But thank God my mother didn’t raise that kind of fool.
I, Maggie Omura, was never going to let my incredibly misguided lady parts lead me to Zane Traynor’s bed. No matter how much they might want me to.
That way lies madness.
On the other hand, Andy Cooper, wickedly talented bass player for the Penny Pushers and genuinely nice guy, was worth breaking a rule for, right? Besides that, Coop was exactly my type. Which was tall, blond, and rock ’n’ roll.
Also, he’d just torn off his shirt and tossed it on the floor, and the sight of his bare chest helped me to focus.
He yanked the babydoll over my head and tossed it somewhere across the room as I tried really, really hard to block out the sounds of screeches and giggles from next door. I was pretty sure Coop said a bunch of nice things about how sexy I was as he kissed his way down my body, but I didn’t really hear it.
Instead, I heard Zane’s laugh. That potent, sexy-ass, full-on Viking laugh I would know anywhere, had creamed my panties to enough times that I’d never be able to hear it and not get wet. It was like a goddamn Pavlovian response.
I wriggled uncomfortably as Coop ran his fingers down between my legs, skimming the lace of my thong, hyper-aware of the fact that I was more turned on by that laugh than the feel of Coop’s touch on my body. He rubbed me up and down, his hand moving in small, eager circles as he kissed his way down my stomach… and I tried to enjoy it, I really did.
But then the music kicked in.
Loud.
It was Guns N’ Roses, “You’re Crazy,” at top fucking volume. Not the acoustic version. The heavy version, hard and fast, thumping through the wall.
Coop looked up in a lust daze, the corner of his mouth hooking in a slight smile. “Who’s out there?”
“Just… ah… one of the guys…” I said, my brain split between the pleasure of what he was doing to me and the party going on next door. “And… about… half a chorus line… from the sound of it…”
Coop laughed. “Should I go tell them to turn it down?”
Sweet. But no way I would do that to Coop.
“No,” I said, “just keep…” and then my head dropped back on the bed as he increased the urgency of his touch. He swirled his tongue around my navel, letting out a low groan, then kissed his way down. I took a breath and struggled to focus on the sensations of his tongue licking its way along the lacy edge of my thong, his fingers slipping inside to peel back the fabric. Then I felt the caress of his hot breath, just as laughter exploded on the other side of the wall.
His laughter, loud and cocksure.
A chorus of female giggles followed, and a surge of raw jealousy scorched through me.
Worst. Roommate. Ever.
Would it totally kill the mood if I put in earplugs before Coop fucked me?
Yes. Yes, it would.
Maybe we could put on some music of our own? I had a laptop here somewhere… but no way my laptop speakers could compete with the sound system from hell next door.
Zane laughed again, and my nipples pricked.
I clenched my teeth and squirmed in frustration.
Maybe my father was right.
Maybe I was just some glorified groupie.
God knew I’d had it bad for Zane since long before I’d met him in the flesh. And ever since… yeah, I still lusted after him—in secret. Physically speaking, Zane Traynor was a god among men, and I was only human.
But that didn’t mean I’d ever, ever act on it.
Screw him, said the voice of reason in my head, the one that sounded suspiciously like my mom’s. Because what the hell did my dad know about it anyway?
No mere groupie would’ve worked as hard as I had, for as long as I had, and put up with the shit that I had—much less stuck to The Rule for as many years as I did.
And now that I’d chosen to break The Rule? So what? I was a single woman. It was my prerogative if I wanted to screw every rock star I’d ever met. Besides, I was having a great time with Coop, I was ignoring Zane’s inconvenient presence, and I wasn’t at all imagining that it was his face between my legs right now.
Yeah.
I totally was.
Good news, though: I’d completely tensed up and my hand was on Coop’s forehead. I was tongue-blocking him.
Sexy.
He stopped, obviously, and looked up at me. “Uh… are you sure—?”
“Hang on a sec, while I commit a super quick murder.”
He backed off, letting me up.
“You sure you don’t want me to—?”
