by Tara Leigh
Delaney made me feel off-balance, like the control I’d worked so hard for was tenuous at best. And if that happened, no one was safe. Especially her.
A flicker of lust had fought its way into her gaze, teaming up with the sensual curve of her lips to tempt me. Intrigue me. And yet—she’d stood up to me without a second thought. Shrugged off my touch as if it was unwanted, stalked off without a backward glance. Delaney had a temper inside her centerfold-worthy package. And I liked it. I liked that she hadn’t fawned all over me while I made one obscene suggestion after the other, responding with incessant giggles that made me want to shove something in her mouth just to shut her up.
I’d done just that with other girls before, and there were more than a few selfies floating around cyberspace, a grinning girl with my dick stuffed in her mouth. Easily found if you typed “Shane Hawthorn, dick pic” into Google.
Welcome to my life.
Travis was having none of my reluctance, listing Delaney’s attributes as if she were a prize hog at the town fair. I cut him off. “There has to be someone else. Someone not like all the others, but not like—” I raked a hand through my hair and then gestured at the women preening like pink flamingos all over his patio, before finishing lamely “—them.”
“Who? If you don’t want Delaney, fine. Go mingle, find someone else. But I’ve introduced you to a dozen girls in the past month. You’ve turned them all down. Too dumb. Too tall. Too short. Too quiet. Too loud. The last one was too bat-shit crazy, if I remember right. You want Delaney, I can tell. So, what’s the problem?”
Nothing. Except that she made me feel things. Want things I didn’t have a right to want. Not anymore. Maybe not ever.
Travis pounced on my non-answer. “See. You can’t come up with a reason to reject her.” He had that look in his eyes, the one I’d seen in meetings with studio executives and moneymen. The look of a hunter who’d spotted weakness in his quarry. “Okay, Shane. This is what I’m going to do. Since you’ve shown more interest in Delaney than you have anyone else I’ve introduced you to lately, or anyone here tonight, I’m going to ask her if she wants the job. Who knows? Maybe she’ll be one of the one percent to turn down a tour with Nothing but Trouble. Maybe she has commitments here.”
He rocked back on his heels, hoisting his shoulders up and then dropping them. “Maybe she has a boyfriend.”
That last comment hit my eardrum like a sonic boom. Boyfriend? Some other guy running his fingers through her hair, kissing her perfectly pouty lips, sliding his hand between her thighs. Oh, hell no.
I stalked off, heading back the way I came in. “Get me her address. Don’t do anything until you hear from me.”
My phone vibrated with a text before I’d even started the engine. Travis was nothing if not efficient. I sat inside the locked doors for a moment, blood rushing through my veins so loudly I may as well have been clinging to a damn raft. No oar in sight, just an inky black night and no fucking clue where the current was taking me.
A frown was doing its damnedest to dig a ditch across my forehead, and I let go of the steering wheel in an attempt to rub it away. What the fuck just happened?
Delaney. Delaney Fraser.
Even her name sounded like a lyric. Soft and hard. Sweetly sinful. That whispered shhh toward the end, as if she were a secret I wasn’t meant to discover.
The girl who walked away from me without a second glance.
Delaney Fucking Fraser.
Beautiful name. Beautiful face. Beautiful body.
Beautiful packages were a dime a dozen, though. Especially in Tinseltown. And backstage, too. Everywhere I looked, really. Gorgeous girls were within reach wherever I went. Inviting me to take what I wanted, when I wanted, wherever I wanted.
But they were easily discarded, easily forgotten.
I’d reached for Delaney, and the damn girl had slapped my hand away. My frown eased as a begrudging grin pulled at the corners of my lips. With a low chuckle, I started the Italian engine and shifted into gear, the quilted leather seat throbbing beneath my ass. Delaney Fraser, I’m coming for you.
Delaney
I couldn’t wrestle the too-tight, too-tiny dress off fast enough. What the hell was I thinking—trying to run with Piper Hastings’s crowd? I hadn’t been able to pull it off in high school, and despite leaving my baby fat and bad hair back in Bronxville, I wasn’t cut out for it now.
