"Ah, I see." It was more candor than I was expecting, and yet another sign clearly pointing to Jax as bad news. The more I learned about The Hitchcocks’ frontman, the more I resolved myself to keep him at arm’s length.
I’d seen him for the first time just a few days ago, and in that time, he’d nearly caused a riot at his own show, flashed his cock at me, and been chased by a jealous mob. And in the midst of all that, I’d had my life threatened multiple times. He wasn’t just a bad boy anymore; he was a very real danger.
When it came to a man as desired and dangerous as Jax, there was only one way I could keep both my job and my life safe. Look, but don’t touch.
"Anyway!" She wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me tightly. "I’m so glad there’s another girl on this bus!"
I squeezed her back, realizing how much better I felt after having met Sky. She seemed like a kind, cool girl that I could hang out with, especially if I wanted an excuse to avoid Jax.
Chapter Seven
PUSHING BUTTONS
"What are you doing up there, Sky?" a voice came from the first floor—a masculine voice, but without Jax’s velvety smoothness.
"They must have gone downstairs when we were up on the deck," Sky said to me. "Come on, let’s go."
We walked down the steep bus steps to the living area. Chewie sat hunched over, looking at a metal machine in the middle of the room that I didn’t recognize. Behind him was a man with soulful, pale blue eyes and blonde hair. It must be Kev—the resemblance to Ryan Gosling really was uncanny. Next to Chewie’s tripped-out persona and Jax’s larger-than-life bad-boy presence, Kev’s clean-cut look made him seem like the boy scout of the group.
In any other rock group, Chewie and Kev would have been the ones with admirers hanging off them. But compared to Jax, they looked like overgrown boys. A joint hung limply in Chewie’s mouth as he twisted the machine’s parts. His frizzy hair and big sunglasses were haloed with thick, skunky smoke. "Okay, I give up," he said, looking up at us hopelessly. "Either of you know how to work this?"
I looked at the machine, which seemed almost industrial. It was relatively small, and had an empty round part at the bottom. I shrugged. "I don’t even know what it is. Sorry."
"Oooh!" Sky burst out, as gleeful as a kid. "Is that the new button maker?"
Chewie nodded. "It’s supposed to be able to make a button a minute, but Kev and I tried for an hour up in our room and only managed to do . . . this." He gestured to the end table, where I saw two mangled buttons with The Hitchcocks' logo emblazoned on them. The paper with the band’s logo was flapping away from the metal backing of the pin, which in turn was bent almost in half.
Sky looked at the twisted metal circles and laughed. "What did you do? Did you even bother reading the directions?"
Chewie lifted his sunglasses slightly, showing his brown eyes beneath. "Directions? We’re men. No directions, no problem."
Kev sighed. "Also, we lost them."
Sky looked at him, dumbfounded. "You lost them?! Now we’ve got a useless button maker machine and we wanted to have the buttons ready for Chicago tomorrow night."
"Maybe it’s a dud," Chewie said. "We might’ve just gotten a bad machine. We could throw it out."
I’d seen all kinds of wasteful spending on the bus—from the ridiculous hot tub to the insane quantities of top-shelf liquor—but this was becoming ridiculous. "Wait a minute," I said. "Are you seriously talking about throwing this out? Look, Chewie, how much can you sell a button for at the merch table?"
"Five bucks, I guess?"
"So if you could make a button every minute, that’s three hundred dollars per hour. Can you really afford to give that up?"
Sky grinned at me. "You have to put this in terms Chewie will understand," she said, elbowing her brother playfully. "Chewie, the accountant says you could make an ounce of weed an hour."
"Damn," he said, shaking his head, "that’s a lot of weed. But that still doesn’t mean I can figure out how to use it."
I pushed up the sleeves on my blouse. "Here, let me try. Let me see one of each of the supply parts." I looked for the back of the button first—that part was easy, it had a pin. I slid it into the machine, then put a blank piece of metal, artwork, and a cover over it. "That’s gotta be the right order," I mumbled, half to myself. Nothing else would make it possible to see the artwork and have the pin in the right position. "Now we just have to figure out how to use it. If I just bring this lever here down . . . and then we . . ."
