by Cari Quinn
She frowned. What was that supposed to mean?
“You got something to say to me, Crandall?” Gray shoved Nick against the bar, upending Jazz’s third drink in the process. “Go right the fuck ahead.”
Nick slammed his hands against Gray’s shoulders. “Back off, you fucking moron.”
Gray grabbed his upper arms, pinning him to the bar for one humming moment before Nick sent him careening backward. Jazz’s stool went flying with her still on it. She landed hard, her glass miraculously still in one hand, the other attached to the sticky floor with what felt like superglue. Ick. She’d have to burn this dress.
A little dizzy, she looked around at the people that surrounded her—some still dancing, some standing still to show off their incredibly hot shoes, some taking the opportunity to get into shoving contests of their own. Her ass hurt. And damn, she really felt short way down here.
All of a sudden she was pulled upward, so quickly that her unsteady head threatened to spin right off her shoulders. Whoa. Her dizziness only got worse when she realized she was being carried through the laughing, jeering crowd by Gray. Her stomach wobbled and she tried to get her bearings.
Before she could, he planted her on a stool at the far end of the bar, then summoned a glass of water and pressed it into her trembling fingers. “Are you okay?”
Gray’s shoulder-length wavy dark hair brushed the round collar of his shirt as he leaned closer to peer into her eyes. His wet dark hair. Looked like he’d taken that shower. Alone?
Forget it. Not relevant.
“Just bruised my pride.” She drank the water because it gave her something to do other than try to bite that sexy-as-hell jaw of his. Not that she’d be able to manage it at this angle. But if she stood up on the rungs of the stool for a little boost—
“Jasmine, are you okay?”
She shut her eyes at Nick’s voice. He never knew when to let incensed dogs lie. “Fine,” she said weakly, praying he would just leave. “When I was on the floor, I saw some shoes I need to find. Strappy silver sandals with a wedge heel. Super cute.” When she opened her eyes and caught Gray’s narrow-eyed expression, she decided she’d used the heel to wedge her own mouth shut. “Just making a joke,” she muttered.
“Not the time.”
“Yeah, well, when is the time?” Anger and embarrassment welled up inside her and she pushed him out of her face. “How dare you? You show up late after promising you’d be here. I ask for one little thing and you can’t even give me that.” She pushed him harder. “Then you get in my face if some guy dares look at me, but you can’t even see me when I’m standing right in front of you.”
He moved in and grasped her throat before she could block the move. The wide plane of his thumb tipped up her chin until she had no choice but to meet his furious gray eyes for one frantic second before she fixated on the movement of his lips. “You think I don’t see you, Jazz?” His voice was quiet. Too quiet. She didn’t know how she could hear him over the crowd. Maybe because she couldn’t drag her gaze from his mouth.
God, that mouth. She wanted it so bad she couldn’t think. Couldn’t tell herself to calm down or save it for another time when there weren’t so many people watching. They weren’t just two anonymous kids anymore. They were in a semi-famous band. Together. How they behaved in public affected the others.
But none of that seemed to matter. All she could do was prod him harder.
“You were with her, weren’t you? While I was waiting, you were probably fuc—”
“Shut up.” He shook her lightly. So lightly she wondered why it felt like her bones were rattling under her skin. Those blunt, scarily strong guitarist’s fingers slipped around to the back of her neck, digging into flesh. “Just shut the hell up. For once, stop talking to me. I don’t want to hear your voice in my head anymore.”
Hurt slammed through her, slicking ice over the burning fury. “So go. No one’s forcing you to be near me if it’s so repulsive to you. I’m sure she’s waiting anyway, right? She has something you need.” His pupils flared and the truth cut her so deep that she went limp in his hold. She hadn’t wanted to believe it. But the reality burned in his eyes.
Those eyes had never lied to her. And they weren’t lying now.
Don’t cry. Not here.