Breathing a sigh of relief once the dress was just a black puddle at my feet, I swept my hair into a ponytail and pulled on Lycra capris and a T-shirt. So. Much. Better.
The buzzer sounded just as I was taking out my lingering aggression on my teeth. Thinking Piper had turned around and decided to retrieve her dress tonight, I hastily spit peppermint foam into the sink and grabbed the dress from the floor. “Be right down,” I called into an intercom system that had a fifty-fifty chance of dispensing only static, before quickly sliding into a pair of flip-flops and grabbing my keys. I lived on the fourth floor of a four-floor walk-up that was more than I could afford but the cheapest place I could find. Jogging down the stairs, I pushed open my front door, eager to shed any connection to Piper and a night I’d rather forget. “I would have dry-cleaned it—” My head jerked back, lungs rattling inside my chest as I shuddered to a stop.
Shane Hawthorne was at my front door, looking every inch the sex symbol that had captivated me from the moment I saw him, his presence no less overwhelming now than it had been an hour ago. Maybe more. My breath caught in the back of my throat, my heart tripping over itself in an effort to run away. Telling me to run away. But I couldn’t run. Couldn’t even breathe.
“Hey, Delaney.” He spoke my name like he’d said it a million times before. Like we were old friends.
Without my heels, Shane seemed taller, his chest wider. And his shirt did absolutely nothing to hide the well-defined muscles beneath. Heat broke over my skin. “H-hi.” The word was a hiccup, at best.
His eyes swept over me, from the top of my messy ponytail to my bright pink toes, lingering slightly over the bubble letters stretching across my braless breasts. “A Hello Kitty fan, huh?”
My nipples puckered beneath his gaze, a flush traveling from my exposed collarbone to settle on my cheeks and the tips of my ears. I swallowed. “Isn’t everyone?”
The air between us crackled with sexual tension, electric energy rushing straight to my head. “Absolutely.” Shane’s husky answer raised the voltage another notch.
Fighting the temptation to swoon like the awkward teenage fan that still lived inside me, I crossed my arms over my chest, straightened my spine, and dragged my muddled mind back to reality. “What are you doing here?”
The cockiest smirk I’d ever seen blazed from Shane’s gorgeous face, streetlights shining on the deep dimple in his left cheek that hinted at easy smiles and quick comebacks. “I was in the neighborhood.”
Ignoring the lurch of my stomach, I jerked my chin at his gleaming sports car blocking the fire hydrant at the curb. “Bad call. Too much time down here and you might need a new ride.”
His full lips twitched, telling me that’s exactly what he’d come for.
Indignation pricked at my temples, and I stepped back inside the small vestibule of my apartment building. “I’m not your next ride.”
Shane grabbed the door, his booted foot blocking it from closing. “Did I say you were?”
“You didn’t have to.”
He sighed. “Look, can we start over? I drove here because I didn’t like the way we left things, okay? I didn’t mean to offend you, to send you running off in the other direction.”
I eyed him skeptically, not buying that the hottest heartthrob on the planet had followed me home solely to issue some sort of mea culpa. But regardless of his reasons, I just wanted to go back upstairs. This night was way more than I could handle, and it needed to end. “Fine. All is forgiven. You can go home with a clear conscience.”
The bitter laugh gurgling from Shane’s throat scraped at
my nerves, tapping a well of empathy I didn’t realize I still had.
“Don’t know that I have one of those anymore, and even if I did, clear is about the last way I’d describe it.” There was a rawness to his voice that had nothing to do with Shane’s singing abilities, a serrated edge that hinted of past hurts to rival even my own, that touched me somewhere deep. Somewhere familiar. I let go of the door, trying to get a read on the man beneath the grit and gloss that was Shane Hawthorne, rock star.
His burning eyes locked onto mine, flaring briefly. For a second I caught a glimpse of vulnerability in him, an openness. But then they went dark, his chiseled bone structure settling into an impenetrable wall once more.