After a few seconds, I lifted the lever and brought out a perfectly serviceable Hitchcocks logo button. Smiling, I handed the masterpiece to Chewie.
"Far out," Chewie said then turned his head toward the stairwell. "Yo, Jax, we have a button maker!"
My smile faded and pulse quickened as Jax came downstairs, a towel wrapped around his waist. If he was wearing anything else, I couldn’t see it. His muscled torso gleamed, and I had an unwelcome urge to reach out and touch him. "Good," he said with an approving nod toward me. "We’ve needed that."
His sudden appearance refreshed my mind of our last interaction, and my positive mood quickly soured.
As he went to the bar, Sky said, "Want to stay here and make buttons with us?"
He shook his head. "I’m going to my room to write. Instead of messing with buttons, you guys should be practicing the set—we’ve got a big show tomorrow and I don’t want anyone blowing it." He locked eyes with me for a moment sending a flutter through my stomach before heading to the stairs with a couple bottles of Guinness.
As he walked up, I couldn’t help myself from honing in on the firm contours of his towel-clad ass. Wow. I’d been so focused on everything he had going on in the front—tatts, muscles, nipple rings, and all—that I hadn’t taken a moment to appreciate the magnificent backside he had. My fingers flexed with a sudden urge to slap it.
When I stopped staring, I realized my mouth had been open and the band members were all looking straight at me.
"What?" I asked, hastily assembling a new button in the machine to hide my embarrassment.
Kev shook his head, smiling faintly. "It’s just like watching a nature show—the mating displays of the alpha male, starring Jax Trenton."
"Mating display?" I said.
"He gave you that ‘look’," Kev said. "Like he’s marked you as his prey,"
"Well, he’s barking up the wrong tree," I defended, not liking how accurate his assessment of the situation probably was.
Chewie lifted his sunglasses and looked at me with big brown eyes. "Yeah, man, but this is Jax. You don’t even know yet."
"Ugh, I don’t care if he’s Casanova," I said, popping out a button and readying another one. "I’m not interested. He’s really not my type."
"He’s every woman’s type," Sky said soberly.
The trio looked at me skeptically. Everyone looked like they wanted to say something, but they were keeping it in. The room was uncomfortably silent for a moment.
I cleared my throat. "So the buttons . . . what are you guys planning on doing about them?"
"Well we can’t practice and make the buttons at the same time," Kev said, "I volunteer Sky."
She shot him a disapproving look. "Hey, I need to practice too! This is all your fault anyway, you and Chewie couldn’t do it right the first time."
Completing another button, I sighed. I knew what I had to do. "You know what, why don’t you guys go practice. I’ll take over the button-making."
"You sure, Riley?" Sky asked.
"Yeah. This stuff has to do with money. So, in a way, I’m responsible for it."
Chewie and Kev, excited to have someone else working on the buttons, started interrupting each other to give me the supplies.
"Here, take the pins—"
"These are the covers—"
"And art—"
"And here comes Chewie with the metal!" Chewie said, using an exaggerated voice, which made me giggle. He brought the box of blank buttons down across
his body in a sweeping arc like he was playing a power chord.
Kev burst into laughter and moved toward the steps. "Was that supposed to be a guitar? I’ve gotta go practice so I don’t look like you."
"Sorry, man, I only play real instruments," Chewie said, getting up to follow Kev upstairs. "Like drums. That’s a man’s instrument."
Sky let out an exasperated sigh in their direction as they disappeared into the second level, then turned to me. "I’ve gotta go practice with these apes. Help yourself to anything in the fridge. And don’t forget to get some sleep, even though the couches pretty much suck."
"Thanks." I was grateful for her. Even though Jax had made me feel more wary than welcome, I was starting to feel more at home on the bus, and Sky had a lot to do with it.
