He clasped her hand, not the least bit surprised when heat flared between their palms. But she didn’t seem to notice. She just kept smiling at him, her huge eyes locked on his.
“Yeah.” He swallowed hard. “I’m Gray.”
“Nice to meet you. How old are you?”
“Sixteen.” Not for too much longer though. “You?”
“Fourteen. But I feel way older.”
He looked her up and down. “You don’t look older.”
She threw back her shoulders. “Yeah, ’cause I’m little. But I could still grow. It could totally happen. I take my vitamins. I work out.” She flexed her tiny biceps under the pink sleeve of her T-shirt and he couldn’t help grinning.
“Sure. I bet you’ll end up six-feet tall.”
“Nah. That’s as tall as you are. I’d settle for five-two.”
Gray glanced down at her red Chucks. “You could wear heels.”
“No way.” She scrunched up her perky nose. “I’d rather be short.”
He laughed and gestured to her guitar. “So how long have you played?”
“All my life.”
He tried to take a deep breath and realized his lungs were still seized up like he’d just run a mile. God, she was cute and she was into music? And she’d be living in his house? Down, boy.
Talking to chicks wasn’t difficult. Well, before today. He’d never had any trouble acting cool around them in the past. Besides, this one was too young. Fourteen-year-old girls weren’t going to be as easy to coax up into his bedroom, something he did on the regular. He loved girls. The way they smelled. Tasted. Felt under his hands. They were like guitars, all smooth lines and perfect curves. He adored pulling different sounds out of them, just like he did his axe.
But this particular one would be his sister. Sort of. Which made this awkward.
“Me too. I’m in a band,” he said, preening a little.
“You play too?” Her eyes lit. “What instrument?”
The nerves finally disappeared as he slid his hand down the neck of her guitar. The wood felt good under his hands. Like it was meant to fit his grip. He grinned. “Guitar.”
CHAPTER TWO
Now
The stage throbbed with the bass. Confetti from the New Year’s Eve celebration littered the stage and colored strobe lights swung back and forth, landing on each member of Oblivion in turn. The lights bounced over the crowd, revealing individual faces caught in various stages of excitement. The first time they’d played at Frenzy, back home in Carson, California, the crowd hadn’t been nearly as enthusiastic, at least at the beginning. They’d had to seduce them into the music.
Tonight they were all ready to fuck.
Gray Duffy closed his eyes and threw back his head, letting the beat take him. His head was spinning, his heart pounding with every crash of the drums behind him. Jazz was killing it. He followed Deacon’s lead as he always did, tracing that heartbeat bass line that led into “Taste of Candy”. The song wasn’t his favorite, but he didn’t care. When the sweat was coursing down his face, the salt burning on his lips and tongue, and his fingers were climbing the frets, so fast he wondered how any skin still covered the muscles and bone, he tasted every note. Became them. Even the dueling guitar played by the guy against his back—Nick—only heightened the experience.
They were a unit again. They’d sewn the group back together, in spite of the fraying threads. But when they were playing for their fans, especially in their hometown, none of the shit that had transpired the past few months mattered. The grin Nick flashed him as he goaded him into the solo near the end of “Taste” was as genuine as the shoulder nudge Gray gave him when he tried to cut him out too soon. They weren’t friends, exactly, but they weren’t enemies anymore either.
Simon slung an arm around Deacon’s neck and shoved the microphone in their bassist’s face, earning a growl that somehow fit the song. Simon laughed and pranced away, swaying his hips in his best Mick Jagger imitation. He hadn’t even zipped his leather pants. Why bother? He’d be screwing some chick the instant he finished the set. Maybe before, if the brunette in the front row who kept flashing her breasts actually made it up on stage.
Jazz banged her heart out on her kit, her wild multi-colored curls flying, the sticks in her nimble fingers colliding with the skins with a beautiful poetry he never grew tired of watching. Every time she smiled, his chest caught, the breath in his lungs stalling out until he looked away and his heart eventually gave in and started beating again.
The vibration of the stage under his boots brought him back to himself, to the solid reality of the instrument in his hand. The heat climbed up his spine, matching the fiery pressure in his fingers as he raced to keep up with the music inside him. Building, building. As potent as any orgasm, swelling to the point it finally exploded.