Jenn sipped her beer and swallowed past the butterflies clogging her throat. In just a few minutes, Cole and his band would take the stage for their first club show. She was just watching tonight, but the thought of getting up there with them next time was already freaking her out. Except it also felt strangely…exhilarating.
“I think word got out who Social Experiment really is,” Farrah murmured in her ear.
It was true. The place was packed, and she’d heard there was a line outside, waiting and hoping to get in. A lot of the women in the crowd had that distinctive “Colton Nix Groupie” vibe, and she’d noticed several of them eyeing her, as if sizing up the competition. Jenn was here with Farrah, Lucy, and Casey, and she was nervously excited for her friends to see Cole play live for the first time.
The lights dimmed, and the crowd screamed. Jenn was jostled from behind as they pressed in, trying to get closer to the stage. That all-too-familiar knot of tension grew in her chest, squeezing her lungs and causing her eyes to dart around the room, checking out the available exits for the hundredth time. Backstage, she reminded herself. The crowd would throng for the main exit in case of emergency, but she and her friends should run for the door leading to the backstage area.
As her gaze fell on it, that backstage door opened. Naveen walked out first, followed by Tom, Ricky, and finally Cole. They strolled onto the stage, oozing swagger and sex appeal. Cole, Tom, and Ricky picked up their guitars while Naveen sat behind the drum set. Cole settled his favorite Gibson over his shoulders and reached for the microphone at the front of the stage. “Thanks so much for coming out to see us tonight.”
The crowd screamed, pressing ever closer to the stage.
Cole caught Jenn’s eye and winked. She grinned back at him. He looked ridiculously handsome and sexy up there, and honestly, she couldn’t have been prouder to be his wife at that moment.
Naveen tapped out a rhythm on the drums, and they launched into one of the new songs they’d been working on together, an energetic jam called “Take Me for a Ride.” She began to move to the beat, grooving and singing along, aware that she was the only one here apart from the band who knew the words and not giving a single damn.
Cole moved around behind the microphone stand, dancing in that somewhat dorky but one hundred percent infectious way that was as distinctively “him” as his rich, throaty voice. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. She’d heard him sing many times now, been serenaded at home and even in bed. She’d seen him perform his duet with Kate before a live audience. But this…this was different somehow. The energy, the vibe that he was putting out up there was absolutely magnetic. She felt herself leaning in, desperate to absorb every note.
When the song ended, she added her voice to the cheers and applause from the crowd. Cole met her gaze and then leaned down to plant a quick kiss on her lips. “My wife, ladies and gentlemen,” he said as he straightened, gesturing toward her.
Jenn felt every eyeball in the club riveted to her for a few dizzying seconds before the next song began to play, and suddenly she was forgotten because this was “King of Manhattan,” and if there was anyone here who hadn’t realized yet who was up onstage, they knew now. She heard the hum of a hundred voices singing along with Cole as he belted through the first verse.
Her lips were still warm from his kiss, her heart racing with the energy and adrenaline of the show, and for the first time since Las Vegas, she felt completely relaxed during a live show. Finally. She gulped the rest of her beer and set the glass on a table against the wall so that she could dance more freely. She, Farrah, and Lucy hip-checked each other as they moved to the beat, laughing.
About halfway through the set, she recognized the opening bars of “Coast to Coast,” and a tingle went down her spine. This was it. A song she helped write, being performed in front of a live audience for the first time. She hadn’t mentioned this fact to her friends, so the moment was hers alone. Hers and Cole’s.
He looked right at her as he began to sing. “Alone in bed, I think of you…”
Everything seemed to melt away but Cole’s voice, the guitar in his hands, and the music they’d created. She listened mesmerized, almost frozen in place as she heard her lyrics leave his mouth.
“The farther apart we are, the closer I feel to you,” he sang. “And whenever we’re together, baby, I know you feel it too.”
Farrah bumped into her, and the trance broke. The noise of the crowd crashed over her, the way they moved to the beat, the way they watched Cole and the rest of the band with enthusiastic smiles on their faces. They liked it.
Jenn felt like all the energy of the stage lights was radiating out from inside her.
They like my music.
When the song ended, Cole winked at her before launching into an old hit. To her left, a busty blonde lifted her tank top, flashing her tits at him. Cole turned away, walking to the far side of the stage as he began to sing. Jenn gave the woman her best death-ray glare, but this was something that happened at all his shows.
Women flung themselves at him every night, and how long would it be before he fell back into old habits? She knew he would never cheat, but at some point, his eye would stray. He’d get bored playing the happily married man and wish for the freedom to enjoy the affection of other women.
