There was no need for me to squint to second-guess who he was. Even without getting a proper look at him, I knew this had to be the main man. The lights were so low that I could barely make him out, but he had this presence about him. The way he strode onto that stage through the piles of men in front of him let everyone in that theatre know that he was the one in charge, that it was him they needed to watch out for.

As he stood there on stage, I stared at him, taking him in, unable to tear my eyes away from him. He was fully-dressed but somehow, despite the gorgeous half-naked men around him, he was the only thing in the world that mattered to me and, for a split second, I was sure I saw him looking back at me.

My heart jittered to a stop in my chest as our eyes met.

Then he lowered his gaze once more, just as he did on the poster, and took his position at the center of the stage. The moment was broken, that moment that had passed between us, where I had been sure that there had been that flicker of something real and raw and divine in that look he gave me.

The silence around the room continued for another long moment. Then, as the lights came up, so did the noise. I realized that I had been holding in a breath, and let it out with a long gasp.

His head snapped up and he faced the crowd for the first time, and the women’s screams reached crescendo pitch. The atmosphere in the room was incredible, indescribable. Even Eleanor got to her feet. I supposed the sight of him here in real life in front of her was enough to get her to forget any games she might have had and just go for it.

The way he moved was something different to the rest of the guys who had opened the show. Sure, they hit their marks alongside him, just the same way he did, but he oozed a kind of unique confidence and charisma, the kind of thing you couldn’t learn with practice. He moved his body like he knew how much everyone in that room wanted him, something that I couldn’t relate to. I had always felt a little out-of-place in my own body, and I longed for the kind of confidence that he seemed to own so effortlessly.

Eleanor moved like she was starting the seduction right there and then, and I pressed my lips together and tried not to judge her too harshly for it. She had just been through a break-up, after all, and I shouldn’t take whatever she was going through too seriously. Everyone needed some space to relax and blow off some steam. Maybe even me.

After the first song was done, the lights fell low again, the only spotlight was on him. I grinned up at him from where I was standing, and I was sure that he looked down at me once more. I felt myself flush a bright red as soon as his eyes were on me, and embarrassed I glanced away at once. There was just something unbelievably erotic about having him look at me like that.

“Now…” he spoke into his mic. His voice was deep and sexy, and another series of shrieks went up from the audience around me. He seriously owned this place, and he had barely been on-stage for three minutes.

“Put your hand up if you don’t want to come up on stage with me tonight,” he grinned, casting a look around the audience. I looked around and saw only about a dozen hands in the whole place that went up, from friends who looked as though they’d been dragged here by someone else. I bit my lip and returned my gaze to the stage, and there he was, looking down at me again.

“Because I’m going to need someone to come up here and give me a hand.” He looked over the audience once more. Another cheer raised the roof.

“Who’s going to help me?”

Pretty much every single woman in that room seemed as though she would have been happy to volunteer, and I whooped right along with them, letting him know that I was very much in their midst. He lifted his finger, letting it rove over the crowd, and then, to my utter shock-

It came to rest on me.

I stood there and just stared at him for a moment. No. Out of all the women in this room, there was no way that he was pointing at me. I glanced over at Eleanor, and I instantly figured out from the foul look she was giving me that yes, he really was pointing at me.

“In the blue dress down there,” he announced, smiling directly at me. “Get up here, Gorgeous.”

Me gorgeous. Did he just call me gorgeous? I continued to just stand there, peering up at him as though I had no idea what he was asking me. And then, I felt a nudge in my side. The woman next to me, a big smile on her face, was pointing to the stage.

“Go on you lucky thing, get up there!” she ordered me. I forgot about Eleanor glowering beside me. I beamed and grinned and blushed and finally did as I was told. The crowd whooped me along, and I felt as though my feet weren’t touching the ground.

I blinked in the bright lights of the stage, feeling like I had been caught out in the light of a million searchlights, but then I felt his arm slip around my waist and everything else in the room dropped away.