He lowers his head.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” His growl vibrates against my skin, heat steaming off him like a furnace.
My spine snaps straight. “Away from you, asshole, if you don’t know how to be polite to a lady.”
For a beat he just stares.
Then his gaze slides, slow and deliberate, down my body and back up again. My cheeks flame even as I force myself not to flinch.
“I’m fresh out of polite,” he rasps, voice low enough to vibrate through my ribs, “but I’ll make up for it with a million other things. Just tell me what’s first on your list.”
I swallow hard.
My brain knows exactly what he means. My thighs know too, the traitors. But I square my shoulders, refusing to melt under his stare.
“Nah, I’m good,” I shoot back, chin tilting up. “Unless those ‘other things’ involve a time machine to get me out of this godforsaken mistake, you can move aside. Because I’m leaving.”
His silver eyes flash with a feral gleam.
Instead of answering me, he looks right over my head—because of course he’s got at least a foot on me—and pins Freddie with his stare. “What’s going on here?” he barks. “Who is she?”
I bristle. “Sheis standing right here. Andsheis leaving.”
I pivot like I’m going to make good on it, but Carl lunges between us with nervous jazz hands. “Hold on a sec, Ruby. Let’s all just calm down. Misunderstanding, that’s all. Zane, this is Ruby Lane. Freddie wanted to meet my barista, possible audition, no big deal?—”
Freddie doesn’t move.
He’s leaning back in his chair, studying me the way a scientist might study a lab rat that just figured out how to talk. “Interesting,” he murmurs, his gaze flicking from Zane to me and back again.
Meanwhile, the wall of sound from the stage has been replaced by a heavier silence, the kind that makes you realize other people are gathering.
Watching.
Sure enough, when I sidle a quarter foot from the bristling tower of manhood, I see the rest of Riot Saints saunter down the hallway, sweat-damp and buzzing from rehearsal.
They fill the doorway behind Zane, a pack of wolves curious about fresh meat. Their eyes land on me one by one, and I feel the weight of it like a brand.
Zane notices too, eyes narrowing as he flicks a gaze behind him.
Then his shoulders go rigid, his face clouding over like a thousand thunderstorms as his jaw tightens. The longer they look at me, the darker his expression grows, until he’s practically vibrating.
Then hemoves.
“Oh fuck,” Carl mutters under his breath.
One second I’m glaring up at Zane Draven, the next I’m airborne, slung over his shoulder like a sack of flour.
I yelp, pounding a fist into his back, but he doesn’t even flinch.
To Freddie, his voice is a guttural snarl. “Give her whatever she wants. But the audition is over. Everyone. Move!”
Being hauledthrough a rehearsal studio over a rock star’s shoulder on a Friday afternoon is not, I repeatnot, on my bucket list.
I kick, snarl, hiss—basically go full feral house cat—but it earns me exactly zilch. His shoulder digs into my stomach like steel wrapped in sweat, and every time I twist, his arm clamps tighter around my thighs.
Humiliation burns hotter than the heat flooding my body.
My face is pressed against his back, and it smells like leather, virile man and something darkly dangerous that makes my pulse skip in places it has no business skipping.
