Always Box Set

by Ward, Susan

  Shit, why is he staring at me that way and why is he pissed? Experience dealing with Alan tells me not to hang around here to find out why.

  I hurry down the metal stairs and start weaving my way through the crowded corridor. Inside the green room I freeze. Jeez, Jenkins wasn’t exaggerating. Everyone with a hand in Alan Manzone’s career is here. I search the gathering for a friendly face, and my gaze settles on Sandy Harris.

  Not exactly a friend, more likely a foe since I discovered Sandy lied to me and I don’t really work for him, but he is the least intimidating exec here.

  I cross the room to the buffet table. “I should be furious with you, do you know that?” I say at Sandy’s back. The strongest defense is a strong offense. Right?

  Sandy chokes on his scotch and turns to face me. His eyes lose a measure of their persistent good humor. “Whoa, Linda. Before you hit me, let me explain.”

  I cross my arms, arching a brow. “I shouldn’t give you the time of day.”

  “No, you probably shouldn’t. But one question. Would you have stayed with the tour after the first week if you’d known you work for Manny?”

  I don’t want him to divert me from my indignation, but to my disappointment I think back to my first week here and reluctantly admit that if I had known I work for Alan I would have hot-footed it out of here.

  I wag a finger at Sandy. “Don’t try to get around me. Don’t try to handle me. It was a rotten thing you did, getting me to accept a job under false pretenses. And I want a straight answer. Where does that leave me?”

  He looks startled by the question. “I gave you my word. Anything you want if you managed to keep this tour on track. You’ve done that, Linda. You’ve done a brilliant job with the band and handling Manny.”

  I ignore the compliment. “When you gave me your word, you also said I was working for you. Now I discover practically everyone in the music industry in the UK works for Alan Manzone.”

  Sandy gives a short laugh. “Hyperbole, Linda. Don’t start losing that head-on-your-shoulders attitude now. Drama does not become you.” He sharply raises a brow. “And I don’t work for him. I needed to raise capital. He invested. He’s strictly hands-off. That’s my agreement with Manny, and it’s worked out very well. I don’t work for him and neither do you.”

  I feel a slight measure of relief, but everything sounded different when Alan explained how things were and I’m not sure if I should let down my guard just yet.

  “The job in London is yours, Linda, if you want it.” Then, boyishly cute grin in place, he adds, “That is if you want to still work for me.”

  I maintain my cool surface expression, but it’s hard to with how suggestively Sandy Harris said that.

  I give him a pointed look. “Work for you, yes. Him; no. Never. Not in this lifetime.”

  Sandy laughs and his grin deepens. “I guess now wouldn’t be the time to ask you to go out on the road with them again in January.”

  I shake my head at him. “Whoa ho, don’t even think it. Don’t even ask.” I study the scene in the room. “What the heck is going on?”

  Sandy’s brows hitch up, surprised. “You haven’t heard?”

  My eyes widen. “Heard what?”

  “The guys get four months off, back to the studio, hopefully to create something, then they are off to the States. Twelve months opening for Destruction.”

  “Destruction?” I say, stunned.

  “Yep. The band is on its way. January US, and then—who knows?” He looks a little shocked himself at how things are working out for Alan. “If the US tour is a success, it will be in large part because of you, Linda. You have really become the balance with these guys. They wouldn’t be where they are so quickly if you hadn’t pulled them together.”

  I roll my eyes, but internally I’m glowing from the compliment. “Don’t blow smoke up my ass, Sandy. That doesn’t become you.”

  His gaze sharpens. “No, Linda. It’s the truth.” He smiles. “We’ll talk when you get back to London. The job in the PR department is yours, but come January the guys would like you to go out on the road with them again. I would like you to go out on the road with them again. I know it isn’t what we talked about. But it is considerably more money and definitely a big opportunity if promotion is a career you’d like to stick with.”

  I’m stunned. “You want me to stay assistant road manager for the US tour? I can’t go out on the road. I’m starting school in a month.”

