Rock All Night (The Rock Star's Seduction #2) (2 page)

“What, you don’t have some big speech laid out?” I asked, annoyed.

He grinned. “Was that an intentional pun, ‘laid out’? Or just a Freudian slip?”

I suppose it
was
a Freudian slip, but I wasn’t about to admit it.

“Pun,” I snapped. “So – let’s have it.”

“That sounds like another Freudian slip,” he teased.

“Why does this conversation remind me of when we were at the gyro place, and you always steered it towards sex?” I asked angrily.

“What, are you going to walk out on me again?” he asked, clearly enjoying himself.

I
wanted
to. I was weighing the options of having to pay back Rolling Stone for my plane ticket when he started talking again.

“There is no big speech. I just don’t make promises I can’t keep. And to me, it sounds like you want a wedding ring to sleep with a guy, so… no. No big speeches.”

“I don’t want a wedding ring to – ”

“This isn’t like before,” he said, his voice edging towards anger. “I’m not standing in front of you with my heart in my hands. I went down that road once, and I got my heart crushed.”

I felt horrible as he said it, but I didn’t have time to speak.

“So, no – no promises. Just let yourself go for once. Just…”

He put his fingers around an invisible object in the air.

“…pry those fingers out of the cold, hard, controlling grip you have on yourself, and life, and everything… and
maybe
you’ll have some fun. Just do something for once without a big plan… without any promises… without any contracts… without any expectations… and you might not get let down.”

“‘Might not,’” I mimicked him sarcastically.

He sighed like he was giving up. “I can’t promise you anything, Kaitlyn… except I’ll talk to you for the article. Whatever you want. And the only thing I expect from you is that you’ll be fair to me. Do we have a deal?”

I still could have walked out.

God knows I wanted to.

Even after all these years, he affected me more than any other man I’d ever met.

Annoyed me, infuriated me…

Intoxicated me.

Obsessed me.

And I had discovered, with a kind of sick dread, that I wanted him just as much as before.

But I wasn’t going to cave.

Fuck that.

I was here because I had a job to do, and I wasn’t going to run away from it.

“…deal,” I said, and stuck out my hand.

He grinned, then shook it.

Like so many years before, a surge of electricity, of chemicals, of
some
sort of primal connection passed between us.

I felt it.

I know he did, because the resignation from earlier suddenly turned into a spark of lust in his eyes.

Had we been in a bedroom, alone, he might have reached out and tried to tear off my clothes…

…and I might have let him.

But instead, we were in a lounge in public, and the emotion in his eyes dimmed as he let go of my hand.

But I noticed it didn’t disappear.

Not completely.

“Okay,” he finally said, finished his drink, and slipped back on his sunglasses. “Let’s go meet the rest of the band.”

We walked out of the bar and through the lobby. I looked towards the bank of elevators passing by on our left. “Aren’t we going up?”

“Yeah, but ours is over here,” he said, pointing past the check-in desk.

“You have your own private elevator?”

“Well, they didn’t build it
just
for me, you know.”

“Where does it go?”

He smirked at me. “The penthouse. We
are
rock stars, after all.”

“The penthouse has its own private – ”

“I haven’t seen you for four years, and you want to talk about elevators?” he teased me.

“Fine,” I huffed. “What do you want to talk about?”

He shrugged. “I dunno… you graduated, I’m assuming?”

“Yes.”

“Syracuse, wasn’t it?”

Now it was my turn to be impressed. “Good memory.”

“What else have you done?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, what other big things have you written?”

I thought he was making fun of me, so I said sarcastically, “The last Time magazine Person of the Year article.”

He looked over at me, stunned. “What? Really?”

I gave him a bitter look. “No, of course not. I did, however, write a piece on artisanal beers for an independent weekly. I even got paid $50 for it.”

He looked at me, startled – then began to laugh.

“What?” I asked belligerently.

“You haven’t written anything big before this?!”

“Not for lack of trying.”

