Run to me, my blue-eyed girl, to the place where pleasure and pain meet

The. Crowd. Went. Nuts.

A veteran artist knows how to recognize a real buzz from miles away.

There’s the usual buzz. The we-like-everything-you-do type of excitement. Then there’s the promotional buzz. The one that smells of glossy brochures and PR women in pencil skirts and brunches at The Ivy to close a nice, fat deal with a top-notch radio station. Then there’s the real buzz. This buzz. It hums in your veins—not unlike morphine—floods your entire body until every hit of oxygen feels like downing a shot. I watched my fans beneath my boots, clawing out of their own skin with elation. They skulked over security, desperate to get to me. Yelling, screaming, begging.

More. More. More.

The flashes blinded me as I finished playing “Secondhand Love,” the song I wrote after I left Stardust standing in the hall. Nine minutes and twenty-three seconds of anger, frustration, and passion.

I could have kissed her.

And another bloke probably would have kissed her.

But where was the fun in that? I liked playing with my food, and that included driving her crazy until she could take no more of it. I wanted to make her cunt ache and drip for it. Because when I finally touched her, the star would turn into dust.

Pacing the stage, I threw them a crooked smile over my shoulder. I was shirtless, first sign that I was in a good mood. Usually I didn’t like the whole Justin Bieber see-my-abs shite. This wasn’t Hooters, and once you let your record label fuck you in the arse, the least you can do for yourself is keep your bloody shirt on. But I felt like I was standing in the middle of a bonfire singing that song to a crowd for the first time. Sweat trickled down my torso, and I could see on the huge screen behind me that the cameraman zoomed in on the drops running down my V-tap. I wondered how long it’d be before the video hit YouTube, and which would be more successful—my new song, or a picture of me fisting that starlet while coming all over her tits. Probably the latter. I decided to Google it sometime. It wasn’t like I fucking cared what people said about me, anyway.

“There’s more where that came from.” I adjusted the mic on its stand and walked across the stage.

The screams became louder, more frantic. Yeah, this wasn’t polite encouragement. This was hunger, immediate and greedy. I was vindictive and complicated and back. Fuck, I was back . I had lyrics in me and they were gushing out. It was futile to pretend Stardust didn’t have a hand in this. She did, and I was going to keep her until the last drop of greatness poured out of me. Or her. Whoever it came from.

I looked down at my fans. Then up at the inky sky. Then in-between, to the space where a golden cloud of body heat and bright lights powdered above their heads, and smiled.

I put my lips to the mic.

My fingers strumming my guitar, I started to play “Man Meets Moon,” one of my earliest tunes. When I didn’t need a blue-haired girl to save me. When I was a teenager with an agenda and a lot of fucking mind to speak. A kid who didn’t know where the Chateau Marmont was and only knew about caviar from the movies. The video of “Man Meets Moon” had been filmed in Lucas’ basement by Blake. I’d had a zit the size of Beirut on my chin that day, but it still gave me the big break I’d needed.

Alfie, Lucas, and the back guitarist followed suit. I gave the back guitarist a slight head nod, and his eyes widened in disbelief. Everyone on my tour knew what it meant. I hadn’t done that in two years, but it was time. He needed to cover for me while I crowd surfed.

And I was going to crowd surf.

Because tonight, it felt so real and right.

Good and bright.

Just. Like. Coke.

“O h, my life, that was bloody epic!” Blake jumped on Alex before the rock star could stumble all the way backstage.

His bare chest glistened with sweat, and the red marks painting his abs and back made a blush creep up my neck. I knew they were put there by his fans, and I also knew what these fans thought about when they raked their fingernails over his skin. It was the same thing I thought about when I watched him move so confidently across the stage. Like an angry god. Mars. Out for blood.

Blue-eyed girl.

Just hearing his husky, hoarse baritone say those words made me rub my thighs together, trying to relieve the tension between them. He’d written about me. He’d sung about me. And, true, he’d referred to me as a mental rebound, but who the hell cared? He’d given me a song. I hadn’t even given him a kiss.

I inhaled sharply, drinking him in. For the first time since I’d boarded the plane in Los Angeles, I was anxious and curious about my time with Alex tonight. About the hallway. Something had changed yesterday when we’d hugged. Better and worse.

It was like we’d become closer and drifted apart at the same time.

Standing in the shadows backstage, I let Alex have his moment with his friends. Alfie clasped his shoulders and shook him with an evil laugh. Fans took pictures of him. Lucas was smiling so hard I thought his face would split in two. Then Luc turned to me, almost in slow-motion, walking over and snaking his arm around my waist, yanking me into a hug, and burying his face inside my hair. I gasped. Sure, we were close. Kind of. We hung out, mainly on the plane and in hotel lobbies, but nothing more than that. There wasn’t some brave, soul-linking friendship between us. There wasn’t a bond. So, this came out of left field. Always one to please, I plastered on a reassuring grin and joined the claps in the circle of human appreciation that had formed around Alex, politely ignoring Lucas’ advances.

“Brilliant, wasn’t it?” Luc squeezed me into his shoulder again.

I hmm-hmmed in response, my smile faltering. Alex’s laughter continued as he took in the people around him, the boyish glint in his brown-green eyes making my stomach do cartwheels, and his head swiveled in slow-motion until his eyes landed on Lucas’ arm flung across my shoulder.

The smile dropped.

So did my heart. Straight to my underwear.

Wicked heart.

Traitorous heart.

Unreliable heart.

“Stardust,” he barked, and I didn’t know why his referring to me by my moniker made me blush, but it did.

I swallowed hard and pretended to comb my hair away from my face, when really, I was hiding from the world. “What’s up?”

“Need you for a sec. C’mere.”