“Have a seat, Toni,”
Dare offered. He stood and took a gym bag from her hand. He set it on the floor next
to the spot he’d vacated, making it clear that Toni should sit next to Logan on
the sofa. Logan loved the guy. Such a thoughtful son of a bitch. Toni’s dark
eyes, hidden behind a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, scanned the interior of the bus
as if searching for refuge. Apparently the seat next to Logan was not it. Dare plopped
himself down in the only available recliner and extended the leg rest, as if he had no
intention of moving for the night.
“Th-thanks,” Toni
said, pushing her glasses up her nose with one trembling
hand.
Logan wasn’t sure what she
was so nervous about all of a sudden. She’d seemed perfectly at ease when
they’d been interacting with their fans. Perhaps she’d taken his
comment about a lamb in a den of wolves to heart. He’d only been teasing,
but he found her skittishness endearing in a world where most women threw all
inhibitions to the wind when in the presence of any member of his band, much less
all four of them.
The bus rumbled as it rolled
forward. They were on the road again. Toni’s hands flew out as the
unexpected movement threw her off balance.
She plopped down beside Logan,
perching on the edge of a cushion as if the sofa’s back was made of shards of
glass. Logan was pretty sure she was looking for the emergency exit. Her gaze
settled on Butch, who was standing next to their driver and running over a strict
schedule detailing how to get them to their next show in time while making a
promotional stop between venues. Their schedule never had an inch of give. Their
manager, Sam, was a genius when it came to getting the band the most exposure, but
he had the tendency to believe that because they were a metal band, they were
made of iron. They didn’t require useless things like down time and
rest.
“So tell us more about this
book,” Dare said, which was apparently the exact right thing to say to Toni,
because her unease evaporated instantly.
“Have you seen the new
interactive electronic textbooks?” she asked, her eager gaze moving from
Dare to Max to Steve.
Logan was very conscious of the fact
that she didn’t look at him once. He’d thought their attraction was
mutual, but maybe not. He scooted several inches closer to her because he saw
something he wanted and wasn’t one to sacrifice his personal needs for the
greater good.
“Textbooks?” Steve
asked. “Like for school and shit?”
“Yeah, that’s usually
where textbooks are used,” she said, a teasing grin on her lush lips. When no
one laughed, her face fell. Logan forced a guffaw about five seconds too late. That got
his bandmates laughing. Not at Toni’s understated joke. They were laughing
at his blatant stupidity. Nothing new there.
“I can’t say
I’ve even seen a textbook since high school,” Steve
said.
“These new interactive ones
are amazing. Each topic has videos and pictures and links. It presents the
information in a way that gets students who are used to constant entertainment
excited about learning.”
“So you’re writing a
textbook about us?” Dare asked, brows drawn together in a confused
scowl.
“What kind of textbook
would that be? A manual on mayhem and debauchery?” Toni cringed when
no one laughed at that joke either.
Logan guffawed five seconds too late
again. He was going to have to pay really close attention to what she said to figure
out when she was joking. He didn’t think she lacked a sense of humor, she
just looked serious. She’d definitely fit in better at a library than at standup-
comedy night.
“The publishing company I
work for designs and distributes these interactive textbooks,” she said.
“Samuel Baily approached us to make an interactive book about the band, the
first of its kind. He’s very forward
thinking.”
That got the band laughing.
“You might say that,” Max said. “Sometimes he’s a bit
too forward thinking. He’s got every minute of our schedules booked for the
next eighteen years. He thinks we’re robots or
something.”
Toni’s eyes bulged.
“Eighteen years?” she muttered under her
breath.
Surely she knew Max was joking, so
why did she look so unsettled? Wondering if he could make her blush again, Logan
scooted a few more inches closer to her. His knee brushed her thigh, and she yanked
on her skirt. Other than her hands and face, not an inch of bare flesh was showing.
