High Strung (Power Station Book 1) (9 page)

“You don’t remember last night? Not even a little bit?” His voice sounded skeptical, almost incredulous before he barked out a laugh. “Now who is being offensive?”

“Now is not the time for me to pad your ego. No, I told you. I don’t remember last night. I’m sorry if that ruins your reputation but you have at least one dissatisfied customer.”

I couldn’t admit that while I couldn’t remember, I wasn’t halfway near as pissed as I was pretending to be. It was bad enough those feelings were waging a war inside my head, battling between high fiving my drunken self for bedding one of the hottest guys I’ve ever seen, and the disgust I allowed myself to slip into the cliché of being another notch in his belt. Stupid girl. He’s never going to respect you. How could I have given it up so easily?

“Oh you are so wrong.” He leaned closer ignoring my knee barrier. “I have never left a woman dissatisfied.”

I swallowed. All that skin, and he had to be naked underneath that towel. Somewhere, digging deep, I found a small pocket of bravado.

“There is a first time for everything. Don’t take it too hard, I’m sure there will be someone just around the corner to scream your name and be thankful. Sorry, but you won’t be finding gratitude here.”

“You really have no idea, do you?” He narrowed his eyes, as if weighing my words for the first time this morning. Perhaps I should use more simplistic language, he did seem to confuse easily.

“No. I don’t, so let’s say goodbye and move on. Last night was an oversight. A hiccup. I can move on knowing that men like you are definitely not for me. So for that, I owe you a thank you. Now if you can kindly put on some clothes and vacate my apartment I’d appreciate it.”

I turned my back to him, pulling the bed sheets around me. While he might have seen it all last night, he wasn’t going to get another peepshow this morning. Besides, facing away from him was definitely the smartest decision I’d had so far. The longer I looked at him, the greater the chance I would be saying something stupid, like offering to towel off the remnants of moisture that clung to the curve of his neck…with my tongue.

“You know I didn’t see it initially but you really are an evil bitch and surprisingly that kind of turns me on more.” I could hear the smirk in his voice as his finger traced the line of my bare shoulder.

I felt I had no choice as I opened my mouth, and lied. “And you are still the insensitive pig I pegged you for. So now we have established this was purely one sided, please leave and allow me the courtesy of wallowing in my shame privately.”

“Fine, babe, I’ll leave but we both know you’ll be calling me.” I felt him move off the bed and heard the thud of his wet towel hitting the floor. All I had to do was turn and I would see what I had obviously been too drunk to remember. I wanted to, desperately, but refused to give him the satisfaction.
Don’t turn around. Do NOT turn around!

“I’ve taken the liberty of programming my number into your cell.” After some rustling, I caught the telltale sound of a zipper being pulled up. “I was disappointed there wasn’t even one dirty selfie on there.”

I whipped my body around, too consumed by anger to worry about what I might be seeing. Thankfully while he was still naked from the waist up he was wearing jeans. “You went through my phone?”

“You didn’t have a password on it.” His satisfied grin danced across his smug, sexy face.

“You can’t just invade my privacy like that. Who do you think you are?” I was barely able to spit out the words through my seething rage.

“Relax, babe, it’s just a phone. It’s not like I went through your underwear drawer.” His playfully raised eyebrow did little to convince me he hadn’t.

It took every ounce of self-control I owned not to launch myself off the bed and punch him right in the throat. Maybe I was wrong and he was just baiting me, he seemed to gain an inappropriate amount of joy from our exchanges. Let’s not overreact just yet.

“Dan. Did you go through my underwear drawer?”

He bit back a grin, unashamedly admitting his perversion. “Okay, maybe a little, but you fell asleep so fast I got bored. Nice stuff by the way. I dig that little red thong you have tucked away.”

“Get out,” I shouted, grabbing a pillow and tossing it at his head wishing I had a more solid projectile within reach. I didn’t even recognize the demonic voice that sprouted from my throat, it was like it was coming out of someone else.

“Okay, Okay. I’m going.” He winced in the wake of my small but efficient explosion, snaring his shirt and boots from the floor before stepping to the threshold of my bedroom doorway. “See ya, babe.” He waved casually pulling the shirt over his head and walking out of my line of sight, not even offering a sorry. Of course he didn’t, he wasn’t
sorry
. In his mind, he’d done nothing wrong. I guessed as far as he was concerned, riffling through someone’s panty drawer after you had just been
inside of them
was hardly a violation. From that perspective, his stupid and idiotic logic was actually somewhat rational.

As soon as the door slammed shut I grabbed my phone from my nightstand, and scrolled through my contacts. Sure enough, DAN EVANS was now listed with an attached profile photo. It wasn’t a typical smiling profile however, oh no. It was of his naked torso, a display of colorful flesh that started from the bottom of his neck and stopped just before it became X-rated. It was the ultimate tease pic: no face, just sculptured, masculine skin. It was raw and unfiltered, just like him. I couldn’t stop staring at it; it was possibly the most erotic image I’d even seen. My finger lingered over the glass as I enlarged the image to fill the screen, prompting an unfamiliar tug in my core. I hated him, there is no way I would be calling him and yet I couldn’t bring myself to delete it. He was trouble. He was everything I had spent my life trying to avoid – reckless, dangerous and a guaranteed broken heart. He wasn’t what I needed and yet I couldn’t stop wanting him, even though I needed to. A part of me wished I could recall the details of the night and I wondered if it had been good; the fact he was still here in the morning had to mean it, or
I
wasn’t totally bad. Damn him! I wasn’t going to allow myself to be dragged down that path. I needed distance, a very cold shower and the biggest cup of coffee I could find, and then I would do whatever it took to exorcise Dan Evans from my body and my mind.

