I once was a man who feared repeat sexual encounters. And then Lyric Cassidy walked into my life. Now I’m a man all too willing to open an on-demand orgasm factory for his girlfriend.
Like my music, she’s become my craving. My obsession. I can’t get enough. So when that douchebag, Tony, showed up at the club and put his unwelcome paws on her, I had to stake my claim. Lyric is mine, and I want to be hers. There’s simply no one else that can satisfy my needs because she created them, and there’s nothing I want more than to protect her from any more heartbreak. She deserves the world, and I want to give it to her.
Last night in the car, I was fuming. Not just because I all but punched a hole through Tony’s face, but because Lyric was once wrapped up in a relationship with him. What was she thinking? He’s a no-good punk. To be honest, for a second I wondered if she fell for me for the same reasons. Bad boy rocker with an ugly ego. I’m all those things, too, but after just one taste of Lyric, I couldn’t imagine fucking her over. Ever.
And then she told me she loved me. I could hear the words on her breath before she spoke them, and I probed her, wanting to hear her say it. I’ve never wanted to hear those words from a woman before. But the moment I thought the words might slip from Lyric’s lips, there was nothing I wanted more.
This morning, I’m drinking her in. The sunlight streaming through the window shines on her where she lies wrapped in the sheets, looking like an angel. My angel. She stirs slightly. I know that stir. She’s waking up, but she’s too comfortable to open her eyes.
I’m about to crawl under the covers to give her something pleasant to lift the morning fog when someone pounds on the door.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
What the fuck? The urge to rip someone’s head off for startling Lyric overcomes me. The pounding starts again before I can jump out of bed. There’s a muffled voice on the other side. “God dammit, open the goddamn door!”
The unsolicited disturbance is Crawley. I grab my shorts and try not to trip putting them on as I shuffle to the door. I look back at Lyric, who seems to be getting more uncomfortable by the second. She rolls over and pulls a pillow over her head. I yank the door open, but only a few inches.
“What the hell do you want? Lyric’s still sleeping.”
Crawley’s face says it all. He’s pissed, and it only takes me two seconds to guess why. He shoves his phone in at me. Tony’s bloodied face stares back at me. I look away.
“We have a problem on our hands, Chapman. Your girlfriend seems to be causing more trouble than she’s worth. She’s going to cost you this tour if you’re not careful.”
Ignoring the phone, I step in the hallway. I narrow my eyes and get right into Crawley’s face. We’re the same height and size, so he doesn’t back down, but he needs to remember who tells who what to do around here. “Watch your mouth, Crawley. I have no problem tossing your ass if you keep up this shit. Lyric isn’t causing problems. You, on the other hand—”
Crawley shakes his head, cutting me off. His face turns beet red. “You’re not listening to me. I care about your career, Wolf, because it’s my career, too. And right now, you’ve got your dick in la la land. You need to eject yourself, no pun intended, from whatever this is before it blows up in your face.” He shoves his phone at me again, showing me there’s more than the one photo. “We’ve got a PR nightmare on our hands. Get dressed and let’s go deal with this shit. Leave your girlfriend here.”
The picture that lights up on Crawley’s phone now is a classic photo of my Hulk face just as my fist made impact with Tony’s cheek. It’s a badass picture. You can even see the trail of spit as it leaves Tony’s mouth.
Crawley slides his finger across the screen so I can see the next photo. One by one, the pictures tell a story of how I messed up Tony’s face over a woman. And the headlines are worse. Somehow, in my effort to protect Lyric from her asshole ex-boyfriend, I became a madman who tried to steal Tony’s girlfriend and then beat him to a bloody pump. Tony’s girlfriend.
“These stories are shit. None of this is true. Tony was hurting Lyric. You should have seen the way he grabbed her, Crawley. I was protecting my girl.”
Crawley yanks his phone back and shoves it in his back pocket. “Look, I don’t care if you revealed yourself as Batman and saved the fucking planet last night. We’ve got to get on the phone with PR and get us a story quick. And the tour company wants to speak with Lyric.”
Anger radiates through me as I stare back at Crawley. “Why?”
“She’s off the tour. We can’t afford to have her mess this up for us.”
I glare at him. “She’s not leaving. Your ass is going home before she does. I mean it. You’ve been with us for as long as we’ve been around, but I don’t give a shit what anyone says. This is my tour, and she’s staying.”
