Rock Reclaimed (Rock Revenge Trilogy 2)

I elbowed him as we made our way down the sidewalk. “Nick’s all right. You’d actually probably like him if you got to know him.”

He snorted. “The chances of that happening are about even with me sitting with the Queen for high tea.”

I fussed with the strap of my bag. Talking about Nick wasn’t exactly a smooth maneuver into his brother, but I was going for it anyway. “Do you want to get to know your brother?”

He didn’t reply right away. It was actually long enough that I wondered if he was just not going to say anything at all. He cleared his throat, his voice a little hoarse. “I keep burning those bridges. Maybe someday though.”

“Do you really hate him that much?”

“So, the New York kind of boardwalk is that different?”

I glanced up at him. “I take it you don’t want to talk about it?”

He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, swooped down, and gave me a hot, hard kiss. “No, I don’t hate him. Can we make today about us and not my fucked up family?”

I sighed. “All right.”

He looped his arm around my shoulders. “Did you say you had brothers?”

“Yeah. Big ones.”

He brushed a kiss along my temple. “Warning me, Magic?”

I shrugged. “You’ll be gone tonight. I don’t need to scare you with the details of my three older brothers.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Three?”

“Yep.”

He let me go as we steered around a woman with a carriage filled with bottles and cans then snagged my hand, lacing our fingers. “Could you stop reminding me that I have to go?”

“Maybe I’m reminding myself.” But I didn’t let go of his hand.

I rushed us across the street to the heart of the marketplace. He was right—now wasn’t the time to think about the end of things.

I was just going to enjoy the moment and the man.

We laughed our way through three different stores. He traded his jeans for Day-Glo orange board shorts that were literally five dollars. When the sales girl recognized him outside the dressing rooms, he signed one of the legs of the jeans and handed them to her.

I was fairly sure the girl was going to swoon for days. She already had her phone out to take pictures. Three selfies and one hand off to me, and she was nearly shaking at the end of it all.

“You know those are nine hundred dollar jeans, right?” I whispered to him.

He curled his fingers into his palm for a moment before shrugging. “Good thing I didn’t cut the bottoms off to make them shorts, yeah?” He dragged me out the door with a wide, dimpled grin.

Two more stores and we had all the snacks we’d need for the day along with ridiculous shirts for me and him. By the time we left for Micky’s, a low hum seemed to follow us. Phone cameras came out wherever we were. Surreptitious snaps, blatant ones, and people tripped over themselves to get a look.

Was this what it felt like to be him for a day?

The constant attention didn’t seem to bother him—at least at first. He got quieter and quieter. Even food seemed to hold little appeal for him, and I knew for a fact that food was probably his favorite thing next to sex.

I straddled his legs on the bench of the picnic table outside Micky’s.

Startled, he gripped my hips. His eyes went hooded.

“Do you want to go back to my studio?”

He gave the gigglers behind us a side eye. “You trying to cause trouble for both of us?”