That would be the day their faux marriage ended, and she ought to prepare herself for it. But watching him up there right now, she couldn’t help indulging in the fantasy that he was hers, and for tonight, at least, it was true.
Cole and the guys played about fifteen songs in total, a mixture of old and new, and Jenn felt like a full-fledged Colton Nix groupie by the end of the night. He was amazing, and she couldn’t get enough. He made eye contact throughout the night, sometimes winking at her or singing a particularly romantic or sexy line directly to her.
“Who are you, and what have you done with the real Jenn MacDonald?” Lucy asked as they made their way backstage after the show.
“I have no idea what you mean,” she said, aware she was still grinning like a fool.
“Lucy’s right. You two are so smitten with each other, it’s actually kind of disgusting,” Farrah said, but she was smiling too. “I had no idea my nerdy, checklist-loving friend was hiding this super-sappy romantic side.”
“Whatever.” She waved them off as they walked into the backstage lounge. The guys were already there, milling around with drinks in hand.
“I’ve never been backstage before,” Farrah whispered, eyes wide.
“They’re just people like you and me,” Jenn said, tugging her forward.
“I know, but…ohmigod,” Lucy whisper-squealed when Naveen began walking her way.
Jenn laughed as Naveen and Lucy walked off together, talking. Farrah headed toward the bar for a drink and was soon chatting with Jorja, apparently having decided she fit in backstage just fine.
“I need a moment with you,” Cole murmured in Jenn’s ear.
“Okay,” she agreed, a hot thrill racing through her at the feel of his body pressed against hers.
He led her down the hall to his dressing room, small and sparse compared to what a larger venue could offer, but not bad for a small club like this one. As soon as they were inside, he closed and locked the door, then pressed her up against the wall. “Just needed this,” he said as his mouth crashed into hers.
“Me too,” she gasped, arching her back to press her breasts more firmly against his chest.
He pressed his rock-hard cock between her legs with a groan. “The combination of the energy from the crowd and seeing you up front, dancing and singing our lyrics…”
His words sizzled through her, settling into a throbbing ache between her thighs. She went up on her tiptoes to bring their bodies into alignment, kissing him frantically.
“Fuck, baby, sometimes the adrenaline of the show makes me hard during the encore, but never like this. I need you so bad, I might explode.” He ground himself against her.
She reached between them, unbuttoning his jeans and pushing down the zipper. “Better hurry, then.”
“God, I was hoping you’d say that.” There was a hint of desperation in his voice, his eyes dark and hot.
She reached beneath her skirt and stepped out of her panties, tossing them onto the couch along the wall.
Cole shoved his jeans down, and she caught just a glimpse of his cock, impossibly hard and thick, jutting toward her, before he was rolling on a condom and then he’d pinned her against the wall again. He pushed inside her, filling her with one hard, fast stroke.
“Fuck,” he swore, anchoring one hand in her hair, the other beneath her ass to hold her in place. “I can’t hold back.”
“Then don’t,” she whispered because just seeing how intensely turned on he was had her right there with him. She was already so aroused, she felt like she might come as soon as he started moving inside her.
His hips started pumping, each stroke harder and faster than the last as he pounded into her. She kept her eyes open, watching the raw need build on his face, letting it fuel her own desire. The dressing room filled with the rhythmic bump and slap of skin, their combined moans and gasps of pleasure. Before she knew it, her orgasm ripped through her, and her internal muscles clenched around his cock.
Cole mumbled a semi-intelligible string of profanity as he moved almost frantically inside her and then with a harsh groan, he tensed as he found his own release. They clung to each other, moving and clutching as they fumbled their way back down to earth. Cole lowered them onto the couch, his cock still buried inside her.
“Now that,” he said finally, lifting his head to meet her eyes, “is the best way to end a show.”
“Our own private encore,” she whispered, her body still languid with pleasure. But her heart felt the strangest of all, so warm and full, and it was all thanks to the one man who wasn’t supposed to mean anything to her. But who was she kidding? At that moment, Colton Nix felt like the most perfect husband in the world.
By the time they left his dressing room, the crowd in the backstage lounge had thinned. Cole walked over to where Naveen stood talking with the manager of the club, a man named Lionel Parnowski.
Lionel extended his hand. “Colton, really fantastic job tonight. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you we haven’t seen a crowd like this in years, and the feedback so far has been incredible. I hope you’ll consider playing here again.”
“We sure will.” Colton gave him a firm shake. “It’s a great place. We really enjoyed ourselves.”
They made small talk for a few more minutes before Lionel headed back into the club. Cole texted Steven, eager to take Jenn home and continue their private celebration. Her friends had already left, so as far as he was concerned, she was his for the rest of the night.
