BOOK TWO in the STEAMY FORBIDDEN ROMANCE series -- please read BOOK ONE, Illicit, before proceeding with this novel!
Coralie Watson, now living in NYC to focus on her singer/songwriter career, has landed herself in quite the predicament. Stuck in a...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
🔥STEAMY ALERT—it's a borderline "2 fires" BUT... not quite ;) 🔥
♫ I'm not the kinda girl who runs around like this, Caught up in a kiss, Best friends with benefits, no ♪ (Ashley Tisdale—Hot mess)
"You good, Cora?" Nikita stood in the doorway to the control room, her layers of flowery skirts whooshing over the threshold. With one brow arched, she peered at Coralie as if questioning her sanity.
Coralie, her lips glued to the microphone, broke from the trance she'd been in. Her tongue was so close to rolling around the microphone's tip as if it were something else—Chester's penis, for example—that she gasped and jumped off her stool. "Oh, man. I'm... sorry. Can we start over?"
"We can, but..." Nikita slid farther into the studio, her bare feet padding over the white-wood floorboards. "Are you sure you want to keep working on that song? You're zoning out. Maybe it's too slow." She scratched her chin and squinted. "Something more upbeat, yeah? That, or we need to get you more coffee."
Coralie's eyes widened as she adjusted her slouched posture and resumed her spot on the stool in front of the microphone. "No more coffee, no." The last thing she needed was to be jittery on top of distracted; and she'd already had too much caffeine that day. The more coffee she drank, the more the taste reminded her of the meet-up with Chester at the coffee-shop. Which reminded her of his eyes, his scent, his hands, his body pressed to hers—
"What is up with you, today?" Nikita appeared beside Coralie, but she hadn't sensed her sneak over. "Are you sick? Or unfocused? How can I help you? Do you have any songs that have faster tempos? Or lyrics to get you going? We only have so much time allotted, because a more prominent artist reserved the space." She checked her neon pink watch. "For thirty minutes from now."
Though her stomach was unsettled and she'd been nauseous most of the morning, Coralie wasn't sick, no. Not clinically, at least. What she suffered from was intense, insufferable lust towards someone she couldn't and wouldn't give in to, but whose proximity made her ill with desire. Whose features wouldn't leave her mind and haunted her through every daily activity.
How could someone she'd gotten over a long time ago and rarely thought about in years be so suddenly engrained in her thoughts and unable to forget? A reunion over coffee, an evening with drinks, and a close encounter in an elevator couldn't be enough to justify her hunger, right? Not when she had Ryan satisfying her every physical urge—even those she didn't know she had—and Michael filling her heart with care and kindness and affection. What room was there for someone like Chester in her life, even if she were allowed to have him? And what could he provide that the other two didn't?
Thrills. Risks. Adrenaline.
"I'm good... but I think I haven't been sleeping right." It wasn't a lie; since Chester had re-entered her life she'd been restless, and she anticipated that that night, she wouldn't get much rest either. All she could think about was stripping her clothes and waiting for Chester to come in and ravish her. Or singing some sappy, sexy song to him as he watched her through the glass, in the control room. That idea prompted her to realize what she needed was to let it all out—to belt out her emotions through a tune. "And actually, I've had some other lyrics in my brain lately, but we haven't put them on a track, yet."
