One Kiss from the King of Rock (The One Book 2)

by Ainslie Paton

  “Jay, you deserve more than a career.”

  As soon as security opened the door the squealing started. “I’ve got everything I dreamed of.”

  The noise ramped up when he put a foot on the pavement. What else was there? “Rock and roll.”

  SEVEN

  Nostalgia didn’t taste as good as the burger Evie was eating. It was super delicious for a couple of reasons. It was gourmet. It arrived on a tray stolen by Grip from the greenroom allocated to World’s End at the Channel Nine Studios. And it stopped her thinking about Jay and worse, playing back the video she’d shot of him doing his thing, gracious and genuine with the fans.

  And so sexy, he’d basically glued her tongue to the roof of her mouth while she watched him from the remove of her phone screen.

  She had to stop doing that. Watching him, thinking about him. Being conflicted about how it felt to have him touch her like they still belonged together and could own each other with a single caress and then apologize for it because they didn’t.

  Under no circumstances where the planet wasn’t imminently ending and civilization about to be wiped from it with a climate-warmed flick was she to voluntarily touch him again.

  Never mind that they’d both said sorry for the past. That handshake had been a rookie mistake. It’d acted like a lightning strike to her libido and there was only so much shock a person could take.

  Jay was messing with her cool and she needed her cool, she was goddamn busy having added another band to her roster of eight, no, nine, and juggling four new sponsorship deals. She was going need to put on another social media manager soon if she wanted to start working reasonable hours. And even then, reasonable hours weren’t going to kick in until after this tour was over.

  While she checked engagement and viewer stats and reviewed résumés from potential new hires, she snuck another burger. The tray was almost empty. She hadn’t had time for lunch after the signing and who knows when she’d get near food again.

  “Must be nice to be the kings of rock,” said Abel, gesturing with the iron he was using on a shirt to the room next door where World’s End were supposed to be waiting.

  They were late. Served them right for having their much nicer food stolen. Lost Property only got sandwiches, which was something Evie would take up with Errol. Way to make her guys feel second-hand, let the network order for them off the cheap menu.

  “Kings of wishful thinking,” Isaac said.

  That got a laugh. Abel abandoning the iron for his guitar and strumming out the first few bars of the early 90’s Go West song of that name. It’d been one of Mum’s favorites. Oscar quick to kick in with his keyboard, Grip using his sticks on a pile of magazines and random stuff heaped on the coffee table.

  Evie couldn’t help herself singing the first line about not needing to fall at an old lover’s feet just because he’d cut her to the bone.

  It might well have been her theme song of the moment. She sang another line in harmony with Isaac and then they’re were all singing about getting over love, stumbling and mumbling half-remembered lyrics when in a fit of overly enthusiastic drumming, Grip opened the zip on his lucky pants again.

  She finished the song on her knees wrestling with his zipper for the umpteenth time. And that’s where she was when Jay opened the greenroom door.

  He looked at her like he didn’t know if she was animal, mineral, vegetable or artificial intelligence. Regardless, he was offended.

  “Well if it isn’t the king of wishing thinking himself,” said Grip.

  She laughed so hard at the way Jay’s expression went from affronted to crush, kill, destroy that she had to let go of Grip’s pants and sit on her heels.

  When Jay lunged for the scissors on the table, everyone shouted, but no one was quick enough to stop him grabbing Grip by the back of his jeans and cutting into the bum of the pants.

  “I’d stand very still if I was you,” Jay said to Grip as he severed the waistband and then the back seam of the jeans, making the two pieces flap open at Grip’s hip.

  “Oh fuck, man,” Grip said, but he was laughing so hard he was in danger of having vital parts of his anatomy severed.

  “Been wanting to do this for days,” Jay said. He wasn’t laughing like the rest of them. “No more wishful thinking,” he said passing the scissors between Grip’s legs, making Grip’s eyes pop as Jay cut the denim right through the crotch to the faulty zipper, leaving Grip standing in his black Calvin’s with the remains of his jeans hanging around his thighs in shreds.