“She threw your ass
out, huh?” Troy’s smug fucking face beamed at me as he slid into the booth and sat opposite. “I tried to tell you last night it was a bad idea dude, and here you are sitting at a Starbucks looking like a douche.”

I didn’t have much choice when I left Ashlyn’s apartment, shit had definitely not gone to plan. I was hoping after working over that tight little body of hers with a session of morning sex, we hit up an IHOP and maybe head back to her piece-of-shit apartment and have a go at round two. Fuck knows I had been packing the biggest set of blue balls all night while I slept beside her, the only hands around my cock being my own. Each time she moaned in her sleep I had to fight the urge not to jack off. ’Cause that would be creepy, right? Does it count as creepy if I jacked off and she didn’t know? Fuck there were too many rules for this shit. This broad was messing with my head.

Knowing I was probably going to end up loaded last night, I hadn’t driven to the club. Troy, Jase and I had requested our regular driver, TJ, to chauffeur.

TJ had been our wheelman for years. Nothing fazed him; he had seen it all, especially in the early days. Back then, all the boys partook in the spoils, even James after Hannah dumped his ass. Of course, it lasted about five seconds before he went crawling back to her like a pussy and handed her his balls. They had been together forever but got into a few fights early in the piece, the label putting pressure on James to be the single front man to earn us more pussy points with the fans. Had to hand it to her, she wasn’t with him for the fame or the money and she would have kept walking if he hadn’t fucking begged her for another chance. James wasn’t into the lifestyle; he just wanted to sing with his band and have a regular girl to come home to. We all knew they’d end up doing the walk down the aisle.

Alex Stone was another fucking story. That good-looking motherfucker had girls creaming their pants with his iceman routine. He didn’t even try. He was the one I least expected to take a knee. Enter Lexi-Knockout-Reed, a feisty brunette from the Land Down Under. Done deal. And then there were three…Jase, Troy and me.

“Don’t even start with me, asswhipe. If I’d known you were going to be such a whiny bitch I would have called a cab.” I took another swallow of whatever it was the blonde behind the counter had recommended. Even coffee wasn’t simple these days, though I had to admit, whatever it was in the cup was surprisingly delicious.

Troy shook his head. “I’m not a whiny bitch, and you know I’ll come pick your ass up from wherever you call me from. You would do the same for me. I get that. What I don’t get is why you have such a hard-on for this girl, when she clearly can’t stand you.”

Girls were a dime a dozen, especially for us. I’d never really chased anyone. Sure I’d throw a line out there and see if I’d get a nibble but I was more a numbers man, and if a girl wasn’t feeling me then I wasn’t about to waste time trying to convince her. To be honest, I didn’t have a solid answer for him, not one that made any sense.

“You don’t know that.”

Troy eased back into his padded chair, the grin on his face hinted he wouldn’t be letting this shit go. “Then how come you’re sitting here with me instead of doing your usual morning-after pancake routine with her? I’m actually surprised she didn’t come to her senses earlier, I was half expecting to get a call an hour after we dropped the two of you off.”

“She pretty much collapsed once we walked in the door. We made out for about ten minutes, and I had barely got my hands on her tits when she passed out.”

As much as I hated to admit it, nothing went down last night. Ashlyn had been talking a good game up until I got her front door unlocked, telling me how she’d wanted to just have one night of fun and then it was like the alcohol finally hit her. Honestly, I had been ready to see her up to her apartment and call it a night, and not because I wasn’t interested. I knew she was loaded and not making rational decisions, but I wasn’t about to take advantage of a girl, even if she was begging. The touching the tits happened before she passed out. Then it was either carry her to her to her room or lay her down on the tired looking couch in her living room.

Troy eyeballed me hard. “Please tell me I’m not going to have to take you outside and beat your ass for being a scumbag.” I had no doubt he would take me outside and we’d have to go a few rounds if that kind of shit had gone down. None of us would ever cross that line.

“Look at me, brother. I am many things but not
that,
and I would never put my hands on a woman without her okay. No fucking way, not ever. I didn’t even jerk off. I just helped her out of her dress and put her to bed.”

Someone should give me a medal ’cause I can tell you it wasn’t easy being next to someone that hot and not want to at least have a stroke.

“But you still spent the night? Why?”

“I don’t know. I just wanted to stay. She lives in a shithole dude. Seriously, how that place isn’t condemned is beyond me and she looked, I don’t know, vulnerable, and I didn’t want to leave. So I stayed and held her for a while. It was kind of nice.”

I shrugged, not really caring it made me sound like a complete pussy. Honestly, if it had been someone else, I would’ve probably just made something up, but it was Troy and he knew me better than anyone. We had been friends since we were kids and had been in bands together long before Power Station formed. It wasn’t until we heard James and Alex were looking to form something solid, that we actually thought we’d play a genuine gig. We’d seen those two kids in the neighborhood and one day we heard them jamming in James’s old man’s garage. Troy knocked on the door and asked if they wanted a rhythm section, and that’s how it started. Being in a band, making money doing what you love is a dream come true, and there isn’t a day when I’m not thankful. But to do it with your best friend by your side, that’s the motherfuckin’ ultimate.

“Am I hearing right? The great Dan Evans spent the night cuddling?” Troy laughed not even trying to hide how much he was enjoying the situation.

“Whatever, asshole. I seem to remember you going home alone, and whether or not I got laid, I still went to bed with the hottest girl in the club.”