She yanked at his hold, desperate to get away. Things had quieted considerably in their corner of the bar, probably due to all the spectators watching them, but she didn’t give a shit. Let them listen. Let them do what she always did and record it all for Twitter. She was tired of being the cute, spunky, easily dismissed Oblivion chick.
If that meant she had to have a meltdown in the center of a New Year’s Eve party, she was entitled.
“Let me go,” she whispered when Gray’s grip only tightened, taking her right up to the point of pain but never beyond. “You want me out of your head. I’m gone.”
“You don’t get it. You never did.” He brought their faces close, so close that his breath fluttered over her lips. He’d been drinking too, something dark and rich. “I could walk out of here and never see you again and it wouldn’t make one fucking bit of difference. I could screw every woman I see blind and I’d never shake that sound from my mind. You. Always you.”
Each word hit her heart like a blade. Any more of them and she’d be left quivering on the floor, impaled by his obvious disgust.
All this time, she’d believed they were a team. Sure, they’d had their rough patches. Joining Oblivion for one. That insane threesome for another. He’d pulled further and further away until she’d felt like she was losing her best friend, but she hadn’t panicked. Because she’d known way down deep that he would always come back to her. He was her constant. The center of her life. Without Gray, nothing made sense.
But now with Gray, nothing made sense anymore either.
“Let me go,” she breathed again, her throat as raw as her eyes. “Just let me go.”
He stared at her for so long that she started to shake. This was really it. He was going to release her and they would be over, without really ever having been anything. This had all been a long dream. She’d just imagined he’d ever loved her—
“Never.” He crushed his mouth down on hers.
Five
Then
“Okay, now do it again.”
Jazz sighed. She’d been playing guitar for years, but he took it to another level. He was crazy good. Almost Kirk Hammett-in-Metallica good. “My fingers are tired.”
“Aww, poor baby.” Gray grinned. “I thought you wanted to be in a band.”
She snorted. “Like that’s ever actually going to happen.”
They’d been practicing for hours in his parents’ basement rec room, which was fancier than the house she’d lived in with her sister and her mama in Glenview. Expensive artwork decorated the navy walls and leather furniture filled the space. The huge TV and high-end stereo were fascinating enough, but the row of antique pinball machines always drew the bulk of her attention. Ms. Pac-Man was starting to look really appealing.
She wasn’t a gamer and normally she loved playing her music more than anything, but Gray had been teaching her some complicated finger combinations on his spare Stratocaster since they’d gotten home from school. Between his endless instruction and the reverberation from the amp, she was starting to get a headache.
And she still had three hours of algebra homework to do. Three hours of pretending she didn’t hear the feminine laughter coming from Gray’s end of the hall as he “tutored” his latest student in French. Literally.
She’d almost walked in on him and the last one. They’d gotten so quiet in there that she’d thought Shelly or Sally or whatever her name was had gone home, so Jazz had stopped outside his door, prepared to knock. The moan had taken her by surprise. As had the red lace bra on the floor when she’d given in to curiosity and quietly nudged the cracked-open door.
Yeah, Gray knew his French, all right.
“You’re right, it w
on’t happen if you don’t start practicing more. You think Krystal Sword will take on just anyone? We have qualifications.”
“I’m sure you do.” Like tongue-testing all the female applicants. If they even had female applicants. Krystal Sword was a band of six loud, smelly boys.
He went on, oblivious to her sarcasm. “Jimmy’s already told me he’s not going to replace Stevie unless we can find exactly the right fit. You’re good, but not better than Stevie. He doesn’t just play, he writes music—”
“I write music.” She set aside the guitar and dug through her backpack, prying out two brightly colored notebooks. The first she tucked under her bent leg. Nope, he wasn’t getting to see that one. “Here.”
Eyebrow raised, he flipped open the peace sign-covered notebook she’d handed him. He read the pages of lyrics quietly, his face devoid of any reaction.
