I wasn’t the last person to buy a round for us, either. It seemed like Megan came up with a new rule every other minute, but all the other girls were nodding along like this was normal. One shot became three, and soon I felt like I was blissfully floating in the clouds.
I could hear myself talking, and I knew that I was telling these virtual strangers way too much personal information—especially given the fact that they were my coworkers. Fortunately, just as I was starting to wonder if I should feel embarrassed, the band started playing, effectively shutting up any conversation that we might have had.
I cocked my head to the side as I listened, tapping out a beat with my foot. The girls were right—they were pretty good.
Everyone got up to dance, and Piper dragged me along with them. I frowned. Dancing wasn’t usually my thing. Then again, tonight I was feeling the music, or at least the booze. I swayed with the rhythm, shaking my hips and bobbing with the beat.
I remembered what the girls had said about the singer being sexy, and I looked toward the stage. He was all right, I guessed, but you could definitely tell he knew that he was attractive. That had always been a turnoff for me. Guys like that were nothing but trouble.
My eyes slipped past him toward the drummer, who was pounding out the beat as though he were possessed by pure electricity. He happened to look at me at the same time that I looked at him. Or had he been watching me dance the whole time?
With a jolt, I realized that I knew him. Those dark blue eyes, those tattoos. It was none other than my new neighbor. And God did he look hot tonight, drumming his ass off.
My mind flashed back to that first night I had gone over there, when I had yelled at him to keep it down. I remembered the way he had stared when my robe slipped and he caught a glimpse of just the upper swell of my breasts. A similar heat went through me now, even as he dragged his gaze away and focused his attention back on his drums, launching into a particularly complex part of the song. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, though. I was utterly mesmerized.
I found myself considering my neighbor in a new light. I had to admit, he was good. Like, really good. He wasn’t just some wannabe rock star drumming away at midnight just to annoy me. He actually had something. If the pulsing bodies around me were anything to go by, I wasn’t the only one to think so, either.
He was sexy as hell too. I wasn’t the kind of girl to go chasing someone just because he was hot, but tonight, I almost wanted to. Maybe it was the liquor or the music or some combination of the two, but I suddenly wanted him.
Sure, he was nothing that I needed, but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to see if he was as good with his hands when he wasn’t drumming. I shivered with heat as I continued to gyrate, watching him closely without trying to seem too obvious about it. I wasn’t sure who I’d be more embarrassed to have notice my sudden attention to him: the man himself or my coworkers.
I couldn’t stop speculating over what it would be like to have him in bed with me, though. To have him strip me bare, to have him run his hands over my body. I didn’t have a ton of experience with guys, and most of my sexual experiences had been vaguely disappointing.
I didn’t think the drummer would disappoint, though. No, I had a feeling he could play my body as well as he could play those drums. For all the flash and passion that he poured into his playing, there was a certain tenderness as well, which was there in the way that he concentrated and the way he struck each beat.
I kept on dancing, my eyes on his, swaying seductively. Suddenly, I wanted to tease him. I wanted his eyes on me, wanting me as he played. I wanted to get inside his head, even if I never got the courage to go any further with him.
I couldn’t help but feel disappointed as he kept his gaze trained on the instruments in front of him. He didn’t look my way again, not even as the singer introduced their next song.
5
Jayson
I couldn’t believe she was there.
To be honest, when I first laid eyes on my new neighbor in the crowd, I had expected her to roll her eyes and storm out. Then I’d realized that she was dancing. And God, how she was dancing…
My cock was rock-hard from watching her. I’d tried my best to be surreptitious about it, peeking at her out of the corner of my eyes. The last thing I needed was for her to realize how much she got under my skin with her hips swaying to the beat.
What the hell was she doing there? Of all the places in LA, how had she just happened to come to our gig? I had to admit, I was revising my original opinion of her. When she had first shown up at my doorstep, yelling at me to keep quiet, I had decided she must be kind of a crazy cat lady trapped in a stunner’s body.
Maybe that wasn’t a fair assessment.
We finished the set, managing to make it through every song more or less decently even though I knew that Carter was already well on his way to blitzed. We didn’t add anything new, though, and I couldn’t help wondering if things were starting to get stale for our groupies. Would they stop coming, eventually, when they realized we had nothing more to offer?
I couldn’t think about that now, though. The only thing I seemed able to think about was my hot neighbor. I watched as she chatted with a group of girls near where she had been dancing before, a huge grin on her face. God, she was cute. She definitely looked like she had enjoyed herself. I wondered if that meant she would come out to more of our shows.
I found myself drawn toward her, like a magnet. I didn’t know what I would say when I got to her, but I supposed I could reintroduce myself now that we weren’t yelling at each other. I realized that I had never gotten her name.
Luke interrupted me, though. His eyes were shining with excitement. “Dude, I just looked at my phone,” he said. “The venue owner, Jim, texted me while we were playing.”