“Nope.” I rolled over and off the bed in one angry lunge, righting my lime-green thong. “I’ve got this.” I scooped up the first thing I saw—his giant T-shirt—and thrust my almost-naked self into it as I stalked over to the bedroom door.
When I threw it open, the scene that greeted me was pretty much what it sounded like.
The main room of the penthouse suite had been overrun with groupies, bits of their skimpy clothing flung across the gaudy, oversized furniture. There were five of them, and while I doubted they were actual strippers—Zane didn’t tend to hang with women who expected to get more attention than they gave, since he preferred to be the center of attention in any given room—I’d definitely walked in on some kind of amateur revue for their one-man audience.
Two blonds were dancing together on the coffee table, the one with the big fake breasts, already topless, undressing the other.
A chick with jet-black hair, in a metallic shrink-wrap dress, was bent over in the kitchen snorting what I could only assume was cocaine off the glossy countertop, showing off her matching metallic thong while she did it.
The other two were pawing each other on one of the big, plush couches. And there was Zane, front row center. Sprawled back on that same couch, legs spread wide. The girls were kneeling over him, and I really could’ve sworn he looked kinda bored as he watched them make out.
I was already bored, but then again, I didn’t have a penis.
One of the girls in his lap was a redhead. The other looked suspiciously Filipina, and even though she didn’t look much like me, it really fucking irritated me. The man had a serious talent for irritating me—and for sniffing out exactly when he was doing it, like some sadistic bloodhound. I was pretty sure he got off on it. It didn’t surprise me at all when his ice-blue eyes met mine, though none of the girls even noticed I was there.
He stared at me, his eyes flaring. He looked pretty blown away to see me, actually. Well, no shit.
Not like I wanted to be stuck in the room adjoining his latest orgy.
I pointed one finger at him and rolled it back, in the universal gesture for Get your ass over here. Which he could’ve ignored. He could’ve told me where to go with a finger gesture of his own.
Technically, the man was my employer.
Instead he dumped the girls off his lap, eyes still locked on mine, and adjusted himself in his low-slung jeans. That’s when I made the mistake of glancing down.
The top button of his jeans was undone, showing a triangle of sun-kissed skin and a hint of his golden treasure trail, not to mention the perfect, tight abs that disappeared under his shirt.
The girls kept going at it, oblivious to his departure, as he rose and stalked toward me.
Tall. Blond. And very rock ’n’ roll.
I just watched him, my features carefully arranged in a look of cool, unruffled displeasure as I forced myself to keep breathing so my heart wouldn’t explode in an epic cataclysm of rage and repressed lust. Luckily, I had a lot of practice with this. Still, my traitorous gaze wandered down the thin black T-shirt stretched over his broad, hard chest and the badass black leather vest, the muscles bunching in his sleek, California-tanned arms… the unbuttoned jeans just barely clinging to his hips… and fuck… did it make me a total weirdo that I had a crazy weakness for the man’s bare feet?
It didn’t exactly escape my notice that his dick looked pretty hard, either. Kinda like it was
about to punch through his jeans, but Zane’s package pretty much always looked that way.
It wasn’t exactly an industry secret that Zane Traynor was well-hung.
In fact, I’d seen his naked cock with my own eyes, multiple times. Not that that meant anything. Pretty sure everyone and their dog had seen it. Since the man was Adonis incarnate, you couldn’t even blame him for showing it off, though his habit of walking around naked in mixed company—irritating for a multitude of reasons—was the main reason everyone in the band refused to share a suite with him.
Well that, and all the groupies.
Really, you’d think a decade would be plenty of time for your average man to tire, or bore, of the groupie thing and move on. Zane, though?
Nothing was average about Zane.
He stopped a few inches from me, all up in my space, but I stood my ground. I looked straight up into his beautiful face and met his unholy blue eyes.
His blond hair, shaved short on the sides but long on top, slid over his eye as he looked down at me. He raked it slowly back with one ring-laden hand and I caught a breath of him… that crazy-delicious man scent of his that always made my ovaries skip a beat.
