Dirty Lyrics

by Lana Sky

  “Damn.” I thought about texting him and asking for it back, but that would have meant breaking my own rule; I didn’t need anything from him.

  With a sigh, I decided to just suffer the bite into my savings and pay for the dress myself.

  After entering my bedroom, I jumped into the shower, surprisingly reluctant to wash the memories of last night from my skin. I could still feel him. Taste him.

  Jason Daniels emanated from every pore.

  A mouth full of toothpaste didn’t wash him out. A layer of perfume didn’t erase his musk. A skintight dress and a pair of “hooker” boots made me feel more exposed than his thin flannel shirt had.

  I should have tossed the damn thing. Better yet, I should have walked out of his hotel room wearing only my bra and panties with my head held high. I’d done it before. I still don’t know what had made me fish it out from underneath the couch and put it on—what possessed me still, to hide it at the back of my closet rather than toss it into the trash.

  I had never been the sentimental type who “borrowed” a lover’s clothing as a souvenir.

  Ugh. Fuck Jason Daniels.

  I tried to wash the bastard out of my brain with a cup of black coffee picked up on my way to work. Once I reached the office, I charged in on razor-sharp heels, ready to take the bull by the horns and put everything else out of my mind.

  As I passed her desk on my way to my office, Bridget greeted me with nothing more than a wary smile.

  I should have known then that the shit was about to hit the fan.

  Surprisingly, Bret was already inside, waiting for me.

  The moment I came in, he took one look at me and his eyes narrowed into slits. “You’ve fucking screwed us,” he declared without so much as a good morning.

  I paused, with my latte poised halfway to my lips. “Huh?”

  “Jason fucking Daniels,” Bret snarled and slammed a slip of paper onto my desk. “He pulled out. Dropped you as his rep. What the hell did you do?”

  Jason.

  Dropped.

  Hell.

  The room started spinning. My coffee slipped through my fingers and crashed to the floor, spilling scalding liquid at my feet. For a moment, I almost couldn’t breathe through a wave of confusion so thick, it swamped me.

  “What…what the hell are you talking about?”

  “This came for you this morning,” Bret hissed, jabbing his finger at the offending slip of paper. “Read it.”

  On autopilot, I sidestepped the pool of steaming coffee on the floor and approached the desk. The document lying there had been notarized and was compiled almost entirely of legal jargon—but after only a few seconds of reading, I got the general gist: termination of business relationship…

  “Son of a bitch!”

  I turned, barely registering the rest of Bret’s bellowed tirade—something about me being fired or the end of the world.

  I didn’t care.

  My vision was tinged red by rage. Poor Bridget had to leap out of my way as I barreled through the front doors out into the mid-morning rush and flagged down the first cab I saw.

  “Miss! I can’t allow you past this—”

  I easily sidestepped the security guard blocking my path and took the stairs two at a time. A part of me liked to think that the man was Jason’s security detail sent to cover his cowardly ass—though his appearance might have had something to do with the fact that I had barged into the hotel unannounced and out for blood.

  It took me only minutes to reach his room and only seconds of banging on the door before it opened.

  “Ten minutes,” Jason said. It was a split-second before I noticed the cell phone he held pressed against his ear. “I need to speak to you. I know it’s the last minute. Okay.”

  He hung up and stowed the device within his pocket. I took a step back as my gaze took him in.

  He didn’t look like some cowardly asshole. His eyes burned from beneath a fringe of ebony lashes. The muscles in his chest strained the thin fabric of his gray shirt.

  He looked…angry—as if I had been the one to renege on a contractual arrangement that could decide his entire career.

  “What the hell?” I demanded—waving the termination document in his face—suddenly so breathless that it was a struggle just to get the words out. “A crummy one-night stand and you pull out?”

  I hated the hitch in my voice that betrayed the lie; sex with him had been a tad bit better than crummy.

  Mind-blowing was more like it.

  “Was that your plan all along?” I added, gritting my teeth so hard that my jaw ached. “Play the innocent country boy, then turn tail and run once you got your fucking kicks?”

  My voice ricocheted off the walls of the hallway. Anyone within a twenty-foot radius would have been able to hear, but I didn’t exactly give a damn about making a scene. I didn’t give a damn about bad publicity.

  I didn’t give a damn about anything other than proving to myself that his rejection didn’t fucking hurt so much.

  I crave you.

  I need you.

  “Fuck you,” I snarled out loud when he remained silent.

  Anger coursed through my bloodstream, blinding me to everything else—like the fact that his jaw was tightening dangerously with every word I said.

  “Newsflash, Jason. If all you wanted was an easy fuck, you didn’t have to—”

  “Get in.”

  Abruptly, he stood back, leaving a sliver of space between him and the doorway. His head jerked, full of authority, and I had to swallow down a nervous comeback.

