I froze when I sensed the movement.
That energy blasted through the atmosphere even though it was coming at slow speed. Warily, I peeled my attention from the scribbled words and dared to look up, hugging my guitar to me as if it were a lifeline.
Royce stood in the doorway.
My mouth went dry, and a shiver raced across my flesh.
He’d lost his suit jacket, and his hands were planted on either side of the doorframe. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up his forearms the way they’d been last night, the top two buttons of his shirt undone, giving a better glimpse of all that cryptic ink.
Black hair unruly, eyes hard and mouth soft.
Completely controlled and looking like he might bust apart.
“What are you doing back here?” I asked, hoping it came off as a demand, but it came out way too curious for that.
And maybe that was the problem.
He left me compelled.
He cocked his head, arrogant and sure. “I heard you playing.”
I turned my attention out the window, trying to figure out how I was supposed to handle this man. “That’s what I do. I play.” I shifted my gaze back to him. “Isn’t that why you want me? Because I play?”
I was referring to the contract, the deal, the band.
But the second I said it, I knew it’d come out all wrong.
His nostrils flared, the man a picture of power and sex, and he eased forward, sliding the door back into place, closing us in.
“I think you already know the answer to that.”
Disbelief huffed from my nose, and I tried to turn away from him, but he just came closer. Closer and closer until he was leaning over me, one hand planted on the back of the couch as he angled down to get in my face. I tried to withdraw, to hide my face, to tamp down this craziness that I was feeling at his proximity.
He hooked my chin with a tatted knuckle, and I sucked in a staggered breath.
“Yes,” he murmured, so low, so rough. “I want you because you play. I want you because you write the type of songs that have never been sung, and you sing them better than anyone else could.”
Onyx eyes blazed that icy fire.
Chills and flames.
I didn’t know which one I was feeling most.
“I want you because when you stand on a stage with the rest of your band, you become something that no one else can replace. You become brilliant. A fucking star.” The last he grated up close to my ear.
Trembles rolled, and I struggled to keep myself from reaching for him. From caressing the curve of his powerful jaw and from touching my fingertips to the thunder raging in his chest. Cautiously, I looked up to meet the brunt force of his gaze. “And what if I don’t want to be a star?”
His teeth clenched. “Bullshit. You were made for this.”
“And what if I don’t want it anymore?” It came out softer than I wanted it to.
“Is that what you really believe? That you don’t want it anymore? Or are you letting fear stand in your way?”
It felt like he was sifting around in my heart and mind. Searching through the rubble and debris.
“You don’t know me.”
He edged back, staring me down. “Don’t I? You think it’s not written on you? Fear? I’m here to take that away.”
My frown was instant, a pulse of panic drumming at my ribs.
Apparently, he knew I’d gone running off that stage last night, the first mistake in a line of them that had sent me running to him.
“I wasn’t feeling well last night . . . that was all.”
A skeptical smirk pulled at one side of his mouth. “And your first thought was to drown your sickness in tequila?”
“Isn’t that everyone’s first thought?” I tried to go for light. That was a mistake, too.
Because he hit me with an offhanded smile. Oh, I really wished that he wouldn’t, because it was all kinds of pretty, as if maybe he had a sliver of nice guy buried underneath.
“Only when what you’re nursing is a sick heart.” He said it as if he got me in a way he shouldn’t.
Our gazes tangled, awareness thrumming between us as strong as the rhythm of a guitar.
I thought maybe he couldn’t handle the force of the connection, either, the feeling too intense, and he ripped his eyes from mine.
His attention drifted to my notebook as if it were safer.
“What are you working on?”
I flipped it shut. “Nothin’.”
“Nothing?”
“Just a song that won’t come.”
“And why’s that?”
“Because sometimes life isn’t fair and it steals the things that are most important to us.”
His lips pressed into a thin line of regret, and he huffed a heavy breath as he turned away, as if he were warring with something inside himself.
Two seconds later, he quickly swiveled back, standing like a towering fortress in the middle of the small space.