“Maggie May,” he said, and the devil was in his slow, easy smile. Yeah. The son of a bitch smiled, like he was happy to see me. “Just thinking about you.”
Fuck me. He totally said that.
He eyed the oversized T-shirt I was wearing, the diabolical gears turning in his head. “The hell are you doing here?”
I wasn’t gonna touch that. Not the point. Though I was glad to hear that he didn’t know I was in the next room when he decided to throw this little party.
Then the song changed, and Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” started playing… and the bottom completely fell out of my anger. Because seriously.
“Classy, Zane.”
“I’m all class, sweetheart,” he said, and the smile lit up his gorgeous face.
I couldn’t even help smiling back as I rolled my eyes. Shit, though. I was supposed to be mad.
How the hell did he always do this to me?
Oh, right. Because the man was evil.
He was also charming as hell, and while I wanted to hate him, a lot, sometimes I failed at that. Big time.
Sometimes—well, most of the time—I liked Zane Traynor far too much for my own good.
CHAPTER TWO
Zane
Maggie crossed her arms and glared up at me, like she was trying really hard to stay pissed. Which was cool with me. When Maggie got pissed, I got hard. Which meant I was already a helluva lot harder than I was a minute ago watching a couple of random chicks suck face. Especially when her nipples popped out against her shirt.
I did kinda feel like a jackass though. Had no clue she was in there.
My gaze skimmed down the oversized Sex Pistols shirt she was wearing, obviously a dude’s. Not Maggie’s usual look. Her lips were swollen and her compulsively-smooth hair was mussed up like she’d just gotten something on her back besides sleep.
What the hell did I interrupt in there?
I glanced over her shoulder but I couldn’t see shit, just the door to a bathroom. I shifted closer until we almost touched, leaning a shoulder on the door frame.
“Who the fuck’s been sucking on your neck?” My gaze had snagged on the mark I was pretty sure was a hickey.
She made an exasperated, frustrated noise in her throat that made my balls pull up tight.
It was no secret, at least to my dick, that I wanted this woman. Unfortunately for me and my dick, I’d never gotten my hands on her for more than a hug.
Maggie and I were “co-workers” and “friends” and not supposed to “go there.”
According to her.
“Zane,” she said extra-politely, “please take this in the nicest way possible, but you need to fuck off right now.”
I ignored that. Maggie told me to fuck off at least once a day. Justifiably.
We had that kind of relationship. I was comfortable enough to piss her off, she was comfortable enough to tell me to fuck off, and at the end of the day none of it mattered. Maggie and I were friends. The kind that occasionally wanted to kill each other, but still.
What kind of friend would I be if I didn’t at least make sure she wasn’t in there with some loser?
I tried to get a look behind her again but she closed the door as far as she could, wedging herself in the narrow opening. I wedged myself right in with her, shouldering the door a little farther open. I drew the line at forcing my way past her, but fuck yeah. I was gonna check up on this asshole whether she liked it or not.
“Come on, Maggs. I wanna meet him.” I gave her my wickedest smile, the one that made most girls soak their panties.
Maggie? Maggie wasn’t most girls.
“Don’t be an asshole, Zane. And would you please mind banging your new lady friends in your own room? You’ve got the master bedroom. See, over there. Behind those nice big solid doors.”
“Oh, they’re not for me.”
She rolled her eyes. “Right.”
“I brought them for Jesse,” I said, which was true, even if she didn’t believe it. “Hear he and Elle are fighting.”
Yeah, so I was a shit disturber. But when weren’t those two fighting?
Fuck if getting together wasn’t the worst mistake my two dumbass bandmates ever made. I’d put money on a breakup at the end of this tour. Better for the band. Better for everyone.
Loved Elle, she was a great girl, but my band brother needed an epic cocksuck, badly, to remind him life was too short for one pussy. Especially one that drove him up the fucking wall.
“Well,” Maggie said, “I’m sure Jesse and Elle would appreciate the gesture, but Jesse isn’t here. I am.”
