Using the demon strength she’d been hiding, Skye twisted one of his arms back and reversed their positions, shovinghimagainst the wall and holdinghimby the throat.
He sputtered as her lips lingered on the outer shell of his ear.“Is that what you want, Remi?”she taunted.“Me?”
Power fanned the flame of her desire as she gave in to the instinct to hurt, just a little.Skye squeezed his throat, blocking his windpipe for a brief moment and pressed the length of her body into his.His breathing hitched, even though his glare didn’t falter.It only shifted from the heat of pure anger to something hotter—like molten lust.
“No,” he gasped as she let up her grip.“I don’t want anything you’re offering.”
She narrowed her eyes but kept her smile in place.She snapped in front of his face.A black business card appeared between her thumb and pointer finger.
Running her hand down his chest, she rubbed her palm over his leather pants, narrowly avoiding groping him outright, and slipped her business card into his pocket.
“Call me when you change your mind,” she whispered.
“I won’t,” he snapped as her flames flickered alive at her feet.
She sifted them out of Hell.
“You will,” she said in a sing-song cadence, leaving him in the dark and dank alleyway outside the bar.
I’ll make sure of it.
Chapter Four
Remislouchedovertheregister to where he’d hidden his phone off to the side.He refreshed the screen to see if the views and likes on Tilted Haze’s social media pages had improved in the last thirty seconds.
They had not.
He’d become a little obsessed with checking it since he turned down Skye’s offer last week.
The starring actress in his sex dreams had been notably vacant from her role, but he tried not to think about her or her offer.
There was practically no one in the store today, so there wasn’t much else to do but refresh the pages again.He couldn’t stop himself, as if maybe by doing so, he could will his band’s popularity into existence.
Although if popularity had been that simple to manifest, he and West wouldn’t have had the shit beaten out of them in high school.
He’d been so confident then.So sure that it would only take a few years of hard work and their band would be recognized by the right person.
In a way, that was exactly how it happened, but they had been too young and stupid to realize how lucky they were at the time.
Remi tapped his fingers on the register and refreshed his phone again.
Nothing.
Maybe your band just sucks, the voice in his head said, sounding an awful lot like Emerson.
Impossible questions began to nag him.What if their tiny shows at bars around the area only did well because the crowd was mostly made up of women who wanted to ogle Remi or West or Liam or Ollie.What if their music actually sucked?That had to be the problem, right?Why else wouldn’t people on the internet find them?Why else wouldn’t another A&R guy scoop them up?If they were good enough—genuinely good enough—wouldn’t someone realize that and give them the chance they deserved?And didn’t the fact that they didn’t have fame and success now mean they must not deserve it?
He shook his head to dislodge those depressing thoughts.They rattled around and didn’t dissipate completely—never completely.He knew it took more than talent to make it big.He just couldn’t give up.
He couldn’t give in to the dark void that lived within him.The pit of emptiness that he first noticed yawn open when he was seven-years-old and his dad left.That’d been the year everything went to shit.The year Remi couldn’t do anything right.He’d gotten into trouble almost constantly, couldn’t keep up at school, fought with his mom and Emerson daily.He felt like he was still fighting Emerson—fighting the ghost of him in his head.
He didn’t blame his dad for leaving.Their house was toxic—the shadow that lived within Remi corrupted everything and everyone.He would have left too if he thought he could outrun it.
“Remi!”
He jerked into an upright position.
His boss stood in front of him with his hands on his hips, and Remi slid his phone back into its hiding spot.