She toyed with the slouchy top of her DayGlo yellow socks then blew out a breath and folded her hands in her lap. So what if he didn’t like her lyrics? That wasn’t her best work. The best work was in her other notebook, the one with way too much personal information.
Like songs about a boy she’d once been in love with. Once because it was safer. Because she’d never tell anyone the truth.
He continued to flip pages with his agile fingers, reading silently, his expression blank. The other guys in the band all wore guyliner. He refused. The one time he’d put on makeup for a show at open mic night at a local club he’d looked almost too pretty. With that lush mouth, super-long eyelashes and thick, wavy hair, he’d been prime rocker material. The chicks had gone nuts for him, but he’d immediately gone back to his own personal style—jeans and concert tees mixed with the occasional leather vest. Hair gel was about as far as he went toward the whole musician look.
Not that it mattered. He already had groupies, both male and female. Guys wanted to be his friend. Girls wanted to do him. When any of her classmates bothered to talk to her, they always asked the same things.
“What’s it like living with that hottie?”
“What does he wear to bed?”
“Have you ever seen him naked?”
Her mental answers were always the same. Amazing, when it’s not hell. Nothing. Absolutely not.
She’d die if she saw Gray naked. She’d seen him shirtless and that was bad enough. The dude was ripped. Not that she’d seen tons of male bodies to compare him to, but his torso alone could cause serious drooling. Since he’d told her he slept totally nude—who did that?—she made sure to avoid his bedroom on weekends until early afternoon. Just in case. Not because she didn’t want to see, but because she did. Really fucking bad.
“Well?” she demanded when she couldn’t take another second.
He held up a finger and continued to read.
“Oh God. Forget it. I’m going to watch TV.” She started to stand up.
“Sit.” Gray grabbed her thigh and yanked her back down. He continued to read. “By the way, Mom told me you have math homework to do. TV’s for later.”
Yeah, she’d known the parental nets would drop down on her after her first midterm report had revealed her D in math. And biology. Her C in Government wasn’t much better. “Jeepers, are you my guardian or what?”
“Or what. Shh.”
There was one sure way to break his concentration. “So is Shelly your girlfriend?”
His lips twitched. “No.”
She smoothed her palm over her other notebook. The one he would never see unless she dropped dead. If he didn’t tell her what he thought of her music soon, that could be anytime now. “So you just have sex with her to pass the time?”
He tilted his head to look up at her from under the curve of dark hair that fell over one moody gray eye. “You been spying on me, squirt?”
Squirt. The most hated of all nicknames he could give her. “No. Of course not.” She tried not to blush. “She just moaned a lot.”
A satisfied smile drifted across his lips before he looked back down at her notebook. “Doesn’t mean we had sex.”
Curiosity ate at her while she gnawed on her nail. Yeah, she definitely wasn’t going to show him her other notebook. She’d taken some guesses at what the “not sex” stuff was and her songs weren’t exactly fit for church. They made her squirm a bit but she’d had to get the words down. “So she’s not your girlfriend?”
“I just said she wasn’t.” He closed her notebook and returned it to her, along with the Stratocaster. “Do you have a melody for ‘Captured’ yet?”
“No.”
“Let’s figure one out.”
“Does that mean you liked the lyrics?”
He fingered his own guitar, plucking the strings with a deftness she both envied and admired. “I liked them,” he said simply. He lifted his head and caught her gaze with his. “Let’s get to work.”
Six
Now
Finally.
Gray pushed his hands into her crazy braids. Her soft mouth tasted of rum. Of everything he’d ever wanted and told himself he shouldn’t take.
Before now.
He tried not to rush, to let the moment spin out naturally. But when she moaned and parted her lips, inviting his tongue inside, he couldn’t resist. He wrapped her hair around his wrist, dragging her up off the stool until she was half standing against him, her full breasts pressed to his chest. Her nipples imprinted his flesh even through their clothes. She wanted this. Wanted him, even if it was because she was a little tipsy and more than a little pissed. Her nails clawed down his side as she sucked on his tongue with an urgency that matched his own.