He just kept laughing, like he found this inexplicably hilarious.

“We haven’t all been as successful as you, Derek,” I said angrily.

“I’m sorry… it’s just… all that crap back there in the bar about me using women… and here you are, using me.”

“I’m not using you!” I snapped.

“Yeah, right,” he said, wiping his eyes as he continued to chuckle.

“I’m not!”

“Come on, Kaitlyn,” he said in a
Cut the bullshit
tone of voice.

We reached the elevator – a single door all by itself, made of gold, set in the marble walls. If I was going to bail, now was my last opportunity to do it.

“Fine, if that’s the way you feel, I’ll just leave and you can get somebody else to write the damn article – ”

I started to pull away – no real plan, just wanting to get the hell away from him –

He grabbed my arm, and a thrill shot through my entire body as he swung me around to face him.

“No, I want you to stay,” he said gently.

I just stared up at him, my heart racing as he stared back down at me.

Neither of us spoke for a long moment… until he finally let go of my arm.

“I seem to remember saying that another time,” he smiled.

“I seem to remember a song about it, too,” I muttered, not wanting to go back to our earlier discussion of who hurt who worse.

He suddenly got an anxious look on his face. “Did you like it?”

You mean, did I sit on the side of the road and bawl my eyes out when I heard it?

“I like all your songs, Derek,” I said softly.

He searched my eyes, looking for a trick. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. I’ve followed you the entire time. It’s just… some are a little more painful than others.”

He nodded like he understood completely. “…yeah…”

For the second time in five minutes, I felt like he might kiss me – and I felt like I might kiss him back.

But then the elevator opened and a British voice rang out, “Where the fuck ‘av
you
been?”

I looked over expecting to see Killian Lee, the guitarist for the band – and was shocked instead to see a short, black, well-dressed man scowling in the elevator.

Wait – Killian Lee’s not black.

I knew that because of the story Derek had told so long ago in Ryan’s basement. Plus, I’d seen plenty of photos of the band since Killian joined. He was white, early 30’s, hair in a ponytail, always wearing John Lennon-style round sunglasses, always dressed in black.

This guy was really dark-skinned, with a long, ugly scar across his right cheek that was lighter than the rest of his face. He wasn’t shaved bald, but his hair was so closely cropped next to his head that he might as well have been. His angry eyes flitted back and forth like they were on a seek-and-destroy mission. He was dressed in a shark-skin suit, an electric blue tie, and a white shirt so crisp you could have cut yourself on the edges of the collar. He looked a little like Don Cheadle, if Don Cheadle were perpetually pissed-off and dressed like a gangster in a Guy Ritchie movie.

His accent wasn’t upper-class, that was for sure. He sounded Cockney… I guess. I’m basically only familiar with the posh accent that Ian McKellan and British royals have, and Audrey Hepburn’s Eliza Doolittle in
My Fair Lady
. (I know there’s a whole spectrum in between, but, hey, I haven’t begun my world travels yet.) This guy fell a hell of a lot closer to Cockney.

I thought he was yelling at me. I didn’t know who he was, but I just assumed it was my fault. Maybe he was the publicist, I was supposed to meet him, and then I’d gotten waylaid by Derek instead.

I opened my mouth to say something –

But Derek beat me to it. “Meeting the press.”

The black guy’s eyes widened as he looked at me. The anger in his voice dialed back a notch as he asked, “Are you Kaitlyn Reynolds?”

It sounded more like
Aw yew Kaitlyn Reynolds?

“Y-yes,” I said nervously.

The guy looked at Derek. “This is the one, then?”

“Yup,” Derek smiled. “In the flesh.”

I frowned and looked at Derek. “What does
that
mean?”

He gave me what I can only describe as an enigmatic smile. “You’ll see.”

The guy stuck out his hand to me aggressively, almost like he was going to attack me. “Miles Sumner. The band’s manager.”
Miles Sum-nah. The band’s manage-uh.

“Oh… hi,” I said, and shook his hand.

