“You’ll stay where I can see you?”
“Of course.”
“Good girl.” He kisses me hard and brutal, pain etched with exquisite pleasure. It’s growing hella addictive and I’m terrified I’ll never break this habit. When it’s over, he steps back, winks. Drifts his thumb over my swollen, tingling mouth. “Be right back.”
With a wink, he’s gone. Vaulting up the steps like a demon vampire.
And I stay right there backstage and in his eye line, painfully aware that everyone’s giving me a wide berth because they don’t want Saint Sin to lose his shit.
And as I watch him perform, I finally get it.
He’s fire. Hell, he’sphenomenalin a way that defies description.
He performs like a man possessed—sweat-slicked, wild-eyed, ripping the stage apart with his voice and his body until the crowd is inches from feral themselves.
And every time he glances side-stage and sees me?
Hebrightens.
Burns hotter.
I’m singing along in my head before it dawns on me that I’ve memorized his song lyrics.
Me.
The girl who thought Riot Saints was a brand of ethical deodorant.
Fantastic.
Which is also why I notice the new words he’s growling out immediately.
The line is supposed to be:“Your name’s a prayer, but my mouth makes it blasphemy.”
But tonight…tonight he sings:“Ruby in the wreckage…my priceless flame, my precious alchemy.”
My stomach drops straight through the stage floor.
Because that? That wasn’t in the original.
That wasn’t inanyversion I listened to while binge-studying him like he was a final exam.
And the way he looks at me when he sings it, like he forged the words in blood and heat and obsession…I know.
He changed it for me.
Oh God oh God oh God.
After the show,he drags me into a dark hallway behind the VIP lounge.
His voice is shredded from singing. His pupils blown and his body buzzing like he’s still mid-reverb. “Come here.”
I step back. “Zane, you need?—”
“You. Nothing but you.” He pins me with a look that strips me bare. “Closer.”
I get one step out before his arm snakes around my waist, pulling me flush against him, his breath hot on my neck.
“You have any idea what you do to me?” he whispers. “How crazy you make me? How hard it is to watch the world look at you?”
