“Your turn, lover boy,” Arash goaded, grinning at Gideon.

My husband nodded, then looked at me. His face held no hint to his thoughts, and I began to worry. There was no softness on his lips or in his eyes, nothing to give me a clue.

And then some idiot started singing “Golden.”

Gideon stiffened, his jaw visibly tightening. Reaching for his hand, I gave it a squeeze and felt a bit of relief when he squeezed back.

He kissed my cheek and headed to the stage, cutting through the crowd with easy command. I watched him go, seeing other women’s heads turn to follow him. I was biased, of course, but knew for a certainty that he was the most striking man in the room.

Seriously, it should be criminal for a man to be that sexy.

I looked at Arash and Arnoldo. “Have either of you heard him sing?”

Arnoldo shook his head.

Arash laughed. “Hell, no. With any luck, he’ll sound like you. Like Cary says, he can’t be good at everything or we’d all have to hate him.”

The guy onstage wrapped it up. A moment later, Gideon walked on. For some reason, my heart started pounding as badly as it had when I was up there. My palms grew clammy and I wiped them on my skirt.

I was afraid of what it would be like to watch Gideon up there. Much as I hated to think it, Brett was a hard act to follow and hearing “Golden,” even sung by someone who shouldn’t ever have access to a microphone, brought those two worlds too close together.

Gideon grabbed the mic and pulled it off the stand as if he’d done the move a thousand times before. The women in the audience went crazy, yelling about how hot he was and making suggestive remarks I chose to ignore. The man was delicious physically, but his commanding, confident presence was the real kicker.

He looked like a man who knew how to f**k a woman senseless. And God, did he ever.

“This one,” he said, “is for my wife.”

With a pointed glance, Gideon signaled the band to start. An instantly recognizable bass beat ratcheted up my pulse.

“Lifehouse!” Shawna crowed, clapping her hands. “I love them!”

“He’s calling you his wife already!” Megumi yelled, leaning toward me. “How freakin’ lucky are you?”

I didn’t glance at her. I couldn’t. My attention was riveted on Gideon as he looked directly at me and sang, telling me in a lusciously raspy voice that he was desperate for change and starving for truth.

He was answering my song.

My eyes burned even as my heart began to beat with a different rhythm. Had I thought he’d be unemotional? My God, he was killing me, baring his soul in the rough timbre of his voice.

“Holy f**k,” Cary said, his eyes on the stage. “The man can sing.”

I was hanging by a moment, too, hanging on to every word, hearing his message about chasing after me and falling more in love. I shifted in my seat, turned on beyond bearing.

Gideon dominated the attention of everyone in the bar. Of all the voices we’d heard that night, his was truly professional grade. He stood in the single spotlight, feet set a foot apart, dressed elegantly while singing a rock song, and he made it work so well I couldn’t imagine it sung any other way. There was no comparison to Brett, not in Gideon’s delivery or my reaction to it.

I was on my feet before I knew it, making my way through the crowd to get to him. Gideon finished the song and the bar went ballistic, cutting off my route to him. I became lost in the crush, too short to see beyond the shoulders around me.

He found me, pushing his way through to catch me up in his arms. His mouth claimed mine, kissing me roughly, inciting a new round of catcalls and cheers. In the periphery, I heard the band begin a new song. I practically climbed up Gideon, panting in his ear, “Now!”

I didn’t have to explain. Setting me down, he grabbed my hand and led me across the bar and back through the kitchen to the service elevator. I plastered myself against him before the doors closed behind us, but he was pulling out his phone and lifting it to his ear, tilting his head back as my mouth slid feverishly over his throat.

“Bring the limo around,” he ordered gruffly, and then the phone was back in his pocket and he was kissing me back with all the passion he’d once kept locked inside.

Ravenous, I devoured him, catching his lower lip between my teeth and tasting it with swift lashes of my tongue. He groaned when I pushed him against the elevator’s padded wall, my hands running down his chest to cup the heft of his erection in my palms.

“Eva . . . Christ.”

We stopped descending and he exploded into movement, grabbing me by the elbow and pushing me ahead of him out the doors with brisk, impatient strides. We exited from a service hallway into the lobby, once again maneuvering through a crowd until we stepped out into the summer night heat. The limo idled in the street.

Angus jumped out, quickly pulling the rear door open.

I scrambled in with Gideon crowding in behind me.

“Don’t go far,” he told Angus.

We settled onto the bench seat with a foot of distance between us, both of us looking anywhere but at each other as the privacy partition slowly rose and the limo began to move.

The moment the divider locked into place, I fell back against the seat and yanked my skirt up, brazenly tearing off my own clothes in my eagerness to be f**ked.

As Gideon dropped to his knees on the floorboard, his hands went to his waistband, opening his slacks.

I shimmied out of my underwear, kicking them off along with my sandals.