He ducked his head, and his lips caressed her shoulder while he whispered, “Me. I’m always the one who performs.”
Okay, so maybe she could trust Alex’s charismatic alter ego, too.
Xan stroked her arm from her shoulder to her wrist. “Ready?”
She nodded, and he held her hand as he led her onto the stage.
Xan stayed beside her, keeping her upstage of him, which meant that he put his body between her and the ravenous crowd, and he held her fingertips as she settled in front of the keyboard.
The stage lights poured blinding white light over everything. Even her own hands on the piano keys paled in their brilliance, and the heat beating down from the lights felt like lying on searing asphalt in a dry summer.
Xan stepped forward as she adjusted her hands on the keys, considering her starting position. He grabbed a microphone off a stand. “Hello, Club Finale!”
The crowd roared, and Georgie could have sworn that her hair waved from the thousands of alcohol-laced breaths brushing her skin.
She kept her hands steady on the keyboard, holding the black and white keys in her mind and under her fingertips. She couldn’t freak. She couldn’t let Alex down.
“I’m Xan Valentine of Killer Valentine,” he said, his voice still raw from singing earlier. The crowd screamed another intoxicated blast of sound. “And Golden Unicorn has graciously allowed me time to sing one song while they get a drink.”
Some screaming, some booing, as the mindless, thousand-headed beast ate and digested that information.
“Joy, if you would.”
That must be her cue. Georgie played a lush, romantic intro section in the style of Rachmaninoff and segued into Alex’s song, “Alwaysland.”
When she looked up from her hands and the keys, Xan was smiling at her from the other side of the keyboard array. His dark eyes locked on hers as he raised the microphone to his mouth to sing.
Somehow, when he sang, his voice opened and became clear, even though he should have been hoarse.
He sang the whole song to her, holding her with his eyes every bit as much as if he had his arms wrapped around her. A small part of Georgie’s brain sent her the image of a mouse caught in a python’s coils, but mice struggled to escape.
The longer he sang, the more she stared into his encouraging eyes, warmth spread through her, and she felt herself smiling back at him, just like she had in Paris.
She didn’t really feel the transition, but at some point, the music that flowed out of her fingers and Xan’s voice melded in her mind and lifted her. The crowd became an ocean of sound and glory around them.
Her music swelled in her, and she gave it to Xan and the crowd.
And they sent the music back to her with their voices.
The song was over far too soon. She laid down the last few notes of the melody as Xan lowered the microphone to his heart. Her fingers hung in the air above the keys, somehow not shaking.
The crowd’s roar became a wall of fire and sound. Xan reached over the keyboards to her, and she set her fingers in his hand.
He led her to the front of the stage.
The blazing lights spiraled around her. Georgie faced the rioting crowd, and she and Xan Valentine took a bow.
CHEATING ON ALEX
Georgie
Xan led Georgie off the stage and she waited, dazed by the flashing stage lights, while he said goodbye to the other band members. The car with Adrien and Yvonne slid to a stop at the back entrance for the ride back to the hotel.
The short drive passed in the crunch of the tires on asphalt and the blur of oncoming headlights. Xan cradled her under his arm, his body warm and muscled beside her.
Yvonne outlined Xan’s schedule for the next day, including a drive to the next venue, personal appearances, radio interviews, and space booked for a short rehearsal because they had a night off.
Her words streamed past Georgie. Energy buzzed in her body, seeking a focus, but a shell built of the music and the crowd floated around her. She pressed her face against Xan’s thick chest, inhaling the last lemon whispers of his cologne under the smoke clinging to his black tee shirt.
From the driver’s seat, Adrien watched her through the rearview mirror. When she caught him watching her, he winked and looked back to the front windshield.
Yvonne walked with Xan and Georgie to the door of their suite, and then she trotted away to find her own room.
Inside the hotel suite, as soon as the door clicked shut behind Georgie, while she was still blinking at the sudden lights in the living room, Xan shoved her up against the door, his body hard against her, and drove his mouth against hers.
The energy turned and grabbed her. She clutched him around the neck, pulling him to her. He felt real. He felt solid. All the rest of the world had faded to insubstantial gossamer after the intensity of performing.
He forced his tongue past her lips and attacked hers, swirling and stroking, and he took her wrists from his neck and held her arms against the wall.
He tore his lips away, and passion sparked in his dark eyes. “You felt it tonight.”
She didn’t need to ask what he meant. “It was incredible out there.”
His broad chest expanded against her, breathing hard. “It’s better than heroin or anything else.”
“Why aren’t you insane when you come off the stage?”
His eyes searched hers. “I am. I feel like I could lift a car. I could fly if I tried hard enough. And I shove it all down every night rather than look like a lunatic.”
“I don’t think you’re a lunatic.” She wrenched one of her wrists out of grip, grabbed the back of his neck under the soft strands of his hair, and pressed her mouth against his.
He bent, reaching under the backs of her knees, and lifted her in his arms.
She almost protested because she was a grown woman and could walk, but Xan’s arms were so strong around her. He held her close to his chest, so Georgie wrapped her arms around his neck and kept kissing him.
