Chapter 11 His Siren Song
HIS SIREN SONG
RUBY
It should bother me how quiet things get after the madness of Vegas.
After the chaos and the trending hashtags.
After Mama Draven whispering about “frequencies” like she’s diagnosing my soul. And especially after the jealousy and the stares and the piano and the thousands of strangers dissecting my life.
But now?
Here in Joshua Tree two days later, wrapped in the dim cocoon of Zane’s hotel room while the tour fades to distant echoes outside the windows?
Everything sharp and loud dissolves.
It’s just us. Just the sound of our breathing in the dark.
Zane sits on the edge of the bed, still shirtless, ink glowing faintly under the low golden light, like every tattoo is quietly alive. His silver eyes track me with that feral softness he gets when he’s trying to be gentle but doesn’t quite know how.
“Come here,” he murmurs.
It’s not a command. But I know even if it was, my body would obey anyway. I walk to him with a newfound confidence harvested from his unvarnished obsession with my body.
And when I reach him, he pulls me into his lap, tucks me against his chest. His arms circle me, heavy and warm, one hand sliding into my hair.
I hum.
It’s soft and I’m barely conscious of it. It’s become as natural to me…to us…as breathing and fucking. And I absolutely relish the moment it takes effect on this man the world worships. When his breath stutters and his eyelids flutter like he’s under my spell.
Maybe siren is right.
“There it is,” he whispers against my temple, shuddering when I increase the tempo. “My song.”
I pause to snort softly. “Out-of-tune song.”
His voice drops to a growl. “Perfect song,” he insists.
“Zane—”
“Keep going, please. Your hum is my favorite fucking sound, Ruby.” He says it like a confession he doesn’t want absolution for.
My heart tries to leave through the top of my throat.
He nudges me back gently, like he wants to see me fully. My knees on either side of his thighs, my hands resting on his shoulders. His gaze drinks me in, slow and reverent, memorizing something he already knows by heart.
Then he whispers words I know in my soul, low, wrecked, breathless: “I’d burn down heaven just to taste your sin.”
A shiver runs through me. I touch his face, his jaw, the scar on his lip. “You wrote that,” I say quietly.
He nods, eyes locked on mine. “I didn’t know who it was for until you.”
“Oh, please,” I tease softly, trying to break the overwhelming thrum in my chest. “I am nobody’s heaven-burning inspiration.”
“Ruby.” His hands grasp my hips, slow but firm. “You’re the only riot my soul ever wanted.”
Another lyric. Another hit song. Another truth he didn’t know he’d written for me.
I swallow.
My hum rises again, unsteady at first, then steadier when he closes his eyes and leans into it. His breath grows rough then syncs with mine.
“More,” he whispers. “Give me more.”
I do. As I reach between us with both hands and grip the steel satin of his cock. Stroke him from root to tip as I continue humming. I brush my thumbs over his wet slit, coaxing more addictive liquid from him. He trembles under my palms.
“Fuck me, Ruby,” he begs. “Take me inside you as you hum for me. Show me heaven.”
I almost stutter at the rough and raw desire in his words.
Desire burns through me as I bring his broad head to my core, brush it back and forth through my wetness, tease my clit with his until we both shudder from the electric tripping through us.
A moan catches me unawares, truncating the humming. But I catch it again as I angle my hips, staring into mesmeric silver eyes as I impale myself on Zane’s cock.
His eyes roll. “Jesus…fuck. I never get used to that first clench of your cunt, beauty.”
My hands move to his shoulders and I grip tight as I hum, roll my hips to drag him deeper, hum, fuck the most beautiful man in the world.
He wraps both hands around my tits, squeezes before flicking his thumbs over my nipples. I jerk and clench on his cock and he hisses.
“Yes, beauty. Fuck, yes! You’re so fucking good at that. So damn perfect. You see how well we fit together, Ruby?” His eyes search mine, demanding answers to questions I can’t decipher.
Or maybe I don’t want to.
Maybe fucking and humming is all I’m capable of right now.
Well, I can certainly ace both.
I pump my hips faster and switch the humming.
It takes a second but his eyes blaze when he recognizes the tune. The tune that made Riot Saints a worldwide phenomenon. The tune he wrote in his mother’s trailer when he was just seventeen.
Chains Like Kisses.
His dick swells inside me, a testament to how what I’m doing affects him. “Fuck, Ruby. Fuck…” His mouth swoops down, catches mine in a filthy, open mouth tussle that makes me drip, grow slicker around his cock, until a dirty squelching sound accompanies the slapping of flesh.
