Sinners On Tour 05 Double Time (5 page)

“I’ll take that as a no.” He turned and started back to the hot tub.

She caught his well-muscled arm and scarcely stifled an excited gasp. He paused and glanced over his shoulder to melt her into a puddle of Reagan pudding with those maddeningly sexy green eyes of his.

“I…” she shrieked.
Shrieked?
What in the fuck was wrong with her?
Keep
it
together, Reagan. Keep it together.
She cleared her throat. “I didn’t come out here to join you in the hot tub. I came to challenge you to a guitar duel.”
What? No, not that.
She’d come out there to console Trey about Sinners. To tell him there was no way Brian would ever leave the band. But what did she know? She didn’t know Brian. She was just a hopeful fangirl.

His eyebrows lifted with interest. “A guitar duel?”

“Yeah. I have to go practice with my band.” She sucked in a breath of pure terror. She was certainly running through a wide gamut of emotions this morning. “My band… Exodus End,” she mumbled. “Oh my fucking God!”

Trey laughed.

Reagan took a deep steadying breath. “After we’re done practicing, I want to duel you, Trey Mills.”

“At high noon?” He whistled the theme to some old spaghetti Western.

“After you’re done with your soak in the hot tub.”

“And if I win, you’ll join me in the hot tub?”

Her heart skipped several beats. “If that’s what you want.”

He stroked a lock of hair from her cheek. “That’s only the beginning of what I want, Reagan.”

She laughed again. She really was just nervous, but she knew it sounded like she was laughing at him. Rejecting his advances. Never in a million years would she purposely laugh at Trey Mills. And yet, she kept doing it. He dropped his hand, a confused scowl on his handsome face. Reagan wanted to strangle herself.

“If I win the duel, we’re going to the skate park,” she said.
The
skate
park? What am I? Thirteen?

“You skate?”

“Sometimes,” she admitted.
Oh
God, he thinks I’m an immature idiot.

“Sounds fun.”

Liar, liar, lack of pants, I’m on fire.
“Yeah. Good. See you later, then.” Mortified by her complete lack of poise, she fled into the house through the door Trey had left open and followed the sounds of music to the practice room.

“There you are,” Dare said. “I was starting to think I was going to have to come rescue you from the hot tub and my brother’s libido.”

Reagan’s cheeks flamed. That might have been a possibility if she hadn’t made a complete fool of herself.

“She’s not stupid enough to fall for that player,” Max said.

Oh, but she was. Stupid. For that player.

With his good hand, Max took Reagan by the wrist and led her into a large closet beside the practice room. They faced a wall that had guitars hanging from one end to the other on pegs. Some were Dare’s. Some Max’s. Some Logan’s bass guitars. All drool-worthy. Reagan sighed in bliss. Who needed men when you had guitars? She wanted to roll around on them naked. Which would probably be a tad uncomfortable, but she didn’t care. She was in lust with every instrument in the room.

“Dare pointed out that I won’t need my guitars,” Max said, “at least for a while, so take your pick.”

“I couldn’t,” Reagan said, even as her fingers itched to grab the black guitar with electric blue flames directly in front of her.

“At least try one out. I’d rather give them to you than get rid of them. Think of it as a gift.”

“Okay,” she gushed and lifted the guitar from the hooks in the wall.

“Nice choice,” he said.

She had the sudden urge to burst into tears. Maximilian Richardson had paid her a compliment. And let her
touch
his guitar. Even better, let her
play
his guitar. How was she ever going to get used to this?

Once they had her hooked up to an amplifier, Max called out songs and everyone followed his lead. Reagan was really glad she’d practiced all of their songs to prepare for the audition. She actually knew what she was doing, and they seemed impressed that she was keeping up with them. Sweet!

As she played with her new band, she had to continually remind herself that to really serve them as a musician she should mimic Max’s sound as closely as she could. It wasn’t much of a challenge. Max was a great guitarist, but Dare was the real six-stringed talent in the band. Reagan played with her usual heart, but damn if it wasn’t hard to concentrate in the presence of this many great musicians. These men were her inspiration. They were rock gods.
Gods.
And they already accepted her into their fold as if she belonged there. They played through about half of their set list. After several songs Reagan began to relax, but she was careful to keep the sound consistent. She spread her feet apart for balance, closed her eyes, and nodded her head in time with Steve’s hard and heavy beat that was made cohesive by Logan’s low bass. She let Max’s incredible voice carry her away. Paid extra close attention to Dare, to complement his hard, edgy sound rather than compete with it. When the song ended, Reagan opened her eyes to find the members of Exodus End staring at her.

