Insatiable Craving: 2 (Insatiable Nights)

Okay. Fine. So he was hot. What was wrong with that?

The answer came just as quickly but offered little comfort. Of course there was nothing wrong with finding a man attractive…except it hadn’t happened in a very long time. And though Electric Panther had been Ginny’s nightly haunt for the past few weeks, summoning the courage to admit said attraction felt downright terrifying.

Ginny ducked her head and quickly averted her gaze from the lead singer’s haunted face. For the past however long, no matter how many pep talks she gave the mirror, no matter how many promises she made to herself not to be one of
those
girls, every night after she clocked off work at Trixie’s, her feet guided her to the popular nightclub.

It wasn’t even as if she liked the place. Heck, she hated it. Clubs had never been her thing—not in high school, when all anyone could talk about was scoring a fake ID to sneak into whatever hotspot had just opened up, not in college when her roommate swore it would be the best,
maaaan,
even after said roommate’s three overdoses, and not now. Ginny hated clubs. She hated the smell, the noise, the nonexistent light, and she hated the people. She hated that she couldn’t see everyone, hated her unease in searching out a drink, hated the shaky, paranoid feeling she was being watched. She hated her own weakness the most—knowing she should go home yet finding herself drawn back again and again.

Electric Panther was a marriage of every bad club stereotype, if that marriage had been thrown into a blender. The only reason Ginny had ever seen what it looked like on the inside was a need to break from routine—a suggestion planted by her therapist and followed begrudgingly after months of follow-up prompts.

She’d sworn she’d never come back even before she first opened the door.

Yet here she was. Back at Electric Panther and again, like so many nights before, without an excuse.

And why? Why?

Because of
him
. Ginny fidgeted, sighed, then caved and finally looked back to the stage. The man himself. The lead singer of Razor’s Edge.

Yeah, she was pretty sure she had crossed the boundary into certified groupie territory and she didn’t like it. Moreover, she wasn’t sure whether her fascination really bothered her or if she was ruffled only because she felt it should.

There was one thing Virginia Higgins wasn’t, and that was a groupie. Or a gossip. Or a teeny bopper. Or really any kind of fill-in-the-blank.

And she typically wasn’t attracted to men who wore eyeliner, doctored fake scars on their face and kept having to blow their annoyingly perfect black hair out of their eyes in order to find the mic. But damn, she couldn’t help herself. Not the way her gut clenched, not how her heart thundered and not the slickness between her thighs, especially when his gaze scanned the crowd and landed on her.

That last thing seemed to be happening a lot more tonight than other nights. Ginny’s cheeks were aflame. Did he recognize her? She had been here every night for over a month, yes, but the notion that she could have caught anyone’s eye in a sea of screaming fangirls—let alone Razor’s—was completely preposterous.

Ginny sucked in a deep breath and tucked a wayward lock of her messy brown hair behind her ear. Razor’s long, magnificent fingers made love to the strings of his guitar, the instrument seeming an extension of his body. Ginny wasn’t much of a musician—she’d tried her hand at the viola in high school but had never learned to play anything beyond
Mary Had A Little Lamb
. She didn’t know how anything synthetic could seem so much a part of a person, to the point Razor seemed less at ease when the instrument wasn’t in his arms. But whatever that power was, Razor certainly possessed it. It and many others.

And again, as he leaned in to whisper sweet seductions to the microphone, his gaze landed on her and lingered. A sharp breath rocketed through Ginny’s chest and her gut twisted again until it was tied in a nice little knot.

“Oh God,” Ginny murmured. “Look away, look away.”

He didn’t. Instead, the faintest hint of a smile curved his lips.

“Shit.”

For a few blissful moments, the world seemed to fade away. Ginny fought to swallow the lump that had manifested in her throat, her hips swaying of their own volition to the music belting over the speakers. There was something about that man’s eyes that shook her to the bone. A lost look swirling beneath depths she could never explore. No matter what light she saw him in, shadows molded his face, giving his presence an almost ethereal feel, as though one day he might blend in and disappear.

Even if she were interested in turning fantasy into reality—which would require a prescription of hefty antianxiety meds she couldn’t afford—she knew broken men were nothing but trouble. That was one lesson Ginny had learned firsthand. And though she had no way of knowing, something screamed Razor was a broken man.

Though perhaps the entire perception was just one of her many defense mechanisms at work.

Yet staring at Razor and experiencing the rush of having him stare back, the wall separating her fantasy world from the one she lived in thinned just enough to give her the smallest rush of…
something
.

The spell might have lasted forever had someone not tapped on her shoulder. Ginny blinked, somersaulting back to Earth in a daze. She hadn’t even realized she’d taken off.

