Revelry (Taint #1) (6 page)

“What?” I say, tilting my chin defiantly.

“You don’t seem like a cat person.”

“I’m not. It’s my grandmother’s.”

“You stroke your grandmother’s pussy?” Levi says.
I really don’t like him
.

“No, she’s dead. I have her bastard cat because it’s all she left me in her will.”

“Oh shit,” Levi says, rubbing the back of his neck and grimacing. “Sorry, Red.”

“Why didn’t you just give it to a shelter?” Coop says. He looks beyond me to my shit-box of a car, and his brow creases in this sexy furrow that makes all the blood in my body rush to my vagina in point-three of a second. “Are you living in your car?”

I step defensively in front of said shit-box. “No.”

“Guys, give us a minute?” Cooper says.

“Here we go,” Zed mumbles under his breath.

“What the hell, man?” Levi shoves Coop’s arm. “You said we were going to go get pizza?”

“I’m gonna shove my fist up your arse in a minute if you don’t fuck off. I need to talk to Red.”

“I don’t need to talk to you,” I say, sounding an awful lot like a petulant child. I do not like being told what to do.

“Talk, riiiiight.” Levi says, and then turns to walk away, but Zed holds a hand out to stop him.

“Wait. The booze,” Zed says.

“Red, you wanna hold your pretty kitty down while Zed gets the booze from your car?” Levi leans in, propping his side against the door, flush with mine. “Or you want me to do it for you?”

“Back off, Quinn,” Cooper warns.

Levi raises his hands above his shoulders and steps away from me, walking back toward the studio. Zed grasps the handle on the passenger-side door.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you—”

He yanks it open. Cat launches herself at him, clawing up his torso and across his shoulder. Zed screams as her tiny little claws pierce his flesh. The cat is freaking out. Zed is freaking out, and Cooper is just laughing. I stare at him like he’s fucking crazy, because he must be. There’s no way you couldn’t see that cat coming at you with claws and fangs exposed and not freak out the way Zed is. Coop makes this clicking noise with his tongue and the bitch cat leaps from Zed into Cooper’s waiting arms.

“Fuck!” Zed roars, yanking off his shirt to assess his new injuries. Kitty drew blood, a lot of blood because it’s running down his torso in a thin watery stream, down hard pecs, and deeply chiselled abs, and—oh god.
When did I become one of those girls who thinks with her cooter instead of her brain?

Zed clears his throat, and I reluctantly trail my eyes up his broad chest one more time before I meet a mischievous smile and bright blue glinting eyes. “Your cat needs a rabies shot.”

“Yeah, so does my vagina,” I mutter, still in a daze from all the pretty on display.

Zed laughs and ruffles my hair. “I like you, Red.”

“Well, seems like you’re the only one,” I mutter again. God, I wish my mouth would just stop moving, just for five damn minutes.

Zed winks at me. Shoving his shirt in his back pocket, he leans into the open car door and piles the rest of the supplies on top of the carton of beer. He turns and carries his loot to the studio without another word. I watch his muscular back, and firm arse retreat and then I turn my attention to Coop, who’s currently holding my kitty in his arms like a baby, as though she’s a real cat that likes affection.
And is that a purr
?

“You got a box you want her to go back into?” Coop asks. I peel my gaze away from Cat lounging in his thickly muscled arms—
hussy
—and I meet his eyes. His gaze is cool as ever. For a man who stands on stage in front of thousands of strangers and bares his heart and soul through his music, he’s surprisingly hard to read.

“Yeah,” I say, and I walk around to the other side of the car, opening the door and stepping aside to let him put Cat in the kitty cage. He eases her gently inside, and she doesn’t protest. The bitch kitty doesn’t scratch and put up a fight like she does for me. She just curls farther back inside the box and licks her paws.

Stupid cat
. And stupid freaking rock stars, with their long-fingered and calloused-in-all-the-right-places damn hands. He steps back and I shut the door. Through the glass I see the arsehole feline hiss. I’m tempted to hiss back, but instead I let out a deep sigh and turn around, and come face to face with very pretty blue-grey eyes.

“Why are you living in your car?”

I blink in surprise. “I’m not living in my car.”

“Don’t bullshit me, Ali.”

“Excuse me?” I glare at him. “What are you my dad, now?”