“What?” she said, her face flaming again.

“Band meeting!” Steve called and climbed out from behind his drum kit accompanied by several loud thuds and clangs.

Did a band meeting include her? She looked to Max for direction.

He hooked his microphone into its stand, noticed her looking to him for guidance, and said, “Stay here, Reagan. We’ll be back in a few.”

Her stomach dropped. She was being excluded. They’d changed their minds. She knew this was too good to be true. And she’d mistakenly thought she was doing well. Fitting in. She’d been fooling herself into believing this miracle was part of her reality.

“Okay,” she said with a cheerfulness she did not feel.

It had been a phenomenal dream the forty minutes it had lasted.

The band filtered out of the room, leaving her alone. She played one of Bait-n-Switch’s old riffs to keep herself occupied while she waited. A pair of bare feet entered her line of vision. Her head snapped up.

“Is that the riff you want to duel me with?” Trey asked. “I’m not familiar with it.”

“It’s a riff I wrote, but it isn’t any good.”

“I kind of like it. Do you want to use it in our duel?”

Trey snagged Dare’s guitar from its stand and lifted the strap over his head. The wide strip of studded leather rested at an angle across Trey’s well-defined bare chest. The body of Dare’s white guitar settled low in front of his pelvis. A no longer naked pelvis. Trey was still shirtless, but he’d put on his jeans. Gnawing on her tongue, Reagan stared at his nipple ring for a long moment before remembering that he’d asked her a question.

“Naw. Too easy. You pick a riff.”

He lifted an eyebrow at her. “How about the intro to ‘Crazy Train?’”

She loved this man. He had excellent taste. Reagan tore into the intro of “Crazy Train” without waiting for a signal. Flying through the series of building notes with no problem, she paused and Trey echoed what she’d played. When he reached the end, she upped the tempo of the intro and played it again. He echoed her perfectly. She played it faster still, concentrating so intently on the notes that she didn’t notice he’d edged closer until his arm brushed hers. She stumbled over a series of notes, the strings feeling awkward under her trembling fingertips. He was left-handed and she was right-handed, so the necks of their guitars faced opposite directions. Scowling at her mistake, Reagan pressed on. Trey copied her, down to purposely making the same error she’d made. She glanced up at him and grinned. He grinned back and winked at her. The next few notes she played sounded like drowned cats choking on strangled chickens. Her heart thundered in her chest. She lowered her gaze to his mouth. A spasm gripped her pussy as she watched the tip of his tongue slide over his lip. God, she wanted him to kiss her.

As if he were a mind reader, Trey turned, lowered his head, and claimed her mouth in a deep, hungry kiss. Stunned, she pulled away and lifted a hand to slap him. She caught herself just in time. She got lost in his eyes, her hand suspended millimeters from his angular jaw. He tilted his head so that her fingertips brushed his cheek and then turned his head to caress her tingling flesh with his lips. Gentle, sucking kisses on the tips of her fingers drew a groan of longing from deep within her. She wrapped both arms around his neck and pulled him down to meet her desperate kiss.

He quickly took control, applying a gentle suction to her lips and then teasing them with hints of an expert tongue and tender nibbles. She tugged him closer, wanting to press against his hard body. Chaotic screeches wailed from their guitars as their strings rubbed against each other.

“You two do
not
make beautiful music together,” Dare said as he returned to the room.

Reagan jerked away from Trey and discovered he hadn’t been holding onto her at all. All the contact between them had been her doing. Oh God, she’d thrown herself at him. She should be mortified, but she wasn’t. She wanted to throw herself at him again and keep throwing herself at him until he caught her.

“Does this mean I win?” Trey asked, his deep voice doing strange things to her nipples.

