Grabbing the hand he had pressed flat against my stomach, I urged it downward.
“Eva.” His voice was harsh with lust. I’d been pushing him all night, from the moment I told him my period was over, to the hand job beneath the restaurant table, to the scorching kiss in the intermission.
He gripped my bare thigh and squeezed. “Open.”
I set my left foot on the bottom of the railing. My head fell back against his shoulder and a heartbeat later, his hand was under my skirt. His tongue traced the shell of my ear, his breathing hard and fast. I felt him groan as much as heard it when he discovered how wet I was.
One song blended into another. Gideon rubbed me through the crotch of my boyshorts, moving in circles, then vertically through my cleft. My hips rolled into his touch, my core clenching, my ass grinding into the hard ridge of his erection. I was going to come right there, inches away from dozens of people, because that was what Gideon did to me. That was how insanely he turned me on. Nothing mattered when his hands were on me, his attention completely riveted to me.
“That’s it, angel.” His fingers pushed my underwear aside and two sank into me. “I’m going to fuck this gorgeous cunt for days.”
With bodies pressing in all around us, music pounding over us, and privacy granted only by distraction, Gideon slid his fingers deep into my soaked sex and stayed there. The solid, unmoving penetration drove me wild. I ground my hips into his hand, working toward the orgasm I needed so desperately.
The song ended and the lights went out. Drenched in darkness, the crowd roared. Anticipation weighted the audience, building until the strum of guitar strings broke the heavy expectation. Shouts rang out, then lighters flickered to life, turning the sea of people into thousands of fireflies.
A spotlight hit the stage, revealing Brett sitting on a bar stool, shirtless and glistening with sweat. His chest was hard and defined, his abs ridged with muscle. He lowered the height of the microphone stand and the piercings in his nipples glittered with his movements. The women in the audience screamed, including Shawna, who jumped in place and gave an earsplitting whistle.
I totally got it. Sitting there as he was, with his feet propped on the rungs of the chair and his muscular arms covered in sleeves of black and gray tattoos, Brett looked insanely sexy and extremely fuckable. For six months nearly four years ago I’d debased myself to get him naked every chance I could, so infatuated with him and desperate to be loved that I took whatever scraps he threw me.
Gideon’s fingers began to slide in and out of me. The bass kicked in. Brett began to sing a song I’d never heard before, his voice low and soulful, the words crystal clear. He had the voice of a fallen angel. Mesmerizing. Seductive. And the face and body to enhance the temptation.
Golden girl, there you are.
I’m singing for the crowd, the music’s loud.
I’m living my dream, riding the high,
But I see you there, sunlight in your hair,
And I’m ready to go, desperate to fly.
Golden girl, there you are.
Dancing for the crowd, the music’s loud.
I want you so bad. I can’t look away.
Later, you’ll drop to your knees. You’ll beg me please.
And then you’ll go, it’s only your body I know.
Golden girl, where’d you go?
You’re not there, with sunlight in your hair.
I could have you in the bar or the back of my car,
But never your heart. I’m falling apart.
I’ll drop to my knees, I’ll beg you. Please.
Please don’t go. There’s so much more I want to know.
Eva, please. I’m on my knees.
Golden girl, where’d you go?
I’m singing for the crowd, the music’s loud.
And you’re not there, with sunlight in your hair.
Eva, please. I’m on my knees.
The spotlight went dark. A long moment passed as the music faded. Then the lights came back on and the drums exploded with sound. The flames winked out and the crowd went crazy.
But I was lost to the roaring in my ears, the tightness in my chest, and a confusion that had me reeling.
“That song,” Gideon growled in my ear, his fingers fucking me forcefully, “makes me think of you.”
His palm pressed into my clit and massaged, and I climaxed in a rush that took me by storm. Tears came to my eyes. I cried out, shaking in his arms. Gripping the railing in front of me, I held on and let the unstoppable pleasure pulse through me.
* * *
When the show was over, all I could think about was getting to a phone and calling Cary. While we waited for the crowd to thin, I leaned heavily into Gideon, drawing support from the strength of his arms around me.
“You okay?” he asked, running his hands up and down my back.
“I’m fine,” I lied. Honestly, I didn’t know how I was feeling. It shouldn’t matter that Brett wrote a song about me that painted a different light on our fuck-buddy history. I was in love with someone else.
“I want to go, too,” he murmured. “I’m dying to get inside you, angel. I can barely think straight.”
I pushed my hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “So let’s get out of here.”
“I’ve got backstage access.” He kissed the tip of my nose when I leaned back to look up at him. “We don’t have to tell them, if you’d rather get out of here.”
I seriously debated it for a moment. After all, the night had been great as it was, thanks to Gideon. But I knew it’d bother me later, if I denied Shawna and Arnoldo—who was also a Six-Ninths fan—something they’d remember for the rest of their lives. And I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to myself that I wanted to catch a glimpse of Brett up close. I didn’t want him to see me, but I wanted to see him. “No. Let’s take them back there.”
