The Purest Hook (Second Circle Tattoos #3)(23)

“No comment. Yet. My favorite would be my fingers. I couldn’t play piano or guitar without them. Now you have to ask me the reverse of the question.”

“What’s the least favorite part of your body?” Pixie asked.

Dred laughed loudly. “No. Which is your favorite part of my body?”

“Really?”

Dred raised both eyebrows and nodded.

“Okay. Which is your favorite part of my body?”

“Where to start?” Dred sat up straight in the chair and leaned toward her. “Honestly, Pix. Straight up, you’ve got the most expressive eyes I’ve ever seen. When I kissed you the day I left, I swear to God you stripped me bare. It was the most honest expression of emotion I have ever seen. I want to drown in them.”

Pixie’s hand went to her mouth. Dred’s intensity was overwhelming.

He sat back suddenly. “So, what’s your favorite part of me?” he asked with a smile.

The statue of freaking David couldn’t hold a candle to Dred. But she wanted to play the game. It felt safe to flirt with him this way with all those miles between them.

“Keep looking at me like that, Pix, and I’m on the next flight to Miami,” he said, his voice low and rough.

“Would that be such a bad thing?” she asked.

“Not at all. You realize all you have to say is yes, right?”

“It’s only four days until I’m there. Three and a half really.”

“I didn’t mean about the flight. I meant say yes, and we can take this conversation to a totally different place.”

A loud knocking sounded, and Dred looked to his right.

“Limo’s leaving in fifteen,” she heard someone say in the background.

“Fine,” he snapped to whoever it was. “Fucking timing. I gotta go. Sorry, Snowflake.”

Pixie let out a whoosh of breath. The intensity lifted, and a sense of relief that the conversation hadn’t gone further washed over her. “Limos sound fancy. Where are you off to?” she asked, hoping to steer him away from their game.

“An industry awards thing in L.A. Maybe next time, you can come with me. Then it wouldn’t be so incredibly dull.”

“You’re going tonight? Oh my God. I was going to go home and watch it.”

“Nah, don’t waste your time. Go home and think about saying yes to this kind of conversation, and I’ll spend the night thinking about the things I’ll say to you if you do.” With a wink, he disconnected.

Damn. Now she was all hot and bothered. In a way it was a good thing that he wasn’t there with her, because the temptation to go further was killing her.

And if they did, he’d quickly figure out exactly how sexually messed up she was.

*





Chapter Six


“Okay, let’s take it from the top again. One . . . two . . . three . . . four . . .”

Dred read the lyrics off his notepad. Something wasn’t quite right at the end of the first verse. He sang it, awkwardly. It didn’t roll right. They played the song, warts and all. A dropped note here, a miscue there. The middle eight worked perfectly, the chorus anthemic. Nikan withheld his proclivity to ad lib until they had the song down.

Thank God it was Thursday, finally. Home-based for several days. At their insistence, Sam had changed their flight from commercial to a private red-eye after the awards show.

They’d been up for hours. Hunger was closing in, and they needed to take a break soon.

Jordan and Elliot sat on their stools, Nikan stood, as he always did. The guy had more energy than he knew what to do with.

“What do you think?” Nikan asked.

“It sounds better without the instrumental solo, much as I enjoyed playing it,” Elliott offered.

“Phraseology of the last line in the first verse isn’t working, but I can fix that later.” Dred opened his bottled water and took a sip.

“That’s not for the album, is it?” Sam walked into the studio. Giving him a key had seemed like a good idea at the time. He could pop in when they were away and look out for the place. When they’d first bought the house, he’d hinted that he wanted to move in, but the five of them had a relationship Sam would never understand. And some of the things they handled once they closed the front door to the world weren’t for sharing.

“Why? What’s wrong with it?” Dred asked.

“It’s too Zeppelin, too early metal. Not progressive enough.” Sam helped himself to bottled water from the small fridge. “You need to build on the last album. Heavier, darker.”

“What were you expecting? A little thrash metal maybe?” Dred tore into the opening riff of a song by Sodom. His fingers flew over the strings.

Nikan joined in for kicks.

“All right!” Sam yelled over the guitars.

Dred and Nikan both stopped at the end of the next stanza.

“All I’m saying is that you have an almost cultlike following among nu metal and funk metal fans.” Sam leaned against the desk. “This sounds like a drift toward heavy rock.”

Dred stood and put his guitar away. “So what if it is? It’s the music we feel like making. And some of the songs we wrote in the past, we don’t feel that way anymore.” It was true. Each of them had received counselling as part of their daily life in the home. Maisey had seen to that. The obstacles they’d had to overcome as children had shaped who they were today. But the scar tissue was so deep, so painful, and the songs they’d written during that time came from a place so dark, it was impossible to perform some of their early songs today without being transported back to a time none of them wanted to return to.