The owner of the finger was a blonde woman who looked barely old enough to set foot in the club. She flashed a friendly smile. “Hi!” Even though she shouted, her voice was near inaudible over the girlish screams and the steady thump of the heavy bass. “I’m with Razor.”

Ginny blinked. “What?” she yelled back. Her gaze shifted to the woman’s mouth.

“I said I’m with Razor!”

Oh sheesh. Another good reason not to get hung up on a singer—they were always involved, and the women they attracted were possessive, insecure whine-brats. Ginny
really
didn’t have time for this. Besides, he’d been looking right back at her. “I wasn’t doing—”

The blonde’s eyes widened then she threw her head back and laughed. “No,” she shouted, shaking her head in that exaggerated way one might do when teaching children. “Sorry. It’s too loud in here to think. My name’s Aria, and I
work
for Razor. I actually own the club.”

“You own Electric Panther?” Ginny had always assumed the club’s owner to be equipped with a penis. Even if that weren’t the case, she certainly wouldn’t have pegged the owner to be a shrimp-sized Barbie who likely got carded by her own bartender.

Still, the blonde nodded. “Arianna McClain, owner extraordinaire. That’s me!”

“And you’re with Razor.”

The blonde nodded toward the stage. “
Work.
Not
with
. I’m out here now, in fact, because he wants your name.”

At once all the sound—the thumping bass, the screaming groupies, even Razor’s special rocky road voice—evaporated from the room, and Ginny’s heart went from a steady pounding to freaking overkill. “My name?” she repeated. There was no way she’d understood correctly.

Aria nodded, her mouth twisted into a slightly crazed grin. Or at least it looked crazed under this lighting. “Follow me!” she yelled, then grabbed Ginny’s hand before a protest could push against her lips.

The next thing she knew, Ginny was weaving through a sweaty horde of drunken coeds, her heart ready to leap out of her throat and do the Charleston on the dance floor. Her brain screamed in what might have been English, but there were too many voices in her head to keep up with the conversation. Logic told her to seize control of her wrist and duck the fuck out of this place before Aria the Teenage Business Owner managed to corner her in a place without clearly marked exits.

Yet she didn’t pull away. Instead, she followed the peppy blonde into the ladies’ room. The loud, pulsating beat of the music grew muffled the second a door was between her and the dance floor, and though the walls still shook with the bass’s heavy vibrations, Ginny at once felt her head clear.

“Sorry,” Aria said, tucking a curl behind her ear. The motion wasn’t exaggerated but the movement briefly diverted Ginny’s attention to a shiny gold and emerald amulet-looking thing nestled between the blonde’s breasts. It looked awkward and clunky—not meshing with the girl’s otherwise sleek and trendy outfit. “I know that was weird, but he made me promise to grab you if you came in again.”

“He did,” Ginny said. Her buzzing nerves refused to calm. “Are you sure you grabbed the right person?”

Aria laughed—a pleasant, melodic sound that deserved its own fucking harp chord. From a glance, Ginny could tell the woman was everything Ginny was not. Aria had rich brown eyes—the sort that laughed all on their own—dimples, a pretty smile, a sizable rack and hair so shiny it could star in a damn shampoo commercial. If she was a friend of Razor’s, she had to be the sort who warmed his bed when partners were scarce.

“He’s noticed you,” the blonde said. “A lot. And he really wants your name so he can call you.”

“Why?”

“Presumably to go out. On a date.”

Ginny blinked. “A date.”

“Societal courting ritual, often involving food and some kind of mutually agreeable entertainment.” Aria grinned. “The objective is to determine compatibility and likelihood of forming long-lasting romantic attachments.”

Great.
She was funny too.

“I still don’t see what this has to do with me,” Ginny said. “He couldn’t—”

“He does.”

“I’m not his type.”

“That sounds like the sort of conclusion one arrives at after at least one date.” Aria bounced on her heels. “Look, I’m not asking you to marry the guy. But he likes you. He’s noticed you. And he’ll have my ass if I don’t at least get your name. Name and number’s preferable, but I’ll work with what I get.”

“Why?”

Aria studied her for a long moment, then shook her head and chuckled. “You really don’t date much, do you?”

“At all. I don’t date at all.”

“Look, if you’re not interested I can tell him that too. But he doesn’t do this often.”

Ginny couldn’t help herself—she laughed.

“Really,” Aria said, crossing her arms. “He’s not the sort for booty calls.”

“Just sending his supermodel friend to pick out random chicks and ask for their numbers?”

“You really think I look like a supermodel?”

“Please. Girls like you drive me crazy.” Ginny shook her head and rolled her eyes. “I don’t know what this is about, but it’s over now. I came here because I like the music, and yeah, Razor’s hot. But I don’t appreciate being dragged from the dance floor and being made the butt of a joke. So if you could kindly leave me alone, I need to catch a train back to reality.”