In the bedroom, Xan dropped Georgie’s knees, and she slid down his chest to stand on her knees on the bed, feeling all his muscles under his black tee shirt with her palms. Alex’s chest was lean, and his defined abs stacked like bricks on his stomach, but Xan’s arms and chest felt burly under her hands.
Alex’s words came back to her as he had kissed her that morning: Always Alex.
She pushed hard, and Xan stumbled backward one step. His voice was still hoarse. “What’s wrong?”
She asked, “If we do this, is this cheating on Alex?”
“I’m Alex,” Xan panted. “I always have been. There’s no disconnect. There’s no dividing line. I’m Alexandre and Alex and Xan.” He stepped toward her again, grabbing her around her waist and grinding her hips against his. “And you want me every bit as much as I want you.”
Saying anything else would be lying, so Georgie pulled his face down to hers and kissed him again.
Xan reached around behind her, fumbling with the back of the dress and the wide ribbons that laced it up. Boris had called it “serving wench chic” when he had laced her into it.
Now, Xan’s fingers fumbled at the top, finding the bow and yanking it. He pried the bodice off her, shoving it down and off her feet, growling the whole time. His thumb snagged the side of her underwear and yanked those off, too.
Georgie tugged at Xan’s tee shirt until he stripped it over his head and peeled his jeans away, hopping on one foot to get the snug denim off. He clambered onto the bed, his expression frantic for her, and he gathered her to himself, his skin hot with the wild energy of the stage. He grabbed her all over, squeezing her ass and hips almost to the point of pain, but Georgie was so worked up from the crowd roaring back at her that she dug her fingernails into his shoulders.
He opened his mouth on her neck and bit down, not scraping his teeth, but a firm bite over her jugular and tendons. Pain sparked through the savage need spiraling through her, and she bit him back on his shoulde
r.
His hoarse gasp and hips twitching toward her drove her to bite down harder, and she licked his skin to soothe the sting.
Xan shoved her down on the hotel bed and used his teeth and strong fingers on her body—her breasts and her belly and her thighs—until she squirmed and panted, begging him for more. His fingers dipped between her legs and then slid over her wet skin.
He rolled off the bed and scrambled for his jeans, coming up with a foil packet, and ripped it open.
He shoved his thigh between her knees, grabbed her in his arms, and worked his way inside her. Georgie held onto his shoulders. He was big, proportional for a guy who was six-four, she figured, and she forced herself to relax and open to let him in.
His huge body trembled above her, not with cold like after a show, but like he was straining to not ram himself in. His shoulder and neck smelled like a trace of his citrus cologne and a hint of masculine warmth. Georgie felt him slip deeper, and his hips fit into hers.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he growled.
“That bitemark on my neck says otherwise,” she muttered.
Xan chuckled, a low, ominous sound. “I didn’t want to hurt you this time.”
He moved in her, slowly, curving above her and letting her completely open to him until her body pressed to meet his and her breath was ragged in her throat again.
Next to her ear, he said, “I want more of you.”
Georgie was half out of her mind, clutching him around the shoulders as his body moved in hers. “You have all of me.”
“Not yet.”
Still deep inside her, Xan pushed himself up, held her hips, and slid her body up his thighs to rest on his legs.
Georgie’s back arched off the bed with how deep he was in her. She couldn’t figure out where to put her feet on the bed, and Xan straightened her long legs straight out to the sides, held her hips, and pulled her body onto him.
She grabbed handfuls of the bedspread, crying out with how deep he rubbed inside her.
He stroked into her, sending pleasure rippling up her, and she was starting to clench around him when he lifted her ankles to his shoulders, resting her feet near his ears.
He said, “Give me your hands.”
Georgie opened her fists, releasing the fabric, and held out her hands. She was panting, nearly moaning, and she wanted him to take her hard and let her go.
Xan took her hands and pulled her up so that she was folded in half, her arms around his hot neck under his long hair and her heels still resting on his shoulders. “Oh!”
He leaned back, holding her around her waist and under her ass, and she was completely unable to move other than to grasp his neck, helpless. Her body was folded open to him, and when he stood up on his knees and stroked up into her, settling her down on his cock, he pressed so deeply in her, and her skin was spread wide so that her clit rubbed on his body all the way down.
Georgie let her head fall back as Xan lifted her and pumped into her. She was tightening, spiraling in with each thrust, and she clutched his neck as the energy coiled and burst in her, shuddering with every wild whip of her body. A scream tore from her throat as she flew apart.
Xan groaned as he throbbed inside her, and she was stretched open so far that she felt every pulse that matched the clench of his strong abs and gasp of his breath.
He held her, letting her sink to the bed and her legs slide over his shoulders and curl around him.
His breath was rough in his chest, as he lay with his forehead against her shoulder, his long hair spreading over her chest and stomach.
Georgie was shaking so hard that her breath hurt, and she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, holding onto him.
She drifted, almost sleeping, when she heard Xan say, “Alex would never have done that to you.”
XAN IN DARKNESS
Georgie
When Georgie opened her eyes in the darkness, she wasn’t sure how much time had passed. The hotel’s clock blinked 12:00, flashing dim red light over the bedroom.
