Free Cover Me: A Rock Star Romance by Carrie Elliott

went faster and faster until she was wild and desperate, on the verge of bursting.
    I slid down her body and slipped my other hand in, pushed my fingers inside her and rubbed while continuing my assault on her clit. “Oh God!” she cried, arching her back. “Fuck!” Her body spasmed and shook. She clenched her breasts and thrust against my hand until the last shock of orgasm washed over her.
    I wanted to keep my hands on her for the rest of the day, but pulled them out of her bathing suit bottoms and fell back on the cushion. “Watching you come is like… I don’t even know. Like nothing I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing before.” I turned my head to see her sleepy, sated eyes blinking slowly. “Why haven’t we been doing this forever? What the hell is wrong with us? This feels so right, doesn’t it?”
    “There’s nothing wrong with me,” she said. “It was always you that was the problem.”
    “I’m the idiot,” I said. “That’s why. You’re the brains.”
    She rolled on her side and tucked her head under my chin. “You’re catching on.”
    I tickled her side, making her squirm and pulled her even closer. “I heard you playing last night,” she said.
    “You did?” I wasn’t sure when she got to her parents’ house. “What did you think?”
    She looked up at me and for the first time since I stepped foot into The Scene the other day, the hint of wariness was gone from her eyes. “I think you’re finding yourself again.”
    I dipped my head and kissed her. It felt like I was finding myself again or the man I missed out on becoming. “Have you had to make a lot of sacrifices in your life, Bess?”
    Her brow scrunched while she thought about it. “Not really sacrifices, no. Have you?”
    “Yeah. A lot of them. How many people do you know who can’t walk on the beach without hiding under stairs and behind umbrellas? I can’t complain, right? I got what I always wanted. I’ve filled arenas, been on the covers of magazines, won awards, but I still think of my parents’ place as home, because I haven’t made one for myself.”
    I took a deep breath and chuckled. “Poor me, huh? The guy with everything.”
    She rose up on her elbows to see me better. “Don’t beat yourself up over a little introspection. Thinking about what you don’t have or what you want for yourself doesn’t diminish what you’ve already got. You know, I interned for the nightlife editor at Encore Magazine in college and something she said still echoes in my head all the time. She told me that even when you’re on top, it’s still not enough. Someone else is always getting something more—more recognition, more awards, more readers, more exclusives.” Bess clasped my hand. “With people like us, there’s never enough. We need that next fix like it’s our drug.”
    “That’s exactly it.” I closed my eyes, comforted by having someone who understood. “It’s exhausting.”
    She rested her head on my shoulder. “Then it was a good time to step out of that world and take a break. You always do your best when you listen to your instincts.”
    Bess knew me so well. For almost ten years I surrounded myself with people who claimed they knew what was best—for me, for my career. I pushed back and fought when they wanted me to go in a direction I knew was wrong, but lately, like with Adrian, I’d grown too tired to fight anymore and I questioned my instincts. “It was time to get away and regroup,” I said, more to myself than to Bess.
    “Sometimes we all need to do that.” She traced her fingernails, aimlessly, over my chest. “Except I’d rather come back here and get back to what’s simple than get away to somewhere new.”
    “Yeah, I would too. I mean, I came here because it was the first—the only—place I thought of, but that’s because it’s like you said: it’s simple. This is where I belong.”
    “Where you can find yourself, reset your compass to true north.”
    “True north,” I