  I wasn’t afraid.

  Tossing my hair over my shoulder, I stalked forward and roughly pushed past him into the main room.

  By now, half of the city had to know where I was.

  “What?” I hissed, whirling around to face him. He had closed the door, effectively sealing us inside, and I don’t know why my stomach dropped at the thought.

  “You rethought the direction of your album?” I asked. “You chickened out because of my reputation after all? You’re just a fucking coward? Give me some excuse, you bastard, and I hope you fucking choke on it—”

  “I couldn’t do it,” Jason said, slicing through my tirade.

  “Do what?” I spat. “Be a man with some common decency and not screw me around like some stupid little toy—”

  “This!” His hand shot out between us. You. Me. “I can’t have sex with someone and then pretend like it doesn’t matter.”

  The guttural tenor of his voice shook me to the core.

  “I-It doesn’t,” I insisted, stunned. “We had a one-night stand Jason. That’s all—”

  “No, it wasn’t.” In an instant, he was in front of me, forcing my body into a corner. His gaze held mine mercilessly until I couldn’t see anything but blue. “Don’t you lie to me and try to pretend that what happened between us meant nothing.”

  I didn’t like the way he said that. Nothing.

  “I told you I don’t do more. It was just sex,” I said thickly. “That’s all—”

  He recoiled as if struck, and the expression on his face hit me like a kick to the stomach. “It wasn’t just sex to me, and I can’t work with you and pretend like it was. You’ve already pushed me too far. I should have never…I can’t do this.”

  “I pushed you too far?”

  One second I was standing three feet away from him and the next I was in his face. My nails dug into the cotton of his shirt, and I seized as much of it as I could and shoved. He barely moved an inch, but that was beside the point.

  “Why the hell do you seem so determined to get inside my head?” I demanded. “What the hell do you want from me?”

  “You.” It was such a simple, heated confession. I found myself stumbling back as if he’d slapped me. “I want you.”

  “What? W-Why?”

  I couldn’t understand it. Did he have a fetish for complex women who weren’t interested in a relationship in the slightest?

  In the
end, his answer was simple. “You inspire me.”

  I scoffed. “Don’t be melodramatic. Sappy pickup lines don’t work on me.”

  Without responding, Jason took two steps toward the coffee table and snatched a notebook from the surface. For the first time, I noticed the crumpled balls of paper that formed a trail across the floor, as if someone had been struggling to place their thoughts on paper for hours…before finally breaking through.

  “Here.”

  He approached me and shoved the notebook into my hands. Forcing down a dry swallow, I scanned the page.

  The moment I met you, I knew I was lost.

  And temptation is often not worth its cost.

  Together we can rise above,

  Elevate from the ashes of the past.

  A simple title was scribbled across the top of the page: “Elevate.”

  “Another song?” I managed to rasp, glancing up to meet his gaze.

  He nodded. “A new one. But not the first one about you.”

  “This isn’t about me,” I insisted, shoving the notebook in his direction.

  Men didn’t write songs about me—at least not ones that weren’t riddled with profanity and involved a line similar to “psychotic, evil bitch.”

  “This isn’t about me—”

  “I hate to break it to you, Abigail,” Jason began, taking a step in my direction, “but I wrote the damn song. It is about you.”

  All at once, he took the book from my hands and tossed it onto the floor. One of his hands cupped the side of my throat while his eyes bore into my own.

  “You drive me fucking crazy, you know that?”

  I tried to pull away. “You don’t even know me.”

  “I want to.” He seized my chin with his free hand, forcing me to face him again. “I want to get to know you. Come on tour with me.”

  I sucked in a breath. My eyes went wide. I laughed.

  “You’ve got to be joking.”

  “Not joking, sweetheart.” He leaned in close, bringing his lips within a hair’s breadth of mine. “Come on tour with me.”

  I recoiled, pressing my back flat against the wall while my insides turned to jelly. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I have to work.”

  “You’ll be working with me.”

  Something told me that if Jason and I got anywhere near the enclosed vicinity of a tour bus, we would either kill each other or repeat that scenario in the hotel hallway.

  Over and over again…

  “Let me go—”

  I succeeded in wrenching away from his grip, but he only let me go so far.

  “You’re just afraid.”

  I slowed down and then came to a stop all together near the door of the suite. “Jason…” Barely five minutes with him and I already felt more exhausted than if I’d survived a full-on battle with Bret. “Let’s not do this again.” There was a slightly desperate edge to my voice that I didn’t like. “Please. You wanted me for your album. You got me, for your album.”

  “I’m not asking you to fall in love with me, Abigail.” He almost sounded amused by the thought.

  Love. The word made me cringe.

  “Don’t even joke—”

  “You said you trusted me.”