I grimaced. That could go either of two ways. We had done a decent job that night, but not our best. At this point, we couldn’t afford to fuck things up. My eyes strayed to where Mark and Carter were at the bar. But then, my gaze was captured by a cheering group of girls doing shots—and wouldn’t you know, but my new neighbor was right in the middle of them.
“He wants to book us for five more shows in the near future,” Luke continued, dragging my attention back to him.
My jaw dropped. “Wow, really?” I couldn’t help but feel shocked. Our performance that night was nothing to write home about. Then again, he knew we could pull in a crowd. We certainly had that night, anyway. We’d taken a stretch with this one; it was a larger venue than the places we had been playing. Not only that, but rumor had it that if you were going to get picked up by an agency, this was one of the hottest places to be. This could be our ticket.
“That’s awesome,” I told Luke enthusiastically. “We’ll have to start drawing up setlists. I feel like we can’t keep playing the same thing all the time or it’s going to get old. And—”
“Whoa,” Luke said, grinning as he held up both his hands. “I’m just as excited and ready to make this work as you are. Can we just enjoy it for a little while before dealing with the logistics, though?”
I chuckled. “Yeah, sure,” I said. The truth was that I knew Mark and Carter probably weren’t in any shape to change things up. I didn’t want to think about that right now, though. I didn’t want to let that sour this for me.
What did sour my attitude, though, was when I scanned the crowd for my neighbor once more and saw that Carter had cornered her and was leaning in close. I felt a surge of jealousy go through me, and I left Luke where he was, jumping off the stage and making a beeline for the pair. My neighbor looked a little overwhelmed when Carter tried to go in for a kiss, and I hauled him away from her just in time.
I gave him a hard shove. “What the fuck are you doing?” I asked, all the pent-up frustration bursting out of me at once.
Carter looked pissed and shoved me back. “Find your own chick,” he snapped. “Or are you just here to be a cockblock again?”
I wanted to punch him, but I k
new it wouldn’t be fair. It was clear that he was drunk right then, and I doubted that he even knew what he was doing. Fortunately, Luke appeared right then, pulling Carter aside and suggesting that they order some coffee for the next round. The look Carter shot me was murderous, but I doubted he would remember this by the morning.
I grabbed my neighbor’s arm and dragged her toward the exit. She giggled. “Nice to meet you too, Caveman,” she said. “My name’s Leah, what’s yours?”
“Jayson,” I bit out in a clipped tone.
For some reason, that made her giggle more. I turned toward her as we finally made it out into the night air. As I peered at her, it was obvious she was drunk. Almost as drunk as Carter was. Suddenly, all of my attraction to her evaporated. “You should go home,” I told her. “You’re going to do something that you regret.”
“How do you know what I’d regret?” Leah asked, leaning toward me, her hand resting on my chest, no doubt for balance purposes. She didn’t seem too steady on her feet.
“You’re drunk,” I told her flatly.
Leah laughed. “Isn’t that the point of coming to a bar?” she asked, stepping away from me and doing a little twirl that caused her to stumble. But she righted herself and grinned at me.
“It’s not safe,” I told her, feeling suddenly protective of her. God, I didn’t know where she had moved here from, but there was something so innocent about her. It made me even more angry about what might have happened back there. “If I hadn’t grabbed Carter off of you, he’d have his mouth glued to yours right now.”
Leah shrugged. “He’s not that bad-looking,” she said. “I could do worse.”
I growled, my jealousy flaring up again. I had planned on just sticking her in a taxi, but now I didn’t want to leave her alone. Who knew what she might do?
I pulled out my phone and ordered a ride, then texted Luke to break down the equipment without me. I felt bad since I knew it would take him a little while. It wasn’t like Carter or Mark would step in to help. But I’d get Luke back at one of the other shows.
“Get in,” I said to Leah when the car pulled up to the curb.
“What if I don’t want to?” she asked, a teasing challenge in her voice. The look I gave her shut her up, though, and she meekly got into the car. She wasn’t quiet for long, though.
“You know, I really liked the show tonight,” she said. “The music was good. You’re actually a pretty good drummer. But your lead singer talks too much for anyone to really get into it, and then there’s the set list. You come out on the highest-energy song, which is good for getting the crowd into it, and then you close on a high-energy song too. But in the middle, things just kind of slow down. It honestly gets kind of boring at points.”
I stared at her, mouth agape as she picked us apart. Normally, I would be annoyed. Even more so because I knew that everything she was saying was true. It was part of why I had been trying to get some new material into our shows, because I knew we needed another couple of really banging songs. How was I supposed to get them when Mark and Carter weren’t prepared to even play our tried-and-true older stuff?
Somehow, though, I couldn’t feel upset with Leah for the way she pointed all of it out. She was just too adorable about it, earnestness in her face like she really wanted to help me out.
I shook my head and didn’t respond. She chattered on about something else, the girls that she had been there with, the reason behind the number of shots she had taken, and her current state of drunkenness. I only half-listened, my mind fixed on the band.
I knew we had to break out of this spiral. We couldn’t keep going down this road with the way things currently were. If we did, I knew there was no way I was going to achieve my dream of making it big.
