Chapter 2
BAD BAD IDEA
RUBY
Carl ushers me away, clipboard flapping against his thigh as he opens his arms wide in a herding gesture down the side of the cavernous warehouse.
My legs move, but my eyes refuse to follow the direction of my body.
They stay locked on him.
Onstage, he’s still gripping the mic stand, silver eyes glued to me even as his mouth twists around words that detonate in my chest.
“Your name’s a prayer, but my mouth makes it blasphemy.”
Heat coils lower in my stomach.
My heartbeat hammers like it’s trying to match the drums. Every nerve ending I own stands to attention, straining toward the manic growl of his voice.
It’s insane.
He’s a walking cliché if there ever was one. I mean, seriously a tattooed rockstar with a man bun?
A silky, lustrous would-love-to-run-my-fingers-through-it-while-he-eats-me-out man bun.
How is he pushing buttons I didn’t even realize I had till right now?
One second I was a barista dodging my boss’s wandering hands. The next, I’m throbbing all over because some tattooed god with rage in his throat and lust in his lyrics decided to look at me.
This morning I woke up determined to scroll job listings and laugh about Clipboard Carl on Wattpad. Now my thighs are clenching like I’ve been caught red-handed with my vibrator in a spotlight I never asked for.
Which only proves what I already knew.
This is a terrible idea.
Carl barrels on, steering me through a side corridor, which I’m thankfully forced to navigate before I face-plant into a steel door, while he chatters nonstop.
“You’ll see, Freddie’s the mastermind. He’ll love you. We’ve been searching for months. The chemistry will be explosive. Looks like it already—”
I barely hear him. My blood is still fizzing with that voice.
Finally, Carl shoves open a door and guides me inside an office lined with leather couches and posters of Riot Saints plastered across every wall.
At the desk sits Freddie Nova himself, I presume, sharp suited, sharp eyes, a smile like a shark who’s already eaten his fill but is looking for seconds.
“She’s here.”
“I can see that. Carl won’t shut up about you,” Freddie says, looking me over. “Now I see why. How much acting have you done?”
I open my mouth, still half-dizzy from the stage, and manage, “Acting? Zero. Well, besides high school drama one term.” I jerk my head at a despondent-looking Carl. “Told him this was a bad idea. He insisted.”
Before Freddie can respond, the music outside dies abruptly.
The silence slams like a door.
Carl and Freddie exchange an edgy look and my stomach dips.
“That’s not good,” I mutter, then edge toward the exit. “You know what? This was a bad idea. Is this door a short cut to freedom?”
I tug the random door open…and back straight into a wall of heat and solid muscle. And sweat-slicked skin. And hints of an aftershave so deadly intoxicating I’m one hundred percent it contains traces of narcotics.
I spin around, heart ricocheting up my throat.
Sweet Virgin Mary’s Baby Hairs.
Up close, he’s devastating.
Those mesmerising silver eyes positively glow under the dim hallway light. A cut jaw shadowed in stubble. Tattoos rippling over a chest still damp from the stage. His breath comes harsh, his mouth twisted into something between a snarl and a smirk.
The scent of leather, sweat, and that something darker and dangerous rolls off him, hitting me harder than the wall of muscle I just collided with.
Every inch of me lights up, frantic, hungry, terrified.
He lowers his head.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” His growl vibrates against my skin, heat steaming off him like a furnace.
My spine snaps straight. “Away from you, asshole, if you don’t know how to be polite to a lady.”
For a beat he just stares.
Then his gaze slides, slow and deliberate, down my body and back up again. My cheeks flame even as I force myself not to flinch.
“I’m fresh out of polite,” he rasps, voice low enough to vibrate through my ribs, “but I’ll make up for it with a million other things. Just tell me what’s first on your list.”
I swallow hard.
My brain knows exactly what he means. My thighs know too, the traitors. But I square my shoulders, refusing to melt under his stare.
“Nah, I’m good,” I shoot back, chin tilting up. “Unless those ‘other things’ involve a time machine to get me out of this godforsaken mistake, you can move aside. Because I’m leaving.”
His silver eyes flash with a feral gleam.
Instead of answering me, he looks right over my head—because of course he’s got at least a foot on me—and pins Freddie with his stare. “What’s going on here?” he barks. “Who is she?”
I bristle. “She is standing right here. And she is leaving.”