  “Is that for stealing your food?” Grip asked.

  “That’s for making Evie fix your stinking pants every day since I’ve been back,” Jay said, eyes fixed on her as if he’d done her a heroic favor.

  “What’s he supposed to wear now?” she snapped. This wasn’t funny anymore.

  “Like I give a shit,” Jay said, going for the door and slamming it on his way out.

  “He is such a dick.” She leaped up and followed, near colliding with Jay in the corridor as he was on his way back with a pair of jeans in his hand. He thrust them at her. “These will fit him.”

  She ignored his hand and got in his face. “You might’ve cut him, badly.”

  “He’s lucky I didn’t.”

  “What’s your problem with Grip?” She might as well have been asking what Jay’s problem with her was.

  “I don’t have a problem with Grip. I have a problem with his pants, which were once my pants. They were great pants, lucky pants. Lucky for him. Not so fucking lucky for me. And now they’re not pants. He has new pants and neither of us have a problem with the fucking old pants.”

  By the time Jay said pants for the last time, Evie’s anger had dissolved into giggles. She could hear laugher booming out of the greenroom in deep male voices as Grip re-enacted the scene for the members of both bands and assorted production people. She could see Jay’s frustration convert into shamefaced amusement.

  “You were singing, Evie.” He palmed his forehead, trying to find some composure. “I haven’t heard that incredible voice for so long. I wanted to see you, but you were on your goddamn knees with Grip’s junk in your face and I don’t know what came over me.”

  “It was only a zipper.”

  “I have no right to an opinion about you touching anyone’s zipper whenever you feel like it.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  He pointed to his head. “I know that here.” He pointed at his chest. “I have a problem accepting it here.” He sighed, and it sounded like it came from his feet and fought dangerous skirmishes with ligaments, joints and organs to find release from his lips. The urge to throw her arms around him came on so suddenly she wavered and took a step away from him to regain her balance.

  “None of that is your problem,” he said, eyes dodging hers, shoulders down and restraint coiled in his pecs and biceps.

  Ridiculous to be noticing his pecs and biceps, and she wasn’t supposed to be feeling sympathetic to his obvious struggle to reconcile this reality of who they were to each other with what they’d once been. She shouted and sneered at him because she didn’t know how to deal with the way her body felt when he was near; like she’d entered a different orbit and the gravitational force of Jay was a promise of pleasure, inexorably sucking her in. She got in his face with outrage because otherwise she’d fling herself in his arms, climb his body and find old comfort and new delight in his closeness.

  And unless she was very wrong about what just happened, he was fighting the same sensation.

  They were one false move away from angry kisses.

  What the fuck was she supposed to do about that?

  “Hey Evie,” Grip danced out into the corridor, denim flapping, underwear on show. “Think you can safety-pin me. It’d be so punk.”

  She looked at Jay’s spare jeans hanging limp from his hand. She couldn’t go on like this with Jay, palpable sexual and emotion tension every time they crossed paths.

  “I could start a new fa
shion,” Grip said. “Come on, Evie. Pin me.”

  There was no time to worry about inappropriate urges now. Grip couldn’t go on family TV safety-pinned together, but his situation would make for excellent fan content. She calculated the attention Grip’s appearance and the story of how he got that way would get in clicks and shares while she took the jeans from Jay and flung them at Grip.

  “You’re not going on prime-time television like that, but let me get my camera.”

  Grip whooped and disappeared inside the greenroom, satisfied he’d get to show his arse no matter what.

  “You’re not interested in Grip, are you?” Jay asked.

  “Interested? Yes, I’m interested. I’m invested in him, like I am in all the boys. But he might as well be my fourth brother at this point. I would no soon sleep with him than I would you, so you can quit getting jealous over nothing.”