There were two options: either Mark and Carter needed to be replaced, or else they needed to shape up and start putting in the effort again. The first didn’t really seem like an option, but then again, neither did the second. I felt sick at the thought that my dreams of touring, of crowds who really knew and connected with our music, might die in some dive bar in LA. I didn’t want to be just another washed-up bar band.
We finally made it back to our duplex, and I escorted Leah to her door. She looked around in surprise, like she had suddenly realized, just now, that she was no longer at the bar. She started to pout. “Hey, I was having a good time until you came along,” she complained. “I wasn’t ready to go home yet. I didn’t even say goodbye to everyone!”
“Tough,” I said, reaching in her pocket to grab her keys and unlock her door. “Go inside, drink some water, and get some sleep.”
Leah frowned but headed inside, flicking on the light and grumbling about me, her “overgrown babysitter,” as she kicked her shoes off. I was just about to go home, my good deed done, when she muttered, “Thanks to you, I didn’t even get to make out with a hot rock star tonight.”
Something surged inside of me, and my restraint broke. I knew that it wasn’t right to take advantage of her like this, no more than it would have been right to let Carter kiss her when she was drunk. Actually, it was even worse since I was still sober and had my wits about me.
Reason couldn’t hold me back now, though. I had wanted her too much all evening to let her go like that. I grabbed her and kissed her, pouring all of my lust, worry, and frustration into the kiss. If she wanted to make out with a rock star, then I was what she got.
She gasped, opening her mouth to me, and I thrust my tongue inside, expecting at any moment for her to push me away. Instead, she melted into my arms, kissing me back just as passionately, moaning as I nipped at her lower lip and tilting her head to the side to give me better access. She wasn’t holding anything back, and I kissed her until we were both breathless, and I was hard again.
I could taste the alcohol from the shots she had been doing, and that was what finally sobered me up. I pulled back, shaking my head as her lips chased mine. I tried to find something to say to her, but I wasn’t about to apologize. I wasn’t sorry for what happened, I just knew that things couldn’t go any further.
“Get some sleep,” I told her.
Leah scowled, but I turned away from her and went back to my own place, trying not to think about the other course of action I could have taken. It would have been only too easy to let her lead me inside. It would have been only too easy to take her.
But it wouldn’t have been right. And at the end of the day, that wasn’t the kind of guy I wanted to be. I didn’t want to be like Mark or Carter. I wanted to focus on the band and make good music. I didn’t need a distraction, especially not one who lived next door to me.
I leaned back against my door, breathing hard. My breathing wasn’t the only thing that was hard at the moment. I groaned, pushing my hand down my pants, body jolting with energy as I wrapped my fingers around myself. There was no relief in that sort of release tonight, though.
I stumbled into the living room and sat down at my drums. Surely she was drunk enough that she wouldn’t hear me tonight.
Except that if she did, she would be back on my doorstep, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to hold myself back a second time. I got up and went to take a long, cold shower.
6
Leah
I couldn’t help but feel disappointed as Jayson pulled away from me and went back to his own place. “But that’s what you get with rock stars,” I muttered bitterly as I headed to my room alone. “Flakes, the whole lot of them.”
You couldn’t count on them. I knew that was true when it came to anything long-term. I just hadn’t realized that it also applied to one-night stands. I had thought that they were pretty sure on that. There was so much I didn’t know or understand about the lifestyle in LA. I had thought that the longer I lived here, the more I would feel like I was fitting in and understanding it all. Instead, I just felt more out of my element with each passing day.
Face it, you’re never going to belong here, I thought sadly as I sat down on the edge of my bed.
Instead, he’d pulled back, looking like he regretted kissing me in the first place. And the worst part was that I didn’t know what I’d done to make him run out of there like that.
I brushed my fingertips across my lips, narrowing my focus to just the kiss and not what had happened afterward. The kiss had been phenomenal. I had never felt such a frisson of passion inside of me before. His lips guided mine firmly; his tongue delved authoritatively into my mouth. He had held me close, his hard body pressed up against my curves, and I hadn’t been able to help the way I had gasped and moaned, pleasure licking through every inch of my body.
I had thought that Carter was going to kiss me earlier in the night, in the bar. I would have welcomed that too; I hadn’t been lying to Jayson when I said I could do worse. At the same time, I couldn’t deny that Jayson was the one I was attracted to the most.
I wanted him badly.
The kiss had ended too soon, though, and with him babying me again. Did he think I didn’t realize I was drunk? I knew I should get some rest; I knew I should drink some water. I knew I’d had one too many shots. At the same time, I was a grown woman. I knew how to take care of myself, and I didn’t need him to decide when it was time for me to go home and go to bed.
I shook my head, unable to help feeling unfulfilled and cranky. I yanked off all of my clothes and fell back in bed. I lay there for a moment, thinking of the injustice of it all. It was as though since coming to LA, I was playing along with kids who had learned a different rulebook than me.
The Boy Next Door: A Standalone Enemies-to-Lovers Romance Page 3