Strung Tight (The Road To Rocktoberfest #1) - Ann Lister Page 0,43

I was a little surprised to see the lighting arranged around the chairs and a camera on a tripod. I thought this was strictly a print interview, but maybe I was wrong about that detail.

“What’s with the camera?” I asked Dagger after we fully stepped into the enormous room. “Are we being recorded?”

“Yes. Come meet my husband, and I’ll have him explain everything to you,” Dagger said as he directed us closer to the gorgeous man making adjustments to the chair placement. “Babe, the band is here. I’ll introduce you.”

Ryan straightened to his full height and spun to face us. Christ, he was incredible looking with absolutely stunning features: chiseled cheekbones, a strong jawline, and eyes a shade of blue that kind of reminded me of Dallas’s. Ryan smiled broadly at us and stuck his hand out to Mike, who was closest to him. Dagger stepped in and did all the introductions, and then Ryan asked us to take a seat.

“Online print articles still hold a little weight, but we get just as many hits on the links posted for our video interviews on the magazine’s website,” Ryan explained. “I’ll have the segment we shoot today edited down to about fifteen minutes, and that’ll be featured on our website for a few weeks. The exposure you’ll get from that will be huge.”

“Sounds great, but had I known we were going to be seen in this interview, we would have dressed up a little more,” I said.

“You look fine, like real rockers,” Ryan said, and his smile was back, this time his lips parted a bit to show off his near perfectly white teeth.

Dagger stood off to the side and out of camera range, I assumed, but he was still in my line of sight as was Ryan, and damn, they looked good together. I could only imagine what it would be like watching the two of them wrestle for dominance in bed, as I guessed they probably did. Often. Then my face flushed after realizing I was imagining our mentor and his husband getting it on, and I cringed. Thoughts like that had never passed through my mind until I started messing around with Dallas. Now I had trouble keeping the fantasies of the two of us naked and tangled up in the sheets out of my head.

Along with my red face, I now had a semi hard-on beginning to tent my jeans. Great. And here I was worried about saying something stupid that would be out on the internet for all eternity. Sporting a boner during a taped interview was way worse, although I’m sure at some point it had already been done by someone.

“Okay, guys, everyone get comfortable,” Ryan instructed. “There are water bottles on the floor beside your chairs if you get thirsty. I’m just going to ask simple questions about how your band got started and where you see things going in a few years.”

A man walked around our circle and attached small wireless microphones to our shirt pockets, and then he moved to stand behind the camera tripod. We did a test of the microphone clarity, and then Ryan signaled the cameraman to start recording. My heart was pounding out of my chest. This was exciting and nerve-wracking, but I knew it was all good for our career.

“So, Fletcher,” Ryan began. “You’re the one who started the band?”

“Actually, it was Mike and myself who got together first with this crazy idea of being musicians,” I explained.

“It was more like—one band geek met another band geek and became enthralled with each other,” Mike elaborated.

“We were total music nerds.” I laughed. “It was the only class I excelled at.”

“How old were you when this stroke of genius happened?” Ryan asked me.

“We met freshman year of high school in band class,” I answered. “I think we were both fourteen or fifteen. It was just Mike and me hanging out and playing for quite a while before we started getting more serious and adding the other guys to fill out our sound.”

“We were strictly a garage band for the longest time,” Mike said. “I don’t think either of us thought we’d be able to get a real band together, but we did.”

“When it was just the two of us, we called ourselves the Brainwashed, and it fit our situation,” I said. “Then we added Jeff because we needed a bass player to ride on Mike’s beats, and not long after that, we asked Potter to join us to add