All I knew was that I couldn’t leave this dressing room backstage at Mandalay Bay with regrets.
So whatever it was that came over me, I went with it.
“I’d love to find somewhere private to let you find out for yourself.”
He raised his eyebrows in surprise, and I had a feeling I’d snared his attention. I was proud of myself. This was so far out of my comfort zone that my good sense was practically in another country, but I’d do it for Mark. This was my one shot.
“You want to come back to my place?”
Fuck yes! I almost said that out loud, but I managed to stop myself.
Are you kidding me? An invitation to Mark fucking Ashton’s house?
I drew in a deep breath, determined not to come off like a total fool. He wanted me to go to his place. That could mean only one thing, and there was no way in hell I was going to deny myself that chance—even if he was basing his invitation on nothing more than me asking. And a physical attraction…but what one-night stand didn’t start because of an instant attraction? “I’d love to.”
“Can I just ask you a few questions, first?” Jill asked him, saving a special glare for me.
He finally pulled his eyes away from me to focus on my friend. “Right. Sure.”
She fired away, and he answered. It all seemed very professional except for the way his eyes kept edging over to me.
“Just one more question,” she finally said, and he nodded for her to continue. “What do you look for in a woman?”
He cleared his throat and ran his eyes slowly from my eyes down to my legs. Heat seared me with every spot his eyes landed on my body. “Blue eyes, long legs, Vail tail.”
Warmth crept up my neck again.
“Vail tail?” Jill asked.
Mark shot her a wicked, flirty grin. “Fangirls. You know, the women who’ll do whatever it takes to get backstage after a show.” He nodded toward my shirt.
“Really?” Jill whined. “That’s what you want me to print in the Sin City Sun?”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Sweet on the outside and creamy on the inside. Will that work instead?”
“Not really,” she said.
He shot her a lazy grin, the very epitome of a bad boy. “I’m not real picky when it comes to women, as you may have heard. I like women who look like your friend here. I like women who like to have fun, obviously. You probably don’t want to quote that, but it’s fairly well recorded at this point.” He took another cool and confident sip from his glass. “I like women who are smart and funny. Off the record, I don’t usually get to know much more about them beyond that.”
I should’ve felt insulted with his speech, or at least surprised that he was so blunt. He didn’t know anything about me aside from my name and what I looked like on the outside, yet he was ready to take me back to his place. That was a total cocky douche move, yet it didn’t stop me.
Besides all that, I counted myself lucky that he chose me. I counted myself fortunate that even though there were several other women in Vail’s dressing room, he chose me. He could have his pick of anyone in the world, and he still chose me.
Yes, I should’ve been insulted. But fucking a rock star was a total bucket list item.
And I was about to check that off my list.
A few minutes later, his driver wove through Saturday night traffic on the Strip to get us safely back to his place at the Mandarin Oriental as we talked in the back of the car. We were sitting next to each other in the back of his customized Yukon. The row of seats in front of us was turned to face us. It looked like meetings could take place back there. Mark put his legs up on the seat across from us and closed the black tinted glass separating the backseat from his driver up front. His big hand rested on my leg, inching up my thigh, and I hugged his arm to my chest. It felt comfortable, like we knew each other, like we’d been together a long time and we were just headed home after a day at the office together…or something like that.
“What’s it like being a rock star?” I asked him. I wanted to know every single detail about him. I still felt like I was living inside some crazy fantasy, like I’d wake up at any minute alone in my bed. I wondered when he’d attack—when the making out and all the sex would get underway.
I chewed the inside of my cheek for a second just to see if I could feel the pain, to make sure this was all real.
“It’s pretty fucking awesome,” he answered in that deep timbre that sounded like every favorite song of mine.
“What makes it awesome?”
“Getting paid to do what I love. Traveling the world with my best friends. The rush I get on stage. Looking out over a sold-out venue, watching as people sing along to songs I wrote…there’s nothing like it.” His voice was quiet, and I couldn’t help but wonder if he always spoke so sincerely with every woman he brought back to his place. He seemed genuine in the moment, but I had no basis for comparison.
“I sang along to every song,” I said shyly. I glanced over at him, still trying to figure out if this was really happening.
Tingles prickled through my belly as his eyes met mine and his lips tipped up. “I know. I watched.”
“You did?”
“I was drawn to you over and over. I’m so focused when I’m up on that stage, but every time I looked at you, you threw me off my game a little. Your eyes lit up with every new song we played, glowed up at me from down below. When you walked into the dressing room backstage, it felt a little like destiny.”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and didn’t hide the fact that he was writing a note. A Little Like Destiny.
“What’s that for?” I asked.
“It’s my list. Lyrics, titles, snippets of conversation. Words that speak to me.”
My stomach twisted violently. That was the first time I knew I was going to have a tough time getting over this night.
“For songwriting?” I asked.
He nodded and tapped out some more words on his phone. “You’re different, Reese. You’re not like the others.” His voice was a murmur as he focused on what he was typing.
“I’m not?” I asked.
He shook his head, and I prayed this wasn’t some line he used on every girl.