He wasn’t sure exactly what she was trying to conceal. Maybe she
wasn’t open to his attempts to seduce her. Which made her a challenge.
Which, like her tits, he couldn’t resist. Or maybe she had a nice boyfriend at
home. His loss.
“Speaking of robots,”
Steve said. “How are the prototypes of our androids
coming?”
“Good until they tried to
replicate my dick and ran out of materials,” Logan
said.
Toni’s sudden intake of
breath made him grin. That shocked her? Seriously? Too
easy.
“If they ran out of materials,
it had to be due to Max’s giant forehead,” Steve
said.
“Or your enormous
feet,” Max countered.
Toni grabbed a pad of paper out of
her bag and started writing furiously. Logan leaned against her shoulder to read
what had her so excited. She was writing down their conversation. In the margin,
she wrote: Keep video camera close at hand when all band members are
together. They’re hilarious.
He was close enough to feel her
body heat and inhale the sweet fragrance of her fruity shampoo. He wondered if she
tasted as sweet as she smelled.
“For the record,”
Logan said in her ear as he pointed toward her notes, “I was the one with the
big dick.”
Toni leaped from the sofa as if it
were on fire. Her gaze darted from one guy to the next, and she pushed her glasses
up her nose with the back of her wrist. God, he wanted to take those glasses off, take
those clothes off, and do things to her. Naughty, devious, delicious
things.
“Um . . .”
The twin bumps poking against her
shapeless turtleneck drew Logan’s
attention.
Hard nipples? Did his crassness turn
her on? That was all the encouragement he needed to behave inappropriately.
Visible nipples also meant that her bra was not padded. There was so much win in
that, he should have her name engraved on a
trophy.
“What’s
wrong?” Logan asked. “I won’t bite. But I will nibble. And suck.
And lick.”
She stared at him with her mouth
agape and her eyes wide. Her nipples strained against her sweater, begging him to
do all those things and more to the tips of those luscious
melons.
She glanced down at her tits and
immediately crossed her arms over her chest. “Is, um, there a bathroom I can
use?”
“At the back of the
bus,” Dare said, nodding his head toward the end of the
corridor.
“Don’t take a dump in
there,” Steve said. “We stop at rest areas to do that
business.”
Face flaming, she sucked in a deep
breath, turned, and sprinted to the back of the bus. She fumbled with the closet door
and when it popped open, a stack of towels that had shifted during transit tumbled
out and pummeled her in the face.
Logan climbed to his feet to rescue
her. He decided to take it easy on her for the moment. He wouldn’t want to
traumatize her so much she decided to leave. They both bent to pick up the same
towel at the same time and bumped heads. They jerked apart and rubbed their
heads in unison. Toni looked up at him, her brown, doe-like eyes watery with tears.
He wasn’t sure if they were tears of pain or humiliation, but seeing them in
her eyes did strange things to his chest. He wasn’t sure why it was suddenly
tight.
“It’s okay,” he
said, deciding that though it was fun to tease her, he’d better tone it down a
bit. She obviously wasn’t used to it, and he didn’t want to harass a
woman who wasn’t receptive to provocative flirting. He hadn’t
intended to upset her, just wanted to have a little fun and get under that
conservative skirt of hers. “I’ll get the towels, Toni. You go ahead and
do your business.” He opened the bathroom door for
her.
She lowered her hand from her
forehead to reveal a large reddened bump.
Logan winced and leaned forward to
press his lips to the lump. She sucked a startled breath into her chest. Shit. There he
went crossing the line again.
“Sorry,” he
murmured. “I always kiss boo-boos.”
“I have a pimple on my ass
that needs kissing,” Steve called.
Logan closed his eyes and shook his
head. “One of the things you should consider stressing in your book is how
little fucking privacy a man has while on tour with his
band.”
“I can include that,”
she said, “but I think fans are more interested in the size of your dick.”
She backed into the bathroom. “I know I am.” She bit her lip before
closing the door in his face.
