Better than nodding out.
Better than flying.
Better, even, than sex, though there was a tiny, distracted part of him that wondered if that would still hold true if he’d had the time to get that cute little brunette he’d met in back of the club into bed. Eating her out had been one of the hottest things he’d ever done, and something told him it wasn’t just because he’d gone two and a half months with only his hand to get him off.
No, there was something about the way she’d felt under his fingers, the noises she’d made as he’d taken her higher and higher, that was sticking with him way longer than an anonymous encounter before a show warranted. Hell, her gasps and whimpers were still playing in the back of his head, adding a sexy-as-fuck baseline to the music he was playing. Each pump of the bass drum, each crash of the ride cymbals, sounded like her in his head. And it made the playing so much sweeter.
In between songs, Jared and Ryder pandered to the ever-growing crowd. Asking them how Li was doing, which they answered with whistles and shouts. Teasing them. Working them up even higher so that they were in a frenzy by the time they were winding up for the last couple of songs. Every time he had a break, he searched the crowd for the brunette, wondering if she was still around. Hoping she was. It was hard to see past the first few rows because of the lights, but he kept looking anyway. Ending the night inside her seemed like a pretty good finish to him.
But the movement of the now-capacity crowd made it impossible for him to focus on any one face. They were so into the music, clapping and stomping and singing along like this was a stadium show instead of a cramped club on Fifth Street. It reminded him of the early days, before things had gotten so fucked up. Before the drugs took hold of him and he ruined everything.
So he played. He played and played and played, going so hard that sweat was dripping off of him and pooling on the floor at his feet.
So hard that his shoulders and back and arms screamed at him to stop.
So hard that he broke half a dozen drumsticks before the show hit the three-quarters mark.
And he loved every fucking second of it.
More than once, he caught Jared or Quinn or Ryder looking at him, eyes wide and mouths open. He didn’t care, wouldn’t let himself get bogged down in worrying about what was wrong. He knew he was playing well, knew he was on point, and whatever it was that had them looking at him like that could wait ’til they were off-stage. This feeling was too fucking good to waste.
He was riding it all the way home.
Chapter Four
He was on fire. There was no other way to describe it, no other words to do justice to what she was seeing. What she was hearing. Wyatt was in the back right corner of the stage, but it was like he was the only one out there. Like there was a giant spotlight focused right on him while everyone else was just standing around in the dark.
Obviously, that wasn’t true. The whole band sounded amazing. Ryder’s vocals were right on, Jared’s guitar playing was phenomenal as usual, and Quinn was as close to perfect on the keyboards as a human could get. It was crazy.
More, it was like it had been two days since they’d played together instead of two months. That’s how well they blended together, how well their styles meshed. Sure, Li was a little off, just as she’d known he would be—he was good, but his skills weren’t up to their level and his style was too removed to work with what the others were throwing out. Plus, he wasn’t coming close to keeping up with the drum line Wyatt was laying down, which was a problem considering bass and drums worked hand in hand in most Shaken Dirty songs.
But then again, it wasn’t like keeping up with Wyatt was easy at the best of times. And now, when he was mounting a full-on assault on those drums? Even Jared and Quinn were struggling to stay with him and this was their music. He was their drummer.
But hell, she didn’t think any musician in the world could be on that stage tonight and be anything but overshadowed by what Wyatt was doing. His stick work was so fast, so precise, so fucking brilliant, she wouldn’t be surprised if his whole kit burst into flames right in front of him. There was a part of her that wondered how it hadn’t already.
Music was her life, and rock was the genre she was most passionate about. She could name every member of every halfway decent rock group in the world, could list off the best singers, best guitarists, best drummers and bassists and keyboardists to ever live, along with their best performances. And she would swear that at this moment, no drummer she’d ever heard—not Keith Moon, not Dave Grohl, not Josh Freese, not even Charlie Watts—could hold a candle to Wyatt Jennings. He’d always been amazing, had always been brilliant at making the drums the creative backbone of every Shaken Dirty song, but right now, in this club after two and a half months of rehab, stone-cold sober and wailing away on the tom-toms, he was the best she’d ever seen. The best she’d ever heard.
And she wasn’t just thinking that because it had only been an hour since he’d given her the two most intense orgasms of her life…
Which she still couldn’t believe she’d let happen.
Not with Wyatt.
Not when she had a job to do that so specifically revolved around him.
Not when she’d worked so hard and for so long to prove her father wrong…one slipup, one moment of giving in to the fire she worked so hard to keep tamped down, and she might have fucked it all up.
If her dad found out what she’d done, it was more than enough ammunition for him to cut her out of this side of the business once and for all. More than enough ammunition to make him think that his archaic views about her had been right all along.
Then again, maybe he had been right. Not about women and rock stars in general, but about her. About her response. Because, God knew, her panties hadn’t stood a chance against Wyatt’s charisma, and neither had the rest of her. The fact that she hadn’t known it was him at the time didn’t make her feel any better about the whole situation. She’d still let the man she was here to babysit go down on her behind a Fifth Street bar. She’d still clutched his shoulders and begged him to make her come.
There was no getting around that, no pretending it hadn’t happened. And if she didn’t have a clue what she was going to do about it now, then it was nobody’s fault but her own.
B
esides, that wasn’t strictly true. She knew what she should do. After forty-five minutes of trying to wrap her head around the fact that she’d just let Wyatt Jennings get her off behind a bar, she knew she should call her brother back and come clean. Tell him everything and convince him to hightail his ass down here to Austin before things got any worse. Hopefully he’d have better luck keeping his jeans on around Wyatt than she had…
But knowing it and doing it were two different things, because no matter how many times she’d told herself to make the call, she couldn’t bring herself to do it. Couldn’t even bring herself to text him that there was a problem.