B00AAOCX2E EBOK (11 page)

He raised the guitar for my inspection. “A J150.” His voice was full of pride. “Do you play?”

“A little.” I’d taken lessons for three weeks before giving up in high school. I reached out to stroke the smooth, rosewood fingerboard, and pressed my fingertips to the mother of pearl inlay. It felt cool and smooth. “I’ve never played anything so beautiful, though. It’s a gorgeous instrument.”

“Isn’t it?” He stared down at it with a look of reverence. “It took me three summers of bussing tables to save up enough money, but the moment I saw her, I knew I had to have her.”

I could appreciate that. It must have cost a small fortune, but Gibsons were well worth it.

“I should probably put this away. I think I’m done playing for the night.” He gave me a quick once-over then cocked his head to the side with an inviting grin. “You wanna come with me?”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Come with you where, exactly?”

He notched a finger in the direction of the second level. “My case is upstairs.”

“You know, I should probably be getting back to my friends.”

“Oh, come on. It’ll only take a minute. Besides, it’s pretty cool upstairs. You ever been?”

I shook my head slowly.

“Then I absolutely can’t let you go until you’ve had the full experience.” He grabbed my hand, giving it a tug. “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I did.”

An alarm blared in my head that I should really go back to my friends, that this was a very,
very
bad idea. But the part of my brain still incensed with Ian cooed in a very enticing voice that nothing would piss him off more.

I shrugged and gave Graydon a brilliant smile. “Sure, why not?”

The upstairs office was relatively clean for such a dump of a building. The walls were water-stained and sagging, and the linoleum on the floor was bowed and cracked in several places, but there wasn’t nearly as much dust as I would have expected, and nary a spider web to be seen. It smelled a bit like stale cigarette smoke and the air was musty, but that was an improvement from the smell of dirt and rot I’d detected downstairs. A desk littered with sheet music, empty Starbucks cups, and a half-empty pack of Parliament cigarettes sat adjacent to the door. An old sofa covered in a mint-green sheet was pushed against the opposite wall, and on the ground beside it, I spied a neat pile of folded clothes and a blanket.

Feeling a little lightheaded, I leaned in the doorway and focused my bleary eyes on Graydon. He sat on one end of the couch, packing his guitar in a brown leather case that had seen better days. “Are you living here or something?” I asked.

He half-smiled as he wiped the guitar down with a towel. “Or something. I share a one-bedroom apartment with James, but I stay here when he and his girl want some alone time. Mostly, I come here to practice. The main room has some kickass acoustics.”

“So it’s your own little refuge?” I looked around my surroundings and made a face. “Cozy.”

Grinning, he lowered the lid and snapped the fastenings on the case. “Your sarcasm isn’t lost on me, but I happen to find the environment inspiring.”

“That’s just sad.”

“Aww, come on, baby. Don’t be blinded by the dirt and decay. There’s a raw and gritty beauty to this building.” He propped the guitar case against the wall to the side of the sofa and sat back in his seat, stretching his arm on the back of the couch. “When it’s just me and my guitar, it’s like I can hear the walls whispering to me. They tell me of their loneliness, of their feelings of neglect and abandonment. They tell me how they long to be filled with life again, with noise and laughter, not sitting alone and forgotten.” He put a hand over his heart. “That’s what tonight’s party is about. I’m showing my gratitude for all it has given me by letting it experience that noise and life once more.”

I gave him a humoring smile. “Wow, and here I thought it was just an excuse to get wasted without paying a cover charge.”

His lazy grin widened, as if the idea just occurred to him. “Bonus!”

I studied him, trying to figure out his angle. “Is this how you pick up chicks? By waxing pseudo poetic about the loneliness of abandoned buildings?”

“It’s my A-game material,” he said with a wink.

I folded my arms over my chest, an amused smile on my face. “What’s next, a monologue on how you eschew mainstream pop-culture because you’re all about independent thought, and how you liked MGMT before “Kids” brought them mainstream success?”

He studied me with an enigmatic smile. “Ah, I see; you think you’ve got me all figured out.”

I gave an emphatic head shake. “Not at all. In fact, I don’t think I know much about
you
at all. What I do know, however, kind of reads like a page from Hipsters for Dummies.”

