and I definitely won’t say anything, but I know who you are.”
Well, damn . He unfolded his arms and slid his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. He would’ve taken her for a Taylor Swift or Katy Perry fan. Fun, flirty pop seemed more her style, not the hard, gritty rock he, Darius, Oliver and Liam played.
“Like I said, I won’t out you, but you also don’t need to wear your,” she waved a hand toward his cap, “disguise around me while we’re in here.”
“Yeah?” He snatched off the cap and dragged his fingers through his hair, not analyzing why he so readily trusted her to keep his identity secret. He did, though. Call it sixth sense, instinct, whatever. He just couldn’t see her crawling into bed with him while he slept and snapping pictures to tweet or post on Facebook. Or selling her story of being his love slave to TMZ.
“Thanks.” He tossed the hat onto the back of the couch. A swift gasp reached his ears, and he glanced at her. Pink stained the caramel skin over her cheekbones. And her eyes—a rich brown so dark they almost appeared black—widened. “Something wrong?”
“Y-yes, I’m just tired. Long trip here with the plane and then drive. Then there was Minas Tirith and snow. And now a, uh, a man.” She flicked her fingers toward him, indicating he was the “man.”
The chick was losing it. Still…
“Minas Tirith? As in Gondor, Minas Tirith?” What did The Lord of the Rings have to do with anything?
She tipped her head back on her shoulders and released a short bark of laughter. “Oh, hell, for real?”
“Are you okay?” He seriously doubted it. From the incessant babbling and the way she ground her fingers into her eyes, he wasn’t the only one who could use a drink.
“Uh, no.” She snorted, tilting her head forward. A wry, self-deprecating smile twisted her pretty lips. “I was blackmailed into this whole thing by Hell, only to discover for the short foreseeable future I will be living across the room from a rock god who has been plastered across every magazine, tabloid, television, internet engine and social media outlet in the free world…including my computer wallpaper. Fuck .”
She pinched the bridge of her nose, her face screwed up in a disgusted moue as if the implications of what she’d just confessed hit her. Once more, the word “charming” popped into his mind. Two times in a matter of minutes. But between her appalled pout and the verbal diarrhea, she struck him as a bracing breath of fresh air. As fresh as the mountain wind outside these walls.
Yeah, women had told him how much they loved his music before, but usually they were rubbing their pussy over his dick or trying to sneak a picture of him on their camera phone at the same time.
But she stood several feet away, still wrapped in her coat like the Abominable Snowwoman, jeans covering her sex and her cell nowhere in sight.
And still unfuckable and untouchable.
Hell, if not for Ari’s desperation, Jack would be here in this suite, being delighted, staring at her mouth and hair, wondering how pretty those lips would look parting for his cock. Wondering if her pussy tasted like the French vanilla hot chocolate of her skin. Wondering if she made the same soft gasp from earlier when a man first pushed deep inside her flesh, penetrating her, stretching her…
Lust clenched his gut in a vicious grip and anger eddied in his chest as images of her and Jack tangled and writhing on the wide, four poster bed in Ari’s bedroom bombarded his brain. The volatile emotional cocktail had him fisting his fingers beside his thighs.
Goddamn . He tunneled his fingers through his hair again, scratching his fingernails over his scalp. The tiny bite of pain helped center him, reset his focus.
“Listen, I had a long trip, too, and I’m tired.” Lie . He’d flown from California to England before and had been ready to jump on stage, hyped. “And in about…” he glanced down at his silver, thick Rolex,