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“We have two months,” I argued. “You’re making it sound like it’s gonna be difficult to bring out a new album.”
At the rate songs were spilling through, we could write a new album by next week. All I needed was Cat and a bedroom with a lock on the door.
“Based on your current performance, yes.” The exec pursed his lips.
I swallowed, the sting in my throat reminding me where the lyrics had come from, and what had triggered them. Their voices faded into the background as I reached for a bottle of water to soothe the ache that traced patterns of her into my flesh.
I’d hidden the marks as best as I could, even shouting at a pair of stylists who tried to take off my scarf for a photoshoot. Bunny had helped but added constant reminders of how it clashed with my style. I think she was more annoyed I had messed up her party plans than the fact I’d disappeared and returned covered in blood.
I couldn’t let anyone else see them. Whenever someone’s eyes ran over my concealed throat, I felt the magic disappearing. I was scared if anyone touched them, the proof of Cat’s love would vanish. I wanted to hold onto her as tightly as possible.
She was my inspiration. She was the dark light that broke through this wall that kept me barred from creativity for so long. All I had to do was find her alone, rile her up, and kiss her or beg her to hurt me, anything to stir me and draw new lyrics into existence. She was my magic, the thing that started me moving again.
I fingered the edge of my scarf. How much had come from those moments in the glasshouse? That interrupted meeting in her office. Even the brief but throbbing session of her fist on my shirt and her foot gracing my cock.
Bunny had bought us both seats for the Great Gatsby fundraiser the Fischer Foundation was hosting tomorrow night. From the way Bunny described it, it was just gambling for charity, but it was being held at the Fischer townhouse in Chelsea, and Cat was definitely attending. Bunny promised it was the event of the season, whatever that meant.
There, I could dance with her, stroke her, smell her delicate essence, and bask in her hatred.
No cameras, no press, only a specially selected group of guests who valued privacy over fame.
“We can do it.” I cut through the arguments everyone was throwing around.
All I needed was time. It wasn’t about preparing, it was about grabbing the moment and fulfilling its potential.
“What!?” Steve yelped. Bevel’s eyebrows rose, and Luc glared at me. “Mate, it took us two weeks just to get those songs anywhere near good enough. We can’t get another, what? Seven? Out in two months. Not with everything else we’re doing.”
“Look, trust me. I know it’s mental, but we can do it.” I just had to see her.
I was already desperate enough to crawl on my knees towards her, ready to beg for any morsel of attention she would throw at me. If my humiliation meant more songs, even better.
“I’ll write new songs. It won’t take long. We’ll have to push to get it all ready, but we can do it. Come on, think of the look on The Angels’ faces when we throw out a new album straight after the tour. They won’t know what hit them.”
Max
Iwas in hell. This was a very special brand of hell designed specifically for me. I was at least 80 percent sure Bunny had arranged this from the way she’d had my hand pinned to the table since dinner had started.
I’d been aching to be this close to Cat since our last embrace in her office, dying for even the smallest hint of her. It wasn’t just about the music; my sanity was at stake. Now I was sitting next to my fiancée with the woman I so desperately wanted to fuck placed right behind me, laughing and joking with her ‘friend’ from work. Their table was so close to ours that I could have reached out my arm to run a hand through her pearl-studded hair, and I would barely have to stretch.
The place was packed. At least two hundred guests were grouped around the circular dining tables that filled the room for the Gatsby Gala, but all I could hear was Cat’s voice. Her laugh stabbed through any conversation I tried to have with the other guests at our table. I couldn’t focus; every one of my senses were drawn to her, painfully aware of how close she was to Dom, even though I couldn’t see them.
The Fischer 'townhouse' was more like a mansion sprawled across half the street; hundreds of rooms all lavishly decorated and reeking of old money. The Great Gatsby theme was in full flow, their giant dining room decorated in black silk with the classic gold line effect. I swear I’d been to at least one of these a year since Clutch became famous, but nothing quite like this. They’d really gone for it. Black and gold crystal chandeliers hung from the ceilings, huge feathered decorations lined up on black tablecloths, strings of thousands of lights hung down the walls, and all the guests had dressed to impress.
I’d left my suit up to Bunny, and she’d gone for a classic dark blue to match her gold full-length dress with a dangerously wide V down to her belly button, barely covering her nipples — not that our dinner companions seemed to mind. A thick jewelled belt hung off her hips, and a matching crown gathered her blonde hair into an elegant chignon.
I was going fucking manic. I didn’t give two shits about how Lord Hastings’s grandson, Darcy, was doing in the national water polo tournaments, or that Madame Lavigne had opened a new vineyard. It was so fucking beyond me. Bun was pissed when I brushed them off every time they tried to talk to me but, really? She’d helped organise the gala, and I was sure she wanted to torture me after the strangling fiasco. But why did she think this was a good idea?
My hand was going numb from the way she was holding it. You could stab a fork into me, and I wouldn’t have noticed.
I couldn’t turn around, couldn’t talk to Cat, touch her, smell her. It was fucking ridiculous. I’d spent weeks since I first laid eyes on her in her office trying to think of ways I could be close to her, but that was more along the lines of burying my face in her chest, not sitting a foot away from her while she flirted with Dom.
I needed to speak to her about that moment in the office where every single one of my brain cells exploded because she was going to kiss me. She’d been in my arms, and everything felt so good and so fucking right. I’d become like jelly, her soft fingers stroking my ears and melting me into a puddle. She could have done anything she wanted to me — scolded me, mocked me, hurt me. Yet she had tucked herself between my legs, taken my face in her hands, and I swear she was about to kiss me, but instead, she told me to fuck off as soon as fucking Dom arrived.
It’d been driving me insane all week… That hair’s breadth between her lips and mine, the press of her palms on my cheeks as she tugged me closer. Her tongue licking her fucking lips as I drowned in her eyes. It was an entirely different level than the choking. She couldn’t pass it off as part of her revenge plan, if she even had one. That was lust, pure and simple, and I had a fuck ton of words to say to her about that.
And behind all of it, swimming there at the back of my mind, no matter how much I tried to ignore it, was the realisation that I had fucked up the best relationship of my life, all because I let Goss manipulate me.
Ten courses and eight million pieces of cutlery later, I was ready to explode. I’d tried escaping to the bathroom twice, but Bunny caught me before I could speak to Cat. Bun was eleven years younger than me, but she managed me more efficiently than Carl had in all the years we’d known him.