“Ooh, I have to write that one down.” Graydon made a show of patting his body down for a pen.

I grinned, unable to help myself. He really
did
have an answer for everything. It was equal parts annoying and charming, and I had to give him props for being able to take a thinly-veiled insult in stride.

Graydon sat back and relaxed again. “Well, we’ve established that I’m a walking-talking stereotype, so let’s talk about you. How does one get to know the beautiful Ivy Rossini better?”

I bit my lip at the word “beautiful,” flattered despite myself. It wasn’t a word I often heard in connection with me. I was always the cute one, the funny one, and I tried to make up for what I lacked in the looks-department with my personality. Sadly, I was terribly susceptible to flattery.

I shrugged and pushed away from the door, walking forward to join him on the couch. The black sandals I’d worn that night were cutting into my feet, and I wanted to get out of them. I sat on the opposite end of the couch from him and turned to face him. “I don’t know.” I wrapped my finger around a loose thread in the sheet. “Drop the cool-guy routine, for one. Just talk to me like a normal person.”

He removed his glasses and hung them on the neckline of his white T-shirt, then looked up at me with the full force of those pretty blue eyes. “I can do that.” Shifting on the couch, he turned his body to face mine and attempted a serious, contemplative expression. The effect was ruined by the twitching corners of his mouth.

I nudged his knee with my toe. “If you have to try that hard, you’re doing it wrong.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’m just messing with you. Fine. You asked why I come here? I’ll give you a real, non-cool-guy answer. Yes, this building is a hole in the wall, but it’s free, no one bothers me, and I don’t have to worry about the neighbors complaining if I play after ten p.m. Is that better?”

“Much.”

He pointed at me. “So I listened to your show last night.”

“Did you, now? And what did you think?”

He reached over and tapped his finger on my ankle. “You’re a pretty kickass girl, is what I think. I’ve listened to your show before, but being able to put a face to that voice? It made it much more entertaining. I was impressed.”

“By what?” I couldn’t have been that impressive. I was in a bitchy snit half the night over losing the bet. I’d never accepted defeat with much grace.

“You’re fast.” Seeing my confused expression, his mouth quirked on one side. “What I mean is that you’ve got a great sense of timing. Hollister dishes it out and you shove it right back. You’re funny and feisty, and have this
I-don’t-take-shit-from-anybody
vibe about you. Like I said: kickass.”

“That’s how I roll,” I said with some puffed-up bravado. I wasn’t as nearly as cool as he was making me seem, but if he wanted to think I was, I wasn’t about to contradict him.

“And,” he added, “if you don’t mind me saying so, you have one hell of a sexy voice.”

I raised an eyebrow. That was one I hadn’t heard before. “Really?”

His blue eyes stared into mine for a moment before slowly traveling down. The sudden heat I saw in his gaze had me warming in an unexpected and pleasant way. He blew out a breath and looked back into my eyes. “As hell.”

The compliment went straight to my head and swirled around with the cheap beer and hormones that always seemed to whip up into a frenzy any time I had a few to drink. I tilted my head as I looked him up and down, taking in the lean body under his tight T-shirt and jeans. At that moment, I was having a hard time remembering why I should be on my guard with this guy. He didn’t strike me as threatening. He was a little cheesy, yeah, but he was kind of hot and funny…well, amusing at any rate. And the look of desire in his eyes was doing some pretty nifty things to my libido, unfulfilled as it was of late. So I didn’t protest when he shifted in close to me, and I didn’t stop him when he pressed his sweet little Jared Leto-esque lips against mine. I didn’t kiss him back right away; not until he did this thing where his tongue traced the seam of my mouth in a tantalizing way, urging my lips to part. He brushed his mouth against mine and he sucked my lower lip in between his.

A pleasurable tingling sensation went through my stomach. I added “pretty good kisser” to the tally of attributes I was compiling in his favor.

