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Her dark eyes rounded and her lips pursed. “Oh really? Like who? Nice of Tristan to inform me he was macking on some other chick while he was trying to stick it to me.”
Randy had to laugh. Simply had to, because his ribs were on the verge of cracking from the pressure. Turned out a human body couldn’t exist as a blocked valve for long without some vital part giving way.
In his case, his sanity.
“Oh honey, you are so wrong. So wrong you’re standing on another continent.” Deliberately, he let her wrist go.
Her hand dropped and hung limply at her side. The other reached up for her throat, squeezing reflexively while her gaze roamed his face. “No.”
The small denial wasn’t what he’d expected. A husky laugh, maybe. He’d always feared getting exactly that from her if he declared how he felt. She wasn’t like him in any shape or fashion. Hell, she was practically a trust fund baby who wouldn’t have to work if she didn’t want to. He’d come from modest roots, and he spent his days with his jeans scuffed from crawling around dusty stages. He’d been raised to get right in there, to get his hands dirty no matter what position he rose to within the crew. If something went wrong, he carried that weight because he got involved. He didn’t just throw out orders and wait for them to be obeyed.
That wasn’t his deal, in life or in the bedroom. But something about the tentative expression Juliet wore made him want to command her in a way he rarely had with a lover.
He wanted her on her knees.
Afterward, he’d reciprocate. Gratefully.
Except this wasn’t some torrid fantasy, and he lived by rules. Including the one that said Tristan had moved first, so unless they ended things, he had no right to show his cards. Even then, he probably couldn’t, depending how far things had gone between her and his best friend. There were lines that shouldn’t ever be crossed.
But he wasn’t a saint. And he damn well couldn’t ignore the vulnerability he’d somehow caused, now reflected on her gorgeous face.
He rubbed his calloused thumb over her dark red lower lip. Under his touch, it trembled, and her pupils flared wide until the brown of her irises receded.
“Yes,” he murmured.
“Hey babe, you get lost on the way to the kitchen? Or you making those refreshments by hand?”
The familiar heavy footsteps should’ve made Randy pull back. As should have Tristan’s lazy question.
Yet he didn’t move. Neither did Juliet. They might as well have been frozen in place, their eyes locked and their breathing equally uneven. Or maybe Randy was just hoping.
Hope was a stupid, resilient motherfucker.
The footsteps stopped on the verge of the kitchen, and Randy didn’t look away from Juliet. He couldn’t. If this was the sum total of their interactions as anything other than the prima donna bassist of Warning Sign and the surly lighting director, he wasn’t going to do anything to speed the moment along.
A beat passed. Two. Randy could hear her heartbeat trapped inside his own. It was throbbing in her eyes, quivering in her lip under his thumb.
And then Tristan’s still lazy—and now curious—voice shattered the moment.
“Well, isn’t this cozy?”
Chapter Six
Tristan wasn’t a stranger to walking into crazy scenes. When one of your best friends was Hunter Jordan, a rockstar with the nickname Manaconda—and no, that wasn’t referring to the size of Hunter’s talent—and your other best friend was the brother-in-law of Deacon McCoy of Oblivion, a guy had access to enough insanity to fill a gallon jug.
And then some.
That wasn’t even counting all the people Tristan met on a day to day basis at The Hollow. He catered to the filthy rich, who often had exotic tastes and a fondness for debauchery. Often both during dinner.
Still, he couldn’t remember ever being as surprised at walking in on something as he was at that moment. Not even because Rand and Juliet were dancing around each other—or more accurately, practically pressed up against each other. He wanted to give his boy a damn fist bump.
About goddamn time, bro.
But he’d had to go and speak, mainly to see what happened next. And now they were pulling apart, looking guiltily at him and adjusting clothes that wouldn’t begin to cover Juliet’s hard nipples or Rand’s hard other things.
Including his sneering mouth.
“It’s refreshments you’re looking for, is it?” Randy took a slug from his beer and crossed his arms. The protective gesture made the seams of his shirt tighten around his shoulders. In a second, he’d be ripping through the fabric Hulk-style.