The bathroom light shined a bright line on the wall, enough to see that Xan lay on the other side of the bed, holding an unlit cigarette between his lips.
“You smoke?” she asked.
He pinched it between his fingers. “Haven’t for two years. It’s too rough on my throat. Plus all the hotels and venues are non-smoking now, and I can’t be going outside whenever I want one. Fans wait outside the hotels.”
She rolled over. “Here, let me have a drag.”
He chuckled and handed it to her. The paper stuck to her lips as she sucked on it and blew pretend smoke out the side of her mouth. “My cross-country coaches would have killed me dead if I’d have tried it.”
Xan took the cigarette back and twiddled it between his fingers before tossing it into the trash can like throwing a dart. “Sometimes I still toy with one. My hands get bored late at night. This is when I usually sneak out to the tour bus to play the violin.”
“You can play it for me.”
“I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“I know, but I’m awake now. Play me a lullaby.”
He stood and pulled on his jeans. He plucked one of the covered elastic bands that Georgie had given him from his pocket, knotting his hair into a man-bun at the nape of his neck before removing his guitar from its case to get to his violin. “What shall I play?”
Georgie snuggled farther under the blankets. “‘Alwaysland.’ I wish I could play it with you.”
“You don’t have a piano here,” he mused.
He limbered up the bow for a moment, tuning the strings without using a pitch pipe or anything to compare the tones to, and played his song slowly, delicately, on the violin.
Georgie laid back on the pillow and closed her eyes.
Xan glided through the song, softening the transitions, she noticed.
As the music faded away, he asked, “Why did you close your eyes?”
Georgie rolled back toward him and opened her eyes. The violin still rested on his shoulder, though he had lifted his head. “Just so I could concentrate on listening.”
“You can tell me anything,” he said.
That was weird. “Okay, but it was just so I could listen better.”
“All right.”
He fit the violin and guitar back into their niches in the guitar case, snapped everything closed, and came back to lay down on the bed beside her.
Georgie folded her arms on his chest and looked at his dark eyes. “So, on the continuum of Alex to Xan, who are you right now?”
“Xan,” he said. “I’m still keyed up from the show and the performance at the club, and from having my way with you.”
“Your evil, evil way.”
He chuckled again. “Sure, I’m the evil one. Alex would be too busy burying his face between your thighs to fuck you like that.”
“Don’t talk smack about Alex’s technique. And it’s still weird that you talk about Alex like he’s someone else.”
“He sort of is,” Xan said.
“I thought that you were really Alexandre and Alex and Xan.”
“I’m Xan and Alex.”
“And so is he?”
“Yes.”
“I think you need a better metaphor.”
“Perhaps we do.” He reached for the pack of cigarettes again but stopped.
“Calling yourself ‘we’ is really freaky.”
“It’s the way we manage things.”
“Is Alexandre someone else?”
“No. It’s that Alex and Xan are sides of Alexandre. Or that Alexandre has two characters that he plays, like an actor who strives to make his characters consistent. It just makes it easier to shift from being a Monégasque nobleman to a crazed rock musician. Alex used to have quite a schedule doing charitable and cultural events because he’s the one who organizes and plans such things. There’s been no time for that the past few years. I’m around most of the time now because I’m the one who will fight for Killer Valenti
ne.”
“Who’s the one who falls in love?” Ah, crap. Maybe he would chalk it up to her being semi-conscious.
“We all share a black cinder for a heart,” Xan said. “You know what I think of love.”
“A social construct to allow people to fuck.”
“Yes, quite. I don’t quite believe that it exists.”
“It’s freaky, you know, that you can write these beautiful love songs and not believe in love at all.”
“They’re just songs.”
“Who do you sing them to?”
“All the women out there.” He shifted on the bed, crossing his long legs at his ankles.
“But you’re not in love with them.”
He smirked and reached for the package of cigarettes on the nightstand again, but he didn’t pick it up. “No, but they’re in love with me. I say all the right things, and I’ll say them every time they want to hear them. All they have to do is touch their iPod, and I’ll whisper that I’ll love them forever or belt out that I’m longing for them. I never leave my socks under the coffee table or watch sports while they’re doing the housework. I never complain about their figures or that they’re always busy. They can love me like they love God: from afar, with all their hearts, and with no chance of disillusionment. I’m their perfect boyfriend.”
She laid her chin on her crossed arms. “You’re not my perfect boyfriend.”
“No, I’m your demon lover.” He curled a long strand of her hair around his hand. “I summon you to my bed, seduce you in depraved and debauched ways, and abandon you in the morning.”
Georgie grinned. “I take it back. You are my perfect boyfriend.”
A smile curved Xan’s lips, but he lifted one eyebrow with sarcasm. “That’s the first time I’ve heard that.”
“And I’m the Ice Princess. No one gets to me.”
“And that’s why you’re my perfect girlfriend.”
“How many girlfriends have you had? Not groupies.”
“I don’t touch the groupies.”
“You have to have had something real, at some point in your life. You haven’t always been a rock star on tour,” Georgie said.
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