Page 50 of Before You Fell

A woman slides between us with a laugh, saving me from another sentence about market momentum. Dark hair. Gold dress cut low enough to make subtlety look unemployed. Tits pushed high, mouth painted red, nails dragging down my forearm as if she is trying to find where the tattoos end and the bad decisions start.

“You were incredible on that tour,” she says.

“I usually am.”

Her smile widens. “Arrogant.”

“More like accurate.”

She laughs and I let her lean in. Let her press her hand to my chest. Let the fucking room see her touch me, because why the hell not. That’s what they dragged me up here for, isn’t it? Product. Performance. Proof that Phoenix Stone can stand in a room full of hungry people and still be the one everybody wants to bite.

I know what I am in rooms like this. A prize with a fucking pulse. A mouth people want to hear, kiss, photograph, or own, depending on the person.

I glance around the room to see who is watching and my gaze lands on Willow.

She stands near the bar with a glass in one hand, her hair pinned messily at the back of her head, loose strands falling around her face as if she got tired of being beautiful halfway through.

Her dress is black, fitted, bare-shouldered, and tight enough to make my mouth remember every bad thing it has ever wanted to say to her. It’s simple, too. No flashy sequins or glitter. No desperate little look-at-me bullshit. Just Willow in black, making every other woman in the room seem overdressed and underfucked.

Long black fuck-me boots run up her legs, all filthy leather and sharp heels, turning that simple black dress into something dangerous enough to make my hands itch.

That’s the problem with Willow. She can stand there, holding a drink, looking bored and untouchable in a pair of filthy black boots, and my hands start thinking for me. On her hips. Under that dress. Dragging it up her thighs until she either slaps the arrogance out of me or says my name because it feels so good.

My cock goes hard in my jeans and it has nothing to do with the woman pressed against my side.

My temper flares when I notice the man beside her.

Memphis, fucking, Cross.

Solo artist. Golden-boy fucker. Pretty voice, pretty face, a pretty little career the label probably keeps in a glass case and jerks off to during strategy meetings. Sharp jaw. Black shirt open at the throat, sleeves rolled to his forearms, all easy confidence and clean hands, standing beside Willow as if he has any right to be that close to her.

The worst part is that the prick has talent. Real talent.

Enough that I can’t write him off as some desperate shithead trying to treat Wills like a groupie. Memphis Cross does not beg for attention. He stands there as if attention had already dropped to its knees and thanked him for the privilege.

Memphis leans close to Willow. Too fucking close.

His hand rests on the counter’s edge beside her drink, not touching her. If he were sleazy, I could handle that. Sleazy gives me a reason to break teeth and call it a public service.

But Memphis is not that. He is careful. The kind of fucker smart enough to keep his hands to himself, as if that makes him innocent, while every ugly part of me is already imagining those fingers snapped before they ever get close enough to touch her. He watches her as if she isn’t just the woman who writes our songs.

He is looking at her as if he wants to fuck her. As if that thought has any right to exist in his head without me punching him in the face.

Willow tilts her face up toward him and he says something I cannot hear over the music.

Something ugly sparks in my chest.

The woman in the gold dress whispers something in my ear, her tits brushing my arm as she leans in close. But nothing reaches my ears.

I don’t give a fuck what she’s saying. She could be offering me her room key, her mouth, or her pussy on a silver fucking platter, and I still wouldn’t turn my gaze away from Willow laughing at Memphis Cross.

“Careful,” Cruz says beside me.

I glance over. “What?”

He has appeared with two drinks and pupils bright enough to suggest he has already found the party’s real hospitality. Lipstick stains his neck and a smear of glitter clings near his collar.

He looks from me to the bar and back again.