She chanced a peek at the front of her thin white tank top. Yep, her arousal was apparent. She crossed her arms over her chest. Why had she decided against a bra that morning? As a card-carrying member of the itty bitty titty committee she didn’t really need to wear a bra most days, but one would have concealed her high beam issue.

“Did I say you could borrow my guitar, bro?” Dare asked.

Trey removed the guitar and handed it to Dare. Reagan squeaked in surprise when Trey drew her against him and claimed her mouth in another kiss. Glad she hadn’t been the one to initiate the contact between them this time, her arms slid around him to draw him closer. For once in her life she wished a guitar wasn’t hanging around her neck so she could relish the full length of Trey’s lean body against hers. Feel his rigid arousal against her damp mound. Why was she melting against him instead of trying to fend him off? Why was she stroking the cool, smooth skin of his back as if she hadn’t just met the guy? What was it about this man that was so utterly irresistible?

Trey’s mouth moved to her ear. “I want you,” he whispered.

A shiver of pure delight snaked down Reagan’s spine, and she shuddered with complete surrender.

God, yes, take me you sexy, sexy man. Right here. Right now. Any way I can have you. I want you too.

“Trey, we need to talk to your latest conquest for a moment,” Dare said. “Do you mind?” He waved at the open door in get-the-hell-out-of-here-twerp fashion.

Latest
conquest?
Could a man who made her feel this special be a player? She realized that’s exactly what made Trey a good player. She was so going to get her heart broken. And while that realization totally sucked, she’d deal with it when the time came. There was no way she was shying away from that opportunity. Or that man.

“I’ll meet you in the hot tub,” Trey said to Reagan.

Probably not a good idea, but she had lost their duel. Might not have if he hadn’t touched her. Kissed her. Drove her to utter distraction. Thank God he had. Otherwise they might be heading off to the skate park. Yeah, not exactly her best idea.

“I’ll be there in a bit,” she said, her heart thudding in anticipation.

Trey moved from her loose hold and slid past the congregated members of Exodus End. Reagan’s face flamed. Again. They’d all been watching that. What must they think of her?

“We talked,” Dare said.

They all looked so serious. Reagan swallowed. Here it comes. Dreams smashed against the rocks.

“We want to sign you for the upcoming concert season,” Max said. “The first half of the tour is US. The second half is world. We leave in three weeks. Can you get your shit, um…
stuff
, in order before then?”

“Of course!” she gushed.

“Awesome,” Max said. His welcoming smile faded. “We do have a few concerns.”

“Concerns?”

“First, you’re a woman.”

She lifted a brow at him. “Last time I checked. Is that a problem?”

“Potentially,” Max said. “Things happen on tours that might offend you.”

She snorted with laughter. “I am unoffendable, Max. Trust me on that.”

“We’re guys,” Logan said. “We’re not used to having to behave ourselves.”

“Why would you have to behave yourselves?” Reagan asked.

“You’re a woman,” Steve said.

“I think we’ve already agreed on that point.”

“We don’t want you to get freaked out and leave in the middle of the tour,” Dare said.

“No chance.”

“You’ll undoubtedly see things…”

“I get it. You guys party. You fuck sluts. You cuss and argue. You lose your minds and break shit. Whatever. I can handle it.”

They exchanged glances.

“I can handle it,” she insisted.

“All right, but we’re going to be pissed if you back out on us.”

“I won’t.”

“Our second concern…”

The four of them shifted their gazes to the floor. It must be a pretty big concern to make four balls-of-steel rock stars unable to meet her eyes.

“We all noticed that you are…” Steve murmured.

“Fucking hot,” Logan blurted.

“Yeah, hot,” Max agreed. “But…”

“You need a makeover, sweetheart,” Dare said.

She was fucking hot, but she needed a makeover? She set her jaw to control the anger rising up from her chest. “I see. And if I refuse?”

“You’ll be destroyed by the tabloids.”

“We know you’re in this for the music, Reagan, and so are we, but… we kind of have this reputation of…”

“Looking gorgeous,” Reagan said flatly.

“If you don’t want to be a part of that, it’s okay, just know that you’re going to hear about it,” Max said.

“Remember that time Dare cut his hair?” Logan said. “You would have thought it was a national emergency.”