The song plays on, aggressive and hard. It isn’t one of Kill John’s songs, which surprises me. I would have thought that he’d only play his stuff. But he’s playing and singing Pearl Jam’s “Alive.” His version doesn’t sound exactly like Eddie Vedder’s. There are subtle differences. The tone of his voice is slightly cleaner, the guitar playing tinged with melancholy beneath all the anger. I have no idea how this happens, but it makes it clear that, while musical notes may stay the same, each artist paints a different canvas.
And there is no doubt about it; Jax Blackwood is an artist.
Ordinarily, I might be dancing, but my chill has been decimated and has little chance of returning with this going on. I want my Zen back.
“Oy!” I shout at the top of my lungs. “John! Blackwood!”
Nothing. Not even a pause.
He plays with effortless flow, his guitar singing.
I cup my hands around my mouth and shout again. “Hellooo!”
It’s useless. There is no way he’ll hear me. I take one of the pillows off a nearby lounger and chuck it in the direction of his sliding doors. It lands pitifully short of target. With a growl, I consider tossing my water bottle but he’s clearly not looking in the direction of his doors or he would have seen the pillow.
Either that or he’s ignoring it. I could call Mr. Scott. After all, he told me to let him know if John was being a pain in the ass. But it feels like tattling. Besides, I’ve already met John. Why bother with a middleman when I can go to the source?
This is what I tell myself. What I actually do, however, is dither and stare at John’s side of the terrace.
As suspected, John’s garden is a lush paradise in the middle of the city. It’s very English, with colorful flowerbeds and orderly paths. He has a fountain too, but it features a sculpture of Pan playing his flute. I have no idea if John bought the condo with the terrace this way or if he had it created, but its beauty surprises me.
John hits the reverb on his guitar and the defiant screech takes me right out of my fantasy of having tea and cakes under the pretty loggia. Okay, enough is enough. I can do this. I can confront him. It’s just a small matter of breaking and entering. Well, I’m not technically “breaking” anything if I jump over his wall. Just a little illegal entering, then.
John won’t mind. I’m sure he’d let me in if he could hear me. A cold sweat breaks out over my lip as I contemplate my crime.
“Oh, buck up, buttercup,” I mutter to myself.
Wiping my sweaty palms on my yoga pants, I then press them to the warm top of the wall and haul myself over. I’d pictured doing it with more grace, but after a few fumbles, I manage to get over and hop down on the mirroring bench running along John’s wall. Not giving myself time to chicken out, I stride straight inside.
For a moment, I’m distracted by the fact that, unlike Killian’s urban-retro loft style, John’s place is decorated like something straight off the set of Pride and Prejudice. Massive Oriental rugs overlap each other. There are expensive antique furnishings, overstuffed chairs, and dozens of oil paintings in gilded frames. It’s so opposite to the rocker front John puts up that I gape, wondering if I’ve entered an alternate dimension.
But no, the music is as loud as ever. And I’m trespassing in this Buckingham Palace of an apartment.
To prove I’m not a total creepster, I call out as I slowly walk farther into his place. “John? Jax? Can you hear me?”
No. No, he cannot.
I know this because he’s standing on a faded red Persian rug, completely absorbed in the music, his fingers moving with crisp precision over the strings of his guitar.
And he is completely naked.
Jesus wept, I cannot look away. I. Cannot. Look. Away.
He is stunning. Breathtaking.
His is more of a long, lean body than big and bulky bruiser. Lovely square shoulders, trim hips, well-defined and surprisingly strong-looking thighs, and tight calves. Running clearly does a body good. And maybe guitar playing does as well, because the man’s forearms are pure poetry, ropy with definition.
This all goes through my head in a flash, because really I’m just gaping like a dying fish.
Holy hell, he moves his hips like he’s fucking, the guitar barely hiding his goodies. But then he lifts the neck and suddenly everything is on display. And all that … girth … swings. It fucking sways like a hypnotist’s pendulum. I swear I sway with it, utterly mesmerized.
That is until he whips around and his green eyes lock onto mine. It snaps me out of my daze faster than a bullet, and I fully realize that I am standing in a room with naked Jax Blackwood.