A sharp inhale escaped me without thinking.
He smelled faintly of earth and warmth, like the forest after a fresh rain. My wolf stirred at the closeness, quietly pleased.
“Try it now,” I murmured, aware of how close my mouth was to his ear.
He strummed. The chord rang out clean.
“Oh,” he said softly. “Yeah. Okay, I feel it now.”
I stepped back before thinking better of it. “Why don’t you play your part on your own for a bit. It might be easier if I listen from here and figure out what we can work with.”
He nodded, keeping his fingers moving over the strings.
After a moment, he started humming along under his breath. The sound hit me straight in the chest.
I remembered his voice from that night. It was low and smooth, warm, like it belonged wrapped around you.
The way it had carried across the room at the wedding, easy and confident, like singing was as natural as breathing.
For a second, the studio faded.
Heat. Sheets. The warm weight of him close. The softness that had undone me when I wasn’t prepared for it.
I swallowed hard.
When the song ended, the silence felt louder than the music had.
I cleared my throat. “That… wasn’t too bad.”
Mark grimaced. “I don’t know. I keep catching the wrong string there.” He gestured vaguely. “Maybe we could switch to something a little easier. At least for the audition.”
He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it over the chair. “Sorry, it’s warm in here.”
“Yeah,” I said, a little too quickly. “Studio’s old. Heater’s basically got one setting: hot.”
“Ah.” He laughed and unbuttoned the top few buttons of his shirt, still talking as if nothing had changed. “Anyway, there’s this other song that might?—”
I wasn’t listening. My eyes tracked the movement of his hands. His throat. The line of his jaw when he turned back to me.
“Zack?”
I blinked. “Yeah?”
“Everything ok?” he asked. “Or are you already regretting agreeing to do this with me?”
“No,” I said immediately. “No. It’s fine. We can work with it. That was just one song.”
I crossed the room and grabbed a few more sheets from the folder, holding them out to him. “I’ve got a couple others in mind. Different tempos. Different vibes.”
He scanned them. “How many are you thinking?”
“Depends,” I said. “If we’re opening the fest, maybe three or four. But…” I hesitated, then added, “I kind of want to aim for the main night. Headliner slot.”
He looked up at me. “That’s ambitious.”
“I know.” I shrugged. “Which means we should probably prep six or seven, just in case.”
He let out a low whistle. “That’s ambitious,” he repeated.