“No. I’m your employer. It’s my job to make sure you’re safe when you’re on my watch.”

“Okay, first of all, you’re not my employer. Harbour Records is. And secondly, beyond telling Guidelli that I’m doing a bang-up job, you don’t owe me shit. Just like I don’t owe you anything,” I say, shoving off the car so he has no choice but to back the hell up. I really want to just get in and drive as fast and far away from Cooper Ryan as possible, but I’d probably get fired for it. Plus, I don’t have the petrol. So instead, I just tilt my chin defiantly and fold my arms over my chest.

“I’m only going to ask you this once more: why are you living in your—”

“Jesus Christ, no wonder your barefoot and pregnant girlfriend up and left you. You’re a fucking pushy bastard.”

Coop flinches. He pulls away from me as if I just slapped him in the face. He turns and walks back to the studio, his shoulders set, hands in his pockets. He doesn’t look back. I don’t go inside. Instead, I climb into my car and wait for the band to be done recording.

It’s another six hours before they all come walking out of the studio, tired, bleary-eyed, and looking so far removed from their hot megastar image. I mean they’re still hot, but they all look as though they could use a nap.

Levi has his arm slung around the blonde receptionist. Ash trails behind the couple, his head down, and Zed and Cooper walk behind him, both engrossed in conversation. Cooper doesn’t look in my direction, but I know he can feel the weight of my stare as my eyes follow him in the rear-view mirror.

When their cars pull out of the lot, I let out a sigh of relief. I wait until the producer leaves the studio and locks up after them and then push my seat back as far as it will go in the tiny vehicle and attempt to get some sleep.

I’m woken at five am by a security guard tapping on my window. He asks me to move the car out of the lot, and I do. I park out on the quiet street until he leaves and then I drive right back in again, figuring I’ll get a little more shut-eye before I’m made Taint’s coffee bitch again.

W
hen I wake again, it’s because the cat is scratching to be let out of its box and there’s a man tapping at my window. I close my eyes, wanting just another half hour, but then I scream because there’s a man tapping at my window, and not just any man, but a super-hot rock star man.

He stares at me with his eyebrow raised and holds a white bakery bag and two cardboard mugs of coffee up to the glass. I bring my seat up and crack the window open, afraid to get too close in case I knock him out with my death breath.

“Dude, you’re here like really early,” Zed says, and I wince a little at the volume of his voice this early in the morning. “Wait. Did you sleep in your car?”

“Uh-huh.” I close my eyes and lay my head back against the seat. Remembering that’s not something normal people do, I add, “Just this morning. I got here at like five, and when no one was here I just decided to go back to sleep.”

I stretch and open the door. Zed steps back to allow me room to exit and then we both lean up against the car. He hands me one of his coffee cups and places the other on the hood.

“Did you bring me coffee?” I croak.

“Isn’t that your job?”

“Right.” I nod, and then let out another frustrated huff. “I just got my foot in the door. I worked my arse off for years and in one split second of douchery I’ve been reduced to ‘Red, the Coffee Girl’.”

“So you really are into this music thing, huh?”

“This music thing?” I question. “Wow, Zed, I feel like I should strip away your rock star badge for that comment.”

“Well you know, a lot of chicks get into this biz for the perks of fucking rock stars.”

“Such as yourself?”

“Maybe.” He grabs a pastry from the bag and ploughs into it, speaking again before he’s swallowed everything in his mouth. “I do alright with the ladies.”

“I’ll bet.” I squeeze my hand tightly around the cardboard cup, relishing the warmth against my fingers, and sip it slowly.

“You can drink it.” Zed tilts his head toward the cup. “I’ve already had two this morning.”

“You had two coffees this morning? It’s not even—wait, what time is it?”

“Six thirty.”

“Holy crap. You guys didn’t finish in there until after two.”

He shrugs. “None of us sleep much.”

Yawning, I say, “Do you think that has something to do with all the coffee and drugs you filter into your system?”

He shrugs. “Maybe.”

Zed balances his empty cup on top of my car, and then without another word he gestures for silence by pressing his hand to his pursed lips. He closes his eyes and crushes the cup with his forehead, finishing with his palms in prayer.

Did he roofie my coffee because … really? Did I seriously just witness that?

“Are you really sleeping in your car?”