  Sandy smiles, amused. “Give it some thought, Linda. You don’t need to decide now. We’ll talk when you get back to London.”

  The atmosphere of the room shifts abruptly and is suddenly filled with the loudness and energy of an exploding rocket. I turn to see the band enter the room, sweaty and long-limbed bodies wired with unspent adrenaline. Flash bulbs explode from all sides, and everyone starts to move, closing in on Alan Manzone.

  The circle around him becomes an enthusiastic, talking, laughing horde. Even Sandy has rushed from me to join in the mob around Alan.

  I’m about to slip from the room when I feel him watching me. I whirl back toward Alan and those black eyes lock on me and my heart stills. He is watching me in that way he has, like he’s hunting prey, and then I notice the glint of anger in his eyes as well.

  Everything inside me begins to twirl and the voice inside my head warns I should make a fast retreat without daring to talk to him.

  I start making my way toward the exit and he closes the space between us, standing between me and the door. He doesn’t say anything and my heartbeat turns into a frantic rhythm.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t come tonight,” he says in a tight, clipped way. “Don’t ever do that again, treat me as though I’m nothing. In the least you should treat me like a job that’s important to you, because I am.”

  My body stiffens. Crap, he’s furious. Somehow I’ve struck a nerve in him, and the way he’s staring at me is unsettling.

  I arch a brow as I struggle not to betray how unnerved I am by him. “Don’t bark at me, kid. Obviously I came for the show. I’m here.”

  For some reason that kicks up his anger a notch. He grabs my arm, dragging me from the room and steering me through the packed corridor, mindless of the sharply fixed stares following our trek. He pulls me into the band dressing room, slams the door and releases me.

  Alan plants his hands on either side of me against the door, the heat of his body surrounding me without contact. I try to move back, but there is no way to put space between us. I raise my eyes slowly to his face and I wish I hadn’t. His eyes are flashing and hard, and his expression warns me that this is a deadly serious moment—at least for him.

  “How dare you embarrass me that way?” I hiss, cautious and unsure, but my voice feverish. “Just because I work for you doesn’t give you the right to drag me out of the green room and make a fool of me in front of everyone.”

  “If you’re going to behave like a cunt, I’ll treat you like a cunt,” he says harshly. “Maybe you’ll figure out a few things faster if I handle you in a manner you understand.”

  I move a hand to slap him but he stops my arm midair, and before I can figure out my next play, he flattens me against him. The currents running through his flesh are scorching, and he molds himself so intimately against me that I can feel every detail of his body through our clothing. His mouth crashes into mine, his lips moving in urgent demand, his tongue flooding me as his fingers run across my trembling flesh in a never-ending flow making every inch of my flesh grow hot.

  Whatever I imagined kissing Alan Manzone would be like—mortified, I admit, I have imagined it more than I want to—it was not this. Erotic and consuming, a total onslaught against the senses, carnality and tenderness blending in waves impossible to fight, turning my body into an uneasy, alternating flow between arousal and fear.

  In dismay, I realize I’m kissing him back and my body is answering the moves of his pelvis in a hungry, insistent way.
I jerk out of his kiss, turning my face away from his.

  “Let me go, Manny. Stop this,” I whisper raggedly.

  The bulge straining within his tight leather pants pushes into me and I reel.

  His cheek is pressed against mine, his lips close to my ear. “You don’t want me to let you go. You want me as much as I want you. I knew when Sandy brought me the report on you, we’d be incredible together. It’s why I hired you. You’re the person I need to make this all work for me. I brought you to the UK to be part of everything I’m doing. To be part of something instead of wasting your life hanging onto to the pieces of Jackson Parker. You can have everything with me. Everything you want. Yours and not the legacy of a man who has already lived his life and can only offer you memories and stories of what was and never something you experience for yourself. I’m offering you the opportunity to be what you want to be. A success in your own right. A part of what I’m building.”