As the band scattered to their rooms upstairs, I settled in with the button supplies. The rhythms of instruments flowed around me; I could hear the faint thrumming of guitars along with Jax’s velvety voice quietly echoing through the thin walls. In an attempt to keep my mind off him, I turned my body into an efficient, rhythmic machine. Assemble pieces, pull the lever, toss the finished pin in the big cardboard merch box. Assemble, lever, toss.
Jax "marking" me as his target and the outrageous spending aside, I was grateful to find that the rest of the band was pretty cool. This tour accountant gig was certainly better than sitting in a stuffy cubicle all day at Hans-Peterson. Although there was a hell of a lot of work to get done, I was oddly relieved by the prospect.
Jax may have liked challenges, but so did I. With all the opportunities to keep myself—and my thoughts—busy, I couldn’t help but feel a hint of smug satisfaction. He might’ve thought that he had the upper hand, leaving me to stew on our interaction this morning and also that towel-clad ass of his. But between the two of us, I was definitely the craftier one.
Night fell, and the once-empty box was nearly full to the brim with buttons. After the first couple hundred, it was easy to completely lose track of time—not quite as relaxing as yoga, maybe, but meditative in its own way. The only annoyance was the lever. It stuck just enough each time that I had to shove the machine with my shoulder, leaving me a little sorer with each button that went ker-plink into the box.
Small price to pay for avoiding Jax. Sky, Kev, and Chewie had come down for snacks periodically, but Jax never did. Fortunately.
Completing another button, my knotted upper back went into a full cramp. "Ouch!" I rubbed at the aching muscle and got up from the couch to stretch, only to hear my stomach growling loudly, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten all day.
Looking around for food, the gleaming steel of the refrigerator caught my eye. When I opened it, I saw that The Hitchcocks' fridge was crammed with more pre-made sandwiches, salads, and reheatable meals than the band could possibly eat before it went bad. Imagining the amount of food that went to waste only made me crankier.
Sighing, I scanned the shelves, taking stock of my options, before spotting fresh fruit on the bottom level. I bent low to pick up what looked to be the last plum in the fridge. But when I reached for it, the fruit slipped from my hand, forcing me to bend further and lunge to grab it before it disappeared behind a case of beer. Cool air from the fridge wafted up the back of my skirt, welcome and refreshing.
"Looks juicy," a voice said behind me.
Straightening in surprise, I bonked my head on the shelf above me. "Ow! Dammit!" Massaging the back of my skull, I whirled around to find Jax leaning against the far wall looking exactly where my ass had been.
"Ripe, tender—must be delicious," he purred, arms crossed and stroking his chin. He nodded toward the fruit in my hand. "The plum, that is."
The dull throbbing on the back of my head was irritating, but him standing there looking all smug and sexy made it so much worse. He was wearing black jeans that hugged his toned thighs and a matching black tank that exposed the sculpted contours of his broad shoulders. His preference for black suited his personality.
"You just made me hit my head, you jerk," I accused, ignoring his innuendo. His insinuation had clearly been bait, and I preferred to avoid playing into his hands.
"You’re upset. And you hurt your head. Come here," he said in a casual tone. He pushed off the wall and spread his muscular arms, motioning for me to receive a sympathetic hug. "You need this."
The invitation was tempting, and I really could’ve used a hug, but I didn’t want one from him. There’d inevitably be strings attached. And Jax was good at plucking strings. "What I need," I said with a dismissive wave, "is my job, my paycheck, and for your band to stop spending so much money."
"I think you need more than you realize."
"Yeah, you’re right." I pointed grumpily at my stomach. "Like food." I lifted the plum to my mouth and took a bite. "Mmmm . . . just what I needed."
He watched me chew with seemingly greater interest than the activity deserved. I heard his stomach growl then he swallowed hard. "I came here for a sandwich, but now you’re making me want a plum."
I grinned when I realized I had the upperhand. "Too bad, this is the last one," I said with barely repressed delight. I couldn’t resist the urge to get back at him for all the shit he’d put me through since this morning, so I raised the plum like a trophy. "And it’s all mine." Bringing it back down to my mouth, I took an aggressive bite.