I pivot like I’m going to make good on it, but Carl lunges between us with nervous jazz hands. “Hold on a sec, Ruby. Let’s all just calm down. Misunderstanding, that’s all. Zane, this is Ruby Lane. Freddie wanted to meet my barista, possible audition, no big deal—”
Freddie doesn’t move.
He’s leaning back in his chair, studying me the way a scientist might study a lab rat that just figured out how to talk. “Interesting,” he murmurs, his gaze flicking from Zane to me and back again.
Meanwhile, the wall of sound from the stage has been replaced by a heavier silence, the kind that makes you realize other people are gathering.
Watching.
Sure enough, when I sidle a quarter foot from the bristling tower of manhood, I see the rest of Riot Saints saunter down the hallway, sweat-damp and buzzing from rehearsal.
They fill the doorway behind Zane, a pack of wolves curious about fresh meat. Their eyes land on me one by one, and I feel the weight of it like a brand.
Zane notices too, eyes narrowing as he flicks a gaze behind him.
Then his shoulders go rigid, his face clouding over like a thousand thunderstorms as his jaw tightens. The longer they look at me, the darker his expression grows, until he’s practically vibrating.
Then he moves.
“Oh fuck,” Carl mutters under his breath.
One second I’m glaring up at Zane Draven, the next I’m airborne, slung over his shoulder like a sack of flour.
I yelp, pounding a fist into his back, but he doesn’t even flinch.
To Freddie, his voice is a guttural snarl. “Give her whatever she wants. But the audition is over. Everyone. Move!”
Being hauled through a rehearsal studio over a rock star’s shoulder on a Friday afternoon is not, I repeat not, on my bucket list.
I kick, snarl, hiss—basically go full feral house cat—but it earns me exactly zilch. His shoulder digs into my stomach like steel wrapped in sweat, and every time I twist, his arm clamps tighter around my thighs.
Humiliation burns hotter than the heat flooding my body.
My face is pressed against his back, and it smells like leather, virile man and something darkly dangerous that makes my pulse skip in places it has no business skipping.
“Hey! Put me down, goddammit!” I snap, punching his spine with a clenched fist.
He doesn’t even grunt.
Just strides down a corridor like he owns the world, which, judging by the way people scramble to get out of his way, he basically does.
He kicks open a door and dumps me on my feet.
I tear my gaze from him long enough to gauge my surroundings. We’re inside a private lounge that’s way too sleek for someone who just sweat-bathed an unwilling audience. Dark leather couches. Mini-fridge. Wall of mirrors.
His personal lair.
I stumble, straighten, and bare my teeth at him. “Neanderthal much?”
Unfazed, he strolls to the fridge, pops a bottle of sparkling water, and pours it into a glass. He hands it to me like a peace offering.
I narrow my eyes, watching the liquid like it’s laced with Rohypnol.
“You think I’d drug you?” His silver gaze sharpens, something like genuine offense flickering there.
For reasons I cannot explain, my stomach flips. Because as much as I should not care, I don’t like that I might’ve just insulted him.
Then I snap the hell out of it.
“You have some nerve, pretending you’re offended. And hey, forgive me if getting abducted into your man cave doesn’t exactly inspire trust.”
His jaw flexes, then loosens. “Fair.”
That… calms something jagged inside me. Against my better judgment, I take the glass. One sip. Cold, crisp, real. Not poison. Not enough to be roofied.
He lounges back on the couch like a king with his prize. “So tell me. Do you think I go around giving every woman whatever she wants?”
I arch a brow. “I don’t know you from a blade of grass, buddy. Do you?”
“My answer depends.”
“On what?”
He leans forward, voice dropping to that growl that rattled me on stage. “On whether you throat punch me if I said you’re the first. And I plan on making you the last.”
I roll my eyes so hard I’m amazed they don’t roll right out of my head.
He smirks. But for a second—just a flicker—something vulnerable cuts through. Like maybe it actually stung.
Which only confuses the hell out of me, because this is the last man on earth I should want to understand.
I down the rest of the drink, set the glass on the table with a decisive thunk, and push to my feet. “Well, thanks for the hospitality, caveman, but I’ll be going now.”
His eyes sharpen. “You seriously don’t want this gig?”
“No. I seriously don’t.”
I march to the door, palm on the handle.
“Wait.” His voice snaps across the room like a whip.
I freeze.
“Remember when I told Freddie to give you whatever you want?”
My eyes narrow warily. “Yeah?”
His eyes burn into mine, feral and unflinching.
“Whatever you want, I’ll triple it.”