Documentary (15 page)

With an indignant gasp, Odette exclaimed, “A bit what, bitch?” She lifted her hand to her hip and shook her hairbrush in Jamie’s face.

“Beautiful?” Jamie sai
d in a high-pitched tone.

Odette’s shoulders dropped. “Perfect.”

Dylan trailed them into the house, thinking about how the quick exchange reminded her of her friends. Maybe it wouldn’t be too long before being away from them still felt like home.

Rock Star Lifestyle – Chapter 9

             
Flashbulbs shattered the darkness erratically, like lightning, when the door to the chauffeured car opened at Lava’s charity party. The lights were bright enough to be daylight near the entrance of Limitless nightclub in the tourist-heavy Wailea. Jamie was out of the car first, then Dylan, and finally Odette. Dylan felt more secure in the middle of the two of them, and it would be much easier for her when she walked her first red carpet. The sight of the crowd leering over the velvet ropes easily overwhelmed Dylan’s senses. She held a death grip on Jamie’s hand as she led the way, and she only let it go when Jamie stepped into the literal spotlight. She pivoted on her stacked stilettos, pointed her back to the camera, and smiled over her shoulder. Light danced all over her gold sequin dress. Dylan froze just on the edge of the chaos, her heart thundering. Odette sashayed over the carpet next. She took a confident stance in the middle, showing off her black leather cropped bustier and dark skinny jeans. The photographers called out to her in an anxious, frenzied roar.

             
“Come on, Dylan,” she shouted impatiently, holding out her hand. Dylan counted to three, held her breath and stepped into the light. She didn’t pose so much as take hurried steps to reach Odette. The photographers halted a second, unsure of who she was, but then started snapping away when she stood next to Odette. Dylan tried a few demure poses she remembered from watching award shows on TV: hand on the hip, hand on the hip with ankles crossed, and hand on the hip standing at a slight angle. It was scary and exhilarating to be commanding attention like this, but just this once would be enough for her. Odette pressed the two of them together and threw her arm around Dylan’s neck. She would probably be captioned as “Friend of Odette Porter,” but then, finally, one of them asked Odette who she was.

             
“Ask Kai White,” Odette said with a giggle before pulling her along.

             
“Odette!” Dylan flushed completely red and buried her face in her hand. No press release about the project had gone out yet as far as she knew, so if someone printed a picture of her and referenced Kai without the mention that she was working on a project with him, Nina would be on her ass.

Fearing the rest of the pictures would be awful if she continued hiding her face, she lifted her head and kept a relaxed look the entire rest of the walk until her eyes landed on Kai. Dylan bit her lip, trying not to stumble when her legs went weak like cut rope as they neared him. Soft warmth rocketed up her spine. He looked amazing. He had gotten a haircut and had trimmed down the five o’clock shadow just a little. He was wearing a black polo shirt, jeans and black
and white vintage high-top Nikes.

Kai was giving an interview near the velvet ropes, and Dylan didn’t hear the question, but she caught Kai’s incredibly loud answer. He rolled his eyes in frustration and stepped back. “I guess it would be better if someone’s hand was shoved up my ass and moving my mouth. Would you like my answer better then?” The reporter was not daunted. He kept his microphone aimed right in Kai’s face, but Kai turned toward Dylan, Odette and Jamie when a photographer behind the interviewer swiveled his camera to them.
There was a smile on Kai’s lips, and she saw the entranced look in his eyes when their gazes latched onto one another. This was no cursory glance. He took in a deep, slow look at her from head to toe.

Dylan downplayed how flattered she was, keeping her smile light and not pointed at him. She tuned her ear into what Jamie was saying as Kai turned a full rotation, lips slightly parted, when he checked out her dress. It was fitted over her shape but flared a little at the hips, and short-sleeved with a scooped out back. She was willing to bet that his eyes were still on her, and Dylan swore she wouldn’t look back when they were cleared to enter the venue. It would take some faking for a while, but she was determined to set boundaries between the two of them.