  I rolled my eyes, irritated that he would choose to throw those words right back in my face. “I trusted you not to give me an STD, not to…”

  “Not to what?” He prodded. “Not to screw you over? I think you’ll find that those two are in the very same category.”

  I gritted my teeth so hard my jaw ached. “That’s not what I meant—”

  “Then what did you mean exactly?”

  Son of a bitch.

  I whirled around to face him. “Fine!” I hissed, my voice echoing off the walls. “We go on tour together. Then what?”

  “We go on tour together.” He made it sound so damn harmless. So easy.

  Leave the office—your life—to go on tour with a man you barely even know. What could possibly go wrong? Not that Bret would give a damn, a part of me argued. I could have flown to Timbuktu, but as long as I maintained internet access and Jason as a client, Bret would be satisfied.

  But that wasn’t the point.

  “No.” I shook my head. “Touring with you wasn’t a part of our contract.”

  “So, now you follow the rules?” He was smiling, even though the expression didn’t reach his eyes. They glowed such a dark shade of blue that I thought I might drown in them if I didn’t turn away.

  “I follow my rules,” I said softly, and every single tenet I lived by warned me not to give in.

  “What are you so afraid of, Abby?” I shivered as the pad of his finger traced the outline of my shoulder. He had come up behind me without my realizing it, and the heat of his breath basted my neck. “Tell me.”

  “Nothing.” The word hitched at the back of my throat, and I pulled away, turning to face him.

  For a second, I allowed my gaze to take him in. Dark eyes honed in on my every movement. Unreadable expression. A slight row of scratch marks over his right forearm, displayed so carelessly by his short-sleeved shirt.

  My marks.

  “Fine.” My words came in a rush. “One stop—only to cement our working relationship. I expect your revised proposal to be at my office by tonight.”

  “Tonight,” was all he said.

  I turned on my heel before he could stop me and swiftly headed for the door.

  My heart pounded, threatening to burst from my chest, and it took everything I had in me not to look back. I hardly noticed the woman that brushed past me on my way to the elevator, seemingly lost within her own dilemma.

  I knew the feeling. The only thought to cross my mind was…

  I was going on tour with Jason Daniels.

  I was going on tour with Jason Daniels, and…it didn’t feel like the world’s worst decision.

  At least not yet.

  I staggered out of Jason’s hotel building feeling weightless. Drunk.

  A part of me was worried that I might have been having a stroke. Or a heart attack.

  For the first time in years, I had given a man the reins. I let him set the pace, and it felt…

  Strange.

  The surreal feeling haunted me as I stood on the curb, too stunned to flag down a cab. I could only linger, as the wind tousled my hair, and go through every single word exchanged. Only when a cab finally slowed before me did I realize that I’d left my purse in Jason’s suite.

  My stomach flipped at the thought of going back, but I forced myself to return to the lobby. No security attempted to stop me this time as I took the elevator up and headed down the hall. Once I finally reached the door to Jason’s suite, I was disgusted to find that I could barely curl my fingers into a fist.

  I knocked just once.

  He didn’t answer, but the door was ajar, so I pushed it open, knowing that he couldn’t have snuck out within the last ten minutes. Just as I took a step over the threshold, Jason’s voice echoed back to me.

  “We need to talk…”

  I froze. He sounded more serious than usual, and I wondered if he was on the phone again—until I smelled it. The scent of a women’s perfume lingered over the air, crisp and delicate.

  A feminine voice, sweeter than honey, replied to him—one that sounded eerily familiar. “About?”

  As if my body were controlled by an outside force, I found myself boldly surging forward to find Jason standing at the opposite end of the room, before the row of windows. His back was to a woman sitting on the chair nearby, and her head of bright red curls needed no introduction.

  Dixie.

  “It’s time, Dee,” Jason said gravely while turning to face her. “I’ve thought about it for a while now, and…I think we reached that point where we can talk about it. We both know it’s over. Hell it has been for a while.”

  Dixie sucked in an audible breath. “Jason—”

  He cut her off with four little words that
sliced into me like knives. “I want an annulment.”

  The story continues in:

  Rhythm and Muse

  Coming soon!

  Connect

  Also by Lana Sky

  Drain Me

  When diagnosed with a fatal illness at the age of twenty six, Eleanor Gray is resigned to her fate—at least until the enigmatic Dublin Helos appears and makes her an offer she knows she should refuse:

  Life or Death?

  With a decision as harmless as checking the wrong box on a mysterious questionnaire, Ellie is plunged into a dangerous world where souls are sold to the highest bidder and pleasure is fueled by pain.

  The rules of this new life are simple: submit everything—mind, body and soul. But the further Ellie falls under Dublin’s control, the more she comes to realize that it’s not just her sanity at stake, but her heart and a whole lot of blood too.

  E-BOOK DESIGN AND FORMAT

  E-book conversion by Rock Star Reads digital division

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