Page 62 of Ravaged By Lust

“Well, I’m sure you can forgive me for not believing you after your past record.”

“Whatever you believe, you just simply have to take this second offer up,” he says. “It’s too good to turn down. This is your big shot, your last big shot, and I can help.”

“I don’t need you to help me, Bishop. I don’t need you to help me practice. In fact, I don’t need you at all. The past seven years are testament to that fact.”

“But you still choke up when you perform, don’t you?”

Really. Screw him.

“I’m refusing to talk about this. None of this concerns you. I know that this is a good opportunity for me, and that’s why I’m going to do this on my own.”

I spin back around to walk away, but Bishop’s voice follows me.

“Mickey Miller won’t see you again unless you practice with me.”

God damnit.

He’s right.

That’s what the producer said. I’ve just been trying to live in denial. If I’m going to have a second chance at this, then the truth is that I’m going to have to deal with Bishop Hayes.

The very last man I want to work with.

I stop dead in my tracks, resigned to the fact that I’m going to have to talk to the man who broke my heart. Get freaking coached by him.

“Do you really want this, Chloe?”

I turn back around to the rockstar. He’s leaning against the wall like he’s in some goddamn photoshoot. And, yeah, he looks hot. He always looks so damn hot.

His intense stare with those deep brown eyes of his bores straight through me. I feel a shudder pass down my spine as he waits for my answer. It’s like I’m his entire world. Like I’m the most important thing in existence right now. His desire for me permeates the air between us, and I feel my breath leave my body.

I really do want this opportunity so bad. This is why I’ve flown all this way to a city I hate and am considering working with a man I want nothing to do with. Simply to do what I feel like I was born to do.

“I’ll give you one lesson,” I say. “One. That’s it. Screw it up and I’m really never seeing your ass again.”

The faintest of smiles crosses the rockstar’s face.

“Well then,” he says. “Come to my place tonight.”

24

BISHOP

I open my front door and, just on cue, there’s Chloe Stoll giving me the death stare I’ve come to get quite familiar with these last few days. She’s holding her guitar case with both hands like it’s a shield between us.

“Let’s get this over with,” she grumbles as she steps inside my place.

“You’re still showing me hostility, then?” I ask her snidely as she just walks on into my home without any regard for an invitation or even a guided tour. She powers on down towards the living room with me following close behind. She’s really trying to give off the vibe that she does not, in any way, want to be here with me.

Well, I do like a challenge.

“Things don’t get forgotten simply because you can sweet talk a producer into giving me another shot, Bishop,” she mutters back to me as she strolls on through. “That’s why there might still be a little bit of hostility from me.”

I shrug. “Fair enough.”

“This place is huge,” Chloe remarks once we reach my living room. “This is where you live? On your own?”

I follow her gaze around the room. Yeah, it is pretty big, but I’ve never really thought about it before. I don’t care much about interior design or anything. I simply had Lucas find me three houses in LA. I had a look around each one, and this place seemed pretty cool, and then I hired some famous designer guy to do his thing. And voila.