Miles looked at Derek in disgust. “Christ, I tol’ you to lay off the drink.”

“You’re not my wet nurse, Miles,” Derek said in a bored voice, as though he’d heard all this a thousand times before.

“You
need
a fuckin’ wet nurse, spoutin’ scotch out of ‘er tits, the way
you
drink,” Miles snarled.

“That’s Riley you’re thinking of.”

Riley… the drummer… the little punk-rock chick…

“Riley can handle her booze. You can’t, you stupid git.”

Riley can ‘andle ‘er booze. Yew can’t, yew stewpid git.

Then he turned to me. “I assume you’re comin’ up to meet the band?”

“Yes,” I nodded, a little afraid of getting him angry at me.

Too late, he already was.

He was probably
born
angry.

“Well, come on, then!” he snapped. “Get on the lift!”

I hurried into the elevator. Derek sauntered along behind me.

Miles hit the ‘Close’ button on the control panel once we were inside, then turned to me as soon as the door was shut and we were in motion.

Like he’d been waiting to get me trapped.

“There’s some ground rules, Ms. Reynolds.”

“Um… okay…” I said, though I looked at Derek as I said it.

Derek smiled indulgently. “It’s Miles’s world. We just play music in it.”

“An’ don’t you forget it,” Miles said, jabbing a stubby finger at Derek’s chest. Then he turned to me and stared me down. “First off, you fuck with the band, you fuck with me. And
nobody
fucks with me.”

I looked at Derek with more than a little trepidation.

“Miles is like a Great White shark in a suit,” Derek explained. “Except he’s
our
Great White.”

“Not the band, I’m assuming,” I said, trying for a little joke about the 80’s metal group.

Derek caught it and grinned. “No. He’d have longer hair if that were the case.”

“A great BLACK shark, an’ don’t you forget it,” Miles said to me. “You fuck with this band, I’ll
bury
you. You fuck with their music? I’ll
bury
you. You fuck with their schedule? I’ll – ”

“ – bury me. Got it.”

I was losing my fear of him with the constant repetition. I mean, he was almost a caricature, he was so ridiculously over the top.

But as soon as I talked back to him, his eyes narrowed into slits, and I could see the muscles in his jaws clench.

I looked over at Derek, who gave me a cool, slightly amused shake of his head like,
That was not a very smart move.

The elevator came to a smooth halt and the door slid open. I moved to exit – to get
anywhere,
so long as it was away from Miles – but he shot out one hand and punched the ‘Open’ button and then held his arm there, blocking my path.

“You think I’m joking,” Miles said in a cold, controlled voice. “Do you think I’m joking?”

I was suddenly (and very unpleasantly) reminded of that scene in
Goodfellas
where Joe Pesci is terrorizing Ray Liotta – but in my head they all spoke with British accents now.

You think I’m funny? You think I’m a clown? Do I AMUSE you?

In the movie, it turns out Joe Pesci was just messing with Ray Liotta.

I didn’t think that was the case with Miles.

“N-No,” I stuttered, contrite as could be.

He edged his face closer to mine. “You must think
I’m
a joke.”

“No. God no.”

“Because I’ve got some rope and a shovel in the boot of my car, just
waiting
to be used.”

I said it without thinking:

“…boot?”

“British for trunk,” Derek said helpfully. I could tell he was getting a massive kick out of the whole scene.

“And if you
fuck
with him, or any other member of the band, I will use that shovel and I will
bury
you,” Miles snarled. “Are we clear?”

“Yes,” I assured him. “Yes we are.”

Miles paused, glared at me for a moment – then nodded his head once. “Right.”

Then he walked out of the elevator.

“Holy shit,” I whispered under my breath.

“Way to make friends,” Derek joked.

“Is he
your
friend?” I asked in disbelief.

“More like a very useful enemy.”

“Where’d you dig him up?”

“ Killian brought him over from England to manage the band.”

“And you
let
him?”

“He may be an asshole, but he’s damn good at what he does.”