“How?” I pressed.
He lifted his shoulder. “Some connection with you I felt even from the stage that felt even stronger when I saw you walk in. You seem like you have substance. You’re interesting.”
“The others aren’t?”
He shrugged. “They’re here because I’m the lead singer of Vail. They’re not here because they care about me.”
“And you think I do?”
“I know you do.” His voice was soft and tender, the tone reminiscent of the one he used when he sang my favorite Vail ballad. A shudder ran through me.
“How do you know?”
“I’ve learned how to read people. Did you know I studied Psychology at Northern?”
I shook my head. As much as I’ve stalked his online biographies over the last ten years, I had no idea.
“I have a Master’s in Psych and I’m a few credits shy of a PhD.”
Was I really sitting in the back of a car discussing degrees with Mark fucking Ashton? What was this life? “When are you planning to finish?”
“I don’t know if I am. I take a class here or there when we’re not on tour, mostly online ones, but the requirements for getting the PhD aren’t feasible with my job.”
“What are the requirements?” I asked.
“Depends. If I want to be a clinical psychologist, there would be labs and practicums. If I want to teach it, I’d need to TA or create a course. And then there’s the dissertation, which takes years of research for anyone, but I don’t have years to dedicate to research.”
“Why psychology?”
“I’ve always been fascinated with human behavior.” His fingertips inched up my thigh a little.
“So what about my behavior tells you I care about you?”
; He chuckled. “For starters, you actually asked me when I’m planning to finish my degree and you listened when I answered.”
“What else?”
“The way you’re sitting.”
I glanced down at us. We were both leaning back comfortably—slouching almost. His hand was on my leg, and my arms were looped around his arm, holding it captive, his upper arm embraced tightly against my chest as my hands clasped around his bicep.
“What about this position tells you anything about me?”
“You’re holding my arm. Most women by now have grabbed for my junk, put my hand on their tits, stuck their tongue in my—”
“I don’t need the details,” I interrupted, holding up a hand.
He laughed. “You get the idea.”
“Unfortunately, I do.” And that’s what makes this so damn hard. “So why music instead of psychology?”
“Aw, you ask like you care.”
I giggle. “I do care.”
“Told you.”
“Answer the question.”
“I picked up my first guitar when I was seven. It was my uncle’s. He was in a band that was locally successful, and he taught me how to play. I met Ethan in high school and we jammed all the time. We met Steve and James one summer and we just knew that we wanted to play music together. My parents still made me go to college, still made me get a degree, but I had to do a lot of it from the road. My entire Master’s was done on the road. Music was always my first love. Everything else took a backseat to that.”
I imagined that was why Mark was never with one woman for more than a night. No woman could ever hold a candle to his first love. Not only did he not have time for a relationship, but he didn’t have the desire for one, either.
“What’s the worst part of your job?” I asked.
He blew out a chuckle as he looked out the window. “People think they know me.”
“They don’t?”
He shook his head. “Shit in the press is all made up. People think because they read an article in a magazine, they know everything about my life.”
A cloud of guilt swirled around me. I’d done the very thing he was condemning.
“I can’t do shit without someone writing about it, and most of the time they don’t even get the facts right.”
“Like what?”
“The press fabricated an entire relationship between Maggie Westin and me.”
“They fabricated it?”
He nodded. “We hung out a few times at a mutual friend’s house, slept together once, and that was it. The tabloids practically had us married.”
“Do they ever spin stuff in your favor?” I asked.
“A couple years ago, I was hospitalized for exhaustion. Did you see that?”
“Of course. It was everywhere.”
“It wasn’t exhaustion. My publicist covered up an overdose.”
“An overdose?” I asked, surprised at his confession. I knew he was a rock star, but he seemed to have his head on straight. “You do drugs?”
“Not anymore, no. I’m not into fucking up my life, but I tried something Ethan gave me and it put me in the hospital.”
“And your publicist covered it up?”
“Yeah. I realize now how fucking stupid I was.”
“Was it scary?”
“The OD?”
I nodded.
He shook his head. “I passed out cold and didn’t even know I overdosed until I woke up in the hospital. It was scarier for Ethan than it was for me.”
“Was it a wakeup call for him?”
Mark chuckled and glanced out the window. “Nothing’s a wakeup call for him. Some men are born without the part of their brain that tells them they’re not invincible. Ethan’s one of them.”
“Was it for you?”
“Yeah.” He was quiet for a minute, and then he told me the thing that would stay with me for a long time to come. “Only a few people know what really happened that night. Ethan, Steve, and James, because they were there. My publicist and the doctors and nurses that night. That’s it. And now, you.”
“Not even your family?” I asked.
He shook his head and flexed his fingers on my thigh.
It was that moment I was certain I wanted more than one night with him—needed more than one night. I wanted it all, but that’s not what Mark Ashton did. That’s not who he was, and no matter how intrigued he was by me or how different I was from the other women he brought home, I wasn’t going to be the one to change him.
