RAJI stood in the dark backstage, holding her ringing phone in her hand. Fog from the theatrical effects coasted through the cones of light onstage and smelled like rotten eggs.
Peyton Cabot was turned away from her, staring at the stage and Xan Valentine, who was still singing in a spotlight with just a guitar, but he whipped around when he heard her phone.
It had been easy to think of Peyton as the safe, Old Money Connecticut preppie from Andy’s reception. He’d been wearing khakis and a white Oxford shirt.
This guy—his hair wild and his skin glowing with heat, a bass guitar still slung over his back, his white tee shirt sticking to the hard, rounded muscles of his chest and shoulders and the braided ropes of his abs, his jeans slung low on his slim hips—looked like a dangerous, out-of-control rock star.
Her phone was still ringing in her hand.
“Oops, I guess I’d better take this.” She held the phone up to her ear. “Hello?”
Peyton lifted his phone and growled, “I’m sorry. I can’t talk right now. I’m talking to the sexiest woman I know.” He tapped his phone screen and looked down at her.
In the light streaming between the long, black curtains that fringed the stage, his eyes looked darker, more emerald green than the teal Raji had been picturing the last two months when she thought about him. He asked, “So how did you get backstage?”
Raji lifted the plastic VIP pass hanging from a lanyard around her neck. “I know the band’s doctor.”
“Good,” he said.
She laughed, but she said, “I’ve had seven patients die since the last time I saw you.”
He stepped closer, his body a hard wall of muscle that rose in front of her. “Did it affect you, my little lizard-hearted surgeon? Do you need the hard comfort of a rock star to fuck all your sadness away?”
His voice was hoarse from singing backup for hours, deep in his throat, and his green eyes glittered.
Raji took a breath and said, “Nope, it didn’t affect my cold, dark soul at all. But yes, fuck me like you can make the whole world go away.”
Peyton grinned at her, and his smile was the wild grin of an uncaged rock musician whose heart still pounded an adrenaline-fueled drumbeat, manic from the stage.
He stepped closer to her, crowding her backward against a brick wall.
As aggressive as he had been in bed at Andy’s wedding, this driving her against a wall was a whole new level of dominant behavior. Raji’s heart beat faster in her chest. She had seen many actual, living human hearts, and it had made her acutely aware of her own pumping inside her ribcage and muscle.
Peyton grabbed her wrists and pinned them to the rough bricks above her head. His mouth crashed down on hers. His tongue forced her lips open and slid against hers.
Her heart beat faster.
Her mind whipped through the biochemical pathway of the adrenaline response, but his warm mouth on hers and the subtle taste of whiskey on his tongue made her moan even though everyone could see them necking.
Peyton jerked sideways.
The drummer, Tryp Areleous, was standing there, his black hair curling around his face like a dark flame. He yanked on Peyton’s arm again. “Come on, man. The cars are waiting. Time for the runner.”
Raji glanced past Peyton’s shoulder.
Xan Valentine was sprinting off the stage, holding Georgie’s hand and nearly dragging her into the wings as he ran. He roared, “Come on!”
Peyton grabbed Raji’s hand and ran, pulling her along the brick corridor behind him.
Raji ran hard to keep up.
They sprinted through the back halls, past security people waving flashlights to mark their path, to a line of cars waiting just outside.
Peyton shoved her into a back seat, dove inside after her, and pulled the door closed behind him.
The tires squealed as the car shot out of the alley and into traffic.
Peyton was thrown back in the seat and jammed his legs against the floor. He was laughing, but in the light from the overhead street lamps, his eyes were wild.
“What was that?” Raji asked.
“A runner,” Peyton said. “To get out of the venue ahead of the crowds, we dash off the stage and jump into cars. Otherwise, you can get caught in traffic. These windows are tinted darkly enough so that shouldn’t be a problem, but you don’t want to get caught in a standstill traffic jam with a thousand screaming fans around you. They probably wouldn’t tear you apart like vicious wolves, but you never know. Xan’s gotten his shirt ripped up a couple of times.”
“That’s awful!” Raji exclaimed.
Peyton shrugged. “Part of the gig.”
“I’ll bet classical musicians never have to worry about that.”
He laughed. “Well, hardly ever. A few of them, maybe.”
The trip to his hotel took barely ten minutes, which was good because after the first turn, Peyton grabbed Raji around the back of her neck and kissed her hard.
By the time the car pulled under the bright lights at the hotel lobby, she was writhing against him and wishing that self-driving cars were a thing. That poor chauffeur up there was probably uncomfortable with all the wet, lip-smacking sounds coming from the back seat.
Peyton led her through the lobby, into the elevator, and shoved open the door to his hotel room.
Raji walked past him into the room, pulling her shirt off over her head as she walked and dropping it on the floor. “Okay, rock star—you over there with your hot muscles and gorgeous, green eyes—fuck me up the ass and then come on my face.”
Peyton slammed the door. “I’ve never really been into that face thing,” he said. “How about I eat you out until you’re screaming my name—you over there with your curvy, luscious ass and your sexy tattoos—and then I’ll come on your chest, and you can watch.”
Raji bounced on the bed like she was testing the springiness of the mattress. “Somehow, that sounds even dirtier. Come on, Peys. Do me.”
In a moment, he was across the room and on her, his body hot from the stage lights. When he grabbed her cheek to hold her while he kissed her, his fingers smelled like the steel of the bass guitar’s strings, and under his shirt, when Raji ran her hands over his body, his chest and ab muscles were pumped like he had worked out in the gym for hours.
He was a stronger, wilder version of Peyton, and though he kept the first part of his promise, he didn’t jack off on her chest. Instead, he flipped her over and fucked her until her arms collapsed from the sheer power of it. His hips slapped her ass over and over as he fucked her hard until she came yet again, screaming into a pillow at the pleasure roiling through her body.