Jet (Marked Men, #2)(36)

Jet was sitting in the center of his bed, his long legs crossed at the ankles. He didn’t have a shirt on, which was already hot and distracting, and the huge black and gray tattoo that covered his entire torso looked menacing behind the acoustic guitar he was holding. It was a sight that made my breath catch and made me remember why he put every good intention I had to the test. His dark head was bent down and he was scribbling something on a notebook he had open next to him. He looked rumpled and sexy, the rock star at rest, but the things he was doing with that guitar and the way he sounded when he sang the next verse made my knees go weak. I walked across the room in a daze, unaware that he was pulling me in with his voice alone. I sank to the edge of the bed and watched him with wide eyes.

He didn’t acknowledge me until he was done, and by that time I had a film of tears in my eyes and felt that something in my soul had been touched by what this boy could do. He leaned across me and put the guitar down on the floor and shoved the notebook into a drawer of his nightstand. His dark eyes regarded me quietly and I couldn’t help but reach out and touch him. I grabbed his thigh and leaned over so that we were eye to eye.

“If you can sing like that why in the world do you get onstage and scream and yell so that no one can understand you? You’re amazing. That was so beautiful, it made my heart hurt.”

He cleared his throat and his shoulders moved up and then down. There was a lot of tattooed skin on display and even though I was used to seeing it onstage or in passing in the hall, it was pretty impressive and very distracting up close and personal, and I wanted to touch all of it. I wasn’t sure where to let my gaze land, so I decided that his midnight gaze with the gold halo was my best bet.

“It’s just music, Ayd. It all speaks to something inside us.”

“But you have a beautiful voice. You could be famous, like famous on a ridiculous level.”

He shoved his hands behind his head and leaned back, making his abs contract and flex under the ink that covered them in a drool-worthy way. My fingers itched to run along the faint trail of dark hair that poked out the top of those too-tight pants and across abs that were defined and taunt under a cover of black and gray ink.

“I could be famous on a ridiculous level singing metal or singing nursery rhymes. That’s not what I want.”

I bit my lip because he was way more complicated than I had ever given him credit for. I thought the band was just a way he killed time, a way he got validation. I had no idea he was as skilled as he was, or that he was actively avoiding being a big freaking deal.

“What do you want in the long run, Jet? Where are you going with all this? Wasting a talent like that should be criminal.”

The corner of his mouth kicked up in a grin that made my skin tingle. “As long as I can continue to write songs that are good enough to bring beautiful, dark-haired girls knocking at my door in the middle of the night, I can be happy. I’ll sing you anything you want, Ayd, if it means you keep looking at me the way you’re looking at me right now. The long run can take care of itself much later.”

I knew if I let him, he would own me. If he sang to me with that beautiful voice and played the guitar for just me, with those hands covered in heavy rings and tipped in black fingernail polish, he would just simply own me. He was already close and I was doing my best to keep him at a distance. I knew none of those things, his beautiful voice or his rumpled hair or ink-covered skin, belonged in my future, but letting that take care of itself was sounding better and better by the second. I slid my hand a little farther up his thigh and watched as little sparks shot off the golden rim of those midnight irises. He was my temptation, and had been for a long time now. Good Ayden or Bad Ayden, we both wanted him, only him.

I leaned even farther over him so that both my hands were flat on either side of his hips. We were eye to eye, and only our breath separated our mouths. No part of either of us was touching, but I could practically feel the electricity jump from his colorful skin to mine.

“Why do I feel like I’m always the one coming after you, Jet?” My voice was barely a whisper, and I saw when it hit his lips, it made them twitch. He pulled his hands out from behind his head and I felt the chill of his rings brush across my cheeks as he tunneled his fingers into the hair at my temples.

“I don’t know, Ayd.”

I probably would have had a smart remark to throw back at him, but he was pulling me across his legs and turning us so that I was on my back and he was hovering over me in all his toned and tattooed glory. I’d had his mouth on mine before so it shouldn’t be shocking, shouldn’t be startling, but there was something about being horizontal and having nothing but thin cotton pants between me and a very impressive erection that made our previous kisses seem like practice for the main event.

Before Jet, I had never been interested in guys who were decorated from head to toe, but now I wanted all the things that just made him him. That included the artwork that was imprinted everywhere and the metal hoops he had in each nipple that I could feel pressing against my own chest. I was also lucky that all that decoration came with a pair of corded pecks, tightly defined biceps, and an ass that looked better in this bed than it ever had on stage.

I couldn’t decide what to put my hands on first. It was like getting all the presents I ever wanted at one time. Jet seemed to run naturally hot and I felt like if I didn’t get to all of him at one time, he was going to melt both of us into the comforter on the bed.