“Yeah, I do. This is between you and them.” She nodded toward the recording studio’s front porch, where Jared, Ryder and Quinn now waited impatiently. They must have been watching for them from the windows.
He followed her gaze then nodded grimly. “At least let me walk you to your car.”
She stared at him incredulously, as did the rest of his bandmates. “I’m fine,” she finally told him. “You need to stay here and fix this.”
…
Poppy was right. He did need to fix this, did need to make them understand why his decision was the best one—the only one—for Shaken Dirty. But since he didn’t have a fucking clue what he was going to say, he figured taking a couple more minutes wouldn’t hurt.
“I do. But it’s not going anywhere.” He glanced at the others. “I need five more minutes.”
“What you need is your fucking head examined,” Quinn snapped back. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”
“Five minutes,” he repeated, knowing it would only antagonize his best friends more. But he’d walked out on Poppy the other night to go on stage after going down on her in that alley. After his whole wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am performance there, he was damned if he was going to do it again, even if the band was falling apart around his ears.
At this point, taking two damn minutes to walk her to her car wasn’t going to cause any more damage than had already been done. To prove it, he looped an arm around her waist and propelled her toward the path that led to her car.
“They want to talk this out because they think there’s a solution.” He lowered his mouth to hers, dropped a kiss on her shiny pink lips. “Plus, it occurred to me as we got back to the studio—despite what we’ve spent the better part of our time together doing—I don’t have your phone number. And since I’m no longer an official member of the band, I won’t be seeing you—”
“You are, absolutely, still an official member of the band. Both you and the label have what I assume are ironclad contracts for a reason—so that hotheaded idiots can’t just decide to blow up a billion dollar band in a pissing contest.”
“Who are you calling a hotheaded idiot? Bill Germaine or me?”
“Both of you! That whole fight in the kitchen was ridiculous, and I’m sure your manager and lawyer will tell you that.”
“I’m sure my manager and my lawyers will be glad to see the back of me. I’m a fuck-up—”
“I really wish you’d stop saying that!” She huffed in exasperation. “It’s—”
“True,” he told her, dropping another kiss on her too-tempting mouth. “It’s true, and wishing it wasn’t isn’t going to change anything.” He pulled out his phone. “Now, give me your number and I’ll call you later after I calm the other guys down. Maybe we can get ice cream or something.”
She lifted a brow. “Ice cream?”
“Well, it’s not like I can take you for a drink. And dinner seemed a little too presumptuous.”
“Seriously? Your dick was in my mouth less than fifteen minutes ago and you think dinner is too presumptuous?”
God, she sounded hot as fuck when she talked about blowing him. “Well, maybe not dinner. But definitely the fact that I’d like my dick to be in your mouth or some other part of your body again very soon…”
“Yeah, well, I don’t sleep with unemployed musicians, no matter how talented they are. So if you want to put your cock anywhere near me tonight—”
“You don’t actually think that’s going to work, do you?”
“Hey, I’m just stating the facts.”
“Are you now?” He fisted a hand in her shirt and yanked, hard. She tumbled forward, straight into his arms. “Something tells me I can change your mind.”
She let him kiss her again, and this time it was her tongue tracing his lips. Her tongue sneaking inside to stroke along his cheek, the roof of his mouth.
The kiss lasted longer than he’d originally intended, but seeing as how she was clinging to him, her body soft and sweet and pliant, he sure as shit wasn’t going to step away. Not when just the feel of her pressed against him brought him more pleasure than he’d had in a long, long time.
When she finally broke away, she didn’t go far. Instead, she wrapped her arms around his waist and laid her head on his chest. “I want you to fix this,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged, blew her words off because if he let himself imagine it, let himself feel how much it hurt to just think about leaving Shaken Dirty, he’d never get out the door. “Not going to happen.”
“Wyatt, please—”
“I’ll try.” He said it more to placate her than anything else, and he could tell by the twist of her mouth that she knew it. Before she could get herself wound up again, he shoved his hand in his pocket and pulled out his phone. “Now, on to more important things. What’s your number?”