I couldn’t help but wonder why he chose to confess one of the darkest hours of his life to me. It made me believe his words were sincere—I really was different from the others. Or it was just another line, something he told every woman he took in the car back to his place.
I’d never know.
He leaned over and tugged my earlobe between his teeth, sending a jolt of desire through my entire being.
His voice came low in my ear, the heat of his breath sending shivers down my spine. “Usually a woman is all over me in the back of this car and I don’t even have to try. Are you gonna make me try, Reese?”
I fidgeted nervously with my fingers still clasped around his arm. “I don’t even know what that means.”
He chuckled, and then he pressed a kiss beneath my ear, the stubble lining his jaw tickling me and making me even hotter for him than I already was. He pulled his arm out from its captivity between my arms and laced it around my back. He hauled me onto his lap, and then he rested his forehead against mine. “Why does this feel different?” he whispered.
“Because it is,” I whispered back, and then he lowered his mouth to mine.
It was our first kiss, seconds before we pulled into the private resident’s drive of the Mandarin Oriental. He didn’t even open his mouth to mine, didn’t deepen the kiss—just rested his lips on top of mine, the gentlest brush of lip on lip, and every synapse in my body fired at the same time.
It was the sweetest kiss I’ve ever had with a man, yet it pressed an aching throb between my legs like no one else had ever managed to do to me. The throb pulsed and spread into my belly, battling with the butterflies there, the pain gaining momentum as his arms wrapped more tightly around me but his lips didn’t move.
He pulled back, his eyes closed. “We’re here,” he muttered, and then he opened his eyes. We were inches away from each other. His eyes told the story that he wanted this, too, which of course I knew since he took me back to his place…but he wanted me, not just sex with me. I didn’t just represent a warm hole to him. I was something more, something I didn’t understand, something I was terrified of because I was sure I couldn’t be what he needed. He was this overwhelming presence, this larger than life being who routinely serial dated singers and actresses and porn stars, and I would never be enough for him no matter how intriguing I might be in the moment.
I sat on his lap, and we were eye to eye, both of our chests heaving with anticipation.
The car had stopped, and I didn’t even know it. The door beside Mark swung open, the driver standing at attention and waiting for us to exit. He broke our intense moment and I slid off his lap as I wondered what sorts of things his driver saw on a regular basis.
Mark grabbed my hand and then got out of the car, pulling me out behind him. Another man followed us—a bodyguard, I assumed, but Mark didn’t confirm that. We ran into the building and then he led me up to the second floor and we called the elevator from there. The bodyguard stayed on the first floor. “Easier from here than from the first floor,” he said as we waited for the elevator to arrive.
It made sense. The elevator on the first floor probably opened somewhere near the hotel lobby, and if we snuck onto the second floor, there was far less of a chance he’d be recognized.
Doors opened to the elevator in the middle. We stepped on alone. He inserted a key into a slot and then pressed the button for the top floor—the forty-seventh floor.
It should have been a long ride from the second
floor to the forty-seventh, but it was far, far too short.
He picked up where we left off in that car the second the doors shut and sealed us into privacy. He stalked toward me, shoving me up against the mirrored wall. I caught sight of the back of him in the mirrored doors, the last image of the him burned into my mind. It was his back side as he pressed his body to mine, his hand coming up to palm my cheek, but because of the mirrored walls, the image repeated and repeated and repeated to infinity. There were a hundred Reeses pressed against the wall by a hundred Marks, a hundred Mark hands touching a hundred Reese faces. That image would stay with me, burned in my mind for eternity.
With the image fresh in my mind, Mark whispered, “I don’t understand this, Reese.” His words were riddled with pain.
I didn’t have time to respond, didn’t have time to ask what he didn’t understand or why he was confessing it to me or what it all meant, because then his lips were crashing to mine and his mouth was opening and there were fireworks going off in that tiny elevator. I responded immediately to his kiss, his tongue finding mine as I tasted peppermint masking a hint of whiskey on his tongue and an even fainter suggestion of cigarettes. He smelled of fresh laundry despite the fact that he’d been sweating up on that stage, a faded trace of sandalwood lying underneath.
They were flavors and scents unique to Mark, different from any other man I’d ever kissed, but I didn’t have time to focus on those sensory details because his body boxed me in. One arm rested on the glass of the elevator wall, and the other came around my waist to haul me against him. His erection met my hip as he pressed close to me. My blood heated and my veins boiled as I was met with the realization that it was me that did that to him. He was turned on. He was hot for me. He desired me.
The elevator doors opened too soon, and he broke away from me. I hadn’t even noticed the elevator had come to a stop, let alone the fact that the doors had opened. I was too wrapped up in what was happening between the two of us. He was my sole focus, and I couldn’t think of another time I’d been with a man when everything else faded to complete insignificance in the background. I’d always been able to maintain some semblance of control—it was what had prevented me from wanting to have sex in public with Justin, my ex, when he’d tried to slide a hand up my skirt in a restaurant. I wasn’t a prude, but I was aware of what was going on around me.
Love Triangle: Six Books of Torn Desire Page 54
