"You owe me an explanation," he bit out.
"It's not - " He kissed me.
He had the softest lips, and he sealed them over mine and kissed me.
By the time I registered what was happening, he'd tightened his grip on my arms and I couldn't move away.
Couldn't push him away.
And for a brief span of time I didn't want to.
I even kissed him back, because the attraction was still there and it soothed something hurting inside me to think I might've been more than a convenient piece of ass.
He tasted like cloves, smelled seductively like hardworking male, and he took my mouth with all the passion of a creative soul.
He was familiar, in very intimate ways.
But in the end, it didn't matter that he got to me still.
It didn't matter that we had a history, painful as it was for me.
It didn't matter that I was flattered and affected by the lyrics he'd written, that after six months of watching him enjoy other women while nailing me anywhere with a door that locked, it was me he was thinking about when he seduced screaming-for-it women from the stage.
None of that mattered because I was madly in love with Gideon Cross, and he was what I needed.
I wrenched away with a gasp - - and faced Gideon charging at a dead run, his speed unchecked as he rammed into Brett and took him down.
Chapter 10
I stumbled back from the impact, nearly falling.
The two men hit the asphalt with a sickening thud.
Someone yelled.
A woman screamed.
I could do nothing.
I stood frozen and silent, emotions twisting through me in a frenzied tangle.
Gideon pinned Brett by the throat and pummeled his ribs with a relentless series of blows.
He was like a machine, silent and unstoppable.
Brett grunted with each brutal impact and struggled to break free.
"Cross! Dio mio."
I wept when Arnoldo appeared.
He leaped forward, reaching for Gideon, only to scramble back as Brett wrenched to the side and the two men rolled.
Brett's bandmates pushed in through the growing crowd around the front of the buses, prepared to brawl .
until they saw who Brett was fighting with - the man with the money behind their record label.
"Kline, you f**khead!" Darrin, the drummer, gripped his own hair in both fists.