“They’ll fire her if she stays. It’s not my call. The articles aren’t just about you, Wolf. They’re about her, too.”
“I don’t give a fuck about the articles,” I yell. “None of it’s true. You can’t just fire someone because the tabloids and paparazzi made shit up. This is my tour. When the fuck did you start thinking you could trump my decisions?”
Crawley taps his finger on my chest, and I’m seconds away from latching on and breaking it. Who the hell does he think he is? “You pay me to make these decisions. You may have forgotten that, but I’m doing what you hired me to do. I have a stake in all of this, too, and you better believe I’ll watch out for what’s mine.
“You wanted me to protect the girl’s secret? Well, those lyrics may be legally yours now, but that doesn’t mean we can’t leak who signed them over to us. That small detail was left out of the contract, and Lyric obviously has something to hide. Unless you both want that secret exposed, I suggest you start following my lead.”
I ball my fists at my sides. Prick. “Are you blackmailing me, Crawley?”
“No.” He shakes his head and laughs. “But I am blackmailing your girlfriend. You won’t need to do a thing.”
With that, Crawley turns to walk away. Rage fills my chest. “Don’t think I won’t have your ass tossed for this, dickhead!” I don’t care who the fuck hears me.
Crawley turns to face me, but he keeps walking. “I think you’re smarter than that. Six years gives me a lot of shit to unleash if you decide to do anything stupid.” I’m racking my brain for anything he could possibly have on me. I’m coming up empty, but I’m not in the right state of mind to be making these decisions. All I see is red.
“Say goodbye to your lady friend,” Crawley calls like a madman, a mega-watt smile on his face. “She goes home today. And you should probably start checking your messages. You have a long day ahead of you.” He disappears into the next elevator.
I’m trying to control my breathing when the door to the room opens and Lyric’s sleepy head pops out, followed by the rest of her body. Her hair is messy, and she’s wearing a white tank top and shorts. Her nipples are at full attention, but for the first time since meeting her, I don’t want to rip off her clothes and make her moan. I want to hold her as tight as I can until I figure out how I’m going to make this right.
“Babe?” she asks. The worry in her expression kills me.
I step forward and nudge her into the room before closing the door and locking it behind us. I lean against it and squeeze my eyes shut, trying to calm down before I open my mouth. Her arms snake around my waist, and she nuzzles my chest. I’m sugar in her hot glass of water—I totally dissolve into her the moment we touch. But even though she’s right fucking here, I feel as if she’s slipping from me. It was only a matter of time.
“Wolf, you’re scaring me.”
I grip her face with my palms and look into her eyes. “I love you, Lyric. You know that, right?”
She nods without a sliver of hesitation, and my heart wants to explode. “I love you, too. What’s going on? Is it because of Tony?”
“Have you checked your phone?”
She shakes her head as much as my hold will allow. I’m not ready to let her go. “No, why?”
“That was Crawley. He says we’re in a deep pile of shit. Both of us. There are pictures all over the internet and articles spreading lies. Because of Tony. And your company wants you off the tour.”
Her eyes widen and then narrow. “No.”
At first I think she’s saying no, she’s not leaving the tour, and hope balloons in my chest, but then she pulls away and practically runs to her phone, and I’m deflated. As she scans her messages, I decide to do the same. There are literally thousands of missed calls, emails, and social media notifications. All in the span of less than twelve hours. I’m overwhelmed, and I haven’t even opened a single one.
“Oh my God,” Lyric breathes.
I go to her because I’m honestly more concerned for her fate than mine. “What?”
She’s staring open-mouthed at her phone as she continues to read. “They’re sending Doug to take over the tour, and they’re sending me a car. Shit. Wolf, how the hell did this happen?”
“We didn’t do anything wrong. There is absolutely nothing in our contracts that state anything about a relationship, not that it should fucking matter, anyway. This is my tour. My life. And if I want to fuck my road manager, I will.” I’m so pissed, and I know the words I’m spewing aren’t kind. “It’s Crawley. All fucking Crawley. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the one who took the pictures and leaked them.”
Lyric looks at me, and her eyes are full of doubt and wishful thinking. “No. I know he’s a prick, but why would he want to hurt us like that? He’s ecstatic about the songs.”
With a sigh, I bow my head. “That’s the other thing. Crawley says if you don’t leave, he’ll make sure everyone knows the songs are yours.”