Gideon grabbed my hand and spoke to our friends, whose excitement over the news gave me the excuse to say I’d done it solely for them. We headed down toward the stage, then off to the side of it, where Gideon spoke to the massive man acting as security. When the guy spoke into the mic of his headset, Gideon pulled out his cell and told Angus to bring the limo around to the back. While he spoke, his eyes met mine. The heat in them and the promise of pleasure took my breath away.
“Your man is the ultimate,” Shawna said, eyeing Gideon with a look of near reverence. It wasn’t a predatory look, just an appreciative one. “I can’t believe this night. I owe you big-time for this.”
She pulled me in for a quick, hard hug. “Thank you.”
I hugged her back. “Thank you for inviting me.”
A tall, rangy man with blue streaks in his hair and stylish black-framed glasses approached us. “Mr. Cross,” he greeted Gideon, extending his hand. “I didn’t know you’d be coming tonight.”
Gideon shook the man’s hand. “I didn’t tell you,” he replied smoothly, reaching his other hand out to me.
I caught it and he pulled me forward, introducing me to Robert Phillips, Six-Ninths’ manager. Shawna and Arnoldo were introduced next; then we were led back through the wings, where activity was high and groupies loitered.
I suddenly didn’t want to catch even a glimpse of Brett. It was so easy to forget how it’d been between us while I was listening to him sing. It was so easy to want to forget after listening to the song he’d written. But that time in my past was something I was far from proud of.
“The band’s right in here,” Robert was saying, gesturing to an open door from which music and raucous laughter poured out. “They’ll be excited to meet you.”
My feet dug in suddenly and Gideon paused, glancing at me with a frown.
I pushed up onto my toes and whispered, “I’m not all that interested in meeting them. If you don’t mind, I’m going to hit the backstage bathroom and head out to the limo.”
“Can you wait a few minutes and I’ll go with you?”
“I’ll be okay. Don’t worry about me.??
?
He touched my forehead. “Are you feeling all right? You look flushed.”
“I’m feeling great. I’ll show you exactly how great as soon as we get home.”
That did the trick. His frown faded and his mouth curved. “I’ll hurry this along, then.” He looked at Robert Phillips and gestured at Arnoldo and Shawna. “Can you take them in? I need a minute.”
“Gideon, really . . .” I protested.
“I’m walking you over there.”
I knew that tone. I let him walk me the twenty feet to the bathroom. “I can take it from here, ace.”
“I’ll wait.”
“Then we’ll never get out of here. Go do your thing. I’ll be fine.”
He gave me a very patient look. “Eva, I’m not leaving you alone.”
“I can manage. Seriously. The exit is right there.” I pointed down the hall to the open double doors beneath a lighted exit sign. Roadies were already transporting equipment out. “Angus is right out there, isn’t he?”
Gideon leaned his shoulder into the wall and crossed his arms.
I threw up my hands. “Okay. Fine. Have it your way.”
“You’re learning, angel,” he said with a smile.
Muttering under my breath, I went into the bathroom and took care of business. As I washed up at the sink, I looked into the mirror and winced. I had raccoon eyes from sweating so damn much and my pupils were dark and dilated.
“What does he see in you?” I asked myself derisively, thinking of how awesome he still looked. As hot and sweaty as he’d been, he looked none the worse for wear, while I looked damp and limp. But more so than my exterior, it was my personal failings I was thinking of. I couldn’t get away from them. Not while Brett was in the same building with us.
I rubbed a dampened square of paper towel under my eyes to get rid of the black smudges, then headed back out to the hall. Gideon waited a few feet away, talking with Robert, or more accurately, listening to him. The band’s manager was clearly excited about something.
Gideon spotted me and held up a hand to get me to wait a minute, but I didn’t want to take the risk. I gestured down the hall at the exit, then turned and headed that way before he could stall me. I hurried past the green room door, chancing a quick glance inside to see Shawna laughing with a beer in her hand. The room was packed and boisterous, and she looked like she was having a great time.
I made my escape with a sigh of relief, feeling ten times lighter the moment I left. Spotting Angus standing next to Gideon’s limo on the far side of the line of buses, I waved and set off toward him.
Looking back on the night, I was tantalized by how uninhibited Gideon had been. He sure as hell hadn’t been the man who’d used mergers and acquisitions as parlance for getting me into bed.
I couldn’t wait to get him naked.
A burst of flame in the darkness to my right startled me. I jolted to a halt and watched Brett Kline lift a match to the clove cigarette hanging from his lips. As he stood in the shadows to the side of the exit, the flickering light of the flame caressed his face and threw me back in time for a long minute.
He glanced up, caught me in his gaze, and froze. We stared at each other. My heart kicked into a mad beat, a combination of excitement and apprehension. He cursed suddenly, shaking out the match as it burned his fingers.
I took off, struggling to maintain a casual pace as I made a beeline for Angus and the limo.
“Hey! Hold up,” Brett shouted. I heard his footsteps approaching at a jog, and adrenaline surged through me. A roadie was pushing a flat hand truck loaded with heavy gear and I darted around him, using him as cover to duck between two buses. I pressed my back flat against the side of one, standing between two open cargo compartments. I cringed into the shadows, feeling like a coward, but knowing I had nothing to say to Brett. I wasn’t the girl he knew anymore.