“What’s that, scaring the shit out of everybody?”

Derek laughed. “That’s part of it. Come on, let’s go meet everybody else.”

We walked from the elevator into a luxurious hallway lined with works of art. Miles had already disappeared through an open doorway at the end; I could hear a young woman’s voice laughing and chatting loudly in the next room, along with a few thumps and crashes from a drum set.

There was some sort of brief conversation, including a few explosive phrases in a British accent, and then a familiar face met us at the door.

Ryan.

Except radically different from how I remembered him.

He was just as tall, but now he had longer, shaggier hair that was perfectly tousled and styled. His face was leaner, with more pronounced cheekbones, and he sported a couple days’ worth of fashionable stubble. He wore high-end jeans, pointed-toe leather shoes, a black t-shirt with the Union Jack and pictures of four band members on it, a fancy leather jacket, and a small rawhide necklace that looked like he’d picked it up surfing in South America or on some other exotic adventure.

My first thought was,
Damn, Ryan got CUTE.

My second thought was,
Shanna would be so jealous of me now.

“Kaitlyn?” he said, a huge smile on his face.

“Ryan!” I exclaimed.

He held out his arms and hugged me tight.

I’d forgotten how good a hugger he was.

After I pulled away, he laughed in delight. “It’s been awhile!”

“It’s good to see you.”

“Let me look at you.” He held my hand and twirled me around like we were dancing. “Beautiful as always.”

All his old shyness was gone.

My third thought was,
Wow, Ryan got some game.

“You look even more handsome,” I said.

“Well, you only saw me during that awkward high school phase,” he grinned.

It hadn’t been that awkward; he was still cute back then.

But, compared with how he looked now, he had definitely come into his own.

“Yeah, yeah… you two lovebirds can catch up later,” Derek said mildly. “She should meet Killian and Riley.”

“True. Come on, let me introduce you to the other half of the band,” Ryan said, offering me his arm. I took it, and he led me inside the penthouse.

It was absolutely beautiful – a gigantic room with a 30-foot-long wall of glass that looked out over Sunset Boulevard – but that’s not what hit me the hardest as I entered the room.

It was the smell.

The scent of pot was so thick in the air that it was like walking into a Christmas tree lot on December 21st. Except it was cannabis instead of pine.

I coughed a little.

Ryan looked down at me sympathetically. “I hope you don’t have to pass any drug tests anytime soon, ‘cause you’re probably going to be getting a contact high if you hang out around us.”

I smiled hesitantly. “I’ll be alright.”

We turned the corner into the main part of the penthouse, and there they were: the other two members of Bigger, the hottest up-and-coming band in the world. They sat in the middle of a nest of amps and cords, sort of like a messier version of Ryan’s basement.

Killian Lee was exactly the same as every photograph of him I’d ever seen: black pants, black long-sleeve shirt, black suit vest, black shoes. His black trench coat was folded over the back of his wooden chair. His black, bushy hair was pulled into a ponytail, he wore little round-lensed sunglasses, and there was a lit joint dangling out of his mouth.

He also had an electric guitar in his lap. Just like in Derek’s story of that night at the 40 Watt, his fingers were dancing over the strings – but it was unplugged, so all I could hear were little metallic pings. He was slumped back, totally relaxed, his face plastered with a blessed-out smile… but his hands worked like they were connected to someone else’s body, strumming and plucking, sometimes slowly, sometimes lightning fast. Even when he would take the joint out of his mouth with his right hand, the left would continue fingering chords on the strings.

Beside him was a full drum kit complete with bass, snares, cymbals – and Riley Wojtalik (pronounced Voy-TAL-ick, according to Wikipedia). She was a tiny little thing, with a thin frame and wiry arms. She could have been a ninth-grade girl by her height and weight.

But I haven’t seen many ninth graders with mohawks.

