When I push through the door into my room, the naked brunette in my bed opens her eyes and blinks at me sleepily. I storm toward her and she gives me the smile that caught my attention from the pit last night, then pushes the sheets aside.
I’m already hard. I have been since I saw Lucky in the street. Hell, I have been since I first saw her backstage at The Tonight Show two days ago.
The brunette lays back and runs her fingertips down her curves.
I kick my jeans off as I go and climb on.
#
I’m backstage again.
I swore to myself I wasn’t going to be, but here the fuck I am. And tonight, I’m not hiding. I’m standing at the soundboard with the stage monitor engineer. Where there’s no way Lucky can miss me.
And I’m so fucked up I can barely stand.
I lean against the scaffolding and watch Lucky do her thing. She’s even better tonight than she was last night, looser and more comfortable now that she’s got a night under her belt. I watch her and Max, trying to read the body language, because I’ve got to know if he fucked her. He’s still all up on her, but tonight she doesn’t seem to be shrugging him off the way she did last night. And every time he touches her, my guts turn to lead.
They finish their set and Lucky’s eyes lock on mine as they come off the stage. She’s hot in more ways than one and the sheen of sweat on her face and neck makes her glow. As she passes me, a bead trickles from the hollow of her neck down her chest and funnels into her cleavage.
And fuck, I want to lick it out.
She stops in front of me, challenging me with her hard gaze as the roadies rush past. When Max comes up behind her a second later and snakes his arm around her waist, Lucky’s eyes don’t budge from mine, but a smug smile ticks at the corners of her mouth.
But tonight, her manager’s here with a TV crew to run interference. “Shiloh!” she calls from deeper backstage. “Over here.”
Lucky gives me one last glare then pulls free of Max. “Gotta go,” she tells him.
“Come party in our bus when you’re done,” he calls as Lucky’s manager pulls her over to where the TV crew is setting up for an interview.
I lift my water bottle to my mouth, but it ain’t water. The satisfying burn of the vodka grounds me. When I sway on my feet, I know I should lay off, but I can’t. My head is more fucked up when I’m sober, trying to figure out what the fuck I’m supposed to be feeling for Lucky.
She glances over her shoulder at me, gives me a scowl that makes me want to rip her fucking clothes off and take her right here and now. So I down the rest of the bottle and toss it to the side.
When they wrap up taping, Lucky smiles and shakes everyone’s hands. She and her manager break away from the group, and her manager says something to her before moving back to the woman who was interviewing Lucky. They leave together and Lucky’s eyes lift to mine once she’s alone. When she finds me watching her, she glares.
I’m getting ready to go to her, but she starts toward me instead. “You’re drunk.”
I crack a smile. “I’m always drunk.”
Her head shakes slowly as she scrutinizes me. “Not like this. Can you even stand up?”
I only realize how heavily I’m leaning on the scaffolding when she says it. I push away and try to gain my balance, but the stage feels like it’s floating on heavy waves, lurching in all directions. I grab the scaffolding before I go down.
“How are you going to perform?” she asks, her eyes narrowing in disgust.
“I always fucking perform, Lucky,” I say through my best smirk. “You’re gonna find that out one of these days.”
The last of the roadies sweeps past us as she rolls her eyes at me, and then I hear Grim’s growl from behind me. He and Jamie grab me and huddle up, saving me from my fucking self.
Or more accurately, saving Lucky from my fucked up self.
“Let’s rip this motherfucker open!” Jamie shouts.
“Fucking kill it!” I yell as the stage lights go down.
We take the stage and I rip my guitar off the stand. With the first flash of the lights, we launch into our set. I find my feet after a few minutes and when the stage stops spinning, I glance into the wings and find Lucky’s gone.
Which is good, because I’m a fucking shitty protector. The only person she needs protection from is me.
#
After New York, I know I can’t be trusted to protect Lucky, so I decide my best strategy is to just steer clear. For the next two weeks I avoid being anywhere I know she will be, but by Toronto, pictures of Lucky and Max start to surface: cozy in the back of a Central Park carriage; standing shoulder to shoulder at the rail of the Boston Tea Party ship; laughing together at a pizza place in Pittsburg; with their heads together onstage in Montreal.
I decide I need to stick around and talk to the sound guys after our sound check in Toronto. When Lucky and her band walk in for theirs, everything inside me seizes.