The Girl's Got Secrets (Forbidden Men 7)

He glanced away, looking humiliated. “Pathetic, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t say it was pathetic either. It’s just...unusual for a guy in your position.” A very good, amazing unusual. “Which makes me extremely curious as to...why?”

He sighed and rolled his gaze to the ceiling. “I knew you were going to ask that.”

“Well?” I lifted my eyebrows, letting him know I still wanted the answer regardless. “For someone who loves women so much and is craving sex...” I started.

“I do love women,” he insisted. “I just want one to want me instead of...” He rolled his eyes. “Asher Hart.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but nothing came. After a second, I said, “Aren’t you Asher Hart, though?”

He growled and frowned at me. “Yes, but...Christ, I don’t even know how to explain it.” When he grabbed his hair in supreme frustration, I took pity on him and decided to stop playing dumb.

“You want someone who appreciates the man within, not just a groupie wanting to score with the lead singer of a band.”

Dropping his hands from his hair, he gazed at me as if he’d just discovered a kindred soul. “Yeah,” he murmured. “Exactly.”

I nodded, letting him know I understood. “So you don’t just want a physical connection. You want something...deeper.”

He looked down at his hands. “Oh, trust me. I love the physical connection. And I’ve done the one-night-stand thing because it seems to be the only thing women want from me. It’s just...I don’t know. All my friends at Forbidden have these incredible women that they’re all devoted to and completely crazy about. And when I watch them together, it just looks so...”

“Nice?”

He blew out a breath and glanced at me. “Makes me wonder what a real relationship would be like.”

That confession had me blinking. “What? You’ve never been in one?”

He shook his head. “No. You?”

My lips quirked. “With a woman? No.”

Snorting out an amused sound, he muttered, “With a guy, then?”

“Well...sure. A couple times. I mean, not tons but...three or four meaningful enough ones.”

Focusing on me as if he’d just discovered I knew the secret meaning of life, he asked, “What’re they like?”

I crinkled my brow. “Relationships?”

“Yeah.”

Blowing out a breath, I ran my hands through my hair, startled when my fingers met the short fake tendrils of my wig. For a minute there, I’d forgotten I was Sticks, the guy drummer. I’d just been Remy...talking to Asher.

“It’s...” Mentally reminding myself I was a guy here, I tried to think up a male way to describe it, but a second later, I just blurted out, “At first, it’s nerve-wracking as hell. You’re always afraid to show your true self. You just want them to see what you think they’ll like, so you’re always on edge, hoping to impress him and trying to figure out if you even like him in return. Even though it’s kind of thrilling and exciting too. But then...then something finally clicks, and you realize you have this...thing...this amazing thing in common with each other that you don’t really have in common with anyone else. Pretty soon, you’re opening up more of yourself and discovering that more parts click, and before you know it, life is amazing and you’re thinking about them night and day. You can’t wait to see them again, and you love everything about everything.”

Asher cracked a dreamy grin as if he

were imagining what I described, and he liked the visions it produced. “Really?”

I nodded. “And then he turns into a fucking lying bastard who rips your heart out, shatters your trust and leaves you a bitter hardened bitch of a human being.”

He blinked and pulled back. “Wow. Uh, I was not expecting you to end that way.”

“Well...” I shrugged. “It’s not happily ever after for everyone.”

He studied me a moment before murmuring, “What did the bastard do to you?”

I shrugged and began to play with the sheets that had bunched down to my lap. “He just...I mean, besides making me come to feel as if he was doing me a grand favor by being with me, he cheated on me with every woman who’d take him on and—”