With the Band (With the Band #1)

“Think Cynthia’s been around today?” he asks.

“Jesus, man, we’re ordering pizza soon,” Cooper, the idiotic member of Filthy Sound, replies. I love him like a brother but Milo is definitely easier to live with. “I’m after the beer. It’s a damn shame Mark doesn’t have an open house. I didn’t get laid last night.”

Mark’s place definitely isn’t a party house—outside the seven of us anyway. It always pisses Coop off because the dickhead needs sex at least five times a week, and this is the place we usually hang out. But Mark won’t have shit like that around Tex regularly.

“Why can’t we order now? We know what everyone wants,” Milo says, sitting on the largest sofa and kicking his legs up onto the footstool.

Coop walks past him and pushes his head. He heads straight for Tex’s swivel chair. She won’t be happy that he’s sitting there, and that’s exactly why he’s done it.

Immature prick.

Wish I’d gotten there first.

I chuck myself down on another of the four huge sofas in here. Their living room is large but separated into two zones—a seating zone and a music zone. Beyond the sofas, coffee table, and TV are bookshelves, a long bench seat below the window that stretches the entire length of the room, and an awesome grand piano.

We’re here to start the tour off right. Our tour. My stomach is filled with electric excitement. I want to be out there now. This is what I was born to do, and we’re finally getting our shot at the big time.

Sinking back into the cushions, I flick on the TV. Let’s just get tonight started.

“Porn?” Coop suggests.

I roll my eyes and settle on one of the Fast and Furious movies. Cars and races. Safe for everyone.

Cooper runs his hand through the front of his hair, making me and Milo laugh.

“Beautiful, sweetheart,” I tease.

“You look gorgeous,” Milo adds in a feminine voice.

“Fuck off, both of you.”

I look at Milo. “Isn’t he precious?”

“Damn cutest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Coop growls and balls his fists. “I hate you wankers.”

Will and Jimmy, the final pieces of Enigma, walk through the door as we’re ripping on Cooper for playing with his hair. He’s worse than a teenager.

Will is Milo’s uncle, and that connection got us our first break. The second was Mark seeing our potential.

Mark spent hours, days, weeks, months with me, helping me hone my craft. I’ve never been shy or lacked confidence—I’m fucking brilliant—but Mark has taught me so much about the industry and my personal performance that I know I can’t fail.

I could never do enough to repay him.

Enigma is the reason we’re where we are today. This tour—our first tour—wouldn’t be happening without them. We owe them everything.

So, when I decided to kiss Texas at Christmas, I fucked up on a monumental level.

I don’t know what I was thinking. We’d both had a few, and she had been dancing around in this dark red dress that slightly flared out. It perfectly hugged her waist and breasts and showed off those killer legs. She doesn’t often wear dresses, so I was screwed from the get-go.

I had been turned on from the second I saw her. It had been torture all night. I couldn’t help myself. She had gone upstairs to her bathroom, and when she’d come out, I had been waiting. No one had gotten me that crazed with a kiss before. I’d never been so hard or so needy as I had been when her legs were wrapped around my waist, her hands all in my hair, and her mouth glued to mine.

Shit.

I rearrange myself while Milo and Cooper are saying hello to Will and Jimmy.

Thinking about that night gets me off quicker than any girl bouncing around on top of me.

Mark would do his nut if he found out.

I’m a dick. It was one drunken kiss, and as much as I wanted it, it shouldn’t have happened. Tex is one of the most amazing people I know, the best probably, and I can’t mess around where she’s concerned—not even if I know it would be mind-blowing.

I’ve not spoken to her about it, and she’s not mentioned it in the couple of times we’ve texted since. That’s for the best. We need to chalk it up to being drunk and move on. She’s not a casual shag. Mark would go crazy if he knew we’d kissed. I’m not ready for a relationship, so nothing can happen again.

Right now, I’m living the dream and enjoying the women who come along with that dream. There are a lot of them, and they’re always so eager to please.

“Kitt, what are you having?” Milo asks, looking over one of the pizza menus left on the coffee table. He knows exactly what he’s having and what the rest of us want.

“Meat feast—” I almost finish my sentence before Cooper interrupts by laughing, waving his fist back and forth in a wanking motion. “Really, dude?” I ask.

“You were thinking it, too,” he says, kicking his legs up on Tex’s footstool.

I deadpan, “No, I wasn’t.”

“You three need an adult with you at all times,” Will says. “Spoken to your mum today, Milo?”