  “Right.” Jay nodded, his chin almost on his chest as he turned for his greenroom.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” she said. “You have to pay for that stunt with the scissors. Come on.” She angled her head in the direction Grip had taken and didn’t wait for Jay to respond. She knew he’d follow.

  Half an hour later, she’d taken stills and shot video of a Grip’s torn pants and Grip and Jay told the story of how they got that way, leaving out Evie’s role in zipper fixing and focusing on how the jeans were once Jay’s and were well and truly unlucky now, but destined to be framed and auctioned for charity.

  What she posted was Abel ironing his shirt and Isaac doing his hair, pre-promo for the interview and performance that would appear tonight. Grip’s piece of fun would wait, along with the footage of Jay with the wizard at the signing, for a slow moment when they had nothing else going on.

  All that done, she slipped into the back row of the studio audience beside Errol and Janina and watched as Lost Property opened the show and then as Abel and Jay were interviewed.

  Jay looked stupidly at ease, was funny and humble and she already knew he looked great under lights. In comparison, Abel looked like he needed a good massage and stiff drink. He’d been interviewed dozens of times but mostly by music journos, not talk-show hosts, and his inexperience was showing in his awkward posture. Probably no one other than the three of them were going to notice that Jay kept rescuing Abel, helping him find the right story to tell and filling in unfortunate silences. Janina was too much of a pro to say anything.

  Abel got a big, warm cheer when he left the stage and Errol stopped grinding his teeth. Jay got a bigger one when he moved from the couch on the set to the second stage where World’s End waited to play and Evie started grinding hers.

  There was a reason why Jay had hit the big time. Talent, hard work, charisma and the sheer magnetism of his physical appeal.

  He moved like he knew all your secrets and he loved you for your worst impulses. She’d deliberately never watched him perform, knowing it would turn her inside out and she’d meant to slip out at the end of the interview to avoid that fate, but she was stuck to her uncomfortable fold-up studio-audience seat, riveted to Jay’s every word and move.

  On stage, guitar on his hip, he made every woman in the audience salivate over him, fantasize being with him, and he did it unconsciously, naturally, joyously, as if singing and playing were what his heart was made from, what his blood pumped for.

  By the chorus of his newest hit, she was squeezing her legs together, squirming to try to ease the signals her body was sending. You want him. You want him so badly you are wet and trembling. You want to take him to bed and lose your tiny mind over him and then maybe you can get through the rest of this tour without having a lust aneurism.

  She lifted her heels off the floor, contracting her stomach and lower abs as Jay appeared to lock eyes with her right before he took his bow and they went to commercial break.

  “You okay?” Errol asked.

  No, no, she was not okay, her head was spinning, her heart was racing, she was flushed and overcome and a whole lot annoyed with herself for what she was about to do. “I’m fine, but I have to bolt.” I have to go do something wild and irresponsible.

  She managed to skip through station security and get backstage before Jay finished saying his goodbyes to the show’s host. She was waiting for him as he handed his guitar off to one of World’s End’s techs and accepted a bottle of water and a hand towel as he headed for the exit, where his car was waiting.

  “Can I have a word with you?” she said.

  He dragged the towel over his face, “I’m not going to cut any of Grips vital parts off.”

  “It’s not about Grip.” She backed up, going into the empty makeup room. He followed, tossing the towel in a laundry basket as she sat in one of the hairdresser’s swivel chairs. “It’s not about Lost Property or the tour or any official business we have. I don’t need a favor.”

  “You’re moving straight to blackmail?”

  She might’ve deserved that. “It’s about us.”

  “The us that isn’t anything anymore,” he said, frowning.

  Really should’ve messaged Teela and had her talk me out of this. Too late. “If I’m not mistaken, the us that still feels a physical attraction.” If she was, she’d nope out, no harm, no foul. She’d drown the epic embarrassment in tubs of ice cream.

  Jay broke the seal on his water bottle. The little snap crackle of the plastic breaking was ominous. He took a swig and she swallowed hard and crossed her legs, swung the top one as if she had balls of steel and a titanium-plated ego. She planned a trip to the supermarket freezer aisle.

