The Siren picked his guitar back up and returned to the mic stand. He started another song.
I stood there watching, listening. Entranced. I was vaguely aware of other members of the band, but in the middle of such a stunning performance,, my attention only focused on him.
He sang about pain and pleasure, desperation and elation. The lyrics seemed deeply personal. I vaguely wondered whether he wrote them himself and if so, where his inspiration came from.
When the set ended, I felt emotionally drained. How many songs did they sing? Two? Twenty? I didn’t know. I only became aware of the passage of time when the music stopped.
The male Siren unslung his guitar, tossed it backward to his bandmate, and hopped off the stage to the dance floor.
Without so much as looking back toward the stage, his eyes searched the crowd and then locked back onto mine just like earlier in the set. Tension coiled in my stomach as he began taking steps in my direction.
Toward me.
I wanted to move but couldn’t; it was impossible to pry myself from his gaze. The sea of bodies, rather than mobbing him, parted to create a path between us, the burly arms of security guards keeping them at bay.
The girl I passed earlier who was struggling against her boyfriend’s grasp squeezed past security, approaching the god from his right. Another girl approached from his left. They each latched onto one sleeve and yanked on the fabric. Within seconds, their panicking boyfriends were at their sides, tearing them away. But the girls held on tight and the god’s shirt split down the middle, one half going to each girl.
He didn’t react, and his steps didn’t falter. He continued moving toward me, his dark eyes maintaining their hold on mine.
My breath hitched in my throat. He was shirtless now, and I could see a melange of tattoos splayed across his sculpted chest and along his muscular arms. Nipple rings jostling with each step, he closed the distance between us.
I tilted my head up to look at him as he stopped a foot in front of me. My mouth dried and my throat constricted. He was so close I could smell him. Nerves in my head were misfiring and bolts of desire were shooting through my core. The scent of his sweat was like an aphrodisiac, warping my senses until all I could think about was the sweat of our bodies tangled together.
My heart was beating a million times a minute, and I was afraid it was going to explode from my chest. I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. My brain was a jumbled mess, coherent thought mixing with visions of me licking his bared skin from head to toe.
He tilted his head.
Oh my god. Is he going to kiss me? In front of all these people?!
My eyes closed, and my lips parted. The surface of his soft lips brushed across mine as his mouth moved to my ear. The warmth of his breath tickled the tiny hairs on my ear.
"Backstage. Twenty minutes."
I opened my eyes to see him walking past me toward the door that led backstage, leaving me in shock.
Almost simultaneously, the face of every woman around me contorted into a jealous scowl. A few had what looked like pure hatred in their eyes. Two of them were the girls that had pieces of the god’s shirt. I then realized that they each had a broken beer bottle in hand and were rushing toward me.
The crowd was still densely packed, leaving nowhere to escape. My eyes darted toward the exits, but after a split second, the reality of the situation sunk in.
I was going to die.
Chapter Two
BAMBOOZLED
Through a buzzing haze, I heard a faint voice crying out to me. What was it saying? It sounded like "snack on a chip", but that made no sense. Why would it say that?
SMACK!
A blow landed across my cheek, sending me reeling. I reached out and grabbed ahold of the counter to stabilize myself before I fell on my ass.
"Snap out of it!" I heard Jen’s voice.
"Ouch, that hurt!" Grasping my burning cheek, I blinked a few times and realized I was sitting on the same barstool I’d been sitting on earlier. Jen was beside me, a look of concern etched on her face. Wasn’t I just near the stage? Had it all been my imagination? "Was it all just a—"
"No, it wasn’t a dream, you numbskull," Jen grumbled, holding an ice pack to the right side of her face. "You see this?" She pointed to the cracked lens on her glasses. The skin beneath was already beginning to swell. "That’s real. I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be black and blue in the morning, thanks to you."
"Wuh?" I mumbled, looking around and seeing that the bar had returned to its normal state prior to the band taking the stage. Except for a few stray thongson the floor, it was as if the chaos during show never happened.
"You left me to fend for myself! I got elbowed in the face by some naked douchebag. Then I ended up saving your ass from some crazy chick trying to cut you with a broken bottle. I had to carry you back to the bar and I tell ya, you may look small, but you’re freaking heavy! I should’ve left you there."
Still recovering from the fog in my head, I squinted my eyes and rubbed my temples. "Ugh . . . What happened to the crazy girl?"
"Her boyfriend grabbed her and pulled her away. Maybe he chloroformed her or shot her with a tranq, I don’t know. Good for him if he did. All I know is she’s gone."
The haze over my mind cleared, and the situation sunk in. "Wow, you saved me. I owe you big."
"Damn straight you owe me! And you can start by telling me what that rock god whispered in your ear."
For a moment, I debated whether I should tell her the truth in case she turned into a jealous psycho like some of the other girls did, but I quickly dismissed the thought. Jen was as level-headed in the workplace as she was in her relationships with men, which was more than I could say for myself. "He told me to meet him backstage in twenty minutes." Saying the words he’d whispered into my ear sent a dark flutter through my stomach.
Her left eye widened. "No way. For what? To hook up? Why’d he single you out among all the raving female fans?"
"I—I don’t know! I mean, it did happen, right? I didn’t hallucinate it, did I?" It wouldn’t surprise me if the whole episode had only happened in my mind. The rock god’s performance had driven more than a few women batshit crazy.
"Unless I was hallucinating too, it definitely happened. Everyone near the stage saw it," Jen said. She took a deep breath. "So what are you going to do?"
I raised an eyebrow and shot her a wicked smirk. "What do you think?"
"No, Riley. Don’t." She shook her head disapprovingly. "I know you have a habit of thinking with your vagina instead of your head, but you almost got yourself killed just a few minutes ago!"