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When the intro finished the lights lifted and Logan had his twelve string guitar in hand. A new face was on the stage. He played the piano with a single-minded devotion to complement Lindsey’s voice.
Logan slowly walked to the piano and played out the song on the guitar. When Lindsey’s voice drifted into the night, there was a pause before a dirty bass throbbed through the room.
The new guy crowded his mic as he pounded on the keys and sang. Jet black hair hung low in his eyes. He wore a white dress shirt rolled up at the elbows. Ink climbed his arms. Music notes on a staff were the main art with splashes of color.
He growled into the microphone as the entire stage came alive with the rhythm and heavy-handed bass line. The piano raged and his rough voice teased down her spine. The song was familiar, but it felt like this was a bastardized version of it. The kind that was jammed out in a grungy bar for four minutes one night or fifteen on another one.
Logan draped his hand over his mic in the stand. His chest bellowed in and out as he sucked in lungfuls of air. “That, my friends, was Alexander Nash. He decided to come out of the bowels of New York City to help me out.”
The murmur in the crowd surprised her.
?
??We are even now, son.” Nash’s raspy voice scraped through the speakers.
A soft thrum reverberated around the room. The lights went out and a black light set the room into a whole different tone. A dripping chord repeated and Bella’s chest tightened.
Oh, no he didn’t.
“I don’t really sing this one much anymore, but a certain lady told me it was her favorite, so I dragged it out of the old memory banks. This is ‘Tipping Point’.”
Gritty guitars and a powerful drumbeat bloomed through her chest. The room went silent as Logan’s voice went tenor deep. It slowly built until it was more rumble than words. The guitars rose up with him, hypnotic and layered. The song had the ebb and flow of seduction and the lyrics of a sweaty, dirty fuck.
The heat of the room and the throbbing rhythm of the song lured her closer to him. The crowd had lulled with the absolute control Logan had on it. The room wasn’t terribly big and she knew the moment he spotted her.
Searing green eyes never broke away from hers. And as the song hit the climax and his voice was little more than a groan, she melted back into the crowd.
The set continued on like that. With songs old and new driving the crowd into a frenzy. Finally the house lights went down. She’d been to enough concerts to know they had an encore to do, but she needed to see him—to touch him, just for a moment.
Needed to know that this was only the beginning of the night.
An ache was growing inside her that only Logan could satisfy. She flashed her all access laminate to the security at the side stairs and snuck behind an amp, around a trunk of guitars. Was that the trunk she’d been so deliciously used on?
That wouldn’t be enough tonight.
She needed the total access of a bedroom—his room. Memories of the room she’d stayed in a few nights ago bombarded her over-sensitized flesh. He’d stayed away all night. Part of her was glad that he’d respected her wishes, but there’d been a huge part of her that wished he’d simply taken the option away from her. Just one push and she’d have caved. But that wasn’t Logan. She was starting to learn just what kind of man he was.
In the middle of the night she’d caught him there, in the atrium, with his bottle of whisky and shadows. A man very much alone. She’d wanted to climb onto that super-sized couch and hold him, taste the whisky on his tongue, pour it over the corded muscles of his neck and collarbone, then drink it off his freckle-spattered skin.
In the dark of night, a safe life with a stable guy wasn’t nearly as alluring as this intense man with demons crawling just under the skin. He was holding something back and she’d wanted to dig those details out of him.
The fact that she’d wanted more, wanted to learn what made him tick, had scared her enough that she’d run out the door at first light instead of facing him.
Tonight she wouldn’t hold back.
She’d let that side of her out again. And she’d own it. Let him own her.
She took a deep, appreciative breath when Logan came off the stage. Sweat soaked his shirt, making it cling to every muscle, a towel was draped over his head. She came up behind him, slipping her hands under his shirt.
He jumped and he swung around, his eyes blazing with…something. Was that fear? He had his arm up, a bottle of water angled as if he was going to impale her with it. She took a step back, her arms coming up. “Hey, there. Whoa, I was just trying to—”
He cut her off, dropping the bottle before lifting her off her toes into a kiss that matched her song in every way. She latched onto his shoulders and gave a startled groan when he pinned her to the wall. He swept his tongue into her mouth, drawing hers out so he could suck her tongue before stroking every corner and crevice.
He pulled back, his shoulders heaving with deep breaths to match the jackhammer beat of his heart. “When I saw you down there, it took every ounce of willpower not to jump into the crowd.”
She dangled off his shoulders, completely at his mercy. “They’d have torn you apart.”
“Would have been worth it.”