“Cool. And why is that?”
She sighed. “Let’s just say… things got screwed up with the rooms, okay?” Then she started chewing on her lip.
“Uh-huh,” I said, distracted at the sight of her teeth gnawing on that full bottom lip. Fuck, but Maggie had a hot mouth. “Screwed up how?”
What the fuck happened to this girl’s mood since I saw her in the lobby an hour ago, looking all flushed and fucking cheerful? It was a great look on her, and I wanted some of it. I’d gotten a little carried away, putting her up against the wall, and for a nanosecond as those gorgeous gray eyes blinked up at me I thought she might actually accept my invitation to come party, which she never did. I always asked. She always said no.
It was kind of a ritual.
Maybe for once I shouldn’t have taken it like a gentleman.
“Look, it sucks we have to share a suite,” she said, ignoring my question. “But we’re both gonna do what we’re gonna do.” She cocked her head a little, glancing past me. “Seriously though, can we draw the line at the coke?”
I waited until her gray eyes lifted to mine again. I didn’t love seeing the worry in them… but Maggie always worried about me falling off the wagon into a vat of whiskey. I got that. Cocaine was never my thing, but Jack Daniels wasn’t exactly a hard man to find in a Vegas hotel.
Then I gave her what she wanted, because yeah. It was Maggie. And I was pussy-whipped like that.
“Yo, Snow White,” I called over to the black-haired chick in the kitchen. “Time to go, sweetheart.”
She was dancing by herself to Marvin Gaye, but Natalie jumped down off the coffee table, dragging the other blond with her to form a protective wall of bitch. “What!” Nat squawked, then threw me a theatrical pout. “If she goes then so do we.”
“Then go,” I said.
“Zane! What the fuck! Who the fuck is she?” Nat stood there in her panties, totally fucking indignant, looking at Maggie like she’d just stepped in shit.
Which really cranked up my stone cold.
“Get your skank ass outta here, Nat.”
Natalie’s mouth fell open. It was a good mouth to have around if you wanted your cock sucked, but other than that, she could k
eep it shut as far as I was concerned. She was the only one of them I’d met before half an hour ago, and that wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement for the rest.
“You’re a real asshole,” she snapped, yanking on her skirt.
“So they keep telling me.”
Nat huffed, grabbed the rest of her clothes and stalked out with her coked-up friend. The other blond yanked a top over her fake tits, kissed me on the cheek, gave Maggie a catty once-over and left.
“Don’t let the door smack your ass on the way out!” Maggie called after her, then grumbled, “Wouldn’t wanna give it chlamydia.”
I stared at Maggie and she gave me a fake-ass smile right back.
So fucking interesting.
Six years I’d known her, and I’d never seen her in this particular mood. Normally she kept her shit under wraps. Cool, controlled Maggie; it wasn’t easy, even for me, to faze the woman. But right now, she was definitely pissed the fuck off, and frustrated.
Sexually frustrated?
If I didn’t know better, I might’ve even said she was jealous.
Whatever it was, it was giving me a raging hard-on.
She made an irritated noise in her throat and I followed her gaze; the other two chicks were still at it on the couch, but now they were horizontal and kinda scissoring.
“Good night, Zane.”
Maggie tried to shut the door, but I stopped it with my foot.
“Aren’t we in a mood.”
“Hey.” Some shirtless dickwit appeared behind Maggie, running a hand through his scraggly hair, and a flash of kill-crazy jealousy went off like a firecracker in my gut. “Everything okay?” He met my eyes and flicked his chin at me in greeting.
Fucking Coop.
I blinked, ’cause I couldn’t quite believe it.
Maggie was fucking Coop?
Shit, no.
I was all for fucking, in general. Was even pretty sure on a rare occasion or two some fuckwad had probably slipped under my nose and snaked his way up Maggie’s skirt. I was no idiot. Chick as hot as Maggie had gotten cock somewhere, at some point in history, even if she was too fucking discreet, not to mention uptight, to ever let on about it.
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