“Sing the chorus for me?”
He pulls back a fraction more, burns me with his gaze. “Only if you join me. Hum and come on my cock while I sing it. Yeah?”
My head bobs as pleasure whips me to shreds. “Yes, Zane. Please. I’m so close.”
“Go on three,” he rasps.
I start humming on cue and his beautiful voice joins in.
“Tie me down, make me beg—freedom never felt this sweet.”
We slow things right down, move intimately, magically with a rhythm more than a motion…a pulse between us that feels like a language.
And when the tempest hits, I throw my head back and I come like a broken faucet. Zane doesn’t roar when he comes, just grips me tight and pulses inside me, his heartbeat echoing my frantic one until we’re one sweat-drenched tangle of limbs and lyrics.
An eternity later, when he opens his eyes, the desperation there is holy. “Ruby… write me,” he says suddenly.
I blink. “What?”
“Write a story about me.” His voice drops even lower. “About us.”
My heart stumbles, half in yearning, half in dread. I haven’t forgotten what he did with the last thing we did together. And I don’t know if I’m ready for another public outing. “Zane—”
“It’ll be anonymous,” he adds quickly, reading my fear. “For you. Only you.” His fingers curl around my jaw. “I want to see myself the way you see me. In your words. In your voice.”
I should say no.
Or laugh.
Or tell him this is ridiculous and intimate and dangerous.
But he looks at me like he’s asking for something he’s never asked anyone. Something raw. Something vulnerable.
“Okay,” I whisper. “Just for me. Just for us.”
He lets out a breath that sounds like relief and hunger mixed together.
“Good,” he says softly, pulling me closer, kissing my jaw, my cheek, my throat. “Now let me give you the rest of the story.”
I hum as we fuck again, involuntary and helpless, and he groans, burying his face against my skin like the sound is oxygen.
We move together, guided by breath and pulse, by the trembling edge of restraint, by the half-sung half-felt melody between us.
His voice breaks against my shoulder. “Christ, baby… you’re going to ruin me.”
And later, when we collapse into the sheets, he murmurs another lyric against my neck as if he’s pouring it into me: “Your name’s a prayer… but my mouth makes it blasphemy.”
My eyes sting.
Because for the first time in my life, blasphemy feels like worship.
Sante Fe
I wake to the softest sound of Zane…typing.
When my eyes blink open, I see him crouched at the end of the bed, phone in one hand, the other braced on my ankle like he needs the physical connection to anchor him.
I yawn. “Morning.”
He doesn’t look up. “Hi.” His voice is sandpaper and sin.
I stretch, and pause. Over his shoulder I catch his phone screen open to a calendar app.
Little dots and notes.
Cycle projected start
Fertility window
Signs to monitor: breast soreness, cravings, mood swings
Ask Ruby…discreetly?
My soul leaves my body. “…Zane,” I say slowly. “What are you doing?”
He finally looks up, utterly unbothered. “Tracking.”
“Tracking… what?”
“You,” he says simply.
I sit up. “You can’t—Zane, that’s insane. You can’t track my—my cycle!”
He hums. “Too late. Already did. Now I’ll know when you’re PMS’ing so I can fuck you into a better mood.”
Why the hell do I like that idea so much? Okay, but what about the rest? Why does he want to know about breast soreness and fertility windows?
I’m on birth control. I’m on birth control. I’m on birth— “Why?”
He rises in one slow, prowling movement, coming to sit beside me, brushing a strand of hair off my shoulder.
“Because I want to know everything about you,” he murmurs.
“Everything your body does. Every rhythm. Every wave.” His fingers trail down my arm.
“And because I want to know the exact second something changes.”
“Something like what?”
His silver eyes turn molten. “You know.”
Heat cannonballs through my stomach. I shake my head quickly. “Okay, well, we’re NOT talking about that. Ever. Also—privacy is a thing.”
“I respect your privacy,” he says solemnly.
“You literally do not.”
“But I respect it in theory.”
I groan, burying my face in my pillow.
He laughs, soft, warm, devastating, and presses a kiss between my shoulder blades. “You ready to write for me?”
I freeze. “I thought…you want me to write now?”
He shrugs. “There’s no shoot or gig today.
We’re free until the party tonight.” His jaw tenses at that and I know he’s not looking forward to the record label party disguised as a day off but really isn’t because he’ll be required to schmooze executives.
One thing I’ve discovered the whole band hates like a root canal from hell.
He taps my new phone on the nightstand. “I want to see Creative Ruby in action. I want to hear how you write me.”