  What? I stare up at him, my thoughts snapping because that heated speech was the last thing I expected from Alan. And then a fragment—I want you—floods me with anger and humiliation.

  “Your offering me the opportunity to be what I want to be? And all I have to do to get that is fuck you in a dressing room?” I counter scathingly. “Excuse me, Manny, but this isn’t exactly a novelty to me and we both know where this leaves me. You must think I’m an idiot if you think I’ll fall for a slick line and a fast fuck.”

  He jerks my chin so I face him. His eyes begin to flash. “I think you’re an idiot because can’t see what’s right in front of you or understand what it is I’m offering you. What it is I feel for you. You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t care for you, Linda.”

  He says that harshly, arrogantly, and yet somehow it’s a turn-on. My limbs go weak, and I am pulsing like the beat of a marching band in my sex. I am terrifyingly aware of the feel of him, the taste and the urgency of his body and my own. Out of nowhere I’m nearly out of my mind with the want of him.

  I fight to maintain some level of external control. “I don’t know what kind of messages you think I’ve been sending out, but it’s not that I want this. If you’ve misunderstood, I’m sorry, but an affair with you isn’t what I’m looking for. It’s not why I took the job and came here.”

  “I’m not offering you an affair.” His fingers close around my jaw. “I’m offering you me.”

  And before I can break free he is kissing me again and everything inside me rages to match the careening want of his desire. I want to resist, but his mouth punishing against mine moves me at his will, reminding me of my sex-starved flesh and wounded heart, fragile for days because I can’t reach Jack. And in a place deep inside me, my inner woman is exploding with excitement that this amazing guy is ragged and wanting me.

  He pins me against the wall, his lower body grinding into me, his mouth an unrelenting seduction. I mold into him, meeting the dance of his tongue.

  His mouth lifts, his panting drowning out my own rapid breathing as he rubs his cock into me.

  “I stared at you from the stage, watching me, wanting me,” he whispers against my skin, “and all I could think about was being with you.”

  He nips at my neck and I arch upward into him. His lips roam my body down to the swell of my breasts, and I am yielding, breathy and exited. He is on fire with an odd angry desperation to fuck me, and there is that girl locked inside me, even after Jack, who craves rough, brutal, emotionally void fucking, and in distress I note I am more than a little tempted.

  Straining away from him, I say the first words that form in my head. “I thought you only screwed two women at a time. That you didn’t want emotional complications. We should stop this now since I have no intention of doing the group thing.”

  “With you, I want only you.”

  He brushes against my sex with his swelling cock, and I grow more wet and pulsing there. My heart commands me to run from the room, but my body refuses to leave.

  I don’t want this, but somehow I can’t stop it. I’m only vaguely aware that he’s moved us to the couch and he’s set me there. I stare up at him, expecting him to cover me with his body, desperate for the feel of him, but he hovers just out of distance, his gaze slowly roaming me in a way that intensifies my arousal.

  He takes off his shirt and I can hardly take in air. Every inch of him is perfection. Smooth lines, defined muscles, and tanned skin. In an effort to regain a measure of control, I shut my lids.

  “Don’t close your eyes.” His voice sounds strained.

  I stare up at him as he takes hold of my ankle and slips off my pump. I suck in a deep breath. He puts a kiss on my arch and then reaches for my other leg. I hear the shoe dropping to the floor and the feel of his mouth against my ankle.

  His hands slowly brush up my legs. “I don’t want you to miss even a drop of what we can be,” he murmurs before his mouth descends over my cunt, and even with my body encased in my pants, the first touch of him there nearly makes me come.

  He kisses the inside of my thigh as his fingers deftly unfasten my pants. A light tug lowers them from my hips and his mouth makes a kissing trek from hip bone to hip bone.

  Deep down I know this is wrong even as I let him push up my shirt and take a nipple between his teeth. I arch into the sucks and tugs of his mouth, and my body moves against the hand massaging my throbbing sex.

