Zane’s mic stand goes flying, metal clanging as techs dive out of the way like he’s thrown a live grenade. He rips headphones off a sound tech so violently the poor guy squeaks before dissolving into full-on tremors.
Someone swears. Several people flee the scene of carnage.
But the band doesn’t even flinch. Looks like this is just another Tuesday for them.
Freddie?
Freddie is nowhere. Probably crouched behind a crate, praying to the gods of rock music and health insurance deductibles.
Zane is pacing back and forth like a caged predator, muttering under his breath, his muscles tight enough to snap. My heart drops to my toes when I see the veins standing out on his forearms like they’re trying to claw out of his skin.
His eyes blaze with a wild, jagged light that should terrify me.
But alarmingly, it…doesn’t.
It draws me. It pulls something deep and primal and stupid out of me. Full moth-to-flame, vampire-to-blood, junkie-to-their-last-hit mode.
A want.
A need.
A wrong urge to soothe him, touch him, anchor him.
It’s insane and dangerous andJesus, why isn’t anyone doing anything?
I hate that it throws me back to childhood trauma, of hearing my parents go at it like it wasWorld War Z.
When he lifts an industrial-heavy speaker above his head like it’s a toy and hurls it across the stage, I do the only thing I can think of.
I dive into my head. And I hum. Like I used to drown out the noise of my parents fighting.
It’s soft. Barely audible. A shaky, nervous hum meant only to calmme, not him.
But… I hear it louder than it should be. Because I still have a microphone attached to my chest.
It picks it up.
And Zane freezes.
Like he did before. Actually freezes mid-step like someone severed a wire inside him.
His head snaps toward me so fast I swear I hear vertebrae protest as the room stops breathing. His chest rises…falls…rises again, panting like he’s in the middle of a survival sprint.
But as I watch, he sucks in a breath. And grows calmer.
Measured.
Like the sound of my hum has synced itself to the rhythm of his lungs.
His eyes find mine and they’reburning. Starving and yup, most definitely, unmistakably unhinged.
He looks like a man on the edge of something lethal. A creature recognizing the one frequency that tames him. A storm learning the shape of the lightning that owns it.
And God help me, my body answers before my brain does as he stalks toward me, slow and predatory, every muscle wound tight enough to detonate.
I hold my breath and widen my stance, loosen my body.
His for the devastating taking.