That does something dangerous to my insides.
I drag the phone into my lap, open a blank note, and stare.
He watches me like I’m about to perform heart surgery on his soul.
I type: He looks like sin carved from starlight. And he’s going to ruin me beautifully.
Zane inhales sharply. “Damn right I am, baby…”
I keep typing.
He kisses like he’s starving and touches me like I’m the only thing keeping him alive.
Zane’s hand tightens on my ankle, then slides up my calf.
Then—A ding. Then another. Another.
A flood of notifications bursts across the top of my screen from social media.
@SaintsAngel86: I FOUND HER ADDRESS
@SinfulCrusader: she doesn’t deserve him. we should warn her off.
@SirensAreLies: she hums like a dying cat we have to stop her
@SaintSinAlwaysMine: I’m going there today
My blood freezes.
Zane rips the phone from my hands.
He goes dead quiet. Scarier than the shouting. Scarier than the mania.
He stands, jaw ticking. “Freddie,” he says into his phone. “Get security. We’re leaving this hotel. Now.”
Twenty minutes later, I’m bundled into the backseat of a black SUV with tinted windows so dark they look illegal. The engine roars. We peel out of the loading bay behind the arena.
“What’s happening?” I demand, clutching my seatbelt. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere safer,” Zane mutters.
“But we have security, don’t we? And isn’t it harder to get to us at the top floor of a hotel?”
“Normally, yeah. But there’s a fucker we’ve been dealing with. Calls himself @SaintSinAlwaysMine. He’s a moron, tends to announce his intentions. But morons can be dangerous too. Too close. Too interested. Too… wrong.”
@SaintSinAlwaysMine. The one who said he’s ‘going there today’. Fucking fuck.
“How wrong are we talking?”
Bishop, sitting in front, turns around grimly. “Security said his last known location was within five miles of our hotel. And he’s said some more stuff online. Said he’s ‘claimed’ you.”
My stomach drops into my shoes.
“We’re taking you somewhere secure,” Zane says, sliding his hand over mine, clenching it possessively. “You’re not going back to the hotel. Ever.”
The SUV winds through dirt hills and desert roads of Santa Fe until we pull into a gated driveway surrounded by high walls, cameras, and trees thick enough to hide a small army.
A safe house. Mega props to Freddie for spiriting this up in record time.
Zane’s hand never leaves mine.
Inside, everything is quiet, expensive, clinical. Too clean. Too empty.
Too… watched.
“Ruby,” Zane murmurs, turning me toward him after security scour the three staggered floors of the sprawling, ultra-private Santa Fe estate carved into the red cliffs, all glass walls, desert silence, and enough acreage to swallow a band—and every paparazzo—whole. “You’re safe.”
I’m about to reply when a familiar voice drifts from behind a column.
“He’s right. You’re safe here. The house has good bones.”
I jump.
Mama Draven moves forward in a long silk robe, hair in braids, hands full of crystals.
“I…I didn’t know she was coming with us?” I whisper, then feel a twinge of guilt for wanting Zane to myself.
“She’s sticking around for a while,” Zane mutters. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“Of course she doesn’t mind,” the older woman answers, gliding toward me like she’s floating.
I’d love to be able to move like that.
“The energies were vibrating violently today. The frequencies were unstable in that hotel. But we’re here now…” She touches my cheek like I’m a priceless relic. “You lit him up. You lit everything up.”
I blink. “I don’t—”
“I wasn’t sure at first, but now I see it clearly.”
“See what?” I ask, nervous as hell.
She tilts her head, as if I’m a little stupid. “Why, that you’re a siren, dear.”
Zane groans. “Mom.”
She pats his arm. “The real kind. Not the mythic kind that drowns sailors. The kind that pulls a soul into harmony…and ruins him if she leaves.”
I swallow hard. “Umm, I’m not ruining anybody. Zero ruining,” I whisper.
Mama smiles serenely. “Oh, sweetheart. You already are.”
I glance at Zane.
Despite his half-protest a second ago, he doesn’t look in the least bit perturbed. Hell, he looks…elated. I’m shaking my head when he rubs his nose over mine, just pulls me closer, then buries his face in my neck, his breath shaking.
“Ruin me, Ruby. Pretty fucking please.”
The fervency in his voice, in his mother’s eyes, stealing through my blood.
I want to scream what the hell’s happening.
But I’m struck dumb. Because for the first time since I met him, I’m not sure he’s the dangerous one.
I’m thinking…I might be.