The laugh escaped me. “You what?”
“The way you sangKilling, like you knew and meant every word of it on an instrument you’d never touched and I had no idea you could play like that…I couldn’t help it. And I thought it was just the music at first.” He looked horribly embarrassed.
“Music erections. I am familiar with them. If you listen to a piece you’ve loved for years, and hear it played perfectly by someone you consider the best…the erections just happen. I nearly came in my pants the first time I saw Phantom in the theater. The organ came up, and so did mine.”
He squeezed his eyes shut and bit his fist to keep his laughter quiet. “Only another musician would get that.”
“So, it was the music?”
“No,” he answered, quietly. “Well, partly. I thought it was only that. But then you were standing there singing the Phantom’sMusic of the Nightand I knew right then that it was you, not only the music.
“Any able musician can play a piano, or sing a tune. You did something otherworldly with it. You believed the lyrics. You trusted the sound. You let it all go, and became the Phantom in that moment. I’d heard good people sing before, but what you were was the music itself.”
“Where were you when Maestro Bogdan was wringing my ass out for missing a flat? My poor fragile ego could have used you.”
He leaned in close, and I instinctively started to pull back. Under the sheets, though, he grabbed my hand and pulled it to his chest—in some way, that comforted me and calmed me down.
We didn’t say anything in the next few seconds, but it was clear what his intention was. He was going to do what I wanted him to do, so desperately.
His mouth met mine a moment later and the kiss was simple, but not without depth. His lips moved against mine, not parting, not asking me to open, but just to kiss. To feel each other there at that single point. It was sweet and somewhere in the back of my brain the wordsholy shit you’re kissing Maddox Jonestried to take up residence.
I pushed them away. This wasDoxxnow. A bandmate. A good friend. Someone who was drawn to me. Someone I was drawn to.
He pulled back a little bit and I opened my eyes. I hadn’t even realized I’d closed them. His face was partly shadowed from the light behind him. “It’s different.”
“Mmm?”
“Kissing a guy. Different, but in an ‘I like it’ way.”
Before I could really delve into that, he was back at my lips, nipping and licking. I could feel a smile on his lips, and I couldn’t stop mine from coming through. He liked it, huh? Well, I could work with that.
I leaned in and deepened the kiss, sweeping my tongue over the seam of his lips. When he gasped, I swallowed his sound, my tongue sweeping in and tasting him. He was mint and masculinity, a touch of the dark Russian tea left behind, and it was all intoxicating.
It was an electric kiss. There was more to it than the stage kiss, and more heat to it than the kiss in this car earlier in the night.
And suddenly there was a lot more heat to it than before. Maddox’s hand came up and gripped the back of my neck both holding me where I was and pulling me to him. I didn’t fight him at all. When his tongue chased back between my lips, I welcomed him. My hand came up and pressed against his well-defined pec and scrambled for purchase on his soft T-shirt.
With no luck there, I dropped to his waist and hiked his shirt up so I could get my hands on his skin. As soon as he felt my fingers on his abs, he tensed, andJesus, I knew the man had muscles, but I didn’t realize they were…like that.
“Take it off me,” Maddox mumbled against my lips.
“Oh, God, yes.” I lifted the hem of the shirt right up and off him, after he raised his hands to make it easier.
“Now, lose the raccoons.”
I chuckled, but didn’t fight him on it. The raccoon pajama top joined his shirt somewhere at the bottom of the bed. “You know I have tons and tons of crazy pajamas. It’s my thing.” He shuttered and there was a flicker across his features. “What?”
Running a finger down the center of my chest, he gave me a half smirk. “I think I would like to peel you out of every single set, no matter how ridiculous.”
This time, I shivered and almost without thinking, lowered my head down to the nipple straining toward me from his well-formed pec. His gasp was stuttered and unready for that, and arched into my lips.
I laughed. “Never had someone do that?”
“N-no.” His voice was guttural. “I always wondered, but…”
“But?”
“Why would a guy want his nipples touched? They’re just nipplesohmygod.”
