The Rocker's Muse

“Tell her you’re with me,” Tristan said matter-of-factly.

“Not sure I want to admit that. She’ll get the wrong idea.”

He arched a brow. “She’d be somewhat right about the wrong idea, though, wouldn’t she?”

“I don’t want anyone knowing my business.”

“But you have to respond to her. Otherwise, she’ll worry about you.”

“She’ll worry more if I tell her I’m in Tristan Daltrey’s room.”

“Ouch.” He clutched his chest. “That hurts, but it’s probably true.”

I shot her a quick text saying I was safe and hanging out with people downstairs and she shouldn’t wait up. It sounded shady as hell. I felt guilty for lying. “I should go back to my room, but I don’t want to.”

“I’m not gonna suggest you leave. If I had my way, you’d be on my bus and in my bed. Every damn night.”

“Well, it’s a good thing you don’t call the shots—I do.”

“That is a good thing. We definitely need someone who’s thinking above the belt to make such decisions.”

“You’re assuming I’m not thinking below the belt?” I quipped.

“Tell me more,” he said gruffly.

“You know how hot you are. I don’t have to spell out why it’s hard for me to resist you.”

Lying on his stomach, he inched closer. “I get hard just looking at the little gap between your teeth. Everything about you excites me.”

“The gap in my teeth?” I poked his shoulder with my index finger. “I hate it.”

“It’s one of my favorite things. Every time you open your pretty mouth, I want to lick a line across it.”

My nipples hardened. “That’s all you wanna do?”

“Fuck no, that’s not all I wanna do. I want to do everything to you. That’s the problem.”

Feeling drunk off the intense way he looked at me, I knew I was in trouble again tonight. I was addicted to him in every way—not only physically but to the attention he always paid me. That addiction blurred the lines between right and wrong.

“I’m scared, Tristan,” I blurted.

“I wish you weren’t.” He rubbed his finger along my arm. “Tell me what I can do to change that.”

There was nothing he could do. I wanted to scream that he didn’t know everything there was to know about me, he didn’t know why I’d gone out to the desert that day. But I stopped myself. It wasn’t the time for that conversation. It was never going to be the right time. And in the interim, I was losing the ability to control myself around him.

I wanted to have sex. My body was ready for everything with him. If he tried to go there, I wouldn’t be able to resist. And that made me the most selfish person in the world.

I rubbed my thumb along the layer of scruff at his chin. He closed his eyes at my touch. Taking my hand in his, he kissed each of my fingers one by one. God, how I loved that. And when he looked up at me again with hooded, lust-filled eyes, I felt weaker by the second.

I reached out to massage his hair. “I wish I didn’t love the way I feel every time you look at me. I’m headed for the biggest heartbreak of my life.”

He frowned. “I know I told you not to trust me, but it was only a warning against things I might do to you that would actually feel good. Even if I cross the line, I’d only ever be making you feel good. I promise I wouldn’t do anything to hurt you.”

He didn’t understand that I had a much greater chance of hurting him than him ever hurting me.

CHAPTER 19

TRISTAN