Steal

His eyebrows shot up, “Easy there with your comebacks, Ang.” He leaned forward, “Is that the best you can do? Because I sure as hell have heard a lot worse.”

I gulped, he was too close again, so close I could smell his aftershave, he’d changed it, just like he’d somehow changed his brain and turned into this crazy responsible man I didn’t even recognize anymore. This guy, this was the guy that used to order every item on the dessert menu for room service and ask for a tub of cherries so he could take a bubble bath with them.

He pranked his tour bus driver on a daily basis.

And when I asked him what he was going to do after singing, his only serious response was that he wanted to go on an African Safari or become a lion tamer.

Always kidding.

Never serious.

Did he not do in between? Was it always black and white?

“You know what?” I backed up. “It’s been a long night. And I don’t want to waste what precious hours I have left to sleep, trying to come up with a better insult when all you have to do is look in a mirror to realize who you’ve turned into.”

His eyes darkened. “Oh yeah, and who’s that?”

I sidestepped him, then stood up on my tiptoes and whispered in his ear. “Your father.”

It was his weakness.

It was his greatest fear.

It was his reality.

He sucked in a breath. “Bullshit, I’m nothing like him.”

“Hey, Will, maybe you should get some penny loafers tomorrow, might be more comfortable if your hip’s giving you trouble.”

I closed the door behind me amidst his cursing and ran to my room.

He didn’t follow.

Not right away.

I exhaled in relief and quickly changed into my pajamas then turned off my light and crawled into bed.

It took seconds for my eyelids to get heavy.

And when my body finally followed suit, the bed dipped under the weight of whoever was brave enough to interrupt my sleep.

“Are you saying that to piss me off or is it true?” Will’s gruff voice was so not what I needed right before my brain dreamed.

“Will!” I groaned and punched my pillow with my right hand, “You know I don’t do well with no sleep, and I’m already sucking bad enough as it is.”

“You don’t suck. You’ve never sucked a day in your life.”

I grinned up at him.

His stone-cold face sobered and then he cracked a smile. “I see someone still has a dirty mind.”

“I was talking about sucking oyster shooters.”

His eyes narrowed. “Bullshit.”

“Do dads still cuss? Shouldn’t you be saying something like, dag nabit or—”

He covered my mouth with his hand. “I’m not my father. My father’s…” He flinched, “He’s… in his seventies, he golfs on the weekends and eats the early bird special because it’s cheap even though he has enough money to do whatever the hell he wants. He goes to church every Sunday, never has a hair out of place, and told me I was going to hell for stripping on stage.”

It was my turn to flinch. “That was a good night.”

“Someone dared me.”

“You didn’t have to do it.”

“Yeah well, the crowd loved it, and I knew it would piss him off.” His hand fell at his side. “I’m not him.”

“Whatever you say, William.”

He groaned and leaned over me. “Keep insulting me and I’ll do a body cavity search…”

“You promise?” It was out before I could rein it back in.

His eyes flashed.

I gulped.

And then he was pulling away again, the intensity in his eyes faded right along with the sexually charged moment that had me itching beneath the suddenly too hot sheets. “Get some sleep, Ang.”

I yawned, “Good talk, Dad.”

He tossed a pillow at my face. Then, in a moment of what I’m assuming was either drunkenness or pure insanity, he leaned over my body and kissed my forehead. “Well, if the shoe fits.”

I held my breath, stunned, unsure of what it meant. Was he teasing me? Baiting me? Or just torturing me with his touch?

One thing was for damn sure.

When Will closed his bedroom door, sleep was the last thing on my mind.

Him stripping on stage took up all my thoughts, but the cherry on top was the feel of his soft lips against my forehead and the look in his eyes that matched it, the look that was more man than monster. More free than controlled.

More Will Sutherland than William.

More the guy I used to know.

Then the one currently possessing his boring yet hot as hell body.

SLEEP HAD ALWAYS been difficult for me. I wasn’t one of those guys who could just crash after a concert or a signing, I had to decompress, my mind was so aware of the constant conversations the chatter, the music, the noise — I had to just let my brain soak it all in, and sort it into the right places.

Some nights it took hours.

Other nights it took minutes.

Lucky me, that after one brief conversation with Ang — and I was leaning toward hour two. One conversation that no matter how many times I twisted it around, tried to make it fit, it just didn’t.

I was in a weird place.

A place where I wanted to hate her.

And a place where I was suddenly just exhausted from all the hate.

Keeping every single part of myself indifferent wasn’t something I was practiced in when it came to women.

I’d never been good at it.

Until she’d forced me to be.

Until I saw the way he looked at her and knew — the more I attached myself the more he would wonder what was so great about her — the more he would want to take.

I miscalculated.

The math never lined up in the first place.

And maybe that was the problem — I was always waiting for her to cheat, waiting for her to leave, waiting for to mess up — judging her from my stupid pedestal.

So when she fell. I turned around and walked away.

I told myself I was right.

I told myself I was better off.

I told myself a lot of lies in order to get through, and now I felt like a zombie as I walked through the dark beach house.

I had everything.

But her.

Money. Fame. An actual career I liked half the time that no longer had my face splashed all over every tabloid in the country.

And I was just as empty as the spare bedrooms in the house I was renting.

I just didn’t know how to get back to that place, the easygoing person I used to be, the guy who blindly trusted and didn’t give a shit, because when you’re that person you leave yourself open to pain.

But when you’re empty. Controlled. Boring.

Old.

I rolled my eyes.

At least it meant safe.

Safe from her.

Safe from hurt.

I paced the house for another twenty minutes and suddenly found myself at her door, leaning against the frame, watching her deep breathing as she tossed and turned in bed.

She finally shot up, scaring the ever loving shit out of me, and threw the covers over the mattress, and walked toward me, her sleep filled eyes heavy, her face irritated.

She grabbed my hand and tugged me toward the bed.

“What are you doing?”

“Neither of us is sleeping. And I only know one way to shut your brain down.”

My body went on high alert.

“Down boy.” Her groggy voice had my body burning, my hands aching to touch, my cock twitching. Great. That’s just what I needed as I laid down next to her. “I meant a duet.”

My heart dropped. “What?”

How the hell did she remember that?

“What’s wrong?” She threw an arm over my chest and sighed, “You’re shaking.”

I licked my dry lips and closed my eyes. “Sorry, Ang, just go to sleep.”

“I can’t, your knee keeps bumping me and you keep sighing and I could have sworn you were tapping your fingers against my shoulder a few seconds ago.”

I sighed, “Sorry I didn’t realize, sometimes I do that when—”

“When what?” Angelica was officially up, she moved to a sitting position and put her long hair in a ponytail. “When you what?”