Rock Reclaimed (Rock Revenge Trilogy 2)

I could smell your coconut scent and turpentine and paint from your work. All around us in this space. So that I was inside you for a moment even as I sat here, under your spell.”

“Stop it.” She covered her ears. “Just stop it. I know your type. And worse, you have that accent and it makes everything poetry and I’m so not that girl. Please, don’t make me say things I might regret later.” She exhaled a heavy breath. “It’s just better if you leave, Ian.”

Her saying my name was the final shove out the door.

Also, I wouldn’t betray her kindness. She’d taken care of me although it made her uncomfortable. Given me a place to sleep, even if her bed was only a step above the motel’s. But the environment couldn’t be beat.

I wasn’t sure I’d be able to go back to sleep in that shitty motel room without the warm curve of her hip against my side.

Without her smells living in my head, an almost tactile comfort.

“I’ll go.” I handed her back the bottle. “Take it,” I said when she wouldn’t.

“You steal my camera. Take my sunglasses. Yet I offer this and you don’t want it.”

“I don’t want you to ever go without, and you have extras of the others.”

She pressed her lips together. “I’m going to see you on billboards, aren’t I? Going to hear that devil’s voice singing on the radio.”

I kissed my fingertips and raised them high. “From your mouth to God’s ears. If such a being exists. I have my doubts.” Quickly, too quickly for her to stop me, I pressed my fingertips to the strip of skin I could see just above her sleep pants. She startled, jerking back and going still. “Thank you.”

“For what? I should be thanking you.”

“You already did.” I stood and found my socks and boots in the darkness.

Then my mobile buzzed. I withdrew it from my pants and held up a finger to Zoe as I took Sabrina’s call.

“A little late for chats, isn’t it?”

“Consider this your new version of early. About time I reached you. What time can you be at Ripper Records HQ?”

HQ? How very acronymic.

I checked the time on my phone. Just past five. Lovely.

I didn’t have a shirt that was appropriate for wearing to see Sabrina. My other was ruined, or the next thing to it. Maybe Zoe had an oversized shirt I could borrow.

Or let’s be real—steal.

“How about in thirty minutes, depending on traffic?” My gaze connected with Zoe’s.

Now she did turn away. She immediately started tidying the bed we’d slept in, smoothing out wrinkles in the sheets the same way she’d caressed my back.

It was still tingling from the memory.

“Make it twenty.” Sabrina clicked off before even ascertaining if that was physically possible, considering my current location.

I’d be taking an Uber and making her pay once I arrived. Good luck if it was in twenty, however. This was Los Angeles, not Happy Acres in bucolic New York.

Christ, Happy Acres. That was where Zoe had probably been in that picture on her Instagram feed, the one where she’d been surrounded by people and holding a big pumpkin. Those people were probably family, since Lila’s parents owned Happy Acres.

Property of Ripper Records indeed.

What would it mean if I belonged to Ripper Records too? Would that make Zoe less off limits…or even more?

“I’ve been called away.”

Zoe nodded and kept fussing, this time with the pillows. She didn’t acknowledge my statement. She’d asked me to leave anyway, so why would she care?