Shane raked a hand through the famously rugged hair that framed his face like a lion’s mane. Paired with his luminous topaz eyes, he bore a vague resemblance to Mufasa, surveying his domain with a wary kind of confidence. When Rolling Stone proclaimed Shane Hawthorne the new King of Rock, they had definitely gotten it right.
He crossed his arms over his chest, shirtsleeves riding up his forearms to offer another glimpse of the ink marking his skin. “Maybe I just wanted to see if you taste as good as you look.” This time Shane’s voice wasn’t raw, and the words coming from his mouth felt practiced, like he’d used them before. Often.
Shane hadn’t asked a question, but I answered it anyway. By slamming the door in his face.
Except that his foot was still in the way, so it bounced off his boot and I had to stagger back to avoid being clipped by the rebound.
Flustered, my gaze landed on the man planted in front of me.
The grin started at the corners of Shane’s lips, pulling them into a crooked smile before his full-bellied laugh wrapped itself around me. I covered my own mouth, not wanting to laugh with him. But it was no use. His mirth was contagious.
As quick as it came, the lighthearted moment disappeared, leaving us silently staring at each other. The invisible current between our bodies sparked, electricity burning off the oxygen and leaving me light-headed. I had the strange sense that he was just as surprised to be here as I had been to find him at my door.
Finally I found my voice. “Why are you really here, Shane?”
He gave a long blink, then shrugged. “No place else I wanted to be.”
The blunt sincerity of Shane’s answer was enough to make me swoon, but the way he was looking at me, like I held the key to a mystery he’d been trying to solve his whole life, was the knockout punch. “That’s…sweet.”
His soft chuckle floated on the charged air between us. “Never been called that before.”
“Maybe you should try deserving it now and then.”
“Nah. Not good for my image.” He glanced up and down the block, then turned back to me. “Can I come in?”
Fighting the urge to nod, I gave a slow shake of my head. “No. I don’t think that would be smart.”
“No?”
“Yes. I mean—no. Definitely no.”
“A hard no?”
Very hard. This time I didn’t trust myself to speak, instead drawing my lips inward and biting them as I blinked at Shane. “Mmm-hmm.” I was already shattered. I didn’t need anyone—especially not the man in front of me—shaking up the pieces I was barely holding together.
“How about a walk? Would you at least go for a walk with me?”
“A walk?”
“Yeah.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
In my Intro to Psych class I’d learned that one of the surest ways to get a yes from someone was to simply keep asking questions. Everyone relented eventually—more often than not, after only two tries. Apparently I was no different, caving like a cheap tent at the second gust of wind. “Um, okay.” Stuffing Piper’s dress into the wall-mounted mailbox assigned to my apartment, I eased out from behind the door. “Just a walk, right?”
Shane pulled a baseball cap from the back pocket of his jeans and pulled it over his head, lowering the brim so I could barely see his eyes. “Scout’s honor.”
I rebuffed the pledge. “Don’t even pretend to be a Boy Scout.” It came out more harshly than I intended.
For a moment, his smile dropped, lips turning down at the corners. “We’re all just pretending, Delaney.”
Chapter Four
Shane
Delaney was right. I’d never been in the Scouts. That would have required money, and at least a shred of parental interest. I’d struck out on both counts.
But my shitty childhood was the last thing on my mind as Delany tucked her keys inside the waistband of a pair of pants that clung to every one of her delicate curves. She joined me on the sidewalk, regarding my baseball cap skeptically. “Does that thing usually work?”
“Sometimes.” Rolling my shoulders in a half-hearted shrug, I started walking. “We’ll see.”
Every guy we passed eyed Delaney, my right hand curling into a fist as they lingered over her full breasts bouncing beneath the thin fabric of her shirt, fingers twitching with the need to knock their hungry stares right off their faces.
By the time we reached the end of the block, we’d passed a tiny bodega, a hookah bar, a strip club, and a fortune-teller. “Interesting neighborhood. Do you like it here?”
“Sometimes.”
