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Nico smirked. “That’s what she said.”

“Don’t be gross,” Logan chided.

Kat forced a smile and checked her watch again. “Ready to go? Don't want to miss your reservation.”

“They'll hold the table,” Jackson said as he set his guitar in its case.

Zach slung his arm around Kat’s shoulder, grinning. “Lead the way. I’m starving.”

Kat shrugged out of his hold. “I’m not joining you tonight.”

Her announcement was met with a chorus of boos from the band members, and she let herself bask in the glow of their affection for a moment. It was so easy to get bogged down with the day-to-day stress of managing the tour, the thousands of tiny details and decisions—never mind the Beckett of it all. It was easy to lose sight of the joy of belonging to this group of men, to the family they’d built so long ago and fallen back into as easily as if they really were siblings.

Nico glanced between the two blondes at his side. “Do you really think it’s a good idea to leave us to our own devices?” he asked with a wink.

“Don’t worry. Gideon and Lenny will be joining you,” Kat said, “and they’ll make sure you get back to the bus on time. Alone. We roll out in two hours.”

Two blissful hours that Kat could spend alone shaking off her Beckett-induced funk.

As if on cue, Gideon appeared in the doorway of the green room, a small black zippered pouch in his hands. “Ladies, if you’ll be joining us, I’m going to need your phones.”

“Seriously?” The redhead asked, turning to Jackson as if he would argue with his head of security on her behalf.

Jackson shrugged. “No phones in the party suite.”

As Gideon made his way around the room collecting cellphones, Kat slipped out the door, calling over her shoulder. “Behave yourselves!”

The bus was empty when Kat arrived, the driver having joined the band and the rest of the inner circle for dinner to celebrate their last show in Denver. But Kat didn’t want dinner. She wanted two uninterrupted hours in her tour bus bedroom with a good book and a bottle of wine. She snagged a bottle of rosé from the fridge—the only wine the guys never seemed to drink before she could get a glass—and a bag of Milano cookies she’d kept hidden in an overhead compartment, and disappeared into her bedroom, kicking the door closed behind her.

But even her beloved chocolate-mint Milanos and the new Adriana Herrera novel couldn’t distract her from thoughts of the person she least wanted to think about. When the hero growled, she heard the rumble of Beckett’s frustration. When the heroine tended the wounds on the hero’s knuckles after he’d punched someone in the face, she thought of the tattoos on the back of Beckett’s hands, the hummingbird she’d watched spring to life with each pass of the tattoo gun a thousand lifetimes ago. And when the hero dropped to his knees and made the heroine come apart on his tongue, she thought of all the times Beckett had done the same to her.

Beckett’s gray-blue stare finding her in the dark, across the stage, everywhere. A stare she could feel on her skin like a physical touch.

Beckett’s calloused fingertips smoothing her hair behind her ear, lingering on her throat, branding her with his heat.

Beckett beside her in bed, his warmth and his weight and the inescapable magnetic pull of him even now, even after all this time.

She squeezed her thighs together as desire gathered low in her belly, an empty ache she knew all too well. There was no way she could sleep next to him all night while stuck in a loop of horny thoughts. That would be a surefire recipe for poor decision making and she’d had enough of that when it came to Beckett Hayes to last a lifetime.

A glance at the bedside clock confirmed she still had thirty minutes before the band would be back. With a frustrated groan, she tossed aside her book and dug into her overnight bag at the foot of the bed, retrieving a silky purple drawstring bag. She tipped the contents of the bag into her waiting palm. Out fell a smooth silicone object, a thick cylindrical shaft, curved and ringed with textured ridges and topped with a smooth sphere set at a slight angle. The body of the toy joined with a smaller, shorter arm with a circular nozzle-like protrusion. It was her most expensive toy, the one guaranteed to get the job done every time.

Slipping beneath the sheets, she shimmied out of her jeans and underwear, tossing them off the side of the bed. With the press of a button on the side of the toy, the main shaft whirred to life, buzzing quietly in her palm. Kat settled lower on the bed, dropping her knees to the side and closing her eyes as she skimmed the silicone ball over her clit, dipping it lower to gather some of her wetness and drag it up over the swollen bud. She rolled the ball in slow circles, just enough to tease her hunger to the surface but not nearly enough to satisfy. As she did, images flickered behind her eyes.

Beckett’s hand disappearing down the front of her jeans in a mirrored elevator in Paris, their eyes locked as he stroked her to a stunning climax.

Beckett staring up at her from between her legs, one hand clamped over her mouth as he licked her over and over backstage in Miami.

Beckett settling over her body, his hips spreading her thighs wide as he slid inside her.

Beckett driving into her from behind as they watched themselves in the bathroom mirror of a fancy hotel room in New York.

Beckett Beckett Beckett—

She slid the toy lower, pressing the bulbous end against her opening, the pressure sending tiny shockwaves of pleasure radiating out from her core. “Beckett,” she moaned, tipping her head back.

“I’m right here, love.”

Her head snapped up, eyes locking with the blown-pupil gaze of the man himself standing in the doorway to her bedroom. Their bedroom. A wolfish grin spread across his face, and he scrubbed his hand over his mouth.