  When he lowered the bottle he said, “You’re not wrong.”

  Feeling stupidly relieved, she blew out a stream of air. “I have a proposition for you?”

  He took another sip and put the bottle on a counter. “Let’s hear it.”

  “We should fuck.”

  Jay cocked his head to one side, his eyes widening. “Go on.”

  That wasn’t a rejection, but it wasn’t a street parade either. “Get it out of our system.”

  “Because?”

  Aw hell. He’d been the one to suggest this first. If the heat, the push and pull between them wasn’t obvious to him, how was she supposed to explain it? She looked away momentarily stumped.

  “Yes,” he said.

  His grin was the first thing she refocused on. It reminded her of how great a kisser he was and how his kisses changed the course of her life. “We need rules.”

  “Smart.” He made a come-on gesture with his fingers. “You first.”

  “We’re one and done. We keep it quiet. No one else needs to know.”

  “No.”

  She uncrossed her legs and sat forward. “What do you mean, no?” She couldn’t crash and burn now.

  “I agree we keep it on the lowdown but I’m not up for one and done with you. I already know that won’t be enough.”

  She was a hit it and run specialist, but for Jay that rule was worth breaking and he was only here ten weeks and that was hardly long-term. Still. “I don’t do—

  He cut her off. “Make an exception.”

  “All right, but no strings and no comebacks. If we’re just coasting on fumes and it’s not good, either of us can call it over.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Protection.”

  He snorted. “Of course. I had a full battery of tests for the insurance company before I flew out. All clear, but happy to suit up.”

  She grinned, so far so very good. “I have an implant and I just got tested too. Cleared for take-off. Anything you want to add?”

  “I won’t see anyone else while we’re doing this.”

  “Me either.” She tap-danced her fingertips on the padded arm of the chair. “I have one last thing.”

  “Surprise me.”

  It might. “No kissing.”

  He laughed, a sharp, insulted sound. “No deal.”

  “You can’t call no deal on that.”

  “Watch me.” He g
rabbed for his water bottle, the other hand out for the handle of the door.

  “I wouldn’t survive this if we kiss. It has to be—” slam-bam, no emotions allowed.

  With his back to her, he said, “Clinical?”

  That covered it. “Mechanical.”

  He faced her, both big smooth calloused hands strangling the bottle. “No deal. I can’t not kiss you, Evie, that’s like asking me not to breath when I’m with you.”

  Ah, she hadn’t thought this through properly. The fact that he could say things like that was the reason she couldn’t kiss him. “No kissing on the lips.”

  “You’re saying I can kiss you anywhere else but your mouth?”

  She nodded. He cursed. “Jesus suffering fuck, Evie. You’re going to kill me.”

  But he wasn’t saying no. “So you’re in?”

  “I have one condition.”

  Reasonable. She gave him the come-on gesture with the hand not grasping the chair arm in excitement.

  “If I don’t get your mouth, you don’t get my cock.”

  Up came both her hands, like she was at the top of a roller coaster and it was all downhill from here. “What, I can’t—”

  He cut her off again. “You can stroke it, lick it, suck it, gag on it, but you can’t have it in your vagina.”

  She pounded the chair arm with her fist. “You can’t be serious?” Had he been so pigheaded, so ready to cut off his own orgasm to spite himself ten years ago?

  He pointed the bottle at her. “You have your conditions and I have mine.”

  “But your condition means we’re both denied pleasure.”

  “And so does yours. There’s still plenty of ways we can make this work.”

  This wasn’t what she wanted at all. If she was going to be with Jay she wanted every shuddering, gasping, lip-biting sensation pushed moment of it, with, let’s be honest here, none of the emotional responsibility. He was being a bastard. “You think I’ll compromise to get your dick in my vagina.” Any kind of sex with Jay would likely be good, but not worth trashing a principle for.