around my waist that loosely holds my invention in place and I squirm in his grasp to stop his hand.

  “Let’s leave the sheet, shall we? I don’t think you’re going to be able to do much of anything in the shape you’re in. Let me up. You need to sleep.”

  His expression softens into something sweetly regretful and almost tender. “I’m sorry that I’m drunk. I’m not usually like this. I promise.”

  I bite my lower lip and try to ease out of his arms. “Don’t promise me. Promise yourself.”

  His hand falls away from me and his golden head wobbles on the pillow.

  Now what? I don’t know what I should do. Do I put a blanket over him? Do I run from the room? Or do I just sit in a chair and watch this iconic genius sleep?

  I sink down on the edge of the bed and just stare. How dazzling he is. The most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. I feel my flesh tingle.

  I pull a blanket from the foot of the bed up and over him.

  “You’re not leaving, are you?” he whispers.

  I shake my head.

  “No. We’ll talk in the morning, but now sleep.”

  “Linda, Linda, Linda. Where did you come from? Why are you here?”

  “Aha. So you remember my name.”

  “Of course, I do.” He frowns.

  “I came from that way.” For some lame reason I point. “North.”

  Jack chuckles. “That’s not north. That’s west. The beach faces south here.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I found you. If I continued to walk the shoreline I might have ended up in New York. I was going east without knowing it. I would have never reached Los Angeles that way.”

  He laughs. “Beautiful and funny. Why LA?”

  “It’s where I live.”

  His golden brows pucker into a frown. “So why are you in Santa Barbara wandering the beach all alone wearing a sheet?”

  “I’m not alone. I went to a party with my roommate. It’s not far from here.”

  I reach under the lamp shade to turn out the light.

  “Roommate? Male or female?” he asks.

  “Female, not that it’s any of your business.”

  “Then she won’t miss you tonight.”

  And before I know what he’s doing, I am in his arms being turned beneath him on the bed. His face descends before I can stop him and Jackson Parker is kissing me.

  The touch of his mouth shoots through my body like an electric current and it feels like I’m completely surrounded by the warm length of him. With gentle demand, his lips ease apart my lips and I feel the lightest touch of his scotch-flavored tongue against my mouth. One hand slips beneath my sheet to caress my breast.

  His hand begins to glide over my flesh as if he’s relishing and absorbing the feel of me. His movements are erotic and sure, almost leisurely. Their effect on me is anything but leisurely. Every speck of my skin is heating rapidly and he is only kissing my lips while his hands calmly roam my flesh.

  My breath catches in my throat. Who would have expected a man like Jackson Parker to take with such heart-melting gentleness?

  I try to work free of him. The man definitely knows how to get a woman from zero to sixty in record time. As much as I want to stay until he sobers—and my alert senses taunt me that this would be a surefire way to ensure that—it wouldn’t be a good thing for either of us. I’m not even sure he’s aware of whose body is beneath him.

  “Jack…” I moan into his lips.

  His face lifts and his blue eyes begin to glow. “Say my name again, lovely Linda—” his voice is a sensual rasp, “—and then no more words. Just me being good to you. You being good to me. Two strangers from the beach in an encounter we both want.”

  His mouth lowers back to me and I feel like I am melting into the bed. As his mouth plunders mine, what’s in his kiss is something I’ve never felt before, a hungry desperation with whispers of longing. He kisses me as if we’ve shared a thousand kisses, as if he knows the contour of my lips and what pleases me: the touch of his tongue against mine, the gentle swirls that dance and play, and even the light nips of his teeth on my lower lip. His moves, knowing and sure, are beguiling and pulling me into him.

  He rolls back from me until he is kneeling, and then the tie on my sheet is gone. Jesus Christ, how did he get my toga off me without me stopping him? I’m lying totally naked, except for my panties, and Jackson Parker is making love to me with his famous blue eyes.

  His gaze roams me in the same unhurried fashion as his hands. He smiles at me, his expression soft. “Fuck, you are beautiful, Linda. I knew those big brown eyes would never lead me false.”

  He pulls off his shirt without unbuttoning it and tosses it on the floor.

  The muscles in the deepest part of me clench and my velvet flesh feels like it is dripping—just from sight of his chest in this erotic fantasy.

  I stare at him in spellbound wonder. It’s not possible for another man to be so confident and sexy and hypnotic.

  In a single, fluid glide he removes my panties. I look away, trying to control the flash-fire in my body.

  He laughs, starting to work on the fastenings of his jeans. “Don’t stop looking, Linda. Look. Touch. Do what you want. It’s all good with me.”

  Do what I want?

