The air between us felt fuzzy, staticky. Like if I touched him I'd get the shock of my life.

As he stepped forward, I stepped back. Not because I was trying to run from him, but because closing that space between us seemed dangerous almost. I'd been around enough overloaded circuits in my life to know that danger when I saw it.

But I wanted that danger too. So when he got me up against the wall, my back pressed up against the rough brick, I didn't try to duck away. I just looked up as he put his big hands on the wall behind me, his fingers curling slightly as if he needed to hold onto something. I could feel the tremor through his body, the effort he was making to hold himself back.

But I didn't want him to hold back.

I actually didn't know what I wanted.

I was relying purely in instinct.

Going up on my tiptoes, I closed the distance between our bodies, the hair on the back of my neck standing on end when I crossed into that charged space.

His mouth crashed into mine at the same time as I wrapped my arms around his neck. I let my lips part, and the noise that he made as his tongue slipped into my mouth with like nothing I'd ever heard or felt before.

Because I did feel it. Right down to my toes. I felt everything he was feeling, like this weird sort of energy transference, a psychic connection, and suddenly I wanted more, more than maybe it was even possible for him to give me, but I needed to see if we could try.

He made that noise again, a slow, deep rumbling, something so primal that it rubbed up against his proper English upbringing, and I knew that he was starting to lose it. I was losing it too. Because even though this was a huge, massive, completely asinine mistake I was making, getting involved with the talent like this, I was ready to throw it all away right now. All of the hard work, all of the slogging toil, all of Uncle Gil's phone calls to his buddies, giving reassurances that I was a professional, that I could hang with the boys. All of the promises I'd made to myself and others that I could work as a roadie without losing my head over the talent like some kind of empty headed groupie. I was ready to throw it all away.

I was ready to ruin my reputation just to have Niall Penrose kiss me like this.

Blood boiling, I threw myself against him, and he rewarded me with that noise again. At the sound of it my nipples tightened, and I felt a heavy sliding sensation in my pit of my stomach. Then suddenly something inside of me broke free. I think it was the last of my inhibitions.

He slid his hand down the wall, then across my back, pulling me flush against him, and I could feel him, his desire for me, me, hard and unyielding against my belly. He bent me backward a little, cradling my head with a gentleness that shouldn't have been so damn surprising, but it was just one more item for my list of surprises Niall Penrose had in store for me.

I lost myself.

Arching upward, I pressed my whole body against him, and he shivered again, still somehow holding back. I didn't understand how he had anything left to hold because I was already gone.

He kissed me in a way that made me feel like I was already naked. He kissed me like I was already his. He kissed me like he wanted to put me high up on a pedestal, then yank me back down again and fuck me in the dirt.

Our bodies tangled together so that I wasn't entirely sure where he ended and I began. It was a dance, it was a tango, it was a connection, and as he moved his kiss lower, sucking, kissing, licking, I fell back, surrendering.

I don't think I've surrendered to anything in my life, ever,.

That thought startled me enough to make me snap my head back up again and look at him. We were both breathing hard. "Yeah?" he asked.

I nodded, and I fucking bit my lip, and then licked it, tasting where he'd kissed me. "Yes," I repeated. I could pretend I didn't know what it was I'd agreed to. But I absolutely did.

He pressed against me, hard, letting me feel him. "You want this as much as I do?" he murmured against my ear.

My body was vibrating like one of his bass guitar strings. In the low light of backstage, his green eyes looked black. "Yeah," I said again. "I want this." I was practically squirming.

"I'm not gonna fuck you up against this wall," he murmured, letting his lips brush up my neck. I sighed and it sounded like a whimper of protest. The charged space between our skin sizzled. He pressed his forehead to mine so that the green of his eyes was the whole world. And then asked, "Come to my room with me, yeah?"