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“Truth,” I murmur, my mouth against the hollow under her ear.

“You’re…” she pants.

“Truth, Birdie,” I press, hovering just shy of where she needs me most.

“I missed you!” she breaks, her forehead pressed to my throat, her hands fisting in the back of my shirt. “I missed you, Gray. I missed you so much. Every day. Every single day. Please…”

“Good girl,” I murmur against her temple, my fingers stroking her again. I tilt her face to mine. “Good girl. Come for me, baby.”

She comes apart on the next stroke.

She clenches around my fingers and her thighs clamp around mine, and the cry she lets out is one I have to swallow with my mouth, my tongue sliding against hers, because the only thing on this planet I am more selfish about than her body is the sound of her getting off. That one is mine. All mine. Five thousand people in this building paid to hear her sing tonight, and not a single one of them gets this, because this one is mine. Her whole body shakes through it, her hands fisted in my shirt, her forehead pressed to mine, her gloss smearing across my bottom lip.

“Fuck, and I didn’t think you could get any wetter,” I breathe against her mouth, my hand still inside her, riding her through the aftershocks.

She whimpers against me until she stops shaking.

I pull my fingers out, bring them to my mouth and lick them clean while she watches, her pupils blown wide, her chest heaving, her bottom lip swollen from where she has been biting it.

“Sweet just like I remembered,” I rasp, my thumb dragging across her bottom lip to wipe the smear of gloss. “Now,” I murmur, my voice dropping, my hand sliding from her throat and into the back of her wig. “On your knees, Birdie.”

She doesn’t hesitate and slides off my lap and onto the floor between my boots. Her hands race to the buckle of my belt, lips parted, wet, waiting for me.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

“Echo!” Nicki’s voice cuts through the wood, sharp and impatient. “Echo, open the door. We have to get you into hair, now.”

I lean my head back against the wall and let out a breath through my teeth, because this is the worst possible timing.

“Okay,” Sienna squeaks, pushing herself back onto her feet. “Be there in a second.”

She starts fixing her outfit, and I tuck the hardest erection I’ve had in four years into my fucking waistband. If The Purge was ever real, Nicki would be the first person on my fucking hitlist.

Once she’s presentable, Sienna comes back to the couch and cups my face with both hands, kissing me one more time.

“You and I are going to continue this,” she whispers against my lips. “After the show.”

Her thumb drags across my bottom lip to wipe off the gloss, and before I catch my breath, she’s gone.

Side stage is a tangle of cables underfoot, a wall of black drape on one side, and a sliver of the lip of the stage visible through the curtain ten feet off my shoulder. The tech points me to a folded chair behind a riser, hands me a pair of in-ear plugs I don’t put in, and walks off without another word.

I stand at the edge of the curtain with my arms crossed and I wait.

The house lights drop. Thousands of people in the dark make a sound I’ve never been on the wrong side of before. The bass kicks up through the steel of the stage and into the soles of my boots. The kid drummer from her college hits the count-off. The dancers run out. The curtain pulls back.

“Boston! You better sing your heart out,” her voice rings through the room.

Purple and pink lights rush across the room as she steps out onto the lip of the stage. A sparkly microphone in one hand and a dirty little grin she throws out at the front row before she opens her mouth on the first note.

Five thousand bodies in the room scream her name. She has been waiting for this her whole life.

I lock my arms harder across my chest to keep from doing something stupid.

She is so good I forget to breathe for the first thirty seconds. She is so good that the velvet box in my right pocket feels like a brick. She is so good that I have to step back from the curtain twice during the first song to lean against the wall, because watching her come alive on stage is surreal.

She tears through the set. ‘Brokenhearted Tango’. ‘Beach Nights’. The duet from her first EP with the other singer’s part on the track. The whole arena sings every word back to her, every single line, and her face splits open every time they do. Halfway through the second hour, she pauses to thank her fans, gripping the mic stand as her band plays the same four notes over and over again.

“Boston,” she breathes into the mic, her voice gone soft and a little raw from an hour of singing like her life depended on it. “You guys know this is a special night, right? You know why?”