His kisses were gentle for all of about five seconds, before his mouth slammed down onto mine. His eagerness made him a little sloppier, and I downgraded his technique to “fair.” He placed his hands on my hips, urging me to move down on the couch. The second I was on my back, before I’d even had the chance to adjust the angle of my head, he dropped his body down on mine and started grinding between my legs with the pointy bulge in his pants. His hands groped and squeezed me at an eager, frantic pace that was a little rough for my taste, making it hard to enjoy.

“Wait, slow down,” I told him.

“Sorry,” he said between pants. He looked down at my chest. “You’re just so hot.”

He did slow his pace down, but with him on top of me, I became enveloped in his scent. It was a strange combination of cigarettes, beer, weed and something cloyingly sweet I couldn’t identify. My nose wrinkled and I felt a bit of queasiness in my stomach. Opening my eyes, I stared at the dirty ceiling. It swam in and out of my vision, spinning to one side and then the next. I tried to break the kiss, but he pressed so hard down on my mouth I was afraid it was going to get stuck in that position. I sucked in a breath through my nose, feeling that nauseating coil in my stomach again. I fought a gag for as long as I could, but couldn’t hold it back when he pressed his tongue so far down my throat that it
brushed
my tonsils. I jerked my head to the side to break his suction-like seal.

I gasped for breath and cringed when he began licking my neck. His sweaty hand darted under my shirt and squeezed one of my breasts.

“Graydon, wait.”

He ignored me and made a grunting noise while his hips pounded into me so hard that the denim of my pants pinched and abraded some very delicate places. “Wait,” I said in a louder voice, putting my hands on his shoulders and pushing him back.

“What’s wrong, baby?” he asked, looking at me with a confused smile. At close range, I could see the sweat on his upper lip and the grease in his hair. It looked like it hadn’t been washed in days.

What had I gotten myself into? What possessed me to think this was a good idea?

“I think we should stop.”

“Why?”

“This just doesn’t feel right.”

Graydon gave me a smarmy smile and said, “Aw, come on, baby, just relax.”

He went to kiss me again, and I dodged his mouth by turning away. He plunged his tongue into my ear, instead. My flesh crawled. The time for polite was over. “Graydon, I want to stop,
now
.”

He groaned and dropped his head on my shoulder. “What’s the problem?”

I wedged my arm between us and pushed him against the back cushion of the couch. Rolling the other way, I spilled onto my hands and knees on the floor and inhaled a greedy breath of air.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have come up here. Casual hookups aren’t my thing.”

He ran his fingers through his hair and chuckled. “Yeah, right. Don’t act like no blushing virgin, baby, ‘cause we both know you ain’t.”

My brow lifted slowly. “Excuse me?”

“You’ve got more notches on your bed post than a porn star, so you can stop with the coy act.”

With a burst of adrenaline, I scrambled to my feet and put my clothes together.

“Hey, where are you going?”

“Away from here and away from you.”

“Why?”

The fact that he had to ask, after a remark like that, made me question his intelligence on top of his grooming habits. “Because you are an asshole.”

He pushed himself up into a seated position. “And you’re a cock-teasing little bitch.” He grabbed the bulge in his jeans. “You give me a fucking hard-on and leave me high and dry? That’s bullshit. You should get down on your knees and suck me off, bitch.”

I had a smart remark to come back with, but the idea of going anywhere near his lap sent a spray of bile into my throat. I swallowed it back and shuddered. “Not a chance,
dollface
.”

“Well, fuck you, then.”

I rushed from the room and slammed the door behind me. “Ugh!” I did a full-body Snoopy Dance of revulsion and then stalked away. I felt like I needed to bathe in bleach.

I wrapped my arms around myself and quickly left the small hall that led to the office. It opened up into the second floor sitting room, which contained several rows of cracked poly-vinyl booths left over from the building’s club days.

I ignored the couples who’d sought out the second floor to make out and made my way to the staircase. I was almost there when I saw Ian coming up the steps, two at a time. The dark look on his face told me he was straddling the line between desperation and irate.

Well, mission accomplished. I’d set out to piss him off and he certainly looked pissed. Too bad I was still too skeeved out to take any joy in it.

I stopped long enough to scowl at him, then shook my head and tried to stalk past him.

“Hey.” He caught my arm.

I yanked out of his grasp and whirled on him, my fists clenching at my sides. “What are you doing up here?”