Platinum (All That Glitters #3) (13 page)

As Trihn neared the campus radio station, a message came in from Bryna.

Where are you?

“Shit,” she murmured. She pulled into the radio station parking lot and replied.

Have to cancel. Got into it with Neal, and now, I’m meeting Damon. Sorry!

Yay! Go off and have a scandalously sexy Brit bang fest, and tell me all the juicy details later!

Trihn laughed and shook her head.
Leave it to Bryna.

Only a minute after she’d arrived, his car parked next to hers. They both stepped out and he smiled when he saw her.

“Hey.” He walked around her car and pulled her into an embrace.

She wrapped her arms around his neck. “Hey yourself.”

When he released her, he nodded his head toward the door, and they walked to the building together. He used his phone to illuminate the door and then produced a well-worn key from his pocket. The lock turned easily. Twisting the door handle, Damon let her enter the dark space first.

“Wow. It’s a little creepy in here,” she whispered.

“Yeah, sorry,” he said. “Give me a minute.” He fiddled with a box and then flipped on a series of switches. The hallway lit up before them. “Here we go. This way.”

Trihn followed him into the studio. It was a relatively small room, all things considered. A bunch of computer monitors sat before a keyboard and a pretty impressive-looking soundboard. A speaker hung suspended from the ceiling. A few seats for interviews with musicians were placed in front of the soundboard. Trihn had heard local artists come on campus radio to try to gain exposure with the college crowd.

Damon sank into the seat behind the soundboard and habitually fiddled with a few of the controls.

Trihn walked around to his side. She leaned against the desk. “I’m sorry,” she finally said.

His eyes shot to her. “For what?”

“I haven’t been myself the last couple of weeks, and that was the girl you got to know. My breakup really messed me up. Then, you had to see me when I found out about my sister’s wedding.” Trihn choked up when she mentioned the wedding. That part still burned with a fiery passion. “Her fiancé is an asshole, and I was shocked when I found out the other night. Basically, you and I have gotten off to the wrong start.”

“I kind of liked our start.”

She let loose a breath. “You liked the sex, but you wanted more.”

“Look, I’m sorry, too. I wanted more. I
want
more with you, but that doesn’t mean I have to force you into it.”

“I don’t feel forced. I just feel like I have major trust issues. And it’s hard, letting in someone new.”

He nodded in understanding, but she knew he could never really understand.

She moved forward and sat down in his lap. Her hands snaked up around his neck. “But I’ll try for you.”

His arms circled her waist, and he smiled the most brilliant smile. “I like the sound of that,” he said before kissing her.

Wear white. Something you don’t mind getting ruined.

TRIHN RAISED HER EYEBROWS
at the text she had just received from Damon.

All white and something I could get ruined. Is he planning to tear it off of me? Now, that would be fun.

They’d spent a couple of hours in the radio station, talking. Damon had picked up a few instruments around the location and played for her. It had been a nice, chill evening, something she hadn’t realized that she needed.

Now, they were going to go on their first official date, and after that bizarre request, she really had no clue what to expect.

An hour later, Damon knocked on the door, dressed in jeans and a plain white T-shirt. He had a bouquet of tulips in his hand. “For you.”

“Thank you,” she said, taking them from him. She found the vase she had put the last bouquet in and placed the flowers inside.

He came up behind her and kissed her shoulder. Then, he slipped something in her hand.

“What’s this?” she asked. She turned to face him and opened her palm to reveal a Hershey’s Kiss. She laughed. She could get used to this.

She opened the wrapper and popped the chocolate into her mouth. It melted almost instantly, and Damon leaned forward, capturing her lips in a searing kiss. The taste of the chocolate lingered between them.

“Oh, I like the kiss,” he said.

“Which one?”

“Both.”

He kissed her again and then had to drag himself back. “Come on. This isn’t an event you’ll want to be late to.”

“Where are we going?” Trihn asked, following him out of her apartment.

They hurried out of the building and into Damon’s car before he answered, “So, we’re going to see this DJ.”

“Cool. Like you?”

“Sort of.” He revved the engine and started to drive them out of the city. “We started doing shows around the same time, but now, he’s kind of a big deal. He got a record deal, and his shows are pretty packed.”

“All for a DJ?” she asked curiously.

“Well, yeah. I mean, Calvin Harris is recording with huge celebrities, and Skrillex has his own gig. They’re huge in the music industry. If you make it, you make it. And Poet is on his way.”

“Poet?” Trihn asked. She tried to hold back her laugh. “He just goes by Poet?”

“Yeah. His last name is Poe, and the label thought he’d be more recognizable with a stage name.” Damon shrugged. “Poet was his nickname in high school because he was always scribbling lyrics into his notebook.”

“Did you go to school with this Poe…Poet guy?”

“No, but I have a friend who did.”

“You seem to know a lot of people.”

“That’s the industry,” he said with a smile.

“What’s his real name?”

Damon glanced at her. “James Poe. Not exactly the sexy stage name they were looking for.”

“And what about Damon Stone? Would they make you change that?” she asked curiously.

“I wouldn’t let bigwig asshole music producers who were paying me thousands of dollars to do what I loved change anything.” He looked over at her with a smirk on his face.

“Well, for the record, I think Damon Stone stays. You don’t want them to call you something like Stoned or Stoner.”

“I heard that enough in high school,” he said. He brushed a hand back through his unruly dark hair, and the strands fell back into place almost instantly. “And what about you?”

“Me?”

“You’re going to be in that fashion show. What’s your line going to be called?”

Trihn chewed on her bottom lip. “You know…I never thought about that. Maybe just Trihnity.”