I watched him rush by. I decided to wait, give him time to look and give up. I was hyperaware of the time passing, of the fact that Gideon would be looking for me soon.
“Eva.”
I flinched at the sound of my name. Turning my head, I found Brett approaching from the other side. While I’d been looking to the right, he’d come up on the left.
“It is you,” he said roughly. He dropped his clove smoke on the ground and crushed it beneath his boot.
I heard myself saying something familiar. “You should quit.”
“So you keep telling me.” He approached cautiously. “You saw the show?”
I nodded and stepped away from the bus, backing up. “It was awesome. You guys sound really great. I’m happy for you.”
He took a step forward for every one of mine backward. “I was hoping I’d find you like this, at one of the shows. I had a hundred different ideas about how it might go if I saw you at one.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. The tension between us was so thick it was hard to breathe.
The attraction was still there.
It was nothing like what I felt with Gideon. Nothing more than a shadow of that, but it was there nonetheless.
I retreated back out into the open, where the activity was high and there were lots of people milling around.
“Why are you running?” he asked. In the pool of light from a parking lot lamp, I saw him clearly. He was even better looking than before.
“I can’t . . .” I swallowed. “There’s nothing to say.”
“Bullshit.” The intensity of his glare burned through me. “You stopped coming around. Didn’t say a word, just stopped showing up. Why?”
I rubbed at the knot in my stomach. What was I going to say? I finally grew a pair and decided I deserved better than to be one of the many chicks you fucked in a bathroom stall between sets?
“Why, Eva? We had something going and you just fucking disappeared.”
Turning my head, I looked for Gideon or Angus. Neither was anywhere in sight. The limo waited alone. “It was a long time ago.”
Brett lunged forward and caught me by the arms, startling me, briefly frightening me with the sudden aggressive movement. If we hadn’t been so near other people, it might have triggered panic.
“You owe me an explanation,” he bit out.
“It’s not—”
He kissed me. He had the softest lips, and he sealed them over mine and kissed me. By the time I registered what was happening, he’d tightened his grip on my arms and I couldn’t move away. Couldn’t push him away.
And for a brief span of time I didn’t want to.
I even kissed him back, because the attraction was still there and it soothed something hurting inside me to think I might’ve been more than a convenient piece of ass. He tasted like cloves, smelled seductively like hardworking male, and he took my mouth with all the passion of a creative soul. He was familiar, in very intimate ways.
But in the end, it didn’t matter that he got to me still. It didn’t matter that we had a history, painful as it was for me. It didn’t matter that I was flattered and affected by the lyrics he’d written, that after six months of watching him enjoy other women while nailing me anywhere with a door that locked, it was me he was thinking about when he seduced screaming-for-it women from the stage.
None of that mattered because I was madly in love with Gideon Cross, and he was what I needed.
I wrenched away with a gasp—
—and faced Gideon charging at a dead run, his speed unchecked as he rammed into Brett and took him down.
Chapter 10
I stumbled back from the impact, nearly falling. The two men hit the asphalt with a sickening thud. Someone yelled. A woman screamed. I could do nothing. I stood frozen and silent, emotions twisting through me in a frenzied tangle.
Gideon pinned Brett by the throat and pummeled his ribs with a relentless series of blows. He was like a machine, silent and unstoppable. Brett grunted with each brutal impact and struggled to break free.
“Cross! Dio mio.”
I wept when Arnoldo appea
red. He leaped forward, reaching for Gideon, only to scramble back as Brett wrenched to the side and the two men rolled.
Brett’s bandmates pushed in through the growing crowd around the front of the buses, prepared to brawl . . . until they saw who Brett was fighting with—the man with the money behind their record label.
“Kline, you fuckhead!” Darrin, the drummer, gripped his own hair in both fists. “What the hell are you doing?”
Brett broke free, lurched to his feet, and tackled Gideon into the side of a bus. Gideon linked his hands and hammered Brett’s back like a club, forcing Brett to lurch away. Pressing the advantage, Gideon lashed out with a roundhouse kick and followed with a lightning-quick jab to the gut. Brett swung, his powerful biceps bunching with his fist, but Gideon ducked fluidly and retaliated with an uppercut that snapped Brett’s head back.
Jesus.
Gideon didn’t make a sound, not when he struck out and not when Brett landed a direct hit to his jaw. The quiet intensity of his fury was chilling. I could feel the rage pumping off him, saw it in his eyes, but he remained controlled and eerily methodical. He’d disconnected in some way, retreated to a place where he could objectively observe his body doing serious damage to someone else.
I’d caused that. I had turned the warm, wickedly playful man who’d enchanted me all evening into the cold, murderous fighter in front of me.
“Miss Tramell.” Angus grabbed my elbow.
I looked at him desperately. “You have to stop him.”
“Please, return to the limousine.”
“What?” I looked over and saw blood dripping from Brett’s nose. No one was intervening. “Are you crazy?”
“We need to take Miss Ellison home. She’s your guest; you need to see to her.”
Brett swung and when Gideon feinted to the side, Brett rammed his other fist forward, nailing Gideon in the shoulder and sending him backward a few steps.