Yet even an enormous two-floor building full of people wasn’t enough space as the night rushed on, especially when there was a gigantic video screen streaming the party that seemed to be holding his image every time she happened to look up. Kai was sitting on stage as everyone sang the chorus of “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” a bunch of times before “Pour Some Sugar On Me” started and hired burlesque dancers circled him with seductive moves. Dylan really didn’t want to be staring at him, but it was impossible not to.

             
“He’s going on tour, not getting married,” Dylan muttered as she rolled her eyes when Jamie bumped her with her hip to the beat of the music.

             
“Your dress is pretty tight so I’m wondering how you managed to fit you
and
the green-eyed monster in it,” Jamie teased.

             
“I’m not jealous… I’m just saying,” Dylan said, refusing to look at Jamie as she bumped her hip back. The crowd cheered when the song ended. Kai moved to dance on top of the bar with a group of shot girls. Prior to the lap dance, he had been up there almost all night. He had danced on a few tables in the place too. And some speakers. And done some body shots off a few ecstatic ladies.

Odette drew her attention away by sticking another
shot in Dylan’s hand and then one in Jamie’s. It was Fire, the new cherry and cranberry-flavored Lava energy drink, topped with Sprite and vodka; it was called a Cherry Time Bomb. True to its name, the last one had actually gone down like her esophagus was engulfed in flames, but the more she drank, the more she seemed to think she would be able to convince herself that she could be indifferent toward Kai. So far, complete failure, but she seemed to be getting closer to turning the room into a kaleidoscope. And she still just wanted to go to him. She still just wanted to be where he was.

             
“To new friendships!” Odette declared. They tapped glasses before drinking.
Yep, like an inferno.
All three of them winced and laughed. It’s not that she wasn’t having a good time, because the deejay battle turned out to be a great party. At the beginning of the night, each guest had paid for a certain amount of fake bills. Four deejays took turns playing three fifteen-minute sets and there were large clear barrels with slots at the top that had the name of each deejay on them. As the deejays played, the crowd was supposed to put the bills in the barrels. Whoever had the most at the end of the night, would have $50,000 donated to the charity of their choice. When one of the battling deejays turned out to be Leko, Dylan had dumped all her bills into one of his barrels then she cheered and jumped until her feet felt like they had been bulldozed.

             
“Are you going to avoid Kai all night?” Odette asked before she took a sip from a bottle of water.

Dylan signaled the bartender as she shrugged. “I’m not avoiding him,” she said, wishing it had sounded somewhere in the proximity of the truth. In actuality, when she wasn’t watching Kai on screen, she was rigging a meandering pathway through the crowd that prevented all contact with him. This sucked.

              “Good.” Odette swung away from the bar. “Hey, Kai,” she lilted, and Dylan froze when Kai’s arms boxed her in at the bar. His chest rested up against her back. Some other parts of him were touching her too. When Dylan leaned forward to chat with the bartender, her hips pushed back into his lap and he let out a short groan. Heat settled in her body and stayed there. She cursed the universe for plotting against her but secretly thanked it for working in her favor as well.

             
“Water, please,” she said, almost in despair. She had considered getting another Cherry Time Bomb—with the neon bracelet, they were free—but she knew it would just go down like acid and not make Kai matter any less.
Dylan sighed and chugged down the water.

“What’s up, Dette? Hey, Jamie,” Kai said. Dylan held her breath and watched him drum his fingers on the bar near her elbows. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jamie come closer, and Kai’s entire body rubbed against Dylan’s when he move to peck a kiss on Jamie’s cheek. There was friction again when he twisted back to his original position.

“You look beautiful.” His lips on her earlobe sent shivers down her back. She curled her fingers into her palms. Dylan dropped her head back against his shoulder. “Dance with me,” he said. Dylan spun around in the small territory set by his arms, catching Jamie’s enthusiastic thumbs-up before she dragged Odette away.

“So?” Kai drew his fingers down her bare back, right along her spine. He had an arrogant smile on his face like he already knew she was going to agree.