  I bite my lower lip and I can feel that my eyes are enormous as I stare up at him. I want to fuck this man hard, right now, until I’ve pounded every other musician I’ve ever been with out of my head, until Jackson Parker is the only memory I have of sex. We haven’t even started, but I can feel it, that this is going to be mind-blowingly indescribable.

  Leaning down, he kisses me until I am breathless and pliant in want of him. He starts to ease off his jeans, somehow still
kissing across my jaw, my chin, my neck. I hear the sound of denim hitting the floor, and I want to look at him, but his kisses have moved to the swell of my breasts. His golden head blocks my view of the rest of him.

  And then he’s up on his knees, gazing at me, and I flush because he is everything a man should be and too often isn’t. Every inch of him is fit, tanned, virile, ready and larger than life.

  What the hell was he doing alone on the beach at night for me to find? My blood is pumping through my body, and being here with him is so unexpected and so hot in its surrealness.

  He scoops me up in his arms and lifts me from the bed into him, his erection pushing into me as his mouth reclaims mine demandingly. Gripping his upper arms, I surrender to this fast-moving shift into scorching passion. His body is strong and muscular, his hands flex on my backside, and I eagerly stroke against his hardness with my moist, soft flesh. I want him so badly, and tentatively I move my hands to feel his face, his hair, the pulse beating in his neck.

  I kiss him there, and he arches me backward, touching the tip of his erection against my vagina, and then he moans, setting me down upon the bed. His fingers hold my hips as he runs his tongue around my navel. Then, with gentle nips and swirls of his tongue he traces a path between my hipbones. His breath is brushing my mound. His eyes are fixed on my perfectly shaved lower parts and his finger lightly glides my labia.

  My hand strays to his hair, my fingers lacing into his golden waves, and his face turns, his blue eyes glittering with desire.

  “I love the way you smell,” he whispers, and I nearly convulse at the look of pure pleasure in his eyes. He kisses me on my mound. “I bet you taste just as wonderful.”

  Before I can react, he is there, mouth, fingers, everything. I gasp as he runs his tongue along the inside of my fold, away from me, across my vagina and then blows. One hand moves to my breasts, his callused fingers stroking my hardened nipple. His mouth sweeps up the other side of me and then pauses to lightly flick and tease my clitoris.

  I groan, arching on the bed, and he chuckles. Even his laugh is erotic, stirring the air across my sensitive nerve endings.

  “Oh, Linda, you need this even more than I.”

  His tongue flutters against me clitoris. My thighs begin to shake.

  “Do you like that?”

  I nod. His mouth works greedily this time, consuming my juices and making me ooze even more. His tongue runs up my mound, swirls and lifts.

  “Or do you like that better?”

  There is no point answering him, he already knows the answer, but I nod anyway. His mouth lowers and my fingers tighten around the sheets.

  My head rolls back on the pillow and my hips begin to move in urgency against him. I feel heat and sensation along my nerves, building impatience, as his mouth devours my need. I want to savor this, prolong it. He’s only just started and I’m almost about to come. I can’t even remember the last time a man gave me an orgasm and he’s doing it with expert sureness.

  I arch, my body twitching, my fingers tightening in his hair, and I feel a blow and then his tongue leaves me.

  “Oh please, don’t stop,” I beg. I open my eyes to find him hovering over me as I squirm with need.

  “Never,” he murmurs before leaning down to kiss the inside of my thigh. Another shockwave through my muscles. My skin is burning and I need his mouth there, but he is kissing the flesh of my thighs, my pelvis, near and then away, but never there. I feel like I’m about to crawl out of my skin.

  He slips a finger slowly into me. He begins to work with his mouth as his finger is lifted for me to taste me. He swirls it in my mouth, the taste of me and the taste of his flesh. I’m clenching tighter and tighter, my breasts swell, my nipples harden even more, and every single nerve ending in my body explodes at once.

  His mouth closes completely over me as I convulse against his tongue. His is kissing me, sucking me, licking me as my cries shatter the silence of the room.

  It keeps going on and on. I can’t breathe and there is too much sensation. It is too intense all at once. I try to move my hips away, but he holds me there, getting more aggressive in delivering me pleasure.

  It feels like someone has covered me with oil and lit me on fire. The quaking should have started to calm, but it is intensifying. My arousal shifts, building like I’m going to come apart again.

  I’m lost in my own breathing and roiling flesh. My breath is still ragged as I rally enough to open my eyes. Jack is on his hip, reclined beside me, staring down at me with a smile of pure satisfaction.

  “Your body is wonderfully responsive.” He scoops me from the bed, turning me into him. He starts kissing me on the neck. “But you don’t know a thing about letting yourself enjoy pleasure, do you?”

  There is no time to react. I am draped across his body and he is slowly lowering me onto his erection. My flesh swallows him deeply and I instantly shudder and tighten around him. Briefly, he closes his eyes and his breathing hitches.