It was dyed black with platinum blonde streaks, and stood up two feet from her head. Apparently she changed her hair color as often as most women change their bras, because I’d seen pictures of her with dozens of different variations: red and black, yellow and orange, completely blue, all colors of the rainbow at once, purple and pink, a dozen different shades of green.

The funny thing was, besides dying it and spiking it, she didn’t keep up the rest of the hairstyle too well. She currently sported a soft brown fuzz over the rest of her skull, like she couldn’t be bothered to shave it.

Her face was very pretty – or could have been, if she’d tried. She had a slender little nose, big brown eyes, porcelain skin, delicate cheekbones and perfect, tiny lips – but all you could focus on were the raccoon eyes from mascara and eyeliner she hadn’t removed the night before. Maybe the last
couple
of nights.

She wore scuffed, black leather pants, clunky Doc Martens, and a dirty, smudged wifebeater with no bra. Not that she needed one, since she was basically flat-chested. She twirled drumsticks in her nicotine-stained fingers. On her wrists she wore black leather cuffs with studs. Tattoos of skulls and demons and naked girls marched up and down her arms. Around her neck was a cheap metal necklace – the kind with little balls, like the pull-switch on a ceiling fan. Several keys dangled from it like ugly pendants. She had a nose ring, a lip ring, an eyebrow piercing, and about eleven studs in each ear.

And right as I walked into view, she stopped whatever she was saying to Killian, looked me up and down like a horny construction worker, and wolf-whistled.

“Hell yeah –
that’s
what I’m talkin’ about! What’d ya bring me there, Ryan? Momma likee!”

I might have forgotten to mention this, but Riley Wojtalik was a lesbian.

She was quite open and
very
aggressive about it. The stories of her hitting on female fans and taking them back to her room for the night were legion. Gay, bi, straight, didn’t matter. Riley was an equal opportunity horndog.

And apparently she was trying to make me her next conquest.

Oh shit…

I edged behind Ryan as protection.

“Simmer down,” Derek said as he walked past her to the bar.

“Yeah, be nice, Riley,” Ryan admonished her.

“Ohhhh, I’ll be nice,” the little drummer girl leered. “I’ll be nice to her allllll night long.”

EW.

“Riley, Killian… this is Kaitlyn Reynolds,” Ryan announced.

As soon as he said it, the room went quiet. As in dead silent. Even Killian’s fingers froze on the guitar strings.

Riley’s jaw dropped open. “You’re shittin’ me.”

“Really?” the guitarist said, looking over at Derek.

“The one and only,” Derek confirmed.

“SERIOUSLY? This is
her,
” Riley said in a disbelieving voice, like
You’re kidding, right?

What the hell are they acting so surprised for?

While all this was going on, I wanted Derek near me. Ryan was nice, but I wanted Derek.

I looked over at him at the bar and caught his eye, but all he did was smirk at me like,
You want it to be professional? Well, let’s keep it professional, then.

I scowled at him.

Fine.

Asshole.

I looked up at Ryan. “Why does everybody keep saying that?”

“What, being surprised about who you are?”

“Yeah.”

Killian chuckled as his fingers started dancing over the strings again. “You’re kind of famous around these parts, luv.”

He sounded like a young Paul McCartney, if Paul McCartney were really,
really
stoned.

“…wwwwhy?” I asked with trepidation.

“Do you
really
have to ask that question?” Derek said, in a deliberate echo of our conversation down in the bar.

I shot him another look. He just grinned, knowing he’d gotten my goat.

“Wow, you know how to pick ‘em, D,” Riley said. “Great rack, but dumb as fuck.”

God, she was
worse
than a construction worker.

I frowned.

Wait – how DO they all know who I –

I closed my eyes. I could have slapped my forehead when I realized it.

The songs. Of course… the songs.

I turned back to Derek. “You told them who you were writing about?”