“You up for drinks?” Naveen asked. “The guys and I were thinking about going out. You know how it is after a show, so much adrenaline. I’m wired.”
“Actually,” He glanced over at Jenn, who stood near the bar, texting furiously on her phone. “I’m going to call it a night. We married men have other ways of working off the adrenaline.”
“Thought you already took care of that,” Naveen said with a knowing look.
“Yeah, well, there’s still more adrenaline to work off.”
“You guys are disgusting,” Naveen said, shaking his head with a smile. “I guess I’ll catch up with you tomorrow, then.”
“Will do. Great show tonight. You were on fire.” He fist-bumped Naveen and pulled him in for a clap on the back before making his way over to Jenn. “You ready to blow this joint?”
She nodded, and together they walked out back to the waiting Town Car. Unsurprisingly, there were a dozen or so fans waiting outside, clamoring for his attention and waving their cell phones in his face. He slapped hands, posed for a few selfies, and started to decline autograph requests when Jenn slipped a black Sharpie into his right hand with a sly wink. So he signed a handful of cell phone covers, a shoulder, and a breast before making a break for the car with Jenn at his side.
“Do you always have a Sharpie in your purse?” he asked as she pulled the door shut behind them.
“At least one,” she answered.
“Yeah, well, there’s a reason I don’t carry them.”
“You don’t have a purse?” she responded with a smart-ass smile.
He laughed in spite of himself. “There’s that too. But I get to the car faster when I don’t have to sign stuff.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t always try to get to the car so fast,” she said quietly. “Build a rapport with your fans. Were you watching their faces tonight? You have the power to make their day, their week, their year…more. It’s an amazing gift, and you shouldn’t take it lightly.”
“I don’t.” He sank into his seat. “But it’s never enough. They always want more.”
She looked over at him, a streetlamp illuminating her face as they drove past. “Don’t be the guy who’s only in it for the admiration and the sex. You have the opportunity to be so much more.”
He opened his mouth to refute her claim, but she’d hit the nail pretty much on the head. He loved basking in the admiration of his fans, letting them fawn all over him, grope him, beg for the chance to fuck him. And maybe that was the reason so many of them tried to play their way into his bed.
“Interact with them,” Jenn said. “Answer a few fan letters. Sign stuff for them. Talk to them, more than complimenting their looks and inviting them back to your room.”
“You know I don’t do that anymore.” He reached over and squeezed her hand.
“And after we’re divorced?” Something changed in her tone. It grew colder and more distant.
“I don’t know. I think maybe I’ve evolved past the groupie phase, but I guess I’d still be looking to keep things casual.” It felt strange, wrong to talk about future women he might date, and not just because he was afraid of somehow offending Jenn. He didn’t want to think about other women, not even in the abstract.
“I hope you do evolve,” she said quietly, “both in the bedroom and with your fans. Get to know them. They’ll love you even more for it. Change your core fan base from groupies trying to get into your pants to real fans who value your music, people inspired by you.”
“I don’t know… No one actually reads their fan mail, do they?”
“Kate reads and responds to every letter,” Jenn told him, still in that quiet, almost distant tone.
“She couldn’t possibly. She must get even more than I do.” He looked out the window at the buildings rolling by.
“We have a form response that she uses for most of them, but she signs every card, and if someone touches her heart with their message, she writes them a personal note in return.”
“Well, maybe I’ll ask Jorja to look into it.”
Jenn was quiet, hands folded neatly in her lap, her face averted from his. A world apart from the woman who’d danced and sung along with wild abandon during the show tonight, who’d made him so hard, he’d had trouble finishing his set just watching her, who he’d fucked so thoroughly in his dressing room afterward, he was still high on it.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“That’s woman code for ‘I’m super pissed at you,’ right?” he asked, half joking but half not because he had a bad feeling he’d misstepped with her somewhere.
“I’m not pissed.” A smile tugged at her lips. “I’m just, I don’t know what I am. Sometimes it’s hard to remember what’s pretend and what’s not, I guess.”
“Baby, none of this is pretend.” He took her hand and brought it to her lips. “I am being one hundred percent genuine with you all the fucking time.”
“Pretend isn’t the right word, then.” She shrugged, but the movement was stiff. “This thing between us just feels so real sometimes, but we have a contract, and in a few more months…”
Well, hell. “Jenn, I—”
“Don’t.” She pressed a finger against his lips. “Don’t say anything. There’s nothing to say.”
But there was. There were a million things he ought to say, starting with the fact that he felt it too. She meant more to him than any woman ever had, and he wasn’t exactly looking forward to saying goodbye either. If he said any of that, though, he’d be opening a whole can of worms that was better left sealed. So, in the end, he took her advice and said nothing.