Come with me. Be with me. The words clamored loudly in his head. He was so tired of fighting his feelings for her. If it was wrong, if he’d go to hell for this, at least he’d take them on a long, hot ride through heaven first.
He eased back a fraction and dragged in a breath, already diving back down when the singe in his nostrils registered. The moments before he’d walked into the bar flashed through his mind in stark Technicolor.
Face close to a mirror, eyes shut. Too many memories crowding his head until he inhaled, slow and deep, and they all faded away. The high rushing through his veins, filling the vast, empty spaces that had gone to rot inside him.
No. God, no. He couldn’t let that filth touch her.
You’re the filth.
He shut his eyes and dug his fist into his forehead. Already the rush was receding, the edges of his consciousness blurring as reality encroached. The warmth that had exploded inside him from her kiss wouldn’t last long.
She’d been about to kiss Nick when he showed up. Fucking Nick. That was the truth. More proof of what he’d never been able to accept.
Jazz would never be his. And now he’d made it so he didn’t even deserve her.
Her sleepy blue eyes opened and she blinked, clearly confused why he’d stopped. Her lips were swollen and wet. So wet. “Gray?”
His hand was still embedded in her hair, fisting it at the root. He pulled it away, unsurprised when a tangle of rainbow-streaked dark strands snarled in his fingers. He must’ve hurt her. Again.
God, not again.
His gaze shot to hers and he swallowed hard at the hazy desire reflected back at him. He’d never been good enough for her, and he sure as hell wasn’t now.
“That’s enough. Party’s over.” The sharp female voice cut through the crash of noise in his head. He hadn’t even realized that the people around them had quieted. It was still so loud in his brain. He pressed his fists against his ears and stumbled away.
Right into a coolly furious Lila.
“Easy.” She gripped his forearm to hold him still when he would’ve kept going and stared into his eyes for a beat too long. Her lips pursed. “Band meeting in five.”
Gray tried to process what she’d said. The words hung in the air between them, pulsing with a meaning he didn’t get. What meeting? His vision wavered. Since when did she have three mouths? Jesus, she looked like a Venus flyt
rap with bright white teeth, ready to bite.
Someone bumped his shoulder, hard. “Oh Jesus. Right fucking now?” Nick. Naturally. “It’s New Year’s fucking Eve—”
“I don’t recall asking for your opinion, Crandall.” Lila’s focus whipped to Nick for a fraction of a second, though she didn’t release Gray. Good thing, because he wasn’t entirely sure he could’ve remained standing if she had.
What had been in Cricket’s shit tonight? He’d taken an extra hit, yeah, but he’d done this much before. He’d just wanted a little extra buzz to get him through the party.
At this rate, he’d be laid out before their meeting was over.
“We’re not punching a freaking clock.”
“We’ll discuss it in private,” Lila snapped at Nick. “Now.”
She called something out to a passing waiter before leading Gray and the others—he assumed the others were behind him, but he didn’t dare turn his head—from the packed VIP room into a narrow hallway. Halfway down it, she opened the door to an office crammed with a conference table and a few file cabinets, then grabbed the nearest chair and pushed him into it.
He didn’t protest. All the fight had gone out of him the moment he’d dropped back into his body and realized he was ripping the hair out of Jazz’s head like an animal.
Remind you of someone else who mistreats women?
“Gray.”
He didn’t lift his head. It took more energy than he had left. His thoughts played on a constant loop, taunting him.
You hurt Jazz. Just like he did. You’re no better than Brent.
“Dammit, Duffy, get it together.” Lila got right in his face. “You think I can’t see it on you? Smell it on you? Get yourself straight. I’m not tolerating this.”
He opened his mouth to reply then snapped it shut as the other guys shuffled in with Jazz in tow. Deacon had his arm around her shoulders and she gripped his waist as if she needed the assistance to walk.