  My eyes drift closed. I want so badly to touch him, to taste him… I am snapped from my thoughts by his fingers harshly clutching my chin. My eyes fly open.

  “I’ve already told you. Don’t close your eyes,” he commands. “Don’t look away. I want you to watch me make love to you.”

  His voice and the expression in his black eyes brings my careening senses to an abrupt halt. Every emotion inside Alan shoots through my veins like an electric current. My passion-frenzied cells lose all sensation as I finally understand what Alan thinks we’re doing. Or rather what he wants it to be.

  Oh God…he doesn’t want sex. That’s not what he’s after. It’s more dangerous than that. Alan is starving, desperate and wanting, to be loved. He wants to seduce me into loving him. But I can’t love him. I love Jack…

  I spring from the couch, avoiding his arms and jerking my clothes back into place. “I can’t do this.”

  I start to move toward the door and he whirls me back around to face him. “What’s wrong? Why has everything changed?”

  He sounds anxious and unexpectedly young in a way that makes my heart ache for him. I can’t look at him.

  I latch onto the first thought I can form in my head in an effort to gently explain my abrupt change. “I can’t give you what you want, Alan. I might have been able to do this if it was only a fuck, but I’m not even sure of that right now. But I do know that I can’t give you what you’re looking for. That I’m not the girl for you. I can’t love you. Not ever. I’m in love with another man and always will be.”

  Before he can answer, I dart out of the room and rush toward the theater exit. Tonight may cost me my job, everything I’ve worked for, but I don’t care. I need to put as much distance between me and Alan Manzone as possible.

  I’m in love with Jack. Thank God, I stopped before making the biggest mistake of my life. But I went far enough tonight to realize that a piece of me has started to love Alan as well.

  Everything inside me is running frantic and loose when I reach the hotel. I cut through the crowded lobby, bypassing the elevators and take the stairs two at a time to the third floor.

  I’m distraught beyond composure by what I nearly let happen. How could my body betray me to the point that I nearly fucked Alan Manzone? How could I let that happen?

  I’m confused and in disarray in a way I’ve never experienced before. A part of me wants to run back to California. A part of me wants to return to the theater and Alan. The look in his eyes when I left him. Only a woman with no heart could be unmoved by him.

  Inside the hotel room I freeze.


  Jack whirls away from the window to face me. His brilliant blue eyes lock with mine. “I have three days, baby. It’s all I could manage, but they’re yours if you want them. Something in your voice the last time we spoke told me to come here. I’m sorry I hung up on you. I’m sorry I didn’t call you. It took some doing to get here, but I didn’t want the next time we spoke to be on the phone. I wanted to be able to look into your eyes and tell you there is no one else. There will never be anyone else. I am in love with you, Linda.”

  That dear, sweet wonderful man. I step into his arms and he folds me protectively against his chest. I don’t know why, but between kisses I start to cry. And without another word, Jack takes me to bed.

  ~~~

  I lie in Jack’s arms, nestled as closely into him as I can be, and I never want to let go of him again. For the first time in many months, everything in me is in perfect order. I didn’t fully comprehend how much I missed him until that moment he first touched me again.

  I kiss his chest. “I still can’t believe you’re here.”

  He brushes the hair back from my face. “I’ve been kicking myself for days over how I treated you. You deserved a little extra effort from me. I definitely did not deserve the welcoming you gave me.”

  Our eyes meet and I flush, the memories of last night moving warmly through my senses. I ease up on his chest to kiss him. “You deserved last night. You deserve more than last night. I was the one who was a bitch and fought with you. I don’t know why you are always the first one to apologize.”

  He touches his lips against my nose. “It doesn’t matter who is at fault and who makes up first. It only matters that someone does. I love you, Linda. I don’t want to lose you.”

  “I don’t want to lose you either, Jack.”

  He buries his lips in my hair. “Then come back to the States with me. Whatever you think we need to work through we’ll work through it better together. Last night made that abundantly clear to me. It should have made it clearer to you.”