Rock All Night(20)

Not an attractive look on a 17-year-old… and not attractive on a 23-year-old, either, I told myself.

I went back to watching the show, and tried to tune out all the lithe, nubile female forms out in the audience gyrating to the music and beckoning with their bodies.

But the jealousy was still there.





14




Thirty minutes and two encores later, Derek concluded the show with, “Good night, Los Angeles! Now grab somebody next to you and go get laid!” before he walked offstage to rapturous female screaming.

I guess that’s another reason guys liked Bigger concerts: they had a better chance of scoring afterwards.

As the band walked offstage, they were dripping with sweat. Derek and Riley in particular looked like they’d been dunked in a swimming pool.

On most people it would have looked gross. It certainly did on Riley.

On Derek Kane, it looked like a personal invitation to have your brains f*cked out.

And the smell of him – not just the musk of his deodorant, but the testosterone or pheromones he exuded – it was enough to drive me wild. I’d heard about some woman who started a speed dating thing were you had to sleep in a t-shirt for three days, then bring it to the meet-up. The idea was that attraction really is chemical, and you’ll know someone you’re attracted to by the scent they give off. If you can get past the idea of a bunch of strangers smelling each others’ clothes, it’s actually kind of ingenious. She said that she got the idea because even when her boyfriend smelled ‘objectively bad’ – as in, other people would have wrinkled their noses – she still thought he smelled good.

Derek Kane smelled like that.

Like sex.

Like delirious, animalistic sex.

I had to contain myself as he walked up to me, all smiles beneath his sunglasses. “So – did you like the show?”

“It was pretty good,” I said, the Queen of Understatement.

“Pretty good,” he scoffed. “We rocked.”

Then he turned to Mara and Casey. “What did my two girlfriends think?”

“IT WAS AWESOME!” they screeched simultaneously, at a pitch only fully audible by bats and dolphins.

Ryan walked up behind him, a dour look on his face. “I thought you were going to tone it down.”

Derek grinned. “That was me toning it down.” Then he turned to Mara. “You didn’t mind, did you?”

She shook her head ‘no’ and squealed.

“Yeah, well, I’ll let you explain that to my mom,” Ryan said with a dark smile as he walked on past.

“Great,” Derek muttered humorously. “Casey, Mara – you go with Ryan. Kaitlyn… you come with me.”

“What?” Mara asked, crestfallen. “Why can’t we come with you, too?”

“I’ll be along in awhile. But we have to go do an interview.”

“Oh,” Mara said. She shot me an angry look, then followed her brother and her sister backstage.

An interview! The first one with him, one-on-one, just him and me alone.

I didn’t realize it was going to be in a shower, though.





15




We walked down the concrete hallway, sandwiched between two heavy-set security guards, one in front, one in back. As we went, people – stadium employees? Music label people? Band crew? – shouted and smiled their hellos at Derek, with an occasional high five or fist bump on the way. Most of them were men – and most of them took one look at me and then gave Derek a knowing little smirk.

I could tell what they were thinking, and it bothered me.

Not so much that they thought we were going someplace to have sex (although their leering was pretty disgusting)… but that he’d probably done something like this with other girls. Enough of them that it was what everybody expected.

We finally reached a locker room. Derek led the way inside. One guard came in and checked every nook and cranny for stalkers, then went back out to join his partner guarding the door.

I looked around. It was the locker room for the LA Lakers – their purple and yellow colors were everywhere, and I saw some famous last names on the tiny placards adorning the burnished wood lockers. There was a pleasant, minty tang to the air, like sports liniment.

On a nearby bench sat a small pile of plush towels, a pair of designer jeans, sunglasses identical to the ones Derek was wearing, a high-end t-shirt, black boxers, socks, bad-ass black boots, a pair of shower flip-flops, and a bag of toiletries.

I looked down in shock. “Um… what’s this?”

Derek grinned as he pulled off his sunglasses and tossed them on the bench next to the change of clothes. “You don’t expect me to go meet all my adoring fans looking like this, do you?”

Then he lifted his hands up and peeled his sweat-soaked shirt up over his head, just like he had on our night together four years ago.

I froze and watched the wet cloth slide over his bulging muscles, his perfect olive skin, the intricate design of tattoos across his chest.

Jesus.

He was even hotter than I remembered.

He’d gained a little muscle mass over the years. His abs stood out in relief from the rest of his body, and as he turned and threw the t-shirt down, his back flexed like a model’s in a Bowflex commercial.