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She laughed again, and it suddenly struck her how easy it was to laugh with Noah. How very little of it she’d done for a long time. How different her life would be a week from now once she was back home. Back with Warren.
He cupped her chin. “Hey.”
She glanced back at him, fighting to stay in place. “Sorry.”
“What was it?”
“A whisper of ghosts. Nothing more.” She visibly shook herself out of thinking about the future. “I’m awesome groupie material. The right ingredient to being a good groupie is to project enough crazy awe without coming over all stalkerish.”
He stared down at her, head tilted thoughtfully. “So if I were in a band, you wouldn’t chain yourself to my trailer or drape yourself naked over my drums?” he asked with a salacious wink.
She laughed. “No, but I’d wear your headband and let you sign your name on my boobs. Possibly consider holding your joint when the muse suddenly struck and you didn’t have an ashtray nearby.”
His laugh was a deep and sexy rumble that wove its way through her body to her toes before whooshing back up to curl around her heart.
“If I had you, I wouldn’t need a muse or weed. You already go straight to my head,” Noah whispered against her lips.
God, he was gorgeous. And hers for only a few more days…
Unless she contemplated the impossible and let herself see him once they were back in the real world.
The temptation was strong. It tantalized, drawing her in deeper, even as she pushed it away.
Dr. Hatfield had tried to steer her into thinking that what happened five years ago wasn’t her fault. But deep down, Leia knew she wasn’t guiltless. In the dark of night when the ghosts gleefully woke, she couldn’t shut them off because they were right. She might hate her mother for not being strong enough to withstand the horror that had befallen their cursed family, but she couldn’t hide from the fact that part of that horror had been of her own making.
A series of rapid African drumbeats rumbled through the auditorium, effectively distracting her from the dark sojourn into the past.
She tightened her arms around Noah’s neck, closed her eyes and swayed to the throbbing beat.
Noah’s hands clenched on her waist. “Fuck. Open your eyes, Leia. Now. Before I find somewhere dark and disturbing to remind you that you’re mine.”
“Kiss me first,” she challenged, her heartbeat still echoing with wisps of what she’d done. How she’d made it so she carried an incomplete tattoo on her ribcage, too scared to complete it.
He didn’t. Her breath caught because she knew what he wanted. Knew what she had to say to get what she needed. “Kiss me. Please, Noah.”
One hand dragged her closer. Held completely immobilized, he sealed his mouth over hers in punishment and lust. She opened for him, drank him in, infused her senses with the breathtaking man who could make everything fall away. The drumbeats increased in tempo as Osibisa, the band her father had loved and whose music she’d known since childhood, built up to a wild and frenzied crescendo.
Noah pressed her against the balcony railing, her bottom digging in to the metal frame, sparking a riot of pain that mingled with the pleasure of his kiss.
Her clit throbbed to life, her pussy clenching with desperate hunger.
“Miss Michaels? Mr. King?” a hesitant voice said above the music.
Noah broke the kiss, his chest rising and falling rapidly as he pressed his forehead to hers. “Shit. I’m going to make you pay for the next four hours of blue balls I’m going to suffer,” he muttered.
“I’ll be a good little groupie and let you use me however you want,” she whispered back.
Noah was still cursing when she craned her neck to see a woman about her age with a clipboard, earpiece and slightly panicked look in her eyes that spelled “harried usher” standing in the doorway of the exclusive box the Indigo Lounge had hired for tonight.
“Hi, I’m Greta. The band is getting ready to go on stage. If you’d both like to come with me?” she asked with a smile that flashed on and off, her fingers drumming impatiently against her leg.
Noah took Leia’s hand and tugged her behind him, making no effort to hide what must have been a very evident arousal.
Leia held her breath, but the girl was too busy getting the shock of her life once she caught a glimpse of Noah’s handsome face to lower her gaze.
When he smiled at her, her mouth dropped open along with the clipboard, which landed on the floor with a clatter. Still smiling, Noah bent and retrieved it for her.
She didn’t move.