I set my other hand on his shoulder to steady myself.
Slowly, barely thinking, just moving, I swipe the soft bristles along his neck, under his ear. “Just making sure I get it all.”
“It’s good to be thorough with a haircut.”
It’s so intimate, touching him this way. Makes me feel like I’m taking care of him.
Something I like to do. It fits who I am.
But with him, that’s a dangerous feeling.
Because it’s not going to happen. Even when he raises his arm and slides his fingers through mine. My gaze drifts down. He clasps my fingers, and my chest flips. Warmth spreads through me as he squeezes and I squeeze back.
I stop swiping. I’m done with his hair, was done a while ago. I’m touching him because I can. Because this is my one chance. My God, I wish I were the one who’d cut his hair, the one who’d stop by his room to give him a massage before a show, the one who’d tie his tie if he wore one.
I wish I could do all that.
I curl my hand tighter into his shoulder. I’m tempted, so damn tempted to brush my lips against his neck, to inhale him, to run my hand across this short hair that is so damn sexy, so very him.
But this is already enough for today. Especially when the click-clack of shoes sounds on the tiled floor, and I release him instantly before Lola turns the corner.
I step away, snagging some necessary distance, setting the brush on the counter.
“You finished the cleanup,” Lola says with surprise, but also delight.
“Hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. I appreciate the help.” She surveys his neck. “Nice work.”
“He does good work,” Stone weighs in, catching my gaze in the mirror, holding it, making it impossible for me to look elsewhere when his piercing green eyes pin mine. “He has very good hands.”
The warmth disappears.
In its place is heat.
Need.
Longing.
But it’s a longing that won’t be satisfied.
This will be the hardest few weeks of my life.
Because I do have good hands, and I want them all over him, and nothing has changed that.
Not his bet. Not this day. Not the last week.
Fact is, in the last hour, my need for him has only intensified.
I want him more than I did before.
I want him in a deeper way.
The only thing that’s going to get me through this concert series is knowing that I’m taking a few days off when it ends.
I need to get away from him.
Need it for my sanity—sanity that’s hanging by a thread.
18
Stone
Zane is still working, and my stomach is not okay with that. My belly grumbles as I check the latest message from him.
Zane: One more quick run-through.
Stone: Quick run-through? Your run-throughs aren’t quick.
Zane: You want this thing to go right, don’t you?
Stone: Of course I do. Take all the time in the world. I’ll just gnaw on the leg of this poker table while I wait.
Zane: Awesome. Be sure to get pics. The paps will love that. Anyway, I should be done in a half hour, and I’ll meet you somewhere then.
I groan as I slump against the wall by the high rollers lounge. “It’s official. I’m going to die.”
“We all are,” Jackson deadpans. “Welcome to the club.”
I tug on my eyelids, the lower ones. “Check my pupils. Can you tell if the starvation madness is setting in? Zane can’t meet me for dinner yet.”
He peers at my eyes. “Seems it set in . . . right around age fourteen.”
“What the . . .?” I pretend to be aghast, but then I am curious how he picked that age. “Why do you say fourteen?”
“I’m guessing that’s when you became a tad dramatic,” he offers dryly. “I mean, give or take a few years. But I’m betting on puberty as the onset.”
“Fine,” I grumble. “Then there’s no point pretending I’m not as hungry as a horse.” I tuck my phone into my front pocket.
He adopts a surprised look. “Oh, sorry. Were you actually pretending you weren’t hungry? Because it didn’t seem that way to me. It was pretty blatant.”
“Whose side are you on, man?”
“The side of rational thought. Along those lines, are horses that hungry? Like, in the scope of animals that have big appetites, are horses truly the hungriest? More than elephants? More than sharks?”
“I bet lions are hungrier than horses.”
“And probably hungry for horses,” he says, surveying the scene, his eyes peeled for anything out of the ordinary. I just finished my rehearsal. It’s nearly six o’clock. The show opens tomorrow night, and I am ready. The last several days have been hard, but I’ve battled through them like the fighter I am. I have not touched Jackson, have not tasted, have not licked. I’m like a goddamn warrior.
Just need to get some vittles. “Fine. So I’m as hungry as a lion for a horse.” I pat my belly. “Owning it. Want dinner? Like, now?”
“You’re not going to wait for Zane?”
I shake my head as my stomach growls again. “Lions can’t wait. I’ll tell Zane we’re getting sushi. The avocado rolls are the best.”
I grab my phone and text my brother that I’m heading to Konu. As we walk, my phone pings with his reply.
Zane: This is going to take me longer than I thought. Start without me? Just tell me where to meet you in forty-five minutes.
Stone: But I’ll be missing you the whole time.
Except that’s not entirely true. Because the best parts of my days lately start and end at four and midnight, and I’m still in that delicious window of time.
Putting my phone in my pocket, I clap Jackson on the shoulder and say, “You are my dinner date.”
Jackson barely cracks a smile as I indicate the path to the sushi joint.
But a bright idea lands a few seconds later. I stop in my tracks, and he halts alongside me.
“Wait.” I meet his eyes and tip my head toward the other end of the long hallway. “Since you’re my date, let’s do Italian.”
And the smile he barely cracked? It splits wide open.
After fifteen minutes and a text to Zane with the new location, we’re in a quiet corner of Rosa’s, all the way in the back, far from crowds. Not quite a private room, but definitely a nook that’s out of the way of prying eyes.
Jackson orders chicken parmigiana, and I opt for the penne pasta and a glass of red wine.
We thank the waiter, and when he leaves, I run a hand across the back of my neck, still getting used to the absence of hair there. The haircut this week was the best trim of my life. And it had nothing to do with the way I look and everything to do with the man across from me.
From the way he looked at me in the mirror.
How his fingers slid through mine.
And from his offer to cut my hair if I need it.