The slight quiver in Delaney’s voice made me hesitant to press for more. Instead I stepped closer, enfolding her hand within my own. I might as well have been holding napalm. Energy from the contact raced up my arms, singing through my veins. Girls like Delaney shouldn’t be walking down dark, dank L.A. streets with guys like me. I was just as decrepit as any of the buildings rising above us. And yet here she was, her tiny fingers interlaced with mine, flip-flops echoing off the dirty pavement.
After a few blocks, a trio of drunk girls stumbled through a door, surrounded by a verbal cloud of off-key voices. I made a face, rubbing at my ears. “What the hell is that?”
Delaney stopped, an impish grin stretched across her full lips, aquamarine eyes gleaming. “It’s a karaoke bar.”
“People really go to those places?”
“We’re in Koreatown. There’s at least a dozen of them around here.”
The door swung open again, more awful music polluting the air. “I think my ears are bleeding.”
Delaney looked thrilled. “We should totally go inside.”
I shook my head. “No way. The second I open my mouth, everyone will livestream it and the place will be mobbed.”
She deflated, pink toes kicking at a discarded cigarette butt. “Oh. I hadn’t thought about that.”
Why would she? Delaney still had her privacy, a luxury I’d traded away a long time ago. I didn’t regret it. The perks of celebrity were pretty damn hard to beat, but there were occasional moments like these when it would have been nice not to be recognized.
The dejected slump of Delaney’s shoulders was killing me though. I barely knew this girl, but when her smile disappeared it was as if someone had stolen the sun. “I can’t sing. But that doesn’t mean you can’t.”
“Me? I can’t sing.”
“Says who?”
“No one. Because I know well enough to leave it to the professionals.”
I tipped my chin at the blackened window with neon lettering. “Those are definitely not professionals.”
“But—”
“How about we make a deal? You sing a song for me, and later I’ll sing one for you.”
A confused frown pulled at her delicately arched brows. “I thought you said—”
“I can’t sing here. But I’ll let you pick any song, songs even, and I’ll serenade you with a private, a cappella concert. What do you say?”
Delaney nibbled at her lower lip, each gentle bite of the sensitive flesh sending waves of lust ricocheting inside my jeans. Her shallow nod was all I needed to tug on the door handle and give her a slight push.
Once inside, the music was even worse than I’d expected. But the place was dark as a cave, except
for a small stage with a couple singing a duet, “Crazy in Love,” the music video playing on a screen behind them. I would have given the contents of my bank account for a pair of earplugs. Beyoncé and Jay-Z they were not.
There were several free tables, and I led Delaney to one in the back corner, pointing to a booth near the stage, with a huge binder open on the counter. “I think you sign up over there.”
Her eyes were huge pools in her face. “You really expect me to go up there?”
I nodded. “Yep. I really do.”
“I think I need a drink first.”
It wasn’t long ago that I needed a drink just to get out of bed in the morning. I flagged down a waitress, keeping my head low. After we placed our order, Delaney begrudgingly gave her name to the guy in the booth. “You didn’t look through the book,” I said when she returned.
“I already knew which song I wanted.”
The couple was replaced by a thin older man sporting glasses and a sweater-vest who launched into a halfway decent imitation of Eminem. “Yeah? What are you going to sing?”
Our drinks arrived, some fruity concoction for Delaney and a beer for me. She took a nervous gulp. “You’ll find out when I get up there, if I don’t wimp out.”
“You won’t.”
She gave a sad, disparaging smile. “And you got that impression when I ran away from you at Travis’s house?”
“Actually, I did. Anyone else would have been perfectly willing to duck behind the nearest tree with me.” I lifted the bottle to my mouth, not because I wanted a sip of beer, but to keep myself from reaching across the table and devouring her. “But not you.”
Delaney Fucking Fraser.
There was something different about her. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Maybe it was just that I’d been living in a bubble for the past decade or so, and Delaney only seemed different because she wasn’t a Nothing but Trouble groupie or an L.A. wannabe starlet. But I didn’t think so.