He’d been right—it was juicy, and my teeth sinking violently into the soft flesh made sweet nectar dribble down my chin. Too stubborn to wipe it off, I let it drip freely in defiance.
"Mmm," I moaned loudly. "So good."
His eyes narrowed as his arms fell to his sides. "You’re teasing me."
"Me?" I mumbled, mouth full. "Why, I’m shocked you’d think I’d do such a thing." I batted my eyelashes at him obnoxiously. I was still chewing what I bit off from my previous bite, but I took another chomp anyway and rubbed my belly for good measure. I could tell from his expression that I was pissing him off. I wasn’t ordinarily a petty person, but Jax was an exception; seeing him irritated by my antics brought me great enjoyment, since I knew he deserved it.
Without warning, he strode over to where I was, eyes focused intently on my mouth. His tattooed body and rippling shoulders set off alarm bells as he entered into my personal space. I could smell him—an earthy, rich, testosterone-loaded scent that was intoxicating.
An unwanted shiver of desire moved through me. I wanted to take a step back, but I held my ground. I couldn’t back away. Not here. I couldn’t show weakness around a man like Jax, or he’d try to take advantage of that weakness whenever he could.
I bit down on the plum again, savoring its juices and eyeing his presence warily. I searched his eyes in an attempt to figure out what he wanted, and when I saw the blaze in those inky irises, my grip on the plum tightened. If he wanted to take it, he’d have to use a crowbar to pry it from my fingers.
He reached out, cupping my face then brushing the side of my mouth with his thumb. He brought his thumb to his lips and sucked the nectar from the pad.
"I was right," he purred seductively as he savored the juice. "Delicious."
My heart skipped. Oh no. I was starting to feel it: that inescapable pull, the sheer force of his sexuality unleashed on me through those dark, haunting eyes. Somehow the situation had turned dangerously flirtatious—exactly what I didn’t want to be doing if I wanted to have a job in accounting at the end of this tour.
"I—I really should get back to making buttons," I said, turning away. Taking one last bite, I tossed the pit in the trash, and went back to that dreaded machine. As I bent, trying to make sure I didn’t give Jax any more upskirt views, my shoulder twinged again. "Fuck!" I cried, bolting upright as the muscle cramp intensified.
His eyes narrowed as he stared my shoulder. "What happened? Are you still hurt from this morning?" His voice was heavy with concern, the flirtiness from before gone.
"No, it’s just this damn machine," I said, spinning my arm in slow circles. "It gets stuck, so I have
to push it hard."
"Here, lay down." He gestured to the couch.
Feeling more achy by the second, I didn’t have much of a choice. I slowly eased myself down on the couch with his help. When I settled into a semi-comfortable position on my back, I looked up at him seated on the armrest. "Thanks."
"Don’t thank me yet," he said. His expression was unreadable as he swirled his finger. "Turn over."
My brows lifted. "And why would I do that?"
"So I can give you a massage."
Laughter burst from my lips, and I smiled. "Well, I gotta give you credit for your persistence. I appreciate the offer, but I’m already comfor—Ow!" My shoulder spasmed again.
Damn it. It was if my body was conspiring against me.
"Don’t be stubborn, Riley. You’re in pain. We’re both losing from this."
His tone—and the fact that he called me Riley instead of Pepper—made me think he was being serious. Still, I was wary about agreeing to receive a massage from him. A man who had clearly stated his intentions to pursue me. A man who could trigger an orgasm with a chorus.
I narrowed my brows. "How so?"
"You can’t do your job if you’re hurt, and if you can’t do your job, you can’t manage our finances."
Crap. He had a good point. "I’ll be fine," I mumbled.
"You said our relationship was going to be strictly professional, and that’s what this massage is. Professional. Trust me."
The ache began to worsen again and just looking at his beautiful face and hearing his deep voice was starting another ache of its own—this time between my legs. "Alright," I resigned petulantly, eager to move to a position where I wasn’t facing him. "Just don’t try anything fu—" Before I could finish, he gripped my legs and deftly flipped me over. It was a smooth move that left me wondering how the hell he was able to pull it off without hurting me.