Riley burst out laughing. “He didn’t have to tell us anything – it was ‘Kaitlyn this, Kaitlyn that’ the whole fuckin’ first album. Your name was in every other goddamn verse. We had to hold a band meeting and strong-arm him into changing the lyrics.” She cocked her head and looked me up and down as though judging livestock. “From the way you were all gone on her, D, I thought she was Miss America and Miss December all wrapped up into one. She ain’t all
that
… but I’d still hit it,” she added, as though she’d be doing me a favor.

I slipped behind Ryan a little bit more.

“You’re not making a very good first impression, Riley,” he scolded her.

“The fuck do I care what kind of impression I make?”

“Nowhere to go but up,” Killian said genially as he took a drag on his joint.

“Yeah – exactly! Nowhere to go but up. Hey, Blondie!”

Is she talking to me?

I
was
the only blonde in the room, if you didn’t count half of Riley’s mohawk.

“…uh… what?”

“You into chicks?” she asked eagerly.

“…nnnnno.”

“Aaaah, we can fix that,” she said, and waved her hand like it was no big deal. “After one night of me goin’ down on you – ”

EW.

At that exact moment, Miles suddenly reappeared from another room, or wherever he’d been hiding for the last few minutes. “Christ, Riley, can’t you keep it in your pants for at least five goddamn minutes?”

“No, I
can’t.
Hey, Blondie, did Miles give you the boot speech?”

Before I could answer, she turned to the manager. “Hey, Miles, didja? Didja give her the boot speech?”

“Piss off, Riley.”

“Ha haaaa – you did! ‘Ah’ve gah a shuvell in me boot.’ What else ya got in your boot, Miles?”

“What didn’t you understand about ‘piss off’?”

“‘Av ya got a pint in your boot?” Riley prattled away in a hilariously bad English accent. “‘Av ya got a guv’nor in your boot?”

“You’re not even making sense – not that you
ever
do. Oy, and you – ” Miles snapped his fingers at Derek behind the bar. “What the fuck did I tell you? No more drinking before the show!”

In answer, Derek very deliberately picked up his glass of amber liquid and took a long swig, never breaking eye contact with Miles the entire time.

“That’s right, keep it up, you stupid sod,” Miles lectured. “Go an’ piss yourself onstage, for all I care.”

“I’d pay good money to see
that,
” Riley snorted. “Hey, D, throw me some Jack!”

“Don’t – ” Miles warned, but Derek picked up a bottle of Jack Daniels and lobbed it underhanded into the air.

I freaked out. I totally expected it to crash to the floor and shatter in a million pieces and a tidal wave of whiskey –

But Riley caught it expertly, like it was a move they’d practiced many times before.

“You
arseholes
– ” Miles shouted.

“
That’s
the other thing in the boot!” Riley exclaimed, as though she’d just now remembered it. She lapsed back into her British accent: “‘Av you got an
arse
hole in your boot?’”

“Hey Riley, you’re a millionaire now,” Derek said. “Why don’t you drink better shit than Jack Daniels?’

“Cuz I’m not a pussy like
you,
” she retorted, right before she started guzzling straight from the bottle.

“It’s like working with animals,” Miles fumed.

“At least they’re housebroken,” Killian offered.

“
Barely.
And you,” Miles snapped at Killian, “do you know how much it’s going to cost to steam-clean this room? It smells like a goddamn Rastafarian convention in here.”

Killian shrugged. “Apparently I’m a millionaire now, if Derek’s to be believed.”

“I am,” Derek called out.

“I think I can pay for it, then,” Killian said philosophically.

“Hey Blondie – ya got a nice ‘boot,’” Riley catcalled as she twirled her drumsticks in her hands.

“…uh… thanks…”

“Derek, you ever tap that boot?”

“Not yet,” he said as he took another sip of his drink.

“Not EVER,” I snapped, and glared at him again.

Derek gave me a self-satisfied little grin. Like,
Just wait.

“Oooooh,
drama
,” Riley hooted. “Hey Blondie – you ever take it in the boot?”

Oh God.

Ryan looked down at me. “So… welcome.”

“Thanks,” I muttered.

What the hell have I gotten myself into?