Page 44 of Wicked Destiny

As if. I get two fingers into her and curl them. She comes hard with her fist in my hair and I hold her against the wall so she doesn’t fall down.

Then I’m up, my belt’s open, and I lift her so she can lock her legs around me. Pushing in all the way, I’m lost. Elodie makes a keening sound into my shoulder. She’s tight, soaked, and shaking, and I’m surrounded by her perfect heat.

There’s more of Elodie to hold than a month ago. Her hips showed first, now the rounder swell of her belly. The first places her body is giving up the secret, and no one up by the house has a clue.

“You feel what you do to me,” I whisper against her ear, working into her slow and deep. “My cock needs to be in you. Morning, night, in the shower, in the back of the car. I can’t stop.” I cup her ass and squeeze. “One month off birth control and I knocked you up. Should have known. As often as I fuck you, baby, it’s a wonder you weren’t showing at the ceremony.”

“Beau.” She’s laughing and gone at once. “Thank God the morning sickness wasn’t so bad today. One heave into the flower arrangements and I’d have spoiled the whole surprise.”

I thrust up and she laughs and moans in the same breath, biting down on my shoulder through my suit. I fuck into her until she goes over a second time, clamped hard around me with her face buried in my neck. I follow her a stroke later.

I set Elodie down. She shakes the dress out and I do up my belt. Then she fixes my collar while I smooth her hair badly, both of us knowing we’re not going to fool anyone. Neither of us cares.

We step out of the boat house and, of course, the party’s still going up the hill.

Elodie stops at the rail to put her shoes back on and a robin swoops down past my ear and lands on the rail an arm’s length from her hand. Red down the front, head cocked, taking in the two of us in our wedding clothes.

My breath catches and Elodie goes still. Neither of us says a thing. The robin stays a moment, long enough to feel like it came on purpose. Then it lifts off the rail, flies out low over the water and disappears into the twilight.

Elodie is the only person who knows about the robin who appeared after Yolanda died. She gazes up at me and takes my hand. Doesn’t say anything. I don’t either. Some things are meant to be unspoken.

She drags my palm over her belly and leans her whole weight into me. “Come on, old man, let’s rejoin our wedding.”

Elodie starts her second year of law school in three weeks. Come spring, we’ll spend a few months in Los Angeles with our new baby while I take a mentor’s chair on a singing competition show.

After thirty years of arranging my life around Limelight, I’ve chosen a job which allows me to arrange it around my family.

For most of my life, a second act meant walking back onstage after the lights came up.

I can honestly say, nothing could be better than this.

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Beau's bandmate Carter has a whole life beyond Limelight. These days he manages Less Than Zero. Keep reading to get to know Carter and the men behind Less Than Zero in an excerpt from Limitless.

Behind the Scenes

I should probably admit Beau started with my lifelong attraction to blond rock singers with great cheekbones.

Benjamin Orr. Roger Daltrey. David Gilmour. Sting. David Lee Roth in his prime, obviously. I was so certain I would marry David Lee Roth I bet my sister and gave myself until thirty to make it happen.

I lost.

(of course I married the hot Irish guy, so I actually won).

Beau is a little bit of all of them. The hair. The jaw. The lean body. The voice capable of making a perfectly sensible woman lose their panties. I knew how he looked before I knew much else about him. Fifty-six. Blond going silver. Fit without making fitness his entire personality. Faded black jeans. No khakis or golf shirts. Nothing suggesting he has ever operated a lawn mower.

I’ve spent a good part of my life around musicians, and the interesting ones don’t freeze at the age they became famous. Life gets hold of them. They get sober or they don’t. They fall in love. Have children. Lose people. Make terrible decisions. Sometimes they learn something. Their faces change, their voices roughen, and a few of them walk onto a stage at fifty or sixty with more sexual energy than they had at thirty.

I wanted to write one of those men.

Beau looks in the mirror and sees fifty-six. Elodie looks at him and wants to climb him. This amused me through the entire book.

The part I didn’t expect was Yolanda.

I knew Beau was a widower. I didn’t know how much I would love his wife or how real their marriage would become to me. Yolanda found him when he was a complete fucking disaster, saw the man buried under the addiction and rock-star bullshit, then built a life with him. She gave him a family. He became a good husband and father in large part because she expected him to be one.