“One dance,” Dylan said, mostly to convince herself. Hopefully, no one here would rat her out to Nina Sanchez, and she had only said that Dylan couldn’t get personally involved with him. Dancing with him in a dark nightclub was hardly fraternizing, or at least not according to the cherry time bombs in her bloodstream. She wouldn’t be starting work until the
real
morning technically, and she intended for tonight to be the perfect end to the non-platonic connection between them.

Kai agreed with a nod and touched her face tenderly, seeming to understand the significance of the moment, before he led her to the middle of the strobe lit floor with all the writhing bodies. Leko was back on the turntables, and he was thrilling the crowd with a fierce mix, barely giving anyone a minute to rest between rapid beat changes. It had been a while since she was in a club atmosphere, and she loved the way dancing made her feel. It had been hard to let this part of her life go.

Dylan danced with Kai behind her, and the whole time her hands were either up in the air or back on his shoulders or on the back of his head. His face was buried in the curve of her neck, and she could feel his breath pumping through her clothes. It fired up her already blazing body. Dylan pulled her hair away from her neck, and Kai blew on the back of it. She placed one of her hands on the back of his neck, and she shuddered when his lips suddenly grazed her skin. Kai’s grip on her hips tightened. His lips bounced on the bone right at the base of her neck before they pressed against it, and Dylan closed her eyes, curling her toes in her shoes. She bent her head forward, and Kai’s lips hit the space between her shoulder blades, and then he traced a line back up to the nape of her neck. Dylan gulped down as a sensation of pleasure pulled between her legs, but her internal warning signal finally went off. She spun around and stopped dancing.

“Okay, this is getting hard,” he mumbled, laughing.

Dylan giggled. “What?!”

“Not
that.
Well, yeah,
that too.
” Kai held her at the waist and backed her up until they were in the shadows of the room against a wall. Dylan was unsure of how much longer she would be able to fight her attraction, and she considered walking away, but there was nowhere else she wanted to be right now. He tilted his head down slightly so that their foreheads were touching. Kai put his palms on the wall on either side of her head and his lips inched closer. He drew his teeth over his bottom lip slowly. It was sexy, and the prospect of being kissed made her skin prickle in excitement in response, but a gnawing in her stomach shredded the fantasy.
Nina. The web series. Erica.

Dylan turned her head to the side. “We shouldn’t.” It was the
most diplomatic answer she had, but simmering anger suddenly broke through, too. “And I guess if you were really interested in me, you wouldn’t have ignored me.” Dylan tucked her hair behind her ears before she crossed her arms over her chest. “Why didn’t you talk to me after L.A.?”

Kai straightened, and a confused look crept onto his face. Definitely not the conversation he had expected. Then he shot a blank stare at her but quickly pulled his gaze to the side like he planned to be evasive. “It’s a long story…” Kai looked up at the ceiling. “All I can say is that it had nothing to do with me dissing you.” When he dropped his gaze, she knew that the conversation was over, and he wouldn’t disclose anything more about his actions during the Lava Surf party. She needed more, way more, to even begin considering exploring the attraction between them, and definitely if she was going to risk so much.

“I’m working for your company, so it really doesn’t matter, I guess,” Dylan said in a flat, dismissive tone as she shrugged. “What happened in L.A. is in the past, anyway. You’re just work to me, and I’d like to just be work to you.”

“Okay.” A disappointed look took shape on his face, and he stepped back. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

Dylan watched him walk away, feeling a sad, regretful tugging in her chest. Shit. They didn’t call those drinks “time bombs” for nothing. It was hard not to go after him, but she knew the only priority he needed to have in her life was as a professional assignment. She would stop feeling crazy soon enough when she sobered up. She found Jamie, Odette, Wes and Abel with a few other people on the dance floor. When Leko’s set was finally over, he and Kai joined them in the crowd. If the group noticed tension between her and Kai, they were ignoring it, and Dylan did her best to keep up appearances when they were all dancing together.