by Kasi Blake
Bay-Lee began to relax once she realized Van was not going to make trouble for them. Her pretend-father didn’t even bother to ask about her relationship with Nick. Since he obviously wasn’t going to confront her and no one else knew, she stopped holding her breath every time someone knocked on her door. Although she didn’t trust happiness to last, she allowed a little of it into her heart.
It was early morning and she was with Nick in the meditation room, his idea. For some reason he thought she needed to learn how to meditate and do yoga, so he insisted they work on it twice a day. Her body cooperated, but her mind did not. Sitting still while incense burned and Nick hummed, had her mind screaming for activity. She tried to keep it blank. It wasn’t her fault scenes from the past saw it as an opportunity. No matter what she did she couldn’t get the night of her mother’s death out of her head. For her it was better to keep her mind racing. Total focus on dark and twisted things kept the past in the past where it belonged.
Today was different. Instead of sitting on the mat and folding his legs beneath him, Nick picked up his electric guitar. He perched on the edge of a corner table and strummed the strings. Without giving her a word of explanation he started to play a familiar tune. It was one of his hits, but she couldn’t remember the name of it. Nick was in a weird mood.
She wondered if Van had said something to him.
The beautiful music simultaneously surrounded and filled her. She fought the growing urge to dance. The room was big enough with a smooth hardwood floor, and it beckoned to her, but the thought of doing it in front of Nick made her uncomfortable. Feeling shy, she walked around instead, hands clasped behind her back as she hummed along with the tune. Nick didn’t know about her past, didn’t know about her mother, and didn’t know the little girl inside of her still dreamed of being a ballerina.
Standing on the other side of the room, she closed her eyes and swayed back and forth, feeling the music. An arm went up of its own accord, fingers reaching high as if to pluck an invisible apple from a nearby tree. The music continued uninterrupted. She lifted both arms, feeling more confident, and stood on the tips of her toes. After spinning around once, she bent backwards at the waist. It felt incredible to let go.
It no longer mattered she wasn’t alone. Opening her eyes, she danced around the room. She leaped into the air, legs spread apart in a flying move and landed gracefully. The guitar grew louder. Nick played with his whole heart, but she didn’t dare look in his direction. She wouldn’t be able to dance if she saw him watching her. Ballet was her dead dream, a part of her she never shared with anyone—until now.
After playing the last chords of the song Nick seamlessly glided into another. She recognized this one, a heavy metal rock ballad, and her dance quickened. She performed intense moves she hadn’t attempted in years. Her body remembered even if her mind didn’t. It went on instinct, automatic. Quiet now, her mind let go and bad memories no longer existed. She didn’t have to think. The music calmed her mind, body, and soul.
Nick played the guitar and sang in his husky look-at-me-I’m-a-rock-star voice while Bay-Lee danced around the room, uninhibited. Showing off her ballet skills, she wanted him to know he wasn’t the only one with a talent. She wanted him to be as in awe of her as she was of him.
She did a complicated twirl ending with a leg going straight up in the air.
He winked at her.
She danced by him.
He reached for her.
She spun away.
He dropped to his knees, arched backwards until his hair nearly touched the floor, and he held his guitar away from his body while wrenching magic from it.
She left the ground in a graceful leap.
He circled her while strumming the guitar strings. They were in sync when it came to music, and part of her wondered if it would be the same on the battlefield. If they tracked down the werewolves together, could they kill the pack without either of them dying?
Bay-Lee shoved the thought aside, opting for more dancing. She performed leaps and spins around him as he did his rock star thing. Legs spread wide, Nick bent his knees and leaned back a bit. Eyes closed, he played the instrument as if his life depended on it, almost looking like he was in pain.
For five more songs they lived in their own private world. He was a rock star and she was a prima ballerina. No one was there to watch, or to judge, or to ruin the moment. It was like they were the only two people left in the world. Bay-Lee wished with all her heart it could stay like this forever.
Sweating and exhausted, she grabbed a towel from a stack on the provided bamboo shelf. After wiping her face, she hung it around her neck. Her hands held tight to both ends as she tried to catch her breath. Not done yet with his Tyler Beck persona, he continued to sing and play the guitar.
The song changed.
Bay-Lee sat on the blue mat and watched him. It wasn’t every day that a girl got a private performance from a coveted celebrity. She took her time in studying him, memorizing every detail of his face and body. To say he was drop-dead gorgeous was an understatement. She wanted to comb her fingers through his thick hair while staring into those incredible eyes, wanted to kiss him, wanted to die in his arms.
Nick sang one of his biggest hits.
Bay-Lee used to turn the radio off every time those familiar chords began to play. Now she savored each one. Unlike other songs, it started with the chorus. To her the chords sounded a bit like Highway to Hell, but she wasn’t going to tell Nick. It might hurt his feelings or make him angry. Didn’t artists want to think their work was totally original?