“That’s not you. Go with just Trihn.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. Then, when I’m on the red carpet, people can ask me who I’m wearing, and I can say Trihn.”

She burst out laughing. “You are insanely way ahead of yourself…but I like it.”

His eyes lit up at her enthusiasm. “Good. I like it, too.”

A few minutes later, Damon pulled into a parking lot. He had a tag that let them pass the crazy line of cars waiting to get into a general admission section. But even their passes kept them pretty far from the venue. She was glad that she had chosen to wear boots tonight with her white jeans and shirt. The jeans weren’t exactly something she wanted to ruin, but he’d said white, and she couldn’t help herself when it came to dressing fashionable for an event, especially a first date.

Damon handed over two passes to a guy, and he nodded his head for them to take the line to the right. Someone checked her small purse and gave them each a handful of glow sticks, and then they were through.

They entered what more or less looked like a closed-in mosh pit. There was a stage at the far end of the football field–sized area. Damon took her hand and seamlessly threaded his way through the crowd, getting as close to the stage as they could get.

In confusion, Trihn held out her glow sticks to Damon.

“You’re going to need those,” he said.

After breaking them in half, she pushed the ends together and created a necklace as well as a few bracelets. Damon had a long chain up his arm. The sky darkened, and soon, the entire audience was glowing. Black lights flickered to life around them, illuminating their white clothing, and then the music started.

“Welcome to Poet’s Paint War. Rock on.”

The music grew with intensity as DJ Poet got into the groove. The crowd immediately started dancing all around Trihn, but she was focused on one word that had come out of Poet’s mouth.

“Paint?” Trihn asked.

Then, she felt it. A giant glob of neon green paint landed in the middle of her white T-shirt. Damon laughed at her reaction just as more paint rained down on them.

“Where the hell did you bring me?” she asked.

His hands landed on her hips, and their bodies moved together, as if they were made for each other. “A rave.”

“This isn’t any old rave.”

“It’s like those color runs everyone goes on about but with dancing and good music. And you.”

Paint covered their bodies. Her skin was already plastered with neon green, orange, pink, and yellow. It was on her clothes and skin and in her hair.

Everyone threw their hands up in the air and danced with their glow sticks over head.

Losing her inhibitions, Trihn threw her arms around Damon’s neck and leaned against his body. She teasingly circled her hips as the techno backbeat picked up the tempo. The crowd around them started jumping, but Trihn leaned forward and pressed her mouth to Damon’s.

Their heated bodies slammed against each other, and paint-slick wet hands grasped onto bare skin. Desire flared in her stomach. Lust mixed with hope and the promise of something real. She had feelings she had sworn off for undeniably good reasons. But his kisses tasted like chocolate. His skin was a canvas she wanted to turn into a masterpiece. His seductive movements hypnotized her. Cognizant thought fled, leaving behind something she hadn’t felt in a long time—abandon.

Damon brought out the old Trihn, the one who had danced on rooftops in Milan, flirted with strangers in London, and lived her life without fear.

But fear had a way of eating you up from the inside out.

Slowly, over time, fear had done its job and mingled with his bastard cousins—doubt, regret, and depression—leaving a hollowed out corpse of a person.

Damon crept into those empty spaces and infused them with light. His mere presence seemed to rid her of the dark despair that had fallen on her shoulders like a familiar blanket.

This could be real. This could work out.
She at least owed it to herself to give it a real shot. If she opened herself up one more time and found heartbreak waiting around the corner, then it would really be the end. She couldn’t survive it a third time.

And Damon’s soft kisses over the pulse of the music honestly made her believe it was possible.

The DJ played well into the night, but Damon pulled Trihn from the crowd when he got to the point where he couldn’t seem to take his hands off of her. They sped back into the city, and without a word, Damon drove them to his place.

He parked, rushed around to the other side of the car, and held the door open for her. She sympathetically looked back at his painted cover interior.

“Don’t worry about it. It all washes out,” Damon said before drawing her in for another kiss.

He couldn’t seem to get enough of her. At the show, they’d been all over each other—not that anyone else had noticed or had been lucid enough to care.

They took the stairs to his studio. Trihn kicked off her shoes at the entrance. Damon took her hand, and she was careful not to touch anything as they walked through his suite.

When they got to the bathroom, he closed the door behind them and turned the shower on full blast. He peeled her destroyed white shirt over her head and tossed it to the floor. He kissed across her collarbone and then down her stomach before sinking to his knees before her.

Her heart stuttered as she watched him worshipping her body. His fingers deftly unsnapped the button on her jeans and dragged the zipper to the base. Then, he took his time inching her once white jeans off her legs and threw them into a pile with her shirt. His hands crawled up her legs, admiring every bare inch of her skin.

He moved to her face and smudged away some paint on her cheek. “There. Better.”

“One smudge, and that was all it took?”

“You’re my pièce de résistance.”

Their lips met again, bridging the distance between them. He snapped her bra free with one hand. She felt exposed with him in so much clothing, so she worked her way up his shirt. He pulled away long enough for her to remove it. His jeans followed, but she wasn’t as patient as he was. Her fingers tugged at the material, stripping him out of everything as quickly as she could. He made no protest as his boxers fell to the floor next, showing just what their stripping had done to him.

Her body quivered at the thought of being with him again. She hadn’t forgotten for one second how good he was in bed or the pleasure he brought forth from her body. She had shoved that knowledge in the dark recesses of her mind when she was too afraid to move forward—but no longer.

She stepped out of her last article of clothing, and they both walked under the steaming hot spray. The shower floor was soon the same neon wash that had coated their bodies.