Lyric’s eyes go wide, and she jumps up. “He can’t do that! I signed those songs over to you. You, Crawley, and the lawyers are the only ones who know.”
“He said that there was no agreement to keep your involvement with the songs a secret. But that’s the only hold he has on us, babe. Who cares if people know you wrote them? You still signed them over. It’s not like you’ll be flooded with fame and fortune because of it.”
Her expression falls, and for a moment she looks like she might cry, but instead, she hardens and turns to me. “It’s completely out of the question. No one can know about the lyrics, Wolf. That was the deal when this all started.”
Now I’m starting to get pissed. How can she let some silly song lyrics keep us apart? “You’d rather leave the tour than let people know you wrote some songs? Lyric, you have to know how ridiculous that sounds.”
“Ridiculous?” She's fuming. “You think my secrets are ridiculous? If you remember correctly, you stole my secrets, and now I’m getting kicked off a tour because of what you took from me.”
“What?” I don’t believe what I’m hearing. She’s pissed at me? Is she even listening to herself? “You mean the secrets you tossed in the trash? Meant that much to you, huh?”
I don’t know why I’m provoking her, or why we’re arguing about the lyrics. We’re both insanely heated and borderline irrational. We agreed in the beginning it would all be a secret, and I fully intended to respect her wishes. But the thought of her leaving absolutely crushes me. Everything we’ve built together is about to blow up in our faces, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.
Without another word, Lyric grabs her overnight bag and begins packing. “What are you doing?” I roar. She can’t leave me.
“What do you think?” She doesn’t even look at me.
“Babe, stop.” I reach for her, but she slaps my hand away.
“I need to pack.”
I sink onto the bed, my chest tightening. I watch as Lyric flies around the room, gathering her things and shoving them into her bag. I’m racking my brain for anything I can say or do to help this messed up situation. When it looks like she’s gathered everything, she pauses, and I think she might stop and say something to me. But when she turns and walks away instead, I shake off my fog and reach for the door before she can open it. My hands shoot out, slamming against the door and caging her in as she swivels to face me. Her eyes spit fire.
“Is that what I deserve? You’re going to walk out the door without so much as a goodbye?”
I haven’t seen Lyric this angry since the night she walked in on Jenn and me. Just that thought weakens me.
“Goodbye, Wolf,” she says, but it’s not as cold as her expression is. I hear her voice crack. I know she’s just reacting to the situation. This can’t be a reflection of our time together. Our connection.
“You don’t need to leave.” I’m pleading now. “We can figure this out together.”
Lyric turns away. “It doesn’t sound like I have a choice. It’s either you or my ridiculous secrets. I think I’ll keep my secrets, thank you very much.”
Her words hurt like hell, but they’re also revealing. There’s something she’s not telling me. Before, when she was upset about people knowing she wrote those songs, it seemed like she just didn’t want the attention. Now, I think her reasons run deeper than that, and I’ll be damned if I don’t get to the bottom of it.
“I’m going to talk to Crawley. I’ll toss him if I have to. I don’t trust him after this. If you want to leave and work things out at the office, then go. I’ll fix the PR mess, and then you can come back. If you can’t come back as my road manager, then maybe you can take a break and travel with me.”
Her eyes narrow. “You mean be your groupie?”
“No, Lyric. Fuck.” Why is she talking like this? “I mean be my girlfriend. Work doesn’t have to get in the way anymore. I just want you here with me.”
“And what about my job, Wolf? I can’t just give up my life because I met a hot rock star with a new outlook on life. This was never supposed to be anything more than a one-time hookup, and you know it. We took it too far, and now look at us.”
I didn’t realize Lyric could turn her ferocity on me like this. But there she goes. Her words are her weapons, and I’ve lost count of how many times she’s stabbed me. All I know is that it fucking hurts.
I move away from her and hold my hands up, not liking the way this is ending one bit, but I won’t let anyone speak to me like that. “You know what? You go take care of you. Keep your lyrics locked away. Do whatever you need, but don’t you dare play the victim card here. I’m asking you to stay. To be with me. To figure this out with me. If that’s not what you want, too, then get the fuck out.”
Her gasp is the last thing I hear before the door opens and slams shut behind her, effectively shredding my heart.
Fuck love.
Never a-fucking-gain.