Bay-Lee listened intently to the words. Was this song about a girl from his past? Was it about Jordan? A sliver of jealousy embedded itself deep beneath her skin.
She’s got a hard-rockin’ bod.
She’s never gonna hold it against you.
She’s got a hard-rockin’ bod.
She forgot you the moment she met you.
Bay-Lee didn’t dare blink, afraid she might miss something important. Even alone with a solitary guitar, he was awesome with a stage presence that defied the imagination. No wonder girls adored him so much they wouldn’t believe he was guilty of murder. A twinge of remorse over giving Chloe grief for idolizing him came back to taunt her. If only her former friend could see her now.
Take it from me, she’s a deviant queen, slicing and dicing boys she says she loves.
Hey, look at me.
She’s got me on my knees, bawling and crawling right after her now.
That’s right!
If I can’t handle her, nobody can.
He stopped playing mid-song and she stared at him, afraid to breathe.
Should she applaud? For a moment neither of them moved a muscle. Their gazes locked. She wanted him in a way she didn’t think was possible, not after such a short time. Drawn by an invisible magnet, she got up and crossed the room to stand in front of him. He was still seated so she stepped into the space between his legs in a bold move.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She removed the guitar from his talented hands and set it aside. Her fingers delved into his mop of hair, grasping handfuls of the stuff, tugging slightly as she kissed him full on the mouth, giving him a taste of what heaven must feel like. When she pulled away, he wasn’t smiling anymore. There was a look of pure hunger in his eyes.
“Your father is a powerful man,” he said. “I owe him my life, literally.”
“Are you afraid of him?”
“Everyone is afraid of Van, except for total idiots.” His hands wrapped around her narrow waist, fingers almost touching. “I promised Van I wouldn’t take advantage of you when you’re vulnerable.”
Vulnerable? The word stung worse than a slap across the face. It had the intended effect, dousing the fires of desire. Pushing against him hard, she tried to walk away, but Nick’s hands tightened and refused to let go.
“I want you,” he said. “Don’t ever think this isn’t killing me too.”
“Then why?”
“There are so many reasons.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’ve heard them and I don’t care.”
“Not all of them. You haven’t heard the most important reason for me to keep my hands to myself.”
“What could you possibly say to convince me this is wrong?”
He pressed full lips together and his gaze went to her mouth as if he was considering kissing her again. In the end his common sense won out. “You aren’t even eighteen yet. I know you don’t see it like I do, but you’re too young to know what you want, what you really want. There’s a whole world out there waiting for you to explore it, and there are millions of guys waiting to meet a girl like you.”
She made a face. “I’m not that young.”
“Sixteen.”
“Seventeen soon.” Her lips stretched in what she hoped was a confident smile. “Besides, I’ve been through more than any other person my age. I’ve been through more than most eighty-year-olds. You can trust me when I say I know what I want and I want to be with you more than anything.” Then she hit him with a hard truth. “Where is this coming from? You weren’t dragging your feet when you pushed me to get your name tattooed on me.”
“That was probably a mistake.”
“Don’t say that.”
His eyes went north. “When Alec called you Bait, he wasn’t talking about jail bait. Van would kill me if I even thought of putting my dirty hands on his precious pretend-daughter.”
Frustration mounted. “I can’t believe you’re going to let Van Helsing control our lives.”
“It isn’t just Van stopping me at a kiss. I love you, Bay-Lee, and I don’t want you to regret choosing me. Someday we’ll be together in every possible way, I promise. Once you turn eighteen, if you still want me, I’ll totally stop being a gentleman. Until then can you please ease up on me? I’m not sure numerous cold showers can kill a person, but I don’t want to find out firsthand.”
Changing the subject to a safer topic, she asked, “Have you written any sweet love songs I might have heard?”
Shaking his head slowly, he said, “Me? Sweet? Not my style. I write how I feel, and I usually feel like smashing someone’s face in. Mike is the band’s romantic.”
Mike? Romantic? Didn’t sound like the snarky little guy she’d come to know and loathe.
Their smiles simultaneously disappeared as he stood. Nick’s hand slid around her waist, and he pulled her close until she could feel his hard body against hers from shoulder to feet. She tilted her face, ready and willing to be kissed breathless. His lips grazed her forehead instead. “You have class,” he said. “Better hurry or you’ll be late.”
“Can we meet up later? There’s something I need to talk to you about, something important.”
“I’ll be at the castle this evening. Van crossed over to meet his spy again so we can be alone.”
“Perfect.” Tonight she was going to tell him about her mom, the werewolf pack, and her unquenched thirst for revenge. Nerves twisted her stomach into knots. She hoped telling him wasn’t going to turn out to be a huge mistake.