  He doesn’t move. He eases up into me, taking a breast in his mouth, and I want to ride him hard. I try to move. He stills me. His tongue swirls around my nipple as he slowly moves his cock out and then back in, somehow even deeper. His mouth sucks harder. I roll my hips. He stops me.

  “Don’t move your body,” he whispers, holding my hips steady as he lies back against the pillow. “Just let me move you.”

  He slides me up the length of him slowly, knowing exactly how to glide inside me so all the most sensitive parts are stroked. He lowers me in delicious increments. My body quivers as my back arches and my thighs clutch.

  I start to shake. I try to grind and ride his cock. He lifts one hand to touch my cheek. With the other he stills my anxious limbs.

  “Oh no, lovely Linda. Tonight I want to please you.”

  Oh my.

  He moves inside me, whispering my name, holding me captive to his body and his touch and his kisses. All parts of me are completely absorbed into him and I am lost in the feel of a man for the first time in my life.

  Three

  I wake smelling of Jack and sex, wondering how I got here.

  I haven’t been a virgin since I was fourteen, but those hours in Jack’s arms felt like a second virginity loss. At last, I have experienced what sex should be.

  Cheeks burning, I turn on my pillow to find him sleeping beside me. He is even more gorgeous washed in morning light with his lax features and tousled, bright hair. My gaze greedily roams the parts of him not hidden beneath the sheets.

  He is magnificent. A man at his peak and prime of masculine appeal. Not young. Not old. Just the perfect blend of both that no woman could resist.

  I note the time on the clock resting on the bedside table and resist the urge to kiss him. Ten a.m. I better call Jeanette at the motel before she sends the police out looking for me. Jeez, she’s going to be pissed. Not only did I ditch her last night, I left her alone to deal with Rob.

  I shake my head, mind made up and determined. Rob: over, finished, gone. A giant waste of my time in more ways than one. Even if I didn’t have very fresh memories of how a man should treat a woman in bed—thanks to Jack—I would have ended us anyway after that stunt he pulled at the party.

  I don’t take shit from any man.

  Careful not to wake Jack, I ease to the side of the bed and sit up. I reach for his shirt and my panties lying on the floor and my eyes lock on a collection of photos sitting on a table.

  I pull on my clothes and make a detour on my trip to the bathroom, stopping at the table. Family photos. I lift what must surely be a 24-carat gold picture frame and stare at the woman preserved in glass.

  Lena Parker. Jackson Parker’s dead wife. I don’t need anyone to explain to me who she is. Even if I wasn’t a knowledgeable groupie, Lena had been enormously famous in her own right.

  If ever a woman had it all, it was Lena Parker. Beautiful, talented, a world-renowned violinist, perfect husband—I look around the ro
om—perfect home, wonderful children. What a tragedy that she died so young.

  It’s been four years. Is that why Jack drinks? The loss of her? I set the picture down and lift up another one, and everything inside me goes cold.

  Oh Christ.

  I stare into the time-frozen image of Sam Parker, Jackson’s son. I remember Sammy well. I used to see him play with his band in the LA club circuit. A brilliant guitarist and an amazing voice. He was definitely a star on the rise. Sexy as all hell, but troubled and dark. He just died last spring from a drug overdose and they found him in his bedroom here in this oh-so-perfect house.

  A snippet from the tabloids stirs in my memory. Jack has existed in total seclusion since he buried his son. I wonder why he should let me someone like me, a strange girl from the beach, into his carefully guarded world.

  Perhaps the pressures of being alone in his sorrow has grown too much for him. Perhaps it is only intimacy with a stranger he can manage, and that’s why I’m here. I am nothing to him and maybe that’s my appeal. It wouldn’t be the first time a man used me this way.

  I set the picture back onto its resting place. I focus on the little girl. She has to be Jack’s daughter. Same golden hair. Same dazzling blue eyes. How sweet she looks, but sad.

  Most musicians have a sad tale, but Jack’s history is sadder than most. I suddenly feel badly about being here and why I want to stay.

  I slip into the bathroom and quietly close the door.

  Oh fuck, is this how rich people bathe?

  I stare at the room in wonder. It’s larger than my mother’s living room, with an enormous sunken tub before a wall of glass, a separate dual-stream shower, and double sink vanity. There is even room for a chaise, a full wall mirror for dressing, and a special lighted vanity dressing table.

  OK, where’s the toilet?

  I open a door. A linen closet. I open another and there it is. I lift the lid, pull down my panties and sit to pee. The phone mounted on the wall makes me laugh.

  You’re not in Reseda any more, Linda.

  I unroll paper from the fancy, custom design TP holder.